Politics

Before I head back to the “perfect storm” of quarter-end work, the processing of 7/1 business, and other “fun”, I can’t help but pass along the following quote:

We demand more energy and complain about high prices, but we restrict energy exploration and production. We embrace the promise of energy efficiency, but we are slow to make adjustments in our energy-intensive lifestyles.

That comes from an open letter that the AP reports has been sent to various leaders and political candidates by a group of “elder statesmen” including Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell, calling for something to actually be done about the emerging energy crunch, rather than the impotent energy-themed bickering currently taking place in political circles.

I like the statement I’ve quoted above.  The “energy problem” isn’t one that can be solved just by tracking down new sources of existing forms of energy, or developing new “alternative”  energy sources and infrastructure.  At some point, Americans will be obliged – by fiscal realities at least, if not by prudent foresight – to realize that the lifestyle some (many?) feel entitled to is unsustainable.

Political grandstanding isn’t going to fix the problem.  People resisting being inconvenienced while publicly wishing that others would change their behavior also isn’t going to change anything.

The answer is going to involve reaching a public consensus on what should be done, and then acting upon that consensus.  Part of what’s involved in that consensus will not please some groups, while other parts of that consensus will displease others.  But at least corrective action would be taken, which is appreciably better than the status quo of talking about the problem without making changes until those changes are forced upon us.

The article mentions that the open letter includes about a dozen recommendations of action that should be taken sooner rather than later.  Unfortunately, a quick bit of googling didn’t turn up an actual copy of the letter.  I’d be interested in seeing what those recommendations actually are.

Of course, my quick web-search did turn up a web forum where a couple of posters quickly alleged bias in the letter due to the political affiliations of the sponsoring group and some of the elder statesmen…and where others quickly responded with vehemently opposing political thoughts.

Typical.

Maybe I should dust off an old Thomas Jefferson quote:

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his politics, you gotta give the guy credit for timing.  Quoting the New York Times:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy returned to the Senate on Wednesday for the first time since being sidelined with cancer and was greeted by a bipartisan barrage of whoops, cheers and applause before savoring a legislative triumph.[…]

“I return to the Senate today to keep a promise to our senior citizens,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement released by his office, “and that’s to protect Medicare. Win, lose or draw, I wasn’t going to take the chance that my vote could make the difference.”

The bill would block a 10 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors because of a statutory formula that reduces payments to doctors when spending would otherwise exceed certain goals.

Admittedly he returned to help pass a bill that aggravates Medicare’s dire financial condition…but still, dropping in after some chemo to help ensure your doctor gets paid is a rather dramatic statement.

(In fairness, I should point out that the bill’s failure also wouldn’t have addressed Medicare’s problems, thus supporting my belief that Congress doesn’t really care about doing the right thing; they just want to look good for their constituents.)

An impressive stat from Rasmussen:

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

What amazes me is that despite the 9% rating, there doesn’t seem to be anti-incumbent fever spreading across the country.   You’d think that any sitting congrescritter should be concerned about his or her reelection prospects, regardless of party affiliation.

Oh, but I forget.  This is America, where we have mastered the art of “someone else’s problem”.   Something’s not quite right when, in 435 Congressional districts and 33 or 34 states, polled folks seem to essentially be saying, “my congressman/woman is the best candidate for the job…but all those other jokers need to be kicked out of office.”

Seen at the Daily Mail:

Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions.

But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.

It’s nice to see that world leaders have no fear of being criticized for hypocrisy.

The menu, in case anyone’s interested:

One of the reasons I started / I maintain this site is that I think too much.  Every so often an oddball thought pops into my head, and it’s nice to express it, either in the hopes that it’s either a good thought worthy of being shared…or that it will serve as evidence for one day when I’m committed to the funny farm.

One of the mailing lists I subscribe to is for folks who have a fascination with borders, tripoints, and the like.  A recent discussion on the de facto border between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory on that list has turned nasty, for the usual reasons.

The subject of “what to do” about the Middle East is a nasty one, as there’s plenty of blame to spread around, a lot of history behind the current situation, not to mention the conflicting claims of entitlement to the region.

It’s that “conflicting claims of entitlement” that stimulated my nutty idea of the day.

I wonder, what would happen if, by international consensus, everyone were kicked out of the country, at least temporarily, and sovereignty were transferred to a theoretically neutral party with no prior claims to the region – the Dalai Lama, for instance.

The conflicting parties could be resettled elsewhere…or even be granted readmission to the region, provided they accepted governance by the new powers-that-be.

I know, it’ll never happen, and it would only aggravate the conflicting claims of title on property in the region.  But given the ugliness of Middle Eastern politics, sometimes you wonder if the situation is messy enough that if the parties involved can’t just learn to table past conflicts and quit antagonizing the other side (the only practical solution, unfair though it may be), the next best answer is to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

Last week, it was announced that a District Court of Appeals had found that the classification of a Uighur held at Guantánamo Bay as an “unlawful combatant” was inappropriate; the Government needed to either revisit his classification or release him.   The appellant’s attorney was reported as looking forward to passing along the news…but was unable to do so since his client was being held in isolation, incommunicado.

The New York Times is reporting that the unclassified portion of the opinion has been released.  This passage in the story caught my eye:

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its allegations against a detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a Lewis Carroll character: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why our government has a system of checks and balances.  If one branch of the government gets a little too full of itself, another can step in and impose some amount of reason, thereby reducing the chance our government devolves into a totalitarian regime.

I don’t object in principle to the idea that those who really threaten public safety should be detained.  However, the process by which the threat they pose is neutralized must permit a fair process to review the assessment of that threat.

You’d think that given after all this time, the process we have today wouldn’t rely on Executive fiat or the use of a tame, kangaroo court.

Apparently the federal courts would seem inclined to agree.

Seen at CNN:

The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.[…]

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

Surely I can’t be the only person speculating about joint American-Israeli operations against Iran being started up on Wednesday, 5 November, too late for it to impact the November elections, but before the Bush administration is removed from power.

If the Dems were truly dovish, they would start wrestling through a prohibition on the expenditure of any funds in preemptive, offensive action against Iran between 1 November and 20 January as part of each and every appropriations bill passed between now and the change in administrations.

If a legitimate need to go to war with Iran emerged, such a prohibition could be rescinded.  And, by setting those particular time limits, the administration would be obliged to weigh the political ramifications of any aggression (as opposed to the potential for a Lame Duck War).

I normally would not be comfortable suggesting that such restrictions be attempted against the Commander In Chief.  However…where are the WMD’s the invasion of Iraq was supposed to protect us from?

The smell of political silliness is in the air here in Connecticut.  An article in the Courant mentions:

• Connecticut is required to have a ballot question every 20 years on whether to call a convention to amend the state’s constitution;
   
• This November will see an appearance of the bi-decadal question on the ballot;
   
• Groups supporting an anti-same-gender amendment to the state constitution and the introduction of the ballot initiative are ramping up a campaign to encourage voters to vote “yes” to the question.

While I’m all for periodically revisiting the fundamentals from which our legal and regulatory system works, I tend to distrust politicians’ and activists’ attempts to improve something that isn’t necessarily broken.  That distrust is doubled when folks seeking to meddle with the status-quo have ulterior motives.

For example, longer-time readers of this blog should be aware of my thoughts on same-gender marriage – I feel that the notion of a bureaucrat or politician dictating whom God or Mother Nature may marry to be silly at best, arrogant at worst.  I wouldn’t mind seeing a roadblock or two set up to interfere with those who would aggravate that silliness/arrogance.

On the subject of ballot initiatives – while I can see the attraction to the idea, I can also see the potential for great mischief to be caused through attempting to game the tyranny of the majority.   Besides, given the small size of Connecticut, both in terms of population and geography, state legislators seem particularly responsive to the will of the people.   For a recent example, consider the recent hoopla over requiring gas company franchises to permit franchisees to grant cash discounts.

We apparently don’t need ballot initiatives in this state to see silliness occur.

Given the level of responsiveness we already have in state government, why the heck should we want to give up the sanity that is supposed to be imposed by filtering legislative changes through theoretically wise elected representatives?

However, I suspect that I’m in the minority on this matter.  So, if we are going to endure the ordeal of ballot initiatives in this state, could I at least get the right to mace aggressive petitioners written into the state constitution, or the state’s do-not-call law amended to prohibit robocalls from political campaigns and campaigns for/against the initiatives of the day?

You’ve probably already heard this, but just in case…quoting the New York Times:

The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.[…]

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child, on the other.

Hmmm….I wonder if spamming could be classified with treason as a crime against the state, which is also permitted to retain the death penalty under the ruling.

Seriously, I have issues with the death penalty on general principle, due to seeming inequities in its application, and due to the number of times that capital offense convictions have been overturned.  But, if  you are going to have a death penalty… I’m not sure that I agree that capital offenses require that the victim be a corpse.  If death is ever an appropriate punishment (and that’s a big “if”), the test of appropriateness should be heinousness.  There are some particularly vile crimes that don’t involve murder.

Justice Kennedy expressed concern that the criminal justice system would be bogged down if child-rape cases were capital offenses, or that family member victims/witnesses would be less likely to testify if the criminal was a family member and was up for the death penalty.   While those are valid concerns…isn’t that part of the reason why judges and district attorneys are given some latitude in prescribing sentences?

When contemplating the possibility of disruption up here in Windsor Connecticut from the upcoming revaluation, I’ve toyed around with the idea of my section of town breaking off into its own community, to avoid the tax drain from ineffective municipals schools, and a tendency for the town leadership to push for development in this area despite the town long-range plan’s call for maintaining the exurban nature of the area.

I quickly dismissed the idea as impractical.

Judging by this news from Atlanta (via the AJC), maybe I was a bit too hasty:

The Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation has mailed a glossy four-page newsletter to about 50,000 households in the area, pushing to secede from Atlanta and make Buckhead its own city.

Supporters point to the city government’s budget problems and school property tax rates and say the proposed city of Buckhead would better manage their tax dollars. Opponents fear the move would financially devastate Atlanta, which is currently struggling with a staggering budget shortfall. […]

Buckhead is considered home to many of Atlanta’s largest office buildings, some of its most expensive homes and two of the region’s haute shopping malls: Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza.

Reading through the article, it sounds like the plan suffers two fatal flaws – a majority of all voters in Atlanta would need to approve of the secession, not just the voters in Buckhead, and somehow I suspect voters in the balance of Atlanta might not like to see so much of their revenue base leave…at least not without taking their share of the infrastructure costs along with them.

And, as the article notes, there is already an incorporated municipality in Georgia named “Buckhead”.  The Potential Former Atlanta Neighborhood Known As Buckhead would need to find a new name – Hâute Buckhead, perhaps?