Politics: June 2004 Archive Page

Those who complain loudly about how many jobs have been “exported” to other countries because of international free trade totally ignore all the jobs that have been imported to the American economy because of that same free trade. Siemens alone employs tens of thousands of American workers, and Toyota has already produced its ten millionth car in the United States. --Thomas Sowell --Low Taxes Do What? (Hoover Digest)

I'd never considered this perspective before. Here's another fascinating quote, an attempt to counter the meme that Regan cut taxes for the rich and soaked the poor, leading to defecit spending:

What Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich” actually cut were the tax rates per dollar of income. Out of rising incomes, the country as a whole—including the rich—paid more total taxes than ever before.

As Sowell puts it, "Simple stuff like this is not very exciting for economists, and there is no payoff in one’s professional career for clarifying such things for the general public." That kind of explanation won't fit on a bumper sticker as easily as something designed to get you in the gut, like "AIDS: The Reagan Vietnam."

Sadly, I think that regardless of their political persuasion, this topic would probably put the average freshman comp student to sleep, so I won't bother Googling for a good counter-opinion to present as a pair of readings. Someday maybe I'll teach an upper-level rhetoric course...

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery. --Christopher Hitchens --Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore (Slate)

Woah... Hitchens is known as one of the few to attack pop-culture saints such as Bob Hope and even Mother Teresa, so it can't be easy to dismiss his attack on Moore. He's not a conservative who's annoyed that Moore has trumped Rush Limbaugh-style politics-as-entertainment by using images (which speak directly to our emotions, as opposed to words, which at least sometimes engage our minds).

Hitchens, who has made a few documentaries himself, sounds a bit bitter in the following quote, but I think it's an important perspective to consider:

[A] documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them.

Weblogs, Comments, and Law (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

IANAL ("I am not a lawyer"), but here are some links I found interesting.

While a newspaper has a responsibility to check the accuracy of letters to the editor, if person A were to start a cafe, and person B walked into the cafe and made statements that the court deemed libelous, it doesn't seem likely that person A should be held responsible.

If Person A rents a hall, calls a public town meeting and invites people to walk up to a microphone to say whatever they like, and Person B makes statements that a court deems libelous, would person A be legally responsible for any offense committed by person B?

Last year, in Wired, the article "Bloggers Gain Libel Protection" described a ruling involving the re-use, in electronic form, of information taken from elsewhere. Thus, if a blogger were to quote an excerpt from someplace else, and the author of that excerpt was charged with libel, then according to this ruling, the blogger would not be responsible. Let the reader beware -- the title of the Wired article mentions blogs, but the case actually centered around an e-mail.

I missed it when I blogged the original article, but Jack Balkin quickly put it into perspective:

This does not mean that bloggers are immune from libels they themselves write. It means that they are immune from (for example) libels published in their comments section (if they have one) because these comments are written by other people and the blogger is merely providing a space for them to be published. Congress wanted to treat operators of chatrooms and other interactive computer services differently from letters to the editor columns in a local newspaper.

Balkin also notes that corrections, clarifications, and retractions are part of the weblog culture, in ways that traditional print journalism doesn't provide.

If that's so, when blogger A posts an inaccurate statement, visitors to blogger A's website can publish corrections -- by commenting on the post (and thus adding their text to the main text), or perhaps simply by sending an e-mail. The technology and practice of weblogs makes it easy for bloggers to correct their mistakes or give space to opposing views. This built-in series of checks and balances is part of what makes the online media so exciting, from a "power to the people" perspective.

We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse -- so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management." --Deborah Orin --Reporting for the Enemy (NY Post)

An extremely interesting argument. Two wrongs don't make a right, so if it's true that the US media are downplaying Saddam's tortures and hyping the US tortures, that doesn't make what the US did right. But it's still fascinating to consider, in terms of a media perspective, that the US torture was just outrageous enough to get coverage (after all, these photos don't document removing limbs or executions).

Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I'd vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect lives?why mess with it? This rational fear of the peasantry is frequently misinterpreted as rich guilt, but that's not the case. They just want to pay off all the have-nots to keep them from storming their manors and impaling them on stakes.

Republican elites don't set off the spite glands in the same way, and it's not only because of a sinister right-wing propaganda machine. Take a look at a photo of the late billionaire Sam Walton, a dried-out Calvinist in a baseball cap and business suit, and you'll see why. If Republican billionaires enjoy their wealth, they sure as hell hide it well. As far as one can tell, Republican billionaires genuinely like working 18-hour days in offices. Their idea of having fun is a day on the golf green (a game as slow and frustrating as a day in the office) or attending conferences with other sleazy, cheerless Calvinist billionaires. If that's what all their wealth got them, let 'em have it?so says the spite bloc. --Mark Ames
--Spite! It Wins Votes! (NY Press)

Another of the "doesn't quite fit into one camp or the other" essays that I find interesting reading these days. (Starts with some salty language.)

An atheist's attempt to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance failed on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court avoided the constitutional question and ruled he could not bring the challenge on behalf of his daughter.... The ruling came on Flag Day and on the 50th anniversary of the addition of the words "under God" to the pledge. The U.S. Congress adopted the June 14, 1954, law in an effort to distinguish America's religious values and heritage from those of communism, which is atheistic. --Top Court Rejects Atheist's Challenge to Pledge (Reuters|MyWay)

When Sandy called to tell me that she had been fired over the essay she had written for class, I felt like Joseph K. in Kafka's The Trial?arrested without charge, guilty of something, but uncertain of what. I had been teaching writing since 1971, and to my knowledge a student had never before been fired for writing an essay for class. After the phone call, I tried to convince myself that I had done nothing wrong, merely given an open-ended writing assignment. I wanted to believe that my sense of having been arrested was caused more by moral outrage over an abuse of political and economic power than by anything for which I personally could be held responsible. Now, nearly a year after Sandy's phone call, I still feel a sense of outrage; but I also recognize that I was culpable, that in my teaching I had perhaps not committed a crime of commission, but that certainly I deserved to be charged with a crime of omission: in my naivety, I had failed to tell students the whole truth about writing. --Michael Kleine, in an article co-authored by Sandy Moore
--Toward an Ethics of Teaching Writing in a Hazardous Context?The American University (JAC)

Via This Public Address.

After six years of regulations and restrictions that have cost builders, local governments and landowners on the western fringe of the Great Plains as much as $100 million by some estimates, new research suggests the Preble's mouse in fact never existed. It instead seems to be genetically identical to one of its cousins, the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse, which is considered common enough not to need protection.
--Research: Endangered mouse never existed (CNN/AP)

Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character. --The Death of Lincoln (Harper's)

From an 1865 article.

Alzheimer's had done what many feminist leaders fantasized about doing themselves, if only they could get away with it.

Today, I am still pro-choice, and I still support fetal tissue research. But I now realize that those who disagree with me also have good points. I hope they reflect on their position as often as I do on mine, because both camps are on the razor's edge. I have made my commitment to women and reproductive freedom, while my compatriots on the other side of the fence, mostly because of their religious faith, have made a pact with what they call "the unborn."

We will have to agree to disagree, but only now do I consider those on that other side decent people -- as decent as I, but with a different focus. --Tammy Bruce --President Reagan Changed Me (FrontPage Magazine)

I have a policy of not permitting freshman to write academic research papers on abortion, because I've never seen such a paper move beyond one-sided rhetoric... students turn in papers full of slogans taken from activist websites on whatever side of the issue the authors already aligned themselves with before they started writing. (Next year, I'm probably going to add same-sex marriage to the list.)

Regardless of what you think of Bruce's opinion, this is a good example of an argument worth making. The author treats her ideological opponents with respect. A footsoldier who hates the footsoldiers on the other side is efficient and formidable; but leaders who simply hate, without understanding and respecting intellectual differences, end up losing, becuase they fool themselves into believing their own rhetoric.

Two tales of gender, politics, weblogs, and cybercultureJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Both tales are pretty sad.

One is the story of Alexandra Polier, falsely accused of having an affair with Sen. John Kerry. According to Matt Drudge:

“In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week General Wesley Clark plainly stated: ‘Kerry will implode over an intern issue.’"

Polier painstakingly traces the sloppy reporting that led to her name being splashed across headlines. Polier had her editor call up the reporter who first named her, Bryan Flynn of The Sun, who brags smugly about breaking the story, but then when the phone is passed to Polier, he suddenly becomes too busy to talk to her. --"John Kerry intern scandal - Alexandra Polier's account"

The other is the story of Jessica Cutler:

...I posted my diary on a blog - the Washingtonienne - so my friends could read it for fun. As a young single woman, the diary was mostly about my sex life. I could not believe anybody besides them would want to read such a thing. But thirteen days later, it was all over Capitol Hill.... Then I saw my name and photo all over the internet. Type my name into Google and you'll find 32,600 results. I have read some of the racist, sexist comments about me posted on the internet with utter fascination. Unfortunately, these people can post anonymously, while I had to own up to all the stuff I wrote. But that is exactly what I love about the internet: expanding the social dialogue via the unrestricted sharing of ideas. Especially the ones that nobody wants to take credit for. -- "Senator Sacked Me Over Tales of Congress"

Polier shows superhuman restraint as she demonstrates the meticulous reporting skills that were so clearly absent from global reports linking her to Kerry. Cutler seems to think she's writing a Dave Barry humor column: "I opened mail all day (which is why you should never bother to write your representatives in government: somebody like me reads your letters). And then I either threw the letters in the garbage or I would make fun of them with co-workers. In retrospect, that job was perfect for me."

Assuming both women get book deals, whose will probably sell better?

In 1990 women around the world gave birth to 3.3 children on average, the report says.

By 2002, the average had dropped to 2.6 children - slightly above the level needed to assure replacement of the population.

The bureau's projections show the level of fertility for the world as a whole descending below replacement level by 2050. --World population growth 'falling' (BBC)

Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States largely credited with ushering in an era of conservative politics and pursuing a foreign policy that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, died Saturday at his home in California after a 10-year struggle with Alzheimer'sdisease. He was 93.

[...]

Born into poverty in 1911, raised in several small Illinois towns, Reagan turned a Depression-era radio sports-announcing job into a springboard to Hollywood fame and fortune. After a successful quarter-century career in movies and on television, at age 53 he turned his energies to politics full time and quickly became the inspirational leader of conservative Republicans nationwide. --40th President, Ronald Reagan, dies in California.

When Reagan spoke at U.Va. while I was a student, he confessed that he got mostly Cs in college. "I sometimes reflect that, I had applied myself to my studies, I might have gone farther in life" he quipped. The crowd responded with a polite chuckle, which quickly heated up into a full-fledged ovation -- this was the leader of the free world, after all. Of course, there were also protesters holding signs such as, "AIDS: The Reagan Vietnam" and the like. But he sure knew how to work a crowd.

Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech is probably less famous now than his infamous "We begin bombing in five minutes" joke.

I just wrote a rather long blog entry reflecting on my high school years, so this news hits me at a time when I am perhaps a bit nostalgic for the time when Americans were obviously the good guys, and the Russians were so clearly the bad guys.

Be careful what kind of art you make. The Feds may come a knockin'? --Michael Mateas --Feds can't tell art from terrorism (Grand Text Auto)

I'd heard about this story in passing, but now that I see how few degrees of separation I am away from the artists in question, I see the situation in a new light.

''Students felt more empowered,'' said Frank Klapak, an education and communication professor at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, one of the schools participating in the study. Klapak let his students help decide how to structure the course as a way of showing them the results of democratic involvement.

The study also found that by semester's end, students participating in the project showed greater improvement than other students in their ability to find compromises and make sound moral and ethical decisions. --Christina Gostomski --Cedar Crest looks to raise civic interest (The Morning Call)

Frank Klapak is a colleague of mine just two office doors away.

In a comedy of errors, Dasch proceeded to call the New York office of the FBI to explain that he was a German citizen who had arrived in the U.S. the previous morning, that he had a statement to make about the nation’s security, and that he wanted to meet with J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI desk agent duly noted the call in his log but decided it was not worthy of action. Not until several days later, when Dasch traveled to Washington, checked in at the Mayflower hotel, and called Hoover’s office directly, did the FBI "crack" the case.

With his usual flair for publicity, Hoover held a dramatic press conference emphasizing the FBI’s ingenuity and skill in bringing the German agents to book. --Jacob Heilbrunn reviews Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America by Michael Dobbs
--Plodders Plot (Commentary Magazine)

A history of videogames, just as a history of any software "type" or "genre," will reveal an open-source origin and a legacy of "borrowers" and "derivers" hoping to capitalize on what was originally free, whether through buying up copyrights or creating enhanced commercial versions. With an increase in the size of a software corporation comes a decrease in the level of innovation one finds there, until finally, in 2004, gamers are confronted at the videogame store with hordes of cloned videogames and programmers are threatened at the courtroom by battalions of lawyers frantically protecting someone's "intellectual property." The protection that intellectual property law affords software developers is possible only by seizing the rights of the users of that software, even those who legitimately purchase it. As corporate lawyers, CEOs, and investors further entrench themselves in the software market, gamers and programmers will find themselves in the same dismal position as the ship in a game of Space Invaders. --Matt Barton
--The Videogame in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Armchair Arcade)

I left a few (unrelated) comments on Tetris, Galileo, and the open source philosophy on the Armchair Arcade site.

Since the best way to make a good choice is by using the Internet, I ask all my readers to reach out to a senior citizen who doesn't understand computers. Clip this column and invite a senior -- perhaps a relative or someone who lives in your neighborhood -- to line up his or her pill bottles and receipts so you can help with the online drug card selection process. --Terry Savage --Help a senior use Web to pick a drug discount card  (Chicago Sun-Times)

Another great suggestion from Rosemary, who observes, "The pocess should be easier and I hope there is phone number people without computer access can call to get help."

On 19 September 2001 the Federal Minister for Aged Care the Honourable Bronwyn Bishop MP launched the National Public Toilet Map. The National Public Toilet Map identifies the location of more than 13000 public toilet facilities in Australian towns and cities, including rural areas, and along major travel routes. Useful information is provided about each toilet, such as opening hours and access for people with a disability.
--What is the National Public Toilet Map? (Australia)

Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.