Taxes for thee but not for me

David Axelrod was on Fox News Sunday this past weekend and was asked about President Obama's taxes which were released this past week. I found the exchange over the Obamas' taxes very interesting and telling:

(CHRIS) WALLACE: It turns out that he [President Obama] paid a tax rate of 20.5 percent, which is a lot less than the 30 percent he talks about and yes, it is lower than what his secretary pays.

AXELROD: It is.

WALLACE: And the president has -- if I may, David, the question I have for you is: if the president feels so strongly about tax fairness, is he going to he contribute money to the Treasury and they have a special department just for this, to help with the deficit?

AXELROD: Listen, Chris, first of all, the reason that his tax rate was so low was in part because 22 percent of his income was donated to charity, mostly to these Fisher Houses around veteran hospitals. So --

At this point Wallace interrupted Axelrod to point out that Mitt Romney also contributes to charity. Axelrod agreed and then began to point out the differences between President Obama's tax proposal/plan and Governor Romney's. Wallace eventually returned to the original question:

WALLACE: I take it that he's [President Obama] not going to contribute money to the Treasury to help with the deficit.

AXELROD: Listen, well, that's not the way we operate our tax system, OK? We don't run bake sales. It's not about volunteerism. We all kick in according to the system. And the system allows that -- look, the fact that Mitt Romney pays 14 percent on $20 million income is not the issue. The issue is that the system permits it and he would perpetuate that and he would enhance it.

On the one hand, let me say, "good on Obama". If, as libertarians, we believe that taxes are theft, then we ought to commend any attempt to avoid paying them just as we would any defense against other criminal actions. On the other hand, it seems disingenuous of the president to call for the rich (millionaires, specifically) to pay 30% or more of their income in taxes while conspicuously failing to do so himself because the "system" allows it. Perhaps, it would have been wise for Mr. Axelrod to raise the point that the Obamas did not earn over a million dollars last year, and therefore, would not be subject to the president's proposal(s). But he didn't. In fact, he went on to defend the president's use of the system to lower his tax rate -- he's just following the rules. Nevermind that those rules permit him to contribute more.

There are a number of points raised by this story, all of which deserve a post of their own, but I don't have the time or energy to delve into each so deeply. Here they are, briefly and in no particular order:

• Taxes are not voluntary and are collected at the end of a government gun.
  
  Axelrod admits as much when he says [emphasis mine], "that's not the way we operate our tax system, OK? We don't run bake sales. It's not about volunteerism. We all kick in according to the system." The only issue I take with his description is the use of the phrase "kick in". Stop enforcing tax laws; only then can we truly know how "voluntary" taxes really are.


• No person should ever pay more than the "system" requires, the criminality of the system itself, notwithstanding.
  
  Obama's actions and Axelrod's defense of them (see the quote under the previous point) bear this out.


• It's hypocritical to call out Mitt Romney for paying "only" 15% of his income in taxes.
  
  Governor Romney lives under the same tax system that President Obama does. Why is it okay for Obama to "kick in according the system" while Romney is vilified for doing exactly the same thing?


• President Obama, himself, doesn't believe in his own tax proposal(s).
  
  As the Fox News story points out, Obama paid less in taxes, percentage-wise, than did his secretary. If he believes that a system in which this kind of "inequity" is allowed is "unfair", why wait for the system to change? Nothing is preventing him from correcting this particular injustice right now. Thus, we can infer that correcting this problem is less important to him than keeping his own money.


• Why are taxes proportional to income but not other things, too?
  
  If taxes are what we pay for government goods and services, why don't rich people pay more for everyday goods and services like groceries and carwashes?


• War is a racket.
  
  I note that the overwhelming majority of the Obamas' donations went to the Fisher House Foundation. It's been funny (interesting, not ha-ha) for me to see people on the political right who hate Obama with a passion turn around and lavish praise on him for donating money to this organization. Their love of war and support of those who fight it seemingly knows no bounds.
  
  The politics obscures the absurdity of it all. Why does the government pay for war and the private sector pay for cleaning up the messes left by it?
  

When does it end

Right now, I've got 18 tabs open on my Internet browser (I use Firefox in case you're interested). This is a real rarity for me. I never have more than 3, possibly 4, open for any length of time. One is the window in which I'm typing this entry, one is iGoogle, one is Facebook, one is a news story about Timothy Geithner "extending" the deadline by which the U.S. Congress "must" raise the debt ceiling, and the other 13 are news stories devoted to Osama bin Laden. I first found out about bin Laden's death when my wife received a text message from her sister who had apparently been watching the news. I received the same text message a few minutes later. (Good work AT&T, delivering text messages to two phones 5 feet away from each other 5 minutes apart.) I have to admit that my first reaction was: so what?

It was immediately obvious to me that no troops would be coming home. No civil liberties would be restored. We would all continue to be forced to take our shoes off and be molested at the airport. I even commented sarcastically to a friend of mine: "Awesome, so the war on terror is over and we all get our liberties back?" In reality it would seem that just the opposite has turned out to be true. Secretary of State Clinton was quick to "reassure" the public that "battle to stop al-Qaeda and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of Osama bin Laden." Moreover, major government officials and every major news source and pundit has told us that we are in even more danger now because of the possibility of retaliatory attacks. The NBA took the extra step of mandating metal detectors at playoff games. So, killing bin Laden made us less safe? If that's the case, then logic would dictate that he shouldn't have been killed.

After confirming my sister-in-law's text message, we changed the channel back to our "regularly scheduled programming". Before going to bed, we turned again to the news to see what, if any, additional information might be available. We were treated to clip after clip of video showing people dancing in the streets in places like Times Square and the White House. I was disgusted to see the very same people who denounced people who danced in the streets while burning American flags after the death of one of our soldiers acting in the exact same manner. The news feed on my Facebook account exploded that evening with people cheering on our government and our military for summarily executing another human being.

In dying, Osama bin Laden showed us that we're really not so different from the very people that we deride as war-mongers and who we believe are incapable of a peaceful existence.

He taught this country the consequences of operating an open, free society. Literally, he showed Americans the price of their liberty, how many of their principles they'd be willing to cast aside, and how quickly they would do it.

In other words, bin Laden showed American exceptionalists how unexceptionally they behave when faced with horrors most older nations have endured.

The writer is referring to our weak-kneed acquiescence to government intrusion on liberty here in the U.S., our paranoia at the thought that a terrorist is hiding around every corner, and our rampant xenophobia. His point is equally applicable to our reaction to the news of bin Laden's death, though. The overwhelming reaction, that of proclaiming America's strength and celebrating our actions in the streets, was no different than that of the people you see in other parts of the world dancing upon hearing the news of the killing of American soldiers.

I woke up the next morning to hear people on the radio explaining that it's different when American's celebrate. You see, Osama bin Laden killed innocent civilians on September 11th, 2001. Therefore he is evil, and not only was his killing justified but morally right. On the contrary, our soldiers are overseas doing good work, and when they are killed, that is wrong. Never mind that the "rebels" in Afghanistan see us as an invading and occupying force; never mind that America regularly kills civilians as part of its eternal war on terror; never mind that America locks up and tortures "militants", denying them any sort of access to a justice system to sort out their guilt or innocence; never mind that America has "peacefully" killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, via sanctions of various kinds. Everyone wants to point to 9/11 as if bin Laden started this fight and America's hands are clean, but it's been going on for much, much longer. All of those American actions I just cited have been and continue to be used as justifications for Al Qaeda's actions. And regardless of how it started, it is only escalating.

But, there are likely those that remain unconvinced that America has any responsibility for the fight in which it now finds itself, but, nevertheless, it must see it through. That is, they believe that "we didn't start the fight, but we're going to finish it." So then, when does it end? If one truly believes that we are going to finish it, then the answer would be "when we've killed or captured all of the terrorists". As I pointed out, though, capturing terrorists and refusing to bring them to justice -- for those that have forgotten, justice means a trial in a court of law, not vigilante killings or indefinite detention -- or killing them, especially when unarmed, tends to drive more people into the fight. This so-called solution actually perpetuates the problem. Yet, it seems to be the solution America is intent on carrying out.

Attorney General Eric Holder sat in front of the U.S. Senate and had this to say about the whole affair:

The operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed was lawful. He was the head of al-Qaida, an organization that had conducted the attacks of September 11th. He admitted his involvement and he indicated that he would not be taken alive. The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self defense.

Ah, national defense. Of course. I wish Mr. Holder would have gone on to explain exactly what our military was defending when it shot and killed an unarmed man. Apparently, bin Laden resisted, but I find it hard to believe that a team of highly trained and very well armed men were unable to subdue a frail, old man in regular need of dialysis, without killing him. Jeffrey Toobin explains that the U.S. had to kill bin Laden because messy details like whether bin Laden would be given a civilian or military trial, who would defend him, and where his trial would be held are just too difficult for us to sort out. That's right; when the government has a "difficult" problem on it's hands, killing people is the only way out. I'm not sure why that same principle didn't apply to Saddam Hussein or Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

But let me return to the idea of national defense brought up by Mr. Holder. Exactly what are we defending with our actions overseas? The knee-jerk answer is always "freedom". It's hard for me to believe that anyone can still respond this way with a straight face; I'm chuckling to myself a bit just writing this. Even if it were true, though, what will be left should we ever finish fighting this war on terror? We've abandoned the idea of innocent until proven guilty. We've abandoned the idea that people are entitled to a trial before being assessed any sort of punishment (including death). We've abandoned the idea that our government is subject to the same laws as the people. If the war on terror, by some miracle, ever does come to an end, we will find that we were busy throwing away our freedom, all the while claiming that our military was overseas fighting for it.

The truth is that we're not fighting for freedom. We're fighting for empire. We're fighting to bring the rest of the world under our control. Osama bin Laden understood this all too well. "We, alongside the mujaheddin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt," he explained.

The campaign taught bin Laden a lot. For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s plan for the United States, too.

And that returns me to my original question: when does it end? I can't say for sure, but my money's on "soon". As for the "how" question, I'm not so sure that we're not about to follow in the Soviet Union's footsteps and those of every other major empire throughout history. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

When will we learn? Or, will we ever learn?

It should be abundantly clear to everyone now that the U.S. involvement in Libya is not limited to the creation and enforcement of a no-fly zone. "Adm. James Stavridis admitted that, while allied forces were not yet considering the deployment of troops on the ground in Libya, it was a possibility." Furthermore, the Washington Post reports that the U.S. is using planes to bomb Gaddafi's ground forces focusing their effort on "halting advances by government ground forces in and around key coastal cities". It would seem that the U.S., while not directly fighting Gaddafi, is in fact allied with his enemies, even going so far as to consider arming them despite reports that the rebels are comprised, at least in part, of members of Al Qaeda.

I'm reminded of this clip from The Daily Show a few years back:



As Glenn Greenwald points out this morning:

The real question is the wisdom of this escalated involvement. How many times do we have to arm one side of a civil war -- only for that side to then become our Enemy five or ten or fifteen years later -- before we learn not to do that any more? I wrote earlier on Twitter, ironically, that one good outcome from arming the Libyan rebels is that it will lay the foundation for our new war 10 years from now -- when Commander-in-Chief George Prescott Bush or Chelsea Clinton announce that we must wage war to stop the Libyan faction from threatening its neighbors and supporting Terrorism (with the weapons we provided them back in 2011). One of the most reliable ways that the posture of Endless War has been sustained is by our flooding the world with our weapons, only to then identify various recipients as our new (well-armed) enemy. Whether this is a feature or a bug, it is a very destructive outcome of our endless and always-escalating involvement in military conflicts around the world.

The demise of the rule of law

After the U.S. and other nations attacked Libya this past weekend, I posted a portion of one of Laurence Vance's recent blog posts as my Facebook status:

But to American soldiers I would say this: Is there any country you won’t attack? Is there any order you won’t obey? Without a declaration of war or even a congressional authorization, you are just acting as the president’s personal army.

Having broken the first rule of American politics—never criticize the military—I expected a swift and vitriolic reaction to those words. Much to my surprise, none ever materialized. However, I did have to further explain that the purpose of those words, as I understood them, was not necessarily to criticize the military. While the question/statement does call into question the military oaths of enlistment/office, it was intended primarily to draw attention to the President's having sent troops to war without congressional authorization.

This, to me, was a clear violation of Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S Constitution which grants the Congress the power to declare war. It turns out that I wasn't alone in thinking that. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, in 2007, when asked about the President's authority to send troops into action without congressional authorization said the following:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Since U.S. military involvement in Libya began, the President, via his staff, has gone to great lengths to assure lawmakers and the public that the U.S. is not at war. No less than Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems to disagree, and while he stopped short of using the phrase "act of war", others have not been so reserved in their descriptions of the actions. In fact, the President himself, who now believes he does not need congressional authorization, still took the step of notifying the Congress of military action, "consistent with the War Powers Resolution", anyway. (Wikipedia explains that the use of "consistent" instead of "pursuant" is because Presidents are loathe to recognize limits on their ability to wage war. The word "pursuant" implies that the President recognizes Congress's limit on his office. "Consistent" implies only that the President is following the law, not that he recognizes its legitimacy.)

It's curious, to say the least, that the President felt compelled to notify the Congress while, at the same time, arguing the U.S. isn't at war. Nevertheless, it would seem that the President has placed himself (back) within the law... such as it is. The question of whether or not the President has the power to send the military into action without congressional authorization is still ambiguous, at best, though. When exactly can the President wage war? According to James Madison's notes taken during the Constitutional Convention, the framers intended the President to have the authority to use the military without congressional authorization only in one specific case. During the convention, the legislative branch's power to "make" war was changed to "declare" war for the purpose of "leaving to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks". However, since Libya did not attack the U.S., nor was it even threatening to do so, it would seem that the President's action is illegal, even considering his notification to Congress.

So, what about the U.N. Charter to which the U.S. is a signatory? On March 17th, 2011, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya, and Chapter 7 of the charter allows the Security Council to act with force to enforce its resolutions. Thus, the President claims he is "acting under a mandate issued by the United Nations Security Council" which is binding on the U.S. presumably under Article 6, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution which gives treaties made by the federal government the force of law. There are two problems with this claim. First, Chapter 1, Article 2, Paragraph 7, of the U.N. Charter specifically prohibits U.N. involvement in "matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state", e.g. civil wars. (Some might argue that the text that follows, "this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII" allows for the actions now taking place. I disagree for two reasons: 1) not prejudicing the application of enforcement measures is not the same as allowing enforcement measures in violation of the preceding "principle", and 2) if my first reason is incorrect, then the second half of the paragraph contradicts, essentially nullifying, the first which makes no sense since the section would basically then read "the U.N. has no jurisdiction in domestic affairs unless it does".) The second problem with the President's claim is that Article 6, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution declares that the Constitution is the supreme authority when it and a treaty made pursuant to it are in conflict. That is, the President's authority to use the U.S. military cannot be increased by any treaty beyond what the Constitution allows.

It should be clear now why the President is working so hard to portray the U.S. involvement in Libya as anything but a war. Based on notes taken during the Constitutional Convention, it is plain that the framers never intended for the executive branch of the U.S. government to have unilateral authority to send the military into action except when timely consultation with Congress was infeasible due to a sudden, unforeseen attack. Since many (but not President Obama as evidenced by his own words in 2007) have forgotten this intent of the framers, President Obama is focusing on this (not) being a war in order to deflect any accusations of usurpation of Congress's authority. Much like the use of "consistent" vs. "pursuant", the meaning of "torture" vs. "enhanced interrogation", and the meaning of "is", the debate will revolve around what exactly constitutes "war". Ultimately government lawyers (the Supreme Court, if the debate ever reaches that level) will decide what "war" is. No longer is the U.S. government subject to the rule of law.

The rule of law is, in part, the idea that no person is above the law. This is in contrast to "ancient" times when the king or ruler of a nation or people was him or herself the law and, in many cases, above or not subject to it. When this nation was founded, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", and it is this idea that gives rise to the notion that all people, therefore, should be subject to the same laws. Other writers at the time also argued for this idea. Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, wrote that "in America, the law is king" in reference/contrast to earlier ideas that the king was the law. The Massachusetts Constitution also contains this ideal, using the phrase "government of laws and not of men".

In order for the law to be king, however, it must "possess the characteristics of [...] certainty". And this is where the problem lies. The law is (no longer) certain. Can the government listen to your phone calls without a warrant? Can it see you naked when you try to board an airplane? Can it abridge your right to free association as it is attempting in Wisconsin, among other places? Can it force you to buy healthcare? Can it imprison you indefinitely without trial? Not only are existing laws not certain, but new ones are constantly being added. It has been estimated that "the average busy professional commits three felonies every day", and the government, via its police forces, decides, on its own, which crimes to prosecute and which to ignore. And in cases where the law is unclear, a government lawyer will twist the words of the law to suit his or her purposes, or the case will ultimately end up in front of a judge, employed by the government.

In this way, we are no longer a nation of laws, but of men. The government decides what the law is and when to enforce it. In the case of the federal government, it has become the arbiter of its own power, in contrast to the tenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There used to be a fairly well organized and loud opposition to this violation of the rule of law. During the (George W.) Bush administration, the political left was up in arms about the President's usurpation of power. It was constantly demonstrating against his "illegal" war in Iraq. It wanted him to pull troops out of Afghanistan. Now that a Democrat is in the White House, though, opposition to those wars, as well as the current one in Libya, has all but disappeared.

While small government types and libertarians (note the little 'L') continue to oppose war no matter who is in office, it would seem that they constitute a rather small portion of the population. Eric Posner, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy, agrees arguing that "[t]here is no constituency for reforming the executive". There do exist constituencies for limiting executive power when the "other team" is in power, but since the team occupying the White House changes rather frequently, each team ultimately gets to exercise the very powers that they railed against when they were out of power. Thus, no one is really interested in reforming the executive branch, itself.

Posner continues:

arguing that we should return to the original Madisonian design is tilting at windmills [...] these arguments are on the fringes—not because they violate the rules of logic but because they have no constituency—and that is where the Madisonian argument belongs as well.

[...] Arguing that our current system of government is unconstitutional is like arguing that the original Constitution was unconstitutional because it violated the amendment procedures of the Articles of Confederation. It is a logical argument that makes no difference in the real world because ultimately what matters is popular sentiment [...].

I can't tell you how dismaying it was for me to hear, correct as it may be, that arguments for a return or adherence to Madisonian design, that the people should be ruled by laws and not men, are on the fringe, but there you have it. The rule of law is dead.

Scariest thing(s) I've seen in awhile

Saw this on an Internet forum I frequent:

I think it's wrong to look at the Military as a defensive tool, only to be deployed in defense of our country.
It is an instrument of political, social, and ECONOMIC might.
Fighting for oil or to promote economic stability is as patriotic as fighting to physically defend your homeland.
If it makes the country stronger in any way I'm for it.
The more global the economy becomes the more important it is that everyone play nice and do business and if America has to carry a big stick and bust some heads once in a while to achieve that then so be it.

It was followed shortly thereafter by another who said:

[I agree]
Oil is an essential part of the economy and our nation. It cannot run without it so it is worth war. Even though the two current wars in the Middle east are NOT because of it.

These comments were in response to someone asking about people's feelings about "liberals" who hate the military. Like any Internet discussion, the comments took off in a number of different directions, but these comments especially caught my attention because despite the tendency of this forum to lean somewhat to the (political) right, the people there generally seem to have their heads on straight with respect to freedom and liberty.

To hear people suggest that might makes right, that because we have a strong military, we should be able, if not have the right, to impose our will on others is really very sobering to me. I once heard someone say that the Tea Party doesn't have a coherent view of liberty. I don't want to make any statement about the Tea Party other than to say that these comments illustrate the point the gentleman was making at the time. For all the talk about freedom and liberty, many people seem to think that those things are reserved only for Americans and that our military is not simply a defensive tool but can and should be used to promote our own well-being at the expense of others'.

How can anyone simultaneously cry foul at U.S. government's trampling on its citizens' rights while at the same time demanding that it trample on someone else's? Rights come from our Creator, not the constitution. The constitution does not grant rights but instead restrains the federal government from infringing them, and people who truly understand what liberty and freedom are understand that all people have those rights.

***

Glenn Greenwald writes about the U.S. government's treatment of its detainees, specifically Bradley Manning, the army private accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks. I'll admit that I'm a little conflicted about Mr. Manning's case. On the one hand, he allegedly leaked documents in violation of his promise to keep them secret. On the other, assuming he did leak them, he's brought to light a number of horrible, horrible things that the government has done in its pursuit of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, I think he ought to be commended for bringing these things to light. It's unfortunate that his "crime" against the government is getting all of the coverage instead of the crimes committed by the government. That's not what really scares me, though.

Read Glenn's article. What scares me is the treatment of Mr. Manning, a U.S. citizen, who has not yet been convicted of any crime and his visitors who have not even been accused of any crime. This treatment screams authoritarian "police state" and people of all political stripes, regardless of their feelings about Mr. Manning should be appalled by his and his visitor's treatment.

What will I say?

[In various places, I've heard responses like this to what I did, but very few people have taken the time to ask their questions respectfully and without name calling. I received this message early this morning and am going to take the author's measured tone as an indication that he really does want a response and does not simply want to excoriate me. I am publishing this response as a way to answer everyone who may have similar questions about what I did.]

May I ask: So if next time a terrorist successfully hides "devices" to kill Americans on a plane, because you seem to think TSA or airport security is over-excessive...What will you say?

First of all, I am not advocating that we drop all security at our airports. What I oppose are the intrusive (and arguably unconstitutional) use of body scanning (or AIT) machines that can literally take a picture of one's naked body and/or the use of the new pat down procedures in which TSA officers are not necessarily instructed to "touch your junk" but come so close that many have and/or do. I find this level of scrutiny to be invasive and offensive.

What do we do instead? As I said, I am not saying that we should simply allow anyone and everyone to get on a plane simply because they have a ticket. (I should add that I would not oppose an airline that wanted to board planes with zero security. I don't think they would get much business, but it is within their right to do so.) What I am saying is that there are alternative methods of screening passengers that are far less invasive than what we do now and could actually make us more secure. That is, we wouldn't have to rely on machines that would not detect a "device" hidden inside of a would-be attacker.

For example, I drove across the U.S./Canada border about 5 years back. When I reached the border, an agent stopped me and asked why I was entering Canada. I explained that my wife and I had been driving/sightseeing in the northeastern area and wanted to go to Niagara Falls. When he looked at my ID, he noticed that I had a California driver's license but was driving a car with Virginia plates. He asked about this. I told him that the car was rented. He then asked how I got to the East coast in the first place... There is a bit more to this story; he asked me a few more questions. My point is, though, that if someone is lying, their story usually begins to fall apart around the third question or so. We should be employing a screening more along these lines.

In addition, technology (both advanced and not-so-advanced) allows for the detection of very small amounts of explosive material. One of these is the swab that you've seen TSA take of your bags and then run through a machine. They also have employed full body sized machines that simply blow a puff of air over you and analyze the result. Finally, a lower-tech solution of using bomb sniffing dogs is a possibility. Any of these would be as equally effective in ferreting out would-be terrorists and do not require anyone to virtually take off their clothes or have their junk touched.

I'll tell you one thing that WILL happen. We service members will fight a war again, just for you, because you complained of security being unnecessary.... The terrorists are waiting for us to put our guard down again. Think about that for a bit.....

Thank you for your service. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the men and women in our military. I know that they all enter the service willing to die to protect the liberty and freedom upon which this country was founded, especially because I'm not sure that I would be able to make the same sacrifice. I would certainly like to think that I would, but I can't say for certain that that is true.

I agree with you that in the event of another terrorist attack, you will likely be called upon to go overseas and fight another war in the name of freedom. You should ask your commanding officers, and ultimately, the president, however, if your fighting in those wars makes us safer. Terrorist attacks do not take place in a vacuum. The Times Square bomber viewed himself as defending his "lands" against foreign occupation. The underwear bomber acted in retaliation for "American-backed airstrikes [...] in Yemen." Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group attacked us on September 11th because of our interventionist foreign policies and our presence in Saudi Arabia. Don't forget that we actually backed Osama bin Laden in the 80's in his fight against the Soviet Union.

It goes on and on, and don't get me wrong. I fully support a strong national defense. What I oppose is a strong national offense that imposes U.S. will on other peoples. Despite the rhetoric, terrorists don't hate our freedoms. They just want us to leave them alone.

John Tyner, I UNDERSTAND what all is implied and I respect whatever you want to call this. Unfortunately you have forgotten why things are the way they are. How are you a "Hero". Tell ME that. Honestly brother, a person who self-consciously video records prior going through security had the attention to overembellish the true intent for TSA Security - FOR SAFETY and TO PREVENT PEOPLE FROM GETTING KILLED.

"Never Forget" (looks like you all forgot)
Here's a video to jock your memory.

I have not forgotten September 11th. I am reminded of September 11th every time I enter an airport, every time a "suspicious package" is found at a public building, every time a U.S. soldier like yourself is killed fighting in the name of that terrible event. It truly is tragic.

I am not a hero. I know that people have come to regard me as such, but I have explicitly disclaimed that title. I'm simply someone who stood up for what he believed to be right: that the government does not have the authority to view me naked or pat me down to the extent that they would have without some kind of reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

I have explained repeatedly the reason for my recording of my interaction with the TSA. I am not trying to over-embellish anything. In fact, the recording prevents me from doing exactly that. I don't doubt that TSA is trying to provide security for air travelers. So far though, they have done a poor job of it. Attacks on our airplanes since September 11th have been stopped by the passengers, not the TSA. It's time we started treating our passengers like the first (and arguably last) responders to a possible attack. We need to start treating them with dignity and respect and not like the very terrorists of whom we have now become so afraid.

It's legal because we say so

Former President Bush is making the rounds on television promoting his new book. In an interview, he defended his view that waterboarding is legal because his lawyers told him that it is. (The quote is at about 0:30.)

This argument is a form of legal positivism which basically says that something is legal or illegal because the law says (or doesn't say) that it is. It ignores any kind of moral connection with the law and whether or not the law is "just". It also implies that juries do not have the power to judge the law as well as the case being tried, something that the founding fathers explicitly envisioned that our system of justice would contain. This argument, in my opinion, is dangerous. It supposes that the government is right because it says that it is right. The idea is anathema to the very basis of the U.S. Constitution.

In spite of the legal "go-ahead" Bush received, though, torture is still a legally tenuous undertaking. The memo authorizing torture written by John Yoo and Jay Bybee was declared legally defective by Bybee's successor, Jack Goldsmith, in 2003. When Goldsmith was forced from office by the administration in late 2004, his successor re-declared torture to be legal. After Bush left office, the Department of Justice again declared 18 USC 2340-2340A to be in effect and torture to be illegal. Note that during the entire Bush administration, that portion of the code was in full force. Bush simply had legal opinions stating that what he was doing was not torture. I think any honest person has to admit that waterboarding plainly falls within the definition(s) of torture contained within 2340. It's telling that only the Bush administration has attempted to get around those sections in U.S. law and even then, it could not agree completely on the legality of doing so. It's also worth noting that the Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, ruled that enemy combatants were subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. It would appear that the legality of torture is not tenuous after all; it's plainly illegal.

Here are some things that I think should be considered by anyone defending the use of torture: Is torture effective? If it is, why isn't it used more often or domestically? Does torture put more people in danger (via the creation of new enemies) than it protects? If so, isn't torture bad economic policy as well since it further drains resources (via the military efforts in furthering the "war on terror") that could be used for more productive means?

Finally, I'm willing to accept the possibility that one can find the use of torture morally justified in the perceived protection of others. If torture is moral and right, however, why won't those engaging in its use stand up and declare that what they did was right and allow themselves to be judged by those in whose names they supposedly acted?

Just... hold on a second

I came across a number of weird/wacky news stories this morning, and since I didn't really feel like writing very much, I was going to just post a few links with some commentary to accompany them. Then a friend of mine posted a link to an opinion piece entitled "Just Stop" over on the Mesa Democratic Club's website. Well, I loves me some politics, so I went over to read it. The article started out well enough (read: I agreed with it), but then it lost me. Since this friend of mine and I have agreed not to discuss politics over our social network of choice, I decided to write this post.

The article starts out pointing out that Sarah Palin is not a "political outsider", that the Tea Party is not an independent group, and that John McCain no longer has any discernible political positions outside of whatever it takes to get elected. These are all excellent points with which I could not agree more. It's at this point that our respective positions diverge.

Stop pretending that the deficit we’re all facing is the fault of President Obama and the Democratic Congress. During the Bush administration, we went from a surplus to a massive deficit, largely thanks to two wars that were never (until Obama) added to the federal budget—wars, in other words, fought entirely on credit. We compounded the problem with tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, and a huge Medicare increase, and all those were also on credit. When the economy tanked in fall 2008, Bush quickly pushed through the TARP bailout, adding to the deficit (but pulling the economy back from the cliff).

President Obama is not entirely responsible for the deficit. He is quickly adding to it, though. Yes, Obama added the wars to the federal budget, but that does not change the fact that they (along with the much of the rest of the budget) are still paid for on credit. And while Bush may have pulled the economy back from the cliff, he did not change it's direction; it is still headed that way under Obama.

Stop pretending that the near-ruinous economic crash that we’re still reeling from was Obama’s fault, too. The root causes stretch back decades, to a continued process of deregulating financial institutions, allowing them ever more leeway to prey on the vulnerable, to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and to manipulate financial products that were ultimately guaranteed to fall apart.

And stop pretending that Obama and the current Congress should have been able to fix the two above problems in 18 months, when it took eight years to create the first one and literally decades of foxes guarding financial henhouses to create the second.

Again, the author is correct that the economic crash was not caused by Obama, and that it is unrealistic to think that the government would be able to fix it (I would argue, in any amount of time). The author implicitly places the blame on the private sector, however, when he talks about mortgages and financial products. Those mortgages that people couldn't afford were promoted and backed by the government in the form of Fannie and Freddie and FHA and VA loans. Obama has continued this process with the homebuyer tax credit and the HAFA and HAMP programs. For non-mortgage related financial instruments, look no further than the Federal Reserve serving as the "lender of last resort". Even though the Fed is nominally a private entity, it's ludicrous to think that they really are, and when banks get into trouble, the Fed bails them out via the power of "printing" money, a power that Congress abdicated to it long ago.

Stop pretending that saying “No” is the same as governing. We pay our legislators good money to go to Washington and make difficult decisions that keep the country moving. By voting “No” on every bill, by refusing to negotiate in good faith, by deciding that short-term political advantage was more important than the everyday lives of Americans, the Republicans set back our recovery, made needed reforms fall short, and put our lives and our economy at unnecessary risk.

I hate the idea that governing means "doing something". Saying "no" is a legitimate act, one in which all politicians engage because nobody can agree on the exact role of government. In this way, saying "no" is doing something. That is not to say that Republicans are not being obstructionist for political gains; however, the author would be better advised to point out Republican hypocrisy on things like expanding Medicare under Bush but railing against the PPACA, now.

Stop pretending that the economy is magic. You can’t continue to give millionaires and billionaires huge tax cuts, make tiny, cosmetic cuts at the margins of things, and still reduce the deficit. You can’t create jobs without spending money. Tax cuts for millionaires and up are not stimulative because those people don’t spend the money from the cut—it’s not like you’re giving them a wad of cash and sending them to the store. When you put an unemployed person to work or give a tax cut to a poor or middle class family, that’s exactly what it’s like—they go buy things they need and those dollars flow through the economy, creating jobs and wealth everywhere they go.

I'm not sure anyone is pretending that the economy is magic; however it is far more complex than most imagine. Not only that, but the government via regulation or the Fed often arbitrarily moves the market in ways that could only be predicted by magic. The author is correct that tax cuts (to anyone) won't balance the budget. He is mistaken, though, if he thinks that tax increases will do the job, either. Federal spending is out of control, and the only way to save this country's economy, over the long term, is to start cutting Social Security, Medicare, the military, everything.

And stop talking about stimulus. It's too bad that people believe that Keynesian economics preaches deficit spending. Keynes, mistaken as I believe his theories to be, spoke of stimulative spending out of savings. Yes, it takes money to create jobs, but it also takes money to keep those jobs. To think that the government (or anyone) can throw a one-time bucket of cash at the economy to "unstick" it is ridiculous. It will only lead to the government having to throw ever increasing amounts of money at the economy. It's amazing to me that most people agree that easy credit was the proximate cause of the economic conditions in which we all now live and at the same time believe that if the government just borrows more from China that that will fix the problem. We will end up back in this very situation again, only it will be much, much worse.

The things that Pelosi and Reid have supported these past 18 months have been programs that will help America move into the 21st century. Health care reform, in spite of great efforts at pretending, is not a “government takeover” of health care—it institutionalizes, in law, the presence of the health insurance industry, and gives that industry millions of new clients.

Whoa! Stop right there! Did you catch that? The government, under Democratic control, via the coercion of law, just delivered millions of customers to the health insurance industry. It's not just the Republicans that are in bed with big business.

It will, in the long run, reduce the deficit and create a healthier nation, by allowing more people to get preventive care and long-term care and keeping the sick and impoverished from turning to emergency rooms when there’s a crisis.

This entire problem was created by the government in the first place, though.

Stop pretending that “lifelong politician” is some kind of curse. Most people who hold public office do so because they genuinely want to help people, they genuinely want to make government responsive to the needs of their fellow Americans, and they’re willing to put themselves on the line every few years to get the chance to do so.

Here's a thought experiment: If "most" people who hold public office genuinely want to help people and make government better, why hasn't it happened?

Stop pretending that “big government” is the problem. When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?

Gay rights, TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level. Not only that, but all of this ignores the fact that every year I have to fill out a number of forms figuring out, on the government's behalf, how much money they want from me, and then send them that amount under the threat of force if I either figure wrong or don't send the right amount.

Stop pretending that anybody’s going to come and take your guns away. [...] There’s no truth to it, there’s never been any truth to it, and if you actually believe it, you just might be so simple-minded that you shouldn’t be trusted with a firearm.

They may not be trying to take them away, per se, but the laws (at least in CA) are clearly not conducive to gun purchases or ownership. One must wait 10 days to purchase any gun, even if one already owns one or one hundred of them. AB962, once in effect, will make the mail-ordering of handgun ammunition illegal and require fingerprints be taken of law-abiding citizens when they do purchase ammunition. It is illegal to actually carry one's gun in a manner that would actually allow it to be used effectively in self-defense, and many counties around the state deny CCW applications to all but the wealthy and connected.

Perhaps the author can explain to me why the BATFE and the state of CA keep records of gun sales if not to retain the possibility of rounding up guns in the future. I realize that that has a bit of a "tin foil hat" sound to it, but it is a legitimate question.

The author goes off the rails at this point with a lot of name calling. He tries to bring it home at the end, though.

Finally, stop pretending that voting doesn’t matter, and don’t let the 2010 Class of Crazy take office and convince you otherwise.

A variation on the previous thought experiment I proposed is apropos here: If voting mattered, why is government the way that it is? Perhaps it's because we've gotten the very government for which we voted. Voting doesn't matter and arguably does more harm than good. A voter is statistically more likely to be killed going to or coming from his/her polling place than to cast the deciding vote in an election. I refer the reader my previous posts on voting and the nature of government.

Free speech, alive and well

I noticed the 'crawl' along the bottom of the TV screen this morning mention that NPR had fired Juan Williams over some comments that he had made. When I was able to get to a computer, I found a link to this story in my RSS reader. I thought it was fitting that the story came from Fox News since Mr. Williams is a regular contributor to Fox and his fateful comments were made on a Fox program. The linked story cites this quote as the reason for the firing:

I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Mr. Williams's first mistake was prefacing his comments with "I'm not a bigot." Whenever someone prefaces a comment with, "I'm not X", at best, it means that he/she fears that his/her comments will be interpreted so as to paint him/her as X and, at worst, that that person really is X. It's sort of the same way that the phrase "with all due respect" is interpreted as "I have no respect for you".

I have to admit, though, that I don't really see what the uproar about this particular comment is all about. The September 11th attacks were carried out by Al-Qaeda, a militant Islamic group. The Christmas Day bomber and the Times Square bomber both cited their religion as reasons for their actions. The U.S. continues to agitate Muslims around the world with its continued presence in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan in addition to indefinitely detaining and torturing people without charges when it is not just killing them both on and off the battlefield. In light of those actions, it seems reasonable to expect further violence to be attempted, if not perpetrated, against the U.S. by the very recipients of this U.S.-style democracy. I'm not sure that being nervous about flying with a Muslim is entirely irrational.

Glenn Greenwald takes up the case against Juan Williams this morning. In his article, some more context is provided for Mr. Williams's comments. Immediately prior to the earlier quote, Mr. Williams said this:

Well, actually, I hate to say this to you because I don't want to get your ego going. But I think you're right. I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don't address reality.

This was said in response to Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" which had aired just previous to Mr. Williams's comments in which Mr. O'Reilly had said:

The world is on edge because millions of Muslims accept violence and enable jihad. In order to correct the economy and the terrorist threat, those [referring also to the fact that private businesses are not hiring] things must be understood and stated.

These two statements properly deserve all of the outrage, in my opinion. Millions of Muslims do not accept violence and enable jihad. The U.S. government, itself, says that there are probably less than 100 Al-Qaeda members fighting in Afghanistan. It admits that many are probably hiding in Pakistan, but even being generous would probably place the total number under 1,000. Muslims make up almost a quarter of the world's population. If they all really supported violence and jihad, even if merely millions of them supported it, they would have destroyed the U.S., whose military only numbers about 1.4 million, quite decisively a long time ago. In fact, most (the percentage of "radical" Muslims is almost infinitesimal, but still prevents one from saying "all") Muslims are peaceful, preach peace, and abhor the violence perpetrated in their religion's name.

I'm not really sure how I feel about Juan Williams being fired by NPR. To be honest, I don't care enough to try and decide. He may have been a good reporter, but I never cared too much for his opinion pieces on various Fox shows. What is interesting to me is the outcry from the political right that his free speech rights are being violated because NPR gets a significant portion of its funding from the federal government. (Funny, that in this instance, they are, all of a sudden, civil libertarians.) Eugene Volokh contends that acceptance of government funds does not, on its face, make one a government actor and therefore obligate one to protect the free speech of others. I tend to agree. To argue the opposite is to open up a Pandora's box of (further) government intrusion into private affairs. As Mr. Volokh reasons, there is nothing preventing Congress from attaching strings to funds that it allocates (which it has not done in this case), but I would argue that Congress shouldn't be allocating funds to private businesses in the first place.

Men are not angels

For those who didn't pick up on the title of this post, it is a reference to a post from last week entitled "If Men Were Angels". That post's title and most of its content were shamelessly lifted from an article of the same name which itself gets the phrase from James Madison's writing in Federalist No. 51. The same day on which that article was posted, news of an excerpt from a book by former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Clinton and then Bush, General Hugh Shelton, hit the Interwebs. This news was unfortunately buried by virtue of its coming out on a Friday.

In the book, the general relates a story of a conversation he had with a Clinton cabinet member during one of their weekly breakfasts.

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, "Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?"

The general doesn't explicitly say with whom he was speaking at the time, but the general consensus seems to be that it was the same person who gave this interview.

I was actually really surprised to hear of someone as far back as the Clinton administration suggesting something like allowing one of our own to be shot down in order to provoke war. To be honest, this is something I would have expected to hear come out of the Bush/Cheney White House. Not only was this person willing to purposely send one of our own to die, but he/she was willing to do so to enable the killing of probably tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more. It really is regrettable that stories like this don't get more play. I think it is imperative that people understand that this is what the State is capable of. Even if one is unwilling to accept the premise that such behavior is commonplace or routine and instead believes that false flag operations are the things of spy novels, it should be a very sobering thought that people at the highest levels of government are even capable of suggesting such a thing out loud and with a straight face.

Let's give credit where credit is due, though.

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, "Of course we can ..." which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.

"You can?" was the excited reply.

"Why, of course we can," I countered. "Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go."

Brav-o! The military, in some circles, gets a bad rap for being a bunch of warmongers and killers, and I don't know much about this particular general's career, but for this show of cojones, he earns a gold star in my book. I am in constant fear, though, that over time people like this will disappear or lose their sway within government. This quote, attributed to Edmund Burke, looms large:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Terrorists: Criminals or Warriors?

I like Glenn Greenwald. I subscribe to his RSS feed, and I read most of what he writes. Most times I agree with him; sometimes, I don't. But sometimes, on rare occasion, I disagree enough to sit down and write a response. (I would have commented directly to his blog, but Salon.com requires you to create an account, something I'm not interested in doing, for a number of reasons.)

Back to the topic at hand. Today, Glenn wrote an article entitled "Fulfilling Al-Qaeda's 'warrior' wish." It's worth reading, but for those of you who don't, I'll summarize. He says that terrorists are common "murderous criminals" and should be treated as such. They should not be glorified as warriors or participants in some grand cause.

I want to agree with Glenn that terrorists like he describes: Richard Reid (a.k.a. the shoe bomber) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the so-called mastermind of 9/11) are criminals. I further believe that they along with all of the other terrorists we're holding deserve a trial (but that's another post). My issue with what Glenn wrote this morning is that to take away the "warrior" or "soldier" title from these people, while gratifying to the rest of us, ignores the reasons for their actions.

To treat these people as common criminals is to assume simply that they're evil, that their actions are the product of an unwarranted hatred of the United States. In the statements posted in Glenn's article given by Richard Reid and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they both list retaliation for the killing of innocent civilians and U.S. oppression as reasons for their actions. Aside from the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, the U.S. is also dropping bombs in Pakistan and now Yemen. In fact, the Christmas Day bomber claimed that his attempt to blow up his flight was in retaliation for the U.S. strikes in Yemen. To treat these people as common criminals is to deny they fact that they have very real and valid claims against U.S. actions.

But they attacked us first, on 9/11, you say. Why do you suppose that was? No, they don't hate our freedom. They hate our unqualified support of Israel and implicit backing of their treatment of their Palestinian neighbors. They hate the fact that we set up military bases around the world including on what they believe to be holy land. Look at it another way. Just yesterday, China announced plans to set up a military base in the Middle East. What do you think about the possibility of Chinese military bases on American soil? If you don't like the idea, then why do you think it's right for the U.S. to set up bases elsewhere?

Still not convinced? After being attacked on 9/11, why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan? Ostensibly, it was to find and destroy Al-Qaeda, a group of maybe 300 people at the time, but instead it ousted the Taliban government; a government that the U.S. itself had propped up and to whom the U.S. was providing aid up until 9/11. The U.S. invaded a sovereign nation, without a declaration of war, and ousted its government. It did the same thing in Iraq two years later, all the while, killing innocent civilians and causing all sorts of collateral damage. It's gearing up to do it again in a number of places. Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen are all possibilities. Predator drone strikes are already having disastrous results in Pakistan.

Now consider being on the receiving end of all of this "democracy." This spread of democracy looks a lot like terrorism, doesn't it? It should also put terrorist actions like trying to bomb a plane in a little better perspective. Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to justify terrorism or the killing of innocent civilians (or anyone for that matter). My point is simply that U.S. actions around the world are contributing to the terrorism against it, and to simply label these people criminals, without understanding their motivations and their view of themselves as justified warriors, is to attack the symptom and not the underlying problem.