BP Shakedown Street: Is this really our remedy?

Is it me? Am I the only clear-thinking “liberal” remaining? Or is it that I now know that I never really was a liberal, and that the BP gulf disaster has just pointed that out in the clearest terms yet.

I heard Republican senator Joe Barton on NPR this morning saying that the president’s demand for $20 billion in escrow amounts to nothing more than a shakedown, a comment for which he was forced to apologize. While I might choose another word, I’m inclined to agree with the good senator. BP has a responsibility to help, but the burden for paying for the cleanup, helping folks recover from the disastrous economic fallout and ensuring that the practices that caused this mess are never repeated fall on us. Me. You. Us. U.S. We allowed it to happen, and we’ve had and have the power to stop it.

$20 billion promised from BP is absurd on moral, legal and practical terms. What exactly did BP do? Or, put another way, what exactly did BP do that every other major corporation hasn’t been doing at least since the end of WWII?

It’s a multinational corporation. By definition and mandate, a multinational corporation moves across the globe, like a feral virus strain, seeking profits where they can gain purchase and where conditions allow the greatest return on investments. To stretch the analogy, a national government’s role it to act as the host nation’s immune system. Governments are expected to establish safeguards and restrictions to either reject potentially dangerous projects or to regulate, inspect and enforce the safeguards that it deems necessary to protect the health of the host.

Left Behind: AIPAC and the Jewish Response

If measured by the number of letters, there has been a lot of buzz around Gary Kamiya’s Salon article about the power (real or perceived) of AIPAC, the “mainstream” Jewish Israel lobby. In case you have not read it, or have no intention to read it, his main points are

1. AIPAC is one of the most powerful K Street lobbies, rivaling AARP and the NRA.

2. AIPAC has supported, and by (his) extension has helped to shape some of the most disastrous parts of this and past administration’s Mideast policy.

3. AIPAC purports to but in fact does not represent the majority and plurality of the Jewish community.

4. It is primarily up to the Jewish community to speak up about, and at, AIPAC in order to assure skittish legislators and candidates that they are not representative of us, and that we see the harm AIPAC’s lobbying has had.

It is hard to argue 1 or 2, or even 3. All things being equal, it is a well argued and balanced assessment. AIPAC certainly does not represent the Jewish community, and surely AIPAC backs repugnant foreign policies, many of which I would argue hurt Israel.

However, in the hundred-plus letters I scanned on Salon in rebuttal or support of Kamiya’s article, I found very few that hit one major point of contention (number 4) and none on another, perhaps more sensitive and personal topic. I will take them in order.

Is it up to the Jews to challenge AIPAC? Well, yes and no.

Hurrah for Capitalism? I Don’t Roger That

Roger Cohen argues in Hurrah for Capitalism, Its Many Warts and All (International Herald Tribune, March 14), that capitalism is the “worst system except any other that’s been invented.” I have argued this point, but even if we accept his premise, I take issue with the suggestion that capitalism is the “best system ever invented” not because it appeals to our more noble purposes, uplifts our humanity or delivers the greatest good to the most number of people. His supposition, as I comprehend it, is that capitalism is the best of all economic systems for precisely the opposite reasons: That it allows our most predatory, greedy and anti-social instincts to be rewarded often, as you point out clearly in your essay, on the smoldering ruins of tragedy and misfortune. Roger says, I think, that in order to have the selflessness of the good, we must allow for the depravity of the bad.

“An unprecedented breach of trust:” Of all the justice departments in all the world….

I wrote in an earlier post that naïveté was an unlikely excuse for any serving senator, least of all for long-serving, high-ranking members such as Clinton and Dodd. But as I’m preparing to put the image of the doe-eyed senator to rest, some Rudolph keeps raising his head for another stare down at the White House.

In reaction to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ deflecting confession that he “accepts that mistakes were made,” in the firing and replacement scandal of US attorneys, none other than Charles Schumer, the long-standing senior senator from New York, was quoted by the NYtimes.com as saying that this “…prove[s] beyond any reasonable doubt that there has been unprecedented breach of trust, abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department.”

On Memory, The Boss, and The Underground

When I was a child, I lived in London with my family. I was 5. My parents, with all the best intentions, decided to send me to a public (which in the UK, of course, means private—very confusing) kindergarten. Oh wait, that is a topic for another time…

Let me take a step back, for this is a post about getting reacquainted with a long lost (but never forgotten) artifact. In this case, Bruce Springsteen’s seminal Born to Run.

But I really did want to start in the London of my fifth year. Almost daily, I rode the Tube with one of my parents on the way to pick up my brother or sister, to the market, to-and-from all the ordinary things of a child’s tag-along life.

Apologies miss the point

Stanley Fish, always a thoughtful, and almost always worth the read for any topic he cares to comment on, misses the point in his New York Times Blog post of February 25.

He states,

“[Clinton] is admitting to putting her faith in the wrong person (she has said, “I take responsibility for that vote”), but refusing to accept the blame for what he subsequently did, that is, refusing to take the blame for the war.

“This distinction between delegating authority to someone and holding oneself accountable for the actions he then performs might seem too fine and casuistical for Senator Clinton’s critics, but it is one I recognize from my own experience.”

This entirely misses the point. I don’t care if any of these senators have the stomach to apologize or not. John Edwards apologized (sort or, with a “if I knew then” chaser on it) and Hillary didn’t. Kerry is still deciding, I suppose.

They all either made a huge misjudgment on the facts, intentions and character of the Bush administration (less likely), or else a miscalculation on what the political effects of a “nay” vote would be in 2004, ’06 and ’08 (more likely).

Either way, they failed us. And frankly, an apology now does nothing to change my opinion—no one that cast a vote in favor of JR 114 will get my support.

See my earilier post for a more complete discussion of this.

Why I’m a Democratic Socialist, Part 5

What does democratic socialism mean?

Democratic socialism means that the basic services of the public sector economy—those things on which we all heavily rely in order to pursue our personal happiness, whatever it may be—are owned publicly. Why should modern necessities such as electricity, oil and other energy resources, water, sewer, roads and ports, enrich the few at the expense of the many? How has private ownership of health providers and medical services, telephone and broadband services and public transportation aided the common good? How is the common good served when gas hovers around $3/gallon while oil companies reap record profits?

Remember 9/11/01? Sure, but also remember 10/11/02

In what has turned into the defining issue of the pre-pre election cycle this February, the congressional vote to authorize use of force against Iraq, on October 11, 2002, has taken on a life of its own.

As well it should. For what could be more central to issues of life and death. It was a time of crises, of calls for vengeance, of putting principles to the test of stark realities. And on that day, on this issue, many failed the test.

To those who failed to stand up and say, unequivocally, “Nay,” I say you have not earned the right to ask for my vote now. Rarely in the world of complex—and mostly muddled—political debate do we have a moment of clarity such that October 11, 2002 afforded. Are you for it or against it? Do you have the integrity and courage to do the right thing, or don’t you?

We knew that day where you stood, Hillary. Where Edwards, Biden and Dodd stood. Or, in an effort to say something positive here, we also saw the bravery of Feingold, Boxer, Wyden and Jeffords. (Thank you to the 23 senators with the courage to do the right thing.)

Why I’m a Democratic Socialist, Part 4

The failure of socialist creep

Two possibilities:  Either the impoverished 15% – 35% are those unable to compete, unable to ever have a fair shot at overcoming their circumstances, or they are just the unlucky comprising the same ratios of intelligent and simple, diligent and lazy as those who eat well from the economic pie. I would like to believe that most thinking defenders of capitalism would agree that the upper classes have their share of lucky-dumb just as the underclasses have a fair ratio of unlucky-smart. For if one were to truly believe that the poor all get what they deserve, that is a sort of dark social Darwinist/Dickensian world-view that is beneath our dignity to engage in debate.

The unworthiness of a segment of our society is a red herring. While I would argue that no human is unworthy, that is a philosophical debate that is outside of the scope of discussion here. Suffice to say that at least some of the working poor and unhappily unemployed are as equally worthy of dignity and prosperity as any of us.

Eat Food

I read Michael Pollan’s essay in last week’s NYT Magazine (January 28, 2007). What a joy it is to read something that just makes sense. In something like how the exception proves the rule, it made me realize just how rare it is to read something that leaves you nodding your head in agreement and thinking how it could be that no one thought of making the argument so simple before.

Into an ocean awash with diets, nutrition tips, get-skinny schemes and hand wringing about the obesity of Americans, floated a clear bottle with a very simple message: Eat food, and eat less. Read the full 10,000 word essay here (you may need to subscribe to Times Select to see the full version), complete with much appreciated critiques of capitalist agricultural and food productions industries (I’ll deal with Monsanto and ADM on another day), but it really is as common sense as it sounds.