Dirty Politcs by the Obama Administration?

In this interview Ron Paul talks a bit about the stimulus bill, and the process by which it was introduced. Ron Paul is an honest guy, so I’ll take him at his word until I see strong evidence otherwise. Obama made a campaign promise to publish all legislation five days ahead of time to allow congress and the public to peruse it. He didn’t do this for the stimulus. It could be argued that the stimulus is an emergency measure and should be exempt, but he also didn’t do this for children’s health insurance, which was hardly an emergency since it doesn’t kick in until mid-year. But this was more than a simple broken campaign promise; according to Ron Paul, the bill wasn’t revealed until the midnight before the vote, and was 1,000 pages. This was made worse by making only five hard copies available, which seems to me to be a clear tactic to prevent the opposition from being able to work together to get it read and discussed before the vote. Lets get this info out to the public at large. I want to see either a denial, an explanation, or a loss of credibility over of this one. If it is true, it is disappointing.

Ball Back in Obama’s Court on Gitmo Tribunals

The chief judge at the Guantanamo Bay war crimes court Thursday rejected President Obama’s request to halt the prosecution of terrorism suspects. Obama had made a request rather than an order. The judge does have a lot of jurisdiction here, but I can’t imagine it holding up if Obama really pushed. I don’t really see the judges rejection of a request like this from the commander in chief as defensible. This could get interesting. There is a full and well written report on the issue over at the LA. times.

Extraordinary Rendition

Under the Bush administration, the CIA began a practice of nabbing people off of the streets all over the world. They would be stripped, drugged, and flown via secret flights to secret locations, often allegedly chosen because of their lax laws on torture and interrogation. They were mistreated and interrogated, all without accusation, trial, or notification to either the country they were stolen from or their families. Many were released after years of torture without so much as an official accusation or apology.

Barack Obama has been conspicuously silent about the practice. He created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they “do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture”, but has otherwise taken no action to ban the practice. The L.A. Times cites an anonymous source within the Obama administration as saying, “The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”.

At some point things like this have to fall under some sort of oversight. The danger of knowledge of capture affecting results is a short term one. Once an individual is noticed as missing, any organization they belong to would act under the assumption of capture. The risk of corruption that inevitably follows government unaccountability is then the greater threat. I could support the practice under very short term conditions. I can’t see holding anyone or more than a week without at least notification to their country of origin. Obama has banned torture and closed Gitmo. He has some credibility on the subject with me, but I’m going to be watching this one closely. I’ll update this post as more becomes available.

Dammit Obama

I’m apparently having a week of breaking resolutions. I wasn’t going to say anything bad about Obama until he was in office and started screwing things up, but he apparently couldn’t wait that long.

On Feb 17, analog TV should be no more. The conversion to digital has been a long drawn out process, for which we have already paid a ridiculous price in commercials and other time wasters, and well over a billion dollars. The conversion will retire a dinosaur of a technology that has been bogging down huge swaths of prime spectrum that could be used for far more useful new technologies. The spectrum has been sold. New products that will use the new digital service are everywhere and have been sold for years. They have a better picture and better features.

Now Barack Obama puts out a last minute memo asking that the conversion be delayed until mid-summer. Heaven forbid anyone illiterate and living in a cave might be surprised to find their television not working and have to venture into reality long enough to figure out why. What we really should have done is just cut the TV resolution in half every month until everyone gets sick enough of it to get their crap together and convert.

Update: The Chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, has now come out at CES and said about Obama’s request, “[W]e’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting ready for the February 17 date,” “I am concerned about the consumer confusion that would be created.”

Update: Obama has named June 12 as the date he would like the switch to digital to be postponed to.

Compromise

“The fellow who says he’ll meet you halfway usually thinks he’s standing on the dividing line.” -Orlando Battista

When you hear the top political candidates speak, one of the more common qualifications you hear them push is their ability to get compromise between democrats and republicans. What does a bipartisan compromise mean in America?  There are a few ways we break the deadlock.

• One is when individual representatives decide to sacrifice their convictions on the current issue in exchange for pushing through their own pet project they know would never fly otherwise. We call this pork.
• Another is to remove all the parts of the bill that are offensive to anyone, usually removing the taxes that will pay for the project, or the regulations on how it will be used.
• Or they can just spread panic and try to push it through under public pressure before realization and regret set in.
• Or they can just reallocate the money from something vital and force the other side to re-fund that (as seen with the Iraq surge, and California budget under Schwarzenegger)

None of these are helpful. The second example, splitting the difference, is what most often appeals to the public. This is like having each party with a hand on the steering wheel. The Democrats wanting to turn left, the republicans right; meanwhile the media is in the back seat rooting for the underdog.  We will hit the center divider every time.

 

There are ways to affect compromise that aren’t dirty. An example would be this plan put forth by Bob Ingles. He proposes starting up a carbon tax (democrats want), but offsetting the tax by reducing taxes elsewhere, such as income taxes (republican opposition evaporates). I’m a fan of taxing problems to fund solutions. Pollution is a much bigger problem than income.  If we give the free market incentive to clean up, they will do so. Since this is as much a behavioral issue as a technological one, I would consider it progress. Imperfect progress (for much the same reason as traffic cameras), but still far better than the business as usual methods of compromise.

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