U.S. and Iraqi Polls

Today the New York Times published an article that seems to say that Iraqis do not favor U.S. troop withdrawal. Toward the end you read that there was an extremely limited sampling of opinions. The Times just published a more scientific poll that says the Iraquis want a withdrawal of U.S. troops by a 2 to 1 margin. This article also fails to mention that the Iraqi parliament, as well as Prime Minister al-Maliki, are calling for withdrawal. (The linked Christian Science Monitor article says that talks are on-going.) By all authority I have been able to find there has been ardent support for withdrawal among Iraqis since at least 2006 and strong support prior to that.

American polls are interesting. A strong majority has favored withdrawal for a long time. Bush’s handling of the invasion and occupation has for some time been viewed disfavorably by a clear majority. Almost 40% of Americans do not understand that McCain is against a timetable for withdrawal. Despite most people disfavoring his approach to the war, most Americans see McCain as the better commander in chief. Early polls on the two candidates are somewhat confusing.

Walls

I just read that a group out of the University of Texas recently petitioned the Organizatin of American States to condemn the wall between the U.S. and Mexico. It of course has already been condemned by Mexico and most of Latin America. While the wall can’t help but deter immigration, it’s overall utility is debatable. No one believes that the petition to the OAS will affect the building of the wall. Human rights considerations, and international law and opinion have not played a significant role in determining U.S. policy recently.

Our wall is to be 2000 miles long, as long as the low estimates of the length of the Great Wall of China. (Some estimate the other wall to be three times this length.)

Whatever your position is with respect to the wall, people agree that it is certainly symbolic of our era. It is a metaphor, a symbol, which for many replaces the Statue of Liberty. The welcoming beacon of freedom is replaced in the minds of many people with the blank expanse of the wall, like an extended palm signaling “halt.” For many people outside the United States our country is seen, not as a sanctuary, and champion, for the oppressed, but as a garrison, walled like a Medieval city-state.

Looking back, Bill Clinton’s euphoric descriptions of globalization (one of his favorite terms) seem naive and distant. The purpose of bridging cultures and identifying common interest has been replaced by phrases like “If you are not for us, you are against us,” “bring ‘em on,” “we are on a crusade,” and the like. We have turned a blind eye to international opinion, like the balnk stare of the wall.

We have not just invested in walling our country, but in creating a honeycomb of walls within it. Political forces have converted the world’s melting pot into a fragmented society in which cultural identity is preserved in part for defensive purposes. We are becoming a society of gated communities which look out at others with distrust and fear.

Our government has a growing list of citizens identified a suspected terrorists. The number of people on the list has apparently passed one million. That’s about 5 for each thousand adults. If you go to BellSquare on a busy day, there should be maybe ten or twenty “suspected terrorists” among your fellow shoppers. We have built walls around airports, public buildings and public gathering places, access permitted by guards only after inspection.

These walls of course are not just metaphorical. We have by far the biggest prison population in the world. More people are in prison than there are in Phoenix, Arizona. A staggering number of our fellow citizens have been through the criminal justice system in one way or another.  Prison construction and management has been privatized to a large degree and has become a booming industry. It could become a college major in some schools like hotel and motel management.

These are the costs of security, as we see it. The cry of “security!” seems to be in the ascendancy. It’s good though to keep it in context.

Merit System in Washington Chopped Off

As you know, if you’ve been reading this a while, there was a bill last session of Washington’s legislature to adopt the merit system for the selection of judges to the Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court. This is the system advocated diligently by Sandra Day O’Connor to eliminate the influence of deep pockets on judges’ decisions and to assure that the most qualified people are appointed to the bench.

The bill was sponsored by Jay Rodue, a Republican from the 5th District, Sherry Appleton, a Democrat from the 23rd District, Helen Sommers, from the 36th District. Here is a copy of the final form of the bill. The house report explained generally how it would work.

The bill made it to Frank Chopp’s Rules Committee, a death chamber for bills that do not advance the interests of the most powerful lobbies. He predictably killed the bill.

The people who sponsored the bill deserve accolades for wanting to improve our judicial system for the sake of the people here and not any special interest. The members of the House Rules Committee are listed here.

Our legislators need to know that we care about having the best court system that we can muster. I’ll write more when the legislature is in session.

Factoring in Experience

In considering the candidates, one must consider Obama’s lack of experience in national and international politics. But how much wieght does this carry and how do you evaluate it?

President Bush represents one worst case scenario. As a fledgling president, he came under the control of a small group of people with a minority, highly militaristic view and through him they were able to implement views that were generally regarded as far fetched. In conjunction with that Vice President Cheney filled the vacuum of power created by neophyte president, and assumed primary control of domestic energy policy as well as p.r. responsibilities for the drum beat of war.

The undue influence of the neocons certainly contributed Bush’s rush in the direction exactly opposite to that which he promised. Bushes campaign, if you recall, included an unconditional promise to unite the nation and under no circumstances would he permit us to engage in nation building. Exactly the opposite of course has become the defining character of his presidency.

Predictability of policy is certainly a risk in choosing a president without experience. Clinton with his talk about national health care raised hopes for a liberal administration, but his policies proved to be directly in line with Reagan’s. Actually he succeeded in balancing the budget, a classic conservative goal that has been long abandoned by the Republican Party, at least during Republican presidencies of the past half century or so.

Reagan had no experience but gave what he promised, as did Carter. So I guess that it is fair to say that an inexperienced president creates a greater risk of heading in a direction that could not have been anticipated from his campaign.

Another risk is that a president might panic in a crisis. Despite the fact that most of the presidents we have elected in recent years have had little experience, we have not seen much panic, other than perhaps seeing a president decline to interrupt reading a children’s book when told we were under attack, then disappearing for a day while the vice president ran the country.

Kennedy’s willingness to launch a nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis may perhaps have been due to a lack of experience. Recent revelations have certainly been shocking. But all in all there has been little evidence of anyone become overwhelmed and panicking while at our country’s helm.

It is interesting to think that Obama with one plus years in the Senate has more national political experience than any first term president since 1968, Nixon’s first term, with the exception of George H. W. Bush.

My conclusion is that, with the caveat that we cannot predict as well what he will do, there is not much risk in choosing a president who has little national political experience.

FISA, Immunity, Pardons, and Luthor Collins

The recent discussions about immunity in the context of the FISA bill have stirred up a great deal of frustration among people who have been shocked or disapproving of the Bush administration’s apparent cavalier attitude to complying with the law. This resentment no doubt provides some of the fuel for the populist movement that seems to be carrying Obama along. Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed to me frustration that there is not even any meaningful investigation of the charges. The administration does not have immunity but it does seem to operate with impunity.

Part of the public’s outrage about FISA relates to the appearance of hypocrisy. The same law-and-order people who advocate strong criminal sentencing standards advocate immunity for the corporate officials whose conduct apparently involved violation of constitutional rights on a massive scale. The sense of hypocrisy is heightened by the color and class distinctions between the criminal justice defendants and the corporate miscreants.

This frustration is very deep and involves what appears to be a failure of our system of checks and balances. The Republican Congress during the first six years of the Bush administration is widely seen as having allegiance to party over country or over the citizens of the country. During this time effort seemed to be directed to covering up the regularly occurring scandals. The two years of Democratic control of Congress have not been signifiantly different in terms of rendering people in the executive branch accountable for their transgressions. The FISA bill in granting immunity for illegal domestic surveillance was profoundly disillusioning for many. It went beyond disregarding disreputable behavior to condoning it.

FISA’s defender’s chant “national security” and to my knowledge there is nothing more than this rather empty slogan to support the position, a slogan that I had thought was used so much by the Nixon administration that it would not be heard again in connection with domestic activity. This slogan has also been used to justify the treatment of detainees and has been gradually rejected by the courts. Without anything to back it up it is just a slogan famously used around the world throughout the twentieth century. People need more substance to the claim for it to have traction outside of Congress.

The defenders of FISA point out that the guilty can still be prosecuted for crimes that were committed but few doubt that Bush will pardon everyone before leaving office. He, however, can only pardon for federal crimes and at least in theory any enterprising attorney general could investigate and prosecute under state law for crimes committed against its citizens. I doubt that anyone believes this will happen.

Bush is likely to pardon everyone in his administration, making the investigations promised by Obama unlikely. If McCain is elected he would not conduct investigations at all, at least as far as I know. The only way the Bush could be prevented from pardoning everyone would be for him to be impeached. If he were impeached, he could not grant pardons during the process. There appears to be no chance that this might happen.

Thus it appears that this itch to see criminal conduct exposed, or at least investigated, and punished will go unscratched regardless of the party favored in the next election. This rather sorry state of affairs is not without local precedent.

Civilization came to the Seattle area in the middle of the nineteenth century. Settlers first arrives on Alki, then some came to what is now the downtown area. A few located near the mouth of the Duwamish River between the two camps. Civilization, as everyone knows, requires government and the settlers were quick to elect a commissioner: Luthor Collins, our first governmental official. Two years after his arrival he was arrested for lynching a Native American. His civic leadership may have contributed to the dismissal of the charge. Later, having rooted himself in the administration of local affairs, he lynched two Native Americans and presumably it was his his august stature that prevented charges from being made.

County’s Hands Tied on Excessive Forest Clearing

RCW 82.02.020 is an example of the ways in which the stong hand of special interest lobbies in Olympia affect folks in Washington. This law says in pertinent part that

no county, city, town, or other municipal corporation shall impose any tax, fee, or charge, either direct or indirect, on the construction or reconstruction of residential buildings, commercial buildings, industrial buildings, or on any other building or building space or appurtenance thereto, or on the development, subdivision, classification, or reclassification of land.

Meanwhile King County adopted its Clearing and Grading Critical Areas Ordinance in 2004 pursuant to the Growth Management Act (RCW 36.70A.060(2)) which required it to adopt regulations to protect its critical assets. Generally speaking the ordinance prohibited clearing more than 50% of rural lots with a number of qualifications and exceptions.

Before adopting this regulation the County undertook a number of studies and consulted with experts to verify that excessive clearing had negative impacts on stream health, wildlife, and critical aquifer recharge areas in the County.

The ordinance was challenged by a property rights groups that contended that the blanket prohibition against clearing was an improper indirect charge under RCW 82.02.020.

The County said that this was not a tax but a justified regulation, presenting 24 journal articles and several experts who identified the harm sought to be avoided and vouched for the efficacy of the regulation in terms of avoiding the harm.

The trial court sided with the County but the Court of Appeals did not. In Citizens Alliance for Property Rights v. Ron Sims

the court held that the bar against excessive clearing was prohibited by statute. The decision seems quite sound to me, relying on well established pro-development case law. Without disregarding precedent, the court could do little else. (Personally I would like to see the court start whittling away at the existing law.)

What is important here, I believe is that local decision regarding the environment, urban sprawl, habitat, and water issues are fairly commonly thwarted by the state legislature which in turn is rather shockingly influenced by special interests, particularly the building industry which pushed through the legislation giving developers a preferred tax status.

Osama Bin Laden and Nostradamus

Remember ten years ago? When the price of gas was $11 a barrel? That was one of the things that ticked Osama Bin Laden off. (He of course was in the minority of people who supported the invasion of Iraq, as it would eliminate a sworn enemy, Sadam, destabilize the region and inspire opposition to the U.S. As we know, according to our National Intelligence Estimate these things have come to pass.)

But before the invasion the price of gas irked Bin Laden. When asked what the price should be he responded $144 per barrel. It seems that even this ambition has been realized, as the price is now at Bin Laden’s prescribed level.

McCain: a Balanced Budget?

McCain is focusing more on domestic issues and particularly the economy. He has announced that he will balance the budget and while their is some confusion about whether that would occur during the first term or the second term (which McCain pointedly has declined to speculate about until this moment), I can’t help but wonder how this is possible.

I have thought that this was a critical issue and was disappointed by McCain’s announcement that he would significantly increase defense spending while cutting taxes. This formula was followed by Reagan and resulted in deficit spending, by H. W. Bush and resulted in deficit spending. W. has dogmatically followed the prescription with historic deficits. McCain announced that he will follow Bush’s program, exept greatly expand the factors that lead to the deficit.

Now he’s saying that he will in four or eight years balance the budget. How?

What Obama Might have Learned from Carter

In Obama’s talk about patriotism he called attention to similarities in attitudes between people now and in the 1960’s. He spoke about how people in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movements were labeled unpatriotic and un-American. He talked a little about how people’s urge to be patriotic can be misused for political purposes. There are certainly very obvious similarities between then and now. Perhaps most obviously dissenters are still branded un-American or unpatriotic. I doubt that this will ever change; it’s such an easy tool. The country built on a revolution has become rather resistant to criticism of military policy and such things.

I though have been thinking more about connections between the present circumstances and the 1970’s. Nixon’s departure left the country to some degree searching for a purpose, an identity. His administration was identified with corruption, secrecy, illegal surveillance, and abuse of power. The ensuing election ushered in a president who campaigned on hope and change. He was not associated with the beltway and promised to clean out Washington’s dark corners, to do things a new way, a fresh start.

Carter came in having promised to eliminate the tax loop holes benefiting corporations, so that they would pay their fair share. He wanted healthcare reform and to reduce the high price of hospitalization.

The post Viet Nam economy though was faltering. The Republican administration had left behind a huge trade deficit and a drastically devalued dollar. Unemployment and inflation were creeping upwards. The price of gasoline was going up and people were becoming increasingly wary of our dependence on Mideastern oil, particularly with OPEC tinkering with the supply.

The Democrats had a substantial majority in Congress due in part to the country’s disillusionment with the failed Republican administration. Carter was a very hard working president and soon presented to the Congress a remarkably thorough and well thought out budget that in fact eliminated many of the tax breaks given to corporations. It was thoroughly trashed by the Democratic Congress and never got anywhere. Carter’s party was too entrenched and beholden to special interests to support his efforts.

Carter failed to get Congressional support for his national health-insurance bill or his proposals for welfare reform and controls on hospital costs. He could not get Congressional approval to consolidate natural-resource agencies within the Department of the Interior. He could not get Congress to approve expanded economic development units in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

He was hung out to dry by the Democratic Party. In so doing, the Democrats lost an historic opportunity to seize the slack reins of government and take it in a new direction. The Democrats more or less imploded. The party offered only more of the same. At the next election the Republicans captured the mood for change and harnessed the dissatisfaction with the Democrats, and the Reagan era was launched.

While using a contemporary brand of Carter’s themes, Obama is not running as an outsider. In fact he seems to be earnestly trying to insinuate himself into the party establishment. This is troubling to many people who supported him. On the other hand he may be taking necessary steps to realize his goals. It remains to be seen whether Obama’s vision will be sacrificed or realized by this approach.

Obama and McCain could learn from the Mariners

I’ve met three kinds of Mariner fans: philosophers, baseball fans and front runners. The front runner is a Seattle sports fan desperate to feel the joy of winning. A baseball fan enjoys the intricacies of the game, and the philosopher finds lessons in it all. (There is a fourth category — the picnicker — who attends the game because of the ambiance of the stadium but this phenomenon is transient so I have not included this group.)

In a good season all three kinds of fan find satisfaction. There have been many, many seasons where the pleasures offered by the Mariners to their observers have been too subtle to detain the front runner. The attendance records of the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s give us some measure of the number of people in the other two categories: Roughly 5,000.

This season has been noteworthy because the team has culled from its audience not only front runners, but its woeful, error prone and too often half-hearted performance has distanced many baseball fans. They have though provided grist for the philosophers.

It seems to me that our presumptive candidates for the presidency are having Mariner moments. To me it is entirely appropriate that the selection process and most of the presidential campaign occur during baseball season. Then the hard hitting last weeks of the campaign and the sudden death election occurs during football season. Baseball season though is the time to observe and reflect on the candidates.

McCain is having the same experience as the Mariners at the beginning of this season. Before the season the Mariners thought that they were one player away from the playoffs, and they went out and got him: Erik Bedard, pitching ace.

McCain felt that he was one domestic policy away from the brass ring and stayed out to get it: Energy and the environment. He stayed out of the Senate and avoided every vote that came up in the area. Now he has an environmental and energy “vision.”

The problem for McCain occurred when he took the field. Little things popped up that seemed to spoil the moment. He went to Iraq to show his commander in chief qualities and forgot who was fighting. This reminded me of Jose Lopez looking between his legs to see the ball scooting toward center field.

The Mariner defense was supposed to be good this year and McCain was strong on war and the military. Just early season jitters or a harbinger of things to come? What happened?

The errors became infectious and others around him started making them, obscuring his “vision.”

Then, like the Mariners’ starting pitching, the “vision” started to falter. McCain, who had historically opposed off shore drilling came out for it as a cure for spiraling gas prices. When a government report said that this would not have such an effect, he said that it would help “psychologically.”  This is a bit like Bedard not making it through the third inning.

The Mariners’ season collapsed and McCain’s is just barely begun. Hope he has better luck than the home team.

There’s a little bit of Richie Sexon in Obama, who electrified crowds with talk of change and new direction and populist involvement. He was a power hitter. Richie Sexon, a power hitter,  was told that he also needed to hit for average. The team was going nowhere if he could not hit over .200. So Richie changed his stance and his approach at the plate. He became patient instead of agressive and sure enough his average did climb . . . about fifteen points. He started getting walks which was good, but he lost his power. Now he is pretty much foundering.

Obama is moving to the right, trying to convince people that he is “strong on security” and that he will not overthrow the world as they know it. Richie would tell him not to change his stance too much in trying to hit for average.