The AP is reporting on a black tie gala ""Secession Ball" last night in South Carolina.
But organizers of the ball said it had nothing to do with celebrating slavery. Instead, they said the $100-a-person private event was a fundraiser to honor the Southern men who were willing to sacrifice their lives for their homes and their vision of states' rights.
"Their vision of states' rights" no doubt included extending the institution of slavery well into the future. It is true that most Southern propagandists defended secession and civil war via appeal to state sovereignty to protect "vital state interests," but it is impossible to believe that slavery was not paramount among those state interests. The very economic system which supported the old aristocracy of the South looked to be willed away by the faster-growing North which had successfully elected a strong anti-slavery President. The notions of state sovereignty, nullification, and state superiority to the federal government (conveniently ignoring Article VI of the Constitution) are reflected in much of the political discourse of the 19th century. The Hartford Convention considered the possible secession of the Northeast 40 years before the South dreamed of leaving the Union. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions embodied the same constitutional theories that states have the right to review federal laws (beyond the power granted to states to act together in the U.S. Senate to shape the laws of the Union). These arguments became no more persuasive through the 1820s as new states which were founded under Article IV of the constitution came into being or in the 1840s when the Federal government launched an expansionist war against Mexico. The constitutional story of this period was of an increasingly important role of the federal government in creating the vital infrastructure which tied the Union together (post offices, roads, canals, and rail roads). The direct reason for secession was none of these constitutional theories of states rights or vague federal power. The urgency to secede was provided solely by the North's growing power in Congress and will to end the national system of slavery to which the South had bound the Union. The facts of Ableman v. Booth 62 U.S. 506 (1859) amply demonstrate the growing unease which Northerners felt with being required to participate in a system which enslaved millions and dehumanized the few free blacks in society. Northern states galvanized against the federal law requiring them to return fugitive slaves to their Southern masters. The election of the adamantly abolitionist Lincoln scared the hell out of the South, and that is why on this night 150 years ago, South Carolina's legislature decided to secede from the Union. The intellectual cover for secession was available for decades, yet the South had not felt an urge to dissolve their ties to the Northern states and their liberal values. Suddenly, slavery was threatened, and Southern political leaders decided to bolt in the night to protect it.
NAACP leaders said it made no sense to hold a gala to honor men who committed treason against their own nation for the sake of a system that kept black men and women in bondage as slaves.
Slavery is not an accidental after thought to which the South subscribed. It is a central principle of the confederacy, which is why the Confederate States of America wrote slavery into their constitution. This ball honors the men who charted the course into civil war to protect the abomination and national embarrassment of slavery. There are better people to honor 150 years ago, and not just the eventual victors in the war. We should honor slavery's dead if the South still toasts its dishonorable defenders.
A conservative state legislator in Virginia plans to ban gay national guardsmen in Virginia via statute reminiscent of DADT. Except the statute wouldn't rest on the conduct of gay service members (i.e. vigilantly closeting their sexuality), but appears to rely on the more absolute 'objective' standard of sexual orientation. The measure would ban all homosexuals from the national guard, not just ones who 'tell' other service members that they are gay. The forced closeting of gay service members under the DADT regime is over in the army, thanks to leadership from the White House, surprisingly non-ornery Joe Lieberman, and a handful of Senators who put their country before the Republican Party. Democrats don't deserve any credit according to the mainstream media because only Democrats are supposed to care about ending purposeless discrimination. For instance, a more equitable DADT regime would have made discharge automatic for any service member who 'comes out' about either heterosexuality or homosexuality. People with sex drives are an obvious threat to "unit cohesion" regardless of orientation. But I digress. The purpose of Delegate Bob Marshall's bill is clear. It is to let other nations dictate the policies of the American army:
"This policy will weaken military recruitment and retention, and will increase pressure for a military draft,'' Marshall said. "After 232 years of prohibiting active, open homosexuals from enlisting in our military, President Obama and a majority in Congress are conducting a social experiment with our troops and our national security...In countries where religions and cultures find homosexual acts immoral, the Obama administration's repeal policy will work to the detriment of all American troops in securing local cooperation with our nation's foreign policy goals."
America has a responsibility to the Taliban, to the Jamaicans, and to anybody else with senseless prejudices to uphold their standards. It is these societies' hatred of American liberties (i.e. liberal values) for all its citizens that drives their wars against America after all. If we could only bring our values into line with theirs, we could have a peaceful world. Marshall thinks that respect for Taliban values would improve the army's ability to secure peace. And after all, isn't peace worth the sacrifice of our liberty? This grandstanding is a product of President Obama's preference of getting Congress to reverse its civil rights mistakes instead of letting the Courts perform this task. While Courts typically are bad at creating social policy, they were in a very good position to repeal DADT. The Hollow Hope constraints of rights, judicial dependence, and policy development simply did not exist with DADT. There was a clear constitutional right against discrimination in the equal protection clause. The executive branch and military supported repeal of DADT, meaning that the lack of judicial independence would be a boon to reformers, as the court would be steered to the most effective and remedial outcome. Policy development also would be left to the repeal-friendly military, a monolithic organization who would not produce compliance or implementation troubles. DADT repeal was ripe for court overturn. The added benefit of Supreme Court action would be the general rule that discrimination against homosexuals would not pass Constitutional muster unless there was a very good reason for it. The military has never presented a rational problem that discrimination solved. The Bob Marshall argument, is perhaps the most compelling argument for DADT that I've ever seen. It is, however, simply a bad principle to bend American laws and customs to fit despotic, brutal, or otherwise illiberal societies. In the end, Bob Marshall won't be able to gather enough support to make this into a law, and if it were enacted, the courts would pretty much have to overturn it. The backlash this time (a feature of all social change) is coming from conservative politicians with little support from the populace. The fact that two Senators switched their votes from a No on cloture to a Yes on the actual bill suggests how little stomach there is to support discrimination in the military. If the courts had accomplished the same goal, the narrative might be a little different, with more far-right grumbling being reported as more common or more representative than it is now. Congress at last did the right thing, and democratic action is, in this instance, preferable to court action that would be attacked as somehow countermajoritarian. A footnote: Bob Marshall thinks that Virginia would be able to discriminate against gays in its national guard because:
Marshall, who is considering running for U.S. Senate in 2012, is one of the House's most conservative members. He said Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution gives Virginia the authority to uphold the ban by "reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress."
"The Constitution never would have been ratified if states were not reserved unqualified control of the militia, now called the National Guard," he said.
So if you ignore the whole "according to the discipline prescribed by Congress" clause, he could be right that Virginia at one point had the power to do whatsoever with its militia. The 14th Amendment changed all that with the inscription of American citizenry as characterizing state citizens and the promise of equal protection of the laws to all Americans.
The Washington Post's post-election poll finds that among American adults President Obama more trusted and better liked than Congressional Repbulicans. Does the relative popularity of the President matter at all? Republicans retook the House this year in a reversal of Democratic momentum of the last two elections, taking state legislatures like Minnesota's that have literally always been Democratic. The Republicans will have a freer hand in drawing the boundaries of congressional districts this year than they did in 2000. The current thinking is that a generic ballot poll overstates actual performance in the House by 3 and a half points. More Republican-drawn maps might move actual Congressional districts a couple points in a more conservative direction, packing Democrats into fewer districts. This point boils down to: Republicans are very well suited to control the House (and will likely take the Senate) after 2012 whether President Obama wins reelection or not. The 2012 election is the next time that the public has a direct say in the makeup, temperament, or direction of the federal government. Until then, what the public thinks is actually pretty irrelevant. Why should it matter that President Obama is better trusted to reduce the federal deficit than Congressional Republicans or that people like him more than his newly powerful rivals? This awareness won't change the media coverage, which is dominated by right-wing talking points via Fox News. The public won't suddenly become visible to Republican politicians who are taking away funding for their rail systems, libraries, or police departments. It's nice to know that the public, in the privacy of their own homes talking in confidence to a pollster will prefer the President over the Congressional Republicans. This preference doesn't translate to a more rational Republican party or a more sane media climate. Those who prefer the President's policies to the Republican's plans need to make their voices heard outside of their homes. Organizing is hard when there isn't an election on. People are motivated by goals and overcoming challenges. The challenge now is to prevent serious cuts to spending programs that better American society, that protect the weary from famine and the weak from harm. I can't imagine how to do that in your neighborhood, but I'm sure that you can.
Clues have been trickling in about what we can expect from the 112th Congress, which will be comprised of a Republican held house and Democratic controlled Senate. We can expect few major pieces of legislation from this Congress, and a lot of fireworks. The major goals of the Republican Congress differ between the vaguely substantive "defund health insurance reform" and the purely political making of a "one-term President." With the defeat of the omnibus appropriations bill that would have funded the government for 2011, however, we get a glimpse at which normal means of governing the Republicans will balk. The Omnibus spending bill was a combination of the 12 appropriations bills that traditionally receive independent debate, though that tradition was abandoned for much of the last decade. Because of the $1.1 trillion price tag for the bill, and because it consisted of less than 1% of earmarks, Republican leadership withdrew support for the 2011 appropriations bills. The obvious takeaway is that Republicans will shy away from large ticket bills, breaking them down in component parts. The sticker shock for a functioning government would be too much for the new conservative base, so expect to see some more creative accounting from the House appropriations committee. What is not obvious is how Paul Ryan and the Republicans think they can effectively slash the budget without a large package. Any smaller package can be held up by the Democratic Senate who will spotlight the least popular cuts. The Republicans might be able to win a budget war, but it would be difficult to get the American public on their side once they return to governing. The alternative is to make it look like Democrats are holding up the budget process for small change. The only way to mask large cuts as piddling losses for small constituencies would be to scale up the size of the bills. If Republicans try to play politics with the budget, they'll get burned from either side of the spectrum. Either moderates won't support their 2012 presidential candiate or the base won't maintain their 2010 level of support in less ideological congressional districts.
Washington State is in the middle of a massive budget crisis, which prompted Governor Christine Gregoire to announce big cuts in education, medical care, and various programs in the state. The Washington State Department of Revenue, on the other hand, is looking to fill in some loopholes. They have sent a letter to 90 medical marijuana dispensaries that they identified in internet searches which demanded that they pay state sales, business, and occupation taxes. There's no estimate given for the amount that Washington State expects to raise from the 90 patently illegal (even under state law) businesses. Medical marijuana law exists in Washington state, but it requires that either a patient or a designated caregiver grow the medicine. The law did not provide for the sale of marijuana. The revenue-collecting agency just happens to be ahead of the legislature on this issue. Some former medical marijuana advocates are against the move, but really, any move which normalizes marijuana sales is a positive step towards ending prohibition. Of course, as was true for the proposed tax-marijuana-when-prop-19-passes stance, this taxation could expose distributors to federal (or even state) criminal penalty. The legislature needs to follow the tax agency's lead here if it wants to support the Department of Revenue in plugging the budget hole from every conceivable source.
... is a government that doesn't function. Getting the Senate to vote on DADT repeal and continuing funding for the government for 2011, according to Senator Kyl is, "grinchery." Jim DeMint believes that asking him and fellow Senators to do the job they were elected to do is "sacrilegious."
Senators Johns Thune and Cornyn, both Republicans, requested earmarks totaling millions of dollars in the appropriations bill. The $1.1 trillion package would implement the President's budget with some cuts for the government in 2011. Now, Republicans may throw a hissy fit and Both Thune and Cornyn had pledged not to seek earmarks in the 112th Congress, along with the rest of the Republican Senate Caucus. Their press conference today was supposed to hammer Democrats on the inclusion of earmarks (less than 1% of the bill) in the spending bill. The specific spending provisions, which will largely go to stimulate the economy through funding projects, are more effective stimulus for the economy than the $68 billion dedicated to a tax cut for millionaires who inherit their wealth that both Thune and Cornyn voted for today. (By the way, did you know that half of American millionaires inherited their fortune? I didn't.) We'll see if Republican outrage over their own actions will be enough to overcome the bipartisan appropriations bill. If it is, we might see more GOP hostage taking (a government shutdown would result from passing nothing at all before this Saturday).
Meanwhile, back on the tax cuts topic, the Senate achieved cloture (83-15) to proceed to debate on the temporary extension of the Bush Tax Rates coupled to Obama's payroll tax holiday, unemployment insurance, AMT adjustment, and bunch of other middle class goodies. @BarackObama tweeted:
Today’s Senate vote on tax cuts is a substantial victory for middle-class families across the country—and I urge the House to act quickly.
Lest we forget, all business in Congress is backed up behind the passage of this tax bill, including the DREAM Act, DADT Repeal, and the New START nuclear treaty. To be precise, all business in Congress is backed up behind Republican demands that the wealthiest 2% of the country get their money before Congress proceeds to the peoples' business. So what exactly is in the bill that we expect the Senate to pass in three days? The Christian Science Monitor reports that for every dollar that goes into extending the Bush Tax Cuts, there are two dollars for extensions of the Obama tax cuts and additional tax cuts for the middle class. Let's look at some super-rudimentary math: using Ezra Klein's suggestion that the tax deal inclusion of an additional tax cut for the wealthiest 2% of Americans will cost roughly $100 billion over the next two years, and the estimate that millionaires who inherit their fortunes will keep an additional $68 billion over the next ten years, we get $168 billion in tax giveaways for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, most of that is concentrated above the $1,000,000 income mark. In the context of Reuter's estimate that the Senate bill will cost roughly $1 trillion, that means the wealthiest 2% of Americans will receive about 17% of the tax cuts in this bill. That doesn't include the benefits that they get from the tax cuts that are more fair like the payroll tax holiday and AMT adjustment which apply to everybody's taxes up to a certain income. All told, the wealthy 2% are taking home one out of every five dollars in this tax bill.
"Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market," he wrote. "In doing so, enactment of the [individual mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I.
This is the first ruling against the health insurance reform law which passed Congress in early 2010. A federal trial judge in Michigan had previously ruled that the individual mandate is authorized by the commerce clause in Article I §8 of the Constitution. Another federal judge, this time in the Western District of Virginia, has upheld the constitutionality of the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision, aka individual mandate. That case, Liberty University v. Geithner and Virginia v. Sebelius must be reconciled by the Fourth Circuit.
The New York Times runs this story on the similarity/difference matrix between Clinton and Obama administration responses to large midterm election losses. At the heart of it is the refusal to come to terms with the Reupblican strategy for the next two years.
In applying the lessons, Mr. Obama might find areas for cooperation and conflict. The president and Congressional Republicans could find common ground on issues like education reform and alternative energy. They could clash on spending, environmental regulation and any attempt to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care program.
They could find common ground, but there's no reason to believe that they'll acknowledge good Democratic ideas any more in 2011 than they accepted repackaged Republican ideas like the individual mandate, this year's tax-cuts-for-small-business "small business bill." Forecasting Republican obstructionism probably doesn't count as "News that's fit to print" either, but at least it's based in reality.
There is a small subset of Christians that go into an uproar easily, like when a nativity scene was removed from a ferry terminal on Staten Island. The religious display was not authorized to be in the location that it inhabited. Other holiday signifiers, including a Christmas tree, remain at the ferry terminal in the spaces in which they were authorized. At least one right-wing blog posted a snippet of the local news article along with the extensive and non-vacuous commentary "The madness continues..." So the city removed a display that wasn't supposed to be there, what's the big deal? The President of The Catholic League (probably an adversary organization in one of the Justice League comics), Bill Donahue complained, "We take this as an enormous affront." I doubt many Catholics believe that removing a display that was not supposed have been on the property is an affront. Or would that automatically make removing graffiti with the Lord's name in it sacrosanct? The real affront is that a group of citizens thinks that it can and should impose on every American person and institution their religious beliefs. Getting outraged because stores aren't "christmas-friendly"--meaning only celebrating Christian traditions--is an absurd intolerance towards fellow citizens and businesses. If Rush Limbaugh doesn't want to eat at a Halal cart, that's fine. But he shouldn't label it as anti-Christmas.
Two recent polls show that GOP congressmen are more conservative than GOP voters, with 47% of rank-and-file Republicans supporting the repeal of DADT, and 58% supporting raising taxes as part of a deficit reduction solution. Both of these positions have been filibustered by the Republican Senate Minority in the last week. To put it another way, only 3% of Senate Republicans support repealing DADT (thank you, Susan Collins) and none have stepped forward to support raising tax cuts on the super wealthy despite a number of proposals being floated around (including creating an additional tax bracket at $1 million) that would be substantial concessions from the Democratic position. The Obama tax compromise sums up nicely the problem that American government is facing: Democrats conceded their basic principles of a fair tax cut in order to implement moderate goals like extending unemployment assistance and cutting payroll taxes. Essentially, the Republicans were not in a position to compromise because they do not have principles. They only have a desire to give welfare handouts to the wealthy. There are not two serious parties who could negotiate a fair outcome. The death of the two party system (as long as we regard legislative sanity as the primary goal of the two party system) is partially a result of the Democratic party broadening its appeal to ideological moderates and conservatives in some districts, and also a reaction to that outreach from Republicans. Republicans sought to differentiate themselves in campaigns from conservative Democrats, and entrenched themselves in far-right nonsense land. The tea party is the logical outgrowth of the rhetoric that nothing Democrats do is good: since Democrats controlled government, nothing government does is good. Now we should see either a realignment among some Tea Party voters to a more anti-everybody position, or more likely, Fox News will take away their megaphone from those groups. This leaves us with a serious problem: Republicans will govern from the extreme fringes and in cases where they can't force concessions from Democrats in the Senate (Recall that Democrats in the Senate will be looking mostly to keep the economic growth going in their home states, not for ideological victories), more grandstanding and obstructionism. Progressives have an opportunity to change this balance by pouring some effort into promoting liberal Republicans in primaries. Not to help Democrats win the general election, but to actually modernize and de-crazy-fy the Republican party. Republican voters will vote for people who want to actually solve our nation's problems, but Republican activists won't work for them. Top Republican strategists will also be focusing on the Presidential race, and activists may be overwhelmed at state legislature and Congressional levels by progressives organizing for moderate Republicans. Electing moderate Republicans in open seats will encourage actual bipartisanship and will weaken the control of Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan on the GOP caucus. Republicans actually interested in improving the economy may be anathema to the Democratic branding of the GOP, but it's what this country needs in order to solve our problems. Progressives should consider post-partisan activism this cycle. Turnout will be high for the Republican Primaries, which will produce a more moderate primary electorate than in 2012. There may even be some opportunities to primary far-right Republicans if a strong moderate Republican Presidential candidate shows up. Convincing a Huckabee voter to oust an incumbent in favor of a moderate Republican will also be a lot easier than convincing the same voter to split their ticket in November. Progressives need to elect better Democrats, but better Democrats also need to be legislating with better Republicans.
A Bloomberg news and right wing propaganda factory blog asks Do Jobless Benefits Raise Unemployment? How do I know it's a right-wing propaganda machine? It uncritically links to Redstate as an "influential blog," which is equivalent to linking to Stormfront as a "popular blog." The claims are true among a very small audience: in Erick Erickson's case, right wing activists; in Stormfront's case, neonazis. Regardless, the actual answer to the question is a resounding no. There is no causal link between jobless benefits and work ethic. Moving past the profound take-your-pick bias or stupidity of the author, the assumption that welfare and motivation to work are interrelated seems like an idea rooted in microeconomics. The argument posits a rational preference of available welfare to available work opportunities, and predicts behavior based on microeconomic theory: equal utility with a lower cost will be the preferred. If a person can get as much return from a cost by receiving welfare, why would they work? This level of analysis is evidence-free, it misses other important incentives to work like social stigma and views of self-worth, and it turns out to be wrong on its own terms.
There is the possibility that the Repbulicans will choose not to pay for their tax giveaway for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, of course, in a repeat of the original Bush give away to the wealthy. Crosscut, a Seattle based blog suspects thinks that Republicans are intent on instituting an austerity program of their own by removing all remaining stimulus money from the economy. (Quote is from subscription-only innobriefs.com) "Congressional GOP aides are reported to be reviewing agency records to identify particular stimulus-funded projects that could still be 'reasonably' killed because work on them is only beginning." Recall that 'reasonably' means whatever a hostage-taker or extortionist would mean when he says it. This only restricts the Republicans from taking money that is part of an active contract with an agent outside of the federal government, such as a state or or contractor. Goodbye, all emergency programs administered by the federal government. Your money just got given to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and a lot of other characters much less scrupulous than those two.
I reject the notion that the framework that President Obama and Republicans agreed to on Monday was in any way a true compromise. In a White House video release the President makes the case for the agreement. The Administration extracted a few promises from Republicans including an extension of the Obama tax cuts from the stimulus bill, a tax cut for all Americans on income below $250,000, an additional payroll tax to incentivize hiring, and extensions of emergency assistance for the unemployed. In return, Republicans received a two year freeze on income tax rates for the wealthiest 2% of Americans and the Millionaire Inheritance tax at historically low rates. Protecting tax cuts for middle class families is now only a liberal goal? Puh-leeze. Getting the economy into a true recovery by incentivizing hiring is a progressive idea? Sure. Keeping the unemployed out of foreclosure with unemployment insurance is only good for Democrats? That's a new one. Conservatives got almost everything they wanted, except perhaps an even larger reduction to the millionaire inheritance tax. The Democrats got nothing that is of ideological value on par with the Republican gain. Since when did economic pragmatism become solely a province of one party? Oh right. Republicans held hostage every goal that Obama mentioned in his press conference remarks yesterday. The Republicans essentially planted a bomb aimed at the middle class and the entire economy and claimed that the only way to defuse the bomb was to accede to their demands. Is it a compromise to accede to the bomber's demands? On the one hand, the safety of the American economy, which is the Obama administration's penultimate goal, was safeguarded. On the other hand, there's a reason that every government (and even fictional government) has the policy of not negotiating with terrorists. It spawns more danger for the citizens of their countries. Will Republicans be satisfied with this gift to the wealthy? Let's hope so, but there's plenty of reasons to expect them not to be: their stated goal is to cause the Obama administration to fail. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their SPECTRE GOP cronies will keep holding guns to the heads of Americans and demanding that Democrats act like Republicans or they'll shoot.
Progressives feel they have been sold up the river in the tax cut deal, and the net roots are attempting to stop Obama's tax cut deal with Republicans. The deal is certainly not optimal, especially if this is how we can expect Obama to deal withRepublican thuggishness over the next two years. The DailyKos demand that Congressional Democrats refuse the Preisdent's "compromise" deserves some thought, especially considering that the primary Republican goal this year is Obama's failure. Should progressive legislators buck Obama's leadership? The answer depends on what we think of the role of a legislator. Legislators' responsibilities are split in at least three important ways: to the interests of their constituents, to the national interest, and to their party. Each of these obligations suggests different immediate goals, and there are multiple strategies to achieve the disparate goals. The primary strategic motivation of a legislator is to be reelected, as a legislator who is not reelected loses the power to pursue any of the three sets of goals implied by his or her obligations. The strategic necessity of election complicates motivations. While the simplest assumption is that the needs of reelection dovetails with the obligation to constituents, reelection is also contingent on the strength of the party and the ability to attract ideological support from across the country. This is only a dilemma for legislators that don't support the kleptocracy of giving money for social services away to the wealthy when social services are most needed. I'm not talking about Blue Dogs; I'm talking about Democrats and Progressives who may be able to stop the tax cut deal by filibustering in the Senate. Dick Durbin thinks there are some senators in this position, and Barney Frank seems to be leading the charge. I am not in a position to guess how many Democrats will view this "deal" as enough good and not too much bad and which will view it as politically valuable as compromise for the sake of compromise. So what should a Progressive Democrat do?
The last two years have taught us that Republican intransigence is just as inevitable as death or taxes. The dilema over the extension of the temporary tax cuts that Bush rammed through the Senate in 2001 tells a nice 10 year story on the subject. Republicans are claiming that raising taxes now would have a disastrous effect on the economy and extension of the tax cuts would magically make the budget deficit better. To anybody with a memory of 2001 or the campaign of 2000, that's precisely the opposite reason initially given for the tax cuts. Per CBS News:
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993 he faced a $300 billion deficit. He cut government spending by $247 billion and raised taxes on top earners. That move, and later tax cuts, resulted in a budget surplus in 1998.
The tax cuts were supposed to give the surplus back to the American people. The government wasn't using it to provide services or pay down the debt, so they shouldn't be taking it out of the pockets of American workers. This in and of itself is an interesting myth, but one which was amplynoted at the time. Bush quickly turned a government surplus into a crushing deficit, making it necessary to take money out of social security to pay for current operations. The social security crisis you keep hearing about was manufactured by Bush's OMB when they shoveled $3 trillion out the door, disproportionately into the pockets of the wealthy.
20 Democrats and 168 Republicans voted against a tax cut on income below $250,000 for all Americans. This tax cut would have put money into the hands of middle class families who are struggling to make ends meet. The families receiving this tax cut would have been very likely to put their money more into consumption in advance of the holiday buying season. Extra consumer spending is exactly what the economy needs right now, yet Republicans and conservative Democrats voted against it. Making the tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 permanent is sound economic policy, but John Boehner says it's "chicken crap." Just the type of reasoned argument supported by evidence, theory, and history that the country needs right now. In case you were wondering, the "chicken crap" part of the deal is that John Boehner will only get a tax cut on the first $250,000 of his income. The rest of it will be taxed at Clinton-era rates. The GOP argument is that raising taxes on the wealthy would be an exceptionally bad idea, a position which makes no sense. If Clinton-era rates were so reprehensible for economic growth, why was Clinton's presidency marked by steady expansion of the economy?
One of the more laughable myths of the last 30 years is that America is a "center-right" nation. The phrase allows easy condemnation of any democratic policy proposal: "this plan comes from the left, therefore it's incompatible with a center-right nation." It also makes it more difficult to criticize far-right legislative plans because the pundits who buy into this phrase believe that most legislation should represent a right-wing tilt. A plan that represents an extreme right wing position is declared equally acceptable as a plan from the mainstream left. It's a glorious phrase for conservatives, especially because they get to define "center-right" in whatever way they want. This is why it's a laughable idea on its face. Whenever somebody claims that America is getting more conservative, it's time to consider what that really means. In Bill Kristol's mind, evidence to support such a claim is provided by a rise in self-identifying conservatives in a Gallup poll. Yet the same conservatives that Gallup finds growing want their medicare protected, their social security safeguarded, and want the government to have less favorable policies towards big business (e.g. TARP). If that's a conservative, maybe Obama really is a socialist. Self-identification as conservative does not mean that a person wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act. It probably means that a small group who though they were being heard in the Bush administration decided that they could no longer consider themselves moderates as Congress passed landmark health care reform, a temporary but scary takeover of the auto-industry, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Forty percent of Americans define themselves as conservatives, but I doubt that anyone could define Conservatism.
DADT repeal is typical of efforts to roll back discriminatory policy. There's been a lot of handwringing among Republican senators, conservative pundits, and... well... bigots about the rights of homosexuals to serve their country without deception. Asking gay and lesbian service members to hide a part of their identity is humiliating, despite the possibility that they might develop superior intelligence trade craft in the process. The Pentagon doesn't seen an upside in keeping DADT around in their report, despite all the protests from GOP quarters. Removing discrimination against homosexuals is supposedly back-lash free, according to Dale Carpenter at the Volokh Conspiracy. Anti-sodomy laws being struck down, anti-discrimination and anti-hate crimes legislation have been passed alongside predictions of calamities. In the wake of reform, nothing. No ill effects and no backlash. Same sex marriage in Iowa follows the same pattern, except a did form. While 92% of Iowans report same sex marriage having absolutely no effect on their daily lives, that didn't stop a highly energized coalition of conservatives from voting Iowa Supreme Court judges off the bench for recognizing an Iowa constitutional right to equality for homosexuals. Traditional marriage may not have been threatened (or affected in any way) by same sex marriage, but there are negative effects of safeguarding equal rights, as three former Iowa Supreme Court justices can tell you. Recall that the Presidential election of 2004 was won largely on the backs of anti-gay voters. The demographics of the 2010 electorate was very similar to the 1994 electorate, which was also largely motivated by religious right voters. There is no reason to deny equal rights to homosexual couples who want to marry--except political cowardice. We'll find out how rampant a condition that is in the U.S. Senate when DADT repeal goes to the floor.
Yesterday the White House announced that federal employees would not be eligible for raises as part of an effort to "tighten the government's belt" This pay freeze will cut an estimated $28 billion over the next five years, and is a continuation of the Obama administration's continuing efforts to deal with the deficit through executive action. In the words of the newly confirmed OMB director Jack Lew:
Already, the Administration has taken a number of steps in this regard as part of its Accountable Government Initiative from the President freezing the salaries for all senior White House officials and other top political appointees upon taking office to his efforts to get rid of $8 billion of excess federal real property over the next two years, reduce improper payments by $50 billion by the end of 2012, and freeze non-security spending for three years – which will bring non-security discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in 50 years.
The Obama administration is working to eliminate fraud and waste in the budget. The common complaint in Washington is that no one pays attention to the M in OMB, but management is what former OMB Director Peter Orszag had been doing by getting agencies to tackle waste and root out fraud. The money saved through these programs had a loss for the economy; societally unacceptable fraudsters and inefficiencies soaked up a few billion dollars.
I haven't been able to update in the last week, as I'm currently in the process of moving (physically, like between two states). Luckily, nothing really is going on in the world. The economic and logistical impact of TSA opt-out day was predictably marginal--perhaps a new word, fringical, would better describe its political roots. There's a decent James Fallows piece on the myth of party-first response to security theater, privacy rights, and an intrusive state. His main takeaway is that while individuals on the conservative end of the spectrum may have recently found a reason to hate airport security, the same liberals who grumbled about earlier iterations (remember when they banned books on planes for a couple weeks?) have not begun to support the government out of partisan fealty to the President. Whereas Fallows seems to say that conservatives are more susceptible to partisanship dictating moral outrage, I think the truth is that the conservative media was not interested in discussing the intrusive indignities of the modern state while Bush was in control. The individuals who are up in arms about "enhanced" security procedures may have been provoked to equal outrage and activism had they had earlier access to "intrusive state" stories in the media. I think liberal blogs tend to assume that their readers have a certain baseline familiarity with the intrusiveness of the state, but conservative storytellers start at the beginning, as if the entire outrage were wholly new. This is just a guess, but maybe liberals do themselves a disservice when they frame new developments--in any field from airport security to tax cuts--as the latest in a long string of similar stories. Example: the Party of No. The narrative that the Democratic party attempted to spin over the last two years was that Republicans were consistently putting politics before country. That message never broke through to the mass audience, largely because saying "Republicans blocked progress again" is hardly news. "Republicans Launch Filibuster of X" is a bigger headline when the drumbeat for weeks hasn't been, "Republicans Will Probably Do Everything They Possibly Can to Block X." The blogs telling the anti-TSA story right now are telling their audiences about the screening as if the use of full body screeners wasn't a long time in the making. Maybe liberals need to learn to play dumb.
Lots of people think that preventing the destruction of a nuclear detonation is a really good idea. Russia thinks so, the International Atomic Energy Association thinks so, NATO thinks so, the United States military thinks so, and so does the President. That's why they have been vocally supporting the ratification of the New START treaty, which recommits the United States and Russia to reigning in their cold war-era nuclear stockpiles, securing nuclear weapons and weapons-grade material, and closely supervising each countries' nuclear arsenal. Of course, Senate Republicans seemed to have decided that they want no part in nuclear security, holding out in favor of grand standing on tax cuts for the wealthy. In time to assuage our fears that Republicans are the only people in the world against the START treaty and the principles it stands for, North Korea unveiled a new nuclear weapons facility. I'm not a big foreign policy blogger, but I'm sure there's a bunch of people who will tell you that it would be easier to compel the North Koreans to wind down their weapons programs if Russia and the United States presented a united front and if there were a binding legal model for controlling nuclear arms programs in operation. The Anti Defamation League and the National Jewish Democratic Council support New START because it will be an important tool in addressing Iranian nuclear ambitions.
The right to vote is the fundamental right in a democracy. Democratic elections hold principal agents of the government accountable, allowing the population to exerciatse sovereignty through threats to elected officials that they'll be thrown out. Elected officials then go on to make laws, which are infused with democratic legitimacy. In theory, elected officials also control the bureaucracy and administrative agencies, meaning that these agencies are subject to attenuated popular control. Even courts, which are generally staffed by unelected judges, are constrained by jurisdictional grants within democratically made law. This is what it means to live in a democracy. Institutions are linked by some commitment to popular sovereignty which is enforced through free and fair elections. If the individual right to vote is infringed, the legitimacy of this system quickly goes out the window. Popular sovereignty, while it only nominally controls decision-making within administrative agencies, loses all normative force when elections consistently fail to express the will of the people. The logical conclusion is that voting rights are important. In fact, they're so important that voting rights should be suspended when we think that people haven't done enough to 'earn them.' You see, Ada Marijo Vik has this theory, apparently, that when rights are important--especially when they are fundamental in society--they should be highly restricted so that only the worthy enjoy them.
Why shouldn’t voting, the most important of our civil rights, be reserved for those who pay enough attention to voting to actually register in advance?
I simply don't understand why Democrats need Republican Senators to vote for extending the tax cuts for middle class Americans. The original Bush tax cuts were approved under a suspension of the filibuster rules. Because tax cuts "affect the budget" they can be passed as budget reconciliation acts which do not require cloture to proceed, therefore don't require a single Republican vote. The biggest obstacle to a more progressive tax code is the so-called centrist Democrats (e.g. Ben Nelson (NE), Mary Landrieu (LA), etc...) who might want to extract another pound of flesh for their states in exchange for a sane tax policy (as they did with the Affordable Care Act). Oh that's right, that's because it's a Politico story, which automatically discounts any courses of action that don't meet the demands of the right wing. Those actions are illegitimate, I presume, because they do not fit Politico's preferred narrative.
Not that this is a new or particularly interesting complaint, but journalism today lacks a lot of the value we wish it would provide. I don't really know if journalism used to be that much better, but here's an example of some terrible journalism:
There seems to be some tailwind for the National Opt Out Day, which encourages airline travelers on Wednesday, Nov. 24 to decline to be 3-d scanned into the TSA's new security device and teleported into the 'clean' area of the airport. There seem to be both health and privacy concerns about the new scanning technology, which can probably determine if your nipple is erect. I'm not a big fan of the security theater that is airline travel; American airline passengers are no safer than Israeli airline passengers, which uses a vastly different paradigm of airport security. I would, however, like to point out an additional feature to the National Opt-Out Day activism envisioned. Apparently when you refuse to be visually inspected, you cannot get onto your flight without submitting to a "touch my junk" tactile inspection. My guess is that most people would acquiesce to the visual inspection when the choice is made explicit (ogling is preferable to fondling). However, if you refuse to choose either, airlines are likely to refund your non-refundable ticket without too much of a fuss. American Airlines doesn't want to be complicit in violations of your intimate privacy. If enough people truly opt-out of the invasive security choice of ogle/fondle by asking to have their tickets refunded, that will send a much stronger signal in favor of abolition of that choice. The airlines cannot afford to have 5% of their passengers drop out of reserved flights on the day of due to passenger discomfort with TSA demands. An enterprising group of libertarians might organize an entire flight to pursue this strategy, which would certainly raise airline eyebrows if 40% of a plane went from being booked to empty on the day of the flight. Air carriers also have much better leverage over the TSA than individual citizens do.
I've been reading Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State by Malcolm Feeley and Edward Rubin, which investigates the 20-year period in which federal courts transformed state prisons around the country. It's a pretty fascinating story, but especially in their contention that this period of judicial policy-making amounted to a final rejection of federalism:
"In imposing national norms on the state prisons that were following distinctly different models, the courts were rejecting the essential principle of federalism. As stated, federalism is distinguished from decentralization because it allows governmental subunits to follow separate norms rather than simply following separate managerial strategies for achieving a single, centrally established norm. The prison cases decisively rejected the state's power to follow separate norms in prison administration."
The federal courts saw that prisons were across the nation were adopting standards of the American Penological Association and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' guidelines everywhere but in the deep South, where penal institutions were spitting-image imitations of antebellum plantations. Federal judges, first in Arkansas, then independently across the South, decided that prisoners' Eighth Amendment rights against "cruel and unusual punishment" were being violated by the Southern Plantation model of prisons. Judges assumed jurisdiction over prisons in defense of prisoners' rights, and in vary degrees, assumed ultimate administrative control over state prisions. Judges implemented hundreds of reforms, in some prisons going so far as to designate a minimum wattage of bulbs to be used in lamps and schedules for washing windows.
The Anchorage Daily News seems to be doing a pretty good job covering all the malfeasance in Alaska ballot counting, which seems to be that every possible permutation of Lisa Murkowski's name is being challenged, including the correct one. But the reasons for the challenges are pretty obvious. As you might recall, Alaska Elections Law requires that the name on the ballot appear "as it is written on the write-in declaration of candidacy." The Miller campaign has sued the Department of Elections to make sure than any ballot which deviates from the write-in candidacy declaration form is thrown out. The following are ballots that have been challenged by the Miller campaign- see if you can guess why they were challenged (answers below the fold).
I hate facebook. Not from a personal privacy standpoint, but because I simply don't like the necessary upkeep, the constant monitoring, the expectation that I've seen your pictures so you don't show them to me. Yet the internet still should be able to connect me to people and events that I am interested in- right around me, right now. Enter Get Spontaneous, a tool which invites users to post events ranging from pick-up soccer games to door-knocking staging areas to multi-million person concerts. I'm a big fan of where this might go, and right now, it looks like the only thing it's missing is users. I want to use the internet to enrich my life, not the other way around.
In the same vein as "Keep Government Out of My Medicare," we get this straight from the jowls of Mamma Grizzly herself: government should stay out of public education. You couldn't make this stuff up.
In a few hours, the State of Alaska will begin to count the write-in ballots from the midterm elections. Expect results to be reported by state house district. There are roughly 11,500 more write-in ballots than ballots cast for Republican Joe Miller, so he is understandably concerned with exactly how those ballots are counted, and for whom they will be counted. His also-Republican opponent, Senator Lisa Murkowski, ran as a write-in candidate, and the presumption is that the vast majority of the 91,000 write-in votes will have her name on them. Miller is seeking every advantage he can get, especially in knocking out any misspellings or permutations of Lisa Murkowski's name. To this end, he is seeking an injunction against the Department of Elections for implementing their plan to count ballots this year. Specifically, he contends that the directions allow for counting misspellings of Murkowski's name and would 1) incorrectly include 'protest votes' of people who intentionally misspelled her name (because people would apparently do that in Joe Miller-land) in Murkowski's vote total and 2) violate state law requiring the write-in section to contain the candidate's name "as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy" to count for that candidate. Joe Miller's legal team thinks that "as it appears..." requires perfect spelling. They note that the legislature says that there can be "no exception" to the rule that the name must be on the ballot "as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy." Obviously, "as it appears..." is a very harsh standard, but that is what is required by law. Miller's suit notes that a vote cannot be counted if there is any deviation between the name of the candidate on the ballot and the name as it appears on the declaration of candidacy, "no exceptions." Alongside with deviant spelling, reasons for rejecting write-in ballots must include deviation in ink color, deviation in the size or shape of every individual letter, deviation in the placement of the dot over Murkowski's 'i', deviation in line thickness, and deviation in writing implement. Lisa Murkowski's campaign to provide supporters with wristbands that displayed her name clearly was mislead; they should have provided self-inking stamps to their supporters with the exact image of her signature "as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy." Of course, the original form would have to have been stamped with one too. With the write lawyering, Joe Miller could whittle down Murkowski's vote share to a literal 0. I don't know why he's wasting time with these amateurs who just want correct spelling when the standard that he's advocating for requires far more.
One of the most noxious aspects of our nation's drug policy is that since 2000, resources to students dry up if he or she is convicted of any drug offense. The provision was inserted into a bill amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 by Rep. Mark Souder(R-IN) and appears as subsection (r) of 20 U.S.C. 1091
A student who is convicted of any offense under any Federal or State law involving the possession or sale of a controlled substance for conduct that occurred during a period of enrollment for which the student was receiving any grant, loan, or work assistance under this subchapter and part C of subchapter I of chapter 34 of title 42 shall not be eligible to receive any grant, loan, or work assistance under this subchapter and part C of subchapter I of chapter 34 of title 42 from the date of that conviction for the period of time specified in the following table:
"Offense" is not defined in the legislation, though "controlled substances" is. "Controlled substances" certainly includes marijuana. California students may be able to escape this penalty if they are 'convicted' of possession. California recently enacted a law changing possession of under an ounce of weed from a misdemeanor to an infraction. Criminal infractions do not appear on standard criminal records. The Department of Education's policy says it looks to "the student's record" in determining eligibility for grants, loans and work study under the Higher Education Act. When asked by the San Francisco Chronicle, a Department of Education spokesperson acknowledged the need to clarify the procedure, remarking, "We will review the changes in the California law to see how it affects the federal provision." If you value equal access to education, now would be a good time to call or email the Department of Education to help them shape their rule. The California law takes effect on January 1st, so the Department will probably shore up their rules by then.
It's nice to see Wikipedia getting some respect from the scholarly community. After all, everybody seems to use it, and it seems to work pretty well. This review of scholarship on Wikipedia's "Good Faith" culture points in some interesting directions about the democratized encyclopedia. Wikipedia provides its excellent content because it has a wide variety of input, yet produces a class of users who are incredibly engaged. Partisans (called POV warriors in wiki terms) are certainly present in the wikipedia ecosystem, but their efforts seem to produce a synthesis with the moderating influences of the more engaged editors. It should be noted that this group operates as a sort of privileged class, but without any structural privilege. Highly engaged contributors are not paid, and their comments are subject to the same systems of feedback as any other users. They gain a larger influence by the brute force of how much they work on wiki edits, integrate into the community, and gain recognition from their peers. Why is this good news for democracy? If we are to believe Joseph Reagle's theory that Wikipedia's culture results from the dictum to "assume good faith" and enshrining "neutrality" as the goal, we can gain some insight into how true democrats should approach voters. Respecting the views of others seems to have tangible results in wikispace; it might have similar results in a political culture. Secondly, a purported stance of neutrality does seem to create lasting consensus. Consensus building is a particularly neglected goal in the current political environment, as power is conferred once one candidate gets 50% of the vote plus 1. Wikipower certainly seems more likely to come up with good policy than electoral power.
Tomorrow morning, America wakes up to find that there's a ton of news that happened last night. So what news will an interested reader look at? Local media still provides the most intense contact that people have with national news. After such an interesting and multi-faceted night, local news might have more particularized, interesting concerns than weekday morning variety show broadcast. That's why I check out gallery of today's newspaper front pages from around the globe.
In the absence any evidence that enough voter fraud exists in America to turn any election, conservatives are pouring money into "uncovering" instances of voter fraud. Last night, I was able to attend an event with one of the foot soldiers of the voter intimidation effort in Minnesota, the blogger over at Fightin' Words, North Star Tea Party Patriots Media Relations Director Walter Hudson. In prepared remarks, he identified two goals for his tea party group this year: elect judges and stop voter fraud. He willingly acknowledged that there is no evidence of wide-spread voter fraud; so it is incumbent on the coalition of Minnesota Majority, the North Star Tea Party Patriots, and Voters Alliance to manufacture that evidence. Conservative paranoid delusion holds that the 2008 Minnesota Senate race was stolen by fraudulent Democratic votes. When pressed on exactly what the Minnesota Majority tactics would be, Mr. Hudson gave this answer: 1) His group would wear buttons asking elections officials to ID the wearer. A federal judge yesterday instructed that this counts as electioneering and could not be done in a polling place. 2) The group would be flagging any buses which delivered voters to the polls, as the conservative groups believe that buses of voters vote multiple times at multiple locations 3) Staffing a hotline to help document cases such as these. Obvious problem with point #2 (explicated at 1:58 in the video) is that there is no obvious way to tell if a bus carrying "a bunch of voters" is engaging in double-voting. The Minnesota coalition of conservatives pursuing this "voter fraud" story will clearly presume that any organized group of voters is engaging in voter fraud. After all, the warrant for believing that voter fraud was being perpetrated by ACORN despite evidence of an absence was the fact that they were registering low-income voters.
It's a good thing that I never attempted to set limits on topics that I would touch on this blog, because this post will violate any reasonable standard of what is a worthwhile to blog about. There's a lot of interesting fall-out in the media from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Most of the commentary is incredibly shallow or plays up the same high noise-to-signal ratio which is my complaint about the modern media landscape. Take the HuffPo noting Keith Olbermann attacks Jon Stewart for "Jumping the Shark" article for example. Keith Olbermann tweeted that Jon Stewart was espousing "naiveté" in suggesting that "everybody on Thr cable is the same," which is a valid position: If Jon Stewart wants to criticize the rhetorical arms race in establishing competing echo chambers/noise machines, the players in the noise game should point out that they are in a dilemma. Hegemonic discourse is probably worse than splintered discourse for the country, even if the tone of the splintered discourse is vitriolic. Olbermann reacts to the criticism of the media environment by pointing out that liberals are forced to engage in this game. I think that Olbermann's and MSNBC's tactics are not optimal in responding to the GOP/Koch Brothers Media/Fox News complex, but that's what they're hired to do. Essentially, the "hate the game not the player" principle applies. That's Stewart's point, and he provides a viable alternative (after all, 200K+ came out to hear a critique of the media which was based on an hour of comedy each night). And this is precisely the discussion that the Huffington Post could explore by calling a few sources, getting some sides of the story, and writing a thoughtful piece. They could do some basic journalism. Instead, they focus on the non-substantive lead-in to Olbermann's comments, "It wasn't a big shark but Jon Stewart jumped one just now...". That's a pretty annoying example of the media failing to reach the substantive level, deciding to amplify the pointless bickering when in fact Olbermann was trying to get a point across. There's simply no room to get an argument into the media, even for a media start like Olbermann. It seems that in today's media environment, as soon as a message gets outside of your immediate control, you lose all ability to transmit information. I guess that's why I started a blog- to allow other people's arguments to retain some meaning, as well as provide my viewpoint. It's just too bad that your popular journalism today doesn't attempt to transmit other people's messages. The HuffPo is trying to get hits, and like the Drudge Report, you do that by putting in big simple headlines that seem provocative regardless of the substance of the story. I don't think I should have to produce my own media to avoid this type of avoidance of journalistic responsibility.
An interesting dynamic is evolving in the wake of the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear over the weekend. The media is striking back, claiming that the nonpartisan nature of the rally forced Stewart, Colbert to attack media instead of the real originators of the partisan warfare which has crippled Washington. I kind of agree with the New York Times here, and wish that the rally focused a little more on the obstinate party, but honestly what good would come of that? In going after the media exclusively, Stewart and Colbert at least forced this article in which the New York Times is decrying the lack of confrontation and real questioning of the failure of the political system in the modern Congress. Of course, the media (the Times included) have facilitated the decline of the political process, so getting them to pen a piece complaining that the rally didn't focus on the structural failures of rhetoric and serious democratic discussion is a massive accomplishment in Jiu-Jitsu.
His barrage against the news media Saturday stemmed from the fact that, on this day, attacking the message would have been bad manners, so he stuck with the messengers.
Of course, the general critique of the media is exactly the same- that the news reporters are too polite. The thrust of last Monday's Daily Show segment with Wyatt Cenac cozying up to lobbyists and noting the incestuousness of the Washington media-political scene struck exactly this chord. The New York Times has been doing too little "afflicting the comfortable." The media, if you listen to anybody outside of it (or inside of it attempting to claim a populist mantle), is complacent. Now they're charging that the Comedy Central News Hour is as complacent. And that's the big story from today's media coverage of the event: journalists are publicly calling politeness a vice. Depending on how cynical you are, this either bodes well for a burgeoning media self-awareness and reform or is emblematic of the psychoanalytic concept of projection. Of course, companies don't maintain psychologies, but the principle is the same- a component (journalist) of the psyche (corporation) sees a problem, but a supervisory node (editorial norms) attributes the problem to an external actor in order to save face (job security). I'm not holding out much hope that media executives will have the realization that their companies should be filling the void of serious criticism and digestion of politicians' behavior and talking points, but blaming the Daily Show host for not doing so evinces a real unease that journalists aren't doing it.
's theory that Wikipedia's culture results from the dictum to "assume good faith" and enshrining "neutrality" as the goal, we can gain some insight into how true democrats should approach voters. Respecting the views of others seems to have tangible results in wikispace; it might have similar results in a political culture. Secondly, a purported stance of neutrality does seem to create lasting consensus. Consensus building is a particularly neglected goal in the current political environment, as power is conferred once one candidate gets 50% of the vote plus 1. Wikipower certainly seems more likely to come up with good policy than electoral power.