Siding with Big Business

Siding with Big Business

Wiretapping. By the very nature of it, we are putting national security over indvidual privacy rights, putting the governement over the people. Last week, officials from the Obama administration pushed for greater enforcement of wiretapping laws, forcing corporations including AT&T to reestablish means for the government to wiretap their lines even if it means downgrading their technology, according to the New York Times.
In America, government is usually well-meaning. Ronald Reagan's 'government is the problem' is simply not true. Government has a real role in the economy. It can protect, insure, and provide for the struggling. It can stop the crushing of the individual by giant corporations. But wiretapping goes beyond regulations and tariffs, past what is beneficial and infringes on individual's rights to an extreme extent.
Sure, there are real national security reasons for wiretapping. But given the history in America of warrantless wiretapping, it shouldn't be so easy for the government to trample on privacy rights.
It is the role and responsibility of the government to protect the people. It is not the role of the government to destruct privacy rights. So, maybe, being against the expansion of wiretapping programs is, for once, siding with big business. But maybe it's just siding with the individual.
It is imperative that the Obama administration does not venture down the warrantless wiretapping path forged by its predecessors. Any feasible national security benefits by listening though phone lines without a warrant are seriously outweighed by the destruction of rights it causes.
Assuming any activities would be done with a warrant, there are other cons. Wiretapping is expensive and becomes even more so with changing technology. In order for phone service companies to comply with the government wiretapping abilities, they will have to downgrade their systems. With the current programs, the government simply cannot keep up.
There were no public, tangible results from Bush wiretapping. The Obama administration must act legally and with great thought as to the program's actual benefits if they truly plan to pursue wiretapping.

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Graph of the Week: Big Government Spending

Graph of the Week: Big Government Spending

Featured by Paul Krugman, this graph shows the overall growth in government spending in the past four years, growing from a cold number of just over 4,000 billion dollars to just over 5,000 billion. So, yeah, the government spending has increased, though not dramatically. Notably, the rate of increase since the Obama administration took office has remained largely unchanged. We can talk all we want about the increase of government spending, but it hasn't really changed all that much. And let's not forget why spending has increased.
We were fighting two wars actively- and though the combat mission has since ended in Iraq, America is still acting as a strong financial support in the area. The recession is still in full swing, and the only way to pull ourselves out of the hole we've dug ourselves is to spend. Tax cuts are great, but they are the definition of blind populism. Sometimes, just sometimes, what Americans want and what the economy needs do not match up. And for the good of all America, the economy needs to see a major increase in monetary circulation.
While spending hasn't increased much, in general, what has is good spending. Good for America, good for the economy, and really the only way a recovery will be successful. Next time, before rants about 'big government' and too much spending become the politically acceptable narrative, it is important that why and what spending has become prevalent is examined.

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Quick Fire News (Don't Ask Don't Tell, Chilean Miners)

Quick Fire News (Don't Ask Don't Tell, Chilean Miners)

Don't Ask Don't Tell
A federal judge who had previously declared the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy unconstitutional has now released a memorandum on the Department of Defense, forcing it to lift the policy that had kept openly gay soldiers from serving in the military since 1993. Attorney General Eric Holder can decide to attempt to challenge the decision or he can allow it to stand. Either way, this is the biggest step towards the total repeal of the policy that has occurred; hopefully, it will give way to either Congress or the Obama Administration taking steps towards the complete dismantling of the policy.
In a midterm year when Democrats are struggling to keep their legislative achievements the focus, a progressive move like this in Congress could act as a way to highlight the stark difference between Democrats and Republicans on social issues. This particular group of Republican candidates for Congressional seats generally share rather radically conservative views on social issues including gay rights and abortion. It is imperative that the Democrats running for Congress do not allow themselves to simply be 'the other option' to Republicans. They need to be running on their legislative triumphs and their comparative moderate positions.

Chilean Miners
In what has become possibly the biggest and most uplifting story about mines in a really long time, all of the 33 miners, with some rescuers still on their way up) have been rescued from the collapsed mine in Chile they had been trapped in for over two months. Their rescue was far ahead of schedule and, according to authorities in Chile, the men appeared in better health than expected. Countless Chileans have been watching live television reports on the rescues across the country, and many more have been camped out at the site of the mine- some since the original collapse. Other than the hopefulness of the situation (the miners' fate was originally considered bleak), the story truly demonstrates the technological advances the world has made in terms of underground equipment. As few as five years ago, there is no way this rescue would have been possible. The miners would, in all likelihood, not have been reached in the first place by message and certainly would not be returning today from their situation in the condition they are in.

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Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren

The aspect of the banking regulatory bill that will benefit consumers most in the long term is, doubtlessly, the creation of a new consumer protection agency. Its critics can rant all they want about how the agency will be superfluous, that all it is adding is more paperwork, but perhaps they remember the international fraud cases, focused in America and Europe, last year. Or maybe they recall the US's experience with Bernie Madoff? Or even the shoddy business practices by Wall Street companies that abetted the recession. The agencies already in existence failed here, and they have failed in scores of other cases. The new organization can cover these gaps, protecting Americans from fraud and malpractice in an unprecedented way.

The only way, however, that this agency can operate effectively and not go the way of, for example, the Minerals Managment Service, is if the person heading up the agency truly is devoted to its purpose. The work of Elizabeth Warren, who has been deeply involved in the creation of the agency, puts her in the best position to lead the group.

If the agency is properly headed and effectively run, the regulations it enforces can truly protect Americans to a much further extent than any predecessors. And isn't that the most basic reason for progress in government for a functioning society?

[Photo credit: topnews.net]

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Quote 10/11/10

Quote 10/11/10

"But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)- that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are burned in containers of the earth. We have learned to give them the exact same portion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily then when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly."

-the late Howard Zinn, author and historian.  

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Citizens United

Citizens United

In January, we said:

With lobbyists already such an imposing force on Capitol Hill, you might think that the Supreme Court would rule against expanding the powers of corporations to spend money influencing politicians and public policy, but you would be absolutely incorrect. Thursday, the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of Citizens United, a conservative corporation non-profit corporation, to reverse years of legislation forbidding companies to spend money on ads for political campaigns, essentially setting back any campaign finance reform indefinitely.
Corporations can now use their overall profit to support any candidate, PAC, or special interest group publicly, giving them more lobbying power for various issues and more pull over candidates and elected officials. It is paramount to our country's future that elected officials answer to people rather than companies, and this new decision will put the opinions of corporations over constituants.

The Supreme Court's decision has real-world ramifications. This ruling is not disconnected from actual campaigns, rather, it has given way to the brand-new 'Super PAC', whose spending- especially on ads- is practically unlimited.
These PACs have already poured money into the midterms in an unprecedented way. Districts that were previously won with maybe a million dollars spent by all groups involved with every candidate, like Rep. Peter Defazio's, are now multi-million dollar affairs- and these are just the Congressional elections. Imagine what this means for the 2012 presidential race. This sort of inflation of campaign value renders individuals irrelevant. All the power now belongs to the PACs, who are in turn funded primarily by large corporations.
The base problem with the court's ruling is a corporations is not a person. Its owners are, its employees are, but it is not. In America, we treat corporations legally as individuals, but this was never intended to render them equivalent to US citizens. Socially, a corporation is not a person- it cannot vote, and it shouldn't be able to throw money at an election. Even if the idea of a corporation being a person was upheld, therefore keeping the rationale of the decision being one of free speech, it would still not be valid. The entire premise of the first amendement rights is that they are inalienable until they infringe upon the rights of someone else, and the new powers of corporations according to the ruling would decrease the validity of the free speech of an individual. Regardless, a corporation is not a person.
The Koch brothers, raw material moguls who fund politically active groups like the 'grassroots' organization Americans for Prosperity, just have one vote each. Their votes are equal to every other citizens, not inflated due to the millions- or even billions- of dollars behind them. Their access to nearly unlimited funds combined with the new ruling gives the Koch brothers much, much more influence over politicians than everyday constituants.
The same is true of every other mogul or corporate group with enough spare funds to fuel a Super PAC. Maybe the new addition of Elena Kagen- whose first official day as a justice last week marks the unprecedented presence of three female justices- will result in the Court reassessing the role of corporations in the increasingly money-based political system, but, in all likelihood, it won't.


[Photo credits: CNN.com and WashintonPost.com]

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We Shouldn't Have To

We Shouldn't Have To

Tyler Clementi, an eighteen-year old college student in New Jersey, committed suicide last week after being harassed for being gay. Clementi's death follows those of Billy Lucas, age 15, Ashter Brown, 13, and Seth Walsh, also 13, all gay teens who recently committed suicide, purportedly due to constant bullying. Looking back further, Clementi's death has echos of the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, which lead to the enactment of hate crime legislation in several states, including the targeted deaths of gay men and women as hate crimes. These deaths are rapidly becoming the rule, not the exception, for gay youths.
Simply put, this is disgusting. The unhappy losses of these young people only further magnifies the central issue when fighting for gay rights in America: there is a culture in the country that tells children there there is something inherently wrong about being gay, something so heinously wrong about it that it's better to kill themselves than to live as gay men and women.
The blockage in the Senate of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell is only another organization telling these children that because they are gay, they are not good enough. Not good enough to serve America, not good enough to get married.
We shouldn't have to tell LGBT youth not to contemplate suicide. We shouldn't have to tell them that they just need to 'hang on' through the harassment until it gets better, or that yes, they are just as important as everyone else. We shouldn't have to read stories or hear commentary about the deaths of gay youths. We shouldn't have to because the harassment shouldn't exist in the first place.
America must allow Clementi's death to do what Shepard's did in the 90s: make progress for the rights of the gay community. If not a change in the laws surrounding gay marriage, it must act as a motivator to finally repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. It would be irresponsible for the US Senate to look at the influence they can potentially have upon gay youths like Clementi and not pass the retraction of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The change of this policy could, quite literally, save lives- not only in the military, but also at home. It could validate to scores of gay youth their importance to America, and if that is a possibility at all, it is worth it to repeal just for that. Using Clementi's death to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell would not be politicizing it. It would be possibly saving some other Tyler Clementi out there from committing suicide because he didn't think he was good enough.

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