A Level Gaze

A Level Gaze

"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual."
--G.C. Lichtenberg

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

They Honestly Don't Care About Security

This morning, I heard a report on NPR (audio only) that made me think I might have been unfair to the Bush Administration in last night's post on foreign control of port security. The upshot of the report: the port managers are just "luggage handlers"; the Coast Guard and US Customs Service take care of all security. So, what would be the difference if a foreign company did the heavy lifting instead of an American one?

Fortunately Julia was around to set me straight:

Just to top off the sundae with a great big cherry, amongst the ports that Dubai would be taking over operations in are multiple C-TPAT ports. C-TPAT is an innovative program developed by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11 to allow various companies involved in shipping, including port managers, to certify their own safety and avoid a good deal of even the current low percentage of materials shipped currently searched by Customs agents.

In her earlier post on the subject, Julia shows what her research on the subject turned up. Strangely, the Customs and Border Patrol C-TPAT fact sheet she linked to seems to have disappeared. The good news is that she was able to grab some of the highlights before it did:

* C-TPAT is a joint government-business initiative to build cooperative relationships that strengthen overall supply chain and border security.

* C-TPAT recognizes that Customs can provide the highest level of security only through close cooperation with the ultimate owners of the supply chain, importers, carriers, brokers, warehouse operators and manufacturers.

* Through this initiative, Customs is asking businesses to ensure the integrity of their security practices and communicate their security guidelines to their business partners within the supply chain.

And what are the benefits of the C-TPAT program?

* A reduced number of inspections (reduced border times)

* An assigned account manager (if one is not already assigned)

* Access to the C-TPAT membership list

* Eligibility for account-based processes (bimonthly/monthly payments, e. g.)

* An emphasis on self-policing, not Customs verifications

(emphasis added)

In short: the Bush Administration made an effort to shift more responsibility for port security to the private companies that manage ports and away from the Customs Service. If the administration had its way, the government of Dubai (along with those of China and Denmark) would have a great deal of responsibility for the security of these ports. At a time when we should be tightening security, our president is telling private port management companies that they should police themselves.

I feel compelled to offer my apologies to Brad DeLong for failing to remember his immortal axiom:

The Bush administration is not only worse than you imagine even after taking account of the fact that it is worse than you imagine, it is worse than you can conceivably imagine[.]

posted by David at 2/22/2006 11:44:00 AM ::

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

If You Want a Job Done Right, Do It Yourself

I've listened enough to people saying that the UAE deal for the ports is bad because it involves Arabs. Please stop, it's not a good argument. There are Arabs with whom we have problems, but blanket statements like this are crap, even if 90% of the American public agrees with you. Farming out our port security would be a bad idea if we were hiring an army of Unitarian Terminator clones from Prince Edward Island. Security must come from the government. Failure to recognize this is what's wrong with this plan, and that's all that's wrong with it.

The port issue has nothing to do with the UAE. It has nothing to do with their being Arabs. It has nothing to do with their alleged ties to terrorists or terrorism. It has to do with the fact that They Are Not Us. I would feel the same way if we were entrusting the security of our ports to the English or the Japanese or the French, or any private American company, for that matter.

Why? Because the safety of our country is just not as important to any of them as it is (or should be) to the United States Government.

I don't care what Cheney and Rumsfeld tell you, security is the government's job, period. It's why governments exist in the first place. No nation that depended on mercenaries for protection has ever survived for long, and with good reason. However well the hired guns are paid, eventually they will decide to take over themselves, melt away from a threat they would rather not face, or just take the money and do a half-assed job. They simply cannot care enough. When it's the government's job, it's either protect the nation or be obliterated. That's the kind of motivation you want in your protectors, and nothing less is acceptable.

After the 9/11 attacks, the government hired and trained airport security personnel for exactly this reason. Private companies were simply not reliable enough.

I'm aware that the security of the ports in question is currently in the hands of a British company, and I'm not ok with that either. This might be the one place where I could see myself on the same page as the Bush Administration: we're in a post-9/11 world, in which our security, especially at the points at which we make the most contact with the rest of the world, has become deadly serious. The time for handing off our responsibilities to a company with the words "Steam Navigation" in its name has long since passed.

Entrusting the safety of our ports to a foreign entity might, I repeat, might, be acceptable if we were manifestly incapable of doing the job ourselves. But for a country that never tires of styling itself as the world's lone superpower, the very idea is a sick joke.

The fact that George W. Bush, after being president for over five years, is threatening to use his first veto on this issue is just icing on the cake. Everything he has touched has been a disaster. If he's stamping his feet and screeching about it, you know it's got to be a doozy.

posted by David at 2/21/2006 10:54:00 PM ::

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Dammit, Hackett!

(updated)

Get back in the race, you wuss!

You were going to take on the Republican and media establishments, and you cave to the craven, corporate-money Democratic leadership? What were they going to do, whine you to death?

After all that tough talk, you're going to go out complaining?

We need someone tough, and I'm afraid you're it. I thought you were about dragging politics out of the back rooms and putting real democracy front and center. You know, representing the people?

I believed in you, man. The nation needs you. You were willing to put your life on the line for your country. You can handle a Senate race.

p.s. Memo to Democratic Party leadership:

Dear Sirs;

Fuck You.

Sincerely,
David

UPDATE:

It seems the Law of Conservation of One Single, Solitary, Lonely Democrat Who Will Stand Up and Speak Truth and Sound Like He or She Means It has been invoked:

In what could be one of the most interesting campaigns for the U.S. House in 2006, The BRAD BLOG can now reveal that computer programmer turned electronic vote-rigging software whistleblower Clint Curtis is officially planning a run for the U.S. Congressional seat in Florida's 24th District.

The 24th Congressional District seat is currently occupied by Rep. Tom Feeney, the very man who Curtis has alleged once asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype program back when both men worked for the software firm Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) in Oviedo, Florida.

***

Curtis, formerly a "life-long Republican," became a self-described "Conservative Democrat" after his various disturbing dealings with Feeney and friends. He will be making his first public announcement about his intentions to form an exploratory campaign at a local Democratic party gathering at the Cocoa Civic Center in Brevard County this Wednesday evening.

***

Curtis who, unlike both Michaud and Feeney, has never participated in a political campaign before, will have his work cut out for him. But he's faced more daunting -- and terrifying -- fights in the past. His tireless years-long effort to hold accountable those who he sees as having committed wrong-doing against this country has not come at a small cost. But that struggle may serve him well in his "good vs. evil battle."

Curtis explains that he feels he has little choice at this point but to enter the battle, and in discussing it, he expresses a sentiment heard all too rarely from Democrats these days: "I am now convinced that fearing a loss is not a valid reason for never entering the fight."

Turkee can be sent here.

posted by David at 2/14/2006 08:27:00 AM ::

Monday, February 13, 2006

A Leaderless Cult?

(updated, please see below)

As you already know, this post by Glenn Greenwald is a must-read, a powerful, by-the-numbers proof of what many of us have suspected for a long time: there is nothing more to Bush Republicans/conservatives than politics.

Glenn makes his point in a very clever and insightful way, through examples of how conservatives identify their enemies. Conservatives are slippery, nearly impossible to pin down and define. By turns they can be compassionate and torturers, government-drowners and pork-barrelers. Glenn's approach hits them where they haven't yet thought to camouflage themselves, and succeeds brilliantly.

I want to leave the personal issues to the side and examine a few of the substantive issues raised (unintentionally) by Alexandra’s post. It used to be the case that in order to be considered a "liberal" or someone "of the Left," one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, "judicial activism," hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a "liberal," such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

I mean to take nothing away from the brilliance of this post, but I think one point could use a bit of clarification. It's not about George W. Bush. I mean, it is now--he's the flag they rally 'round today--but it wasn't always thus. The same movement was in evidence 13 years ago, and it was aimed at Bill Clinton. There was no single charismatic leader at the center of the movement then, and I don't believe there is one now.

Or, if there is, it isn't George W. Bush.

I know that's not the point Glenn was trying to make, and, in what I hope is fairness to him, I don't think he intended to address it. I just want to help to propagate the idea that it is not Bush we're against, but the movement of which he's currently the figurehead.

UPDATE:

Of course, Glenn already knew this:

I don't believe that one instance of independent thought in five years proves or disproves much of anything. The fact that people cling tenaciously to [conservative opposition to the Miers nomination] as proof that there are residual flickers of independent thought left among Bush followers says alot in itself. I think and have argued that Bush followers are excessively loyal to their leader, not that they've been lobotomized into mind-controlled zombies of the type one sees in a science-fiction film.

But I will say this: one will see criticism of Bush when he doesn't defend the movement with sufficient vigor or extremity. If they perceive that the White House isn't attacking liberals with sufficient fervor, or that they're backing down and compromising too readily, they will urge a more resolute posture on behalf of themovement. That's all Harriet Miers was. They were unconvinced that she would be as reliably loyal as Bush thought she would be, and they wanted someone more reliable and dependable to the cause.

(linked from a quote of his own comment on a previous post)

It's pretty clear that Bush is the very antithesis of a movement leader: as soon as he deviates from the line taken by other people, he loses his legitimacy. He cannot think for himself, or take any substantive initiative. The movement leads him.

It should also be noted that apostasies committed against core conservative principles don't seem to faze the movement's constituents. Bush has increased the size of the Federal government, increased the defecit, reduced the autonomy of the states, taken measures to limit personal privacy, and even caused income taxes to rise by failing to reform the AMT. The chairman of the RNC is widely alleged to be a gay man, and the Vice President's daughter is a lesbian. About the only conservative taboos he hasn't broken pertain to gun control and abortion, neither of which he has been willing to be caught denouncing on the record.

These are the principles that animate voters, the hallowed "base" toward which all of Bush's actions are supposedly directed. If in practice he actually does little to advance their interests, we must conclude that said interests have nothing to do with the movement. The movement works for its own ends, and the base is seen as a bunch of useful idiots whose votes can be bought with empty, intolerant rhetoric and junior membership cards.

posted by David at 2/13/2006 01:41:00 PM ::

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Be Still, My Heart

Via Atrios, comes this reminder that true red-blooded Americans still exist:

It’s August 2, Election Day, and the lanky, blond, 43-year-old Marine has taken up position outside the polling place in Loveland, a burg on the outskirts of Cincinnati, flashing his toothy smile for the early risers. Hackett is dressed smartly in a blue shirt and striped pastel tie. His khaki pants hang loosely from his wiry, 180-pound frame.

“That’s low politics, punk!” a heavy-set man sneers as he marches toward the poll.
Hackett wheels around. “Pardon me?”
“You know, that radio ad that says, ‘You don’t know Schmidt.’” He’s talking about one of Hackett’s attack ads against Republican Jean Schmidt. The man spews a stream of epithets, and Hackett lets out a crybaby whimper: “Waaaaaaa!”
“What’s that, punk?” the big man growls.

A TV crew is setting up nearby, but Hackett doesn’t seem to care. “What’s your fuckin’ problem?” the candidate snaps. “You got something to say to me? Bring it on!” Hackett, all 6 feet 2 inches of him, is nose to nose with the heckler. “Problem?” he taunts. The man turns around and storms away.

“These guys in the Republican Party adopted this tough-guy language,” Hackett tells me, still steamed, an hour later. “They’re bullies. They’re offended when somebody takes a swing back at them.”

Wow, a Democrat who 1) believes something, 2) stands up for it, and 3) doesn't take any crap. This guy makes Dean look like Lieberman.

“I said it, I meant it, I stand by it,” he said when I asked if he regretted any of his comments. “Bush is a chicken hawk, okay? Tough shit.” As for the SOB barb, Bush “talks the tough talk. He should appreciate that.”

Every time I hear him say something like this, forceful and with conviction, I send him another $20. I hope 2006 is an expensive year. You too can help show America that being a Democrat doesn't mean you don't stand for anything.

posted by David at 2/09/2006 01:13:00 PM ::

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