Nice Guys Finish First

Hooray for the Nice Guys! Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee both won their perspective caucuses last night in Iowa. (I was going to make that a link, but really, if you found me you're capable of looking up cnn.com or Googling "wins Iowa".)

The two men who faced negative attacks and refused to sling mud in return wiped the floor with their supposedly inevitable opponents.

The two candidates who were told they'd never make it, because they didn't have the money or the right color skin, because they openly embraced their faith and/or dared to organize their communities for a better tomorrow, because conventional wisdom said the other candidates had "inevitability"-- those candidates soared ahead on the one thing greater: the belief of voters too smart for all of that.

One woman asked Mitt Romney in the hours before the caucus, will you keep running negative ads in the general election? Without hesitation, the candidate replied with a hearty "yes". That's because he believes in these "contrast ads" as being important parts of a campaign-- but the spirit in the room sagged like a poor soufflé when he said it. Because we're tired of evil. We want someone who for heaven's sake is at least NICE, and trustworthy. Last night, we got two, one for each side. Thank you, Iowa!

I am a registered Democrat, and while I hope that I am centered, balanced, fair, moderate, and willing to see the other side of a debate, it does mean I'm following the Dem side more closely. The GOP can pick whoever it wants and it's not really any of my business. I guess I feel the need to point this out because I will sometimes sound like I support Huckabee (cuz, shuckabee, he's keen) while at other times I might criticize him or his policy ideas. The thing is, he's a Republican I like while still disagree with on many issues. But as I've said before, at least I can trust that a debate with Huck would end in a prayer and a salad, not a wiretap and rendition.

And as you'll hear me say time and again, those of us who love our country and are interested in policy and governance have more in common with each other, even on different sides, than we do with our fellow citizens who don't care. So yeah, I like Mike. I'm not going to vote for him, and I'll tell you why as the election draws near, but today, I'm nothing but happy.

Two fine people showed that money and mudslinging don't win elections. And we couldn't have gotten a better gift from Iowa or a better message to start off the primary season of 2008.

Today, be happy. There is hope.

Oh, hey, I didn't even talk about the main attraction last night, but Mr. Obama not only walked away with Iowa at 38%, but gave a speech that reminded us of why we all fell in love with him back in 2004. If you've been wondering where that Obama went, he's back.

A Message from My Roommate

[Update below]

My roommate used to work for the IRS managing databases. Perhaps this gives him a unique perspective, because recently he said this to me:

"When I hear a candidate say that their tax system idea will 'shut down the IRS', I stop listening. They don't know what they're talking about."

Why is that? Because someone is still going to have to process the forms. Let's say we have a flat tax. Great, if you're single and have one employer. What if you're self-employed? You'll have to report your income to someone, and that would be the IRS.

Let's say it's a national sales tax. It's agreed that's overly punitive for the lower income folks, because they spend their whole paycheck and therefore pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. So national sales tax plans usually involve a break for the poor-- if you make less than x, you're exempt. OK, so who do I tell that I'm exempt? I'll have to fill out a form and someone will have to process it. That would be the IRS.

You could dismantle the IRS, get rid of its assets like facilities and computers, fire its staff, and create something else, buy all new stuff, get new buildings, and hire ex-IRS employees, but I dare you to name it something more vague than "the Internal Revenue Service". So long as revenue is generated internally in this country, someone's going to have to service it.

As if to prove my friend's point, Mike Huckabee spoke on New Year's Day and said that his Fair Tax plan would do away with the IRS. "Citing a poll conducted by FOX News, Huckabee said, 'The average American is more afraid of being audited than being mugged. This didn't make sense at first, but when you think about it, it does make sense. When you get mugged it only lasts a few seconds. When the IRS comes after you, they don't quit until they have every last dime and it could take years,' Huckabee quipped." (Iowa Independent)

Or, as my roommate put it, "every last dime you owe the government". Well, when you put it that way...

But even so, all I could think of when I heard that Huckabee quote was, the federal government is US. If we're so afraid of ourselves, maybe we should change the rules, yes? Or are those rules important to keep people from cheating, as the lawmakers clearly believe? Either way, quit telling me about how a government agency is so "bad" that we would kill it. Fix it! (Except those created in knee-jerk reactions like the Dept. of Homeland Security, of course.)

And back to my friend's point: Huck's Fair Tax plan involves a national consumption (sales) tax. And he says he'll kill the IRS. Well, who will collect the tax? And his plan involves cutting a check to every American to cover x amount of the consumption tax. (This makes it so the poor aren't paying that disproportionate amount.) Who does he think will write these checks and distribute them? And how will we know who every American is unless they fill out a form and send it to... someone? That's even assuming that the poor can get these checks-- we're talking about the homeless, the poor who rent and move a lot, students, etc. There are many problems with this plan, but not the least of the problems is how we will implement this system without an Internal Revenue Service to, hello, service the revenue generated internally.

So I have come around to my friend's opinion: if you say your tax plan will do away with the IRS, then you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

UPDATE: There's a great article on this on Salon.com (you'll have to watch a short ad before accessing their site). Listen to this:

The FairTax doesn't eliminate the IRS. It replaces the IRS with another agency -- the United States Fair Tax Federal Revenue Administration and State Tax Authority Reconciliation Service, or the USFTFRASTARS.

Hah! So, there you go. Just in acronyms alone this system makes things more confusing!

Ooh, good answer!

As you probably know, I'm not voting Republican in 2008. But if I were to do so, well, I have to confess I heart Huckabee (that is, Republican Presidential Nominee candidate and Governor of Arkansas Michael D. "Mike" Huckabee). First of all, he seems to have more character and integrity in his little finger than the other GOP candidates could find with two hands and a flashlight; plus, he retains the added bonus of not being bat-shit crazy, as most of them are. Oh, we'd probably have a rousing debate on policy, Mike and I, but at least I know it would end with prayer and a salad instead of a wiretap and rendition.

But the election aside, I want you to hear what Mike said at the CNN/YouTube debate the other night in answer to the question if the candidate believes the Bible to be the literal truth, every word. Mike used to be a Baptist preacher and actually holds a theological master's degree, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at what a brilliant, thoughtful, and insightful answer he gives now. As a former Southern Baptist myself, I often cringe at how the divisions between left & right, red & blue, have manifested themselves as a fight between the faithful and the secular. And just like Texans, when the media gets a quote from a Christian, they usually sound crazy and right-wing. Sadly, Mike hasn't been much of an exception: I don't know if there was a turning point in his life but many sources like Wikipedia insist that he believes in biblical inerrancy (that the Bible contains nothing untrue, which may actually be argued as not the same thing as everything in the Bible being literally true, but that's for another post) and Mike's reputation for such things would put him in the Scary Christians camp for many voters.

But, you're still waiting for the money quote, right? Well, it's almost here. One more thing: if you're a Christian and you're not so obtuse as to believe every literal word of the Bible as being completely literally true, then print out this quote and put it on your fridge or cubicle. People have got to learn that Christians aren't crazy (or at least, that's not why). Ready?

"'Love your neighbor as yourself,' and 'As much as you've done it to the least of these brethren, you've done it unto me,'" Huckabee said. "Until we get those simple, real easy things right, I'm not sure we ought to spend a whole lot of time fighting over the other parts that are a little bit complicated. And as the only person here on the stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don't fully comprehend and understand, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite God, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their God is too small."

Ooh, thank you Mike! Not only did he answer the question beautifully, but he taught us a good lesson too. First, he says let's stop this petty gay-marriage-scare and all that and work on loving our neighbor (hello, Gulf Coast!) and caring for our fellow man (hello, SCHIP!) and I would add "turn the other cheek" (hello, diplomacy!) and until the day when each of us win a Nobel Peace Prize, we should stop worrying so much about these theological points of debate. Right on!!!!

Second, he said something really profound about the Bible issue. Some of my readers aren't Christian and may find this debate pedantic (it is) and obvious (it is), but here's the thing: for those of us with Judeo/Christian faith, the Bible is a guidebook for living, not in the parts that say, "Do this," or "Don't do that", but in the story parts. The parts where we think about Elijah dropping in on some poor woman trying to feed herself and her kid and he demands she use the last of her food to feed him first and then herself and her kid, and she does, and the food never runs out. What must the woman have thought when this stranger showed up at her door? Why does she say yes to feeding him before her son? Why does Elijah demand this of her in this way? What situation in my life is this similar to? What does the story tell me is the right thing to do? I have a friend who recently after a series of failures and missteps (with good intentions) found herself a single mom with $120 in the bank. The IRS, to whom she owes a few thousand (part of her not-so-great life), seized all the money. Like the widow Elijah meets, my friend had no choice but to give up her last $120 to the government instead of using it to care for her son. I'm not attacking the IRS here, but rather, I can imagine my friend turning to the Bible for comfort, and finding this story. The last of the widow's oil and grain was just like my friend's $120. Elijah's intractable attitude on the subject is like the IRS' immovability. But what my friend might draw hope from was that even when your last morsel of food or your last $120 is taken from you, it will still work out. God won't let that be the end of you, there is hope! And for my friend, getting on a payment plan and out of collections with the IRS was actually a step on the road to recovery for her whole life, so in the end, she too found hope.

Some people talk about the Bible being allegorical or literal. Allegorical would mean that the Elijah story never happened, but is merely there to illustrate a point, while literal would mean that it happened in history just as it says. But as I see it, "allegorical" for me means that I turn these stories into allegories that speak to my life whether they happened or not. Who cares if there was a real woman with a real bottle of oil? Who cares if Elijah was a spiritual prophet or a technical man? (Go back and read Elijah's whole story in Kings and tell me if you don't end up thinking he's a time traveler. It's totally eerie.) What's most important is, "How am I going to get through the end of the month with my last $120 gone?" and for that, you're going to make an allegory to your own life anyway, so who cares if it's literal or not?

Plus, if you're saying it's totally literal, then you're saying that it is a record of historical events that stands on its own whether it has meaning for anyone or not, which seems to undermine the point of the Bible. We can read the Constitution, for example, and if we just think of it as a description of the lives our founding fathers and the rules they made up for themselves in their point in history, then we can't apply it to today, and what would be the point of that?

Lastly, and I'm just piggybacking my own thought onto Mike's here, is that even if you thought the Bible was literally word-for-word true, we don't have the whole story. Looking back at the Elijah/widow story, we don't really know what he said to her (surely there were a few more words than, "Fetch me...", how about hello, where'd you come from, cute kid you got there, etc.) or what she said to him (she doesn't have any lines in the story, was she mute? had lockjaw? cat had her tongue? we don't know), or other details. There are a very few sentences that describe this story, and so that can't be all there is to it. So therefore if it's not the whole story then even if it is literally true, it's still not the whole truth, and one is then left to ponder, imagine, fill in blanks-- and what has happened then to your certainty in "truth"?

Same goes for the technical rules contained in the Bible. BTW, for those of you who aren't Christians, the deal is supposed to be that Jesus make a New Deal with us (the new "covenant" or "testament") that superseded all the old rules about animal sacrifices and stonings and hair lengths. So please stop asking Christians who take the Bible literally whether they think people should be stoned to death or follow other arcane practices; even if they took that literally, Jesus shook our hand on a new pact and we don't have to listen to those old rules anymore anyway. That should be a question saved for Jews, who you could say didn't shake on the new deal and are still following the old one. They're the ones who have to answer for all that, and most of them aren't taking it literally anyway, so, debate over.

But in any case, let's say it says (sorry, I don't want to take the time to look up a real one) to stone a guy if he sleeps with his brother's wife. A technical rule, and one that would have been possible to carry out because at the time it would have been legal and presumably customary. Nowadays, that would be first degree murder, so following Christ's admonishment that we "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" (follow civil laws), we know we couldn't stone anyone for any reason in modern America. So we have to look at it allegorically, that is, what this is saying to us is that sleeping with your brother's wife is seriously bad, and worthy of getting the smackdown from your friends and neighbors. So even tho this example is Old Testament (and we Christians aren't expected to follow it), I would say that it's telling me that I should cut this guy out of my life and stop being his friend until he ends the affair and starts living an honest life. Cutting him out of my life is the equivalent of "killing" him, and since I can't really kill him, that's the only option left open to me. Whew! I need to stop saying "I" in this example! I wouldn't do either, because of course Jesus said to turn the other cheek and not judge, but you get the point.

Boy, I really thought this was going to be a short post today! Let me just wrap up on the last bit of what Huckabee said:

Leaving aside the allegorical/literal debate, what Mike said at the end was that there is no end to the mind of God, and if this Bible is his revelation to us, then there is no end to it.

I'm a big Shakespeare freak, and what I find so cool about Shakes is that no matter what we descendants invent (19th century realism, 20th century "method" acting, 21st century rap), when we look back at Shakespeare, it's in there. This is much like what Mike was saying about the Bible, that it continuously reveals itself to us, which is a phenomenon that by definition expands beyond the debate of literal or allegorical.

Oh, Mike. Now if only you held progressive political ideals, my love for you could be complete...

Welcome to the Horror Coma

I didn't know there was anything beyond scandal fatigue, until I tried to pick up writing again. As John Dickerson said when he opened the Slate's Political Gabfest podcast a few weeks ago, "There's so much to cover... and we're sick of it all already." Amen, brother.

I've got a couple things on the stove (my writing stove, that is, where the heat source is righteous outrage), so I'm going to give you not one, but TWO posts to be thankful for today! First, privitization, then below this post you'll find one on Hillary Clinton.


Enjoy your turkey and your tryptophan comas!

Privitization & The NeoCon Economy: Maybe it's because Democrats can't hatch intricate plots to redesign the government (the last meeting disintegrated when the nice lady who brought brownies was brought to tears justifying them as cruelty-free AND not anti-feminist), but there really is a nefarious and wide-ranging plan on the right to create an economy based on fear and war (see Naomi Klein's Disaster Capitalism) that is executed primarily through privatization, that is, handing over implementation to private companies.

I have lots of problems with this, but I just want to take a step back here and say, this isn't just about Katrina (New Orleans public schools remaining= 4) or the Wars (Blackwater). In the film No End In Sight, we learned that the NeoConMen intended to use Iraq as a laboratory for these economic ideas. "We can't get the American people to see what a great idea this is and let us do it here," they apparently thought, "so let's topple another country and do it there!" The New York Times said in describing the film, "The knowledge and expertise of military, diplomatic and technical professionals was overridden by the ideological certainty of political loyalists. Republican Party operatives, including recent college graduates with little or no relevant experience, were put in charge of delicate and complicated administrative areas. Those who did not demonstrate lock-step fidelity to the White House line were ignored or pushed aside." OK, that sounds like the typical crap we hear from the GOP, just like the stories of the justice department. But what the film makes clear is that this was done specifically to implement necon ideals-- because (to paraphrase, I should have written down the quote) the older, experienced policy makers would have known better, would know that these trickle-down, "free market", privatizing ideas would not work, and so the spots were filled with fresh-faced, brainwashed, inexperienced kids who wouldn't know better and would do what their Leaders told them to. So if you want to see what the NeoEConomy would look like, look at Iraq. Isn't it swell?

Oh, there's lots more on this subject-- look at how housing monies in the Gulf Coast are being funneled to the ports for the good of the casinos-- and I will continue to stay on this topic in the weeks and months to come.

Let me just stop here and give you my philosophy.

We as a nation, as one people, make decisions through our elected representatives as to what will receive our allocations of time, money and resources. For example, recently in Texas we allocated millions of dollars for cancer research. We as a state, through voting, decided that we want to research cancer more and help cancer patients. Our allocation is for the public good. We Texans need cancer research, we're putting money to that for the people.

Cancer is an easy one because it's obviously "good". But when I talk about what America does for the public good, I mean we make moral decisions, decisions on what we feel is important. We have X number of dollars, and we decide to spend more on cancer than heart disease. This is a moral choice, a choice that reflects one's morality, or priorities.

Making a decision "for the public good" does NOT always mean the measure is in fact good-- it could be a mistake, or not the best way to go about things, or perhaps if the morality of the leaders is skewed, they might allocate resources to line their own pockets rather than on cancer. But as I am using the terms, even that is a moral choice because the act of allocating resources in our name is making moral choices for the public good, even if those choices are poor or even diabolical. With me so far?

If you allocate money and other resources for the public good, then as it goes through the government processes and all down the line we're working for the good of the people. But then at the end of the line, where the rubber meets the road, where the work or service is actually happening, if you privatize the implementation of this thing, you have suddenly and at the last minute handed over the process to a corporation who works solely for the good of the corporation, not the people. While all along we were working toward the common good, in the end we serve the good of a private corporation.

Consequently, that privatization in essence robs America of its morality.

I want to wrap up but I have to say this first: conservatives have said for years that the private sector is leaner, more agile, more able, than cumbersome and sometimes corrupt government agencies and bureaucracies. Well, if that is so, then let us LEARN from those companies, and do better. We have oversight of the agencies. If a corporation happens to be corrupt or inept, we can't do anything about it. We can't say, fire that boss and let's do better. But if it's our own government, if it's us, we can correct problems with both corruption and lumbering bureaucracy. And again, we retain the moral high ground.

Update: Here is a list of the Senior officials of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority. These are the senior, in-charge folks, so their resumes don't look as anemic as what is described in No End In Sight. However, you do see their NeoCon is showing.


Chew over that, next up, Hillary Clinton.