Sunday, March 28, 2004

Greedy Olde Party?

On March 9, the Daschle Amendment No. 2710 to the 2005 Budget Resolutions bill was voted down 53-44, with 3 senators not voting.  The amendment asked the Senate to reduce the tax cuts for people making over $1 million a year in order to a. create a reserve fund of $2.7 billion to pay for veterans medical care and b. reduce the current $500 billion projected deficit some.  Here’s the link.

I know, I know, “why should I care?” Because this vote illustrates an alarming trend in the Grand Old Party.  The Republican party no longer deserves to be considered the party of national security or of fiscal responsibility.  Instead, the GOP should now stand for Greedy Old Party

Conventional wisdom says that the Republicans are stronger on national defense and security than the Democrats are.  If that’s true, how come the only Republican to vote for the amendment was Senator John McCain, R-AZ?  The fact that all the other Republicans shot it down illustrates how single-minded the Republican party has become with respect to taxes.

Our soldiers are called upon to serve the United States in times of need, but what about our responsibilities to those very same soldiers?  Soldiers were being deployed to Iraq without body armor that might save their lives, and our State Department was distributing armor to our allies BEFORE our own soldiers.  The National Guard is being called up for tours in excess of a year in some cases, contrary to long-standing Pentagon rules.  Many soldiers, especially those in the National Guard, are finding themselves and their families short on money due to Pentagon budget SNAFUs that deny them and their families back pay and hazard pay (See Bob Herbert’s editorial in the NYTimes: An Insult To Our Soldiers).  Because the Administration got the military into Iraq without so much as a single thought on getting out again, morale is so low among units that the National Guard and the Army are predicting a crisis in retention of soldiers.  Finally, the Army is stretched so thin by Presidential over-commitment that the Third Infantry Division, one division that initially invaded Iraq, is being sent BACK to Iraq for a possible year tour after only six months home.

What happened to fiscal responsibility and creating economic growth?  Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the GOP Congress stump hard-core for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in the 90’s?  Many of those same Senators are now the ones voting AGAINST a reduction in the federal deficit that also happens to help our veterans at the same time.  The targeted tax cuts, intending to produce massive additional wealth for the few who would then, ideally, re-invest their new-found wealth in the economy, are instead convincing those wealthy CEOs and entrepreneurs to create more personal wealthy by moving jobs from the US to cheaper labor markets overseas.  And creating economic growth doesn’t work if you don’t utilize the freshman macroeconomic concept of the multiplier effect – put more money into MORE people’s hands and they’ll drive economic growth.  Fewer people means a lower multiplier and less economic growth.

And when did the GOP stop supporting states rights?  The GOP has long been the party that most strongly pushed the “war on drugs,” to the point that the Bush administration is supporting federal law against the right of states to legalize medical marijuana.  The No Child Left Behind Act was a huge intrusion into the operation of state public schools by the federal government, yet it was strongly supported by the GOP.  And now the Republicans in power seem all gung-ho for the Federal Marriage Amendment, a Constitutional amendment that would strip the right of states to define marriage however they wish.  It seems that the modern GOP only seems to care about states’ rights when it comes to passing the buck, namely passing the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and No Child Left Behind to the states.

The GOP seems only to care about two things these days – taxes and morality.

Tax cuts are seen as the end-all, be-all of Republican fiscal policy.  Unemployment problems?  Cut taxes.  Stock market woes?  Cut taxes.  Huge federal deficits?  Cut taxes!

The problem is that tax cuts are being wielded by the Republicans the same way that Democrats used to wield entitlement programs – as a fix-all.  But tax cuts, and tax code in general, are a blunt instrument.  The current bi-polar tax codes are aggravating the flight of corporations from the United States to tax havens like Bermuda, where you only need to open a post office box to incorporate and avoid the bulk of US corporate taxes.  The three rounds of Bush tax cuts are dramatically increasing the split between the rich and the middle class and the poor.  (But the poor don’t matter, since they’re poor because they have a crummy work ethic, not because of ingrained social and economic factors.) And since rolling back the tax cuts on people making over $1 million would have affected the Senators themselves, it is hardly any surprise that they voted it down.  “Tax cuts are always good” has become an idiotic GOP refrain.

On the issue of morality, I find the GOP’s obsession quite… intriguing.  The GOP is filled with people whose morality you cannot question without provoking angry denunciations, and yet these same people regularly act against the founding principles of the GOP, the nation, and even their own religion and still call it “moral.” After all, Christianity (and most Republicans are ostensibly Christian) calls all Christians to help those less well-off than ourselves, to love the sinner but hate the sin, and to treat everyone equally.  It’s tough to be a sinner-loving Christian when you single out gays and lesbians for special discrimination.  It’s touch to be a downtrodden-helping Christian when you’ve tilted the tax codes so the poor are getting shafted.  It’s tough to be an equality-minded Christian when “economic growth and progress” becomes related to how fast the Dow Jones Industrial Average rises instead of how many people are unemployed, or when you treat Social Security and Medicare as anchors weighing you down instead of floats buoying the elderly and the poor.  Such obsessions seem socially Darwinian, aristocratic, feudal, and utterly opposed to Christian morals as I understand them.

As I pointed out in a blog last year (Mr President, Meet The Prince), Bush is not a conservative.  But these days, most of the Republican party no longer qualify as conservative.  In fact, this Administration and Congress are the most fundamentally liberal I’ve ever seen.  They’re running monstrous deficits.  They’ve brazenly lied about Iraq WMD and terrorist intelligence to the public and ordered our soldiers to invade Iraq for no honest reason.  They’ve torn down international alliances that have taken 50+ years to build up and ignored the international community willy-nilly.  They’ve abandoned treaties that were the foundation of nuclear arms control.  They’ve suggested amending the Constitution to purposefully insert discriminatory language for the first time since such language was purged during the Civil War.  They’ve denied our soldiers the body armor needed to keep them safe in a hostile desert.  And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Frankly, I’m amazed and appalled that the GOP can get away with this.  I’m amazed that there hasn’t been a massive defection of Republicans from the party to either a third party option or toward independent status.  I know that if I were a Republican during these last four years, I’d sure be turning independent right about now.

(To be fair, though, not all the problems belong exclusively to the Republicans.  As an example, the initial rounds of tax cuts required help from some at least a few Democrats.  But Democrats aren’t labeled as being the party of fiscal responsibility, so the tar and feathers of hypocrisy doesn’t stick to them as well as it does to the GOP.)

During the 2000 primary season, I was most impressed with John McCain, and I relished having to actually think long and hard about whether I would “cross the aisle” and vote, as a registered Democrat, for a Republican.  I still don’t know what I would have done in that fantasy land of a Gore vs. McCain election.  And even though McCain is, for some reason I can’t begin to divine, supporting Bush for re-election, I still can’t help but find myself respecting the man.

McCain is a true conservative, a man with honesty and integrity that can’t be bent by having his party in power.  But he’s stuck in a party of hypocritical wanna-be elitist oligarchs.  He can’t be the only real conservative in the GOP, but too many other Republicans, drunk on corporate money and political power, are remembering their conservatism too late.  I’ve read about a number of Republicans who have finally wake up to the fact that they’ve been bushwhacked into voting for irresponsible tax cuts.  They’re refusing to make the cuts permanent.  Other Republicans have come out against the Federal Marriage Amendment because it does tread on traditional states’ rights.

But the only real way to fix this fiscally liberal and morally questionable debacle that has been the Bush 43 years will be either drive Bush from office, or to strip control of Congress from the Republicans, in November.

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Primarily SNAFU

Super Tuesday is over. Thirty states have voted in primaries and caucuses, including several of the largest states in the union. States like California and New York, Massachusetts and Ohio. And with so many states now finished with their portions of the nominating process, Senator John Kerry is effectively the Democratic nominee for President.

So, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Sure, if you happen to live in Texas or Florida (March 9) or even Pennsylvania (April 27), you might get Kerry to visit. If you’re lucky.

But those of us living in smaller states are S.O.L. Colorado’s caucus on April 13 might as well called off. I’m something of a news and political junkie, and if there wasn’t a U.S. Senator spot open, I probably wouldn’t vote at my own Democratic caucus. Since all the real Presidential candidates (namely Dean, Gephardt, and Edwards) have dropped out already, Kerry’s a shoe-in regardless whether I vote or not. Colorado’s caucus is a joke, and a particularly sad one at that.

And we’re not the only ones with this problem. Everything that happens in the primaries and caucuses after Super Tuesday is moot, at least as far as selecting a Presidential nominee is concerned. I’m feeling more than a little disenfranchised, and if you aren’t lucky enough to live in a state that’s held their primary by Super Tuesday, you should be too. That means voters in the following states are just as screwed as I am: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming (and lets add American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands too that list, just for good measure).

By my estimates, this effectively disenfranchises somewhere between 14% and 21% of voting population of the United States, namely those Democratic voters who didn’t vote by March 3. Pissed off yet?

If not, you should be. If this year had a contested Republican ticket, we’d be looking at approximately 47% of the United States electorate.

(The percentages above were determined by the population of the states who haven’t voted as of March 3, approximately 127 million people, and assuming that the percentage of voters out of that 127 million people, the percentage of potential voters was constant across the population.)

Think about the unfairness inherent in that statistic for a minute. Just because we happen to live in Colorado (or Texas, or Pennsylvania, or Puerto Rico), we don’t matter to the political process that determines who gets to face Bush in the general election.

What is really, truly FUBAR is this: if even 5% of the voters in a state primary were found to have been disenfranchised due to their race, disability, age, gender, or religion, that state’s election authorities would come down on the responsible parties like a ton of bricks. And then the feds would come down on the election authorities like four tons of scrap iron. And yet, somehow, disenfranchising 14-21% of the entire voting-age population of the U.S.A is ok.

I could go off on the Democratic and Republican (and Green, and Freedom) parties for not working to fix a problem of this magnitude, but there’s really no point. While everyone involved could really use a good reaming out, I’d have to ream out the majority of the people in the country, regardless of party affiliation. The fact that most primaries and caucuses nationwide are closed to independents arguably makes many of the states themselves complicit. And I’d have to include myself in that new-orifice-ripping, too.

So instead, I’d like to propose a solution. Leave Iowa and New Hampshire alone for the sake of tradition, with their historical “first-in-the-nation” status. But after that, enact a federal law that strips away the individual state’s rights to set their own primary or caucus date. Force the small states to hold their nomination elections first, then the mid-sized states, and finally the biggest states. This just might force campaigning nominees to actually pay attention to, and actually campaign in, all the states.

Think about it. Putting California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas (the most populous 10 states) dead last and on the same day would mean that over 50% of the Democratic delegates for Democratic nominee this year would have been in play on that last day. (Those 10 states presently have 54% of the population of the country.) Since the nominee wouldn’t have everything wrapped up until the last day of the primary season, those of us living in smaller states might actually have the opportunity to have our votes mean something.

Now, some people will whine that this strips away a vital state right, namely the right to determine what day the primaries or caucuses are held. To some extent, that’s true, but federalism has been overruled in the past in order to re-enfranchise voters. The Supreme Court did it directly when they tossed out Jim Crow laws and the federal laws requiring that states upgrade their voting equipment after the SNAFU that was the 2000 Florida recount did it again. This would be little different.

I’m sorry, that’s not entirely true. It would be dramatically different.

This kind of law could re-enfranchise between 14% and 47% of the United States’ voting-age population, depending on the election year. I think that’s worth a little erosion of a traditional state right.

Saturday, March 13, 2004

Women and the Military

he Denver Post today published another article in their long-running series of investigative reports on rape in the military. This one, titled Delays on rape-case evidence bring new scrutiny to military, pissed me off to the point that I just couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

Leah Kaelin, a former airman at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas was interviewed by the Denver Post for the article. She was gang raped by four fellow airmen and left in the same unit with them for 8 months before being honorably discharged for “minor disciplinary infractions.” In the article, she claims that her staff sergeant said “Well, if you were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, I guess you got what you deserve.”

Hold it just a damn minute.

If this is true, and assuming that the staff sergeant was male, he needs stripped naked, coated in honey, strapped down onto a fire ant hill and simultaneously castrated with a rusty, dull spoon. Without anesthetic.

Unfortunately, if the recent articles about rapes at Sheppard Air Force Base, sexual assaults in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Air Force Academy rapes are any guide to a pattern of behavior, it most likely is true.

Any person who says that a woman who is sexually assaulted “deserves it” is at least as guilty as the person who assaulted the woman in the first place. After all, the rapist “only” committed a felony, but the other asshole creates an environment tolerant of sexual assault, where women are blamed for the crime against them, and where more assaults will almost certainly take place.

I think that these rapes and assaults I keep reading about are only the tip of the iceberg. There has been some suggestions from surveys at the Air Force Academy, for example, that most of the women at the Academy will be assaulted in some way before they graduate. There are some other surveys that indicate that 30% of the women in the military (across all branches) will be sexually assaulted at some point during their career. And many of them will be like Leah Kaelin, discharged as “punishment” in an effort to cover up the felonies that are occurring. So much for having the audacity to accuse your fellow soldiers of assault.

This is bullshit. But it’s not surprising.

I think there’s at least a couple of problems here. Too much of the brass resent women in the military as stripping “this man’s army” of its “brotherhood.” Women are perceived by too many male soldiers as weaker, slower, and less able to handle combat. This is remarkable since the studies I’ve seen say that women are better able than men to handle the mental stresses of combat and, if it comes to it, capture and torture. And many male soldiers view women as detrimental to unit cohesion. Because of these reasons, many officers are highly resistant to making the kind of cultural changes needed to reform the military’s attitudes about women.

But that’s not entirely the military’s fault. Our culture as a whole is totally screwed up when it comes to our attitudes toward women. The wider culture itself is only just starting to leave the Neanderthal “it’s the woman’s fault she got raped” attitude behind. It’s no wonder that the military culture, as an artificially concentrated and distilled version of the national culture, has the same problems.

On the other hand, the military has the opportunity to take the lead in changing both its own culture and the wider culture too. After all, the military was racially integrated long before the rest of the nation really was, and the military is far more religiously inclusive than is the culture at large.

What the military needs to do is have leadership at the top that is serious about changing things. Sure, the Pentagon brass says they’re serious now, but they said that after Tailhook too, and look at all the good it did. Sexual harassment training is pointless if you don’t follow it up with disciplinary hearings, dishonorable discharges, and in the worst cases, prison time for soldiers who harass their fellow soldiers.

What we need is for a general or an admiral somewhere to truly take this seriously. Not just talk about it, but aggressively follow up on allegations of sexual assault by women in his or her command. That general or admiral needs to court martial any soldier who is found to have assaulted a fellow soldier and dishonorably discharge or imprison the asshole. Furthermore, the general or admiral needs to court martial and dishonorably discharge any officer or NCO who drives a woman soldier from the service in order to sweep the assault under the rug. (I’d say that a lower ranking officer than general could do this too, but only so long as he or she had the full support of his/her superiors. I worry that a major or colonel could be too easily overruled to clean house effectively.)

After that’s happened 30 or 100 times, THEN we’ll start to see cultural change in the military.

Dismissing every officer and NCO at Sheppard Air Force base over Leah Kealin might be a decent start too. After all, aren’t officers supposed to be responsible for the actions of those they command?

Unfortunately, it may take some time for this change to occur. The problem is that the men currently at the top of the military power structure (and they’re almost all men) are products of a bygone era. They were raised and passed through the ranks long before egalitarian attitudes were common. So we may not get the necessary housecleaning in the military for another decade or more. (This is not to say there aren’t decent men in the military, only to say that there aren’t enough decent men in the higher military ranks. After all, if all male soldiers were decent, we wouldn’t have these problems, now would we?)

How many more women will be assaulted in that time? I don’t know. But the only consolation I have is that the misogynistic attitudes in the military will pass sooner or later.

It’s a cold comfort, but I’m afraid it’s the only comfort I can offer.