Unfinished Business

Now that the vox populi has spoken in the most expensive election in the history of human civilization (courtesy of the Supremes and Citizens United), it might be a good time to take a breath or two before the 2016 campaign begins to take stock of the unfinished business of the current, but soon to expire, 112^th Congress.

As Ezra Klein has noted, the 112th Congress will likely be remembered as one of the worst in American history. Not only did the shameful 1112th Congress pass fewer public laws than any Congress since Harry Truman, it is more polarized and more unpopular than any previous Congress, scoring the same approval rating as Hugo Chavez -- 9%. 

How did they manage to earn such a level of disapproval you ask? Well how about creating a false crisis over increasing the debt limit in the summer of 2011 that cost the US its AAA credit rating, dealt a blow to business and consumer confidence, and set back the recovery? This was an act of economic sabotage which, had it been done by a foreign power, could have been regarded as a causus belli. But then they did something even stupider -- as part of the deal to end this manufactured crisis the venal 112th Congress decided to create a special “supercommittee” to hammer out a grand bargain on a deficit reduction deal. They tied failure of this “supercommittee” to a spending sequester that would enact  automatic  across the board spending cuts that neither party likes, which will really cripple the economy if allowed to take place. And guess what --- the “stupidcommittee” failed, and those automatic spending cuts are now due to be enacted on January 1, 2013 unless the remnant of this dysfunctional lame duck Congress does something about it.  Good luck!

The problem is that the 2012 election basically affirmed the status quo with the Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives and the Democrats control of the Senate and White House. This is the same recipe for partisan gridlock in Washington that we have had for the past few years, and there is no reason to think that the results of the election will do much of anything to break this pattern.

One may reasonably ask: How did it get this bad? Maybe it is the fault of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Bull! It was the Republicans fault. Don’t take my word for it, read the book by two longtime Congress-watchers, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” who say that the Tea Party tide of 2010 that caused the dysfunction of the 112th Congress. Although that tide is mercifully receding, Republicans will still control the majority in the House of Representatives for the 113th Congress and will most likely continue on their path of obstruction. 

One might think that having now failed to achieve their major political objectives, to ensure that Barack Obama would be a one-term president, and to gain the majority in the Senate, the leaders of the GOP (Guardians of Plutocracy) would decide to back off their ideological extremism and return to moderation. I wouldn’t bet on it. There aren’t any moderates left in the Republican leadership to make the case for this kind of sensible move to the political center because they were purged in the Republicans primaries earlier this year. This is the reason the prospects for progressive legislation in the next four years continue to be poor. I agree with Alan Wolfe that it is all but certain that the Republicans in the 113^th Congress won’t be any more cooperative with President Obama and the Democrats than those in the 112^th were, and that ”It will take more than one presidential election before the Republicans will ever prefer governance to politics.”

Wolfe goes on to argue that since Obama cannot hope to get any significant new legislation through the next two Congresses, he should become the “Educator in Chief” and really explain to Americans that we really, really do need to do something about wealth and income inequality and about global climate change (perhaps someday). While this may be realistic and pragmatic advice, I do not think it is good enough. President Obama should lead with a real legislative agenda, not with just a bunch of talking points for the punditocracy to jabber about.

Nor do I think it is a good idea for President Obama and the Congressional Democrats to try to “play nice” with their Republican colleagues. There will be some who will say that given how narrow the Obama victory was and how divided the country is, it would be best to pursue the path of moderation. Go for the relatively noncontroversial issues: a sensible deal of taxation and deficit reduction that balances cuts in entitlement spending with modest increases in the nominal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans; increase spending for education, shore up Medicare and Medicaid in sensible ways, and so forth. If President Obama reaches out to the other side with an olive branch, the thinking goes, and there is hope for piecemeal incremental progress.

The problem with this advice is that it is basically the game plan Obama followed in his first term in his forlorn attempt to overcome Washington partisanship. What happened was that the Republicans bit the hands that reached out to them and responded to offers of compromise as their cue to move the goal-posts even further to the right. By leading with moderation all Obama got was a ratcheting of the center of political discourse into the crazy zone (death panels and socialism) and at the end of the day, no deal anyway. One hopes that Obama has learned this lesson and recalibrates his negotiation strategy so that he does not begin with a moderate left-center position, and then cave to center or to the right of that, as he did in agreeing to the extension of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for an extension of unemployment insurance in the midst of the Great Recession.

Instead of moderation and compromise, I think that progressives both within and on the fringes of the Democratic party need to urge that President Obama and the democratic party leadership in the Congress go on the offensive with a real progressive legislative agenda, rather than with a modest and moderate one that their Republican colleagues will obstruct in any case. The progressive wing of the party was loyal to the Democrats this time around and did not undermine his chances of re-election by supporting third party candidates, like Jill Stein, in large numbers. It is time for progressives to urge that Obama adopt a progressive policy agenda in his second term. 

One of the big failings of President Obama’s first term was that he held onto the notion that he could overcome partisanship in Washington by just being reasonable and moderate in his political objectives. He took “Medicare for All” off the table from the get-go and went with what was essentially a Republican, market-based, plan to extend medical insurance to (almost) all Americans. Now that “Romney-care” has been rechristened as “Obamacare” and the supreme Supreme, Chief Justice Roberts, has given it his constitutional blessing, it would be a good idea for the Democrats to push to put back the “public option” that was stripped from the proposal even though it did not make any difference in the end on the number of Republicans who voted for the Affordable Care Act. So, the first element of a progressive democratic agenda is to work to strengthen and extend Obamacare and to ensure its successful implementation. It will never become “Medicare for All” in its present legislative form, but can out an end to some of the greatest injustices of a market-based health insurance system. How about bringing back the “public option” that was traded away in a failed attempt to win over some Republican votes?

Second, we need another round of economic stimulus to accelerate the economic recovery. With much of the East Coast devastated by Hurricane Sandy (the real October surprise in this election) what better way to deliver a needed jolt to the economy than by passing a significant federal infrastructure spending bill? It could be structured so that it contained grants for states and counties to apply for federal funds to rebuild critical infrastructure damaged by the storms, but it should also address the need to build a new, more resilient infrastructure that can withstand or bounce back from future environmental shocks like the one we have just experienced. This is not rocket science – it must be obvious even to so-called “low information voters” that what America needs now is (literally) “nation-building” in America – we have to rebuilt America’s physical infrastructure – our plumbing, electrical grids, our roads, trains, and airports, and our water supply systems to be able to survive the altered climatic conditions of the 21^st century.

Third, America needs to get serious about controlling carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. Forget about “cap and trade” -- go for a  rebatable carbon tax of the kind James Hansen and his colleagues have proposed. Such a tax would enable us to place a real market price on burning fossil fuels of all kinds, while providing consumers with a monthly “green dividend check” to offset the increased cost of fossil fuel consumption. Democrats should put the “Climate Stewardship Act” on the legislative agenda, and let the Republicans howl all they want about the EPA and “too much regulation.” The Roberts court, having reaffirmed that Congress can levy taxes (duh!), will not be able to block it either. Then educate the American people as to why it is needed and how they and their children and grandchildren will benefit from a quicker transition to an energy economy that is less reliant on fossil fuels. While the Republicans are trying to figure out how to tell more lies, hit them with a bill that will eliminate the current subsidies to the petroleum, coal, and natural gas interests that have spent millions on TV ads trying to make people into “Energy Voters.” Yeah, well some of us already are energy voters, and we are voting for renewable energy not for more fossil fuels.

Fourth, we still need to have real financial reform that breaks up the banks that are too big to fail and places restrictions on risky gambling on Wall Street. The bankers largely backed Romney in this election; Obama owes them nothing. He should proceed to reign them in.

Fifth, we need urgently to resolve the immigration mess once and for all with a policy that allows paths to permanent residence and in some cases citizenship to the millions of undocumented workers on whom our economy depends. The passage of the “dream act” in Maryland may be a sign that the country is moving away from hysterical nativism and xenophobia on this topic.

Sixth, lets end the failed “war on drugs.” Let our Mexico and our southern neighbors address the many problems it has created for them dealing with the “narco-economy” that it has created. In this light it might be instructive to revisit the history of Prohibition (see Boardwalk Empire) and reflect upon the important lesson in political philosophy delivered by the failure of the Volstead Act – one cannot enforce virtue through legislation. Instead create community-based programs to deal with drug addiction as a public health problem and increase funding for similar programs to address other vices with adverse health impacts such as alcoholism and obesity. While we are at it, propose an “amnesty” bill that would have the effect of emptying the prisons of non-violent offenders convicted on drug charges and given ridiculous mandatory minimum sentences for victimless crimes. Calling for a general amnesty for such offenders will really give the Republicans fits, but so what – fuck ‘em. If they are going to say “no” anyway to anything that the Democrats propose, then at least propose things that make real sense and would make a real difference. Then when it does not pass, spare no effort on blaming the Republicans for sabotaging our democracy.

The rhetoric of this campaign has been surprising free of Democrats playing the “blame game” – even though it is obvious to most observers that the retrograde 112^th Congress has been obstructing progress on the economy, health care, infrastructure spending, immigration reform, and most other reasonable and necessary legislative initiatives. No doubt this was due to a political calculation on the part of democratic campaign strategists that people don’t like it when you blame others for you own failures, and that making such a charge is tantamount to admitting that much of the democratic legislative agenda was thwarted in the 112^th Congress at a time when the President wanted to run on his record. But that political calculation is now expired, so the democratic leadership should feel free to put the House and Senate Republican caucuses on the defensive by proposing an ambitious and progressive new legislative agenda for the 113^th Congress, and blaming the Republicans when the bills die in the Congress.

Freed from the need to run for re-election, President Obama should lead more confidently and aggressively in his second term both domestically and internationally. Domestically, he should be pushing his democratic allies in the Congress to take up this more forward-looking agenda and fight for it with him, not only as the “educator in chief,” but the “persuader in chief.” Obama needs to get off of the sidelines and go over Congress directly to the American people.

He also needs to attend to important foreign policy challenges, for instance, forging a relationship with China’s new leader Xi Jinping that will end our schizoid “frienemy” relationship and ask him to step up as a real partner in maintaining international peace and security in places like Syria, Iran, and Pakistan, not only North Korea. He also really needs to put more pressure on Israel’s right-wing coalition to deal seriously with the settlements and the question of Palestine. Dare I mention, Cuba?  

One last thought, while I think that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have done about as well as could be expected given unrelenting Republican obstructionism, sabotage, and lying, their tenure as party leaders should also expire with the current Congress. The Democrats should elect new, more progressive leaders in the House and Senate to carry the fight to the next level. But before they go there is still that little matter of the “spending sequester” and the fiscal cliff that looms before us. I think they should try to convince the rump 112^th Congress that before it passes into history that it should have the decency not take the rest of us down with it.  

Weapons of Mass Deception

With the political campaign season poised to go into high gear next month it is important that voters become aware of the various propaganda techniques being employed by the candidates and their surrogates. Having taught logic for many years I am familiar with the standard rhetorical techniques used to persuade audiences to accept conclusions by means of invalid or fallacious arguments. In this political season there is already plenty of name-calling, fear-mongering, oversimplification, distortion, half-truth, false dilemma, misquotation, ad hominem and ad miseracordiam arguments, and other classic informal fallacies being bandied about. But in the digital age political propagandists have invented some novel forms of deception that employ juxtaposed visual imagery, audio cues, and other media techniques designed to mislead audiences into drawing conclusions for which there is no evidence and believing what is not true. 

A fun campaign party-game involves getting a group of friends together and watching the evening news to see how many fallacies and propaganda techniques you can spot. For a useful primer on the new kinds of techniques developed for TV and digital media, I recommend the Patterns of Deception pages on the Annenberg Public Policy Center's website Flackcheck.org. Here you can find descriptions and examples of techniques such as deceptive dramatization, photo-shopping, visual vilification, and glass housing. 

I was particularly interested in glass housing, a propaganda technique which I had observed but did not have a good name for. Basically, glass housing involves accusing your opponent of something which you yourself have done. The name derives from the saying, "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones," which suggests, of course, that the mud one slings at one's political rivals may also end up on oneself. This pattern of deception relies on selective omission of crucial information, namely that the speaker is in fact guilty of the very same supposed heresy. It is a confusional technique, since it creates the impression that the speaker is against something he is actually for. Using this technique may invite the charge of hypocrisy, but only if someone in the audience bothers to fact check the claim against both the target's public record and the speaker's own record. Courting a charge of hypocrisy appears to be an acceptable risk to many politicians who seem to place no value whatsoever on logical consistency. In the example on the Flackcheck site there is a snippet of a Santorum Michigan TV attack ad accusing Romney of not supporting the automobile industry bailout, while conveniently failing to mention that Santorum did not support it either. 

I believe that I have also observed examples of an interesting variant of glass-housing, which I will call preemptive glass housing.  This is a particularly cunning technique if used carefully. Preemptive glass housing involves accusing your adversary of doing something that you or your surrogates are about to do. For example, in the last few days the Romney-Ryan campaign has been putting out statements claiming that the Obama-Biden campaign has been "driven by division, attack, and hatred," in other words, he is accusing Obama of  "going negative." I suspect that this  is an example of preemptive glass housing designed to inoculate the Romney-Ryan campaign against similar charges when they come out swinging with millions of dollars of negative advertising following their upcoming convention. 

Preemptive glass housing allows one to appear to be the moral and honest character in the mud fight by inviting audiences to believe that the speaker could not possibly be in favor of the tactics he is criticizing his opponent for using. It works like a vaccination against possible future counterattacks as well, since it has primed one's audience to regard retaliation as evidence for the original charge, whether that charge had any truth or not at the time it was published. My reading is that by stating now that the Obama-Biden campaign has become harshly negative (which it hasn't), the Romney-Ryan campaign is preparing its audience for it doing just that. When the Obama campaign returns the fire, the Romney camp will just say "I told you so." They will also be in a position to claim that "They started it." But, if Obama-Biden refuse to take the bait, then the smear will stick. Pretty neat, eh?

Why do I think that the Romney-Ryan campaign is going to go harshly negative on Obama? Well because that is basically how Romney secured the Republican nomination. Whenever any primary opponent began to outpace him at the polls (which was often), the Romney camp unleashed a torrent of negative campaign ads against them ahead of the next primary election. This use of negative campaigning worked well against the likes of Gingerich and Santorum, and now Willard is planning to use the same strategy against Obama. Romney's donors and Super-PAC backers understood this all along, which is why they have been stockpiling millions of dollars for negative ad buys in the last two month before the election. 

Romney's choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate provides also evidence that he has decided that his best chance of winning the White House is to mobilize a lot of angry Republicans to turn out on election day while his political allies in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida suppress the Democratic vote, particularly among black, Hispanic, and working class voters. He seems to have reached the conclusion that Obama's favorable likability numbers, as compared to this own, make it unlikely that he will be able to pry loose the votes of many independents, who are the traditional targets in presidential elections. He probably also figures that those primary voters who supported other Republican contenders during the "anybody but Mitt" primary period will come out to vote against Obama, but only if he can get them excited and angry enough. So, he is feeding the Republican base its red meat with Paul Ryan, and will be playing to their baser instincts to get them to the polls in large numbers.

So that is why my money is on the Romney campaign turning fiercely negative in the next few weeks following the Republican convention. If you think this campaign has been dirty, dishonest, and deceitful thus far, "Baby, you ain't seen nuthin yet." 

The Symbolism of the Titanic Disaster

On April 15, 1912 the ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, drowning 1517 passengers. On this centenary of the disaster there are memorials taking place in Belfast where the supposedly “unsinkable” steamship was built,  from Southhampton England, its port of departure, and in New York, its intended destination. Church bells are also ringing in Halifax Nova Scotia from whence ships sailed to recover bodies from the icy waters of the North Atlantic and where 150 of those who perished were laid to rest. 

The Titanic went down on its maiden voyage. Its passengers were a cross-section of humanity. There were the poor who booked third class tickets dreaming of making a new life for themselves in America, as well as the rich who booked the luxury cabins and were taking a holiday cruise. When the ship struck the iceberg in the early morning hours panic ensued. There were not enough lifeboats for all of the passengers. The best of human nature came fully into view, as some brave men and women decided to remain on board the sinking vessel to allow others to board the lifeboats. The worst was also evident, as some of the richest passengers, including the ship’s owner, J. Bruce Ismay, left the sinking ship in partially loaded lifeboats The ship’s wireless telegraph operator, Jack Philips, stayed at his post in the “Marconi Room” until the end,  tapping out the distress signal at that time “C, Q, D: Calling all ships. Distress, We have struck an iceberg.” And the ship’s band, led by Wallace Hartley, continued to play the song “Nearer, My God to Thee” as the great vessel sank into the depths of North Atlantic.


News  of the Titanic disaster was broadcast nearly globally in less than two days, and is one of the earliest example of a “viral” global news event. It also sparked a regulatory revolution that has led to many improvements in safety on board ships, though they did not prevent the Costa Concordia from running around on January 13, 2012 killing 30 people, due to human error. In the past 100 years, the Titanic has spawned hundred of books, thousands, and a “block buster” 1998 movie by James Cameron that made the tragedy real to a new generation of people.

Our fascination with the Titanic derives in part from its serving as a metaphor and symbol; it is an icon for a ship on a different voyage, one that we now are all passengers on. The Titanic symbolizes human civilization since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 17th century. The voyage began with philosophers, such as Descartes and Francis Bacon heralding the dawning of a New Age in which the secrets of Nature would be unlocked by science and technology allowing us to exert our control over the natural world, to better satisfy human needs and desires. Their faith in the capacity of human reason to discover the Laws of Nature in order to Subdue Nature to our Will, turned out, as we all know, to be well-founded.

The Enlightenment’s faith in scientific reason  brought us Issac Newton, the steam engine, constitutional democracy, international trade, factories and mass production, bicycles, electricity, corporations, railroads, cotton gins, the end of slavery, telegraph, photography, internal combustion engines, airplanes, motion pictures, automobiles, radios, telephones,  plastic, refrigerators, submarines, vacuum tubes, oral contraception, transistors, helicopters, computers, fax machines, audio tape recording, nylon, nuclear weapons, Space Shuttles, DVDs, and IPads. Those of us fortunate enough to have been born in the latter part of the 20th century into one of the more prosperous and developed countries, have enjoyed the benefits, comforts, and capacities that far exceed those available a century ago to even the wealthiest passengers aboard the Titanic.These benefits and new capacities came about largely because of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and our belief in Reason’s power to discover the Laws of Nature. But the fruits of Reason were widely diffused in society by Corporations operating within a Capitalist Economic System. The industrial civilization which has been created by this combination of factors, is mighty and impressive, so much so, that many believe it is “unsinkable.”  Some of the passengers expect that this voyage of discovery and invention will continue to lift humanity, and when they peer into the far future, see that we will one day have the ability to leave the Earth in Space Ships and become Wayfarers in the Universe, going where no one has gone before.

But there are also some passengers, among whom I count myself, who fear that we are at the present time heading towards a catastrophe. There are icebergs on the horizon whose shapes are beginning to become visible through the fog and dark of night: global climate disruption, species extinction, terrorism, deforestation, drought, famine, economic collapse, global epidemic, mass starvation, genocidal conflict, conflict over diminishing land and water resources, ecosystem collapse, over population, peak oil, and nuclear war. Those of us who see these ominous shapes on the horizon are trying to urgently warn to other passengers of the danger of our situation by pointing to these looming shapes on the horizon.

But most of the other passengers are not paying much attention to us. They are going about their businesses on the ship,  working to make money so that they can acquire more of the gadgets and goodies that the ship’s shopping mall deck has on offer. Down below, the passengers in third class are trying to make their way to the upper decks to join in the conspicuous consumption carnival.  Up on the bridge, the captain seems to be vaguely apprehensive about what dangers may ahead, but he is skinny and kind of weak and does not have the power steer the ship onto a new course, especially given that there is a group of lunatics on the bridge who seem intent on grabbing the wheel and turning the ship directly into the path of the icebergs. Other passengers are sleeping, or drinking, or having sex; just enjoying themselves.          

There are also some people in the ship’s chapel. Some are praying for a Savior to arrive, while others are talking about the possibility of a “paradigm shift” to a new global consciousness. These latter folks see the dangers that lie ahead if we continue on our present course. They try to practice living in a more sustainable fashion by planting urban gardens, and bringing canvas bags to the local farmer’s market, which they go to on their bicycles or in their new hybrid vehicles. They also host “webinars” and organize conferences in which they discuss finding “inner peace” through yoga and meditation, and then spread the gospel of the New Earth that is possible through sales of books and DVDs. It is comforting to be around these types because they remain optimistic that a New Age of global peace, justice, and abundance is still possible if we only “Occupy Ourselves.”

Other passengers, aware of the impending calamity, are already heading towards the lifeboats. They are moving out of the cities, creating sustainable communities, and re-learning the skills necessary to live off of the land, the skills that our ancestors once had, but which Modern Humans, have forgotten. When the catastrophe hits, these people think they will have their own arks, and will be counted among the survivors.

Some other passengers are trying to do science and to invent new technologies that will help us avert disaster. They are making packaging out of mushrooms; cooking food on solar ovens, erecting windmills, and building baby incubators out of spare automobile parts. It is not clear that any of these inventions will actually avert the Collapse of Industrial Civilization, but at least they are doing some practical things that may one day change the ways we relate to human society and to the natural environment. They are not willing to abandon their faith in Human Progress through Science and Technology; they are trying to apply scientific reason  to the problems and threats that we are now facing. But even as they work, the ship sails on; the bridge controls are dysfunctional, there are not enough lifeboats, and the icebergs are still floating on the horizon.

Still others are sending messages over the Internet (like this one) out to anyone who might happen to be listening for a distress signal: ”C, Q, D, --- C, Q, D.....C. Q, D.....”

But no one is out there listening who is coming to rescue us;

We are the ones we are waiting for;

And many of us will be going down with the ship.....