Losing my liberal credentials

It should come as no surprise to most people who know me that my ideological inclinations lean progressive liberal. I believe there is a role for society in ensuring the health and well-being of everyone, most especially the most vulnerable. I also believe that government is often the most efficient mechanism to ensure that public goods (e.g. education, social welfare, research, defense, etc) are provided to the general public, particularly the most vulnerable.

However, I apparently lost some of my liberal street cred because I refuse to be steadfastly opposed to the debt deal that was passed by the House last night and will likely be approved by the Senate today. I don't believe in hurting people (or myself) to serve ideological purity. Therefore, I am not liberal enough. The fact that I believe that this is not the best deal that could have emerged and that I would have preferred something else apparently does not matter.

Not only that, but because I completely refuse to put the blame for this on President Obama, I am also a sell out. Or a fool. A damn fool, according to one acquaintance.

There are two important reasons why this attitude is both wrong and dangerous. First, putting the onus on the president to solve the budget problem betrays a serious misunderstanding of the legal structure of our government. Second, this attitude is the exact mirror of the right wing perspective that my liberal purist friends and acquaintances profess to detest.

A little lesson on the law: the Congress is responsible for the budget, including the debt.

There's a document that guides pretty much everything that we do here in the USA. It's called the Constitution. It sets the framework for our government and enumerates the rights citizens can expect our government will uphold. For liberals, we rely on the Constitution to ensure everything from fair trials to free speech. Well, there's a little thing found in Article I, Section 8 that should guide our understanding of what is wrong with the whole debt ceiling mess:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States ... (emphasis added)

The powers of the Congress are further enumerated, including:

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

and

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The president's responsibilities are also enumerated in the Constitution. Of particular interest here is that the president has a pretty small role in the crafting and passage of legislation (including the budget). The president's main job is to review legislation passed by both houses of Congress and either sign the legislation or veto it. Beyond this, Article II, Section 3 in the Constitution does provide for the following:

...from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; .... he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, ....

If you notice, Congress has most of the power here. The passage of laws, including the budget, is entirely the responsibility of Congress. The president's leverage is the veto. That is it.

So, forgive me, my liberal colleagues, friends, and others, if I just don't buy the argument that this is all Obama's fault. Did the president make recommendations regarding the budget and the debt ceiling to the Congress? Did he convene both houses of Congresses in this extraordinary occasion to resolve this disagreement? Why, yes he did. Could he impose his will, whatever that may have been, on recalcitrant members of Congress, some of whom were hell bent on going into default? No. The Constitution does not allow it. If we are going to rely on the Constitution to protect us from the government and each other, we need to also accept the structure of responsibilities between the Executive and the Congress that is laid out in it.

Blaming the president for the many undesirable provisions in the debt ceiling plan displaces responsibility for this problem from its true agent: Congress. It is Congress that holds the power here, as was clearly demonstrated over the past few weeks. It is members of Congress who should be held accountable for both the crisis and the consequences of dragging this on for this long. By putting all of their energies and expectations onto the president, liberals and progressives remove themselves from the responsibility from doing the harder work of electing responsible members of Congress.

Obsessing over the president's "failure" to ensure tax revenue was part of the deal to me is like blaming the CEOs of publicly traded companies for laying off workers, rather than the shareholders and investors whose expectations for never-ending increases in dividends make laying off workers a rational choice. And if you really want to know who to blame, talk with the voters who elected the dozens of Tea Party Republicans who made this the crisis it came to be.


Liberal ideological puritanism is just as bad as conservative ideological puritanism

Ignorance of the Constitution is regrettable, but also understandable. For almost a century, the power of the Executive has grown over time. The existence of strong presidents who appeared to impose their desires on an unwilling Congress is a fiction supported by a misreading of history and by the willful spread of misinformation. What I find more disturbing is that the behavior and attitude displayed by some of my fellow progressives and liberals is eerily similar to the objectionable behaviors and attitudes of the rabid right wing ideologues who are the primary source of this crisis.

Much has been made about the demonizing of moderates and liberals by right wing, Tea Party types. This is a legitimate criticism. But when Democrats in Congress refer to the debt deal as a "Satan sandwich" and describe their colleagues as terrorists, they are participating in the exact same kind of demonization. I'm just not inclined to believe that those who hold different views of the world or different ideas about what is right and wrong are inherently bad people. They may be greedy, power hungry, or hypocrites. Or they may be misled or ignorant of the true consequences of their beliefs. Or they may have a truly different value system. But many of those who share my left leaning inclinations have come to the view that everyone who is to the right of them are inherently greedy, power hungry, bigoted hypocrites.

There is a serious problem with this perspective. By demonizing and dehumanizing those whose view of the good is different than yours, you are absolved from the hard work of actually making the argument in favor of your position. You can rest on your characterizations of evilness and bad faith, as if that alone justifies your view. If such behaviors and attitudes are unacceptable when perpetrated by the right wing, they are equally unacceptable by progressives, liberals, and moderates.

Further, there is no meaningful difference between refusing to budge on restructuring Social Security and refusing to budge on tax reform. The outcome is the same: no action. There are definitely times when no action is the best course of action. This was not one of them. The consequences of going into default was immediate harm to the most vulnerable members of society with little to no chance of long term gain. We would have gotten nothing in the long term, except the cold comfort that we were right. We would have imposed a serious economic burden on many individuals and families, even furthered hampered a very fragile economic recovery, and the rest of the world would have been justified in beginning the process of containing its economic relationship with the US. On the latter point, if you haven't been paying attention, China and India are steadily catching up to the US in terms of consumption and economic power.

In my view, there are few values that are absolute. Even the one of the most fundamental of human values, thou shalt not kill, can be loosened under the right circumstance. So, while I am heartbroken that the agreement includes removing subsidized graduate student loans, and knowing that this will probably also impact me as a college professor, if the choice was subsidized student loans or default, I'm going to vote to get rid of student loans. Knowing, too, that it is something that could always be changed later if me and my liberal/progressive/moderate colleagues do the hard work in ensuring that reasonable people are elected into Congress in the future.

So I refuse to be blinded by the righteousness of my view. I also do not believe that this is about my side versus their side but about doing a better job convincing people that my view better meets their goals and better supports their fundamental values. And I believe in holding accountable those who were truly in the positions of power to do the right thing. If this means that I am not the liberal you want me to be, so be it. I was never good at conforming to other people's expectations anyway. And it does not change my inclination to do what I can to prevent harm to those who are vulnerable to the consequences of demagoguery of all forms.

Anti-Obama sentiment

Recently, we took my mother-in-law to DC. We usually don't go to tourist shops unless we need to make change but on this trip we found ourselves hitting the tourist shops in Alexandria, VA in search of souvenirs my mother-in-law could take back home. Now, in general, Northern Virginia is not as rabidly conservative or anti-government as other parts of the South are. However, even on this trip, even in the tourist shops, the anti-Obama sentiment could be seen.

The first place we went into, Old Town Trading Post, is your typical souvenir shop. Everything made in China, including the 'rah-rah America' stuff. There was quite a bit of anti-liberal and anti-Obama kitsch available for purchase. Lots of "Don't Blame Me, I voted for McCain" bumper stickers and "Friends don't let friends vote Democrat" t-shirts could be found here. I didn't see any anti-conservative/Republican or pro-liberal/Democrat products. But it's a kitsch shop and the owner had some clear political views. Being a part of the South, I was not surprised. What they didn't have, and what my mother-in-law was looking for, was a coffee mug that said "Alexandria, VA," so we moved on.

We found the Virginia Shop just off of King Street and were sure that we would find something to meet her needs there. They also sold wine, and we were hoping to find a bottle from the Fox Meadow Winery. My mother-in-law doesn't follow American politics closely (she lives in Mexico) and I found her looking at three shelves of "Don't Tread on Me" merchandise. I explained to her that this was the logo of the Tea Party. Since there was a guy wearing a confederate flag t-shirt within earshot, I made a point to state that, "They don't like people like us. You know, immigrants. Especially Mexicans." He and his wife did turn to look at us. I smiled at them and continued to browse the wines. Again, we left empty handed.

Finally, we went into the America! store. This is where you will find all things to "Express the Pride and Spirit of America!" There were Obama bobble heads and "Hail to Chef" aprons. You can buy your "official" White House ornament here. You can also buy Spy Museum merchandise, as well as hats and t-shirts that say FBI or CIA on it (interestingly, I didn't see any ICE or Homeland Security products). And even here there was anti-Obama merchandise for sale. In addition to the "Don't Blame Me, I Didn't Vote for Change" bumper stickers, there were t-shirts with GW Bush on it that said, "Miss me yet?" and coffee mugs that said, "NOPE" in which the "O" was Obama's campaign logo.

It struck me that even in this place, which was all about celebrating the US (through Chinese made merchandise), you could not get away from the anti-liberal/ anti-Obama sentiment. On their website the owners claim that they are not affiliated with any political group and that they present a variety of "satirical" merchandise for sale. And through the website you can purchase a "Stop the insanity" t-shirt which shows Sarah Palin turning into Edvard Munch's The Scream. That was not available in the Alexandria, VA store. What was available in the store was the Sarah Palin bobble-head.

All of this made me wonder whether there were similar anti-Bush merchandise available during the Bush years. I wonder what kind of satirical merchandise America! sold, if any, during that time. I don't remember walking into a souvenir shop during the Bush era and seeing that kind of thing. But we don't frequent these kinds of places. So I looked at the America! store website through the internet archives.

Between 2006 and early 2008, I did find some of what could be considered anti-Bush merchandise. There was a book of photo ops gone awry focusing on Bush, one on Bushisms, and Bushwhacked by Molly Ivans and Lou Dubose. Munch's The Scream appears on a t-shirt that says "Bush, 3 more years". They also sold the Bush countdown calendar (counting down to his leaving office). Most of these were found in 2007, right as election season was beginning to gear up. In 2006 (the just after the mid-term election), there were four items that could be considered anti-Bush. There are currently eight anti-Obama items available on the website, including one that implies that Obama is the one responsible for the bank bailouts.

It seems like there is a larger market for anti-liberal/anti-Obama merchandise, even in slightly left of center Northern Virginia. I do wonder why. Perhaps liberals just don't go in for that kind of thing. I know I would not waste $13 on a countdown calendar not matter how much I wanted Bush out of office (although I will admit to having bought a Bush-Pants-On-Fire doll for a present and kept one for myself). Certainly racism (conscious and unconscious) is a factor in some part of the opposition to Obama as president, but how much of this latent racial bias is fueled by a corporate media that feeds on sensationalism?

I left one of my favorite Southern cities feeling a little bit uneasy. I know that merchants will sell whatever people will buy. I guess it bothers me that people will buy that stuff. But I don't think having liberals buy anti-conservative products to wear, stick on their car, or use as a pencil holder in their office is the right response. The question is, what is the right response?

Things I've been thinking about lately

I have a small flip notebook with four kitties (not cats, kitties - there is a difference) on the cover that I keep in my purse. I use it to make lists of things not to forget to buy when I go shopping but also to note things that I might want to write about. Sometimes I do write about those things. Often I don't.

Here's the most recent list:

• There seems to be a relationship between anti-urban sentiment and anti-youth sentiment.
• The geography of legal inequity. See Supreme Court decision in the Osborne case. Why is geographic inequality o.k.?
  
• What is political correctness anymore? Why is it that it only seems to be used when someone asks to be treated with respect and dignity?
• At a community meeting, someone gets up and apologizes for hijacking the meeting: "I've never been consulted. I've never been heard. The only way to get heard is to be a disruptor. I don't want to be a disruptor but I am forced to." Similar to EJ communities.
  

Since I have a book review that is already late, I won't have a chance to write about these things today. But I figure I'd put it out there and see what happens.

Politicizing

I was in the car yesterday, listening to the news. NPR to be exact, because I am a raging liberal. I don't know that I have the energy to rage; I barely have the energy to make myself breakfast. But I've been told that anyone who uses newspapers, NPR, or PBS as their primary source of news is a raging liberal.

But I digress.

NPR was reporting on the election of a Democrat in a heavily Republican district in New York state. The general consensus was that this unlikely turn of events was a response to Paul Ryan's Medicare reform proposals. Some Republican argued that Democrats were "politicizing" the issue of Medicare reform, which I guess is their explanation for why they lost so badly.

And then it occurred to me. Anyone who uses the term "politicizing" or "politicized" in reference to a political issue is stupid and apparently think I'm stupid too. And no one is calling them out on it.

I did a Lexis-Nexis search of US newspapers and was told that there are over 3000 references between 1978 and today in news articles that include the terms "politicized" or "politicizing." It gave me 1000 of what Lexis considers the "most relevant." In a random, and totally unsystematic, check of three articles (I didn't say I was doing research on this), the term is used as a pejorative. Which is stupid.

If you haven't figured it out yet:

• If you are an elected official, any official action you take is political.
  
• If you are appointed by any elected official or body (including you, judges), any official action you take is political.
  
• If you propose a law, you are creating a political issue.
  
• If you discuss a proposed or existing law, you are creating a political issue.
  
• If you support a proposed or existing law, you are taking a political position.
  
• If you oppose a proposed or existing law, you are taking a political position.
  
• If you are campaigning or lobbying for any elected or appointed position, you are engaged in a political act.
• If you do any of the above in relation to a court decision, regulation, policy, or government program (including government agencies like public schools), you are making a political issue, taking a political position, or otherwise engaged in political action.

By doing any of the above, you are in fact, "making something political." You are engaged in efforts that shift power, influence, and social benefits and burdens. In fact, by proclaiming that someone else has politicized something, you are engaged in that process of politics-making.

I think the next time I hear my political representatives, or the media pundits for that matter, assert that someone has "politicized" something, if I have the opportunity I am going to ask, "As opposed to what? Is this somehow a personal issue? Is this proposed or existing law, regulation, or policy somehow separate from the political sphere? And if so, exactly how?" And if their answers are not satisfactory, I will let them know that they are insulting my intelligence and will not likely support them in the future.

Feel free to do the same.

Science and religion are not incompatible and O'Reilly is a scientifically proven idiot

Apparently, Bill O'Reilly, one of these TV pundits who gets paid lots of money to show off his stupidity, tried to engage in a religious debate with an atheist. In doing so, he put his own ignorance about both the physical world and his own religion on display for all to see. In short, he argued that belief in religion is "real" because of the mysteries of the tide. As we all learned in elementary school, tides are not all that mysterious and haven't been for centuries.

To me, the foolishness is in the assumption that somehow science and religion are competing ways of knowing. I do not agree with that perspective. Each has their own domain in which they provide meaning to separate questions. Science tells us what happens to our bodies when we die. Religion tells us what happens to our essence (aka soul) when we die. To me, science and religion answer different questions and support different social functions.

This sparked a vigorous debate on a blog that I participate in about the validity of religion as a way of knowing or as a basis for behavior. Some point to the what they view as senseless rules (prohibitions on eating pork) that have outlived their purpose. I see this has simply not understanding how things like rules (or rituals) have meaning beyond the rule. There are others who truly believe that religion is "the opiate" of the willfully ignorant. I personally see this view as offensive.

To me, casual rejection of others' truths shows that you do not live in the world where those truths have meaning. And, what is important here is the meaning that people bring to their truths. The basis of O’Reilly’s comment wasn’t really about what causes tides but that there are mysteries that seem to have no explanation, and God provides that explanation and therefore gives meaning to the mystery. The fact that tides can in fact be explained doesn’t actually remove God from the equation, it just shows how simple, or at least inarticulate, O’Reilly is.

A key concept in the kind of research I do is the idea that reality is socially constructed. And that includes scientifically based facts. I happen to have a lot of faith in most empirically determined facts, but I also know that African Americans were scientifically shown to be intellectually inferior. Men had been told for years that the reliability of the PSA test in detecting prostate cancer was scientifically validated when in turned out that it was not as reliable as people were led to believe. Consequently, many men suffered needless interventions, and some still suffering the effects of those interventions, as a result of what amounts to unexamined faith in science.

The truth behind how science works is that sometimes quite a bit of what we do is based on assumptions that are supported by little more than faith. That isn’t to say that there are no scientifically validated facts. The relationship between the moon and tides, or the process of gradual genetic change in phenotypes (aka evolution) has been repeatedly shown to be the best answer to very specific scientific questions. And there are empirically shaky conclusions to scientific questions that were put out as “truth”, like the relationship between vaccines and autism. This "truth" was acted upon with disastrous consequences for children around the world.

What’s important about social constructions is that, regardless of their “truth”, they are real to people who believe them. The Thomas Theorem states that if you define something as real, it is real in its consequences. So, if you define pigs as unclean, the real consequence is that you do not eat them. This may have been the result of seeing the relationship between eating pork and dying from trichinosis and deciding that a rule was needed to ensure health of your people (an explanation for the Jewish pork prohibition that is not entirely supported by evidence, by the way). It does not change the fact that the rule had meaning and that people acted on the basis of that rule. What is important here is not the rule, but the meaning behind the rule.

The other thing about social constructions is that the justification for rules (and rituals) can evolve over time to serve different purposes. So the prohibition against eating pork no longer serves a potential health purpose but serves to define a community. Having a sense of identity is just as important as understanding what it takes to cook food safely. And given that human beings are scientifically proven social animals, it may even be more important in the perpetuation of the species.

O’Reilly is a Roman Catholic. If you do not live in that world and don’t share its assumptions, it is easy to dismiss his social construction of the world. However, a stronger argument against his stupid remarks can be made if you understand that his references about what is mysterious have not been considered mysteries by his own Church for centuries. (And you can go on all you want about how the Church went bat-poop crazy with Galileo and Copernicus, but the scientifically trained urologists also were pissed when the scientific evidence against the PSA test came out last year.)

Calling any belief in religion stupid is not an effective method of undermining what may be undeniably real to others. Since science has no special claim to truth either, such arguments are only patronizing. Indeed, the one thing that religion and science share is the certainty that its assumptions have meaning and therefore are real to its believers.


**Full disclosure: I am not adherent to any religious belief system. I was baptized and confirmed a Catholic but stopped practicing almost two decades ago. With that said, I have been called a secular humanist, which is a label that I will recognize, if you need me to be labeled.

Saying thank you

I try to make a point of saying thank you to service workers whenever I can. That includes shuttle bus drivers, MBTA drivers, janitors, the public works people who fix the street signals, and the kid who bags my groceries. They do work that makes my life easier. Many of them make very little pay and often deal with rude people. I admit that I do not make it a habit of thanking elected officials unless I've worked with them on some issue or legislation. They are in positions of power and I feel it is their duty to do their jobs well.

I'm wondering, however, if that should change. I wonder whether extending our appreciation for doing the right thing, particularly in the face of personal or public pressure to do otherwise, would relieve the pressure to do the wrong thing.

I starting thinking about this after hearing about the apparent suicide of Middlesex Sheriff James DiPaola. I did not know DiPaola personally. I never worked with his office. Like everyone else, I was shocked to hear of his suicide.

DiPaola had just decided to resign as Middlesex County Sheriff after the Boston Globe made public his attempt to take advantage of a loophole in the law would have allowed him to take his state earned pension while also earning his salary as the Sheriff. He was also under investigation for allegedly campaign finance impropriety. By most accounts, this investigation was for fairly minor offenses. Despite just winning re-election by a considerable margin, he chose to resign so that he would not be known as the person who double-dipped.

In a state that is awash in news stories of official corruption of the highest order, DiPaola's decision to resign showed that there are still people with integrity in our system. Stories that have come out afterwards describe a person who believed in treating others with dignity, who believed in reform over punishment, and who was generally an all around good person.

After reading about his decision to resign, I thought to myself, "I should write him a letter thanking him for putting the dignity of his office ahead of his own personal gain." I admire individuals who have the strength of character to publicly admit a mistake and act to address it. I wanted him to know that. But I never wrote that letter. Now, I do not for one second believe that if I had done so he would be alive today. I am not that powerful. But I do believe that if more people had done something like that for DiPaola and others like him, throughout his career and in this recent period of stress, perhaps the burdens that weighed on him would be that much less.

So, I would like to take this opportunity to thank elected officials who do the right thing even if it means losing your seat. This includes Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. This includes any of those members of Congress who vote to allow the service of openly gay individuals, as well as those who vote in favor of the DREAM Act. This includes members of the state legislature that voted against the recent anti-immigrant policies. And for those members of the Boston City Council who vote not to expel Chuck Turner. Yes, he was convicted of taking $1000 from an FBI informant. But we all know that Turner does not have a corrupt bone in his body. He may not be all that competent when it comes to campaign finances, but we all know he was not bribed. I understand the need for rules, including the one that requires that the Council evaluate whether he is fit to serve. But rules without exceptions are never just.

Perhaps if we thanked elected officials for doing the right thing they may actually do the right thing more often.

I love my life

I love living in a city.

I love that people do actually give money to subway performers.

I love having heat in my house.

I love that people help moms with their strollers on the stairs of the subway stations.

I love that I can drink alcohol and not have to drive home.

I love that I have students who begin to see their own potential.

I love that, if I need to, I can walk to the supermarket and get my sick husband orange juice.

I love that my friends can have a completely different worldview than I have, and we can still be friends.

I love seasons.

I love books. Real books. The ones that I can write in.

I love that my sisters take care of each other. And can forgive each other.

I like chocolate. Dark chocolate, mainly. I don't love chocolate. But I love my friends. And chocolate with my friends is the best.