Mash-ups are not the end of culture, but the final form.
The politics portrayed here are not exclusive to Alabama, but my state is a bellwether for such politics nationally. Indeed, the south generally serves as a great indicator of the national direction. That is because southern Alabama is the epicenter of all wingnuttery -- as you can see by our TV ads.
Tim James has pandered his way to national attention. Young Boozer (real name!) has drawn national mention. So has Dale Peterson, a candidate for Agriculture Commissioner (really!). These ads are aggressive shouts for attention; they are desperate moves (no one in Alabama had ever heard of Dale Peterson).
The time had come for a mash-up -- a complete deconstruction of the right-wing Alabama advertisement:
Alabama's politics can be twisted; ironically, Dale Peterson is the most progressive candidate in the race in the ways that really count for the post. That said, I think Alabama is going to surprise the country this year -- and contribute to a sense of disappointment among the right.
For if the election were held today, the man at the beginning of that video -- Artur Davis -- would probably be elected Governor. The heart of Dixie...might just be turning blue again.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Fundamentals of the Social Contract: Why Rand Paul Is Wrong
According to aspiring legislator, Rand Paul, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far in prohibiting racial discrimination by private businesses. All the while asserting that he would have voted yes for the Civil Rights Act, Rand nonetheless believes that private businesses should be allowed to refuse goods or services to black people, at least that's what he told Rachel Maddow in an interview. His words have thrown the GOP into something of a frenzy as they try to distance themselves from his remarks and yet reap the benefits of his popularity with the tea party contingency.
I have a very personal reaction to Paul's observations. I grew up in the era of Jim Crow when segregation was the norm. White Only and No Colored Allowed signs were as common as traffic signs. All businesses were legally allowed to discriminate, to deny goods and/or services based on the color of the consumer's skin. I don't have any desire to return to the good ole days. I also don't hold with the thinking that given time to evolve, Jim Crow would have died a natural death. Jim Crow wasn't born. The system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow was artificially and intentionally created as a response to the post civil war efforts of black people to claim their rightful place in the social, economic, and political hierarchy of this country. There was nothing natural about it. It couldn't die; it had to be executed. I have no doubt that without government action legal segregation would still be a part of the fabric of this nation.
Rand Paul's position is seriously flawed; however, based on the comments littering the Internet on this topic, there are a lot of folks out there who have succumbed to the same flawed thinking. Much of it stems from worship of the cult of individuality. A characteristic of this cult is a belief that my individual rights supercede all other rights. Of course this is totally irrational. If my rights are more important than your rights, then aren't your rights more important than mine? What about Mary Sue next door, where do her rights fit in this hierarchy? Although said much more eloquently by such diverse thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Hobbes, it's this tension regarding individual rights balanced against the needs of the whole that necessitates the formation of governments. (My listing of only western philosophers is not intended to suggest that only white males have wrestled with these issues. It's just that as a product of a limited American public education, I am most familiar with the works of Eurocentric writers, which is an entirely separate topic to be addressed someday.)
Society is the whole, individuals are the parts. Societies were formed by the individuals to create a system in which the individuals could agree to live governed by rules to protect the common good. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson and many others have defined this concept as it relates to the purposes of goverment. Those who do not wish to agree to the social contract are free to live outside of it but cannot then also benefit from it. (i.e. you don't have to own a business) This is the basic flaw of Rand Paul's argument that a private business has the right to engage in discrimination. Businesses are by definition public enterprises. Its goods and services are sold to the public and as such the business is part of our system of commerce. The regulation of commerce is constitutionally assigned to Congress. If the businessman wishes to engage in discrimination, he may do so but not via his public enterprise. It's up to him to figure out how to run a profitable business enterprise without engaging in public commerce, if he wishes to engage in discrimination as to whom may partake of his goods and/or servces.
The most extreme example of those who place individual liberties tantamount to the society as a whole are those who commit crimes. The thief believes that his/her needs are superior to the needs of all others thereby justifying their right to take what they need. Indeed, if we follow the argument of the superiority of individual rights to its logical conclusion, then those who commit criminal acts are merely choosing to place their individual needs above the needs of the whole. Under this logic, our prisons are populated by true libertarians.
However, in a society, we all agree to subvert our individual liberties to the benefit of the function of the whole. To not do so results in anarchy and a society in which no one has any security. Whatever property that I may have secured would constantly be at risk of being taken by someone who had the strength to do so in a world governed by the supreme right of the individual. Instead, we have laws, enforcers, and systems of punishment to maintain order so that property rights, mine and yours, are not subject to the arbitrary will of might makes right. Which brings me to the final element of the social contract, governments are not instituted to protect the rights of the strong but rather to ensure that even the weak have protections. Otherwise, in the words of Hobbes,we would be in a constant state of war, and man would be a solitary being living an existence that is nasty, brutish and short.
P.S. A good friend, Mark Olmsted, writes for the Huffington Post. In his most recent piece, People and Property: What Rand Really Wants, he presents an astute assessment of Rand Paul's disturbing views which suggest that civil rights should be optional. Check it out.
I have a very personal reaction to Paul's observations. I grew up in the era of Jim Crow when segregation was the norm. White Only and No Colored Allowed signs were as common as traffic signs. All businesses were legally allowed to discriminate, to deny goods and/or services based on the color of the consumer's skin. I don't have any desire to return to the good ole days. I also don't hold with the thinking that given time to evolve, Jim Crow would have died a natural death. Jim Crow wasn't born. The system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow was artificially and intentionally created as a response to the post civil war efforts of black people to claim their rightful place in the social, economic, and political hierarchy of this country. There was nothing natural about it. It couldn't die; it had to be executed. I have no doubt that without government action legal segregation would still be a part of the fabric of this nation.Rand Paul's position is seriously flawed; however, based on the comments littering the Internet on this topic, there are a lot of folks out there who have succumbed to the same flawed thinking. Much of it stems from worship of the cult of individuality. A characteristic of this cult is a belief that my individual rights supercede all other rights. Of course this is totally irrational. If my rights are more important than your rights, then aren't your rights more important than mine? What about Mary Sue next door, where do her rights fit in this hierarchy? Although said much more eloquently by such diverse thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Hobbes, it's this tension regarding individual rights balanced against the needs of the whole that necessitates the formation of governments. (My listing of only western philosophers is not intended to suggest that only white males have wrestled with these issues. It's just that as a product of a limited American public education, I am most familiar with the works of Eurocentric writers, which is an entirely separate topic to be addressed someday.)
Society is the whole, individuals are the parts. Societies were formed by the individuals to create a system in which the individuals could agree to live governed by rules to protect the common good. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson and many others have defined this concept as it relates to the purposes of goverment. Those who do not wish to agree to the social contract are free to live outside of it but cannot then also benefit from it. (i.e. you don't have to own a business) This is the basic flaw of Rand Paul's argument that a private business has the right to engage in discrimination. Businesses are by definition public enterprises. Its goods and services are sold to the public and as such the business is part of our system of commerce. The regulation of commerce is constitutionally assigned to Congress. If the businessman wishes to engage in discrimination, he may do so but not via his public enterprise. It's up to him to figure out how to run a profitable business enterprise without engaging in public commerce, if he wishes to engage in discrimination as to whom may partake of his goods and/or servces.
The most extreme example of those who place individual liberties tantamount to the society as a whole are those who commit crimes. The thief believes that his/her needs are superior to the needs of all others thereby justifying their right to take what they need. Indeed, if we follow the argument of the superiority of individual rights to its logical conclusion, then those who commit criminal acts are merely choosing to place their individual needs above the needs of the whole. Under this logic, our prisons are populated by true libertarians.
However, in a society, we all agree to subvert our individual liberties to the benefit of the function of the whole. To not do so results in anarchy and a society in which no one has any security. Whatever property that I may have secured would constantly be at risk of being taken by someone who had the strength to do so in a world governed by the supreme right of the individual. Instead, we have laws, enforcers, and systems of punishment to maintain order so that property rights, mine and yours, are not subject to the arbitrary will of might makes right. Which brings me to the final element of the social contract, governments are not instituted to protect the rights of the strong but rather to ensure that even the weak have protections. Otherwise, in the words of Hobbes,we would be in a constant state of war, and man would be a solitary being living an existence that is nasty, brutish and short.
P.S. A good friend, Mark Olmsted, writes for the Huffington Post. In his most recent piece, People and Property: What Rand Really Wants, he presents an astute assessment of Rand Paul's disturbing views which suggest that civil rights should be optional. Check it out.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Baffling Bedfellows
by Nance
I explained that I started this study in high school, and continue it to this day, because Christianity has so powerfully influenced our culture. I've long since given up trying to convert or convince anyone to my way of thinking. I was raised in Protestant churches and chose a women's college that allowed me to make an historical-critical study of the Christian Bible and of other religions. I stay fascinated because Christianity plays such a huge role in the conflicts of our time, and because scholars continue to present new perspectives and deeper understandings. I want to understand what philosophies drive American actions and inform America's short history. If I seek to understand, rather than to be understood, then I have to seriously ask, "What the hell are those people thinking?!"
As luck would have it, I found Mike Lux's article, Why Are So Many Christians Conservative?, on AlterNet. Lux does a really good job of explaining, with Biblical references, why the philosophy Jesus taught as revealed in the gospels is at odds with the stated philosophy of Conservatives. To give a taste:
Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government's job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us -- the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.And,
The Jesus of the New Testament spent his public career preaching about the nature of God and our relationship to God, but also about how we should deal with each other. He repeatedly blessed mercy, gentleness, peacemaking, community, and taking care of each other. He lifted up the poor and oppressed, and spoke poorly of the wealthy and powerful. If anyone in modern society talked like he did, you can bet your bottom dollar that conservatives would condemn that person as a class warrior, a socialist.The article is too long to have tattooed on my arm, although I briefly considered trying. You'll have to read it for yourself and get back to me.
When you've done with that, perhaps you can help me understand another mongrel miscreation that keeps me awake at night: The Feminist Conservative.
Addendum: I should add that my own leanings are toward a mix of Reform Evangelical Druidism and Free Range Addlism.
Let there be -- bacteria
Said the J. Craig Venter Institute research team - and there was life.
While the human race, or at least Homo Americanus is preoccupied with destroying itself with it's pet mythologies and peremptory political philosophies and general stupidity, a few of us have been at work actually creating something that constitutes a giant leap for mankind. It's always a very few, isn't it?
A team of American scientists have succeeded in animating a cell with a synthetic genome made out of raw chemicals. The implications of this huge accomplishment are beyond anyone's ability to foresee and I'm not talking only about the ability to design or reproduce life from scratch or even to bring extinct species back from extinction: I'm talking about dispelling another myth, explaining another mystery without relying on further myths and mysteries ad infinitum.
Remember the scene from Blade Runner where the genetic engineer looks at a snake scale to find an identification number encoded in the artificial snake? Perhaps the team who put together a synthetic "replicant" bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides remembered when they encoded the names of the 46 scientists in the project along with the project's e-mail address into its genome.
Beyond being another blow to the "I don't understand how it works so God must have done it" fallacy, the creation of living, reproducing things from bottles of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine will require us to re-examine the nature of life itself and just when it "begins."
I wonder if looking back at today's newspapers 200 years from now we won't wonder why it didn't make the headlines, but perhaps the reason is the same reason we're in so much trouble right now: 300 million self-absorbed, short sighted, ignorant life forms trapped in solipsistic bubbles ( or tea bags) unable to see much beyond the membrane.
While the human race, or at least Homo Americanus is preoccupied with destroying itself with it's pet mythologies and peremptory political philosophies and general stupidity, a few of us have been at work actually creating something that constitutes a giant leap for mankind. It's always a very few, isn't it?
A team of American scientists have succeeded in animating a cell with a synthetic genome made out of raw chemicals. The implications of this huge accomplishment are beyond anyone's ability to foresee and I'm not talking only about the ability to design or reproduce life from scratch or even to bring extinct species back from extinction: I'm talking about dispelling another myth, explaining another mystery without relying on further myths and mysteries ad infinitum.
Remember the scene from Blade Runner where the genetic engineer looks at a snake scale to find an identification number encoded in the artificial snake? Perhaps the team who put together a synthetic "replicant" bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides remembered when they encoded the names of the 46 scientists in the project along with the project's e-mail address into its genome.
Beyond being another blow to the "I don't understand how it works so God must have done it" fallacy, the creation of living, reproducing things from bottles of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine will require us to re-examine the nature of life itself and just when it "begins."
I wonder if looking back at today's newspapers 200 years from now we won't wonder why it didn't make the headlines, but perhaps the reason is the same reason we're in so much trouble right now: 300 million self-absorbed, short sighted, ignorant life forms trapped in solipsistic bubbles ( or tea bags) unable to see much beyond the membrane.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The will of the WASP
Rand Paul is not Ron Paul and I'm not flattering him by saying it. There is a difference between principle and bull-headed intransigence and Paul the younger seems as unclear about that as he is not quite up to the task of successfully debating Rachel Maddow about his distaste for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Asked whether he thought a restaurant had the right to refuse service to black customers, Paul commenced a rather evasive dance around the subject by trying to describe regulation as ownership.
Is the government of and by the people allowed,as the founding documents imply, to promote liberty for all, to promote peace and domestic tranquility by imposing limitations on individual behavior? Is he arguing for a government so impotent it must inevitably fall into feudalism and exploitation? Those are the questions he begs and the questions he avoids. Sorry Doctor, I think the balance between individual liberty and being a free country is a practical and necessary discussion.
Is it practical to have a society so far beyond the control of its members that justice becomes only a matter of the will of the strongest and the richest and most well connected -- the will of the WASP? No, unlimited individual license does not allow for a society at all, much less a free one.
Still it's all about the practical as opposed to the relentlessly repeated and self referential principle and we've all heard of or can easily come up with examples where freedom cannot be unlimited for many reasons; where behavior that needs to be restrained cannot be restrained by anyone other than Government. Is it preferable to allow my neighbors to forbid Baptists to live on my block and ignore my freedom or is it better to protect the minority against the majority, which is a common definition of democracy as distinguished from mob rule. No, if this is but a "philosophical" discussion it's because he doesn't want to address the inevitable questions Libertarians invite when they refuse to discuss its inherent limitations.
The traditional 'best government is least government' trope reduces to absurdity all by itself as quickly as does his argument that any restraints or obligations put on behavior or business practices constitute ownership and are an unnecessary stain on the pure and absolute freedom we've somehow decided is our birthright. Certainly although he assures us that he would never patronize a business that discriminates, he realizes that his sentiments are not universal. He realizes that he's giving license to anyone to debase any group he likes and to diminish their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness. He realizes that such a nation as he dreams of would be fractured, Balkanized, a loose, weak, unstable confederation of hostile groups no more pleasant than a baboon troupe and with each of us at his neighbor's throat. He must realize that he's appealing to bigots, racists and sociopaths of no conscience -- and all in the name of principle and freedom.
So why is he debating as though the balance between too much and not enough wasn't worth discussing? As though that wasn't the real question? Perhaps its because he's pandering to an audience somewhat less rational than Ron Paul's: to an audience whipped into irrational fury by the basic requirements of civilization; too hungry for revenge against a maturing world and too angry and self centered to give a damn what he can do for his country.
"What about freedom of speech?" asked the less than candid Candidate. "Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other?'" Paul replied. "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion."Unfortunately, more than just being grammatically confused, he's wrong. He's equivocating and the debate is, of course, entirely about practical matters. Can we agree, for instance, that being black in a restaurant is fundamentally different than carrying a gun in a bar and if so, his analogy is defective and a fallacy of distraction? Certainly a speed limit is not Government ownership of my car, health regulations imposed on food producers aren't the equivalent of owning the family farm nor is forcing Woolworth to stop creating two Americas with their policies isn't Marxism.
Is the government of and by the people allowed,as the founding documents imply, to promote liberty for all, to promote peace and domestic tranquility by imposing limitations on individual behavior? Is he arguing for a government so impotent it must inevitably fall into feudalism and exploitation? Those are the questions he begs and the questions he avoids. Sorry Doctor, I think the balance between individual liberty and being a free country is a practical and necessary discussion.
Is it practical to have a society so far beyond the control of its members that justice becomes only a matter of the will of the strongest and the richest and most well connected -- the will of the WASP? No, unlimited individual license does not allow for a society at all, much less a free one.
Still it's all about the practical as opposed to the relentlessly repeated and self referential principle and we've all heard of or can easily come up with examples where freedom cannot be unlimited for many reasons; where behavior that needs to be restrained cannot be restrained by anyone other than Government. Is it preferable to allow my neighbors to forbid Baptists to live on my block and ignore my freedom or is it better to protect the minority against the majority, which is a common definition of democracy as distinguished from mob rule. No, if this is but a "philosophical" discussion it's because he doesn't want to address the inevitable questions Libertarians invite when they refuse to discuss its inherent limitations.
The traditional 'best government is least government' trope reduces to absurdity all by itself as quickly as does his argument that any restraints or obligations put on behavior or business practices constitute ownership and are an unnecessary stain on the pure and absolute freedom we've somehow decided is our birthright. Certainly although he assures us that he would never patronize a business that discriminates, he realizes that his sentiments are not universal. He realizes that he's giving license to anyone to debase any group he likes and to diminish their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness. He realizes that such a nation as he dreams of would be fractured, Balkanized, a loose, weak, unstable confederation of hostile groups no more pleasant than a baboon troupe and with each of us at his neighbor's throat. He must realize that he's appealing to bigots, racists and sociopaths of no conscience -- and all in the name of principle and freedom.
So why is he debating as though the balance between too much and not enough wasn't worth discussing? As though that wasn't the real question? Perhaps its because he's pandering to an audience somewhat less rational than Ron Paul's: to an audience whipped into irrational fury by the basic requirements of civilization; too hungry for revenge against a maturing world and too angry and self centered to give a damn what he can do for his country.
Rachel, Rand Paul, and Libertarianism: “What That Woman Been Doin’ to Me”
Some readers may have seen Rachel Maddow’s interview last night with Kentucky’s Senate primary winner Dr. Rand Paul on her MSNBC show. From what I’ve heard, Paul regrets his decision to appear on the show and considers himself not too well treated by Rachel. So let’s cue Waylon Jennings and the Marshall Tucker Band’s soulful lyrics, “Can’t you see, oh can’t you see, what that woman, lawd, she been doin’ to me?” and consider this a bit.
The source of the dissatisfaction, apparently, was the following: that intellectual pitbull on the pantsleg of opportunity Rachel just wouldn’t give up easily in her quest to get the good doctor to admit that one's philosophy may have consequences in the real world. In my own admittedly anecdotal experience, libertarians really, really hate it when you try to get them to admit that. It’s so unfair of you! They believe the free market (a myth) is the answer to all problems social, political, and economic. They're hopelessly wrong, naive and ahistorical in their understanding, but just you try suggesting that to them. I gather that the adoring dittoheads and teabaggery who flock to the well-spoken, eminently presentable and curly-locked Dr. Paul don’t pester him with annoying questions about his utter failure to historicize the concepts that authorize his philosophy and/or that pertain to it by way of extension and impact. Concepts like, oh, I don’t know – private property, capitalism, American federal and state regulatory practice, and stuff like that. I’m just sayin’…. I don't think Rachel was in any way suggesting that Rand Paul is personally a racist -- there's no reason at all to think that about him as an individual. The question was and is, rather, the real consequences of his beliefs and the reflection those beliefs cast backwards on our collective history as Americans.
Well, anyway, if you’re a meanie like “that woman” Rachel, what you’ll get instead of a cogent answer is exactly the response I heard coming from Rand Paul, which I'll meanie-paraphrase and draw out as follows: “I'm sorry I even talked to that person! I won't be doing that again anytime soon! Why is she bothering me with all this hypothetical talk about civil rights and human misery? It doesn't concern my abstraction-laced philosophy, which I know to be absolutely and always right in all things.” Abstractionists and ideologues always cling to their notions with great fanaticism because they sense, however dimly, that abandoning those notions would leave the abandoner in the middle of the street just waiting to be run down by what Allen Ginsberg called “the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality.” And this is an especially intense problem for libertarians, you see, because they pretty much consider the stop light that might halt any such careening Taxicab an infringement of their (and our) sacred personal liberty to do anything they (and we) want at any time. Okay, I admit that I sort of feel that way about stop lights, too, when they last more than about a minute. It's a weakness of mine, I know....
But I say to the Rand Pauls of the political spectrum, nothing human is perfect, Horatio -- including your and my “philosophy,” however different they may be. There’s much more to cover regarding the details of Rand Paul’s view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I’ll leave that to others’ commentary if they’d care to jump in.
The source of the dissatisfaction, apparently, was the following: that intellectual pitbull on the pantsleg of opportunity Rachel just wouldn’t give up easily in her quest to get the good doctor to admit that one's philosophy may have consequences in the real world. In my own admittedly anecdotal experience, libertarians really, really hate it when you try to get them to admit that. It’s so unfair of you! They believe the free market (a myth) is the answer to all problems social, political, and economic. They're hopelessly wrong, naive and ahistorical in their understanding, but just you try suggesting that to them. I gather that the adoring dittoheads and teabaggery who flock to the well-spoken, eminently presentable and curly-locked Dr. Paul don’t pester him with annoying questions about his utter failure to historicize the concepts that authorize his philosophy and/or that pertain to it by way of extension and impact. Concepts like, oh, I don’t know – private property, capitalism, American federal and state regulatory practice, and stuff like that. I’m just sayin’…. I don't think Rachel was in any way suggesting that Rand Paul is personally a racist -- there's no reason at all to think that about him as an individual. The question was and is, rather, the real consequences of his beliefs and the reflection those beliefs cast backwards on our collective history as Americans.
Well, anyway, if you’re a meanie like “that woman” Rachel, what you’ll get instead of a cogent answer is exactly the response I heard coming from Rand Paul, which I'll meanie-paraphrase and draw out as follows: “I'm sorry I even talked to that person! I won't be doing that again anytime soon! Why is she bothering me with all this hypothetical talk about civil rights and human misery? It doesn't concern my abstraction-laced philosophy, which I know to be absolutely and always right in all things.” Abstractionists and ideologues always cling to their notions with great fanaticism because they sense, however dimly, that abandoning those notions would leave the abandoner in the middle of the street just waiting to be run down by what Allen Ginsberg called “the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality.” And this is an especially intense problem for libertarians, you see, because they pretty much consider the stop light that might halt any such careening Taxicab an infringement of their (and our) sacred personal liberty to do anything they (and we) want at any time. Okay, I admit that I sort of feel that way about stop lights, too, when they last more than about a minute. It's a weakness of mine, I know....
But I say to the Rand Pauls of the political spectrum, nothing human is perfect, Horatio -- including your and my “philosophy,” however different they may be. There’s much more to cover regarding the details of Rand Paul’s view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I’ll leave that to others’ commentary if they’d care to jump in.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Murkowski Says Yes To Big Oil
One of the definitions of a prostitute is, "a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money." So, if you're getting over $400,000 a year from a bunch of guys in a particular industry, does that make you a whore?
And what does it make you when you side with your "financial backers over the public interest"? A brazen hussy.
In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.
Well I sure would hate for the little bitty oil companies to get hurt while thousands of gallons of oil a day are pouring into the Gulf, threatening the entire ecosystem, the wetlands, the marine life, the coastline, the fishing industry and the tourist industry, and the quality of life of its inhabitants for decades to come.
I wonder just where Mukowski thinks this legislation should be right now. I wonder if she's considered, or if she even cares, where the money is going to come from to pay for the cleanup and all the other fallout from this disaster. I wonder if she thinks about those 11 men who were killed - and their families. I wonder if she thinks.
Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would "threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security." API's membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.
An API spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker that the bill represented "a knee-jerk reaction that could have unintended consequences." she added: "It's important that the Senate did vote it down."
In fact, the Senate didn't vote on the bill. Thanks to Senate procedures, Murkowski was able to block it simply by objecting to a voice vote request on the bill.
It's not clear that Murkowski's move will end up affecting how much BP and Transocean pay. The White House told TPMmuckraker last week that if the courts find BP to have been "grossly negligent or to have engaged in willful misconduct or conduct in violation of federal regulations," -- which would seem likely -- then the $75 million cap disappears. And there will likely be further efforts in the coming days to raise the cap.
(. . .)
Menendez was scathing in response to Murkowski's move, telling reporters: "Either you want to fully protect the small businesses, individuals and communities devastated by a man-made disaster -- this is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster -- or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable. Apparently there are some in the Senate who prefer to protect the oil companies."
If you are as angry as I am and if you want to scream at the top of your lungs, here's a couple of ways to go about it:
Senator Murkowski’s office phone number is 202-224-6665.
Her email is http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact
Ifidel753 provides this link to sign a petition to save the Clean Air Act. Guess who's trying to kill it?
Ya gotta wonder what kind of thingy is in the water up there in Alaska.
And what does it make you when you side with your "financial backers over the public interest"? A brazen hussy.
In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.
Well I sure would hate for the little bitty oil companies to get hurt while thousands of gallons of oil a day are pouring into the Gulf, threatening the entire ecosystem, the wetlands, the marine life, the coastline, the fishing industry and the tourist industry, and the quality of life of its inhabitants for decades to come.
I wonder just where Mukowski thinks this legislation should be right now. I wonder if she's considered, or if she even cares, where the money is going to come from to pay for the cleanup and all the other fallout from this disaster. I wonder if she thinks about those 11 men who were killed - and their families. I wonder if she thinks.
Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would "threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security." API's membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.
An API spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker that the bill represented "a knee-jerk reaction that could have unintended consequences." she added: "It's important that the Senate did vote it down."
In fact, the Senate didn't vote on the bill. Thanks to Senate procedures, Murkowski was able to block it simply by objecting to a voice vote request on the bill.
It's not clear that Murkowski's move will end up affecting how much BP and Transocean pay. The White House told TPMmuckraker last week that if the courts find BP to have been "grossly negligent or to have engaged in willful misconduct or conduct in violation of federal regulations," -- which would seem likely -- then the $75 million cap disappears. And there will likely be further efforts in the coming days to raise the cap.
(. . .)
Menendez was scathing in response to Murkowski's move, telling reporters: "Either you want to fully protect the small businesses, individuals and communities devastated by a man-made disaster -- this is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster -- or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable. Apparently there are some in the Senate who prefer to protect the oil companies."
If you are as angry as I am and if you want to scream at the top of your lungs, here's a couple of ways to go about it:
Senator Murkowski’s office phone number is 202-224-6665.
Her email is http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact
Ifidel753 provides this link to sign a petition to save the Clean Air Act. Guess who's trying to kill it?
Ya gotta wonder what kind of thingy is in the water up there in Alaska.
BPocalypse
Every day, I check the latest updates on the Gulf oil spill. The spill is massive; the response of BP is slimier than a cesspool; and our government appears incompetent and impotent. Last night, this article caught my attention, Loop Current Is Now Drawing The BP Oil Disaster To Florida Keys. Sometimes a reader comment is better than the article, such as this one (which follows after the jump):
No TEA for me please.
Rand Paul has things backwards and I don't mean his name. His win in the Kentucky Senate Republican Primary is not quite the same thing as being elected Senator and of course it's at least a few furlongs short of winning the Derby, or "taking back the Government" since, of course it wasn't taken from the voters in the first place. OK, there was Bush V. Gore, but you know what I mean.
Pretending that having been voted out of office was a breach of democracy seems to work for those at the Tea Party table, but then anything
seems to work except reality and the reality is that we're not taxed enough already and we haven't had the tax increase they hope you believe we've had. Yes, we may be taxed unfairly and tax policy may have been written by people who can afford lobbyists and huge campaign donations, but beyond the amorphous anger, I haven't heard any proposals for a new tax code that could approach remedying the debt in any reasonable time much less as quickly as we paid off World War II.
They won't come up with one either unless they dispense with the repeatedly disproved fallacy that cutting taxes for the very rich will increase government revenues, spur investment in new businesses and boost employment and won't cause investment bubbles -- and that laissez faire capitalism doesn't lead to monopolies, corruption of government, fewer choices for consumers and less opportunities for small business.
In real terms most of us are paying less in Income tax than we used to -- less than at any time in my lifetime. The countries that have lower taxes are few and tend to have economies based on gambling, money laundering or revenues from things like the Panama Canal. The Republicans were ousted because of public anger and frustration with corporate control over people's lives, because of another apparently pointless and interminable war and the fear mongering that's eroded our freedom. I don't see where Mad Hatters like Rand Paul are addressing that and I do see that the Tea movement, if we can fall it that, is based on the hope that shattering the old form of government will magically cause freedom, justice and prosperity to break out and allow "the people" to control their own destiny. Sound like Marx to you? It does to me too. Does it sound like the same old: "don't trust them, but trust us even though we don't really have a plan other than to cloud your mind with anger?" It does to me too.
Pretending that having been voted out of office was a breach of democracy seems to work for those at the Tea Party table, but then anything
seems to work except reality and the reality is that we're not taxed enough already and we haven't had the tax increase they hope you believe we've had. Yes, we may be taxed unfairly and tax policy may have been written by people who can afford lobbyists and huge campaign donations, but beyond the amorphous anger, I haven't heard any proposals for a new tax code that could approach remedying the debt in any reasonable time much less as quickly as we paid off World War II.They won't come up with one either unless they dispense with the repeatedly disproved fallacy that cutting taxes for the very rich will increase government revenues, spur investment in new businesses and boost employment and won't cause investment bubbles -- and that laissez faire capitalism doesn't lead to monopolies, corruption of government, fewer choices for consumers and less opportunities for small business.
In real terms most of us are paying less in Income tax than we used to -- less than at any time in my lifetime. The countries that have lower taxes are few and tend to have economies based on gambling, money laundering or revenues from things like the Panama Canal. The Republicans were ousted because of public anger and frustration with corporate control over people's lives, because of another apparently pointless and interminable war and the fear mongering that's eroded our freedom. I don't see where Mad Hatters like Rand Paul are addressing that and I do see that the Tea movement, if we can fall it that, is based on the hope that shattering the old form of government will magically cause freedom, justice and prosperity to break out and allow "the people" to control their own destiny. Sound like Marx to you? It does to me too. Does it sound like the same old: "don't trust them, but trust us even though we don't really have a plan other than to cloud your mind with anger?" It does to me too.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
READIN', WRITIN', AND ASSASSINATIN'
The GOP has encouraged extremists in its party by promoting and tolerating hate mongers and near-seditionists like Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin or any other jackboot who will join them in stirring up the mobs in order to nullify the election of 2008.
How many times have we heard not just nutjobs like those mentioned above but even GOP Congressmen and women refer to the government, which they are part of, as a criminal organization--a "gangster government?"
And that is why a weak-minded moron, like this teacher in Alabama, felt comfortable in casually talkiing about murdering President Barack Obama as a way of explaining cosines. When stupid people like this teacher constantly hear his cynical leaders call the leaders of the opposition party, leaders of our government criminals, it follows that they deservc to be murdered, doesn't it? And if you're a teacher, what better way to introduce this idea than in math class?
Sara Robinson at Orcinus has written an excellent piece on where this tolerance for radical insurrectionist talk can lead. She discusses the Hutaree conspirators and the group, Guardians of the Free Republic:
"These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.
Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.
At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is."
How many times have we heard not just nutjobs like those mentioned above but even GOP Congressmen and women refer to the government, which they are part of, as a criminal organization--a "gangster government?"
And that is why a weak-minded moron, like this teacher in Alabama, felt comfortable in casually talkiing about murdering President Barack Obama as a way of explaining cosines. When stupid people like this teacher constantly hear his cynical leaders call the leaders of the opposition party, leaders of our government criminals, it follows that they deservc to be murdered, doesn't it? And if you're a teacher, what better way to introduce this idea than in math class?
Sara Robinson at Orcinus has written an excellent piece on where this tolerance for radical insurrectionist talk can lead. She discusses the Hutaree conspirators and the group, Guardians of the Free Republic:
"These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.
Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.
At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is."
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