An Unfair Criticism from VDH

"What is the alternative to Trump?" he asks. He begins with a very fair criticism -- of Trump, no less.

No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.

Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.

Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

I have occasionally noted in this space that I would like to hear a plan to save the Medicare We Have before we float plans for Medicare For All, but so far none have been forthcoming. I am forced to conclude that our two largest generations, who drive most of our politics, are satisfied with the arc toward failure. The Boomers who are still the frontrunners know there's enough for their generation; and the Millennials just beginning to assume office aren't interested in saving programs they can't imagine surviving long enough to serve them.

Anyway, VDH goes on to this:

To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced.... Instead of vague socialist bombast and promises, where is the actual detailed progressive version of the Contract with America, so voters can read it, digest it, and then decide whether it is superior or inferior to the status quo since 2017?

There's certainly been plenty of vague bombast, but there is actually a detailed set of plans on offer from Elizabeth Warren. They include the following:

* A wealth tax;

* New taxes on corporations, as well as mandates that would force them to put some of their workers on the boards;

* An 'economic patriotism' plan built around 'corporate citizenship' that is, if we are honest, fascist in Mussolini's specific sense of the term ("Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.");

* Essentially every kind of gun control anyone has thought of as an option;

* A plan to eliminate the Electoral College;

* A housing assistance plan that reads as if it were written to satisfy the criticisms raised by Ta-Nehisi Coates;

* Black reparations;

* Native American reparations;

* Gay reparations;

* Female reparations, these to be extracted from their future employers;

* College student reparations;

* Punishment for hospitals with high maternity death rates ("What could possibly go wrong? Well, the hospitals may have no control over the things that are causing the disparity. Yet hospitals that serve large numbers of black women will lose funding."); also, universal child care;

* A plan to boost immigration by decriminalizing currently-illegal entry;

* A plan to shut down mining and other wealth-extraction from public lands;

* ...and numerous other plans.

In fact, the only thing she seems to have no formal plan to do is reforming health care generally. I'm sure it's on her list of things to do, but it's not something she's explained exactly how she'd do.

She's got a pretty sweeping agenda, and I notice that she hasn't spelled it out at her campaign website in anything like the detail she has done elsewhere. It's at least as transformative as anything Obama imagined.

Military Citizenship

If there's one thing the military needs, it's more paperwork.

"The policy change explains that we will not consider children who live abroad with their parents to be residing in the United States even if their parents are U.S. government employees or U.S. service members stationed outside of the United States, and as a result, these children will no longer be considered to have acquired citizenship automatically," USCIS spokesperson Meredith Parker told Task & Purpose.

"For them to obtain a Certificate of Citizenship, their U.S. citizen parent must apply for citizenship on their behalf."

The process under INA 322 must be completed before the child's 18th birthday.

So are they considered 'natural born' citizens for the purpose of running for President? I suppose there's no actual legal standard for that, since there's 'no controlling legal authority.'

A Brexit Gamble

A surprising constitutional maneuver in the UK has people over there a little stirred up.

Prorogation, which suspends parliament from sitting in a period it might otherwise be expected to sit, is an accepted right of a sitting government. But it has never been applied in a manner such as this: as a means of denying parliamentary action opposed by the government. Johnson denies that this is his intent, but few believe him.

By sending members of parliament back to their constituencies in early September and then returning them on Oct. 14th, Johnson has significantly shortened the time they will have to pass legislative alternatives to his Brexit plan. With a final European Council meeting scheduled for Oct. 17th, unless an emergency follow up meeting is held, European leaders will have to accept Johnson's proposals to avoid a no-deal Brexit, or else accept a no-deal Brexit as is.

Good luck, says I.

'Fastest Woman On Four Wheels' Killed in Land Speed Record Attempt

I don't follow the sport and had never heard of her, but she was apparently something else. Her shakedown run went over 483 miles per hour.

The first absolute land speed record, in case you were curious, was a bit over 39 miles an hour. Things have changed since 1894.

Rest in peace, brave lady.

Gillette: You Know What's Awsome? Traditional Masculinity.

Ride the Rotating Earth

Freezing the position of the Milky Way yields interesting results.

Of Course, Of Course

Footage from the camera outside Epstein's cell is "unusable."

Trump "proposal" to nuke hurricanes is "racist."

Performatively pious Congressperson turns out to be a hypocrite who doesn't want to discuss 'personal life.'

Well, these things are just to be expected.

Nine Diabolic Questions

I found another of Tex's crew. It's not a bad piece, especially once the questions are answered.

Fake News Today

MS: "List: Lines from The Princess Bride that Double as Comments on Freshman Composition Papers."

BB: "Bernie Sanders Arrives In Hong Kong To Lecture Protesters On How Good They Have It Under Communism."

DB: "Guam Finally Capsizes."

TO: "School Administration Reminds Female Students Bulletproof Vests Must Cover Midriff."

Cf. this video:



As The Onion reminds us, there's some female agency involved in all this.

Would You Describe This "Problem" As Sort Of Like A "Burden"?

Headline: "Biden: Racism in US is institutional, ‘white man’s problem’"

Ordo Militaris

Via Douglas, a Catholic 'private military company' with Crusader themes. In principle, the idea of forming an order of knighthood to combat the extensive persecution of Christians worldwide right now seems reasonable to me; and incorporating as a private entity seems rational given that the Church is currently disinclined (especially the Pope!) to anything remotely resembling a real fighting order. Whether or not this particular organization has anything like the capacity to accomplish those goals is not known to me.

They do have a holy rule, which makes them similar to numerous orders of knighthood established during the Crusader period and the period of the Reconquista. Two points that refer to secular realities strike me: that those who held military rank should serve in the Order with the same rank they held in the secular military service; and that those who are wealthy enough to provide their own expenses shall enjoy greater honor than those who depend on the Order to pay their way and/or their salary. Those are the sorts of practicalities that historically bedeviled religious orders, a kind of recognition that the nobility and the wealthy aren't quite prepared to surrender all of their privileges in order to follow God. But the verse says 'if you want to be perfect,' which is more than most of us even want.

Related to our recent discussion, it looks as if they have a Twitter account that was mysteriously temporarily deleted during a Congressional hearing relevant to them.

I'll open the floor to discussion, both of the idea in general and the particular example.

Viking Themed Crosswalk Lights

Via our old friend DL Sly, a whimsical story.

Social Media Building Chinese-Style "Social Credit" System

Well, of course they are. They helped build China's.

Crimes are punished outside the legal system, which means no presumption of innocence, no legal representation, no judge, no jury, and often no appeal. In other words, it’s an alternative legal system where the accused have fewer rights.

Social credit systems are an end-run around the pesky complications of the legal system. Unlike China’s government policy, the social credit system emerging in the U.S. is enforced by private companies. If the public objects to how these laws are enforced, it can’t elect new rule-makers.

An increasing number of societal “privileges” related to transportation, accommodations, communications, and the rates we pay for services (like insurance) are either controlled by technology companies or affected by how we use technology services. And Silicon Valley’s rules for being allowed to use their services are getting stricter.

If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.

In other words, in the future, law enforcement may be determined less by the Constitution and legal code, and more by end-user license agreements.

One way of controlling this is to have the government insist that Americans' rights be in no way limited by corporations, and to establish protections that would void any "license agreement" that abridged such rights. That, however, depends on the government being a limit on corporations rather than aligning with them. The alignment of corporate and government power is quite likely, given the resources corporations have, and the benefit to overweening politicians of being able to have a compliant corporation enforce limits on the citizenry that the Constitution would not allow.

Victims of Journalism

Journalists, of course.

“...using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power,” wrote reporters Jeremy Peters and Kenneth Vogel.

Appalachian Orpheus

Anna and Elizabeth are the two women in the "Old Churchyard" video.  Besides singing, they make these hand-cranked cartoons and puppet shows.  Their art is a river of life.

The Orpheus legend is very old.  His music is so beautiful that the rocks and trees dance around him, and he can raise the dead, but he arouses the jealousy of the gods.  Like most stories about the war between life and death, it comes in versions with both sad and happy endings.  One of the modern versions, "Black Orpheus," has both:

The 1949 Mann Gulch disaster

A Song of a Man Who Died Well

His name was Blaze Foley. He had a strange life; much of it he was homeless. Like many who could not maintain a home, he was unable to trust many, and unable to do the basic things that would have enabled his stability. He was important to the Outlaw music scene in Austin, Texas, but he never attained much success in his life.

All the same he died well. Few do, and perhaps there is nothing in life more worthy than a good death.

Why weep for them who will weep no more

Storm

This weekend my county is engaged in a number of two-year anniversary events marking the still-incomplete recovery from Hurricane Harvey.  I took a screenshot of this radar picture showing the landfall.  It's usually hard to tell what the underlying geography is, so I photoshopped a bit, adding green outlines around the inhabited peninsulas (the southern one being Rockport/Fulton proper, and the northern one being ours, Lamar), and black outlines around the uninhabited peninsulas (including the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, home of whooping cranes in the winter) and the barrier islands.  The "X" is about where our house is.  This picture still gives me goosebumps, remembering the sense of a huge wave about to break over us.  Metaphorically, I mean; we weren't overwashed, but the radar pictures we got before we lost our signal looked like a 40,000-foot atmospheric breaker about to crash.

On Dual, and Multiple, Loyalties

I realize that accusations of 'dual loyalty' have a fraught history for the Jewish community especially, and thus that the remarks earlier this week around 'disloyalty' were upsetting to many. Acknowledging that, however, I want to frame a principle in political philosophy in universal terms: not for Jews, or Jewish-Americans, but for all of us everywhere.

The principle is as follows: It is the mark of a healthy political system that it accepts that its members have many other claims on their loyalty, and can negotiate such claims insofar as they are natural or otherwise legitimate. It is the totalitarian system that demands that children turn in their parents to the state for disloyal thoughts, not the healthy system. It is the totalitarian system that demands that religious orders direly violate their conscience, as informed by centuries of theological arguments and developed doctrine, in order to conform to some new fashion in law.

A natural loyalty to one's parents, as well as to those who have taken special interest in one and helped one along, is right and proper. A healthy state neither needs nor ought to command disloyalty to such things in preference to itself. Loyalty to friends, to community organizations, to principles, these things are not undesirable. It is Mussolini who said that the ideal should be 'everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' The system he was describing literally was fascism; other systems that aim at the same ideal, to include the recently-mentioned People's Republic of China, are actively evil rather than healthy modes of human politics.

To return to the specific case, it is also true that loyalty is a two-way street. I think it is only natural to feel a kind of loyalty -- a degree of loyalty -- to a state that declares itself to exist for the specific purpose of providing you and your kin a safe haven if all else fails; to welcome you whenever you come, and even to welcome you home if you choose; and that has shown a willingness to risk lives in the defense of those like yourself who have fallen into danger. It would be a strange sort of character that did not respond to such a display of loyalty in at least some reciprocal way. I do not suggest that anyone has so responded, and certainly do not name anyone as having such feelings, but I would certainly understand if someone from that particular community did feel that way.

To speak again to the universal, I would say that this is a fit principle for judging the validity of any human state. If it cannot accept natural and otherwise legitimate loyalties that may contravene its designs, the state is overweening. Such a state is suffering from a kind of hubris, which produces tragedy and sometimes a great fall. It is unworthy in spite of whatever other claims it has to glory, as the great Greek tragic heroes were found unworthy in this way in spite of being heroes.

Negotiation may sometimes be necessary in the hardest cases: it is one thing to say that a parent who discovers a beloved child engaged in a great crime might ought to inform the authorities; it is another to say that the parent should not, in that process, hire lawyers to protect the child's interests against the state, or that the parent must disown the child and disavow all sense of natural loyalty to them. These concerns may arise in the hardest cases, I agree. Nevertheless, the principle holds true.