Wednesday, May 31, 2006

A blog can be a millstone around your neck

....and other crazed ramblings.

Why do I feel like a shirker when I neglect my blog? After all, I have no evidence that anyone is actually reading it.

At one time I wrote every day in my journal; deep, keenly insightful observations offered up with reverence and wry wit. In short, your typical introvert's maunderings. And it was a certainty that no one would ever see it but me, what with password protection.

The blogging phenomenon changed all that. Now the entire universe, or at least discriminating readers from Siberia to Somalia, can receive my homespun wisdom. Of course, it's much more likely that no one even as far away as Penngrove will actually view this blog, but still, it gives one a bit of performance anxiety. A touch of stage fright.

If I'm going to waste your time, I'd better have something worthwhile to give you. Even if "you" are nothing but a figment of my imagination.

And there is so much to tell the putative you. Every day I find a half dozen Outrages to buttonhole you with for your immediate action, and another six-pack of Wonderful Ideas That Will Save Our Civilization in desperate need of promulgation.

Time. It becomes scarcer and scarcer, as each labor-saving device clears another thicket of obligations to reveal the ever-expanding forest of distractions. Freed from the need to leave my home to work, I've turned my spare attention to foolish causes that I didn't have time for in the days of the daily commute.

Tonight I spent 3 hours calling voters to support my candidate for state assembly. Tomorrow I'm determined to call the local newspaper and strenuously object to his repeated use of a very biased observer to comment on the local legislative races. Friday it's a trip to Ft. Bragg to talk up Clean Money campaign finance reform. Next Tuesday is the primary; I'll be getting out the vote all day. Presumably by then I'll have mailed in my absentee ballot, which is on hold until I find out some more details about one of the races.

The hard drive with all my photos and back issues of my newspaper has crashed. I've got the new hard drive and the rescue software lined up, but no time to perform the rescue.

Somebody needs to rescue ME.

Someday, some year, I really have to install the new sink in the back bathroom so I'll have a place to wash my hands after using the toilet that I finally installed two months ago. I'm worried because I got the faucet fixtures at a garage sale and while they are very nice, they are missing the instructions and I had to download a set of instructions from the Internet for a very similar, perhaps identical but perhaps not, set of fixtures.

The back yard has to be tilled with the borrowed rototiller before the clay soil turns into cement and the rototiller owner takes me to small claims court. A whole list of dinner parties is owed to friends I clearly don't deserve. But first I have to clean out the awful mess that is my abode. Can't have my friends find out what a slob I really am. Of course I want to share my most intimate secrets with them, but not that one.

And I'm getting old. Life is crazy, too short, too messy, and I must make choices every hour, to leave this dream behind so I can try to catch that one before it's too late. I have to stop and get my oil changed now. I have to pick up a prescription. I have to set aside a little time to breathe.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Outrage upon outrage...

Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye....

Monday, May 22, 2006

What have we wrought?

"Come and get your boys. They're in the morgue."

Read on: An Iraqi Mother's Most Dreaded Mission

Or try this, if you've got a strong stomach: The Revenge

What purpose are our forces serving in Iraq? Is it to prevent a bloodbath after we leave? The bloodbath is already happening. It will stop some time after we leave and the Iraqis have fought it out themselves.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Summer Rain


Though technically it's still spring, it feels like summer rain. Especially when compared to the chill unending downpour of March and early April, when rain fell close to the froozing point, and the hills turned white.

After the rain stopped it quickly turned warm and dry, rising to a Mother's Day temperature of 93. This rain is warm and gentle, made for sitting out in the yard under a canvas umbrella, while the earth exhales its sweet breath all around me.

The Framing of Immigration

At last! Someone is looking at the wider issues behind the “immigration problem.”

From the Rockridge Institute, “The Framing of Immigration,” by George Lakoff:
Bush's “comprehensive solution” entirely concerns the immigrants, citizenship laws, and the border patrol. And, from the narrow problem identified by framing it as an “immigration problem,” Bush's solution is comprehensive. He has at least addressed everything that counts as a problem in the immigration frame.

But the real problem with the current situation runs broader and deeper. Consider the issue of Foreign Policy Reform, which focuses on two sub-issues:
  • How has US foreign policy placed, or kept, in power oppressive governments which people are forced to flee?'
  • What role have international trade agreements had in creating or exacerbating people's urge to flee their homelands? If capital is going to freely cross borders, should people and labor be able to do so as well, going where globalization takes the jobs?
Such a framing of the problem would lead to a solution involving the Secretary of State, conversations with Mexico and other Central American countries, and a close examination of the promises of NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank to raise standards of living around the globe. It would inject into the globalization debate a concern for the migration and displacement of people, not simply globalization's promise for profits. This is not addressed when the issue is defined as the “immigration problem.” Bush's “comprehensive solution” does not address any of these concerns. The immigration problem, in this light, is actually a globalization problem.

Read on...

Friday, May 19, 2006

Spare the Taxpayer, Spur the Economy, Save the Planet

Nope, it's not tax-cuts-for-the-rich. It's a fascinating case study in how tax policy can work for the benefit of all.

Spare the Taxpayer, Spur the Economy, Save the Planet

Politicking in Sacramento

Yesterday a whole bunch of Clean Money supporters from all over California went to Sacramento to witness the vote on AB 583, the Clean Money and Fair Elections Act, in the Senate Elections Committee. The meeting started 45 minutes late, and the first thing that Committee Chair Debra Bowen said when the meeting opened was that there would not be a vote that day on our bill.

What followed included a sit-in of about 30 of us in Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata's office, followed by a sit-in in Majority Leader Gloria Romero's considerably less spacious one, in which we actually hummed "We Shall Overcome," while the staff attempted to ignore us.

Here's the Daily Kos link to the full story about our visit to Sacramento, posted by one of my fellow citizen-lobbyists.

No pictures yet, but here are pictures from the April hearing in which Senators Romero and Murray announced they wouldn't support Clean Money.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Random thoughts while waiting through Air America commercials

Are the kids really clamoring for rich chocolate Ovaltine? Are the mothers really secretly hitting the Ovaltine when the kids aren't around?

Do men worry about anything besides baldness and lack of turgor?

Why do so many liberals need debt counseling?

Thursday, May 11, 2006

NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls

What gets me about this article is that Qwest actually said, okay, we'll give you the information if you'll just run it by the FISA court first. And the administration refused. Why? Because FISA "might not agree with them."

FISA, you'll remember, was created specifically to stop the NSA from abusing its power, which it had been doing for the previous 20 years.

NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Think electronic voting just has a few bugs to work out?

This could be the most underdiscussed issue of the century, the one that will be remembered when we ask, who put the nail in the coffin of American democracy?
Electronic voting has suffered from continuing and epidemic failures across the country in the primary elections so far in 2006. And the private companies receiving billions of federal dollars from the Help America Vote Act as local governments “upgrade” their election systems have time and again proven their inability to properly service election officials and fulfill contractual obligations.

Even this early in the election season, machines from all of the companies have proven to be disastrous for the few states that have already had primaries or have them scheduled just around the bend. More...
In Germany, so I've heard, they use paper ballots and hand-count each and every one of them--and it takes a mere three hours.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Immigrants Are Saving Our Baby Boomer Asses

Illegal The next time you see an undocumented worker picking your strawberries, thank him for his generous contribution to your retirement.

Goes nicely with the Bok cartoon showing a latino wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm here to pay for your retirement."

For a reasoned look at the economics of immigration: Immigrants Are Not "Taking Jobs Away" From Americans - California Progress Report

And now for the lighter side of immigrant history:

WorkingForChange-Mark Fiore presents: Migraphobia

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

A Local Issue

Petaluma is a fairly progressive community. We're into liberal politics, sustainable business practices, local agriculture, limited development, and the like. Why, then, do we have a city council that's dominated by development interests?

It's really no surprise. Follow the money. Developers have lots of it, and they fund the campaigns of those who do their bidding: specifically, Harris, Nau, Canevaro and O'Brien. These developers reap a huge return on their "investment" in local politicians. Thus, more and more of our open space is going to ridge-top palaces and flood-plain tract housing. In short, sprawl.

Now developer John Mills has announced his candidacy, coyly describing himself as a "semi-retired builder of custom houses."

Because he has deep pockets, he will send the citizens of our town innumerable glossy mailers filled with platitudes and drop-shadew photos of Mills and his wholesome family. Inevitably, Petalumans will be swayed by the pretty pictures and "family values," and we will have our own home-grown developer on the council, a step up from the four current members who simply get their money from developers and do their bidding.

None of this would be possible if we had an alternative option: publicly funded election campaigns for those who choose them. The cities of Portland, Oregon, and Albuquerque, NM, already have the "Clean Money" option, as do the states of Maine, Arizona and Connecticut, and diversity, competion and voter turnout are flourishing in those places.

Petaluma used to have some matching funds available, not exactly Clean Money, but a step in the right direction. When developers got control of the City Council, they quickly scuttled the matching funds even though their cost was pennies per resident per year.

Those of us in the California Clean Money Campaign are pushing for Clean Money for state political offices, and also supporting citywide efforts in this direction. Los Angeles and San Jose are now considering a Clean Money system for city council races.

Since our current Council doesn't reflect the wishes of most Petalumans, shouldn't we get on board this movement?

Last night after House, I watched a little news on the local commercial station. The lead stories were all about violent attacks, disasters, murders and human interest subjects around the Bay Area. After a while I switched to the PBS News Hour, where Jim Lehrer was lobbing softball questions to a senator about energy policy.

We progressives get annoyed at the human fascination with the depraved. A jogger is attacked on a popular hiking trail. Violence hits a yuppie neighborhood in Oakland. What does it all mean? Only the top national stories--usually the ones that have to do with murder, mayhem and rape--get a cursory summary.

But this fascination is ancient. It's village gossip writ large. We find it contemptuous, but for the average joe--and dare I say it? We're all the average joe--it's the stuff of life. Probably it's hard-wired into us to repeat these little morality stories as a way of keeping things in the village from getting out of hand.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Dictatorship on the way?

Suppose Hillary Clinton got elected president, and soon after taking office she quietly claimed the authority to disobey a whole bunch of laws, asserting that she had the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with HER interpretation of the Constitution? I'm talking about a LOT of laws--like about 750.

What would you do if you were in Congress? Call for impeachment? Censure? An investigation, requiring her to testify under oath?

Or maybe you'd just shrug and say, "Hey, we're in a war on terror--the president has to do what she has to do. I may not have voted for Hillary, but surely she wouldn't abuse the power she's claimed..."

(Okay, I plagiarized some of that, as you can see from the quote below...)
WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional....

(From Bush challenges hundreds of laws - The Boston Globe)
Thanks to Sizzlin' Gizzards and The Era