STRANGELAND.NET

As many of you have no doubt heard/seen/read in recent days, there is a Senate Bill that has a lot of bi-partisan backing (and Presidential) push to establish a “Pork” database. It would catalog any spending project that was worth more than (if memory serves) $25,000. Strangely, a Senator decided to put a halt to it in an obfuscated manner. This caused an up roar in the Blogosphere and main stream media as well as pushing a number of other Senators and governmental officials to try and smoke out who it was.

Now we know that it was none other than Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.

As some of you probably remember, it’s Ted Stevens that brought us the Gravina Island Bridge, infamously known as the Bridge to Nowhere. He’s also the one that summed up the Internet as a “series of tubes.” I’m sure he’s wishing now that it was just that so he could have blocked up the flow of information through them.

While it doesn’t surprise me at all that it was Ted Stevens who was behind this, I wish I could say that it was an isolated problem in Congress. I also wish I could say that the Senate itself would have fully turned to find out who it was if it hadn’t been for the public outcry. My guess is that if it wasn’t an election year and Pork Spending hadn’t become such a flash point issue, then this would have likely passed out of the limelight and disappeared.

I’m very much in favor of the database authorized by this bill being created. There needs to be more oversight and accountability when it comes to pork spending in Congress. Yes, I understand that people want to get re-elected. Yes, I understand that people want to do things for people in their districts. Unfortunately what far too many of them forget once they get to Congress is that it’s not just the money from the people in their district with which they’re dealing. They also seem to lose a lot of their ideas of fiscal responsibility because of how desensitized to the source of taxes they (and we) have become. I’m sure that many members of Congress are much more frugal with their own finances than they are with tax dollars. After all, it’s much easier to spend someone else’s money than your own.

My hope is that this database will lead to greater accountability for pork projects such as the Gravina Island Bridge. My hope is that it will lead members of Congress to think twice before attaching such projects as riders to other bills to sneak them through outside of the public’s eye. It depresses me on some levels at the lack of reaction to such projects and the general reaction from tax payers being to push their representatives and senators to get them their piece of the pie rather than pushing them to put a stop to it altogether. I suppose that’s part of why I would really like to see Rep. Ron Paul’s annual bill to require quoting of the authorizing passage from the Constitution whenever a bill is introduced to be passed. That would hopefully require a bit more forethought on the part of Congress before putting these bills to committee and to the floor for a vote.

Unfortunately, despite this outcry, it’s likely just another in a long line of temporary rallies for a dying Republic. The American people as a whole have become far too complacent and are only looking for what’s in it for them in the short term and for someone to relieve them of as much responsibility as possible. But hope springs eternal, and I’d love to be proved wrong in this case.

stranger Uncategorized

         Welcome to my inaugural Strangeland essay. I’d like to take a moment to thank Stranger for the opportunity to write, and thank you for reading. I hope this is the first of many essays I get a chance to write, and I hope I can help foster some productive and interesting conversations.
         For the title of this essay, I’ve paraphrased the British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, who in 1790 wrote a profound work, Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book stands as one of the earliest and most important articulations of some basic ideas that underlie modern conservatism. Opposed to most of the ideals and values of the Enlightenment, Burke offered a critique of the French Revolution that was based on a rejection of abstract ideas about human nature and rights. A true conservative, Burke extolled the virtues of private property, tradition, and hierarchy, as well as the notion that man’s nature was inherently base or sinful, and therefore needed to be controlled by authority figures.
         Burke’s work should be required reading for any serious student of politics or philosophy, but my point in appropriating his title today has nothing to do with his critique of the Enlightenment or democracy; the 216 years since the writing have produced far better criticism than I could offer. Instead, I wanted to highlight the one area where Burke was profoundly wrong – his conclusions. While Burke was indeed spot on in that the revolutionary government in 1790 France would collapse in faction and tyranny, his conclusion that this collapse would be due to the nature of democracy and the Enlightenment project is rebutted by the persistence, stability, and enduring appeal of democratic and progressive values.
         In similar vein, the conventional wisdom and prognostication surrounding the surprising primary victory of Ned Lamont over incumbent Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary last Tuesday are equally flawed. The CW about why Lieberman lost is disastrously simplistic and incomplete, and the conclusions about “what this means for the Democratic party” fail as well.
         Let me just highlight the three main conclusions drawn from Ned Lamont’s victory. These have been spewn all over the mainstream media and conservative blogosphere already (Hank Waters of the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune manages to cram them all into a short editorial at www.showmenews.com/2006/Aug/20060815Comm002.asp), but as briefly as I can manage, they are as follows: 1) Lamont’s win indicates a takeover of the Democratic party by the fringe, “anti-war left” (conversely, the Lamont win indicates that the Democrats have always been the “anti-war fringe), 2) Lamont won as a single-issue candidate, and 3) Lamont is a rich dilettante, too inexperienced to make a credible Senator. The CW conclusion is that the Democrats have proven that they are “weak on defense” and in thrall to the pacifistic far left. Neither the “analysis” nor the conclusions have any serious basis in reality.
         First, take the observation that those opposed to the war in Iraq are part of some “fringe left.” In fact, opposition to the war is entirely in the mainstream, and has been for some time. According to CBS News polling, the last time President’s Bush’s handling of the war on Iraq reached 50% approval was December 22, 2003. To be fair, approval of his handling of the war hit 49% on March 14, 2004. In similar vein, respondents saying that going to war in Iraq was the “right thing to do” has not been at or above 50% since Halloween 2004. These results are entirely congruent with Newsweek’s, ABC/Washington Post’s, USA/Gallup’s, and even FOX’s polling (all numbers are from www.pollingreport.com). Opposition to the war in Iraq is not a fringe phenomenon, unless we are speaking of an amazingly long fringe.
         Next, take the idea that, apart for his unqualified support for the Iraq war, Lieberman was entirely in the mainstream of Connecticut and Democratic voters on most of the other important issues. Even if Sen. Lieberman did, as the CW has it, “support the Democratic leadership 90% of the time,” it looks like the 10% of issues where he differs from his nominal party are issues that hit very close to home to core Democratic voters. For example, Lieberman both supported and appeared on television to justify the Congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case. He has supported oil exploration in ANWR, and voted against the filibuster of now-Justice Samuel Alito. Lieberman supported the right of Catholic hospitals to refuse emergency contraception to rape victims, a stance which caused him to lose the endorsement of the National Organization for Women. Speaking personally, the most serious knock against Lieberman is his continued stance against “indecency” in film, television, video games, and music, stances which made me appalled that Vice President Gore selected him as his running mate in 2000. Senator Lieberman differs from the rank and file of his political party on many of the issues that those partisans hold most dear; indeed, much of his electoral support comes from unaligned and Republican voters.
         Lastly, the idea that Ned Lamont is “unqualified” to be a Senator is unfounded. First and foremost, the US Constitution places only an age requirement to serve in the Senate, though this argument may well make thin soup. On the merits, Lamont is as qualified as the median senator. He is Ivy League educated, along with 16 other currently-serving senators, the President, and the entire Supreme Court. Lamont founded his own company, Lamont Digital Systems, in 1984. He has served in city government, both as selectman and school board member. Indeed, if one believes in a system where private citizens serve in government for a time and then return to private life, Lamont’s background in business and service should make him a desirable candidate.
         I’d like to conclude by offering my own analysis of what the Lamont primary victory means. I offer two observations, possibly interrelated. First, there appears to be a noteworthy anti-incumbent sentiment among the electorate. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 53% of the public characterizes their mood as “anti-incumbent,” compared with 54% in 1994, the last time majority control of the Congress changed. Ten years of Republican control of Congress and five years of unified control of the government have not produced real feelings of well-being and security in the median American, a sign that bodes poorly for Senators and non-gerrymandered Representatives.
         Lastly, I think the Lamont win and the not-talked-about primary defeat of Michigan Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-MI) by a challenger from the right point to an increasing polarization of the two political parties and their partisans. This polarization has been increasingly demonstrated empirically in the political science literature over the past 10 years, as well as being obvious to any serious observer of our politics, and I believe it is to our real peril as a nation.

arr_squared Uncategorized

In my usual run through websites this morning, I swung by the Drudge Report as usual. The main headline there was a picture of the lines at an airport checkpoint and the phrase ‘Get Use to It.’ This, of course, was in reference to the security lock down following the arrest of nineteen or more suspected terrorists in the United Kingdom yesterday. The news is all abuzz with information–or lack there of in some cases–about the plot and what it entailed.

I’m not going to go into details about it or beat on the ‘good for them’ trumpet. The details are out there for those that want them and I do appreciate the plot being stopped. My issue, however, is with the idea that we need to get used to the intrusiveness of the security as we travel. Shortly after 9/11 when the TSA was put in and security started its first tight down, there was a quote that came out of the Israeli Security in reference to why the TSA wouldn’t improve anything. The paraphrase (as, unfortunately, I don’t have access to the direct quote), Israeli security stated that the main difference between them and the TSA is that the TSA is looking for weapons while they’re looking for terrorists.

That is a key difference noted there. Due to the politically correct mentality in this country, you end up with ineffective screening methods that result in whack-a-mole hammers rather than scalpels for removing security threats. Instead of talking to people, actually paying attention to the particulars of the people who are carrying out the plots, and other such details, the TSA chooses instead to paint with broad strokes as far as banning things and opt to completely randomize their extra screening so that you end up with Grandma and Junior pulled to the side for screening.

I’m personally tired of the utterly ineffectual “feel good” methodology of the TSA. Now we’re being told that we need to get used to further restrictions? Pardon me if I’m less than happy about this. The TSA was put into place because supposedly the private screeners weren’t doing their job, but it wasn’t the private screeners employed by the airports and the airlines who had information regarding the 9/11 terrorists for months before hand and opted not to act on it–or couldn’t because of the walls between the CIA and the FBI.

I understand the need to watch for further terrorists plots. It would have been horrific if this plot had actually come to fruition (approximately 2500 people blown up in midair crossing the Atlantic). I do not, however, feel that we need to wrap outselves in a stifling security blanket on the off-chance that it will catch a terrorist or two when there are more effective means of doing so out there. If we move to the point where we’re paralyzed with fear, then we are doing a disservice to ourselves and our country. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where we’re headed–whether it’s paralyzed by fear of terrorism or fear of offending someone.

I would suggest that people write to their Representatives and Senators to note displeasure on these latest measures and to implore them to actually do something about security rather than handing out visual and verbal placebos to the citizens of this country. Make it clear to them that you do not want your tax dollars wasted by feel good measures that give a false sense of security. Push them to make meaningful security changes rather than allowing the current dog and pony show to continue.

I would also advise you to close your letter with a sentence that’s been put forward by a lot of people in recent years, attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

stranger Uncategorized