Look at health care.  Since the Republicans aren’t playing, this has to be carried on the backs of Democrats.  The real meat of health care reform is access to a public option.  All of the rest is certainly noble, but without real cost control of a public option, this bill will not be able to control the spiraling cost of private health care insurance and will ultimately fail.  So what does the small minority demand? Gut the public option.  Oh we will let you have it, but at such a small sliver it will be ineffective to control costs.  Did I forget the opt-out option?  You don’t have to play if you don’t want too.  Both of these pieces of the health care reform demanded by the minority are designed to gut health care reform and leave the private insurance companies in the drivers seat.

Oh but it gets better.  Evangelicals and Catholics in the House with behind the scenes help from Republicans in both Houses, decided that they could legislate their religious beliefs by crafting a “compromise” that prevents health insurance from covering abortion.  The effect of this language is to make abortion throughout the nation unreimburesable and therefore inaccessible to most even if it results from rape, incest, or is a medical necessity.  We already have the Hyde Amendment which is bad enough, that prohibits public funds from being used for abortions, but this goes way further to say if you receive any federal funds, you can’t perform them.  That is way different.  It basically says that no insurance company in this country can offer insurance for abortion.   This even applies to the public option which is totally funded by premiums.

Now think about this a minute.  Here truly is a religious belief, that life begins at conception, being codified into federal law.  Second it puts the government in the driver’s seat to decide what medical procedures are appropriate.    For those conservatives who are afraid of big government, apparently they only fear it if they don’t agree with it.  But if it is accordance with their religious beliefs, then government should force it on the rest of us.

So the state of the state is getting worse and worse.  The majority can see the way forward, but what they want is negated by a minority because we have instituted minority rule in our Congress.  Then of course we have the God syndrome best evidenced by Joe Lieberman when, this weekend on FOX noise, he explained that he would have to block (read filibuster) health care reform if it contains a public option.  He said he could not in good conscience allow a program to go forward that would bankrupt our children.  Two problems here with this thinking:  The Congressional Budget Office says it will save money and he is playing God.  Americans want a public option but he is so important he has decided to decide for us.  Another good American who has no understanding of Democracy and has let his ego grow to unbounded proportions.

I would be the first to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.  So we don’t legislate laws that say you must have an abortion.  That would be tyranny of the majority.  But when the minority forces its views on the rest of us, Democracy no longer works.

So what does all this bode?  No real reform for years to come.  If people were awake they would understand that if we want to really have change and move forward, the makeup of the House and Senate must change.  And in the next election that probably will happen, but if the jobless rate doesn’t get better, that makeup may shift to those who are holding us back.  I can’t wait to see what they do with the Climate Bill.  Have a nice day.

History does love to repeat itself.  Think about the Republican Party back in the 60’s during the civil rights movement and its evolved form today.  They hate gays, and the words “States Rights” really meant let us discriminate against blacks.  It pulled in all those southern Democrats who were concerned about this equal rights stuff whether for gays, women, or people of color.  The Catholic Church is taking a page out of their playbook.  Come into the fold where it is still okay to hate gays and think women are second-class citizens and you can do it under the guise of religion

Oh, I can hear you now.  “Wait a minute.  Shouldn’t religious belief be protected and if these beliefs are their holy dogma, shouldn’t we respect it?”  In a word, that answer is no.  One has to truly wonder about a religion that treats some people as second-class citizens and discriminates against others.  One has to wonder why in a world where our understanding of the human condition continually evolves, some organized religion’s views do not.  It makes you question their and their God’s ethics, much less their morality.   A god who tells me women are second-class citizens and that gays should not have equal rights is a god I would have no use for.

What I find so interesting in our society is that we feel we should be tolerant of this intolerance because of their religious status.  Whether it is the Muslim burka, or the Catholic denial of women in the priesthood, it is one and the same thing.  Women in their religion are less human than men.  We have countries such as France outlawing the wearing of the burka or even headscarves and many think this is a discrimination against the Muslim religion.  We even have worse misunderstandings of tolerance in some countries in Europe where beatings of wives or genital mutilation are ignored because it is part of their “culture and religion”.  It is the promotion of intolerance by being tolerant of intolerance.

I have no problem with people who distain gays or believe that women should be in a subservient role as long as they are not in a position to propagate their discrimination or to act out their discrimination.  If you don’t approve of gay marriage, don’t marry a gay.  If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t get one.  If you believe that women are subservient to men, well good luck in this society.  But if you attempt to promulgate these ideas to enslave others through our tolerance of your religious beliefs, we should show no tolerance.

So here we have the Catholic Church, like the Republican Party saying “bring me your huddled masses of intolerant people.  We will shelter you and embrace you.  We will reinforce and protect your misguided and damaging intolerance through religious camouflage and the rest of the world’s misunderstanding of tolerance.”  Isn’t religion great?  Where can we get some more of it?

• Healthcare Reform – I listened to a reporter on MSNBC report that House Democrats are looking for a way to pay for the package.  Then he said “single payer plan is dead”.  My thought here is then don’t bother.  I can’t figure out what it is that Congress can’t figure out that there is only one way forward.  And in all of this discussion have you heard one informed discussion about how other countries who have universal care have proceeded, the strengths and the weaknesses?  No, but you have heard some wild claims to scare you to hang on to our failing system.  On the money thing, WE ALREADY PAY FOR IT.  It is just hidden in our fees, cost of goods, and our ever increasing insurance costs as the uncovered end up in emergency rooms which is the least cost effective way to pay for their care.  Gut up, understand we all pay for it, and just make it part of the tax base.
• DNA Testing – The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling, decided that convicts do not have a right to DNA testing to try to exonerate themselves.  The majority view was that this is a State’s rights issue.  Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “To suddenly constitutionalize this area would short-circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response.”  So if you live in one of those States who denies you the ability to try to exonerate yourself, this should give you great comfort.  Here is where the statement of nominee Sonia Sototmayer is showing so much wisdom.  She said that her experiences as a Latina woman would give her some insight and understanding that the majority may not understand (I am paraphrasing).  I cannot understand how anyone could believe that allowing the State to deny convicts the right to examine the evidence against them is anything but a lack of life and liberty.  But these guys have never been persecuted by the State and don’t get it.  You might want to ask yourself why States would want to refuse convicts, at their cost, to examine DNA evidence.  Maybe they don’t want to be proved wrong.  Most prosecutors are political positions.  The Constitution was written to protect individual rights and the five that voted against this case think their responsibility is to uphold the legislative process trumps  due process and standing up for the rights of our citizens.
• President’s Popularity – President Obama has taken some hits in popularity lately and it is deserved.  He is trying hard, but as I have written here before, he is taking the middle road and being timid and what we get is compromise to no where.  Where is his and the Democrat’s spine?  Whether it is gay rights, health care, torture, he is just becoming like the rest of them, deciding what is best for us and politically achievable.  Some day I want to be treated like a grown up.  Change is being compromised into more of the same.
• Iran – This is probably one of the most interesting stories about what change is possible.  Watching the brave Persians stand up for having their voice heard has been inspiring.  I think we have handled this well because any perception of U.S. meddling in the Middle East would be counter-productive.  It is also a lesson to us on Iraq and Afghanistan.  Iran is not the monlithic monster invisioned and Muslims will only resolve their problems internally.  Our involvement simply muddies the waters and feeds the fear of an infidel invasion.  The “Supreme Leader” has shown his fallibility and has cast doubt about this regime throughout the world.  Once the seed of change is planted, there is no turning back, just minor setbacks.
• Financial Reform – It is just barely a start.  Note that we are hearing all the usual arguments about government is bad, regulation hurts the economy.  But it wasn’t government that got us into this problem, but the lack of it.  There are tons of arcane details, but the only question you need to consider is whose economy will it hurt?  The bankers or the middle class.  The last eight years have been devastating to the middle class, but who cares, stock prices were up.  The reality is very simple.  In order to have less volatility, the swings in the market have to be smaller.  But we can’t have the wild profiteering that was going on in the financial industry.  So regulation hurts who?  The bankers.  We have nothing yet.

I believe his heart is in the right place on most of these issues, but he is getting infected with the “bubble” logic of Washington which loses sight of what’s right in the cloud of what seems politically possible.  Sometimes what is politically possible is not any better than doing nothing if it will not bring about real change.  So here is my list and challenges to the President and I am not pulling any punches.  From my point if he doesn’t soon sort these issues out, he will have failed at real change which is standing firm on our American ideals:

• Gay and Lesbian Rights – You promised to end don’t ask, don’t tell and have done nothing while good, loyal, and heroic Americans are being run out of the service.  Even Dick Cheney can see gay marriage has merit.  Yet you still can’t see that until this is a national right, there is no equal protection under the Constitution.  For a professor of Constitutional law, you deeply disappoints me especially when you confuses your religious beliefs with our Constitution.  Allowing these injustices to continue while you fail to exercise the political courage to do something about them is unconscionable.  Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Abortion Rights – It is clear that the killing at the clinic in Kansas was terrorism, plain and simple.  It is also clear that the anti-abortion people have fomented this hate campaign and their tactics are clearly blatant intimidation the Bush administration allowed to fester.  They are being successful because they are depriving women of a legal procedure that they have a right to.  So where is your outrage?  Where is your political courage to stand up and call this terrorism and to protect the legal rights of women seeking abortions? Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Single Payer Health Care – There is only one real change to our health care system that has any hope of working and that is a single payer system.  Some fall back government system if the private system fails is just kicking the can down the road one more time and setting us up for failure.  When do you stand up and look us in the eye and tell us what has to be done instead of pining for some bipartisanship in the sky that is destined to fail?  It is time you came out swinging for what will work, not what may play into the Republican’s hands. Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Reforming the Banking System – There hasn’t been any.  We have bailed them out and not made the boards or their executives pay the price for their bad decisions.  The reform for derivatives to make them transparent has a hole in it big enough to drive a truck through.  I understand the need to save the banks, but now they must pay.  We own them.  Let’s break them up so they are never too big to fail again.  And by the way Mr. President, where the hell were you when the bill to allow judges to adjust mortgages in a bankruptcy proceeding went down to banking lobby?  Do they own you too?  This was the one thing that could have really helped homeowners.  Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Torture and Detainees – Once again you are starting to look like George Bush lite.  First, get on with releasing and declassifying everything.  If you don’t, Republican obfuscation about its effectiveness will never be put to rest.  It is not behind us and it never will be if you continue on this path.  There must be an investigation and responsible parties held accountable.  There is no other way in a nation of laws.  There can be no indefinite detention or our right to habeas corpus and due process is no longer a right.  If there is an exception, then the right no longer exists.  It is only a right if you don’t make it an exception.  You of all people ought to know this.  Hiding behind some judicial process is not the intent of our Constitution.  Detainees must be tried or released and we must have the courage to live with the consequences.  Otherwise our whole system of government has no meaning.  Where is your leadership Mr. President?  Where is your courage?
• Terrorist Surveillance Program, Military Commissions Act, and the Patriot Act – These are all abominations enacted by President Bush and a frightened Congress who sold out our Constitution when they were threatened with fear for their safety.  It was the greatest example of the lack of moral and political courage this country has shown since the internment of the Japanese since World War II.  Instead of overturning many of these abominations, your attorneys have been upholding them in the courts making the same arguments about national security overriding Constitutional rights that the Bush administration did.  When are we going to restore our dignity and demonstrate the courage of our convictions by stopping this travesty Mr. President?  Have you succumb to the argument that to be safe we must jettison our most cherished beliefs?  Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Energy and Climate Change – Have we stalled in mid-stream?  Since gas prices have fallen, where is the energy plan that will not only get us off oil, but save our planet?  We are coasting and I see no focused plan.  Are we drifting along until the next crisis?  We need an aggressive 10-year plan.  Okay then, how about an aggressive 20-year plan, but the point is where is it?  Are we even moving toward it?  I fear we are losing momentum Mr. President.  Where is your leadership?
• Secrecy and Abuse Photos – Here is where I really feel you have lost touch with your roots.  Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have a bill to make the pictures of detainee abuse an exception to the freedom of information act.  Any bill from these two ought to be suspect just for starters.  Their point, which apparently you and Secretary Clinton seem to agree with, is that by releasing these, you may put some of our people in jeopardy, therefore they must be suppressed from public release.  THINK ABOUT THIS! The precedent you are setting is that if our government does some horrible or embarrassing thing that might, if known, put Americans at risk, it should never be released.  This is the same logic that Dick Cheney uses to justify torture.  If it will save American lives, it is justified.  I was an American fighting man and I did not fight so you could suppress the truth because it’s painful.  I fought so that our government will be transparent, that we know what the government does in our name and we can take action at the polls if we don’t agree.  THIS IS A VIOLATION OF EVERYTHING WE BELIEVE IN.  IT TARNISHES WHAT MAKES FIGHTING FOR THIS COUNTRY WORTHWHILE. You are trading safety for our right to know.  If, because you think not signing this bill you will putting some American lives at risk, you sign it, you will be denigrating everything I and many others fought for.  We will take the risk.  It comes with the territory.  If you don’t understand this, then we elected the wrong guy.
• Finally the Deficit – A recent study showed that our out of control deficit is only 7% due to your stimulus package and 3% from your agenda on health care, education, energy, and other issues.  Most of the deficit comes from the tax cuts of the Bush years (33%) and from Bush policies like the war in Iraq.  37% is from the business cycle and the increased spending for the safety net.  About 20% of the deficit comes from your extension of Bush policies like the war in Iraq and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000 and the bailout of wall street.  The Republicans are using this deficit as a fear card, yet they have no plan to curb it since they want even more tax cuts.  The author of the study had a simple conclusion:  “The solution, though, is no mystery.  It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts (for everyone).”  Unlike California, which is about to commit suicide by not raising taxes to invest in their future, when are you going to look the American people in the eye and tell them they have to pay their way?  Where is the leadership Mr. President?

Okay tough language.  We know he has made great strides in many areas and are we just asking for too much too soon?  My answer is no.  These are fundamental values that must be stood up for.  Otherwise we will make changes at the margins, but we may loose what is unique to being American.

Even some Republicans have asked the mouths of Newt Gingrich and  Rush Limbaugh to tone it down.  They are realizing that these racist attacks could alienate one of the biggest voting blocks in the future, but I have no idea how Republican ideology could appeal to them anyway.  I guess what is so shocking to me is that the whole debate is one smear campaign.  Is that what the Republican Party has come to?  Instead of standing firm on their values, they just make outrageous claims about their opponent and hope the feeble minded voter buys into this slander?

I think we are seeing the bankruptcy of Republican ideas in these attacks.  I think what we are seeing is frantic behavior resulting from Republicans starting to realize that their ideas no longer have merit.  They are having a panic attack.  The debates on torture and closing Guantanamo are a case in point.  They have become shrill.  There is no more give and take, but rude interrupting and shouting.  I guess it is hard to continue the torture has value mantra as more and more evidence is mounting that it didn’t.  So out shout your adversary.  Get more frantic.  It reminds me of a discussion I had a while back where a very conservative, conservative explained to me that George Bush wasn’t a conservative, but a liberal.  They are grasping at straws and the straws they are grasping at are less and less rational.

The problem is our 24/7 news media who looks at these shouting matches as entertainment and that is how they cover them.  As Frank Rich pointed out in his column this morning (Who is to Blame for the Next Attack)  and I pointed out in my blog (We Moved On, But They Haven’t) the press is making the same mistake it made before 9/11 allowing false information to go unchallenged.  Dick Cheney’s speech last week is a case in point.  When one side is making outrageous statements, and the other is trying to be rational, the media should not be a neutral moderator of this discussion, but debunk the outrageousness instead of letting it be presented as fact.  If they keep this up, we are doomed as they repeat their errors of the post 9/11 reporting.

I think when you look at the details of some of the allegations that are being made, you really start to see the irrational emotionalism of the Republicans.  Pat Buchannan, who MSNBC keeps giving a microphone to, has attacked Judge Sotomayor about the reverse discrimination suit involving white fire fighters.  Is his emotionalism he missed the whole point of the case, which was that throwing out the test as being unfair because no black firefighters had passed it was not a question of fairness. It was a question of whether throwing out the test was legal  Had she ruled as he felt she should, she would have had to ignore current law and precedent, and in fact, be an activist judge.  For a Republican there is no definition anymore of activist judge except one that doesn’t agree with them.

What we are finding is that Republicans have no argument on the issues based upon the facts because more and more, the facts are not supporting their arguments.  So they are turning to fear and wild emotional appeals not based upon a rational considerations of the actual reality.  Their mantra of small government, low taxes, and faith in the market place with minimal regulation has failed miserably.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t merit in these ideas, but they need to evolve to meet the reality we find ourselves in.  In order to do this, they must jettison their base because it is what mires them in their intransigence.  Right now the Republican’s base are the irrational psychos that need to be marginalized.  Said another way, If the Republican Party is going to be rejuvenated and become a big tent organization, then this base will have to be jettisoned. They are going to have to accept some moderation that their base will never stand for.  Until they are up to this task, we will continue to see the kinds of irrational and emotional attacks and wild claims instead of reasoned and thoughtful debate about our problems.  As long as the 24/7 cable media continues to feed on this circus, we are all done a great disservice and if we fall for it, we are doomed.

The bankruptcy is no surprise as it has been coming for years as Californians want more and more and are willing to pay less and less.  The government is immobilized by the mandatory spending initiatives that passed, and the minorities’ death grip on any compromise with the two-thirds majority required to raise any taxes.  It has been a recipe for disaster for years and it is finally coming to pass.  Paul Krugman opined about it on Monday in the New York Times (State of Paralysis) and he correctly identified the problem but then made the logical leap of what could happen to the federal government if we let a small radical political party (the Republicans) stymie action in the Congress.  In California they will acccept no budget with tax increases.  In one bargaining session the Democrats agreed that for every cut in programs the Republicans would agree to an equal increase in taxes, tit for tat if you will.  There would be no deal because the Republicans stood intransigently mired in no new taxes.  Not much room to negotiate here so we have finally run out of smoke and mirrors and the ship of state is headed directly for the rocks.

After the last “deal” went down in flames at the polls, Arnold and his spokespersons have been repeating that they heard loud and clear from the voters and the message was all cuts, no new taxes.  Actually I don’t think that was what the message was.  The real message was that these propositions were smoke and mirrors, more borrowing and kicking the can down the road without a permanent fix and that is no longer tolerable.  If they had presented a real plan that put us on the road to financial stability again, that got rid of all the borrowing, raised taxes, but also limited many programs that were popular with the voters but needed to be trimmed to balance the budget, the voters would have swallowed hard and accepted it.  But that is not what we got.  It was not possible because we are held hostage by one-third of the state’s representatives who will not allow any revenue increases.

What may be good is that most people have no concept of the impact of the cuts that are coming or how that is going to further depress California’s economy.  It is time for a wake-up call to those that think everybody else’s programs should be cut but not theirs.  It is time to demonstrate how we are all connected and when we think that just those lazy government workers will get laid off, and then the ripple effect shuts down your small business, it is wake-up call time.  These are the people who don’t think they need to pay school taxes after their kids graduate.  Remember we are now 47th in that spending and declining.  I think the only way they are going to get on board with the real changes that need to be made in California governing is if the system finally collapses and I just think it might.

My own thought here is that as long as we expect the super majority (two-thirds majority) to make and go along with really tough decisions, it is never going to happen, especially when the opposition party has become so radicalized (that would be Krugman’s assumption extrapolated to the federal government also (filibuster)).  My experience trying to bring about change in government bureaucracies is that there is always about 40% who are invested in the status quo, never want change, and sabotage any effort for change.  So until California is allowed to totally fail and we get rid of the two-third requirement for funding issues and let a simple majority decide our fate, California will never fix its problems.  California is a shinning example of failure of populace governance as we have a State constitution with over 500 amendments.  It needs to be trashed.

One thought to those Republicans out there that are obstructing any change in Washington or California:  Why not let the Democrats try their solutions?  If you are right then they will fail, the country will be in a mess and you will be swept into office.  You will finally have your mandate.  Instead you keep trying to maintain the status quo and you are creating the deep mess we are in by obstructing any change to the path we are currently on, which by the way was your bright idea.  What’s the problem?  Are you afraid they will succeed?

1. Those the courts have ordered released (21 Chinese Muslims who pose no danger to our country and cannot be released back to China)
2. Those that can be “safely” shipped off to another country for detention or rehabilitation
3. Those that can be tried in our Federal court system
4. Those that can be tried by rejuvenated military tribunals for violations of the laws of war (I wonder if Dick Cheney is in this bunch)
5. Those that cannot be tried, pose a danger to this country, and must be held indefinitely

Now the Republicans have begun a fear campaign that sadly the Democrats fell for.  This basically said detainees could not be kept moved to our prisons ignoring the fact that we already keep terrorists and serial killers without one escape.  Be afraid, be afraid, terrorists will soon be loose in your neighborhood.  This is, of course patently ridiculous, but the Demos and a fickle public fell for it.  But this doesn’t address what are we going to do with these guys and solve the real problem of closing Gitmo and finding a path to justice.  From the Republican point of view, apparently the status quo carried out forever is okay.  From President Obama’s point of view, Guantanamo is the symbol of our failure to provide justice and is a rallying point for Jihadists and must be closed.  This was the Republican point of view until they thought they could play politics with the issue which tells you all you need to know about their “patriotism”.

I will attack the first three and leave the last two for tomorrow’s blog.  What I find is that we are not rationally discussing these options and considering realistic outcomes.  We have the 17-21 Muslim Chinese that did nothing wrong and the only place to released them is here since we can’t send them home and other countries are hesitant to clean up our mess.  My thought here is get on with it.  We made a big mistake in our approach to using a big net to scoop up suspected terrorists and just as Fidel Castro made a fool of us with the boat people, our offering bounty for terrorists resulted in this misbegotten incarceration.  Sending them home would be to their death, so we have no choice.  Sometimes there are consequences to your stupidity.

Next let’s look at those who can be safely transferred to other countries for detention and rehabilitation. This is what the Bush administration did to the tune of 525 of them and the Pentagon is now claiming that 1 in 5 returned to the battlefield.  Now this 1 in 5 number is highly suspect since they include anyone who made a video about their captivity as “returning to the battle field”, but let’s say it is correct.  Considering their treatment, 1 in 5 is way better than the recidivism rate we get in our own prison system (roughly1 in 2).  But these fine American politicians who are standing up and saying not in my back yard would have no complaint with sending them home.  So odds are if we send them home, we are going to see some of them again on the battlefield.  Does this mean we should incarcerate them forever and do we have any legal basis for doing so?  How does this solve our problem of bringing them to trail or releasing them which is what our justice system demands?

Next we have the group who can be charged and convicted in our federal courts.  But think about it.  Except for a very few who are mass murders, many would not get sentences that exceed the time already served and then what happens to them?  They get released.  So the “move them to the federal system” only ensures that they get justice according to their crimes and then they too have to be repatriated to their countries where some will be seen on the battlefield once again.

Are you getting the drift here?  Unless they are sentenced to life imprisonment, and a couple will be, but most will not, or we keep them indefinitely at Guantanamo, sooner or later we will have to repatriate them to their countries and then it is their choice whether they rejoin the battle.  Keeping them indefinitely at Guantanamo means our justice system is a sham.  So the obvious conclusion is some will return to the battlefield where they will most likely be killed.  Exactly what is everyone so afraid of?   If justice is to mean anything, we will just have to live with it.  All the scare tactics in the world will not allow us to lock up everyone who might threaten us in the future.  We simply must live by our values and accept that freedom brings some risks.  Hopefully we can gut up and live up to our values.

This issue of arresting people before they can perpetrate a crime is a very troubling thought and is at the heart of preventative detention which I shall tackle tomorrow.  But the real question in a war on terror that may go on for years and years is just what do you do with prisoners?  What are we doing with Taliban caught in Afghanistan?  Food for thought.

What should disturb everyone is that Lindsey Graham apparently didn’t know this and his only intent in the hearings was to protect the past administration instead of getting at the truth.  Anyone who has read Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side already knows all this, but apparently the people who run our government don’t have time to get the facts.  What is sad about these Republicans is that they so want to believe torture works and therefore justified, they can’t look at reality.  Ex-Vice President Cheney has been beating the drum of effectiveness and claiming there are memos that show how well it worked, which Republican ditto-heads have been repeating every chance they get.  There are memos alright, self-serving and mostly inaccurate memos written by the CIA to justify their program and satisfy their bosses, but there is very little truth in them, which might I add, will come out if the memos do.

Even more interesting was the testimony of Former State Department counselor Phillip Zelikbow.  Mr. Zelikbow, a card carrying member of the Republican Party, was an advisor to Condi Rice in the Bush administration and he wrote a memo, yet to be disclosed because we aren’t adult enough to read it, laying out the legal errors in Yoo’s and others finding for the legality of torture.  He tale is one of how his views were suppressed and the memo ordered to be destroyed.  Oh no, they weren’t shopping for the legal justification to do the illegal.  Just like weapons of mass destruction, they weren’t looking for any other answers and the truth is what they already knew, not the reality swirling around them.

So as the truth is finally getting out, the President Obama took a giant step back yesterday when he announce that he was bowing to the pressure of the military to not release the photos of torture at other prisons besides Abu Ghraib.  He had the audacity to say that those responsible for this treatment of prisoners had been dealt with.  Now I can understand the argument that more photos could inflame Muslim hate and result in further attacks on U.S. forces, but to say that the guilty have already been punished is a giant lie and fails to examine how this pervasive abuse of prisoners was systemic, not a few bad apples.  Sooner or later we have to examine our moral failure as a society, and the leaders who took down this road, instead of continuing to blame this on a few scapegoats.  I am deeply disappointed that President Obama has failed in his role as our leader and took the easy way out.  Hopefully the courts will prevail and the bandage covering this wound will be ripped off so it can be treated and healed, not left festering.

Sadly it just isn’t on the torture front that President Obama is falling down.  His failure to confront the banks is leading to a continuing and festering wound in our economy.  The idea that we could just restore the banks to their past “health” is a recipe for disaster which is now becoming quite obvious.  As more and more people are losing their jobs, and shortly thereafter, their homes, President Obama looked the other way as the bill to allow Judges in bankruptcy court to modify loans went down to defeat.  This was a failure of moral courage to fight the banking industry not only by President Obama, but by the 12 Democrats who also voted against the bill.  You know how the Republicans voted.  Then there is the watered down bill of rights for credit card holders.  Ask your self why there is a waiting period of 9 months before even these water down protections go into effect and it tells you everything you need to know about the continued arrogance of the banking industry and their control of Congress.  The fact that this Congress, including 27 Senate Democrats, couldn’t tighten these regulations, but could add an amendment to allow visitors to national parks to openly carry loaded firearms tells you who these morons represent and it is not us.

I have written before that until the banking industry feels the pain that the rest of us are suffering because of their incompetence and unethical behavior, nothing will change. Right now they are just trying to restore where they were before the fall and at our expense.  If nothing changes, then we are just bailing water on the Titanic. Well it is obvious that nothing is changing and nothing is getting fixed.

Whether it is facing up to our immoral and unethical behavior on torture by treating we the people as adults and letting us know what really happened through full and open disclosure, or by realizing that bankers and their mentality of Master of the Universe got us where we are today and they need to be brought down, President Obama seems to be failing badly.  What we wanted was leadership and moral integrity driven by what should be, not what is politically expedient.  What we are getting is compromise to nowhere.  Just think about health care reform.  Why is the single payer system off the table?  What about gays in the military?  Are we just seeing Republican-lite?  This is not change.  It is a milder form of a trip to nowhere.

Mr. President.  It is time to take charge.  We need a full investigation by an independent prosecutor on torture we we need to release all the memos and pictures.  We need to break-up the banks so they are not too big to fail, or some rich they can buy their way with Congress.  We need real relief in this country and one of the ways to make the banks feel the pain is real bankruptcy/mortagage/credit card reform.  And you better than anyone should understand that making gays second class citizens by your neglect is just as bad as being part of their persecution.  Can we get on with what you promised?

What got me thinking about this is was a story in the New York Times describing how China was now has the lead in clean coal technology.  Now I would be the first to tell you that clean coal technology is mostly an oxymoron because no matter how you burn coal, CO2 is still a byproduct and there are other energy choices for us that bypass this problem of sequestering CO2.  But then you have China whose energy industry is primarily coal and you realize that in the short term, this is the most viable way of controlling greenhouse emissions.  So with the estimated largest coal reserves in the world, and 50% of our energy presently being produced by coal fired power plants, how come we are not the leader in clean coal technology and we could be selling this technology to the Chinese?

Well, the answer to that question is what I suggested at the start of this piece.  Businesses mostly have a very short-term view of profit.  Their stock prices and maximizing profits for shareholders is their primary goal, and any change to their industry that impacts their short-term profit is to be avoided at all costs.  Bottom line here is that most of our industries fight innovation and upgrading if it impacts the bottom line.  In many ways the business model that is being driven by stock market prices and maximizing short-term stockholder profits is, by definition, short term and counter productive to long-term health.  Enter our politicians who because they are driven by either conservative ideology, or short-term votes, and of course the money they can raise to obtain those votes, have exacerbated this stifling of innovation and growth.

First we have conservatives who feel regulation just adds cost to doing business, makes businesses less competitive, and stifles innovation.  So they have fought government energy regulations that might, in fact, actually make our industries more competitive.  Look at the cap and trade proposal to put an incentive into the market place to be more energy efficient and decrease green house gases.  The argument you hear is that this will just add costs to businesses that will be passed on to the consumer, and in affect be like a new tax (note the pejorative use of the word tax as in any tax is bad).  What they are really protecting is the status quo that inhibits innovation.  China on the other hand is requiring that every new coal power plant be built with this new technology; expensive now, and extremely cost and environmentally friendly in the future.  That is why they are leading in the clean coal technology.

Then there are the rust belt Democrats or the Southern Democrats who are either slaves to the industries that fund their elections, or to the workers in industries that will be affected by regulation.  The obvious example here is the automobile industry.  Had the government been successful at establishing tighter gas mileage standards many years ago, we might actually have cars that are competitive with foreign imports.  The biggest hurdles to doing this were the Democrats from Michigan.  But in a misguided effort to protect industries in their state from regulation, they have in fact signed their eventual death warrants.

In this new world that neither Republicans or conservative Democrats seem to be able to comprehend, it turns out that regulation may in fact be the engine that drives innovation and makes our industries competitive.  This is a whole new paradigm for the way we think about government intervention and regulation of businesses.  But sadly, the Chinese are leading the way, while our stuck-in-the-20th-century politicians continue to protect the status quo and sound the death knell for many of our industries.  Maybe in world where everyone is looking to maximize profits in the short-term, only the government can provide the incentives for business to invest in their future.