Mosque-ing the the real problem
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Mainstream media lets us down. Again.
Last night’s Daily Show had its usual fun with the political controversy engulfing plans to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. We’re going wall-to-wall on this topic here at TPP this week, both because it’s an important debate and because it touches so many basic moral and philosophical questions.
Of many pokes at the mainstream media during this clip, one worth noting in particular is Stewart’s scathing attack on news outlets that seem more concerned with the political fallout of what politicians say about the cultural center than whether building the thing is right or wrong. A New York Times headline from today underscores this media focus: “G.O.P. Seizes on Mosque Issue Ahead of Elections.”
Are there any issues where it is simply wrong to play politics? Read more
When choice doesn’t matter
Charles asks some provocative questions in his post today about the role of government versus the power of the market to lift people out of extreme destitution.
But his approach, which focuses on individual responsibility and government constraint, begs the question by assuming, first, that all government action counts as a constraint on liberty and, second, that all individuals are capable of personal responsibility.
This account is not baseless, but it leaves little space for one reason people may suffer: structural barriers to opportunity and liberty. Read more
End of the Tea Party?
The high price of political participation in America
Few anti-establishment movements have had such swift success as the Tea Party, which has moderate Republicans scrambling, a new breed of conservatives rising, and even a congressional caucus. But the one thing it doesn’t have, according to Politico, is money:
Some leading tea party activists are concerned that their efforts to reshape American politics, starting with the 2010 elections, are being undermined by a shortage of cash that’s partly the result of a deep ambivalence within the movement’s grass roots over the very idea of fundraising and partly attributable to an inability to win over the wealthy donors who fund the conservative establishment.
This is problematic. Notes conservative grassroots leader Ned Ryun: “Without money, nothing quite works like it could.” Read more
The big rethink
The U.S. Senate doesn’t have it easy these days. George Packer’s full-frontal assault on the upper chamber of Congress in last week’s New Yorker has been making the rounds in the national media, and many have been eager to agree with his excruciating portrait of a dysfunctional institution:
The two lasting achievements of this Senate, financial regulation and health care, required a year and a half of legislative warfare that nearly destroyed the body. They depended on a set of circumstances—a large majority of Democrats, a charismatic President with an electoral mandate, and a national crisis—that will not last long or be repeated anytime soon. Two days after financial reform became law, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would not take up comprehensive energy-reform legislation for the rest of the year. And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans’ care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing. Already, you can feel the Senate slipping back into stagnant waters.
Along these lines, E.J. Dionne makes a radical suggestion in his Washington Post column today:
I’ve reached the point where I’d abolish the Senate if I could. It is more profoundly undemocratic than it was when the Founders created it and less genuinely deliberative — problems compounded by a Republican minority’s strategy of delay and obstruction.
Is it time to rethink the basic structure of our representative democracy? The idea isn’t so crazy. As Packer points out, “The upper chamber of Congress was a constitutional compromise between popular sovereignty and state sovereignty.”
If that compromise is no longer necessary, why do we need a Senate? The United Kingdom’s House of Lords, for example, has very little power. There’s no single correct way to structure a government.
Discussion of abolishing the Senate is unlikely travel far anytime soon, but there’s no reason why that’s the case. Sometimes thinking about our future means rethinking our past.
-Sam
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user cliff1066.
Fear the quack
Republicans are now stoking fears that Democrats could use the s0-called lame duck period – when defeated incumbents finish out their terms between election day and the next congressional session – to push through key priorities:
As Congress heads home for August, Republicans and conservative activists have a new rallying cry to energize voters: Fear the Lame Duck!
With dark warnings, GOP members of Congress and right-wing media figures are suggesting that the Democratic majority could use a post-election session of Congress to jam through tax increases, cap and trade, immigration reform and legislation making it easier for unions to organize workers.
Whether or not this approach could work, there is a real debate about its legitimacy. On the one hand, it’s within legislative rules. On the other, it flouts the basic democratic values of representation and accountability.
This is true for at least a couple of reasons. First, defeated incumbents arguably no longer represent anyone, despite the fact they remain sitting until the end of session. Second, one of the basic premises of a lame duck legislative approach is that now-defeated incumbents no longer need worry about the political fallout of their votes. But “fallout” is basically a watchword for “answering to voters.”
I guess sometimes it takes ignoring constituents to get things done in a representative democracy.
-Sam
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user HVargas.
Can you send me a telegram?
My Blackberry is blocked
Most global BlackBerry users are comfortably addicted to their wireless devices, which are email and Internet capable. But for those in the United Arab Emirates, BlackBerrys are about to become obsolete. Not because some better device has come along, but because the government has decided to block online data usage through the devices, which are difficult to monitor.
Civil liberties are a different story in the UAE, but many are concerned that discouraging the use of BlackBerrys could have a negative impact on business. Many commercial BlackBerry users in the UAE seek out the device precisely because it offers a modicum of privacy from government’s prying eyes. A previous attempt to monitor UAE BlackBerry loyalists amusingly failed:
Last year, Etisalat, the U.A.E.’s main state phone company, gave users an upgrade that turned out to allow Etisalat access to all the users’ messages. The upgrade also decreased battery life and made the phone get painfully hot, so people soon stopped taking the upgrade.
While privacy has a different standing in UAE, should global data users worry about sending emails to UAE residents whose smartphones could be monitored? And does the increasingly international flow of information thanks to the Internet impact how its use should be protected? Read more
Is WikiLeaks WikiLegal?
Transparency redux
Last week I sided with transparency over state secrets in the case of the Washington Post‘s special reporting on the U.S. intelligence buildup since 9/11. In that instance, the willingness of the intelligence community to pass on making any real objections provided no reason to think the usual cost of transparency – safety or national security – was in play.
Today it’s same song, second verse. The transparency site WikiLeaks has just released 91,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan war, and most major papers – which received advance copies – are running various stories related to the documents.
The White House isn’t happy. According to a statement from National Security Adviser Jim Jones:
The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.
Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted.
This is the opposite case of the Post. WikiLeaks gave the government no heads-up, no chance for review, no opportunity for objection.
Now that’s not itself wrong. Read more
Wild on: state secrets
Love, life and freedom of the press in 2010
Forgive the 90s reference (but, for the record, E! network still exists–I recently watched their broadcast of Knocked Up from a hotel bedroom). The Washington Post is launching today a major expose on the U.S. intelligence community. Entitled “Top Secret America,” the project has been “nearly two years in the making,” and explores “hundreds of thousands of public records of government organizations and private-sector companies” to describe the ” the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
The Post is sparing no expense. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Dana Priest and William Arkin led the reporting, which will be presented through a unique website, a three-part story, a PBS Frontline special, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page.
A headline from the right-leaning Washington Times blog sums up the classic conundrum that faces intelligence reporting: “Is Wash Post harming intelligence work?”
Editors from the Washington Post went out of their way to explain their scrupulous approach to investigating a critical story while respecting the bounds of this highly-sensitive national security domain:
Because of the nature of this project, we allowed government officials to see the Web site several months ago and asked them to tell us of any specific concerns. They offered none at that time. As the project evolved, we shared the Web site’s revised capabilities. Again, we asked for specific concerns. One government body objected to certain data points on the site and explained why; we removed those items. Another agency objected that the entire Web site could pose a national security risk but declined to offer specific comments.
We made other public safety judgments about how much information to show on the Web site. For instance, we used the addresses of company headquarters buildings, information which, in most cases, is available on companies’ own Web sites, but we limited the degree to which readers can use the zoom function on maps to pinpoint those or other locations.
Our maps show the headquarters buildings of the largest government agencies involved in top-secret work. A user can also see the cities and towns where the government conducts top-secret work in the United States, but not the specific locations, companies or agencies involved.
Is that enough? Read more
The Obama paradox
How transformational change and buck-passing make odd bedfellows
Despite a tough economy, weakening approval ratings, and a recalcitrant Republican opposition, President Obama has managed to chase down two longtime liberal white whales, and is hot on the heels of a third (or fourth).
Earlier this year he signed into law a health care reform bill that many regard as the biggest piece of social legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs of the 1960s. Congress is about to approve the largest set of financial reforms since the Great Depression. Now Democrats are hard-charging for a new energy bill (which may include a climate-related component). Even immigration reform seems possible.
While many find it surprising the President has been able to pursue such a sweeping agenda, one little discussed key to his (and Democrats’) success has been the consistent practice of front-loading benefits and back-loading costs:
Health care reform cracks down on insurers right away but won’t force people to buy insurance until 2014. A new consumer financial protection agency kicks in almost immediately under the Wall Street reform bill, but banks won’t feel its full force for more than 10 years. And even Democrats’ nascent immigration reforms include at least an eight-year wait before illegal immigrants can apply for permanent residency – after Obama leaves office.
Some say this is good politics, but is it right? Read more
Loyalty and sports
Is loyalty a virtue in the modern sports environment, or is it simply an illusion to which we cling until the business considerations kick-in, sending athletes to the highest bidder?
The question has become acute for tortured Cleveland basketball fans who worry that hometown star and NBA wunderkind Lebron James will join a new team this Thursday during a nationally-televised broadcast tomorrow.
Those who say that loyalty should not figure in ethical thinking at all are clearly wrong. Families, communities, and even nations expect some measure of personal sacrifice in the name of loyalty from time to time.
But loyalty also has its limits. And appropriate self-interest is also an acceptable, if not laudable, quality.
So, will Lebron be in the wrong if he travels to greener pastures?
-Sam
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from flickr user Keith Allison.
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