Real sacrifice in "fake America"

You remember during the 2008 campaign when that loathsome Sarah Palin divisively talked about the south and midwest (bastions of GOP support) as the "real America"? It was part of the typical conservative strategy to act like the right alone owned and defined patriotism to manipulate toward its own belligerent ends.

ABC News points out that the greatest burden per capita of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is borne by the state of Vermont, generally regarded as the most liberal state in the country and one which the arrogant Palin would smugly classify as being the anchor of "fake America."

Factoid of the week

Extrapolating from average figures, since 2002: approximately 328,000 Americans have died in car accidents, 160,000 have died because of the regular flu, 120,000 have been murdered by other Americans (from our "Christian nation") and 0 have been killed on American soil by Islamist terrorists.

Protecting the sanctity of marriage against threats until death (or my serial cheating) do us part

So I noticed that Republican Sen. John McCain's wife and daughter have appeared in photos opposing California's gay marriage ban. While anyone supporting equal rights is obviously a good thing, I've never been one to overly care what the family members of politicians think; I vote for or against the candidate, not his spouse or children. But in response to the story, the legislator's spokesman said, "Sen. McCain believes the sanctity of marriage is only defined as between one man and one woman."

That California's definition of marriage as one man and one woman was most aggressively pushed by Mormons is an irony to discuss another day.

But I suspect that loving, committed gay couples may wonder if a once-divorced man who reneged on his oath to love his first wife until death do them part really knew enough about the "sanctity of marriage" to deny their participation in it. As for the current Mrs. McCain, who's never been divorced, they might give a little more credibility to her views on the topic.

North Country Public Radio's excellent In Box blog had a piece on the topic in which it mentioned that one of the most prominent Republican mayors in the country, San Diego's Jerry Sanders, broadcast his own support for gay marriage, after discovering that his daughter is a lesbian in a committed relationship.

It made me remember how Joe Bruno changed his tune on equal rights for gays when he discovered he had a gay relative (a brother, I think). The then-majority leader helped pass the state's Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act through a GOP-controlled state senate and has come out in favor of in favor of marriage equality. Even someone as normally opposed to human rights as Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter, has never engaged in the sort of populist gay bashing designed to pander to the most, small-minded and hateful of his own party. It seems it's a lot easier to demonize gays when they are just some crude, generic stereotype, when they are The Other... but much harder when they are the kind, honorable son/daughter/brother/sister you've loved all your life.

Things that make you go hmmm....

A few days ago, I wrote about a letter published in The Post-Star written by the Nature Conservancy's Michael T. Carr regarding unsubstantiated allegations of collusion between the group and the Adirondack Park Agency made in an article written by the daily's Will Doolittle.

If you go on the Letters to the Editor page of their website, it lists every letter published in the print edition since Jan. 8... except the two published on Jan. 20 (one of which was Carr's and one of which criticized the paper's crusade against the residents of the Madden Hotel). A site search of 'Michael Carr' does not turn up the letter either.


Update: Carr's letter, published in print on Jan. 20, finally appeared online on Feb. 5, two weeks later. On Jan. 26, a TNC spokesperson told me that they were "working with the Post Star to get it posted online." No indication was given as to why the TNC had to lobby to get the same treatment as every other letter writer.

"We, the corporations, of the United States of America..."

In a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporate money has too LITTLE influence over the formerly democratic process. In again affirming the fraudulent and legally incomprehensible notion* that money equals speech, the Court has illustrated the absolute imperative to change the Constitution. We need to pass an amendment whereby campaign 'contributions' should be restricted exclusively to those who are eligible to vote for the office in question. Or at the absolute bare minimum, federal, state and local legislative bodies should be constitutionally allowed to impose such attempts to guarantee democratic governance if they so choose.

(*-In every other circumstance under the law, money is treated not as speech but as property)

This Constitutional change would necessarily preclude outsiders from meddling in the election of other people's officials.

It would also necessarily preclude corporations, unions, religious organizations and other non-humans from buying their own politician playthings.

As employers of elected officials, we citizens should have the right to place an ethical code of conduct on our employees.

If politicians are going to be in hoc to anyone, it should be to the citizens they are supposed to represent.

This perversion of democracy and good governance is the most basic problem that needs to be resolved before any of the other issues American humans care about can hope to be seriously addressed

Opposing and governing

There's a great scene in the movie The American President. In the movie, the president character's main opponent always concludes his speeches with, "I'm Bob Rumsen and I want to be president." In one press conference, the president defiantly declares, "I'm Andrew Shepherd and I AM the president." I thought this little snipet illustrates the fundamental difference between opposing and governing, something certainly related to the course of New York state politics today.

Gov. Paterson presented his executive budget on Tuesday. In it, he proposed cuts to all areas, including the inevitable cuts to health and education (which make up a majority of all state spending).

Predictably, special interest groups fell over themselves explaining why they (hold hand over heart) understand the state's tough fiscal situation but that shouldn't stop the governor from exempting their worthy cause from the pain or at worst, from making sure their worthy cause is cut last and least of all. You don't need to be a math major to understand that if everything is exempt from cuts, then nothing will be cut.

Equally predictably, self-described fiscal conservative legislators from northern New York denounced the governor's plan to close three area prisons. They are afraid that it will harm the economy of the region and, shock of shocks, want downstate prisons closed instead. When they called for fiscal restraint, they meant for other regions, not theirs. It gives credence to the complaint of some that the bloated nature of the prison-industrial complex is not about the security of citizens but is a taxpayer-funded rural economic development program.

I don't buy it and neither does Bob at Planet Albany. He accurately describes Paterson's budget as 'necessary.' And he tells the governor's critics to put up or shut up.

The governor's critics, who are many, and potential opponents including Andrew Cuomo, should be required to provide specific alternatives that would actually make the numbers add up, he notes.

And he's right.

It's easy to offer broad platitudes and happy rhetoric from the cheap seats. And it's easy to be popular when your primary job is to sue the bad guys. But those with the ACTUAL RESPONSIBILITY TO GOVERN have to make specific choices. The differing fortunes of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Governor Eliot Spitzer illustrates that. Governors and legislators don't have lawsuit or subpoena power to pass a responsible budget. It's easy to say "leave my pet cause alone." But in a fiscal crisis like the present one, everyone's pet cause should share the burden. No one should be exempt, least of all those who receive the greatest share of the public largesse.

Special interests groups have to advocate for their membership; it's their job. But legislators and the governor are responsible for representing the interests of ALL the people, not just the most well-funded groups with the most highly-paid lobbyists. They also have the unique responsibility to try to get the state's fiscal house in order, something the special interest groups aren't constitutionally required to consider. Unfortunately, only the governor seems to realize all this.

Nature Conservancy refutes accusation of collusion

Last week, I reported and commented on a two-part investigation of the Adirondack Park Agency by Post-Star projects' editor Will Doolittle.

In the first part, one of the parties who felt aggrieved (probably with some justification) by the APA claimed that there was a secret conspiracy between the APA and the Nature Conservancy to steal his land. Doolittle passed along this accusation without evidence or further investigation. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann DID do further research and reported categorically that he found no evidence of any collusion and plenty of belief (even by anti-APA folks) that the secrecy needed for such collusion was be virtually inconceivable.

What's interesting is a letter appeared in today's Post-Star. In it, the executive director of the Keene Valley chapter of the Nature Conservancy Michael T. Carr claimed that in a phone conversation made shortly before the articles were published, Doolittle told him that he'd "found no evidence of collusion between The Nature Conservancy and the Adirondack Park Agency" (the part in quotes are Doolittle's words according to Carr). As usual, the big story is featured prominently on the front page while the rebuttal is buried in a tiny side column of A5 between a big news article and ads. (Curiously, this appears to be the only day for which letters to the editor are not available on their website.)

Yet, Doolittle did not mention this very relevant piece of information in his story.

If Carr's attribution is correct, it is grotesquely reckless journalism by Doolittle and only reinforces my assertion that he, with his harsh and longstanding anti-APA position, was not the right person to do this particular article. How can you publish an unsubstantiated accusation of criminal wrongdoing by a prominent state agency by someone with an obvious ax to grind, knowing you have no evidence to believe the truth of said accusation and, in order to give sufficient context to the reader, at least not mention the fact that neither you nor the accuser had no evidence of this serious accusation? Doolittle did include the Nature Conservancy's denial but while an observant reader would've noticed that no evidence for the accuser's accusation was presented, the author did not point out this glaring omission explicitly nor is it clear if the journalist even asked for it. Still, if you're going to publish a serious accusation of criminal wrongdoing without evidence, you should at least mention the fact that you found no evidence or that the accuser refused/failed to provide it.

I've offered Doolittle the opportunity to publish a response here to my original piece, but he's so far not done so.

Dr. King was about more than legal racial equality

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday weekend, I always like to bring out the divergence between what Dr. King was all about and how he's generally remembered.

Nowadays, the Rev. Dr. King is typically remembered solely for the milquetoast (by today's standards) idea of legal racial equality. As important a first step as that was, the work of him and his colleagues was about much more than that. Much like Muhammad Ali, he's become a sanitized secular public saint stripped of their more meaningful and uncomfortable opinions.

King was also a vocal activist on behalf of social justice and against poverty and militarism. In fact, that's what he was agitating for when he was assassinated, the idea that workers (sanitation in that case) should be treated as human beings. He also became very controversial for speaking out about the injustices inherent in the US war against the North Vietnamese people.

Two recent pieces explore further the broader legacy of the Nobel Peace Laureate. This one by E. Ethelbert Miller on NPR.org and this one by Matt Funiciello on timesunion.com.