Centerfield

Chat With Chris Whitman... Well, Sort Of

The online chat with Chris Whitman at "mypartytoo.com" was anything but. Basically, it consisted of her, or her advisers, picking seven softball questions from those that where submitted this last week, and posting answers on the website. If you are interested than go here.

This is a little disheartening. Chris Whitman is a brave woman, and this is about as canned a version of an online chat as you can get. In case they didn't notice, the moderates aren't exactly in power within the GOP. What we need is vibrant and diverse communication about what we can do to take our party back, not a politician answering the questions she wants and passing it off as a discussion.

This makes me think even more that Whitman is preparing to run, and I don't mean for the New Jersey senate seat. The trouble is I don't think moderates can win either party's nomination with the Karl Rove canned version of political strategy… Conservatives or Liberals can get away with it because they have less to prove to the base. In short, I expected better.

Bush Leaks SS Plan Detail

Bush Renews SS Push

Bush said "I will continue to reassure those of you born before 1950 that your Social Security benefits will not change in any way: You will receive your checks, and that is a fact."

Well, I can read between the lines. If you're younger than 55, expect the new plan to give you less than you've been promised. This should not take long to hit the fan amongst partisans. Notice that it doesn't say how much less. I expect a gradual scaling back of promised benefits starting at 55, and cutting more agressively as "time 'til retirement" becomes greater.

Bush is also still publicly standing his ground on not upping the payroll tax, but that may mean not upping the payroll tax rate, as opposed to not upping the cap. It also may mean that he's not putting it on the table unless the dems are willing to put private accounts on the table. I don't mind Bush taking this stance if it's to force other necessary changes.

But realistically, if substantially longer retirements need to be financed, more money will have to come from somewhere unless retirees will accept lower standards of living (doubtful). I think the amounts of money required to finance longer lifespans and the medical care that provides these longer lifespans is likely to be far more money than growth alone can provide...

That additional amount of money either has to come out of your pocket now to pay for YOUR longer retirement later, or out of everybody's pcokets to pay for everyone's longer retirement later.

Good news from Iraq, Part 22

The regular bi-weekly Chrenkoff, of all the Iraq news not on at six o'clock, and not to be found in the New York Times.

Good news from Iraq, Part 22

Look, an Untapped Revenue Stream for the Gov't!

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution, one of my indispensable favorites among blogs, for pointing out this article by James Boyle at the Financial times about tapping government data flows as revenue.

On one side of the Atlantic, state produced data flows are frequently viewed as potential revenue sources. They are copyrighted or protected by database rights. The departments which produce the data often attempt to make a profit from user-fees, or at least recover their entire operating costs. It is heresy to suggest that the taxpayer has already paid for the production of this data and should not have to do so again. The other side of the Atlantic practices a benign form of information socialism. By law, any text produced by the central government is free from copyright and passes immediately into the public domain. Unoriginal compilations of fact - public or private - may not be owned. As for government data, the basic norm is that it should be available at the cost of reproduction alone. It is easy to guess which is which. Surely, the United States is the profit and property-obsessed realm, Europe the place where the state takes pride in providing data as a public service? No, actually it is the other way around.

I've thought for some time that it made sense for the government to charge for commercial use of information it paid to collect, know-how it paid to create, and so on. Makes sense to me to, say, let non-profit and personal web sites repeat weather data as fair use, but charge for-profit sites a fee. And to not give profitable entities any loopholes because their web site is not profitable per se. It might be really hard to do, though. But it's kind of funny how easy it is to get businesses to like benign socialism depending on whose bread is getting buttered, aint it?

I'm not qualified to address the technical merits of Boyle's economic analysis that suggests giving it away is better, but I'll note that his version of "better" only seems to encompass economic activity and the intrinsic merits of ever more economic activity. It doesn't seem to say anything about getting teased by a partial weather foreceast at 6:03 and then waiting through 2 minutes of blabbity blah just to find out the NWS says it's going to rain tomorrow.

Sprawl

Oregon anti-sprawl regulations eviscerated. In theory, compensating property owners for the economic losses when zoning changes is reasonable, but only if the government is allowed to tax to accumulate a fund for that purpose.

Who here favors sprawl?

I once got into a argument with a libertarian who was against all zoning--if a gas station wanted to open up across from historic Lexington Green, it was fine with him. Who was I to impose my aesthetic values on society?

Is it reasonable to include aesthetic taste in regional planning, or is tacky in the eye of the beholder?

Doublespeak on Hard Choices

According to Larry Overlan in today's Boston Globe "Clearly, fewer services for the same number of dollars equals a tax increase."

Overlan tries too hard here. I constructed the link based on the quote above because it's the one the Globe's editors chose to bold and highlight. Overlan makes some good points about governmental dynamics we should ackowledge. But ultimately, his insistence on framing things as he does in order to support his doublespeak claim makes him unconvincing. It's a shame that his too-clever claim means that he'll be dismissed at a glance by many readers. Engagement on this issue is what would be productive, and engagement in a way that's not inflammatory.

Over the past several decades, more and more people have bought in to the hypothesis that government is bloated and inefficient, for good reason. This has led to a 2nd hypothesis that we could cut taxes painlessly. Regardless of whether this 2nd hypothesis is true in theory, in actual practice it has led to many governments choosing between these:

***door #1***** raising taxes to preserve services

*****door #2*** cutting or not raising taxes, and cutting services

For the most part, with notable exceptions, the electorate has supported the latter choice. But many sensible people may well want to make future choices based on the real government we actually get, not the government whose spending we can theoretically trim painlessly.

Here's the thing: Regardless of the level of corruption and inefficiency, we'll get services at a level that correlates with our willingness to pay for them, via taxes, fees, etc. There won't be a free lunch. Pretending or hoping that there will be a free lunch will not make it so. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not walking through that door.

Many sensible people are aware of the choices government and the people face. But apparently not enough of them. Nothing is served by suggesting that the two different approaches are one and the same. And doing so makes the suggestor easy to dismiss.

Private Accounts - The State Experience

An LA Times article reprinted in the Boston Globe reports that Nebraska has eliminated private accounts that had been made available to state workers as an option for new employees. West Virgina is also considering dropping its private accounts option. I don't know what to make of all this except: the details matter. Clearly, many people have 401(k)'s and other private accounts and find them useful. But as in the British case, some plans don't work out very well.

A Reform Initiative?

Just wondering if anyone would like to do anything about the issue in the post immediately below. I'm thinking of some kind of blogger initiative advocating redistricting reform.

There might be several ways to do it. Perhaps something like this:

1. Create a new web page that explains the need for redistricting reform and provides links to all the state initiatives and resources for activism in various states.
2. Create one of those small sidebar icons for the initiative, and ask bloggers to feature the icon as a sign of their support for it. The icon would then link to the activist resource page.

I noticed that several bloggers have discussed it recently, including some of the biggies on the left and right. Kevin Drum recently had something of a change of heart on the issue. We may be able to convince some of the major left and right blogs to participate in a broad initiative advocating reform.

Redistricting Reform in Ohio

A recent New York Times article mentioned eight states where new pushes for redistricting reform are underway. California is the most well-known example, but there is also Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

My home state of Ohio wasn't on the list. But we did have a nice op-ed article in this morning's Columbus Dispatch pitching for the issue. Below are a few excerpts.

Before he said what he had to, state Rep. James P. Trakas said what he meant.

Announcing he is running for secretary of state, the Cleveland-area Republican was asked if he favors removing politics from the process of drawing legislative and congressional districts.

Trakas smiled. "When we were a minority," he said, referring to Republicans, "I thought it was a great idea."

Then he spewed the party line, saying the process for configuring new districts every 10 years "is imperfect, but it works very well."

For Republicans, that is. And in the 1980s, it worked very well for Ohio Democrats. But a system that allows politicians to chose their constituents and ensures that incumbents can’t be beaten doesn’t serve democracy.

Nationally, the two parties have declared redistricting war and are on the cusp of mutually assured destruction. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, who compares unfavorably with a snake, started it in 2003 when he got his state’s GOP-controlled legislature to redraw congressional boundaries seven years earlier than scheduled. Running in new districts they couldn’t lose, Republicans picked up five more seats in the House.

Now Georgia Republicans are trying to redraw congressional lines five years earlier than scheduled. Democrats are threatening retribution in states they control, including Illinois, New Mexico and Louisiana. In 2003, Ohio GOP Chairman Robert T. Bennett contemplated reconfiguring Ohio’s congressional lines before the scheduled remapping in 2010, but decided not to get too greedy. Republicans already control 12 of the state’s 18 House seats.

Every 10 years, the five-member State Apportionment Board draws new Ohio House and Senate districts to reflect population shifts. Whichever party occupies two of the three offices of governor, secretary of state and auditor controls the board. Republicans, in control since 1991, have drawn a majority of House and Senate districts they can’t lose, packing Democrats in fewer districts that they can’t lose.

The General Assembly draws new congressional boundaries every 10 years, and because Republicans control both houses of the legislature, Ohio has 12 safe GOP districts and six safe Democratic districts.

The upshot: Competitive general elections for the state legislature and Congress, with a handful of exceptions, no longer exist in Ohio. In the November election, average victory margins were 44 points in the 18 congressional races, 35 points in the 16 Ohio Senate races, and 38 points in the 99 Ohio House races.

At best, Ohio’s system is anti-democratic. At worst, it is corrupt, protects politicians and is indefensible against charges that it deprives voters of choice.

Without the moderating influence of competitive general elections, Ohioans now are over-represented by partisan hard-liners and ideologues uninterested in compromise.

If Ohioans really want to reform government, they should follow Ahhnold’s lead and push for a constitutional amendment to terminate this awful system.

Dean on the UN

Brian's Study Breaks, and I have been discussing how the US should respond to Darfur. In my post I analyzed his two posts on Darfur and said that, while they were certainly promising and a welcome sign that the Deaniacs could show some spine, it still seemed a bit too dependent on the International Community to act. To that, Brian directed me to a quote by Dean in August of last year. It's an old column, but it helps put my mind at ease about the good doctor:

"However, I have also said that the U.N. bears a portion of the blame for the Iraq war. The U.N. did not understand that sometimes action is necessary and talk is not enough. There is often too much dithering in the European Union and at the U.N. when action is needed. The shameful reluctance of the European Union to intervene forcefully in Bosnia in order to stop genocide is one such instance. The ultimate failure of the entire world community, including the United States, to stop the massacres in Rwanda is another example.

"The U.N. does not seem to learn very fast."

It's actually a great column...to use the old blogger cliche: read the whole thing

Romney Moves Right

Massachusetts' Republican Governor Mitt Romney has been appealing to conservatives in out of state appearances.

Politically speaking, one would have to judge it a skillful, well-received performance by a man who wants to run for the 2008 Republican Party presidential nomination. But not for an incumbent who says he plans to seek a second term as governor of the Bay State.

"To win reelection in Massachusetts, he has to run like a moderate as he did in 2002, but to win the Republican presidential nomination, he has to run as a conservative," says one long-time veteran of Republican politics. "He has chosen the right-wing option, which could hurt his prospects for reelection as governor."

I have met Romney in person, and he is an impressive figure. I recently heard a talk by a major IT guy who, while clearly liberal in his leanings, said he was impressed by Romney's grasp of information technology issues.

If Romney was focused on winning re-election as Massachusetts governor, and continued to trim his views to fit the state, he'd be unbeatable in 2006. Clearly, he has higher ambitions. He feels that the whispering campaign for who might be the successor to President Bush is starting now, and he'd better start tailoring his message for the national audience now; January 2007 will be too late. Romney is banking on his competence and good looks to get him through to re-election even while taking positions to the right of the mainstream of Massachusetts politics.

Even in 2002, he was perceived as being marginally more conservative than previous Republican governors like Weld and Celluci. No one really believed he was pro-choice, but voters figured it didn't matter much. No one anticipated that gay marriage would be the defining issue of his first term.

Romney may be vulnerable in 2006 as a result. But you can't be somebody with nobody, and Massachusetts Democrats have not been in the habit of nominating appealing candidates for governor. Perhaps they think that with Massachusetts being such a Democratic state, they shouldn't have to be concerned about a candidate's personal qualities.

I voted for Romney in 2002. But his increasingly right-wing stance on social issues bothers me. Right now, I intend to abstain from voting in the governor's race, and possibly support the Democratic candidate if they can put forth a good one.

That being said, I wish Romney were President right now instead of George W. Bush.

Young Writers Sought

College Tree Publishing is seeking essay submissions from people in the 17 to 25 year old age group on political and social issues, as a followup to

What We Think: Young Voters Speak Out, which was put out nationally in late October. The book was meant to be a running forum for political _expression of America's youngest voting demographic, and in that regard has been a success. Since the book was published in October, the book has already received national press on CNN, MSNBC, an hour long special on CSPAN-Book TV and has been nominated for the Franklin Award.

We are a non-partisan company possessing a Republican, Democrat and Libertarian leaning editor, trying to give fair and equal voice to all ideologies present among college age youth. We are currently accepting submissions for our next two books, What We Think 2 and What We Think About God and looking to increase the number of well written pieces.

More information here. Sounds like a good opportunity for our young contributors.

Moonbeam Blog

"Politics is like paddling a canoe. Lean a little to the left, then a little to the right to move straight ahead. If you stand up on one side or the other, you fall into the water."

-Jerry Brown

Former California Governor, presidential candidate, and current California Attorney General candidate, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, has joined the blogosphere. By the looks of it, he is doing his own posting.

Brown is one of the weirdest politicians in the country, earning him the name Governor Moonbeam in the 70's. Not many Republicans have a use for him, but this one does. He is one of the few elected officials that has an intellectual foundation behind every stance he takes. Brown has also shown some willingness to think outside if his liberal ideology by supporting some competitive sourcing efforts that have been partly responsible for the revitilization of Oakland.

One of the first topics Mayor Brown has brought up, is the defense of Iranian journalist Arash Sigarchi who has been prosecuted for criticizing the government. This is a cause we should all join in on, IMO.

I welcome Governor Moonbeam to the blogosphere, I am sure he will at least be entertaining.

Dan Savage Getting Radical About Curbing Unsafe Sex

Dan Savage is a gay, maverick liberal, nationally syndicated opinion columist, editor-in-chief of a weekly Seattle publication called The Stranger, and author of his latest hit: Skipping Towards Gomorrah. Savage, known for being unapologetically liberal on just about everything, has recently turned some heads by supporting the Bush war on terrorism, including the invasion of Iraq, arguing that the only way to prevent September 11th-like attacks on American soil is to ensure emphatically that all terrorists are dead.

Savage in his latest column tackles another important issue by first responding to a writer who asks what he should do about a friend who is infected with HIV, knows it, and continues to have unprotected sex with numerous partners while not disclosing his current medical state. Savage, after telling the writer to dump his friend, tell him why, and tell everyone else why, goes on to propose an interesting policy idea that I think might help curb irresponsible activity by not only gay men, but all men who would do something so violent as to knowingly pass on HIV or any other STD.

Savage writes:

"If people are looking for a truly radical step--something that might actually curb unsafe sex--I've got a suggestion. But first some context: When extremely promiscuous gay men assess the risks and benefits of unprotected sex, most assume that if they get infected, or if they infect someone, that an AIDS organization or state health agency will pay for the AIDS meds they or their sex partners are going to need to keep themselves alive. It seems to me that one sure-fire way to curb unsafe sex would be to put the cost of AIDS meds into the equation. I'm not suggesting that people who can't afford AIDS meds be denied them--God forbid. No, my radical plan to curb unsafe sex among gay men is modeled on a successful program that encourages sexual responsibility among straight men: child-support payments. A straight man knows that if he knocks a woman up, he's on the hook for child-support payments for 18 years. He's free to have as much sex as he likes and as many children as he cares to, but he knows in the back of his mind that his quality of life will suffer if he's irresponsible.

So why not drug-support payments? If the state can go after deadbeat dads and make them pay child support why can't it go after deadbeat infectors and make them pay drug support? Now that would be radical. Infect someone with HIV out of malice or negligence and the state will come after you for half the cost of the meds the person you infected is going to need. (The man you infected is 50 percent responsible for his own infection.) Once a few dozen men in New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Vancouver are having their wages docked for drug-support payments, other gay men will be a lot more careful about not spreading HIV. Trojan won't be able to make condoms fast enough."

My Question for Chris Whitman

"I read Governor Whitman's book and not only did I find a well articulated argument about why the GOP needs to move toward the center, but I also read about a successful, moderate, former Republican Governor's national agenda of tax cuts, fiscal restraint, environmental common sense, sensitivity toward social issues, increased diplomacy throughout the world, and political reform. I am of the opinion that our number one goal as Republican moderates should be the 2008 Presidential nomination, and we are not going to get there unless we start to organize around one candidate as early as possible. So my question is simple. Governor Whitman, when are you going to announce that you are running for President?"

Do you have a question for Governor Whitman or any of the Board of Directors for "It's My Party Too?" If so go to their site and ask, and then let me know in the comment section. If I know what you asked, I can attempt to provide an answer in my blog-post after the forum on the 28th.

The Lawrence Summers Controversy

In the New Republic, Steven Pinker, the eminent biologist and author of "The Blank Slate" has weighed in on Summers' comments about women in the sciences. I think he is absolutely right in his conclusions, first, that Summers never said women were "natively unfit" to be scientists, that people misinterpreted his comments, and that there is nothing in the least controversial about the idea that, ON AVERAGE, men and women may have different talents and abilities.

As he says,

At some point in the history of the modern women's movement, the belief that men and women are psychologically indistinguishable became sacred. The reasons are understandable: Women really had been held back by bogus claims of essential differences. Now anyone who so much as raises the question of innate sex differences is seen as "not getting it" when it comes to equality between the sexes. The tragedy is that this mentality of taboo needlessly puts a laudable cause on a collision course with the findings of science and the spirit of free inquiry.

It's a shame, IMO, that we have come to the point where science is not allowed to question established notions--either on the right or the left.

BTW, from now on, I will be posting under my name rather than MWS.

Open thread

Speak up.

Christie Whitman Online Chat

The Centrist Coalition received an email signed by former NJ Gov. Christie Whitman:

On Monday, February 28th, It’s My Party Too will begin a series of interactive chats that will allow you to speak directly with our board members and other prominent officials. Web users can submit questions online. I will host that first interactive chat next week.

Assuming this is in the evening, I have another committment. Can someone volunteer to cover this for the Centrist Coalition, and then blog it? If you're not a blogger, send an email with a report of the event to blog at centrist coalition dot com, and I'll post it.

Unprecedented

Both parties break new ground in hardball, says Arlen Specter

He said Democrats' filibusters of judicial candidates are "unprecedented" but quickly added: "There have been a lot of unprecedented items taken on both sides here."

So what is it, anything goes as long as it's not illegal? Or should those who escalate hardball tactics be called out?

President Lincoln?

The Centrist Coalition has received an email from a group which would like to draft Blanche Lincoln, Senator from Arkansas, to run for President in 2008. Senator Lincoln is a centrist, and from having seen her on CSPAN, has an attractive southern charm. She would be a distinct underdog were she to run, as she is not even the most prominent female Democratic Senator who has been a long-term resident of Arkansas.

Politics as the Great Divider

In the January/February issue of The Atlantic, there is a section called "State of the Union," a series of article examining, obviously, the state of America today. All of the articles are good, but one in particular I thought was especially trenchant for centrists, called "Bipolar Disorder" by Jonathan Rauch, who people on this blog have mentioned as a centrist.

Rauch's argument, which has been advanced by people here before, is essentially that the American people are actually less polarized on basic values than ever, but that politics and politicians are more polarized. He notes that

we do not live in a two-party universe. The fastest-growing group in American politics is independents, many of them centrists who identify with neither party and can tip the balance in close elections. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, since the Iraq War 30 percent of Americans have identified themselves as Republicans, 31 percent as Democrats, and 39 percent as independents (or "other"). Registered voters split into even thirds.

Nothing particularly new here, but he presents some ideas as to why this is the case, which I think are quite cogent. He argues that

A divide has opened, but not in the way most people assume. The divide is not within American culture but between politics and culture. At a time when the culture is notably calm, politics is notably shrill.

Thus, to understand why American politics seems to have become less and less civil, we need to look at how and why politics has changed. Rauch posits two fundamental ways that he thinks both politics and politicians have changed. First, politicians are different because they are now "self-selected." In the past, Rauch argues that candidates were selected by party machines and bosses. They were often ordinary people that saw politics more as a career than as an ideological crusade. Thus, they regarded politicians from the other party as other professionals, in the way that athletes consider players on other teams as their peers rather than their enemies. With the fall of machines and the rise of primaries to select candidates rather than caucuses and "smoke-filled rooms, people entering politics became those who were often committed to a cause or agenda, essentially ideologues.

Second, the parties have changed. As Rauch notes,

Whereas they used to be loose coalitions of interests and regions, they are now ideological clubs. Northeastern Republicans were once much more liberal than Southern Democrats. Today more or less all conservatives are Republicans and more or less all liberals are Democrats.

In the past, parties were concerned about mobilizing masses of voters, many of whom had conflicting interests. Today, the parties target specific groups with what Rauch calls "inflammatory" appeals. "

In addition, redistricting has creating lots of safe districts where candidates need only appeal to their base to win. According to Rauch,

Today House members choose their voters rather than the other way around, with the result that only a few dozen districts are competitive. In many districts House members are much less worried about the general election than they are about being challenged in the primary by a rival from their own party. Partisans in today's one-party districts feel at liberty to support right-wing or left-wing candidates, and the candidates feel free (or obliged) to cater to the right-wing or left-wing partisans.

As a result, the parties have moved farther and farther apart and relationships between elected officials from the two parties are more acrimonious. As a result, he argues that

"the extremes are overrepresented in the political arena and the center underrepresented." The party system, he says, creates or inflames conflicts that are dear to the hearts of relatively small numbers of activists.

But, interestingly, Rauch does not think this is all bad. He notes that the polarized parties present start alternatives and these alternatives give elections a sense of direction. The party polarization also, he claims, brings the left and right wingers under the party umbrellas rather than leaving them to roam the political fringes, which he thinks is overall a positive. Rauch concludes by arguing that

In the end what may matter most is not that the parties be moderate but that they be competitive—which America's parties are, in spades. Politically speaking, our fifty-fifty America is a divisive, rancorous place. The rest of the world should be so lucky.

It's an interesting article, although I'm not sure I agree that the degree of polarization between parties is healthy. It seems to me that this polarization has the effect of making it more difficult to come up with solutions. Sure, there is no doubt that we know how the parties stand on abortion or social security and the contrasts are stark. But what if you don't want to vote for extremes? What if you think the solution to at least some problems lies in the middle?

But I think he is right about how the parties have changed. The Founding Fathers were always concerned about the influence of "faction", which they took to mean competing ideologies that would not compromise. Madison preferred a republic of "interests" rather than principles. I think it's ironic that party primaries came into vogue in response to complaints that the parties were not diverse or democratic enough. I would argue (and it's obviously not an original argument) that the primaries have actually made the parties less representative of their own voters, much less the population.

God's Politics

On my personal blog, I've reviewed the new book by Jim Wallis, God's Politics. Wallis is an evangelical Christian who is quite left-wing, except on cultural issues, where he is a bit to the right of Joe Lieberman.

Wallis argues that there are three major poles in American politics: conservative, liberal, and what he calls libertarian, which he defines as "liberal on cultural/moral issues and conservative on fiscal/economic and foreign policy." He proposes a fourth option, which he admits currently has no constituency, that would be traditional on moral issues, while being liberal on economic issues. In particular, Wallis states that poverty is the second most prominent theme in the Bible, after idolatry. By contrast, the key issues of the religious right, homosexuality and abortion, are not given prominent mention.

Actually, I find what he calls libertarian to be more what I think of as centrist, and in Wallis, a potential leader for the "mirror-image centrism" which is conservative where we are liberal, and vice versa. I recommend the book not for its political positions, but for its original, thought-provoking nature.

Accurate Versus Effective

School chief wants to nix anti-drug program

I expected this story to suggest the opportunity to discuss making the choice between being accurate and being effective, as discussed in the thread below related to Schneider's green quote. If there's any domain where you can convince people that the ends justifies almost any means, its drug ed policy.

But reading it made we wonder if there was a hidden axe grinding. I'm not a defender of Scientology, but it sounded like many of the sample claims of inaccuracy were at least based in truth. To my knowledge, fat can at least store toxins which may be harmfully released later under certain circumstances, although presumedly compounds like LSD get metabolized, not stored as ingested. Chris?

I also wondered about this:

Among other findings, the panel determined that Narconon also incorrectly told students that the amount of a drug taken determines whether it acts as a stimulant or sedative, and that drugs "ruin creativity and dull senses."

My sense is that these ideas might be debatable, especially when scientific accuracy collides with naive understanding of words as used in their everyday sense. Stimulants and sedatives are classes determined by physiological manifestation which does not necessarily correspond to outward and emotional manifestations. For example, alcohol to my knowledge is classed as a depressant, which may be true physiologically but fails to encompass the obvious fact that alcohol manifests itself to many people as stimulating over the near term even though it does later manifest depressively. And the duration of such stages may depend on level of intake. Whether drugs "ruin creativity and dull senses" is in some cases manifestly true, and over the long term comes pretty close to being inevitably true, as anyone who has ever watched Behind the Music knows. :-)

I'm going to guess that this story has legs. I'm ready to sit back and watch the show. Take a drink every time someone shakes their fist. :-)

Government Share of Health Costs Grows

Government Share of Health Costs Grows

"Whaddaya mean there's no such thing as a free lunch? I just had one yesterday."

Meanwhile, in the world of people who get it, the posible solutions are deja vu all over again: benefit cuts, eligibility restrictions, higher taxes, etc.

Eminent Domain Case Reaches SCOTUS

Eminent Domain Case Reaches SCOTUS.

I hope SCOTUS has the sack to smack. Push, comes to shove, I'm with property owners' rights. But I do wonder whether this really should be resolved by SCOTUS, instead of by multi-party mediation and fair compromise. I don't like the idea of taking, but realistically in this age, I also don't like the idea of one or two stubborn folk obstructing something that might provide substantial public good, regardless of whether it is strictly "public use."

Maybe it makes sense for the state to have the power to do such things if they were willing to pay double or triple fair market value. I dunno. Can we put a price on the right of the individual to say "no" to the government? Seems we ought to be able to do this sometimes.

A Different Kind Of Centrist

I received an email from Luke Lea of Born Again Democrats. He says he's centrist, and writes

“Liberal” and “conservative” in my book, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable terms of description. I always describe myself — and Born Again Democrats™ — as being economically liberal and culturally conservative.

I'll buy that as a form of centrism, but it's not the form we focus on here at the Centrist Coalition. We tend to be the exact opposite--economically conservative and culturally liberal. On the other hand, we certainly share the sense of not belonging uniformly in one camp.

What do you think of Born Again Democrats?

Mitch Daniels: Right Wing Marionette

Mitch Daniels was elected Governor of Indiana because he campaigned as a moderate, dropping the normal right-wing rhetoric and focusing on issues that Hoosiers cared about. Deep inside, Daniels must still be at least part moderate. However, it seems a far right legislature has hijacked an inexperienced and inept Daniels Administration and has begun retooling it to fit its own desires. The outcome: politics as usual.

When House Speaker Brian Bosma excoriated Gov. Daniels during his first week in the office, the tension that so many suspected was made public: a clash between moderates and right-wingers. Bosma, the leader of the right-wing fringe, was telling Daniels to back off and play ball for the party. Daniels, to his credit, stared Bosma down and made him apologize for growing out of his britches. Of course, that was only the first time.

Now we see why the legislature is growing so chummy with Mitch Daniels after all of that fighting – Daniels has finally conceded ground to the far-right movement as political payback for blowing all of his hard-earned political capital on a tax hike that died in the House and appointments that fizzled within weeks. The Bosma-approved Indiana budget freezes spending on education while pushing private school vouchers. It slashed Medicare while stripping medical protection from the poorest Hoosiers. Oh, and it still leaves that gaping hole that Mitch Daniels vowed to fill.

Daniels has shown his Darwinist attitude to Hoosiers he once hollowly swore to help and defend. When Amtrak’s production and repair factory asked for help, Daniels told them it would be “cheaper” to buy them a plane ticket than to help keep the factory going. Daniels’ Administration doesn’t seem to be booking flights for the thousands of jobs that now teeter on the brink of irreparable loss. Instead of creating and protecting jobs as he swore to do on the campaign trail, Daniels spent his day pushing his agenda in the legislature with – you guessed it – Brian Bosma by his side.

Now Gov. Daniels, backed by Bosma, wants to create his own appointed Inspector General and vest the position with full prosecutorial power. Why does a governor need his own prosecutor? The question is never answered. Indiana would be the first state in the Union to give a governor his own prosecutor, even though 11 states have non-prosecutorial Inspectors General. That’s one way to keep investigations away from your Administration – own the guy who’s doing them! Not a bad power grab, either.

It seems that this is the governor Indiana will be stuck with: a leader whose positions are whispered to him from the Republican arch-conservatives in the legislature. That’s not a moderate governor: it’s a right wing ragdoll. Perhaps Mitch Daniels isn’t that different from George W. Bush after all.

It’s time Hoosiers began considering giving Mitch a plane ticket out of Indiana. It’d be cheaper than keeping him.

Brought to you by The New Democrat

Texas-California Compromise

While the Centrist Coalition favors non-partisan redistricting in California and elsewhere starting with the 2010 census, we have not endorsed Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to do a one-time mid-decade redistricting. Unlike the Texas mid-decade redistricting, this one would be non-partisan. However, given that the current California districts were drawn up by Democrats, it is likely that mid-decade redistricting would have the effect of hurting Democrats (individual Republican incumbents would also be endangered, but the party as a whole might prosper). That is why we favor simultaneous non-partisan redistricting in Texas and California.

I've been in a back and forth on the Common Cause blog over the California redistricting (as I don't have a log in over there, my comments are anonymous, but not all anonymous comments are mine). Blagfly, a Common Cause activist, wrote the following:

Common cause is not a centrist organization or a bipartisan organization. CC is a nonpartisan organization. Trying to promote the democratic reform of nonpartisan redistricting while keeping an eye on the partisan impact of that reform would be a violation of CC's principles. The point is not necessarily to keep the parties balanced. The point is to make our democracy work more democratically. Partisan equality does not necessarily equal balanced democratic process.

As to the effect of CA reforming while TX stays the same - you are right, that may cause an imbalance in national politics for a bit. Even if CC was concerned with that, I'm all for achieving whatever reforms can be achieved rather than sitting around waiting for all the stars to line up. CA and TX are never going to agree to pass redistricting reform simultaneously (have you ever met a Texan? Trying to sell something to a Longhorn because CA is doing it will not work, not even with Arnold going door to door in Austin).

As a non-partisan organization, Common Cause is focused on process. If the process is good, the outcomes are good. The Centrist Coalition, on the other hand, is NOT nonpartisan. We are bipartisan. We support moderates in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Actually, I like to think of us as multi-partisan, because we may also support Independents. As a 501(c)4 nonprofit, we are allowed to have opinions--but not give money to individual candidates.

Common Cause is also a 501(c)4, so as I understand it, their nonpartisanship is a choice made by their Board of Directors, not a requirement under law. In this particular case, by balancing Texas and California, we're not trying to be partisan, but rather nonpartisan in outcome as well as process.

With regard to the statement that Texans are unlikely to follow California's lead--that's true. But they would listen to President Bush, if he took this opportunity to heal the excessive partisan rifts left over from the election. The President is finding it difficult to get Social Security reform through Congress on a straight party-line vote. He might find that promoting nonpartisanship is in his political interest.

Is Support for the BEA a Centrist Position?

Lots of good thinking about government policy related to saving at the WSJ Econoblog.

Unfortunately, neither party in Washington is ready to make the hard choices that demography and the profligacy of the past require us to make. As I have said before, we now have two parties in Washington, the tax and spend Democrats and the no-tax and spend Republicans. Neither party is fiscally responsible.

The concluding thought concerns the BEA:

What to do? Last week Mr. Greenspan embraced the idea of returning to the old discipline of the Budget Enforcement Act that contained discretionary spending and instituted pay-as-you-go provisions for new tax cuts and entitlement spending. As you say, the key is to get the hard choices made. Bringing back the BEA seems like a pretty good starting point to me.

Worth reading. Maybe supporting a re-emphasis of the BEA could be a centrist position. I also like the idea of companies adding "save tomorrow" programs to make it easier for people to bolster savings instead of following a default path of least resistance.

Sixty Years Ago

Sixty years ago today, a flag was raised over Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. A short time later, a larger flag replaced it. The picture of the second flag going up will live forever in American history.

UN Blog

Former Kerry campaign worker Peter Daou, creator of the admirably politically-balanced aggregator The Daou Report, has now created a pro-UN blog sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, called UN Dispatch. The effort has already been called a failure by conservative critics of the UN.

My take on the UN is that it's bad on peacemaking, but useful on peace-keeping. That is, in the early stages of a conflict, when two sides are bent on fighting it out, and each has a hope of winning, efforts by the UN to get in the middle usually fail. It takes great power involvement, and muscle to keep the peace. Once the sides are exhausted, the Blue Helmets can succeed in keeping the sides apart and making sure that unintended incidents don't escalate.

The UN gets in trouble when it tries to do too much, and when people put too much hope in it to save the day. Even its humanitarian programs are often a mess, but without them, there would be even more suffering in the many dysfunctional states in the world.

Biden And Hagel

Ambivablog is impressed with Joe Biden, and sees him as a potential centrist candidate for President in 2008. Meanwhile, the American Spectator, in a cover story that is not online, thinks that Chuck Hagel (or McHagel as they call him) would be a bad candidate. According to AS, Hagel is a closet moderate, whose conservative voting record is solely a prospect of fitting into his Nebraska constituency. According to them, he bears an untoward resemblance to former Sen. Bob Kerrey.

Back to Work, Laugh Needed

This cracks me up: Chris Rock explains comments ... sort of

Don't you wish you could go to Vegas and place bets on things like "Chris Rock will not be invited to host the Oscars again next year"? The guy's nose just is not nearly brown enough for such a gig. It's a big part of what makes him funny when he is funny, and the huge reason why he's a choice that's not going to please the Academy. I hope I'm wrong...

The Critical Centrist?

Just throwing this out for thought.

On our little issues matrix, "Critical Theorists" are placed on the far left side of the political spectrum. That's undoubtedly a true characterization, for the most part. Nobody would say that Catherine MacKinnon, Richard Delgado, Derrick Bell, or their pals occupy anything but the far left extreme of American politics.

However, as a person who a) is somewhat centrist and b) finds a lot of the analysis, if not all of the conclusions, in the CRT/CLS movement extremely compelling, I have to ask: Is there a place for Critical Theory in the Centrist Movement? I'll write more after getting some comments.

Green Quote for Discussion

We've food-fought here over appropriate environmental policy on multiple occasions. Must we continually refight the Lomborg Skeptical Environmentalist fight to the same conculsion of everyone sticking to their guns? Perhaps so.

I'm interested in talking a little bit about the intersection between science and politics. How does science manifest itself to the public when its broadest manifestoes are often driven in some part by politics? How are laymen to understand science that gets more specialized and complex as time passes? I dunno. But I'd like to quote an opponent of Bjorn Lomborg, Stephen Schneider, as way of focusing on the dynamics of a situation that Schneider describes honestly as one where absolute honesty might be counterproductive:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people, we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Fair disclosure: I don't have a cite for this quote that doesn't feel partisan anti-schneider,all I have is this. But I have no affirmative reason to think it's inaccurate. So if anyone knows it to be inaccurate, please straighten me out.

Here's the thing: Schneider's not wrong. But that doesn't make the story of the boy who cried wolf any less of a teaching tale, does it? I tend to be pro-caveat, pro-complexity, but that puts me in a pretty small minority.

Press Release On Redistricting

We've done the first-ever press release for the centrist coalition, and sent it to the wire services and newspapers in California and Texas. If you know of a media outlet that might be interested, please send it to them. I've also sent it to Common Cause, which has taken an active position in the California redistricting.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Centrists Propose Texas-California Compromise on Redistricting

COLUMBUS, Ohio., Feb. 22

Political moderates meeting online in the first-ever Centrist Townhall proposed a Texas-California Compromise which would address redistricting in both states simultaneously.

The Centrist Townhall is a project of the Centrist Coalition(http://centristcoalition.com), a grassroots organization of political moderates.

"In California, Democrats currently have an advantage," said William Swann, Policy Director of the Centrist Coalition. "Non-partisan redistricting as proposed by Gov. Schwarzenegger might result in the loss of Democratic seats in Congress. In Texas, Republicans have carved out districts very favorable to their side. Non-partisan redistricting might help Democrats. The prospective losers in each state are likely to block non-partisan redistricting. The only fair way to do this is to work on both states at the same time."

Under Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan, an independent panel of retired judges would redraw congressional and state legislative lines in time for the next round of elections.

In Texas, a mid-decade partisan Congressional redistricting plan adopted in 2004 resulted in the defeat of four incumbent Democrats. The Texas districts are currently under court challenge.

"Once the two largest states in terms of population adopt non-partisan redistricting, other states are sure to follow," Swann said. "If President Bush were to indicate support for non-partisan redistricting, its prospects would gain immensely in Texas. That would strengthen Gov. Schwarzenegger's hand in dealing with California's Democratic legislature. This would be a cost-free way for the President to demonstrate that he is a uniter."

Attendees at the Centrist Townhall included members of the Centrist Coalition, along with bloggers from Dead Armadillos, Reasonable Prudence, and Greg's Opinion.

Contact: Rick Heller, Executive Director, Centrist Coalition
rick@centristcoalition.com

Other blogs on Redistricting

SCOTUS to Scrutinize Assisted Suicide

High court agrees to review nation's only assisted suicide law

My take on this is that a reluctant and quiet majority wants this decision to be in one's own hands if possible, or else in the hands of a trusted loved one. But that's only a guess, most likely colored by my own beliefs. Anyone else have thoughts or forecasts?

Anticipatorily, I'll add that I don't see a slippery slope, I see a staircase of many steps, one that a variety of societal advances will make more and more of us aware of. I expect it'll become harder and harder to pretend that absolute sanctity of life in all instances is stable and sustainable level ground. YMMVary, of course, thus a comments section.

Where Centrists Seem to Stand

I looked over the Pew Center study I linked to below (Something to chew on) more closely. Suppose independent/unaffiliated voters are a rough proxy for centrists. Where do we stand? No big surprise: in the middle. But in some cases we lean more one way than the other. Here are a few conclusions I made using the above-stated proxy, and reading between the lines:

If independents are a good proxy for centrists:

On foreign policy, centrists lean more toward the democratic view that stresses the importance of diplomacy, and are much less willing than GOP supporters to agree that they'd fight for our country even if they thought we were wrong. Centrists acknowledge that use of US force abroad may foster terrorism. But they align with the GOP in stressing support for national interests over pleasing allies.

Centrists lean democratic in supporting explicit extension of civil rights to homosexuals.

Centrists have historically agreed with the GOP that government is usually wasteful and inefficient. However. Democrats have come to agree with this more, while both centrists and the GOP are not as widely convinced of this as they used to be. With the transition in the government from democratic control to GOP control, 3/4 of centrists have been stable in thinking that elected federal officials quickly lose touch with their constituency. Unsurprisingly, democrats are now more convinced of this, and the GOP less convinced.

On social policy, centrists are more likely to agree with democrats that poor people have it tough and deserve more help. However, on the issue of providing this help even if gov't debt is required, they are about smack in the middle between democrats and the GOP: More likely to support borrowing to fund perceived necessities than the GOP is, but not nearly as likely to support this as democrats are.

On the issue of polarization, centrists perceive more of it than the GOP, less than the democrats. All groups perceive more division in the country as a whole than they do among people they know. Centrists are slightly less likely than either the GOP or democrats to attribute the division to foreign policy, but it's still the number one choice among centrists.

These stats match my take on centrists as a group. More socially liberal than the GOP, more fiscally conservative than democrats. More hawkish than democrats on foreign policy, but realistic enough to stress the importance of diplomacy moreso than the GOP.

Summary of party ID demographics:

Few surprises here. Men are more likely to vote gop, women democratic. White people are a little bit more likely to vote GOP, minorities are MUCH more likely to vote democratic. There's a small correlation between education level and party ID. People with less than high school ed or only HS ed prefer democrats. With more ed, there's a pretty even split. On religion, catholics split evenly between parties. Protestants and evangelicals are strongly GOP, jews and "no religion" strongly democratic. On incomes, people who make 50k or less are more likely to be democrats, but after that more likely to be GOP.

Remembering Hunter S. Thompson

I wanted to post a little something today on the sad news of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide. I had the opportunity to meet the guy way back when -- some 20 years ago, when I was in college. And it was, for me, kind of an unusual experience.

I went to school on one of the most conservative campuses in the nation -- that true bastion of southern conservatism known as Vanderbilt University. For some reason, in my sophomore year, the speaker's bureau decided to bring Hunter S. Thompson to campus. I think he was out doing publicity for his new book The Curse of Lono, and the Vanderbilt lecture was part of that.

I had read a little bit of HST, and I picked up another of his books, The Great Shark Hunt, before the lecture. It gives you a real feel for his writing and his "voice" as an author, because it includes all those early pieces from various magazines, including the Rolling Stone articles that first brought him national attention.

There was quite a crowd for the lecture -- a large, packed auditorium. And the kids were mostly startled by the whole thing. HST was a terrible public speaker, and he mostly just rambled and made ugly remarks about then-president Reagan. I can't really say much about what he said that night, except that he kept punctuating everything with "so goddamn what?", as in:

"People say to me, Hunter, you're crazy ... Hunter, you're nuts ... but so goddamn what?"

People thought it was funny, but also kind of crazy. There were angry letters to the administration afterwards and something of a minor campus scandal having to do with the fact that the school paid him for that appearance.

At the end of the talk that night, I wandered up to the front of the auditorium. There was a crowd around HST, and among them a group of students I had met before, but wasn't really friends with.

The students I knew were trying to convince HST to go to a certain bar afterwards. They kept saying the name of the bar, asking him to repeat it back to them, telling him where it was, and trying to get him to say he would go.

It was clear to me that he wasn't interested in the bar, but that didn't seem to get through to the other guys. HST kept mumbling something about going to Louisville, instead. They would say the name of this bar, and he would say "no, Louisville".

He wanted to go on a road trip from Nashville to Louisville, which happens to be his old neck of the woods, where he grew up. One of the guys in the group had a car, but said definitively "we're not going on a road trip."

So that was that -- they kept trying to talk him into the bar, which I kinda thought wasn't happening. When he left the auditorium to go back to his hotel, I tagged along with the group of students on their way to the little bar where they expected HST to show.

He didn't. We sat there for quite a while.

Then the lightbulb went off. In the process of giving HST directions to the bar, we had gleaned the name of the hotel where he was staying. Why not go there?

So we went trudging off to the Vanderbilt Commodore, the swanky hotel right next to campus where they had booked him. We walk in, take a turn toward the hotel bar, and there HST sits.

There was already one guy sitting with him, and a couple of young ladies. The guy was apparently a student, and was enthusiastically challenging HST to a drinking contest. He kept ordering shot after shot, and was egging HST on to try to match him. HST seemed to find this unbearably moronic.

What made an impression on me that evening was how awkward HST was in social situations. This was a guy who was very organized about his writing ... very particular in the way he chose his words. For written publications. But he had a very hard time expressing himself just in everyday conversation.

I wasn't quite confident enough as a young man to engage him about his writing -- those politics and sports pieces I had been reading in The Great Shark Hunt. And I didn't have a car, so couldn't help him with what he really wanted, which was to go have a look at the old neighborhood.

I didn't find a way to rescue HST from the guy insisting on doing shots with him. As partial atonement, I'd like to point you guys in the direction of one of his early essays from his sportswriting days -- something called "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved".

If you haven't read this, do yourself a favor. I think this is how HST would have wanted you to know him.

First Centrist Townhall Chat

We had more than our share of glitches at last night's inaugural Centrist Townhall chat, but we also had a pretty nice showing and an interesting discussion.

In the "glitches" category, we had the fact that we couldn't get the chat software to work for Joe Gandleman, who had planned to be our host for the evening. A lot of other folks had problems with the voice part of it, so I think we're going to be looking for a more stable alternative to Yahoo chat.

On the plus side, we had a pretty decent turnout, with quite a few centrist bloggers, including Greg Wythe of Greg's Opinion, JD Whitlock of Dead Armadillos, Todd Pearson of Pearson's Perspective, and Tully, Jeff, Rick, and myself from here on Centerfield. (We had a few others too who's names I couldn't associate with a blog.)

We discovered pretty quickly that we have fairly broad agreement on the topic of the evening, electoral reform. So we switched gears from a policy discussion to the question of what we should try to do about the issue -- how we can go about effectively pushing for change.

We tossed around several ideas:

• Forming some kind of bloggers initiative or alliance to advocate redistricting reform.
• Offering a "two state solution" that pushes for reform in California and Texas.
• Making ourselves available on local talk shows or news programs to discuss the issue.
• Trying to organize some kind of advertising campaign to push for reform.

Feel free to share any other ideas you may have, either here, on your own blog, or at our next meeting.

I'd also like to share a list of links to several really good resources on this issue. If you'd like to know more about the reform options that are out there, check out the links below.

United States Elections Project (George Mason University)

Center for Voting and Democracy

Redistricting Commissions and Alternatives to the Legislature Conducting Redistricting, National Conference of State Legislatures.

Centrists.org article

Democratic Leadership Council article

Common Cause

The California Initiative

Chat Tonite

Don't forget. The first Centrist Townhall chat is tonight at 9PM Eastern Time.

Click http://groups.yahoo.com/group/centristtownhall/, and join the group. Then click on the chat link on the left. You'll be asked to download a plug-in. Say yes. Once you do that, you will be able to listen to the voice chat, and participate in text chat. If you have a PC mike, you can also speak on the voice channel.

Talk to you tonight!

We're not alone

The Economist has a good article on worldwide pension reform in this weeks issue. The article is based on a soon to be published report by the World Bank “Old-Age Income Support in the 21st Century”. If you're looking for international examples to support one or the other side of the debate then you'll find a mixed picture. Among the highlights:

The need for pension system change:

“Most pension systems in the world,” it argues, “do not deliver on their social objectives, they contribute to significant distortions in the operation of market economies, and they are not financially sustainable when faced with an ageing population.”

the success of individual accounts:

In Latin America, for example, reforms to expensive pay-as-you-go schemes have improved governments' long-term fiscal positions. The new funded individual accounts have been costly to run but have generally delivered impressive returns. Nevertheless the number of future pensioners who will benefit looks set to be disappointingly low, because many workers are not covered by the new arrangements.

The problems with individual accounts:

The new report still favours mandatory accounts as a way of raising national saving, improving labour markets and spurring the development of financial systems. But it suggests that they should be considered as a benchmark, not as a blueprint. “Advance funding is still considered useful,” the Bank says, “but the limits of funding in some circumstances are also seen much more sharply.” If funding is to work, a country's macroeconomic and fiscal foundations must be secure. Regulatory and supervisory reforms are also vital.

Other new ideas:

Sweden pioneered the idea of “notional accounts”. These maintain pay-as-you-go financing, but treat workers' contributions as if they were paid into individual accounts, which then form the basis of their pension benefits. Poland and Latvia have also adopted the system. At first, the Bank was sceptical about this idea. However, it has since recognised the potential of notional accounts, which establish a tight link between payroll contributions and eventual pension benefits. They are, says the report, a “promising approach to reform or to implement an unfunded first pillar”.

It's nice to know were not alone, that many others are struggling with old age pensions too.

Posted by c3 at 10:33 AM | Comments (3)

Why Unions Suck, and How to Fix Them

As the title of this post reveals, I have deeply mixed feelings about unions. They've certainly done great things for working standards, are still very much needed for many kinds of jobs, and I hope will spread a bit further, into the more sweatshop-like parts of the computer industry, like gaming.

That said, in my personal experience, unions have mostly been counterproductive. I will explain why my encounters with unions have not led me to love them, and then suggest how they could be reformed.

Bad Experiences

When Ethernet was appearing on the scene, buildings were wired piecemeal, new strands continually added to reach more and more employees and offices. This was completely against union rules in many places, which required any infrastructure item to be installed and maintained by union members; getting such a union member out might easily take month of paperwork and waiting and calling. PER ADDED STRAND. At that rate, some buildings might have had to wait two decades for wireless to get high-speed network connections.

My first job was as a summer student for the federal government (at NIST). I got occasional newsletters from the union ( AFGE, maybe?) in my mailbox. It was a long time ago, and all I remember about the newsletters was how demagogic and small-minded the ideas in it seemed compared with the fight for the eight-hour day, forty-hour work, healthy workplace rights, etc.. The only action of its that sticks in my mind is their lawsuit against the government against the partial veto, for its possible reducing effect on goverment spending. I can't help but wonder what fraction of US gov't employees felt well-represented by that action. Although there was plenty of fear over RIFs, most of the civil servants I knew were patriotic and already suffering serious pay cuts and lost opportunities to serve, and above all, were vastly in favor of reform.

The union made a big deal of seniority, and was always making a big fuss at any threatened lapse in it. Now, since I was a teenager at the time, that certainly did little to endear the union to me farther. I'm old enough now to take a more balanced view of seniority, but it still seems to me that it should be firmly behind many things. If two people have the same job, the same skills, and get just as much done, THEN seniority should come to bear on decisions between them. The idea that it should be ahead of virtually everything else is yet another place where I and many other Americans depart from union ideas.

For grad school, I went to UCSD, which was involved in a court case of wide interest filed against it while I was there. The University of California, of which UCSD is a campus, refused to recognize a grad student union, which included a UCSD chapter. The union filed suit and won. Now, I was for the union being allowed to organize. But I quickly became disenchanted with the union. There were two problems: while I was there, (1 1/2 years after the union was formed), there had still been no election for leadership. The local chapter was run by the woman who had started it, who maybe represented the leftmost 5% of her constituency. The other problem was that when they went canvassing for members they refused to hand out any information at all (that's why I didn't join). Imagine what the union leaders would've thought of, say, an insurance salesman going door to door similarly refusing to give any details on the policies.

The UC grad student unions seems to me like a microcosm of union results. The most thoughtful one, at Berkeley (UCB), got something serious done early - they got me health insurance. Thanks, union! But not even the one at Berkeley achieved much moderate trust. The UCB strike, though, was well-supported even by relatively moderate students. Looking at the timeline pointed to, you can see that calls for strikes after the UCB strike resulted in vast yawning. There were no moderate and widely interesting goals after that (at UCSD, the union leader was calling for full funding of all grad students without bothering with nasty details like where the money would come from). They might as well have rolled up the union after the Berkeley strike and gone home.

Union leaders have always pushed for monopolies on workplaces, to maximize their bargaining power. Well, of course, this also means that union leaders have to care about as much what their members want as institutional cafeterias do. E.g., they are annoying, weakly helpful, and expensive. No wonder their strength is going down.

Suggestions

My proposal is simple: deregulation. Anybody should be able to easily join any union, no matter where they work. Anybody should be able to form a union; the paperwork requirements should be comparable to forming a corporation; this way tiny unions can form to serve particular workplaces and situations more easily.

Approving a new contract would take a majority vote of all employees to be covered by it.

It seems likely to me that each workplace of any size would tend to see political-party-like union dynamics. There would be 2-4 unions with active members, of which two would be dominant. Unions would have to offer competitive services, fees, and be moderate in action, just like the capitalist system they moderate. Unions would face mass defection if they struck too long for unreasonable terms, collected big fees, or had stifling rules. But they would be able to unite enough, with little trouble, against true evil treatment.

The toughest part of the proposal would be passing it. As a Democrat, I hate to admit that we probably couldn't support such a bill, any more than we can deliver on any but limited school reform.

An incentive for the Republicans to do this would be the necessarily reduced money unions would give to democrats.

Unions are such a big source of Democratic corruption that I'd happily see that loss of money, just to raise the amount that the party has to care about my vote.

Activists Energized Fundraising, but Some Worry They Could Push Democrats to Left

The Washington Post's Dan Balz writes about the newest Democratic Party

But the rising of this grass-roots force also signals a shift in the balance of power within the party, one that raises questions about its ultimate impact on a Democratic Party searching for direction and identity after losses in 2002 and 2004.

At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the Republicans. But some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security, reinforcing a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.

The spin is that they'll just be more confrontational, not more liberal. But the loud voices we hear are coming from the liberals. I expect they will drown out the centrists, for the time being.

Is climate change a Centrist issue?

I would like to answer yes, but I can't. The reason I don't think it qualifies is that most voters just don't care. Work, family, health care and retirement occupy the minds of the voters, not climate change. Tip O'Neil once stated that "All politics is local", which is a nice way of saying politics is about selfishness. One of the reasons climate change isn't a majority issue in the USA is that the current generation hasn't had a long term butt kicking from nature. A nasty hurricane season here, a couple of long term droughts there, but nothing on the order of the “grapes of wrath” and the dust bowl . This is pretty much human nature, if its not a problem right this instant, then its not a problem. Bad things don't happen to us, we're Americans!

We are not a society of historians. People watch American Idol and police dramas, not the History and Discovery channels. The current generation has become complacent. “Oh the government will take care of it”, “America is gods country, nothing can happen”, “market forces will compensate for everything”. What short sighted creatures we are.

Within my lifetime I have seen Mt Saint Helen explode, a major California earthquake, a mega-tsunami, a boat load of tornadoes, floods, mega-floods and and a bunch of killer hurricanes. If I was born 30 years earlier I could include the dust bowl and the pandemic of 1918. Yes, nothing to see here , just move along.

The inherit problem is that science can't predict the future, for complex systems, with the precision demanded by the common man. The trajectory of an artillery shell, no problem. The decay of radioactive material, we got your back. But complex systems are complex (duh!). People live in a Newtonian world. It's a world were we can instinctively predict the flight of a baseball an catch it. The problems facing science today are not Newtonian. When scientists tried to evacuate Mt. Saint Helen people refused to leave. When it didn't immediately erupt people demanded to be let back in.

Well there is a growing body of evidence that Nature is getting ready to use the big stick. In the scientific community the debate is no longer whether climate change is real:

Ocean temperatures are increasing ,

ocean salinity is changing ,

glaciers are melting,

permafrost is melting .

Terrorism was a fringe issue until 9/11, climate change will remain a fringe issue until something goes boom .

Time For A Centrist Blogosphere

Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the British Conservative Party, writes that blogs are moving the Democratic Party to the left.

You would also expect this electronic revolution to be good for the Democrats, but the American left's relationship with the internet has been disastrous. The internet has sunk a knife into Bill Clinton's moderate Democratic party. Mainstream business people were Clinton's principal funders, simultaneously approving and driving his centrism. But the Democrats' new paymasters are the 600,000 computer users who, in 2004, supported Howard Dean's bid for his party's presidential nomination. Dean energised an unrepresentative group of voters with a stridently anti-war message. Electronic money powered Dean's campaign, and all of the other contenders for the Democratic crown soon pandered to his base.

The Democrats' problem has only worsened since. The dailykos.com site of a Democratic consultant gets 500,000 hits a day. That site's memorial to four American contractors murdered in Iraq was "screw them". Hatefulness also pours out of the popular websites of Michael Moore and MoveOn.org. The conservative blogosphere has dubbed the Democrats' IT base its MooreOn tendency.

Indeed. This is precisely why more moderates need to get online and get their opinions heard. To encourage this effort, the Centrist Coalition has created a Centrist Blogosphere aggregator. With one click of this link http://kinja.com/user/centrist, you will have access to dozens of the latest posts by centrist bloggers. Let us know about any blogs we've missed that ought to be included. We hope through this mechanism to encourage centrist bloggers to link to each other, and even create our own "echo chamber." :-)

Something to Chew On

Not weekend homework, but something pretty interesting to centrists. Dig into the Pew Center's report on Politics and Values in a 51%-48% Nation

I won't excerpt it, because there's so much to look at, and I haven't digested it all. The thing I noticed while skimming the graphs and charts is how closely independents model centrists. It's also pretty interesting to see how these graphs show which issues independents/centrists align with Democrats on, and which ones they align with the GOP on. Confirms the sort of stuff we've been noticing.

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic.

Also, please remember, the first Centrist Townhall chat is this Sunday at 9PM.
Click http://groups.yahoo.com/group/centristtownhall/ to join us.
You don't even need a microphone if you only want to listen.

Real State of the Union

Please read Mark Satin's writeup of the Real State Of the Union National Policy Forum, co-sponsored by the New America Foundation. This is one of the biggest meetings of centrists in Washington, D.C. I expect that next year, the Centrist Coalition may participate in this meeting.

Greenspan On Social Security

Alan Greenspan has spoken.

Update: Run Scared interprets a Paul Krugman column calling Greenspan a partisan hack. As usualy, I find Krugman off-base. It doesn't sound to me like he's endorsed the Bush plan(as ill-defined as it is).

Update2: Matthew Yglesias has some dumb advice for Democrats

It's tempting to try and use such an influential figure's equivocations for short-term advantage, but you can't count on Greenspan in the long run, so you need to start going after his credibility on this subject.

Guess what, Matt. Attacking Greenspan's credibility will only work with those already implacably hostile to the President's plan. By spinning Greenspan as a supporter of the Bush plan, you're cutting yourself off at the knees.

A Start on That Linking: Stuart Taylor on Redistricting

Stuart Taylor comes out for redistricting, thoughtfully bashes some of the opposition to it, and explains how redistricting politics have been going down (hat tip and additional comments and links from Kaus).

I'm Ba-a-a-ack!

I'm ba-a-a-ack. Run while you can!

One change that I'll try to make in my blogging is to link more. I'll write about half as many new articles, but try to link more to articles that I like. Especially on the center left.

During the interval, I've decided that the center left side of the blogosphere doesn't mutually link enough. The center right, well, y'all are excellent at it, and so I'll try to pay you the compliment of mimicry. And I was writing a little too many new articles.

I'm more of a gasbag than a linker, but will try to do my small thing anyway, also trying to catch up with the rest of you that way a bit.

Rational opposition

I respect anyone who opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq. It took months before I reluctantly concluded (and not based on the specific arguments advanced by the the Bush administration) that it was the right thing to do. But I have always believed that once the commitment was made, failure could not be an option.

Fast forward to 2005, and I direct you to this article from a New Yorker.

Like most New Yorkers, I disagree with the Bush administration politically, temperamentally, and ontologically most of the time. Two years ago, however, unlike most New Yorkers (but probably like most Americans), concerning Iraq I went from 50-50 fence-sitting to fretful 53 percent support of an invasion. So the ups and downs of the war and occupation since have conformed, more or less, to my own deep ambivalence.

But for our local antiwar supermajority, the Iraq elections were simply the most vertiginous moment of a two-year-long roller-coaster ride. By last November, they’d hoped the U.S. would see things their way—and it was some solace that by January, a solid majority of the country apparently agreed with New York that Iraq was a mess and a misadventure.

Until the Iraqi vote: surprisingly smooth and inarguably inspiring and, in some local camps, unexpectedly unsettling. Of course, for all but a nutty fringe, it is not a matter of actually wishing for an insurgent victory, but rather of hating the idea of a victory presided over by the Bush team. (I may prefer the Yankees to beat the Red Sox, but I cannot bear the spectacle of Steinbrenner’s gloating.) Three months after failing to defeat Bush in our election, plenty of New Yorkers privately, half-consciously hoped for his comeuppance in Iraq’s. You know who you are. . . .

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush’s risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads, but here we are nonetheless.

I don�t mean to suggest, in the right-wing, proto-fascist rhetorical fashion, that every good American is obliged to support all American wars. But at this moment in this war, that binary choice of who you want to win is inescapable and needs to be faced squarely�just as being pro-war obliges one to admit that thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed or maimed or orphaned.

So, there it is. Both for me and those who legitimately argued for a different course.

Democratization In Egypt?

In The New Republic Online, Joseph Braude urges us not be become too intoxicated with the success of the Iraqi elections to insist that the upcoming elections in Egypt follow the same standard--i.e. not knowing who the winner is ahead of time.

The apparent success of the Iraqi elections--despite sweeping gains by Shia Islamists--might incline some Americans to believe that Islamist victories are an acceptable price to pay for the arrival of democracy in Muslim countries. And in some places, they'd be right. Egypt, however, is different. By contrast to some Shia Islamist parties, which began making conciliatory gestures toward the United States months before the invasion of Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood--a Sunni, Egyptian-dominated international movement--has been ratcheting up its anti-American rhetoric. Just a few days ago on Al Jazeera, I watched Abd Al Mun'im Abu 'l-Fattuh, a Cairo-born leader of the organization, affirm his support for the Iraqi insurgency, restate his opposition to the Camp David accords between Begin and Sadat, and appeal for nationalist-Islamist unity in the Arab world in order to confront "our real enemy," the United States. Leaving aside the fact that more radical groups, including Al Qaeda, arose directly from the Muslim Brotherhood--the mentoring relationship in Afghanistan between Brotherhood stalwart Abdullah Azzam and Osama Bin Laden has been ably chronicled in an Al Jazeera documentary--the stated goals of the mainstream Brotherhood leaders are bone-chilling enough. For instance, they aspire to undo the entire framework of Arab-Israeli peace. Hamas, the Brotherhood's offspring in Palestine, is now in the delicate early phases of political détente with the Palestinian Authority--an encouraging move due in no small part to the prodding of Egypt's intelligence services. A new Egyptian governing coalition with any significant Brotherhood presence would likely switch off such pressure, and Hamas could well regress toward militancy. In the Palestinian territories and throughout the Sunni-majority Arab world, political gains for the Brotherhood in Egypt--the country where the movement was born, and still the cultural and political capital of the region--would give a dramatic boost to hardline groups and undermine the nascent liberal movements that oppose them.

Let us remember that our goal is national security, and democratization is a means to achieve that goal, in appropriate situations. There is a window of opportunity in the Middle East with a new Palestinian leader who does not seem dedicated to the use of terrorist means, as Yasir Arafat was. Let's not screw this up by grasping for too much too soon.

More of the author's work can be seen on his blog, Cordova

Rightists Also Enjoy the First Amendment

Freedom of Speech is crossing party lines.

Sex Ed and the Cultural Divide

The divide in our country over cultural issues has been pretty distinct for decades, now. But it seems more stark, more pronounced, at this moment than at any time in my living memory.

Part of the reason for that is 9/11, I suspect, and part of it a newfound sense of political potency with the results of the 2004 election.

Constitutional amendments on gay marriage, the 10 Commandments in the courthouse, prayer in schools, abstinence-only sex education, attacks on darwinian science -- this is a pretty remarkable nexus of issues. Not every conservative Republican believes in the culturally conservative view on all of these issues. Niether does every born-again Christian. But some do. And there's a pretty powerful segment of society pushing hard all the way across this cultural front.

Nick Kristof covers one piece of this agenda in his op-ed piece this morning. He notes that the Bush administration is increasing funding for abstinence-only sex education, even as accross-the-board cuts are being implemented in the rest of the budget.

He cites one fact I was unaware of:

To get federal funds, for example, abstinence-only programs are typically barred by law from discussing condoms or other forms of contraception - except to describe how they can fail.

So kids can go through these programs without learning about contraception, even as 60% of American teenagers are having sex before age 18.

The obvious, logical approach is what's called "abstinence-plus" education. The focus is abstinence, but there is also information for that inevitable segment of youngsters who go a different route. We explain to kids how it's better to wait, and work on strategies for helping them do so. But we also help sexually active youngsters avoid disease, unwanted pregnancies, and abortion.

Kristof notes that 25% of sex-ed teachers are now using the abstinence-only approach, up from only 2% in 1988. Now the Bush administration is pouring more money into it. The religious conservatives may very well be winning on this issue.

Real Monsters

(Cross-Posted at The Debate Link)

It is a rare day indeed when I link to Conservative archetype Jonah Goldberg. However, this column really hit home.

"The tragedy of the imagination was that we couldn't appreciate that evil is real and it exists. In a society where everyone is a victim and it's not right to "judge" others, there's just not much room left for real monsters, while society itself becomes monstrous."

We can seek to understand the causes of evil, the rationales, the justifications, the roots. However, we can never forget that some things still just are evil. And we can never turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the present by invoking empty theories of moral relativism or ethical equivalency. For, as the Rev. Martin Luther King reminds us, "In the end, it's not the words of our enemies we will remember, but the silence of our friends." Global liberalism, "friends" of oppressed people everywhere, needs to find the voice to condemn and combat the grave injustices that occur around the world on a daily basis. Conservatives can hide behind realism and national self-interest if they want. Liberals have no such excuse. We either speak out or become accomplices in the act.

Thanks to my friend Luci Hague for originally drawing my attention to the article.

Red State, Blue State

Joel Kotkin, an Irvine senior fellow with the New America Foundation, has some interesting thoughts about the Great Divide.

American Cities of Aspiration and the Decline of Euro-America

What differentiates these two Americas is not so much politics, but perspective on the future. Cities of aspiration like Reno accommodate job growth and attract young families who hope that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.

They offer an environment that most of our forebears--wherever they might be from--would recognize as distinctly American. In the places people are leaving, what might be called Euro-America, the focus is on preserving older urban forms, cultivating refinement, and following continental norms in attitude, politics, and lifestyle.

Definitely worth a read.

Who says the Wild West is gone?

The Arizona Republic reports that in a bold move to stop rampant crime in restaurants, the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committe passed on a 5-2 vote a bill to allow patrons to carry guns in restuarants, including those that serve alcohol. To allay the fears of those who fear unrestrained gun play in a drinking establishment, the bill does not allow an armed customer to consume alcohol. (Wheww!! For a moment I thought this bill was getting extreme!) Hitting the target dead on as to why we need this law now, Darren LaSorte of the NRA stated:

law-abiding gun owners should be able to dine in restaurants without leaving their weapons at home or in the car, where they are useless for protection.

Call me a yeller carpetbagger from the East who doesn't understand the ways of the fiercely independant West but I just don't get this obsession with guns. Was anyone asking to carry a concealed weapon into TGI Friday's? Is there any gun law the NRA won't shill for?

Keep The Estate Tax!

The DLC's New Donkey argues that we should retain the estate tax, and that the Republican public opinion advantage on this topic is temporary--the result of good marketing that can be fought.

Moreover, truly dangerous and immoral concentrations of wealth often take generations to accumulate, with inheritances serving as the crucial link between economically rational and irrational--indeed, anti-competitive--consolidations of market power.

To put it another way, accepting the abolition of inheritance taxes makes any consistent and progressive fiscal philosophy incoherent. We're gonna tax high earners and small investors, but not big fat trust fund babies? Oh, really?

Aside from the principles involved, I am convinced Democrats can turn public opinion around on the estate tax. The extremist abolitionism of the GOP on this issue makes it easy for Democrats to be reasonable, in a way that's far more difficult in the complicated world of marginal rates on income.

I included support for an estate tax as a centrist position on the issues matrix, and no one objected to it. I want to focus attention on it right now. Do any centrists want to abolish the estate tax? If so, what's your argument?

My argument in favor of it is that it is consistent with a merito