No milquetoast for me thanks

http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html

Don't know that I agree that God is a liberal, but just as we all cherry-pick scriptures (whatever writings we give ultimate value to), we all think God largely agrees with us.

google: petition against sopa/pipa

2012-01-18T09:35:00.001-06:00

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Internet Archive, Wikipedia, others go dark to protest SOPA

2012-01-17T16:19:00.001-06:00

'Rogue Site' The Internet Archive To Go Dark In Protest Of SOPA/PIPA

Thought for MLK Day

2012-01-16T08:48:00.001-06:00

If there's one thing King, Gandhi and Jesus teach us, it's that if you do enough good, they will kill you.

From Swiss Army Librarian: SOPA/Protect-IP links

2012-01-13T16:26:00.001-06:00

SOPA and Protect-IP Links

Library Juice on he said/she said journalism.

2012-01-13T14:06:00.001-06:00

New York Times, Compromise, and the Past

A different culture war front

2012-01-11T10:05:00.001-06:00

Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation

Stop U.S. legislation that would block public access to publicly funded research - Creative Commons

2012-01-09T22:03:00.000-06:00

Stop U.S. legislation that would block public access to publicly funded research - Creative Commons

OWS library looking good after being destroyed

2012-01-09T13:34:00.001-06:00

Occupy Wall Street Library Adds Hundreds of Books

I'm back

2012-01-08T13:09:00.001-06:00

For this election year, I'm back to my political blogging. One change: I've decided issues are more important, by far, than candidates or Republican versus Democrat (versus Libertarian versus Green versus...). Or, to put it another way, policies are more important than personalities and parties. Candidates and parties are, most of them, more interested in holding power than in helping the populace.

Some of the policy issues that matter to me right now:

Economic justice
Healthcare reform
Civil liberties, especially:

freedom of expression
privacy
separation of church and state

Intellectual property reform (expanding fair use, limiting copyright and ownership of ideas)
Environment

I don't have anything specific to say at the moment about any of these, but I will...

Economic observations from a complete ignoramus

2010-02-13T21:35:00.000-06:00

The global economy is not suited to its location.
Economies of scale include vulnerabilities of scale.
If some are too big to fail, that means others are too small to matter.
First Law of Easy Money: For every convenience, something must be sacrificed.

Corollary: People will generally make the sacrifice, unless it's of another convenience.

Link of the Whatever, 11-11-2009: Threatened Voices

2009-11-12T19:17:00.001-06:00

Threatened Voices: Tracking suppression of online free speech
(http://threatened.globalvoicesonline.org/)

This site describes itself as "A collaborative mapping project to build a database of bloggers who have been threatened, arrested or killed for speaking out online and to draw attention to the campaigns to free them." The front page is an interactive world map of bloggers facing threats -- or those for whom it's already too late. The default view is by country (the USA has 2), but you can also filter by status, including "under arrest," "released," "threatened," "deceased" and "unknown." The map has its glitches. When I selected "Unknown," Tanzanian blogger Malecela Peter Lusinde showed up in Texas.

The American bloggers are Elliott Madison, charged with hindering prosecution for using Twitter to help G20 protestors avoid police, and Elisha Strom, apparently arrested for publishing the address of a police officer.

When you view the page for a specific blogger, in addition to basic info and links to the blogger's site and any help-the-blogger campaign site, you'll see a related newsfeed from "trusted websites." Like the map, this feed is a little flaky. Stories supposedly related to Elliott Madison show up because they mention Madison Square Garden, president James Madison, or musician Liam Madison.

The profiled bloggers aren't always people I admire or agree with, but that's the point of free speech: it's for all sorts of speech, for all sorts of people. Agreeable speech doesn't need protection.

In some cases, I might agree that the blogging/tweeting in question broke a just law; but those are the fringe cases the forces of censorship love to present as typical, and it's easy enough to ignore them. Overall, I salute the work and goals of Threatened Voices.

Into the queue!

2009-10-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

Of all the arguments against improving health coverage, the most cynical is this: "If more people are insured, you'll have to wait longer to see the doctor."

If it means somebody else will get to see the doctor who otherwise would not -- who would have waited until they died -- I'll gladly grab a magazine and get in line!

And I'm sure many people who make this argument call themselves Christians. That's not the Jesus I'm familiar with.

As an aside, I hear that Phyllis Schlafly's son Andy is working on a new "translation" of the Bible, excluding anything that smells of liberalism -- but only because those passages are obvious interpolations, of course. That's a topic for another post, but I will say -- as the son of a preacher, and someone who got his A.A. from a fundamentalist Bible college -- that if you're going to toss out the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" bit (a passage the religious right has plenty of reason to be uncomfortable with), there are equally good scholarly reasons to exclude the resurrection.

Scrooge + Kafka + de Sade = insurance industry

2009-10-05T22:32:00.000-05:00

I've recently gone through a hell of a time with my new insurance coverage. I've been on some medications for a few years now, and I've been to a few doctors in that time, and they agreed on prescribing these meds. (I don't doctor-hop. I've switched family physicians once during that time, and I've seen a couple of specialists.)

When I went to pick up my refills, I was told two of my medications required authorization. Would have been nice to know ahead of time, though I'm sure it's in fine print on some document I was given. I won't drag you through the whole saga, but it took more than three weeks of calling the insurance company, the pharmacy and the doctor's office -- each of whom referred me to one of the others -- to get my medications. Three weeks of pain and little sleep. Meanwhile, the insurance company made me switch out yet a third medication. Apparently they, and not my doctor, decide what medical treatment I need.

This is why we need not only reform, but reform that includes a public option. Any reform that leaves the insurance industry in charge is only cosmetic.

I know I said in a previous post that we should take what we can get; but I think if we yell loudly enough, we can get the public option. It worked to get my meds.

Why I don't worry about our starving watchdogs

2009-09-25T23:23:00.005-05:00

If you follow, well, anything, you know newspapers are in trouble. We must do something, the cry goes up (largely from those in the newspaper industry, or their paid help in Congress), before we lose our best watchdog!

Various ideas are floating around to save newspapers, from making them non-profit, to direct government bailout, to paywalls for online content. All have their problems:

Non-profit status for newspapers: Will all newspapers qualify, including those published by crackpots, racist groups, and that guy with an antique mimeo machine in his garage? What distinguishes a newspaper from a newsletter from a magazine, and why shouldn't all periodical publications get this break? Will papers still be able to endorse candidates? Will they have to pay back taxes if they endorse the wrong one?
Direct government bailout: <sarcasm>Yeah, that should keep them objective.</sarcasm>
Paywalls: See numerous articles on TechDirt and elsewhere for a complete debunking of this strategy. I don't think people will necessarily balk at the expense, but they will at the inconvenience. And do newspapers really want to eliminate links to their sites? I, as a blogger, will never knowingly link to an article people have to pay to read.

What is the solution, then?

Who says we need one? If newspapers are watchdogs over government and industry, they have for the most part failed miserably. With a few exceptions, they are either willing propaganda machines, or fail to do basic fact-checking.

Look at the recent articles on ACORN. Have you noticed that there's nothing in most of the news stories that doesn't echo GOP talking points? That there's nearly no questioning of Giles and O'Keefe's version of events? Journalists are supposed to be skeptics. I don't claim to be particularly objective or hard-headed, but I know that all the facts are never on just one side of any story.

Where have I seen this kind of mesmerized echolalia on the part of the press before? Oh, yeah... weapons of mass destruction. Iraq. Americans are still dying there, aren't they?

That's what our wonderful watchdog press has done for us. I won't miss it much.

What we can do:

Donate to ACORN
Join ACORN
Contact your elected representatives and encourage them to restore ACORN's funding.
Write your newspaper about slanted/inadequate coverage -- no matter what the story, and even if it's slanted towards your end of the political see-saw.

It must be miserable to live in Canada

2009-09-24T23:29:00.001-05:00

I work in the volatile IT industry, and have changed employers (and therefore insurance plans) frequently over the years. Because of a chronic medical condition, I have to make sure I don't have any lengthy gaps in coverage. Nonetheless I often, as now, find myself fighting my new insurer to continue my medications. I've gone without two of them for a couple of weeks now.

If the Republicans really want to save me from bureaucrats coming between me and my doctor, they'll help pass meaningful health care reform.

But of course, that's not really their goal. They just want to make sure it's the bureaucrats who own them standing there.

What they don't understand -- what the conservative philosophy in general misses -- is that when everyone is better off, everyone is better off, including the rich. Wealth rises. If there's nothing at the bottom, the flow to the top ends.

And health care is, among other things, an economic issue. Let's forget for a minute about the concrete, easy-to-track dollars and cents I spend on my medical care. If I'm in pain, I'm less productive and more error-prone. If I can't sleep, ditto. If I'm worried, more of the same. If I become unable to work, a replacement will have to be hired and trained. All of that subtracts from the wealth of those up the economic food chain. The gains are short-term, but the losses are long-term.

But it's not just an economic issue. We're talking about people suffering and dying so someone else can have a more attractive spreadsheet. We're talking about insurance companies getting fat on pain and despair. There's nothing new in that, but that doesn't mean it's right.

What will happen if we don't get meaningful reform? My guess: people will stop buying insurance. People will say, "Why should I pay premiums just so they can deny me coverage?"

After all, my dear insurance executives, my big pharma executives, and all you legislative lackies thereof, we aren't stupid. You may fool us for a while, but eventually we can see where our interests lie.

Can you?

Emanuel Cleaver II on ACORN

2009-09-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

Don't miss the "Trial by YouTube" post on Congressperson Emanuel Cleaver's blog, Under the Clock.

ACORN's real crime is registering minorities to vote. I have no doubt of that.

Racism? In America? That's a myth spread by uppity, um...

2009-09-18T23:12:00.000-05:00

I'm glad President Carter has said what everyone knows, no matter how loudly some deny it: a large part of the opposition to President Obama is driven by racism.

I'm not talking about the positions people take, on health care reform or any other topic. I'm talking about bile.

Look at a few of many recent events. A clamor of protest arises when the president of the United States wants to tell children to study hard and stay in school. ("Billy, get away from that man!") Republican activist Rusty DePass compares Michelle Obama's ancestors to a gorilla. Posters at Tea Party events portray President Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. Limbaugh refers to Obama as "a black man with a chip on his shoulder." Glenn Beck warns that Obama has a deep hatred of white people. (And they accuse liberals of playing the race card!) A newsletter show a fictitious Obama food stamp, complete with watermelon and fried chicken. An email from a Republican staffer in the Tennessee state government contains pictures of the presidents -- and Obama is a pair of white eyes on a black background. Obama receives more death threats than any previous president. The "birther" movement continues to insist that Obama's a foreigner, and therefore not legitimately the U.S. president. And a Republican House member yells at the president during a congressional address.

Now, maybe congresspeople should disrupt presidential speeches as a matter of course. A persuasive case could be made for that. But I don't think it's a coincidence that it first happened to our first African-American president -- or that this rebel yell came from Joe Wilson, a member of The Sons of Confederate Veterans who staunchly defended flying the Confederate flag over the South Carolina state capitol.

Of course, racism has been redefined by Limbaugh and Beck as black hatred of white people. Oh, and by the way, war is peace, ignorance is strength, and freedom is slavery.

Health Care Reform: make the call!

2009-09-18T22:16:00.000-05:00

Health Care Reform

"A small daily task if it really be daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." --Anthony Trollope

I contacted my senators and congressman this week -- as I did last week, and plan to do every week -- to encourage them to pass President Obama's health care reform bill. The bill doesn't go as far as I'd like, but a small step is still a step. Once the reform becomes the new status quo, we can push further.

Last week, I emailed my representatives. This week, I phoned. Next week, snail mail. I don't know how they track their messages, but when I called, only one office asked for any information about me, and that was just my zip code.

The left got motivated during the last election. (No surprise, after eight years of Cheney's administration.) We won, but winning was just the start. Now it's time for the unglamorous, daily grunt work. Now we move forward by inches, or fight holding actions, or minimize lost ground, as necessary. The real heroes are those who do the small, necessary things daily, even when they'd rather not.

"Mainstream sentiment" -- WTF?

2009-09-11T23:35:00.002-05:00

In a recent post, I said Senator Kit Bond needs to know how out of touch he is with mainstream sentiment. That was sloppy writing. I just grabbed a prefabricated phrase and hammered it into the blog post.

I don't care how far in or out of the mainstream any opinion is. If the number of people who agree with a thought has any relationship to its validity, that relationship is likely to be an inverse one.

Besides that, I don't believe it's the duty of elected officials to represent our opinions. Their job is to represent our interests. Ideally, they will listen respectfully to the voters, then do what they think is right.

What I really hope to accomplish by writing to Senator Bond, and encouraging others to do so:

Maybe a miracle will occur, and either a chance phrase or the volume of responses he gets will lead him to change his mind (or his political stance).
Failing that, the number of pro-reform messages he gets might at least cool his active opposition.

Why, yes, I do take it personally

2009-09-11T23:22:00.001-05:00

Hey, xkcd! Don't harsh my buzz!

GOP, Fountain of Hope

2009-09-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

Republicans are running scared on health care reform. It's obvious in the shouting and intimidation (what else are people packing guns for?) during town hall meetings. It's obvious in the way they clutch at conspiracy theories. It's obvious in Joe Wilson's outburst during Obama's recent speech. And most recently, it's obvious in the GOP's insistence that we need to “start over” on the health care bill. Reform is breathing down their necks, and they are starting to panic.

It's not only Obama who gives me hope; it's his opponents.

But Obama can't do it alone. He needs our help. I'm contacting my representatives at least once a week to express my support for the health care reform bill.

Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II and Senator Claire McCaskill are already supporters, but they need to know their constituents are behind them. Senator Kit Bond opposes the bill, and he needs to know how out of touch with mainstream sentiment he is.

The reform on the table is not all I would wish for (I'd support complete nationalization of health care), but I believe it's the most we can achieve at present, and it's far, far better than what we have.

Tactical Tip #1

2009-09-11T01:09:00.002-05:00

If you let your opponent frame the terms of the debate, you've already lost.

No milquetoast for me, thanks!

2009-09-09T22:28:00.000-05:00

The folks at Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty are dedicated to a cause I fully support, but it's too bad they changed their name. They used to be the Western Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The name change implies they no longer want to get rid of capital punishment -- they just want to offer choices.

I'm sick of milquetoast liberalism. It's all right to be against something. Not every evil leaves an absence when it's exterminated, and we don't always have to choose a successor.

We liberals don't have to be rabid or shrill, but we must be bold and speak plainly. We ought to be tolerant, but should not show respect for hypocritical cant, crackpot rants or thinly disguised hate speech. If we do, how will we then show true respect to the thoughtful opinions of decent people who disagree with us?

Not that I'm free of ranting and occasional hypocrisy myself (not to mention rambling), but I appreciate being called on it. Well, after my initial defensiveness and irritation, I do. Eventually. Usually. I think.