BAD Politics



Majikthise hasn't only pointed me to some weird sexual notions, but some weird political ones as well. Rather than recapitulate those she's already quoted, I want to go point-by-point here.

1. Family Wage Supports. First and foremost, we favor a program of automatic wage subsidies – modeled on Ronald Reagan’s earned-income tax-credit – to insure that every working American shares in the prosperity made possible by free trade in the new global economy. If our country is going to reap the rewards of doing business with low-wage goliaths like China and India, it essential to cut the American wage-earner in on the deal. Wages have been falling in America for 30 years now. How long is the ordinary wage-earner supposed to watch his share of the nation’s rapidly expanding economic pie grow smaller – not just relatively smaller, but absolutely smaller? Economic theory and commonsense agree on what needs to be done: To make free trade work for everybody, and not just a favored few, we’ve got to divvy up the gains of trade.

A somewhat useful idea, I suppose. Although speaking as one who has used the EIC over the years, it's not a whole hell of a lot of money. The real work would be to open retailers and other service industries to union representation, and making the right to organize a part of trade agreements with places like China, India, and Pakistan. Unions have been shut out of the globalization discussion. It's time to let them in. If we can open Wal Mart, the hospitality industry, and other jobs not vulnerable to outsourcing to union representation, we'll do a lot more for workers than this scheme will. That way, workers can negotiate their own share of the world trade goodies, and not leave themselves up to the mercy of Congress.

2. Immigration Moratorium. We support a time-out in immigration, to give this country a chance to assimilate the 30 million foreign-born citizens we already have. Mass immigration hurts working families’ wages, falling hardest on the least-skilled and most vulnerable among us, Hispanics and African-Americans above all. Most Americans know this already; it is a simple matter of supply and demand. What they don’t know is that mass immigration also hurts the poor countries from which most immigrants come, siphoning off their most ambitious and energetic members. Mexico is a good illustration. Living standards there were rising rapidly in the decades following World War II, just like in the United States. They kept on rising until the U.S. border unexpectedly opened up following passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 – after which millions of Mexicans started migrating north. It was only then that Mexico’s per capita GDP suddenly hit a plateau, and it hasn’t risen since.

Given these facts, is there any reason why an immigration moratorium is not already high on the agenda of the Democratic Party? We plan to put it there.

Immigration in Republican parlance, and in BADs as well it appears, is French for Brown People. I doubt Mexico's economy tanked simply because a portion of their population chose to emigrate. I expect the biggest problem was decades of repressive, corrupt PRI kleptocracy. Further, the most ambitious and energetic immigrants tend to be those who jump through all the hoops to get into US Colleges. Is it BAD's position that ambitious and energetic students should be denied higher education? Not that they couldn't go to Universities in the EU, allowing the EU to gain the benefit of their ambition, intelligence and talent. But, hey, based on the results of the last election, would we know what to do with talent if we had it?

I'm not an immigration expert, so I don't know exactly how to best discourage illegal immigration while simultaneously encouraging legal immigration. But I don't think turning the US into a gated community would be useful even if it could succeed in keeping illegals out. Saying to the world "I'm all right, Jack" won't do much to endear us to people around the world (especially given our notorious stinginess with foreign aid). If we want to retain our position in the world, we'll have to start sharing the toys, either by letting people in to play with them or by sending more of them out.

3. National ID. We support a fool-proof form of national identification, without which a person cannot cash a check, use a credit card, sign a lease, take a job, get a driver’s license, open a bank account, enroll in school, or otherwise function in our society. The American public understands perfectly well that a national ID card is the only practical and efficient way to control illegal immigration. It also happens to be the best way to keep terrorists and wanted criminals from operating freely inside our borders. Concerns about civil rights in this context seem misplaced and overblown. The ACLU needs to grow up.

Yeah, no one could forge one of those. Also, I'm suspicious of arguments that begin "The American public understands..." The American public also understands (or large percentages do anyway) that there were WMDs in Iraq, that angels follow us around, and that the Earth is 10,000 years old.

Fool-proof. Every James Bond villain's plan is fool-proof. They're 0-20 now.

4. Marriage Amendment. We favor an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as the union between “one man and one woman.” Such a definition of marriage would be useful, not only in dealing with the legally anomalous issue of gay marriage, but to head off the challenge of polygamy, sure to be posed by the several million Muslim immigrants in this countr, for whom it is a religiously-sanctioned cultural norm. Gay marriage ignores the very purpose of the age-old institution of marriage, which is to establish a culturally stable form of the family for the pro-creation and rearing of the next generation. As for polygamy, it is simply incompatible with social and sexual equality in a liberal republic. So in these two instances, at least, multi-culturalism be damned!

A non-starter with me. The Muslim bit is a red-herring. Very few Muslims would push all that hard for polygamy, because Islam requires the polygamous man to fully provide for the welfare of every wife he has--something few Muslims can manage. Even Mormons in Utah aren't big fans, largely because those who practice polygamy in Utah place tremendous burdens on the state welfare system and perpetuate a stigma they've been anxious to shed for some time.

As for the purpose of marriage in history, it had less to do with maintaining a culturally stable family than with providing for inheritance of property. Marriages in Ancient Athens or Sparta are hardly the sort that we would recognize or endorse. Marriages in many cultures have had less to do with love than profit, with dowries and family social ambitions determining matches. In Ancient Athens, women were little better than slaves. In Ancient Rome, women could be property owners and get divorces. Marriage as it is practiced in the US today is not, and has not been for some time, a traditional affair. It is the product of a conversation about rights, motives, and privileges that has been going on for thousands of years in hundreds of cultures. The notion of gay marriage is simply another voice in that conversation, one that has been silent for a long time, and one that I'd like to hear--reactionary parochialism be damned!

Time out here for a second. I hate the Patriots. I hate the miserable fucking Patriots those smug scumsucking bastards I want them all dead! Time in.

5. End to Racial Preferences. We support a Constitutional ban on all forms of racial discrimination by government, and by all private institutions that receive government support. Officially sanctioned racial preferences – even when euphemistically described as “affirmative action” – destroy the unity of the nation, and are incompatible with the principle of equality before the law. Henceforth let there be no legal minorities in America, only Americans. We believe this is the surest way to speed the process of assimilation and reduce ethnic strife in the decades ahead. E Pluribus Unum!

I've always thought Chris Rock gave a good defense of affirmative action when he compared it to the baseball rule that says the tie goes to the runner. In baseball, the reasoning is that because the offensive player is alone against nine guys who are trying to get him out, in the event that the ball and the runner arrive a the plate simultaneously, the runner is considered safe. Affirmative action works the same way. We all operate on the basis of a certain racial preference. The dominant one in this country is white and male. It still controls most of the access points and has most of the inherent advantages. Now if white people were naturally inclined toward perfect fairness in hiring and promotion, we wouldn't need laws like affirmative action. But the evidence suggests that we aren't there yet, and may not be there for some time. White men tend to hire white men, all factors being equal. Conscious racism has little to do with it. It's a cultural tendency. Thus, as in baseball, the tie needs to go to the runner--the black person, the hispanic person, the woman--if we're to keep the game fair.

6. Community Standards. We support a re-interpretation of the First Amendment to exclude the protection of sexually graphic images and obscene language. The purpose of freedom of speech and of the press is to allow open debate of controversial ideas, such as we are engaging in right here. It was never intended to abolish small-town standards of decency and public decorum, let alone enable profit-making entities to pump hardcore pornography into every home and library in America. Let the local majorities decide! A place for everything, but everything in its place!

Considering that the nation's rural and culturally conservative areas are among the largest consumers of porn, this seems an odd way to try to win them over. That aside, I don't want the majority of citizens anywhere to have the right to tell me what I can read, watch, listen to, or perform onstage, much less some middle-aged white Pecksniff who gets off accusing others of immorality while he claims the right to fuck his wife whether she likes it or not.

7. The Pledge of Allegiance. We support the language of the pledge, “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” The phrase “under God” should be understood quite simply as a historical reference to the religious traditions under which this nation was founded, according to which there is a moral law, existing prior to, and independent of, the state, which is the true foundation of our rights and liberties. We also favor taking the word “indivisible” out of the pledge, as being redundant, infelicitous, and well-understood.

Arguments over this one quickly become shrill and boring. God shouldn't be there, but I'm not willing to make a fuss over it (friendly, non-confrontational atheist that I tend to be--except when discussing how much I HATE THE PATRIOTS). I have no real problem with the word "indivisible" either, because if things get bad I qualify to emigrate to Canada.

8. Bible in the Schools. We favor not just allowing but requiring the Bible to be studied in our public schools as an integral part of the history curriculum. We justify this on the grounds that the Bible is itself a history book, and a primary document of Western culture and civilization; it is from the pages of the Bible that our secular ideals of freedom, justice, and equality are historically derived. This book is the source of the Western idea of human progress, and of the faith that enabled our ancestors – at terrible sacrifice – to build a civilization like none ever seen before. These are things all children need to learn in school. The Supreme Court has already ruled that such an approach would be constitutional, and we need to take them up on it.

A seminal work of literature the Bible may be, but you rely on it as a history text at your peril. Amile Kuhrt puts it well: "Like many accounts of the past, it [the Bible] was not intended to provide a critical historical study; rather it contained stories detailing the interaction of a people, Israel, with their god, Yahweh, who had chosen them to work out his divine plan. It is a complex, ideologically driven compilaiton, within which stories were refashioned to drive home particular lessons of the past."

Archaeological evidence backing up the Bible is sketchy at best and absent at worst. I will grant that it is slightly better on history than it is on biology, but who's it going to brag to about that? As for BADs claim that the Bible allowed us to build a civilization "like none ever seen" that's true only to a point. Human beings had been building fabulous civilizations without the Bible's input for centuries, and continued doing so after the Bible became widely disseminated. The Chinese, Japanese, Nubians, Egyptians, Mayas, Incas, Aztecs, Olmecs, Anasazis, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians built spectacular civilizations and wonders without the Bible's influence. And as for Christianity as a force for cultural preservation and progress, let the record show that for a thousand years it was the Muslims who preserved "Western" culture, particularly in mathematics and science, while Christians busied themselves with the angels and pinheads problem. And a good deal of contemporary scientific work (in biology particularly) has advanced in spite of religion, not because of it. Would humanity have developed, in the last 2,000 years, technologies for improved farming, communications, and transport without the Bible? Almost certainly. The Greeks articulated the beginnings of the scientific method, and they spread their work widely enough that it would have been hard to destroy. Many in the Near East, China, and the Americas were doing sophisticated work in rocketry, metallurgy, and astronomy during this period without bothering much about Jesus. Would humanity have developed democracy without the Bible? Yes. Our democracy is not founded on anything said in the Bible but on the checks and balances arrangements seen in the Roman Republic. Our civilization is what it is for many reasons. The Bible is one, but it is not the only one. If it hadn't existed, different people would be claiming that a different holy book is the foundation of a wholly different civilization the likes of which no one has ever seen.

The Bible is useful to study as a work of literature, and a familiarity with its stories and aphorisms will help students understand everything from the Crusades, to King James's arguments for Absolutism, to the Pilgrims, to arguments for and against slavery, to the Scopes Trial. It is woven into American and World History in this way--as a point of reference for statesmen, moralists, and philosphers. It should not, however, be used as a substitute for a critical historical text, and should ideally be discussed with reference to the literature of neighboring cultures--such as Sumeria, Babylon, and Greece, from which many of its stories and motifs sprang.

9. Equitable Tax Enforcement. We support – indeed, demand – giving the IRS the tools it needs to fully enforce our tax laws on all our citizens, rich and poor alike. Currently it lacks the resources to audit the returns of the wealthiest group in America: people whose incomes derive from their ownership of businesses, stocks, bonds, and real estate. As a result it fails to collect an estimated $300 billion a year in taxes (roughly a thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child) most of it owed by a just a few thousand of the wealthiest families in America (with fortunes in excess of $50 million) who hide their incomes in secret off-shore bank accounts, using shell corporations and other devious devices. To make up for this shortfall, virtually every other taxpayer in America – including doctors, lawyers, and highly-salaried corporate managers of every description – pays a third more in taxes than he otherwise would. For details on this outrage see Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston’s new book, Perfectly Legal.

Didn't Dukakis flog this in 1988? (His number was $100 billion.) I'm all for doing that in principle, but lets acknowledge that we'll never get all of that $300 billion. The IRS would have to hire armies of accountants and lawyers to track down secret money through these shell companies, Swiss and Bahamian accounts, and assorted dodges, while the wealthiest families in America use their own lawyers and accountants to throw every possible downfield block for them. It may be a very expensive proposition to get a hold of this money, which may explain why the IRS prefers to attack poor people, like me, who can't defend themselves. I may not have much, but compared to Bill Gates, I'm a soft target. All my money's in one place. It's easy to put a lien on it. The only thing saving my neck is that my Mom happens to be a tax lawyer. So, nice idea, but I have doubts about how feasible it really is.

10. Financial Sunshine Laws. To end this abuse of the taxpaying public, we favor cooperating with our allies to close down all secret bank accounts and off-shore tax havens around the world. We propose outlawing shell corporations and other phony legal devices, and holding those law firms and accounting partnerships that create them fully responsible, which we can do by taking away the grants of limited liability that Congress gave them a few years back. (While we’re at it we might also take away Congress’s authority to sneak special tax breaks into law for its friends in the middle of the night.) And lastly, we support making every citizen’s tax returns a matter of public record, as was originally the case; this is justified on the principle that the citizen’s right to financial privacy ends where the public welfare begins. These reforms, taken together, would not only put an end to tax cheating on a grand scale, but would shut down the financial networks that support terrorism and the international drug cartels.

But they'd just find new ones. Ironclad laws are impossible to write. People with sufficient resources will find a way around them. That's what they pay their lawyers for, and their lawyers are exceedingly efficient. Also, how the hell are we going to shut down secret accounts in other countries? Did George Bush or Tom Delay get some new powers I'm not aware of? We can't get the Chinese to stop people from illegally copying Minority Report for fuck's sake!

Unless you plan to stop all money from moving, people are going to find ways to move it so that the government can't get at it or find it. That's what we call in the business, life.

11. Progressive Consumption Tax. To make these reforms palatable to the rich, we favor replacing the income tax with a progressive consumption tax, as was proposed by Senators Nunn and Domenici in their USA Tax of 1995. Their USA Tax was like our graduated income tax, but with savings tax exempt; it is what we would have now if individuals were allowed to make unlimited contributions to their IRA accounts, and there were no penalties for early withdrawals. Henceforward all personal bank and brokerage accounts would be treated like IRA accounts. People would be penalized, not for what they put into the common pot, but for what they take out, and persons who consume extravagantly would be taxed at a higher rate than those who are more moderate in their habits of expenditure. To the wealthiest families in America we say, agree to this tax on principle, and we might scrap the inheritance tax and the corporate income tax altogether as no longer needful. Let’s commit the republic to class comity, not class war.

Dumb idea that helps the rich more than it hurts them. A person making $20,000 per year has to spend nearly all of it if he wants to stay alive. A person making $200,000 will spend all of that money some years, but only some of that money most years (and there's no guarantee that the wealthier person will drop his disposable income in the US). The rest goes into savings or offshore accounts or the stock market or wherever. This means that, with a consumption tax scheme, a percentage of the wealthier person's income goes untaxed, while all of the poorer person's money is subject to taxation. And of course you realize that should the government ever come up short, they'll hit the guy making $20,000 first.

12. New Homestead Act. Finally, for those who desire it, we support a six hour day and a four day week, plus federal assistance in moving into new developments in exurbia. There, a new three-generation form of the family might take shape – not under one roof necessarily, but maybe under two, at opposite ends of the garden. Parents would have time to be with their children, to cook and eat at home, do home improvement projects, even raise a few vegetables. Grandparents would be available to help look after the infants and toddlers; and later on, when they’re no longer able to care for themselves, their children and grandchildren could help look after them. No more daycare! No more nursing homes! And no longer the ridiculous need to retire when decades of life still remain to be lived!

Those are big claims, and they require people to lead circumscribed lives. Nobody ever moves once they get to this homestead? If they do, do that have to drag three generations with them? What kind of work would these people be doing? What about the people who do need to retire because the work they've been doing is physically taxing. What about the families whose elderly members require nursing care--Alzheimers patients, cancer patients, and the like? Are the families forced to bear the full burden or can they get some help? Suppose you're not interested in gardening or home improvement? Where's your twenty-four hour a week job then? Do I have to work forty hours, or fifty, to support people doing this? Why? What do I get out of it? This sounds like a utopian fantasy. Yes, I think people should work fewer hours and get more time off, and we already have a model for that. Germany. And what they've got sounds a damn sight better than this.

That's all. Peace out.

Posted: Sun - January 23, 2005 at 06:27 PM        

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