Concealed Carry

I don’t really have a dog in this fight. Back in my pistol-shooting days I’d just drop my holstered weapon into a saddle bag and ride off; but I’m not shooting any longer.

As I’ve aged I do occasionally carry a walking stick and I wonder if now I might not carry my quite elegant sword cane. Clearly a weapon and clearly concealed.

Perhaps it was the coming change in our laws that helped call attention to the bumper sticker I saw yesterday:

ARIZONA
Armed and Uneducated

Reposted from The Data Port at TucsonCitizen.com

Absurdities

I’m a devoted fan of David Lynch, particularly of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, so when his three-hour-long movie INLAND EMPIRE opened at the Loft I hurried out to see it.

This film has received considerable critical acclaim and a mind-boggling amount of discussion on blogs, fanzines, and the official Lynch web site. Don’t believe me? Google “David Lynch+Inland Empire” and drop down the rabbit hole.

Why all the fan buzz? I suspect it is because we love puzzles. We are particularly attracted to puzzles that are in some way essentially flawed so that they may not, in principle, ever be correctly solved.

I think we can expect even of an absurdist or surrealist work that it’s elements exhibit a certain coherence in virtue of which it is a work of art. It can be puzzling, it can be ambiguous, it can challenge us with a variety of interpretations… but in the end it must be a whole.

I’m not sure I can fully explain what I mean by “an artistic whole” except to say that if anything were left out it would collapse into fragments. My complaint about INLAND EMPIRE is that you could chop out random scenes here or there and it wouldn’t matter. What’s annoying about this film is that it a collection of fragments, although some of the fragments are brilliant.

I suspect the critical acclaim may, in some part, be due to the fact that there is a natural tendency on the part of critics to fight shy of suggesting that the emperor is, if not naked, at least not completely clothed.

.......................................................................................


Now how about this for absurdity? Here’s a picture of Republican Presidential candidates. All about the same size, all dressed exactly alike, all old white guys, and all sanctimoniously asserting that they are “more conservative than thou.” Aren't there any young, exciting Republicans the party would like to push? Women? Hispanics? African-Americans? Someone, say, forty years old?

Blackwater and The SA

The fact that the Bush administration has fostered the development of a private army, Blackwater USA, is probably not news to any readers of Lefty Blogs. What might be news is its size, and the extent to which this mercenary army functions beyond the normal control of Congress or the US Code of Military Justice.

There is a long article in today’s Alternet.Org adapted from Jeremy Scahill's new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books). It’s a long piece, but well worth a reader’s time. Alternet’s lede is: “The Bush Administration is increasingly dependent on private security forces to do its dirty work.” (link)

Blackwater USA has a website you can visit here.

I believe that the sheer size of Blackwater, and the potential for its misuse for uncontrolled foreign and domestic political purposes is something we should at least be willing to consider. Years ago and in a universe far removed from most current bloggers there was another great private army: The Sturm Abteilung of the German National Socialist Party. You may read about it here.

Empire for Sale- American Style

It is an occasional intellectual game to compare the American Empire to the Roman Empire and to ask if, like that first world power, we might not be in a period of accelerated decline. Our prestige and efficient use of power outside our borders seems in decline while inside a subtle corruption of our core political values appears to be underway.

An exact description and analysis of the latter event is still to be done, but it is in part characterized by a loss of interest and participation in the political life of the nation (how many vote anymore?) and a willingness to give up personal freedoms in return for “security.”

It’s ironic that we are willing to give up some considerable measure of those freedoms and liberties to a political system and government in which a majority of us no longer has sufficient trust or belief to participate.

This Rome/America comparison came to mind as I chewed on the consequences of the 100 Million dollar price tag to run for President.

In the year 193 AD the Roman Empire, in the person of the position of emperor, was put up for auction by the Praetorian Guard. It had long been the practice of newly established emperors to offer the guard a “donative” to assure their allegiance, but this was a flat out auction…who wants to be an emperor? Marcus Didius Julianus did.

The Praetorians effectively held the key to the empire. Who in the American empire might our praetorians be? It is tempting to point out the leaders of corporate America, but I’d suggest that our praetorians are the media---television, print, radio, and the political mercenaries who feed them. These are the primary recipients of most (if not damn near all) of the one hundred million dollars the candidate pays for his key to the empire. You can’t get elected without them.

The Left is nearly always fascinated by the prospect of publicly financed federal elections, but such elections still pay the praetorians and the Supreme Court has decided that money equals free speech which effectively allows end runs around campaign finance limits.

What, then, is to be done? Considering the political passivity of most Americans I don’t look for massive street actions. There is a seductive fascination in the net but except for fundraising I’m not sure there is evidence of its real effectiveness except in raising money for the praetorians.

What is the Left to do?

Surfacing

The Data Port surfaces after a short vacation from jiggery-bloggery. I have noticed with pleasure that my fellow lefty bloggers have been doing an excellent job of commentary and reportage--- such a good job that nothing I might have posted would have added anything new. R-Cubed continues to be sprightly in reporting all the news the local dailies don’t recognize as news.

I did notice that two leading Democratic presidential candidates have already signed up for the traditional circular firing squad and that Tom Vilsack has popped for the old inventory strategy of first in, first out. It seems the financial air was being sucked out of all his fundraisers. The “leaders” are vulturing around trying to pick up his Iowa experts. Who knows? He might have had something interesting to say.

If you have the patience for an extended analysis of the 2006 election and the coming presidential conflict of 2008 I’d recommend a piece by Steve Fraser at AterNet.Org, “On The Road to 2008.” Let me know what you think.

Vilsack had a very nice website that’s now nothing more than an historical artfact.

Too Many Candidates

I got a nice e-mail from Bill Richardson the other day. He’s running for President, he’s “in it to win,” he’s eager to serve his country in its time of need… or some such thing.

In this earnest appeal for my support (and my money) there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between him and:

Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Mike Gravel
Denis Kucinich
Tom Vilsack
Barak Obama.

And those are just the Democrats. Over in the Republican camp we have:

Sam Brownback
John Cox
Duncan Hunter
Michael Smith
Jim Gilmore
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Huckabee
John McCain
Ron Paul
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
Tommy Thompson.

At the bottom of Bill Richardson’s e-mail was a button I could click to unsubscribe. When I did this a little box popped up asking why I had done that. My reply: “Too early in the election cycle. Come back just before the first primary.”

The truth of the matter is that none of the pre-primary political rhetoric is going to make one iota’s difference in national policy or the fate of the nation. Each candidate will struggle to raise the required war chest of a rumored one hundred million dollars.

That money will not be spent on the poor, on providing health care, on educating the young or preserving the environment. It will largely enrich television production units, TV stations, assorted political mercenaries, and consultants.

Will I vote in the primary? Sure. Will I vote in the general election? Well, I always have. But until September, 2008, my dears, I plan not to give a damn.

The Tucson Mayoral Race…What Are the Issues?

There’s been considerable speculation about who will throw a hat in the ring to become Tucson’s next mayor. What’s been missing to date is any speculation about what the key issues will be…or what they ought to be.

Tucson Symphony Conductor George Hanson (in a Star guest editorial) has suggested a topic:

“The vision: a performing arts, education and technology center, celebrating our Native American, Hispanic and European heritages — the centerpiece that is missing from the Rio Nuevo table. An 1,800 seat concert hall, easily converted into a ball- or showroom; a renovated Tucson Music Hall, perfect for opera and Broadway shows; a shared plaza with restaurants, coffee shops, a taqueria and open gallery space; a jazz club nearby; education and technology facilities to bring the enormous benefits of the performing arts to young people, and to those who can't afford it.

“What's wrong with this vision? No one else sees it.

“Perhaps it's tunnel vision: bridge, arena, science center. But none of those projects can compete with the economic impact, dollar for dollar, of the performing arts.”

I think this is worth making a key issue of the election. It bears not just on the economic viability of Rio Nuevo and downtown re-development, but on what kind of city Tucson wants to become.

Do we want to be simply a great place for conventions (the Walkup vision, apparently) or do we want to grow as a great cultural center--- the Athens, if you will, of the Southwest. Do we want businesses to come here because the land and labor are cheap, or do we want businesses to move here because the cultural dynamic attracts the leadership of those businesses?

However it plays out this idea should be a major issue in the coming election.

Arizona CD 8’s Giffords Co-Sponsors Resolutions/Possible Iraq Trip

Since her swearing-in Congresswoman Giffords has been a co-sponsor of 14 House Resolutions and has addressed the House five times.

The first six House Resolutions were part of the Democrats’ “1st Hundred Hours” push. She co-sponsored resolutions to implement the 911 Report, raise the minimum wage, permit human embryonic stem cell research, require government negotiation of drug prices for Medicare recipients, reduce interest rates on student loans, and to develop alternative energy resources and emerging energy technologies.

The details on these votes and the eight other resolutions she co-sponsored are available here.

The Arizona Capitol Times has a long interview with Congresswoman Giffords. Here are two excerpts:

What are the main issues affecting your constituents in southern Arizona?

Being one of 10 U.S. Mexico border districts, certainly the impacts of immigration are greatly important to the 8th Congressional District. We're basically carrying the burden. We know it because of our first responders - issues in terms of law enforcement, also our hospitals and our schools. The federal government needs to step up and take responsibility. Immigration is a top priority for the district.

The district also has two very important military installations. Fort Huachuca, which houses the Army Intelligence Center, which is becoming increasingly important as we fight issues pertaining to international terrorism. We also have Davis-Monthan, a very large and important Air Force base. Southern Arizona is home to one of the largest veteran populations. We need to make sure that the men and women who sacrificed to serve our nation are taken care of. So that's a big area of concern.

Also, I have to mention the University of Arizona - our economic driver, in terms of keeping global competitiveness at the forefront - making sure that we graduate engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and technical people that continue to help lead the United States into this 21st century and our global economy.

You were recently appointed, as you mentioned, to the House Armed Services Committee. What would you like to see happen with the U.S. military in Iraq?

I support a strategic redeployment plan. The president convened the Baker Hamilton bipartisan working group that set forth recommendations of how we should be dealing with the situation in Iraq. I believe that we should be following those recommendations.

I hope to travel to Iraq in the near future to have a chance to spend time with constituents, with not only folks from my district but the leadership to get a better understanding about the challenges we face. I also believe that we need to focus on Afghanistan. We are losing ground. The al Qaeda terrorists that attacked the United States were trained and had real ties to Afghanistan.



And, last, a short housekeeping note. I’ve re-established a second version of The Data Port, cleverly named Data Port Two. That’s where I’ll post all the non-political stuff so it doesn’t clutter up righteous lefty haranguing.The first post is up here

Where Is The Outrage?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t think ‘non-binding resolutions’ or ‘sense of the Congress’ expressions are going to get us out of Iraq; neither does Salon commentator Gary Kamiya, who asks “Where is The Outrage?”

Kamiya is profoundly skeptical about the Democrats ever cutting off funds for the war--- still spooked by the Conservatives’ strategy of tying the ‘soft on security’ can to their tails. A real anti-war movement, a thunderous presence in the streets, would support the radical move of cutting funds, but no such anti-war movement exists.

Although disapproval of Bush’s mismanagement of the war is huge there is really no outrage at the suffering that war has caused. After all, there have ‘only’ been 3000 deaths and for no one is the suffering of the thousands of wounded a reality. When even the dead are just numbers, the wounded become only medical statistics.

Kamiya writes: “The fact is, except for that comparatively small number of Americans who have fought there, Iraq is just a name on a map. The deaths there, too, are unreal. And if by chance their reality becomes undeniable, they happen to other people.”

” American casualties have remained discreetly hidden from view. (To say nothing of the horrendous numbers of Iraqis who have been killed as the result of the war, which the U.S. government has callously avoided tallying.) The Bush administration has tried to keep the dead and wounded out of sight, and the media, cowed by "taste" rules and patriotism, has mostly played along. The result is an abstract war, a play war, a dream war.”

During World War One it was the war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and (after the war) novelist Erich Maria Remarque, who raised our consciousness of the horror, making it explicit and terrible.

Iraq has produced a soldier poet of extraordinary talent, Brian Turner. Kamiya quotes him in the Salon article. It will break your heart.

In a poem titled "2000 lbs," Turner opens with a description of a suicide bomber in Mosul's Ashur Square, who is watching in his rearview mirror for a convoy. He writes of two men, an Iraqi taxi driver named Sefwan and an American Guardsman named Sgt. Ledouix, who are also in Ashur Square.

A flight of gold, that's what Sefwan thinks
as he lights a Miami, draws in the smoke
and waits in his taxi at the traffic circle.
He thinks of summer 1974, lifting
pitchforks of grain high in the air,
the slow drift of it like the fall of Shatha's hair,
and although it was decades ago, he still loves her,
remembers her standing at the canebrake
where the buffalo cooled shoulder-deep in the water,
pleased with the orange cups of flowers he brought her,
and he regrets how much can go wrong in a life,
how easily the years slip by, light as grain, bright
as the street's concussion of metal, shrapnel
traveling at the speed of sound to open him up
in blood and shock, a man whose last thoughts
are of love and wreckage, with no one there
to whisper him gone.

Sgt. Ledouix of the National Guard
speaks but cannot hear the words coming out,
and it's just as well his eardrums ruptured
because it lends the world a certain calm,
though the traffic circle is filled with people
running in panic, their legs a blur
like horses in a carousel, turning
and turning the way the tires spin
on the Humvee flipped to its side,
the gunner's hatch he was thrown from
a mystery to him now, a dark hole
in metal the color of sand, and if he could,
he would crawl back inside of it,
and though his fingertips scratch at the asphalt
he hasn't the strength to move:
shrapnel has torn into his ribcage
and he will bleed to death in minutes,
but he finds himself surrounded by a strange
beauty, the shine of light on the broken,
a woman's hand touching his face, tenderly
the way his wife might, amazed to find
a wedding ring on his crushed hand,
the bright gold sinking in flesh
going to bone.




The poem appears in a collection of Turner's poetry titled, 'Here, Bullet'


Read more about Turner here.

Ignoring and Repeating History

If Bush and his neo-con conspirators had even the most rudimentary knowledge of the history of the region would they have led us all into the Iraq disaster? One hopes not.

Sadly, they were either ignorant of the history of the area, or they knew it and were too dumb to think for a moment about the lesson of an earlier empire’s Iraq adventure.

Consider this quotation from an article at AterNet.Org by Barry Lando.

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia [Iraq] into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information…..We are today not far from disaster.”

So wrote Colonel T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) in the London Sunday Times, August 1920.

Lando’s outline of the stages of the British invasion, and its ultimate failure, reads like a shockingly contemporary account of our own bloody disaster.

When the British forces marched into Baghdad in 1917 they did so announcing that they were liberators, not conquerors.

In fact, they were no more interested in liberating the local inhabitants and their lands than were any of the conquerors who had preceded them, nor the one who followed. Their major concern was bases to support their sprawling empire and oil to fuel their economy and war-making machine.

The British attempt to pacify the region was carried out by aircraft, armored cars, machine guns, firing squads and 130,000 British soldiers, more than 1600 of whom were killed. The British established the Sunnis as rulers in Baghdad and the Shiites of course considered them occupiers.

The British attempted to maintain control of the region by establishing the Hashemite prince Faisal (who had never been to Iraq) as the King of the new nation, in the process betraying the Kurds who had been promised an independent homeland at the end of World War I.

Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, argued that Britain should give up its attempts to control Kurdish Mosul and Sunni-dominated Baghdad and retain only the Shiite province of Basra in the south, which was a strategic link to British possessions in Persia. If the British Cabinet had followed his advice, each of the principle peoples of Iraq—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds—would have had its own government; the groups who were bound together as Iraqis might have had a much less tragic history.

Churchill was right. It's my judgment that in addition to simply advocating a withdrawl from Iraq Progressives should consider support of the 'three state solution.' However, the devil is in the details and this might mean we have to stay in Iraq longer than a simple 'withdraw now' policy implies.

Quotations from Barry Lando’s article are in Italics. Read the complete article here.

Getting Out of Iraq

The following note was distributed on each chair at last Saturday’s organizational meeting of the Pima County Democratic Party.

TODAY’S SCRIPT
First we take impeachment off the table
Then we take war funding off the table
Then when George Bush sends in more troops
We throw up our hands and explain
There is nothing we can do to stop him.

The circulator of that also asked a couple of questions: Why have so many left the Democratic Party to register as independents? How come they call us “spineless” and “brain-dead”?

It begins to look like “Today’s Script” is tomorrow’s action plan and that we’ll be in Iraq through 2008.

I think it’s clear that the vast majority of Americans want us out of Iraq. I think it’s safe to say that the sooner and more completely out of Iraq you want us to be, the more likely it is that you count yourself a Progressive.

If so, that makes me a Progressive.

But while Progressives mount campaigns to put pressure on Congress to get out, it seems appropriate that we discuss exactly how we propose that be done and what our post-exit relationship to Iraq ought to be.

More important, and so far as I can see not considered at all, is the question of what our moral obligation to the people of Irag is and how we should respond to that obligation.

Perhaps one of our most active Progressives, Rev. Gerry Straatemeier, MSW could lead us in such a discussion.

AZ CD-8: Giffords' First Vote

Representative Gabrielle Giffords took her first action in Congress today, voting on a package of ethics reform measures.

A Ban on Gifts from Lobbyists: Members of Congress and their staff are not allowed to accept gifts or expensive meals that could sway legislators' opinions, create unethical relationships between lobbyists and legislators, or give the appearance of impropriety. This is also a ban on gifts and meals from lobbyists and the organizations that employ them, and requires that tickets to sporting and other events given to Members and staff are valued at market prices.

A Ban on Lobbyist Travel: Lobbyists and the organizations that employ them cannot plan, organize, request, finance, arrange, or participate in travel for Members of Congress or their staff.

Shut Down Pay-to-Play Schemes: This measure ends the revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms, in which jobs were exchanged for political access.

A Ban on Arm Twisting for Votes: The measure prohibits the practice of holding votes open for undue amounts of time for the sole purpose of twisting arms and affecting the outcome of a vote.

A Requirement on fiscal and budgetary responsibility: Congress must use "pay-as-you-go" budget rules to stop any new deficit spending as the first step toward reversing record deficits mortgaging our children's future.

Earmark Reform: There will be no secret deals between legislators and special interests -- there will be full disclosure of all earmarks, requiring Members to certify that earmarks provided would be for the public good -- not financially benefiting themselves or their spouses.


In case you missed it, here’s an interesting story from the New York Daily News.

“WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.”

The great decider strikes again.

Tax Breaks for Rich Kids’ Schools

Someone in the State Legislature has finally been fast enough on the up-take to recognize that the scheme that allows tax credits for donations to their kids’ schools benefits the rich more than the poor.

It’s a simple matter, really. Wealthy parents are more likely to have the discretionary cash to donate than are the poor. The result is that school districts with poorer populations receive less money with which to fund enrichment activities for their kids.

This is pointed out in a story in today’s Arizona Daily Star. There’s a little irony here. The story quotes Republican Rep. Mark Anderson, who was one of the original sponsors of the Arizona Tax Credit Program, the 1998 law that lets individuals donate up to $200 to public schools for clubs or class activities and get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit.

It’s taken Anderson eight years to recognize that the tax-credit deal he co-sponsored is inequitable, which may not be fast after all. Maybe only half fast. Here’s a quote from the Star:

"The one flaw … is that schools that are generally wealthier demographically have an easier time raising money from the parents who live there, because they can afford the $200," Anderson said.

“Differences in donations between districts and individual schools can be dramatic, he said. For example, Franklin West Elementary School in Mesa took in $5,817 in tax credits in 2005, while Red Mountain Ranch Elementary got $34,758.

Poorer families can't afford to give to their schools, Anderson said, even if they know they will get it back later.

Anderson wants to establish a corporate tax credit to fund a program that would make up the short fall. This would mean less money in the general fund. (As does the existing tax credit.)

Why, in the past nine years, hasn’t some Democratic legislator spoken up on this issue? Geeze, why not scrap the tax credit altogether, let the money stay in the general fund, bite the bullet and go on to fully fund education.

But that just ain't the Republican way.

A Thousand Points of Light…

…won’t cut it. On Christmas morning Katherine and I joined volunteers at the Tucson Convention Center to assist the Salvation Army in serving Christmas dinner. Our particular job was to drive around Tucson and deliver Christmas dinners to the sick or elderly who simply couldn’t leave their homes.

Christmas and Thanksgiving attract great numbers of volunteers eager to reach out to serve their fellow Tucsonans who are struck down by illness, homelessness, poverty, or the isolated loneliness of the elderly.

The Salvation Army PR person reports that more than 200 people volunteered on each of the two holidays. 3600 meals were served or delivered on Thanksgiving and 2400 on Christmas.

I think it’s fair to ask what good, in the long run, this annual feeding of the poor does. Of course it certainly provides a hot meal to people in need on two days out of the year. What it does not do is solve the problems of homelessness, poverty, the mentally ill forced on the streets as the result of the arbitrary closure of mental health facilities, or the social isolation that frequently comes with old age.

Feeding the poor is a ritual act, like washing feet, but as at least one famous foot-washer observed, “The poor you shall have always with you.” However extensive volunteerism becomes it will not solve problems embedded in a society’s social and political structure. The solutions require political action.

The value in volunteering is that it puts volunteers in direct contact with the poor and dispossessed. It reminds them (and I include myself here) that “the poor” are not just a category of social analysis but human beings. If we could get more people to spend just one day working in a homeless shelter they would be more inclined to endorse the political action necessary to really address the problems of poverty.

I wonder if that might not be the idea behind John Edwards’s One Corp?