Nature versus Nuttier

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Nature Versus Nuttier in Texan Politics

Whenever I notice there is an election for which I am a qualified voter, especially an official governmental election, I feel obliged to participate. Recently two things reminded me that this is an election year in Texas. One was my voter registration certificate and the other was a bunch of unsolicited spam from rightwing lunatics. As a result, I initiated an attempt to perform my civic duty, and I ran into more of the usual obstacles. An old friend (actually one of my first computer mentors) asked me to explain what happened, and I decided to prepare this public statement of the situation

There are two underlying and extremely basic principles in this presentation: (1) Change happens and (2) Democratic government is good. Why do I need to start so far back? Because my conclusion (which will follow from considering these principles) is so sad, which goes back to the overlying theme of this particular blog, which is that America really is close to its end this time around.

As long as we are alive, as long as we participate in the flow of time, change happens. Some people argue that change is the very nature of time, but my concern is with two types of change that I'll call evolutionary versus revolutionary. Something of a strained metaphor, but evolutionary change is similar to the evolution of a species. After enough generations, the species is going to be different, but there is a line of continuity there. Revolutionary change is different because there is a serious break there, in the natural metaphor corresponding to the extinction of a species. In general, the niche is still there, but some other species (or several species) will fill it.

Now it's time to justify democracy and democratic forms of government. The basic problem of government is that groups of people are more powerful than any individual, and we are social animals that are going to live in groups and we need rules and laws to limit the chaos. The difference with democracy is that each individual can feel a vested interest in the survival of the society because they participate in it, at least to that degree. Rationally I know that my vote is unlikely to make any difference, and the likelihood goes down as the scale of the election goes up, but I still feel that the act of voting gives me some stake in the system. Maybe my candidate didn't win this time, but I can always hope to pick a winner the next time, and therefore I should go along with the system and even try to make it better.

Now the background of the current situation is that the elections in America have been turned on their head. Instead of voters picking someone to represent them in the political process, the professional politicians pick the voters who will keep them in office. The mechanisms have varied over time, but the current mechanism is legalized bribes, and the most cheaply bribed politicians write the laws on behalf of the greediest and least ethical businessmen. Since the goal is to make more money, of course American politics has become a kind of monetary game, where the goal is to buy just enough votes so that you have just enough representatives to dictate the rules of the game. In the last election, most voters wanted Democratic Party politicians to represent them in Congress, but the gerrymandering and other mechanisms resulted in a House of Representatives that is dominated by neo-GOP politicians. Getting too far afield in this paragraph, and I've said this stuff before, but...

Let me get back to my own situation, eh? I still have this delusion that democracy is good and that I am morally obligated to vote. However, over the years it continues to become more and more difficult for me to actually do it. I think that is a systematic thing. I am categorized as a troublesome voter who mostly opposes the elected politicians, and voters in my category should be discouraged from voting whenever possible. Over the years my so-called franchise has become more and more restricted and ever harder to exercise.

This year I sent in the forms and received a response that, although my forms were mailed before the deadline, they were received too late. I have no way to check that, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out they were 'mislaid' for a few days to make sure they were too late. I was told that there was still an option via FAX machine, if only I knew where one was and had the special knowledge required to send an international FAX.

If they actually wanted me to vote, then they could simply have assumed that I wanted to vote. Based on my past record of voting in almost every election in the past, then it's a safe bet that they could just send me the ballots if they wanted me to continue to vote. Even on this issue of the FAX, there is a viable alternative that I suggested and which was ignored. My suggestion was that they accept a scan of the FAXable forms attached to email--but that idea is evidently too convenient (for those pesky little voters) to even consider or respond to. It's just one of the suggestions I've offered several times, but...

Another option I considered was asking a friend in the States to FAX the form domestically, but I decided against that on the grounds that they might get prosecuted for improperly assisting an actual voter. These days one of the top strategies to disenfranchise voters is to go after people and organizations that try to help people vote.

Then again, even if I got the ballot, Texas persists in using a really bizarre and oddly sized ballot that is rejected by all of the international standards. It's only a minor injury added on top of the insult, but it's a rather expensive form of stupidity that they must have noticed over the years. Well, that they must have noticed if they actually had any sincere interest in encouraging votes, that is.

Now we get to the awkward punchline and the relevance of the stuff about evolutionary versus revolutionary change. In my situation, the only possibly meaningful election I can still participate in is the so-called Republican primary in Texas. I suppose it's possible the clerks who have been working so hard to prevent me from voting are just sincere public servants, but I think it much more likely that they are sincerely partisan as a job requirement of modern Texas. In the old days, that was actually tilted the other way, in favor of the so-called Democratic Dixiecrats of Texas, and the most meaningful election was the Democratic Primary.

How could my vote have mattered? Confession time. It could have mattered by voting in the primary against the candidate I dislike more. In other words, I think the neo-GOP has rejected any possibility of evolutionary change and they need to experience the revolutionary change of going extinct so that a better species of politician can take their place. Stretching the metaphor again, but sometimes a species commits suicide without regard to the competitive competition. In natural terms, the species goes crazy and commits itself to extremism that results in extinction. It certainly isn't pressure from the Democratic species that has forced the neo-GOP down this road. Rather, Abe Lincoln's progressive and liberal Republican Party evolved into the increasingly conservative GOP of Teddy and Ike, but has now branched into an evolutionary dead end as today's neo-GOP.

Anyway, I wanted to write more on the topic, but I also wanted to finish today, so the compromise is to decrement the version number and publish it as is... In closing, I want to clarify my personal policy regarding moderation: Spammers go away. Anything else is going to get approved, but I admit that I may take the last word if I strongly disagree with your comments. In extreme cases, I'm just going to say something like "See what an extreme lunatic supports the neo-GOP" and not waste any keystrokes arguing with the fool, however I'd actually be grateful to get useful new data or superior reasoning that obliges me to learn something new.

Trying to vote absentee in Texas

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Trying to Vote Absentee in Texas

Here is a now-open letter that I just sent to my voter registrar. Any questions?

Recently received my voter registration form, so I decided to request my absentee ballots for any elections in which I am entitled to vote. I just spent a while getting the runaround of your various websites. Links can be useful, or they can be designed to lead on a merry wild goose chase.

In conclusion, I still want to perform my duty and exercise my right to vote, but I'm convinced you don't want me to vote.

Wasn't it nice back in the old days? Back when the voters actually got to choose their representatives and before the politicians learned how to choose their voters.

I was going to thank you for the voter registration, but since it now appears to be an exercise in futility, I guess not. Let me repeat my ancient suggestion, though I'm sure you'll ignore it again. If someone has taken the trouble to vote in most elections ever since becoming old enough to vote, then you ought to assume that the person in question actually wants to vote in the next election, too. Instead, there is a clear trend over the years of Texas politicians doing their damnedest to make it as hard and as inconvenient as possible, but especially in the years since I became a resident of Japan. At this point, your anti-voter policies are one of the strongest reasons I am unlikely ever to return to the States.

Oh yeah, who am I? According to this new fangled voter registration certificate, I'm voter # .

Whoever you anti-voter bastards are, I hope you have a really bad day, and I still want to vote in any elections for which I am an eligible voter. It's my duty and supposedly my right as an American citizen, for what little that is worth, thanks to people like YOU.

--

Freedom = (Meaningful + Unconstrained) Choice ≠ Beer

Neo-GOP Bully Christie versus Teddy

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Neo-GOP Bully Chris Christie versus Bully Pulpit Teddy Roosevelt of the Real GOP

This blog is mostly a response to a column on "BridgeGate" by John Dean. His surprising focus struck me as being on relatively trivial aspects, since there is an EXTREMELY direct link between the latest neo-GOP scandal and his own experiences with President Nixon. The only lesson the neo-GOP "learned" from Watergate was that the ostensible leader should be kept in the dark about the dark stuff.

Reagan provided the best example (to date) of how the deprincipled neo-GOP applied this lesson. As long as people perceived "the big boss" as a personally nice guy, then it didn't matter what crimes his subordinates committed—as long as they didn't tell the boss. Dubya was mostly following the same line, but he was largely undercut by the visible "evil genius" of the big Dick Cheney glaring over his shoulder.

Governor Christie was (and is) simply applying the same lesson of "Nixon knew too much" and was thereby too personally involved in Watergate. Based on the Nixon lesson, Christie's staff understood what to do and when NOT to tell the boss about what they did. Since I believe that Christie is relatively quite competent and even perversely intelligent, I am certain he understood full well the kind of environment he was creating. If Christie is now claiming he didn't understand what kind of vindictive person he had promoted to such a position of authority and power, then he is lying—and he is STILL responsible. Even if they can't find a law that applies specifically to closing a bridge for politically-motivated punishment, threats and intimidation are still considered crimes in most of the so-called civilized legal codes. (Your mileage may differ in today's America.) No, you can't criminalize the promotion that enabled a future criminal to commit crimes, but you can (and should) hold Christie personally responsible for crimes committed by the government (or even by a company) he leads.

Which political party is the one that keeps emphasizing "personal responsibility"? Oh, yeah. The neo-GOP (not to be confused with Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party or Teddy Roosevelt's GOP).

I think the best way to demonstrate the ultimately personal nature of the vindictive and intimidating policies of his administration would be to make a "best of the bully" video compilation from the YouTube videos Chris Christie himself has been ordering his staff to make. He actually orders aides to be ready to film his attacks on possible liberals and their progressive ideas, so he can publish those videos and gain so-called street cred with the neo-GOP fanatics. Yes, from Christie himself they are only verbal attacks, but he uses his aggressiveness and sheer size to make them seem quite threatening and on the edge of hate speech. After all, extreme hatred is what the extremists want to see—as long as they personally hate the targets of the speech.

However, it has long been OBVIOUS to me that Christie is a BIG bully, and I also believe he is an insecure coward, though the evidence of his personal cowardice is weaker and more circumstantial. Didn't you see the video of him viciously attacking the little woman who dared to ask him if he had any personally vested interest in the public schools? A simple "No, my children go to private school" would have sufficed. If he was as honest as his defenders claim, then he would have added an honest clarification: "... and it's just too bad YOUR children have to attend those lousy public schools I despise." However, what the big bully Christie actually did was get her name and go after her in a quite personal way, OBVIOUSLY seeking to intimidate her and threaten future intimidation to her and to anyone else who would dare ask him such nasty questions about his behavior and his beliefs. It was obvious that Christie is just a nasty BIG bully.

That his gang of junior bullies sometimes gets out of control is only to be expected with BULLY Christie as the leader of the gang. Why not close a bridge to punish the citizens who dared to elect a Democratic mayor? How dare a Democrat refuse to endorse Chris Christie just because he belongs to the so-called Republican Party?

Another aspect makes this bridge thing an even larger scandal to me. That's because Christie personally made the transportation problems worse by vetoing a new tunnel and other bridge projects. Instead of working to improve the traffic situation, he first makes it worse, and then his staff jumps on top of that badness and they use the transportation mess Christie had exacerbated to "punish" a trivial mayor. Apparently Christie's aides regard any trace of political loyalty to the Democratic Party as the kind of crime that deserves creative punishment.

However, I also think they followed the Nixon Rule and were quite careful NOT to tell Christie about their illegal actions, which is precisely what Christie expected them to do. Based on working with him and watching him in action, they were basically thinking that Christie certainly would approve of their thinking and actions, though he couldn't say so and MUST not be told, and they quite probably even expected him to pardon them even if they did get caught. I think they were wrong on that last expectation, and it doesn't matter if that's because Christie is a coward or cunning or a cunning coward. As for Christie's claim that he's standing on principle... Well, since when has politically safe BS been an actual principle? Oh yes. Ever since we had professional politicians.

That leads back to Teddy Roosevelt, who was such a highly principled but amateur politician that his last political act was to take the White House away from the GOP. That was the end of the first permanent-majority project of the GOP politicians. Unfortunately, now that looks like another one of those lessons no one learns from history.

New Jersey has a bad reputation, and Christie just made it a whole lot worse. Oh, and did I mention he's a big bad bully.

Candidates from Beyond the Absurd

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Candidates from Beyond the Absurd

The American political system is so broken these years that it has become impossible even to guess where to begin an attempt to fix it. There are just TOO many problems and flaws. Some of the systematic problems afflict both sides, and those are going to be especially hard to cure, because both sides are in effect equally committed to NOT curing them, which means it doesn't even matter how elections turn out since the so-called winners will have won because of taking advantage of the problems. Campaign finance and gerrymandering, I'm talking to you. However, some of the problems are sort of within the scope of influence of the voters. Kind of laughable to imagine putting anything within the actual control of the actual voters, eh? Perhaps that is the real sickness of the American political system?

The so-called democratic or even republican thesis so far is that it makes sense to begin with the problems that can be influenced by the results of the actual elections. Maybe we can get some reform by a focus on the places where there are clear differences between the political parties? In those places, the voters may actually have some influence, at least in theory. I've written elsewhere (though I can't find the comments so as to include a link or two) why the American political system is a winner-take-all system that essentially reduces to two parties, so I'm just going to take that as a given and focus on one of the key differences between the two main parties: Today's so-called Republican Party nominates nuts.

There are two proximate data sources that motivate me to address the topic now. One provocation was a recent final new rule from Bill Maher on the disastrous legacy of Ronald Reagan. [That's a transcript link on the HBO website, but I don't currently know of a video link that looks reliable, though he delivered it quite well.] The second provocation was reading Tina Fey's fairly recent book Bossypants, which included quite a bit about her comic impersonations of Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign. These are just examples of the general thesis that the neo-GOP can and does nominate incredibly unqualified candidates, even for national offices. Two other examples are Dubya Bush and Dan Quayle.

There have been some competent Republican candidates, too--but as far as the neo-GOP partisans are concerned, those competent candidates are regarded as failures or losers or both, and therefore the obvious prediction is that the quality of so-called Republican nominees is going to continue to decline--if that's possible. In other words, the lesson the neo-GOP has learned from candidates like Romney, McCain, Bob Dole, and even Poppy Bush is that they were too competent and not sufficiently extremist. Many of them believe it was precisely because of his hand-on competence that Nixon himself was hounded out of office.

It might be nice if the self-immolation of the neo-GOP was going to help the nation, but there is little evidence of that. Instead, we are likely to have a collapse into permanent control of the White House by the Democratic Party, with Congress going the same way once the mathematical limits of gerrymandering are passed. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think one-party rule is going to be disastrous, even if that party starts with the best of intentions... At least that's what the historical record indicates.

There's a need to clarify the use of "so-called" and "neo-GOP". That's because the modern neo-GOP is just borrowing the brand name, but there is no real connection the the progressive Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln or the rationally balanced conservative GOP of Teddy Roosevelt and his ilk.

Lock and Load your Will for Gun Safety

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Lock and Load your Will for Gun Safety

Not sure where to begin, but let me list a few obvious points:

1. Lots of Americans die by getting shot, at least 30,000 per year.
2. America's professional politicians are incapable of addressing the problem in any meaningful way.
3. Gun safety is not an unsolvable problem. I think every metric shows the United States has the worst record for gun safety--but you can't even find out how bad the problem is because the statistics are actively suppressed.

Actually that leads me to start with point #3. I already knew that the US government is basically forbidden to collect various kinds of statistics about gun deaths and gun safety. So I started my research by searching the Internet for gun deaths and quickly found an apparently useful lead on Wikipedia for firearm-related deaths organized by country. The United States was not included.

Wait a minute. Tens of thousands of Americans are shot to death every year, but it isn't worth mention?

I don't think the lives of Americans are worth so little. Do you?

It's obvious the data is being censored, even on Wikipedia. Censorship is NOT a neutral point of view. Sorry Wikipedia. It's a big FAIL, at least as of the date of this writing (23 April 2013).

So I've expanded a bit on points #3 and #1, so let's hit on #2. Why are politicians unable and unwilling to do anything about gun safety? Of course I'm mostly concretely talking about the recent use of the filibuster to prevent a very slight improvement in background checks, but in general terms we have an almost total political paralysis in Washington, DC.

"It's the MONEY, Lebowski!"

In this case, the particular is mostly the money of the gun manufacturers invested with the NRA and some rightwing media. Easy to understand why. Gun manufacturers make money when everyone buys more guns.

To paraphrase the NRA itself, "The only thing that stops a bad politician with bad money is a good politician with good money."

Here is my suggestion for a source for good money: Lock and load your will. Not sure how this should be written, but I suggest that lots of people should add a paragraph to their boots-on will. If you die because of a gun, then 10% of your estate will be donated against some incumbent politician who has a favorable rating from the NRA. If you are shot by a gun that might not have been there if Congress had passed some gun safety regulation, then it should go to 20%. Probably too long for most people to write, but your will could even specify the kind of gun safety legislation that would cancel the paragraph.

Remember we're talking about 30,000 deaths per year. Those are pretty much unplanned deaths, but if some of those deaths start producing political funding for gun safety, maybe enough of the politicians will become as afraid of opposing gun safety as Americans should be afraid of the guns.

Loss of the Republic of Franklin

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Franklin's Republic Lost

Probably another apocryphal quote, but Benjamin Franklin was supposed to have been asked what the new American government was, and his answer is widely reported as "A republic, if you can keep it." Well, we just lost it. Not because President Obama won reelection, though that was a widespread lament of the right-wing authoritarians--but sometimes there is a grain of truth even in the rantings of nuts. There are plenty of extremists out there who are ready to be certified, but in this case they came close to a truth they couldn't see. The death knell of the American experiment with a representative republic was actually the victory of the incumbents in the House of Representatives.

Let me repeat that the crucial results in this election were NOT at the top in the presidential and Senatorial elections, but at the bottom, in the local elections for the House. In brief, most of the voters actually voted for Democratic Party candidates for the House of Representatives, and yet the result is that the Democratic Party only has about 45 percent of the members of the new House. The Congress went into this election with an approval rating around 10 percent, and yet roughly 90 percent of the incumbents were reelected to their positions.

Before considering the reasons, it's worth considering the rationale behind the design of the House of Representatives. The House was specifically designed to be highly responsive to the voting constituents. That's why their terms were set to only two years. The idea was that their accountability would make them responsible and for that reason they could be given the primary responsibility for controlling the purse strings.

On one level, the outcome represents the power of partisan gerrymandering, which is basically a triumph of the targeted investment of conservative money in lower-level elections, especially over the last few years. Entire States such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have had their Democratic voters packed into districts that essentially waste a large fraction of the Democratic votes. (My own district has been stretched 300 kilometers to flip away from the Democrats.) Meanwhile, the neo-GOP carefully distributes their own voters into statistically safe districts around 55% that maximize the number of districts they capture. At the presidential level, the Electoral College has the same effect of negating most voters as regards the presidency. (This pressure from big businessmen has been around for a long time, and it isn't the first time the GOP was trying to create a permanent majority. The major difference this time around involves the pro-money tilt of the Supreme Court, which certainly looks to be decisive as things stand now.)

There are several other factors that should be considered but mostly dismissed. One is the cooperation of the incumbents of both parties to insure their reelections. This is the only thing that both parties can agree on, but there is clearly a tipping point effect. It is quite clear that many states have passed the point where the Democratic Party has any influence on the redistricting process. Rather than cooperating with the more powerful politicians to make things smoother for everyone, they now target those opposition leaders quite deliberately. Another factor is the dominance of money, but correlation is NOT the same thing as causation. Yes, the candidate with more money usually wins, but the events are not independent, and it is more likely that the candidate who is most likely to win is going to have the easiest time collecting money. It's the motivation of the donations that matter. Some people donate as insurance, but the neo-GOP is now dominated by investors who expect specific returns in exchange for their donations. Let me reiterate that most businesspeople are fine and upstanding people who just want to play the game, but it is the LEAST ethical businessmen who make those investments in the most cheaply bribed politicians.

The next level is less obvious. The central idea of public elections is that the candidates are supposed to talk to the voters about the issues and their plans, and the so-called mainstream media is supposed to facilitate the political process by disseminating that information. However, what has actually happened is that the media coverage focuses on making the election look like an interesting horse race, and the serious, but difficult and even boring, discussions of the real issues get ignored.. The professional journalists are supposedly responsible to influence or even push the discussions so that the elections actually do involve substantial debates of the real issues facing the voters. What's wrong?

It's the money that drives the media to the horse races and away from the real issues. After this election, there has been some noise about how the neo-GOP wasted over a billion dollars in this election cycle, especially in the presidential race. Was that money wasted? Did it disappear? Absolutely not. The deeper story is where the money went. Most of it went to the media companies such as television stations that ran campaign ads, especially in the so-called swing states and hot districts. I read that the nonpublic SuperPACs sometimes had to pay 10 times the most favorable rates that the laws provide for the official public advertisements of the regular candidates. Talk about your windfall profits! It's also important to note that these profits were concentrated in only certain media markets. Not sure how large these profits were, but I am sure that the people who made them liked those profits and would be glad to get more in the next election.

So was the billion dollars wasted? If you got your beak wet, you wouldn't think so, would you? My new hypothesis is that the billion dollars wasn't wasted, but represents highly effective bribes invested in the mainstream media to insure they play the same games in the the next election. It's worth noting that negative money is less evidently less effective at the higher levels, both because the higher level candidates are stronger and because of the blow-back taint that sometimes affects such high-level candidates. In contrast, in the low-level elections, it's relatively easier to find and sling enough mud to control the results--and it pretty clearly worked for the House of Representatives quite well this time.

My final conclusion is that the presidential election was mostly just a distraction, the bright shiny object that kept the voters from actually looking at the real problems of the nation, including the problems in the election system itself. Yes, the presidential election mattered, and I think that Romney's performance as president would have been on the scale from harmful to terrible, but the real damage was being done elsewhere. The political system has been disrupted and destroyed in a way that makes a mockery of the intentions of the Founding Fathers.