Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Sigh.

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Samhain                                        Waning Harvest Moon

First the Vikings, now the Democrats.  Geez.

As I said a while back, the political scene, long a part of my life, a passionate part, has begun to recede for me.  I see this by-election as a cyclical matter, not a rejection of Obama and progressive ideas, but a cry of pain from people injured the great recession.  An angry elephant has stomped through the polls this November election day, an elephant moving with great feeling, a powerful force in politics.  Yes, this will slow down Obama’s progressive agenda.  He will have to work in a more measured, less dramatic way, but, as I’ve read more than one place, that may well be to his advantage in 2012.

(I’d be happier if I watched the election returns on Ka’anapali beach.)

It is not so much a time to wonder what went wrong from a Democratic perspective, as it is a time to reconsider how communicating the gains of the past two years has fallen so far short.  It is a time to consider how to pursue the great issues yet unaddressed, like climate change and immigration, in the small ways that will lay the base for further work in the 2012 Congress.  I went into this election proud of my leftist politics and I remain so.  Over time movements toward greater equality erode the opposition, witness the number of conservative women running in this election.  Over time matters of mutual care and compassion like Social Security, Medicare and now the National Health Care legislation become new bricks in a solid foundation for all Americans, rich and poor.  The economy will right itself and the timing of recovery matters more politically than it should, because the tools used to massage the economy are gross and work only over time.

So, we’ll have to learn how to work with a whole new legislative alignment.  That’s the nature of politics.  This is still a center/right country, so we have to be glad when we have the chance to make progress, philosophical when we can’t.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Politics, US History

It’s Here! It’s Here! It’s Finally Here!

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Samhain                                    Waning Harvest Moon

Election day.  Or, as I prefer to think of it, extinguish those politicoporn commercials day.

The constant negative drone, the contention that the other person has committed some perfidy totally unexpected of a human being, let alone a politician, gets on my nerves, so, for the most part, I shut it out.  But that’s not what I mean.

What I mean is the amount of hard cash required for designing, shooting and airing political commercials.   Along with other technological expenses in the modern campaign the dollar amounts required make it inevitable that each politician, each one, Republican and Democrat, spend their incubency focusing not on policy or the politics of the day, but on fund raising.  Fund raising in amounts so large that often times they go back to the same well not just twice, but thrice.  This places every politician in Congress squarely in the sites of those who have wealth or who have become adept at bundling wealth from others for political purposes.  This is not only bad form; it is also a bad way to create a government.

Add the constant fund raising to the incessant drum beat of lobbyists and it’s no wonder our democracy–for which we want to make the whole world safe–has twitches and contortions that make professional gymnasts look clumsy and out of practice.  We are a people proud of our democracy, often hubristically so, and yet it has become a clogged artery, a broken limb, a part of our body politic that needs strong medicine and tough therapy to heal.

Our system of checks and balances has devolved into a system of halts and stops where partisan wrangling and/or ideological purity turns each place where a check might happen into a full body check against the boards and puts a thumb on the scales wherever balance must come into play.

While I’m at it, let me point out, too, a problem in our Senate.  No, not the rules, though those do need attention.  No, not Jesse Helms.  He left office.  I’m talking about representation.  Here’s what the point in a brief paragraph from Wikipedia:

“The Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that state’s consent. The District of Columbia and all other territories (including territories, protectorates, etc.) are not entitled to representation in either House of the Congress.[12] The United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959.

The disparity between the most and least populous states has grown since the Great Compromise, which granted each state equal representation in the Senate and a minimum of three presidential Electors, regardless of population. In 1787, Virginia had roughly 10 times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has roughly 70 times the population of Wyoming, based on the 1790 and 2000 censuses. This means some citizens are effectively an order of magnitude better represented in the senate than than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are approximately proportionate to the population of each state, reducing the disparity of representation.”

And this from a book blurb on Amazon for:  Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation–

“We take it for granted that every state has two representatives in the United States Senate. Apply the “one person, one vote” standard, however, and the Senate is the most malapportioned legislature in the democratic world.

But does it matter that California’s 32 million people have the same number of Senate votes as Wyoming’s 480,000? Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer systematically show that the Senate’s unique apportionment scheme profoundly shapes legislation and representation. The size of a state’s population affects the senator-constituent relationship, fund-raising and elections, strategic behavior within the Senate, and, ultimately, policy decisions. They also show that less populous states consistently receive more federal funding than states with more people. In sum, Lee and Oppenheimer reveal that Senate apportionment leaves no aspect of the institution untouched.

This groundbreaking book raises new questions about one of the key institutions of American government and will interest anyone concerned with issues of representation.”

I mention this intriguing and disturbing analysis to underscore the problems with the amount of money it takes to win a Senate race which is, by definition, a whole state affair.  This means that money sunk into races in smaller population states can have the affect of negating changes in the House of Representatives while increasing the amounts for which the elected Senator is beholden.  This is not a recipe or a chance for corruption; it is a guarantee, a built in consequence of modern elections and an increasingly unequal Senate.

What to do?  We’ll look at that tomorrow, apres deluge.

Politics

Mlid-Term Elections 2010

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Fall                                        Waning Harvest Moon

Politics in Minnesota started its private subscriber newsletter this week with this (to me) sobering paragraph:

“The big news today is last night’s KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showing a virtual tie between Mark Dayton and Tom Emmer heading toward Tuesday’s election. This year partisans of all stripes have had the opportunity to pick and choose among a selection of cheerfully discrepant, mutually contradictory polls; by selectively holding up their internal data, you can “prove” almost anything about the race.”

It would be nice if Minnesota proved an exception to what looks like an otherwise ugly election day, but that remains to be seen.  As always, only a whole lot rides on this election.  In particular, control of this state and many others for the popular political sport called gerrymandering.  That means, in essence, that the big winners of this by-election will have a good shot at creating favorable political districts for themselves for the next decade.  Ouch.

(As last year, myself and comrades will be combing the late night spots and digging up new voters.)

As matters cease to have the one and done significance my younger self ascribed to all elections, I can see this election in a broader pattern.  A new president’s party always, almost always, loses seats in the by-election.  Due to a confluence of factors this one may be worse than others for the Democrats.  There is wide spread anger at the state of the economy as the working class and the soon-to-be-retiring class both find their futures crimped by a stagnant and perhaps deflating economy.  The war in Afghanistan long ago passed all U.S. records for foreign entanglements and Obama seems to have achieved no political credit for closing out troop actions in Iraq.  The passage of the economic stimulus, which will, like the health care legislation, be seen by history as critically important for our nations future have also failed to stick to Obama’s credit.  This means something is wrong with his handlers, but perhaps, too, with this cerebral, even style.   On top of these realities is the Tea Party, a not so new mix of populist politics and ideas created in the heyday of such notable movements as the John Birch Society.

From a legislative perspective in Minnesota the terrain still looks unclear today, four + days before the election, but it will clear up a lot by Wednesday of next week.  Not a fun funny season if you’re on the left edge of the political spectrum as I am.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics, Retirement, Weather +Climate

The Constructive Task

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Fall                                                   Waning Harvest Moon

Another morning of cool, wet weather.  The beginning of October.  No.  Scratch that.  The end of October.  I recognize this fall weather actually; it comes to us courtesy of the climate that used to be Indiana’s.  This is the weather pattern of my boyhood.  Sunny, sometimes warm, sometimes not fall days, then rain drifting over into ice or snow with some cold, a January thaw that makes everything muddy and nasty, then a bit more cold and snow until March when the muddy, nasty part returns until spring.  This weather pattern had a good deal to do with my move north, since I wanted stable seasons and in particular real winters.  Now it seems the weather patterns I left have begun to follow me.

The Liberal Spirit is on Ancientrails now, just look on the left side, all the way at the bottom under Ge-ology.  This presentation completed a six part exploration of, first, the movement West of Unitarian-Universalism, and then the nature and future of liberalism, especially as it applies to matters often called religious.  I like working in three parts because it encourages me to think longer than the usually 5-7 page presentation, to take an idea further, develop it.  Not sure what I might do next, but I do feel a need to begin what my old seminary theology professor would call the constructive task.

Constructive theology as an abstract idea involves the coherent development of ideas, ideas about the ultimate nature of reality, human existence and the forces that work on both of them.  My notion of a Ge-ology, which continues to rattle around, make sense, but defy careful development is a significant part of where I want to go, but there’s a lot more to piece together.  The whole notion has become a more and more pressing idea for me as I work in the Sierra Club legislative arena.  It confirms what I have known now for some time.  The representative democracy which serves our nation well at a conflict reduction level, does not work well when it comes to deep, systemic change.  Its checks and balances, its partisan politics and its ephemeral nature make radical change not only unlikely, but almost impossible.  This is by design and it does well at frustrating regional ambitions or the rise of a revolutionary faction, yet those same mechanisms also frustrate radical analysis, even in those instances in which it is so obviously needed.

Upstairs now to our business meeting, still massaging our way toward Kate’s retirement, getting comfortable with the financial side and with our new life.  Not long now.

Politics, US History

All For Obama Stand Up and Holler

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Fall                                        Full Harvest Moon

Obama.  Has done a fine job.  The Republicans and far left (my crowd) need to back the **** off.  He succeeded in the economic stimulus.  He passed health care legislation.  He reinvigorated the EPA.  He took a good shot at climate change legislation.

His presence in the office is steady and, I believe, calming, though the dark noise of the chattering classes seems to suggest otherwise.  Once the Republicans dug in their heels and decided there was no political mileage for them in bipartisanship the whole Washington scene has devolved back to the Newt Gringrich era, even further back, the right wing nut job politics of the early sixties:  the John Birch Society, the Minutemen and the hangovers from the McCarthy period.

We are lucky to have him in the office and I’m glad and proud that I voted for him.

Nunc disco.

Politics

Weak Tea

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Fall                                                   Waxing Harvest Moon

The tea party.  What a change that phrase has experienced from the days of 5 year old girls with their princess themed tea sets and imaginary tea.  Or, maybe not.  These folks seem to have a fantasy going, too, a party in which they serve a tea called small government that has no money, no responsibilities and no Democrats.  Now, I appreciate a good anarchist as much as anyone, but these folks seem to have missed the Bakunin/Kropotkin memo.  When you eliminate the guberment, a sentiment I was known to espouse in my youth, something must replace its function.  The anarchist solution was mutual aid, co-operation, co-operatives.  That is, individuals would band together and create systems that distributed wealth and power and therefore goods and services.  The trick here is that those systems would be run by individuals for the sake of the community.

This is different from the tea party notion of no taxation, ever, under any circumstances so I can continue adding to my bank vault.  Very different.  A libertarian may look like an anarchist and sound like an anarchist, but in fact they are stalking horses for the moneyed elite, eager to eliminate any and all impediments to the rapid and persistent collection of wealth.  Lots of just folks have taken up the tea party banner, also wanting the government out of their lives.  “Keep your hands off my social security and medicare!”  “Don’t mess with what goes in my schools!”  Oh, yeah and fix those damned roads.  And fight the terrorists.  Well, freedom from contradiction has never been a political virtue, no matter what stripe, but at least cover it up a little bit.

Here’s my read.  This is a populist uprising, one of many over the history of the US.  People are angry.  They’ve lost jobs, wealth, homes and dignity.  Somebody’s gotta pay and it’s gonna be political incumbents in this by-election.  It makes more sense to me to direct this anger at Wall Street, large corporations, bankers in particular, but government always shoulders the blame.

Why?  Because,  The government is our designated problem solver for collective problems.  I understand the angry flailing, since I did a lot of it when the government insisted on fighting in a 3,000 year old civil war in Vietnam, killing  thousands of Americans and Vietnamese.  Government is supposed to find solutions and when it can’t or won’t people get mad.  Democracy, or representative democracy like we have, is the solution to civil war when real problems and solutions divide us.  I can appreciate the desire to tar Washington and its career insiders with the brush of infamy.  It’s great fun and you meet lots of people while engaged in the act.

Yet when the tea party is done ranting and politicing and blustering, we will still have an economy in peril.  It will still be up to somebody to fix it and that somebody will be the Federal Government.  Instead of starving the beast, Reagan’s favorite tactic, we need to demand the government and corporate and financial sectors get serious about upgrading the lives of the former middle class, about finding work for all those for whom college education does not make sense.  The solution to these vexing and real problems:  unemployment, a widening gap between wealthy elite and poor everyone else, a sense there might be a lost generation, lies in a great coming together of us all, recognizing that each of us has a stake in the others success.  That to be strong we must do well by all our citizens.  That to be the beacon on the hill Reagan wanted us to be we must continue to offer hope to those who would immigrate here.  Will the Michele Bachmans of this political climate move us in that direction?  I don’t think so.

Aging, Asia, Humanities, Politics

Diversity

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Fall                                            Waxing Harvest Moon

Whew.  Sierra Club am.  Latin at noon.  Touring the Embarrassment of Riches show for Lindquest and Venum from 5:30 to 7:00.  A very diverse day.  Fun in that respect, but also tiring.

Greg took me through some Latin readings to test my level of retention since we paused back in mid-summer.  He decided I was fine to pick up again where we left off in July.  Good to know my brain has not gone soft.

Around 4 pm I took off for the cities and went to the Ford Bridge on 46th street.  Jon e-mailed me and asked for me to take some shots from the bridge looking north.  He wanted some of the fall colors.  Don’t know how good the images are, but I took them, then scooted over to the museum for my stint in the Embarrassment of Riches show.

It came to me while touring this show that it validated many of those who came through in a way similar to African and Chinese galleries for their respective ethnic communities.  That is, these folks saw images that were of the world in which they moved.  They may not all be in it personally, but in working with clients they cross over many of these thresholds.

A different experience than I had anticipated, but not a bad one.  Interesting, rather than revelatory.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics

A Voice At The Table

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Fall                                                  New (Harvest) Moon

Just back from the Sierra Club.  A real dilemma for me resurfaced here.  I manage the legislative process for the Club, as I said, and in that role I organize the legislative priority setting process, its fine tuning and the work of the committee and the lobbyist while the legislature is in session.  This means I do not have to have a very deep knowledge of the particular issues since my role has a mostly administrative/managerial focus.  Thus, in a meeting like the one this morning with a legislator, where ideas get floated and possibilities discussed about a particular matter, in this case, broadly, energy issues, I simply don’t have the details and background necessary to contribute.

As Kate said, I like to participate and have intelligent things to say, but in this context, I didn’t feel like I had a anything to say.  This is disempowering for me.  The obvious solution, to learn more about each issue, runs into my other intellectual pursuits, like art history and Latin and liberal thought.  Dividing time so I have enough to do solid work in those three areas has not left me with enough left over intellectual energy to dig into the scientifically and often politically complicated waters of particular issues.  The fix here is not obvious to me and has me questioning my role.  We’ll see where this goes.

GeekWorld, Politics, Travel

On the Banks of the Wabash

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Fall                              Waning Back to School Moon

Lafayette, Indiana on the banks of the Wabash River.  Home of Purdue, the Boilermakers.

Got in here at 8:58 last night Minnesota time.  But, this being Indiana, it was 9:58 here.  Indiana suffers from chronic ambichronicity with the rest of the country and from county to county within the state.  A pleasant night for a stroll took me past the county courthouse and several college bars to the Holiday Inn.

Tuckered out, as we say in Indiana, I went to bed not long after.

Up this morning with a significant amount of work to do for the Sierra Club; we’re in the legislative priority setting process, so I ordered room service breakfast and tap, tap, tapped my way through saving files, sending attachments and setting up a meeting wizard for a late October meeting.

After that the friendly folks at Enterprise entertained me by sending a man who stood right next to me talking to Kate and asking her where I was.  When he realized it was me, he hung up, saying, That was your wife.  Well.

Now back at the  Hotel, finishing up this and that before heading out to Chesterfield Spiritualist Camp.  If you feel any spiritual vibrations, it means I’ve arrived.  At the camp.  Not the great beyond.

BTW:  I carry this netbook with me as well as my Blackberry and my  Kindle.  An electronic menage a trois.  Keeps me connected, informed and well read.  Not bad for under 2 pounds.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics

Booming One More Time

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Fall                                 Waning Back to School Moon

Metro Lounge                  Union Station

This is the first class lounge, folks who’ve bought rooms.  My next trip to Lafayette had no rooms, but I convinced the lady here to let me in since I had rooms on the Empire builder both ways.

Old folks pass by, some in the early years of aging, like me, others in the thin, papery skin and tottering walk phase.  How many of them in the former, I wonder, marched in Washington, fought for student rights, worked hard to end the Vietnam war, protested to achieve civil rights for African-Americans?  Age and accommodation hide the former marks of my kind, the long hair, the frayed jeans, the combat boots, the green book bags, the peace symbol pins,the flower print dresses and plaited hair.

We walk past each other, joined by other links, the cane, the gray hair, balding pates, bum knees, expanded middles.  Makes me think of another addition to symbolic logic:  the law of the expanded middle.

One of our own, Tom Brokaw, wrote a book, the Greatest Generation, talking up the folks of the WWII era as saviors of our culture.  Maybe they were, I don’t know, history is difficult to judge; but, the next spate of articles and books focused on how the Baby Boomers are not the Greatest Generation.  Somehow we have failed to live up to pundits self-made expectations of us.  Balderdash.

An article this month in the Atlantic offers a guide as to how we can retrieve our lost promise by solving the economic crisis at home.  C’mon.  A minimum sized group of greedy bastards almost sunk the American economy, a breed that, like the poor, has always been with us.  It is the chattering class that needs to fix the economy and they’ve worked at it in fits and starts.  The economy never was our forte.

No,we fought our battles for change at the level of the personal,the local, the national foreign policy level, not in the canyons of wall street or the board rooms of the Forbes 500.  We challenged US military policy so successfully that a generation of military leaders has vowed never again to make the same mistakes as Vietnam.  We supported the African-American community among us and Lyndon Johnson in a push for civil rights.  Women and men of our generation took the gender controversy into our private lives, struggling for a just place for women one bag of garbage, one diaper and one sink full of dishes at a time.

We have had our share, more than our share, of brilliant scientists and innovative artists.

Where we still have a big opportunity is not in the stock market or its ancillary phenomenon like the Department of Treasury.  No, our opportunity lies in the self same area we did early work in during the 60’s when we took the advice of such gurus as Scott and Helen Nearing and tried to go “back to the land.”

Climate change, local food, energy independence, forest and water health, these are the areas where our generation can still act and act forcefully, this time for the future of the unborn generations who will suffer from the profligacy of our time.  We know how to use the levers of popular power.  We know how important it is to speak truth to power and to use our personal lives as leverage in the pursuit of deep social change.

I hope we take the challenge and begin to acknowledge each other in the metro lounges and streets and lobbies and town halls and legislatures of our country.