hsuperpolitical

dems win 18 seat majority in senate!

2010-01-19T22:31:00.001-05:00

Jon Stewart hyperventalates wondering why Democrats can't get anything done despite having a larger majority than Republicans have had since 1923, despite losing Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat tonight.

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We're all hyperventilating a little bit right now. Keep your inhalers close by.

"sumate al cambio"

2010-01-18T11:47:00.002-05:00

I would like to know how many countries have had presidents or other top leaders elected on a mandate of "change" post-Obama.

El Mercurio (en español): Piñera beats Frei and the center-right wins its first election in 52 years

L.A. Times (in English): Billionaire Pinera wins Chile runoff

just i time for 'back to work week'

2010-01-06T14:16:00.003-05:00

I'm still traveling, but for most Americans this is the first week back from work following the Christmas-to-New Year's holiday. Accordingly, Slate reports on a new Conference Board survey showing that only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs (h/t Micky).

From the survey, published in TIME:

When the Conference Board's first survey was conducted in 1987, most workers — 61% — said they were happy in their jobs. The survey of 5,000 households was conducted for the Conference Board by TNS, a global market research company.

One clue that may explain workers' growing dissatisfaction: Only 51% now find their jobs interesting — another low in the survey's 22 years. In 1987, nearly 70% said they were interested in their work.

Workers who find their jobs interesting are more likely to be innovative and to take the calculated risks and the initiative that drive productivity and contribute to economic growth, Barrington says.

"What's really disturbing about growing job dissatisfaction is the way it can play into the competitive nature of the U.S. work force down the road and on the growth of the U.S. economy — all in a negative way," says Lynn Franco, another author of the report and director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center.

Conference Board officials and outside economists suggested that weak wage growth helps explain why workers' unhappiness has been rising for more than 20 years. After growing in the 1980s and 1990s, average household incomes adjusted for inflation have been shrinking since 2000.

goodbye big zero. hello happy new decade!

2009-12-31T14:29:00.002-05:00

Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman is calling this last decade "The Big Zero." I tend to agree with him (and thus excerpt at length):

[F]rom an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.

It was a decade with basically zero job creation. O.K., the headline employment number for December 2009 will be slightly higher than that for December 1999, but only slightly. And private-sector employment has actually declined — the first decade on record in which that happened.

It was a decade with zero economic gains for the typical family. Actually, even at the height of the alleged “Bush boom,” in 2007, median household income adjusted for inflation was lower than it had been in 1999. And you know what happened next.

It was a decade of zero gains for homeowners, even if they bought early: right now housing prices, adjusted for inflation, are roughly back to where they were at the beginning of the decade. And for those who bought in the decade’s middle years — when all the serious people ridiculed warnings that housing prices made no sense, that we were in the middle of a gigantic bubble — well, I feel your pain. Almost a quarter of all mortgages in America, and 45 percent of mortgages in Florida, are underwater, with owners owing more than their houses are worth.

Last and least for most Americans — but a big deal for retirement accounts, not to mention the talking heads on financial TV — it was a decade of zero gains for stocks, even without taking inflation into account. Remember the excitement when the Dow first topped 10,000, and best-selling books like “Dow 36,000” predicted that the good times would just keep rolling? Well, that was back in 1999. Last week the market closed at 10,520.

So there was a whole lot of nothing going on in measures of economic progress or success. Funny how that happened.

[...]

What was truly impressive about the decade past, however, was our unwillingness, as a nation, to learn from our mistakes.

Even as the dot-com bubble deflated, credulous bankers and investors began inflating a new bubble in housing. Even after famous, admired companies like Enron and WorldCom were revealed to have been Potemkin corporations with facades built out of creative accounting, analysts and investors believed banks’ claims about their own financial strength and bought into the hype about investments they didn’t understand. Even after triggering a global economic collapse, and having to be rescued at taxpayers’ expense, bankers wasted no time going right back to the culture of giant bonuses and excessive leverage.

Then there are the politicians. Even now, it’s hard to get Democrats, President Obama included, to deliver a full-throated critique of the practices that got us into the mess we’re in. And as for the Republicans: now that their policies of tax cuts and deregulation have led us into an economic quagmire, their prescription for recovery is — tax cuts and deregulation.

Of course, one of the great things about the United States is that we believe in second chances. So while the first decade of the new millenium was a big dud, here's to substance, to progress, and to new hope for the Tens.

the more interesting story is where the stimulus money was allocated

2009-12-27T23:39:00.003-05:00

The Sacramento Bee reports on California state agencies that inflated the number of jobs they created or preserved through use of American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (a.k.a., stimulus) funds. But I think the more illuminating part may be how the money was distributed in the first place. Consider these numbers:

In October, Caltrans told the federal government that it created or preserved 1,590 jobs with $26.7 million the department received earlier this year under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

[...]

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation claimed that it saved 18,229 jobs with $1.08 billion in stimulus money, even though the department had issued layoff notices for just 6,962 corrections employees.

The California State University system said it saved 26,156 jobs – half its entire work force – with $268.5 million in federal stimulus money.

To recap: Caltrans got $26.7 million, the Cal State system got $268.5 milion, and prisons got $1.08 billion.

So basically, when designing how to "recover and reinvest" in America and in California, it was decided that the best solution was to spend about 40 times more on prisons than, you know, actual infrastructure like transit, and 4 times as much on keeping people locked up than on, you know, training our labor force to be highly educated and competitive in today's economy.

Just great.

crs finds acorn broke no laws in last five years

2009-12-24T19:51:00.001-05:00

via OpenLeft, the NYT reports on a Congressional Research Service Report that shows that the much-maligned ACORN, a stalwart of community organizing and voter registration, has broken no laws in the last five years, despite facing the scrutiny of "46 inquiries by federal, state, and local agencies, including the FBI and the Treasury Department, and five by Congress as of October 2009."

This witch hunt is purely political.

ca food banks make fresh produce a priority

2009-12-24T14:36:00.002-05:00

From yesterday's LAT, a piece on the efforts of California's food banks to make fresh fruits and vegetables a key component of food assistance:

"Ten years ago, food banks were much more passive," said Michael Flood, who runs the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, one of the largest food banks in the country. They took what they could get -- packaged food that might have been supermarket rejects or new products that failed.

Today, 20% of the L.A. bank's food is produce -- by far the largest single category, Flood said.

Farmers have long donated food to their local food banks or have allowed people to glean leftovers from their fields. But in 2005, the California Assn. of Food Banks got involved, hiring one solicitor who procured 10 million pounds of food. In 2008, three solicitors got 64 million pounds of produce. A fourth solicitor begins work in January.

[Solicitor Steve] Sharp, whose family has long farmed in the Imperial Valley, is a deal maker in a Dodge pickup and a straw cowboy hat, seeking farmers in the Imperial and Coachella valleys who are willing to harvest or pack crops they can't otherwise sell. They get paid just enough to get the cabbage or garlic or melons into bins.

"Two weeks ago I had a grower call me and say he had a truckload of cantaloupes and one of honeydew. So I have to go look at it and make sure the quality is there," Sharp said. "They were just real small, and nobody wanted it. There was no market for that size of melon."

He hopes to get [grower Rudy] Schaffner's off-size corn come spring. Schaffner has agreed to work on adapting his conveyor belt system to handle what Sharp needs. They think of it as finding a solution "farmer style."

"The cool thing is, we've got a problem and we're taking care of it directly," Schaffner said one sunny December afternoon in his kitchen, a large poinsettia on the table.

Farmers often have crops that don't meet customers' size or appearance requirements. Or they may have a bumper crop they can't afford to store. A storm in the Northeast can back up produce orders across the country, leaving a farmer with a truckload of unsold food.

"You cut their losses. You are fixing a problem they may have," Sharp said.

Very cool.

sen. al franken's anti-rape amendment signed into law

2009-12-21T19:39:00.002-05:00

Good news today, as President Obama signed the Defense Appropriations Act that included an amendment from Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) that prohibits defense contractors from limiting the ability of their employees to seek justice against their employers in court for offenses including rape, sexual assault, harassment and false imprisonment. Although the law does not apply retroactively, any company signing a contract with the government may not enforce arbitration clauses preventing bringing these types of charges to court; thus, once a company such as, oh say former-Halliburton subsidiary KBR signs a new contract with the government, they can no longer invoke any such arbitration clause, such as the one that is preventing former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones from suing the company for being drugged and gang-raped by co-workers, and then locked in a storage container by other co-workers to cover up the crimes and destroy forensic evidence. More horrifying details here. Thanks to the new law, Jones and others who have suffered from similar violence and crimes may soon be able to pursue justice in the courts.

Score one for the good guys.

health care bill: good policy killed by bad politics?

2009-12-15T16:45:00.003-05:00

Two of the most prominent progressive leaders in Democratic politics have just said that we should kill the health care bill the Senate is recommended, which has been freshly stripped of the Medicare buy-in for those 55-64 years of age as well as the public option trigger. It will likely also be stripped of the 90% "medical loss ratio" provision, which would have required insurance companies to pay-out 90% of their premium revenue in health care benefits. Given all these losses on big ticket and hotly debated issues, it is not surprising that Howard Dean and Darcy Burner are calling for abandonment of the abomination that they see a once promising reform effort having turned into. To quickly get the cost-savings that real health insurance reform requires, reconciliation may be a better idea.

One expert, however, disagrees. Health care cost guru Atul Gawande argues in his latest New Yorker piece that perhaps Frankenstein's Monster is exactly what the U.S. health care system needs right now: a poorly sewn together package of every innovation and policy proposal ever to cross a health policy expert's desk, all thrown out into the marketplace of ideas as pilot projects, may the strong survive. As Dr. Gawande argues, "if we’re willing to accept an arduous, messy, and continuous process we can come to grips with a problem even of this immensity."

The real question, then, seems to me to be not whether American ingenuity fueled by small-scale government-backed successes, gradually scaled up, can work--it seems very plausible that it can--but whether such a process can flourish in the political turmoil likely to follow from such a "weak" health care bill. Because the truth remains that even if there is a lot of "good stuff" in this bill, it will not reduce health care costs quickly enough, it will not create competition in the market where health insurers operate as an oligopoly, and Americans will see little short-term improvement in their access to or cost and quality of health care. There simply isn't enough big ticket stuff in the current health care bill that Democrats will be able to point to come 2010 and 2012, and too much risky stuff (individual mandates to buy insurance comes to mind) that may prove political liabilities. The possibility of a loss of Democratic control of government means that even the good policy ideas scattered throughout the bill may not have a chance to take root; a Republican government would undoubtedly lead to uprooting of pilot projects before they can demonstrate their success, and scaling up would be near impossible.

I have little faith that a Sen. Reid-led Senate will use reconciliation, as they should have from the beginning, to push through the most essential, cost-saving reforms. The final hope lies in conference committee and the possibility that the Medicare buy-in compromise with the public option trigger can be restored, and that this will provide enough short term relief for enough Americans that Democrats can hold on for the next 4 years at least.

does rahm want democrats to lose congress?

2009-12-11T18:28:00.001-05:00

From Chris Bowers:

The best way for Democrats to keep improving is to focus on jobs. This is probably why, in a speech before a bunch of CEOs, Rahm Emanuel has declared reducing the deficit is the top economic priority for next year:

Deficit reduction over the long term will be the White House's primary focus next year, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council conference last month it will be a "key component" of the president's State of the Union address.

"It is foremost on his mind and the mind of the economic team," Emanuel said.

Good idea. The budget deficit is also the top priority of, like, 2% of the nation:

CBS News Poll. Dec. 4-8, 2009. N=1,031 adults nationwide. MoE ? 3.

"What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Open-ended

Economy/Jobs: 47
Health care: 12
War/Peace (general): 4
Poverty/Homelessness: 3
Moral values/Family values: 3
War in Afghanistan: 2
War in Iraq: 2
Budget deficit: 2
Other: 20
Unsure: 5

This poll makes a mockery of the notion that the country is mainly concerned about the deficit right now. When people are not promoted with any choices, only 2% of the country independently lists the deficit as a top priority.

on mammograms and science

2009-12-11T13:03:00.002-05:00

The science behind the mammogram brouhaha in the NYT:

if screening catches the breast cancers of some asymptomatic women in their 40s, then it would also catch those of some asymptomatic women in their 30s. But why stop there? Why not monthly mammograms beginning at age 15?

The answer, of course, is that they would cause more harm than good. Alas, it’s not easy to weigh the dangers of breast cancer against the cumulative effects of radiation from dozens of mammograms, the invasiveness of biopsies (some of them minor operations) and the aggressive and debilitating treatment of slow-growing tumors that would never prove fatal.

The exact weight the panel gave to these considerations is unclear, but one factor that was clearly relevant was the problem of frequent false positives when testing for a relatively rare condition. A little vignette with made-up numbers may shed some light. Assume there is a screening test for a certain cancer that is 95 percent accurate; that is, if someone has the cancer, the test will be positive 95 percent of the time. Let’s also assume that if someone doesn’t have the cancer, the test will be positive just 1 percent of the time. Assume further that 0.5 percent — one out of 200 people — actually have this type of cancer. Now imagine that you’ve taken the test and that your doctor somberly intones that you’ve tested positive. Does this mean you’re likely to have the cancer? Surprisingly, the answer is no.

To see why, let’s suppose 100,000 screenings for this cancer are conducted. Of these, how many are positive? On average, 500 of these 100,000 people (0.5 percent of 100,000) will have cancer, and so, since 95 percent of these 500 people will test positive, we will have, on average, 475 positive tests (.95 x 500). Of the 99,500 people without cancer, 1 percent will test positive for a total of 995 false-positive tests (.01 x 99,500 = 995). Thus of the total of 1,470 positive tests (995 + 475 = 1,470), most of them (995) will be false positives, and so the probability of having this cancer given that you tested positive for it is only 475/1,470, or about 32 percent! This is to be contrasted with the probability that you will test positive given that you have the cancer, which by assumption is 95 percent.

[...] Whatever the probabilities associated with a medical test, the fact remains that there will commonly be a high percentage of false positives when screening for rare conditions. Moreover, these false positives will receive further treatments, a good percentage of which will have harmful consequences. This is especially likely with repeated testing over decades.

In short, tests are not perfect, and when testing for a rare disease, too much testing may actually do more harm across a large population than good.

turnout wins elections = the base wins elections

2009-12-04T17:54:00.004-05:00

"The Base"--that is, hardcore ideological supporters--are insufficient in the United States to win national elections or swing districts. Candidates and incumbents need to woo the oft-cited "swing voters," moderate/centrists and/or indifferent voters who are as likely to stay home and watch the newest Grey's Anatomy as they are to go and cast a vote. However, winning a majority of swing voters does very little good if your base stays at home. In fact, pissing off your base will lose you an election, since the base is much more valuable than just the sure-thing votes they represent. They represent volunteers for get-out-the-vote and voter registration efforts, they represent your most likely donors, and they represent the people who are trying to convince their social networks that going out and voting for you is actually more important than catching up on TV dramas.

President Obama should be worried about his base, because they are shifting from excited optimism to depressed cynicism, and cynicism does not a volunteer/donor make.

DaveJ at OpenLeft makes some suggestions on ways that the President and Administration could signal that they actually do care about their base:

I want to see some Democratic Senators publicly held accountable for going against Obama's agenda.

I want to see the government very publicly slap down a large company for illegally firing union organizers, polluting,

I want to see the government publicly prosecute a few companies for discriminating against (firing, pay differentials, etc.) people over 50 or because they are women or minorities. I'd like to see very public sting operations that catch these companies doing what we all know they are doing.

I'd like to see some Bush cronies held accountable for the corruption and lawbreaking that occurred. (And how about doing something for Gov. Siegelman and apologizing to him on behalf of the government?)

Actually I just want to see some damn laws enforced. A signal that we are returning to rule of law would tell the public that government is back on the side of the people. How many Bushies have been prosecuted for corruption? How many cronies have been asked to give the money back?

A robust Jobs Bill and climate change legislation would help, too. So would immigration reform. But one way or another, President Obama needs to do something. As Mike Lux notes, "the last 4 presidents who didn't have a good relationship with their base were George HW Bush, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Ford, and LBJ. What those four very different presidents had in common was that they didn't get re-elected."

a healthy gdp does not mean a healthy nation

2009-12-03T16:13:00.007-05:00

After four consecutive quarters of decline, positive GDP growth is an encouraging sign that the U.S. economy is moving in the right direction.

- White House Council of Economic Advisers, Nov. 24, 2009

One of the most insulting approaches current American politicians can take in addressing the ongoing Great Recession is to express great joy about the fact that Wall Street seems to be recovering, and the GDP seems to be reversing its downward trend. It is insulting because it essentially is telling Americans that the economy is actually much better than the one that they are living with every day. As the pre-Recession bubble showed us, a healthy total GDP doesn't mean that everyone in the country is benefiting equally. This has been especially far from the truth in recent years, as economic growth largely benefited the wealthy. The top 1% of income earners in the U.S. take home 23.5% of Americans' income, the largest share to be concentrated in the top percentile since 1928, during the pre-Great Depression "Gilded Age." According to the United Nations Development Program, the United States is ranked 3rd in the world for largest gap between rich and poor.

There are better ways to measure countries' success in bettering their lives than simply looking at GDP rates. One standout is the idea of a Human Development Index, as Paul Rosenberg discussed over the summer. The UN Development Program bases the index on actual outcomes in the areas of health and education, rather than just how much money the country is making overall:

Similarly, the Social Science Research Council's American Human Development Project (cool site to play around with if you have some time) looks at standard of living in addition to health and education indicators. This allows them to (literally) draw a vivid picture of the well-being of various parts of the country:

Policymakers who genuinely care about the well-being of their constituents need to abandon the GDP rhetoric when talking about economic trends. Perhaps more fundamentally, though, efforts to change the way that American leaders understand and value economic progress requires not just better government policies, but better ways of measuring the success or failures of such policy.

what is unclear is what type of president obama chooses to be

2009-12-02T08:53:00.003-05:00

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained [...] infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

- George Santayana, 1905

From Alan Jenkins today:

Most Americans carry around at least two stories of government in their heads. One is the story of government as problem solver, as fair referee, and as investor in shared prosperity. It is the government of first responders, of Iwo Jima, of gifted teachers, Head Start and Social Security. The other story is of government as bloated bureaucracy, as tax-and-spender, as bungler, and as rights violator. It is the government of the DMV, of Vietnam, of lazy teachers, of FEMA and Hurricane Katrina. More important than ideology for these Americans is how facts on the ground seem to reaffirm one story or the other.

[...]

The public’s willingness to wait for progress [...] will depend in large part on their belief in the competence of this administration to make the trains run on time. Mistakes will no doubt occur. But the political success of this president may be determined in the coming months by whether his government is characterized by the popular and high-profile “cash for clunkers” program, or is just seen as a clunker.

The lessons of history are clear: it is clear what type of government programs have long-lasting positive effects on American society and help build the legacy of a great Administration (Social Security/Head Start), and it is clear what types of failures tarnish even otherwise laudable presidencies (Vietnam/Hurricane Katrina).

What is unclear is what archetype of president President Obama chooses to be.

FDR good, Hoover bad.

simple lesson: hoover bad, fdr good

2009-11-28T18:35:00.003-05:00

In the grand scheme of things, 75 years is not a very long time. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt decision to turn away from President Hoover's "pay of the deficit and let the market fix itself" economic policy, and toward one of investment in infrastructure and jobs that stalled the Great Depression and helped create mid-20th century economic prosperity and the American Middle-Class. We know these revolutionary policies as the New Deal, which took place primarily between 1933 and 1936, or about 73-76 years ago.

And yet, many Democrats seem to have already forgotten how the Democratic Party became successful and popular in the first place. They joined with pro-Wall Street Republicans to pass the big bank bailouts while simultaneously hemming and hawing about a moderate stimulus package of grants and tax cuts to average Americans. They stall and hold hissy fits about creating a robust health insurance system that will ensure most Americans and create a bunch of jobs. And now they want to destroy the core of the New Deal, the social safety net of Social Security and Medicare.

There is $317 billion of TARP funds left, with more to come as banks repay the bailout that they didn't need in the first place, and that they failed to loan to businesses like they supposedly were going to. Using this money to create actual jobs would be a good thing, like the New Deal was a good thing. Using this money to try to pay off the deficit when we have drastic cuts across the country due to a lack of revenue, on the other hand, would be a very bad thing.

President Obama has suggested he is open to both options. He should be reminded that Pres. FDR is remembered as one of the greatest presidents this country ever had, and he went with investing in our country and communities; Pres. Hoover, on the other hand, decided to try to cut the deficit. He is remembered as the guy who made the Great Depression a lot worse, and one of the worst presidents ever.

ca unemployment at 12.5%

2009-11-27T18:48:00.002-05:00

From the LAT last week:

Unemployment statewide hit a fresh post-World War II high of 12.5%, from a revised 12.3% in September, the California Employment Development Department said Friday.

Prospects for job growth in key recession-battered industries, meanwhile, remain weak.

"Job losses are moderating, but I don't think we'll see a sustained recovery in California until we begin to see job growth in construction and manufacturing," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

California, which has the most manufacturing jobs in the country, lost 8,300 jobs in that sector last month and 124,400 since October 2008.

Time for a Jobs Bill that will help build sustainable jobs.

thanksgiving as a progressive holiday

2009-11-26T22:01:00.004-05:00

There are many reasons that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. That mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie are among my list of all-time top ten favorite foods certainly helps, as does having extra days off to visit family and friends, many of whom I haven't seen for over a year. A double dose of Thursday football also helps (it would be triple if the NFL would realize that the NFL Network experiment is an unmitigated disaster). But the same reasons are true for me of holidays such as Christmas or the Fourth of July (minus the football), and yet there is a particular element of Thanksgiving that makes it a particularly American holiday. Thanksgiving, it turns out, is a time when Americans recognize that we all have so much to be thankful for that we often take for granted during the rest of the year: a peaceful and stable civil society, opportunity, and, perhaps most of all, unifying hope for a better future for all of us.

It is this last character of the United States that makes me think that Thanksgiving has the potential to be a truly progressive holiday; that is, not a holiday for Big-P Progressives, but a holiday when the country remembers and reflects upon its inherently progressive values of community, equality, and the promise of opportunity to make a better life for ourselves and future generations. It is also a uniquely American holiday (sorry Canadian Thanksgiving that takes place in October). As the Christian Science Monitor proclaimed today:

By the time Abraham Lincoln declared it an annual holiday in 1863, Thanksgiving Day had evolved to become an ongoing measure of the American character for generosity, or acts of humble giving to others out of a gratitude for the goodness of God.

Most often, this "ongoing measure of the American character for generosity" is seen in the millions of Americans who volunteer their resources, food, and time to help feed the hungry and needy on this actual holiday, and throughout the holiday season. But our character of generosity is also measured in our welcoming nature, encapsulated in our national motto, e pluribus unum, out of many, one. It is measured in the common belief that in order to live better lives, we need to make our community and country better for everyone in it, so that each of us not only fight for our right to pursue happiness for ourselves, but also fight to create a more perfect Union, that is, a better community.

The American character, as reflected in Thanksgiving, is one of progress.

Much more eloquently, from the President:

As Americans, we hail from every part of the world. While we observe traditions from every culture, Thanksgiving Day is a unique national tradition we all share. Its spirit binds us together as one people, each of us thankful for our common blessings.

As we gather once again among loved ones, let us also reach out to our neighbors and fellow citizens in need of a helping hand. This is a time for us to renew our bonds with one another, and we can fulfill that commitment by serving our communities and our nation throughout the year.

progress lies in the hands of representative legislatures

2009-10-22T06:04:00.003-04:00

I've been only somewhat following the California governor's race, but I kept asking myself the same question: where's the progressive alternative here? It seems, superficially, that leading-contender Attorney General Jerry Brown would be rather conservative in a lot of his policy-making; for example, rather than strongly supporting restoration of majority-rule in budget and revenue decisions, he's implied that he'd much rather continue the current Schwarzenegger policy of cutting state programs and services until we have no infrastructure left. The other major Democratic Party contender, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, has come out strongly for budget and revenue reform, and is known (deservedly or not) as one of the greatest allies of the LGBTQ movement in the state, but as Calitics has reported, Newsom for whatever reason enjoys throwing due process out the window, at least when it comes to the right of immigrant children. Again, I haven't been following the race very closely, so I'm not sure whether there are more factors here, but it seems at a glance that neither candidate is a particularly appealing option for progressives. So what are progressives to do?

I think the answer is clear: the progressive alternative is a representative legislature. Just yesterday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors restored civil liberties by passing a veto-proof bill overturning Newsom's executive action. There is, of course, also the example of the ongoing health reform debate in Congress. The expected leadership from the White House has been absent (as it has been, unfortunately, on other issues of major concern). It has been Speaker Pelosi, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Tri-Caucus (CBC, CHC, and CAPAC), and generally the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives that have been pushing the frontier on the legislation and trying to make some meaningful health reform happen.

Progress in the country requires not only the will of the people to aspire to a better deal, but elected representatives who are actually accountable to that will. The design of the Senate, and the inherent nature of executives elected by millions upon millions of people, render these branches rather immune to the popular cause. It is representative legislatures, such as the House and state and local legislatures, that can and will be the driving force of progressive change. FDR, after all, would not have had the success he did without the strong majorities making up the New Deal Coalition in Congress.

What this means practically is that concerned citizens need to shift their resources and focus--as voters, donors, and volunteers--away from imperial executives and onto representative legislators. Individuals and groups inevitably will have more influence, given the smaller constituency size, but perhaps more importantly, the regularity of elections allows for continuous accountability.

feminism can feed the world

2009-10-21T16:41:00.003-04:00

Natasha Chart at Open Left writes on how feminism can fight global warming; her hypothesis, writ short, is that increasing educational and economic opportunities for women reduces the birthrate, and thus reduces the number of people who are creating CO2 (not to mention also reducing maternal mortality rates and a host of other bad things).

It would seem to follow as well, with regard to my last post, that this would likewise be an effective way of reducing the number of malnourished persons around the world. Even more effective, perhaps.

the world is getting hungrier

2009-10-21T12:30:00.004-04:00

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that over 1 billion people are malnourished around the world, and that the problem is likely getting worse:

After gains in the fight against hunger in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of undernourished people started climbing in 1995, reaching 1.02 billion this year under the combined effect of high food prices and the global financial meltdown, the agency said. The figure topped the 1 billion mark in June, and was 963 million a year ago.

The blame for the long-term trend rests largely on the reduced share of aid and private investments earmarked for agriculture over recent years, the Rome-based agency said in its State of Food Insecurity report for 2009.

"In the fight against hunger the focus should be on increasing food production," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said. "It's common sense ... that agriculture would be given the priority, but the opposite has happened."

In 1980, 17% of aid contributed by donor countries went to agriculture. That share was down to 3.8% in 2006 and only slightly improved in the last three years, Diouf said in an interview with AP Television News.

[...]

Thirty countries now require emergency food assistance, including 20 in Africa. FAO announced in June that the number of hungry people had reached 1 billion, or one in six of the world's population. The world's most populous region, Asia and the Pacific, has the largest number of hungry people — 642 million — followed by Sub-Saharan Africa with 265 million.

"The current crisis is historically unprecedented" said the new report. "With developing countries today more financially and commercially integrated into the world economy than they were 20 years ago, they are far more exposed to shocks in international markets."

[...][M]ore investments will be needed to fulfill pledges like the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve of the number of those living in hunger and poverty by 2015, the report said.

"an organization's whose sole desire, and drive, is the pursuit and seduction of goats"

2009-10-14T11:59:00.001-04:00

Jon Stewart (and John Oliver) on the stunning lack of fact-checking at CNN:

CNN Leaves It There

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Ron Paul Interview

nobel prize week, day 5: well, that was unexpected

2009-10-09T08:51:00.003-04:00

Pres. Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009?!

Nobelprize.org is down for the moment, I assume overrun by the unexpected increase in interest.

update: Ah, there we go: The Nobel Prize for Peace in 2009 goes to President Barack Obama, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

From the press release:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

nobel prize week, day 4

2009-10-08T22:12:00.004-04:00

Day 4 is the Prize for Literature, but as always, we wait in anticipation for Day 5, the Peace Prize. Last year, there was a lot of build-up, with predictions that Human Rights Watch or Chinese dissidents would win the award, but alas, a career diplomat won the prize. Undeterred, would-be soothsayers claim (yet again) that the Nobel Prize committee is seeking to "return to activist roots," with top odds on former hostage Ingrid Betancourt (France), PM Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe), peace mediator Sen. Piedad Cordoba (Colombia), and human rights activist Dr. Sima Samar (Afghanistan). Given how far off mark the predictions were last year, I won't put too much credence on this list (which also mentions President Obama and French President Sarkozy), but if I had to guess, I'd guess PM Tsvangirai as a relatively safe pick for the Committee that will still make them feel like they're "boosting" the position of a peace maker.

But on to Literature! The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2009 is awarded to Herta Müller (Germany), "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

From her bio:

Herta Müller was born on August 17, 1953 in the German-speaking town Nitzkydorf in Banat, Romania. Her parents were members of the German-speaking minority in Romania. Her father had served in the Waffen SS during World War II. Many German Romanians were deported to the Soviet Union in 1945, including Müller's mother who spent five years in a work camp in present-day Ukraine. Many years later, in Atemschaukel (2009), Müller was to depict the exile of the German Romanians in the Soviet Union. From 1973 to 1976, Müller studied German and Romanian literature at the university in Timişoara (Temeswar). During this period, she was associated with Aktionsgruppe Banat, a circle of young German-speaking authors who, in opposition to Ceauşescu’s dictatorship, sought freedom of speech. After completing her studies, she worked as a translator at a machine factory from 1977 to 1979. She was dismissed when she refused to be an informant for the secret police. After her dismissal, she was harassed by Securitate.

Müller made her debut with the collection of short stories Niederungen (1982), which was censored in Romania. Two years later, she published the uncensored version in Germany and, in the same year, Drückender Tango in Romania. In these two works, Müller depicts life in a small, German-speaking village and the corruption, intolerance and repression to be found there. The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively. Because Müller had publicly criticized the dictatorship in Romania, she was prohibited from publishing in her own country. In 1987, Müller emigrated together with her husband, author Richard Wagner.

The novels Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (1992), Herztier (1994; The Land of Green Plums, 1996) and Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (1997; The Appointment, 2001) give, with chiselled details, a portrait of daily life in a stagnated dictatorship. Müller has given guest lectures at universities, colleges and other venues in Paderborn, Warwick, Hamburg, Swansea, Gainsville (Florida), Kassel, Göttingen, Tübingen and Zürich among other places. She lives in Berlin. Since 1995 she has served as a member of Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, in Darmstadt.

And her listed works (1982-present) (works noted by the bibliography in bold):

Niederungen. – 1982
Drückender Tango : Erzählungen. – 1984
Der Mensch ist ein groβer Fasan auf der Welt : Roman. – 1986
Barfüβiger Februar : Prosa. – 1987
Reisende auf einem Bein. – 1989
Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. – 1991
Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger : Roman. – 1992
Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett. – 1992
Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm : vom Weggehen und Ausscheren. – 1993
Herztier : Roman. – 1994 (The Land of Green Plums. - 1996)
Hunger und Seide : Essays. – 1995
In der Falle. – 1996
Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet. – 1997 (The Appointment. - 2001)
Der fremde Blick oder Das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne. – 1999
Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame. – 2000
Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird. – 2001
Der König verneigt sich und tötet. – 2003
Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen. – 2005
Atemschaukel : Roman. – 2009

Selected Criticism
Die erfundene Wahrnehmung : Annäherung an Herta Müller / Norbert Otto Eke (Hg.). – 1991
Der Druck der Erfahrung treibt die Sprache in die Dichtung : Bildlichkeit in Texten Herta Müllers / Ralph Köhnen (Hrsg.). – 1997
Herta Müller / edited by Brigid Haines. – 1998
Predoiu, Grazziella, Faszination und Provokation bei Herta Müller : eine thematische und motivische Auseinandersetzung. – 2000
Dascalu, Bogdan Mihai, Held und Welt in Herta Müllers Erzählungen. – 2004
Bozzi, Paola, Der fremde Blick : zum Werk Herta Müllers. – 2005
Patrut, Iulia-Karin, Schwarze Schwester - Teufelsjunge : Ethnizität und Geschlecht bei Paul Celan und Herta Müller. – 2006

pres. obama nominates judge denny chin, other apias to federal judgeships

2009-10-07T17:34:00.001-04:00

Remember how during the Democratic presidential primaries, 80-20 called for then-Sen. Obama's defeat because he refused to fill out their questionnaire? Many folks then, including me, were baffled, since the questions seemed like softballs.

Well, there are recent signs of hope that while Candidate Obama didn't make the pledges at that time we hoped for, he's going to actually carry them out anyway. Pledges #4 asked then-Sen. Obama to nominate more APIAs to become Article III life-tenured judges (at the time APIAs comprised only 0.6% of all federal judges, despite comprising 4.5% of the population and 5.3% of all attorneys at top 100 law firms), and Pledge #4 asked for him to nominate an APIA to a Circuit Court of Appeal during his first term (there are no APIAs sitting on federal Courts of Appeal).

As the saying goes, talk is cheap, and Pres. Obama is walking the walk. Yesterday, Pres. Obama nominated federal district court Judge Denny Chin (SDNY) to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. If confirmed, he would be the sole active-status APIA Circuit Court judge (Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the Ninth Circuit is a Senior Judge, which means he does not have a full caseload--h/t angry).

But wait, there's more! The President has also nominated three APIAs to federal district courts in California: Jacqueline H. Nguyen to the Central District of California, Edward Milton Chen to the Northern District of California, and Dolly M. Gee to the Central District of California. From the Alliance for Justice blog:

If confirmed, Edward Milton Chen would be the first Asian Pacific American district court judge in the history of the NDCA, (this is especially significant given that approximately 35% of the population in San Francisco is Asian Pacific American). Dolly M. Gee would be the first Chinese American female district court judge in the history of the United States, and Jacqueline H. Nguyen would be the first Vietnamese American district court judge in he history of the United States and the first Asian Pacific American female district court judge in California history.

In American history, there have been only four Asian American federal circuit court judges and 14 Asian American federal district court judges. Asian Americans are still significantly underrepresented on the federal bench.

AFJ has an interesting fact sheet as well.

nobel prize week, day 3

2009-10-07T12:33:00.003-04:00

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 is jointly awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (UK), Thomas A. Steitz (USA), and Ada E. Yonath (Israel) "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome."

From the press release, these breakthroughs may lead to better antibiotics:

Ribosomes produce proteins, which in turn control the chemistry in all living organisms. As ribosomes are crucial to life, they are also a major target for new antibiotics.

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

[...]

An understanding of the ribosome's innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life. This knowledge can be put to a practical and immediate use; many of today's antibiotics cure various diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes. Without functional ribosomes, bacteria cannot survive. This is why ribosomes are such an important target for new antibiotics.

Go Science!