Saturday, February 01, 2003

How cynical have we all become?

Waking up this morning to the news of the breakup and destruction of the space shuttle over Texas, one of my first thoughts was:

They’ll find some way to suggest that there was some sort of connection to terrorists. 

By they, I mean of course the war parties like the Bushies, Fox TV, Rush, et al.  That one of the astronauts was an Israeli may be used in that manner by some.  Perhaps the ultra-Orthodox findamentalists will find it significant that Colonel Ramon was “working” on Shabbat during the landing.

For the moment, I’m chiding myself for my cynicism.  We’ll soon see whether that cynicism needs to be transferred elsewhere.

I hope I’m wrong about this.

Thursday, January 30, 2003

Loaded language

An undeniable success of the reactionaries is that they have consistently been able to frame issues in terms of their choosing.  I have no insight as to why that’s the case—are ad agencies hotbeds of ideological neo-conservatism?—but you can’t get around the fact.

The clearest recent example is the loaded phrase death tax, used to disparage and overturn the estate tax.  By the way, is the world outside of Washington state aware that William Gates Sr., Bill’s dad, is strongly and publicly opposed to estate tax repeal?  A recent Seattle Times story about that topic is here.  In fact Gates Sr., who recently chaired a statewide special commission that recommended introducing a state income tax, has even co-authored a new book in support of retaining the estate tax.

The conservatives won control of pro-life ages ago, leaving the progressives with pro-choice, a term that’s certainly descriptive of our position but not the winner when it comes to snappy advertising sloganeering.

Even when the loaded term-of-choice is objectively negative in its implications, the reactionaries embrace it and, amazingly, are able to convince large segments of the population that it’s a valid, positive selling point for their position.  The phrase I’m thinking of in this instance is trickle-down economics.  The Reaganites were proud as punch of that phrase, trumpeting it proudly.  But doesn’t it really tell us unashamedly that the intent of their policy of cutting rich people’s taxes was to allow a mere dribble of financial wherewithall to reach the general public?  What was (and still is) needed was gush-down or cascade-down, yet the Republicans somehow managed to frame the discourse in their own favor so thoroughly that the public accepted the scraps tossed their way as if they were receiving a huge windfall from on high.

And now we come to double-taxed dividends, marketed as if it’s the only class of income that is potentially subject to taxation at more than one point in the financial system.

I can offer no reasonable avenues for progressives to explore to counteract this phenomenon.  I merely observe (and rue) it.

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

OK, can we get the little war against the tinpot dictator out of the way so that the truly dastardly and reactionary nature of Dubya and his minions are no longer hidden behind the flags and sabers, the cruise missiles and stealth bombers, the tank squadrons and carrier task forces?  The assault upon our Constitution, our economy, our privacy, our environment, our standing in the world community, our civil liberties ... all of that continues unabated while Karl Rove’s prestidigitation diverts our attention.  We’re forced by the sensationalist media—aided and abetted by very smart, very devious Republican operatives—to concentrate on Saddam while the very essence of our nation is sucked dry in the background.

So let’s start the war now.  The sooner the better, so that the danger emanating from the White House percolates to the surface all that much quicker.  And so that there’s enough time to develop, nurture, and (most importantly) fund a high-minded, honest , forthright, progressive alternative to the horrors that await us as long as GWB continues in office.

Monday, January 27, 2003

Sorry, Joan

Lots of organizations want my money.  Whether it’s the National Trust for Historic Preservation or the American Diabetes Association or the National Building Museum or a local NPR station, I imagine that they trade my name and address like little boys with baseball cards.  I contribute to all of the above, and quite a few more, but others often appear in my mailbox unbidden.  My demographic and/or contribution profile is such that the Republican Party (no link to them!) occasionally wastes a few of the giga-cents in their coffers by sending me some of their heinous propaganda.  Every time I see one of those RNC envelopes, I breathe a little easier, comfortable in the knowledge that their software hasn’t yet figured out that they are not about to collect a penny from these here parts.

A couple of days ago it was the turn of Joan Claybrook, former chair of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  Joan’s letter asked for my support in opposition to the Bush Administration’s energy policy.  She rightly pointed to the need for improving auto fuel efficiency, reversing energy deregulation, controlling powerplant pollution, and promoting renewable energy.  Joan alerted me to the tremendous influence of big-energy special interests, oil-bidness cronyism, self-serving Texas agenda, anti-environmental orientation, and other attributes of Dubya’s operation.

So why am I getting ready to toss Joan Claybrook’s letter into the recycling bin?

Sunday, January 26, 2003

The Peter Principle in action

You do know the term “Peter Principle”, don’t you?  Named for educator Laurence Peter, who published a book by that name in the late 1960s, its central theme is that:

in a hierarchy, employees tend to rise to the level of their incompetence

The Peter Principle falls neatly between “Parkinson’s Law”:

work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion (C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958)

and the entire Dilbert oeuvre.

I briefly thought about this classic examination of bureaucracy and its unintended consequences while reading an op-ed piece in Saturday’s Seattle Times, but that article remained firmly in the back of my mind until I read Raye’s latest epistle in By Sand and Sea.  In her January 27 essay Not a black helicopter, but..., she quotes from an article about the bully-tactics employed by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who are following the example already laid out by the ghouls of the executive branch by accreting all available power and authority to themselves, rewarding those subordinates who toe their line and dumping anyone who steps even a whisker out of (goose)step.

The case of Connecticut’s Christopher Shays, senior Republican on the Government Reform committee, who was bypassed for the chairmanship of that body in favor of Virginian Tom Davis, is well known.  Not coincidentally, Shays and Massachusetts Democrat Marty Meehan co-sponsored the House version of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform legislation, while Davis chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2002 campaign, raising over $180 million in hard and soft money (nearly $1 million of it from his own re-election coffers and his personal PAC).