PZ Myers has a political post especially for Kevin.
Current Affairs
Aw, Sweet…
The kids at COLAGE are doing their own bit to help the fight on Proposition 8. They are having a postcard campaign:
2. Create your message. Keep it short and simple. Here is an example: Dear Uncle Ron. On November 4th when you go to vote please remember to think of me and my two moms. Prop 8 would take away our rights as a family. Vote No
Short, simple and to the point. More power to them.
Descending into Farce
When Kevin first explained to me how the US political system worked I was aghast. Over the years I have partially got used to it, but now it seems that Americans are starting to wonder too.
Most systems of parliamentary practice (e.g. the famous Robert’s Rules of Order) do not allow an amendment to a motion unless that amendment is germane to the subject of the original motion. But Congress, as I understand it, has a special standing rule allowing non-germane amendments, because they allow for the addition of pork.
Here’s how it works. Someone wants to pass a bill for, say, saving the country from economic collapse. “NO”, say the Congresscritters in unison, “it shall not pass. At least, not until we get ours.” And so the pork allocation begins. $xbn to struggling car manufacturers in Detroit, $ym to struggling wind farm owners in Texas, and so on. Some of these things are good, some bad, but they all have one thing in common – they bring in votes. Every Congresscritter has to be able to take back something to his or her backers (and by “backers” I may mean “voters”, but more often I mean “the people who supplied the campaign finance”). And the bigger the crisis, the more Congresscritters need to be bribed in this way, and the stranger their demands become. Because there is apparently one man in Congress who will not give his vote to save the country from disaster unless something is also done for the plight of people who cycle to work. Cyclist commuters of America rejoice, a $20/month tax break is coming your way.
You know, it is a great cause, and I’m very happy for all of those cyclists. I’ll also be happy if the good old USA doesn’t suffer terminal economic collapse. But sometimes I am tempted to imitate the great sage Obelix and tap my head in wonder.
More on the tax break for cyclists, and even more sarcasm, at Knowledge Problem.
Update: And lo, it worked. Offer them enough pork and they will vote for you.
I Have Powers
One of the things I got to do today was have an extended rant about certain political issues close to my heart (in a way which may eventually get back to persons in government). I let rip a bit about Toiletgate, and with that and various other London policing issues in mind I voiced my opinion that the Met might be better off without Sir Ian Blair. Imagine my surprise when I got home and pulled up the BBC web site…
Where Do We Go From Here?
Well, it seems like a majority of the American people (or at least those who badger their Congresscritters) want the bailout deal to fail, and are prepared to accept the risk of a major financial meltdown. There are various reasons for this. Some of them are offended by the very idea of state involvement in business; some of them are dancing in the streets over the “death of Capitalism”; and some of them just think that watching bankers jump from skyscraper windows would make great reality TV. But all of them have one thing in common: they all think that someone else will suffer, not them.
They are wrong. We are all in this together.
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Legal Opinion
British MPs have been warned that soldiers who hand over prisoners to US forces may face prosecution under both British and European human rights legislation because they might be knowingly abetting torture. Andrew Tyrie MP (Conservative) told The Guardian:
“I commissioned a legal opinion to establish whether the UK acted unlawfully when they were handed over […] I now have the answer. The UK remains legally responsible for the subsequent treatment of anybody who has been detained by the UK. It is likely that British policy on this area is not only ethically questionable but is also unlawful. The government now needs to radically rethink its policy on this issue.”
Whether he’d say that if the Tories were in government is, of course, another matter.
Quote of the Day
“We know Washington is asleep at the wheel. We know we can’t count on leadership there.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
OK, he was actually talking about environmental issues at the time, but it is a measure of how low Dubya’s stock has sunk that a supposedly Republican governor can say that about him.
The Planet is Leaking
With all of the fuss about financial markets I completely missed this potentially more serious story. I just caught up with it via Nature, and they don’t seem too worried right now, but it has a small potential to be very, very bad indeed.
On Financial Regulation
I have seen a number of people around the blogosphere today saying that the Washington Mutual Bank has “failed”, and even that this is like being back in the Great Depression. Well, no.
I had a few thousand dollars in WaMu (much of it owed to the British government in taxes I will get billed for eventually). I’ve been watching the bank with concern for some months, but Kevin assured me that I didn’t need to take my money out because it was FDIC insured and I’d need to have much more cash than that deposited before I would be at risk of losing anything. And so it turned out, because WaMu has not failed. It was ordered to sell itself to another bank before it could fail. If it had failed, as banks did in the 1930s, I would have lost all of my money. As it is, the bank is still in operation, and I actually withdrew a fair chunk of cash today in the form of payments on my credit cards.
I find it rather odd that some of the same people who are calling for regulation of the financial sector in the face of the current crisis are also completely misrepresenting what has happened to WaMu. The FDIC system, after all, was set up after the Great Depression precisely to prevent things like that happening again. And in this case it has worked. Maybe people just don’t understand what has happened. But you know, if there was a car crash and the seat belts kept everyone safe then hopefully people would be saying what good things seat belts were, not going on about how there was a car crash and everyone died.
Spam of the Year
I don’t remember getting one of these myself, but it may have got lost in the flood. Ellen Kushner, however, has highlighted it:
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
And so on. Hilarious.
A Mad, Mad World
I’ve been refraining from commenting further on the current economic meltdown because I don’t know enough about the actual issues to know whether what the US Treasury is doing will fix them or not, and I have no desire to add to the mass of uninformed comment already out there. On the other hand, I’m not exactly how well informed the Treasury folks are either. Most of you probably don’t read Forbes.com, so you won’t have seen this:
In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Never mind, John McCain is apparently off to Washington to sort things out, presumably with a six gun and some well-aimed fisticuffs. I gather that the elitist intellectuals are upset (The Economist described it as “ridiculous”), but the rest of the electorate thinks it is a great idea because who cares about boring old debates anyway, right? On the other hand, it has given Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber a chance to resurrect a famous moment from my favorite TV quiz.
A Landmark Decision
While I have been in transit an interesting story has been unfolding in the field of transgender rights. It centers on an employment discrimination case. Colonel David Schroer applied to the Library of Congress for a job as an expert on counter-terrorism issues, a subject on which Schroer was very well qualified. The Library was initially enthusiastic, but on learning that Schroer was undergoing gender reassignment and would be coming to work as Diane they told her she could not have the job. With the help of the ACLU, Schroer sued for sex discrimination, and won. There’s a long and learned post about the case by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss, an expert in transgender law issues, here. If you’d like my potted (and probably slightly off on the finer points of law) layman’s version, read on.
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The Politics of Fear
Here’s one for all of you folks getting exercised about US politics. Some researchers at Rice University have discovered a strong correlation between how disturbed people are by frightening images and sudden sounds, and how likely they are to have political views that are non-liberal.
I am generally rather dubious of this sort of science, but I have to admit that there’s a strong temptation, next time I encounter one of those in-your-face talk radio types, to yell back, “Yeah, but you only vote Republican because you are a big wussy coward who’s afraid of foreigners, feminists and queers.”
I should add that there are other reasons for voting Republican that were not covered by the research, and I’d be interested to see a similar experiment that looked at beliefs such as strong government control of industry.
Update: Here’s a parallel report from the paper’s co-authors at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In the Financial News
Let me get this straight… Manchester United is now sponsored by the US Government???
The Derivatives Panic
Thanks to the goings on in Wall Street over the weekend, various newspapers are busily producing panic-filled articles about evil things called “derivatives”. This happens to be something I know a little about. Those of you who have a faith-based view of economics need read no further, but if you are interested in some more information, here it comes.
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Hang in there, Houston
It is very windy here and we have some pretty impressive black clouds, but we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t been lucky with Ike. So my personal happiness in getting my vacation is shot through with worry about my friends who are being evacuated. Karen, Curtis, Amy, anyone else I don’t know about, take care and good luck.
UK Gender Politics Update
I’ve just got an email alert about a new political campaign in the UK to give people the right not to identify as either “male” or “female”. I suspect that some people will immediately jump on the bandwagon and try to hijack it into forcing all transgender people to identify as neither “male” nor “female”, but the original focus appears laudable. If there’s anyone in the UK who think this applies to them and wants to get involved (even if it is only signing a petition) let me know and I’ll pass the information along.
Comrade Cheryl Strikes Again
Yesterday I was apparently upsetting sensitive Republicans, and this morning I find Mike Glyer holding me up as an example of the “left wing” of the sf community. I suppose I could make some crack about only in America is someone who is neither a gun-toting Libertarian nor a religious fundamentalist regarded as a raving Communist, but that’s not actually the way it works. Many of the Americans I know have political opinions that are pretty close to those of the Socialists I know back in the UK (most of whom would happily lump me in the same political group as Jerry Pournelle, Mike). But Americans generally won’t self-identify as Socialists, regardless of how collectivist their political views are. And more importantly the right in America has become so obsessed with opposing civil rights that anyone who stands up for women or LGBT people or people of color is immediately identified as a dangerous leftie. The economic debate is completely off the radar.
Trip Planning Update
The good news is that New Orleans and its people appear to have got off relatively lightly as compared to Katrina (though the people of Bihar in India have been a lot less lucky). However, the storm did do quite a bit of damage and there are problems with basic services such as electricity. Speaking earlier today, Mayor Ray Nagin asked citizens not come back to the city until services were restored.
Obviously in such a situation the last thing that the city needs is a bunch of stupid tourists getting in the way, but because of this Northwest have been very reasonable and have allowed us to re-book for the following weekend. That’s going to be pretty tiring for me as I’ll be back from New Orleans and have to turn around almost immediately and head to England, but so it goes. The bottom line is that we do get our vacation and we don’t make nuisances of ourselves. That sounds good to me.
Gustav Moves In
Today’s news is full of the evacuation of New Orleans. From what I can see, hurricane Gustav is not expected to make a direct hit on the city, but it will pass close enough to cause major damage. Hopefully the local and federal authorities will manage to make a slightly better job of managing the situation this time. Possibly the threat of major loss of life due to a badly managed natural disaster during the Republican National Convention will succeed in concentrating minds.
As for us, the Northwest web site shows that the ticket re-booking restriction waiver is only in operation for flights up until Wednesday. We are booked for Thursday, so we have to go or lose our money. In any case, the terms of the waiver only allow re-booking for times when we won’t be able to travel, so we are screwed either way. Given that, I suspect we might as well go anyway, though we won’t know whether the city will actually be open for business next weekend for a few days yet. As much of the point of going was to give New Orleans some badly needed tourist traffic, I’d be happy to go, but if the storm causes major damage the city authorities might want tourists to stay clear for a week or two while they clean things up. There’s no point in going just to gawk and get in the way.