Ted

It's a little thing, but this is what I admired about Ted Kennedy the most: Ronald Reagan made the word "Liberal" a dirty word. The great propagandist had conservatives sneer out the word as if it was the worst obscenity in the world. Reagan drove liberals to use the word "progressive" as an alternative. Ted Kennedy always referred to himself as a liberal. I'm proud to be a liberal, just like Ted Kennedy.

Torture Investigations

In the first version of The New Common Sense, I found myself defending Lynndie England and the rest of the enlisted, accused in the Abu Ghraib scandal. The way I saw it, there was no way that this small group of what the Bush administration called bad apples, were out there on their own. It was just too organized, and too close to the old line, School of the Americas playbook. As details of what Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Bush, himself, authorized came out, it became impossible to deny that the actions of Lynndie England, and the others court marshaled for Abu Ghraib, were not being directed by those above them in the chain of command. I'm willing to admit that those pulling the strings might have been CIA or civilian contractors. That's still in question, but clearly what they did was authorized, and it was unjust, that only those on the bottom of the torture food chain were charged.

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Now, it looks pretty probable that Attorney General Eric Holder will be looking into illegal torture authorized by the Bush administration. If Holder indicts field agents of the CIA, and civilian contractors, as he should, but not higher ups, I'll think it all a wasted effort. I would hope that the four I've already mentioned end up in the dock. I doubt they will. I'm not sure the Obama administration is willing to take the political fall out, and I can see that harsh, political reality. Such indictments would be so big, that it might not be possible to address any other problem. But come on, at least John Yoo should go to prison.

Common Sense

When I started the first version of The New Common Sense, I wrote that I had not come to my liberalism from a sense of ideology, but from a sense of practicality. Specifically I noted that I didn't believe in a single payer national health care system because it was the darling idea of the American left, or because it emulated the French system of health care, but because I didn't want to die prematurely because I couldn't afford to go to the doctor.
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This last week, here in Los Angles, Remote Area Medical, a charity that was started to provide free health care in remote areas of the third world, treated over a thousand Americans that either had no health insurance, or were under insured, or couldn't afford the co-pays. Because of the lack of a national health care system, RAM has found itself providing 60% of it's services in the United States.
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There are times I'm ashamed to be an American, and one of those times was when I watched the television coverage of America's poor and lower middle class, standing in line for hours because they couldn't see, because they couldn't afford glasses; because they couldn't eat solid food, because they couldn't afford dental care; because they couldn't afford treatment for high blood pressure, or diabetes, and because their government and many of their fellow citizens didn't care.
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Let's not make nice and try for a sense of bipartisanship. There are those on the right wing of America's political spectrum who care more about the profits of the health care industry than they care about the health of our citizens. They can talk all they want about death panels, deficits, the end of democracy if government guarantees access to health care. That's all window dressing. What they are actually saying is, if people have to die for the bottom line, so be it. They are expendable people.

Cash for Clunkers, How About Solar Cells for the Middle Class

The cash for clunkers program is about to end, and only those ideologically opposed to any government involvement in the economy are calling it a failure. For a few billion dollars, (And yes, I do realise that's a lot of money.) we've increased fuel efficiency in the domestic auto fleet, lessening dependence on foreign oil, and started on the long, hard fight to control global warming by getting rid of older, heavier polluting cars. And as a bonus, we've saved a lot of auto industry jobs.

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So what's should we do next? I think we should add a little box to everybody's income tax forms. If you make less than a certain, to be determined, amount, and if you own your own home, make a check mark. That amount should be the line below which individual home owners cannot be expected to pay for their own, home, solar arrays. For a few billion a year, with home owners chosen by lottery, congress could jump start the home solar industry in the USA. Put in a provision to use American made solar panels, and local contractors rather than national businesses like Wal-mart, and we'd get the domestic solar panel makers humming, and stimulate, small local businesses. We'd decrease the amount of green house gases by cutting day time, coal fired, electricity use, and if a couple of hundred thousand home owners suddenly weren't paying electric bills, they'd spend a lot of that money on other things, which would stimulate the general economy.

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Of course, we'd have to give up on this whole idea that electricity should be supplied exclusively by large corporations. When electrification started, home electricity was being supplied to a small number of middle class homes, and above. That's not true anymore. Electricity is as much a part of vital infrastructure as roads. Perhaps those cities that own utilities shouldn't have their operations privatized. Perhaps private electricity companies should be taken over by local municipalities.

California Crazy

Still in the signature gathering stage, the latest example of the stupidity of California's direct democracy: A petition to turn the state legislature into a part time body, limiting the days in session to 95 a year, with an additional five days to consider bills vetoed by the governor. Wow, not only will we be governed by politicians term limited out before they really understand how to run one of the largest and most complex governments on earth, but they'll only get a bit over three months a year in office. California, Somali without the militias.

The Grand Tour of North America

The latest cycling news out of Colorado and Lance Armstrong is that there will probably be another major stage race in North America. As I noted in my three posts about a future grand tour in California, (Posted on 7/15/o9, 7/20/09, and 8/3/09) that while I favored the expansion of the Tour of California into a fourth grand tour to be contested in the fall, as an alternative, a rotating Grand Tour of North America would be just as good. With a Tour of California and a Tour of Colorado, there would be two established major races that could be expanded to a 21 day stage race. Add two to three more major races, and a rotation of race locations could be up and running fairly quickly. The Tour of Georgia wouldn't have the major climbs of the Rockies or Sierras, but the southern Appalachians are still fairly challenging. A tour of the Pacific northwest, running from the Eugene area in the south into southern British Columbia, and something in the north east could do it.

The NRA, Glenn Beck, and President Obama

I grew up in a small town were the majority of men, and a sizable minority of women hunted. To say I grew up around guns would be an understatement. As a child, the National Rifle Association was such a common part of my life, that I didn't think there was anything odd about people getting together and shooting guns. Here's the thing, though, when I was growing up, the NRA was an organization that stressed hunting rights, sport shooting and gun safety.

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What happened? Somewhere along the line, the NRA was hijacked by the gun extremists, who are more worried about the right to walk around in public, armed to the teeth, than they are about deer season. These extremists equate showing up at a presidential speech with AK-47's over their shoulders with the right to hunt, target shoot, and to defend themselves from crime. (An issue that's blown way out of proportion. Most Americans will never know crime beyond the level of irritation.)

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Enter Glenn Beck and his border line endorsement of assassination as a form of political protest. Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of the far right hate mongers are playing to the gun extremists. Every time I read in the papers about an Obama town hall meeting surrounded by gun wielding nuts, I wonder just how long it will be until a few of these fools decide to rush the hall and try to take out the president. They probably won't get beyond the local police and secret service, but they'll probably end up killing a few people before they themselves are shot.