“News” Commentator Glenn Beck and Extremism, and the Left’s Response

Fox Channel and leading Radio news commentator Glenn Beck says “Progressivism,” which he underlines twice, emphasizes with body and unpleasant gestures, jumps up and down on stage, is a “disease,” a “cancer,” that must be “cut out,” and “eradicated.”

Here is someone else:

Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them….

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.

That someone else was homocidal killer James Adkisson, who in 2008 tried to murder an entire congregation of people in a house of worship because he believed them to be “liberal;” and, very likely, a “disease,” that “needed to be cut out,”and “eradicated.” That he called a “cancer,” much like Beck has on numerous occasions.

It does not seem Beck is saying that people he disagrees with need be murdered (though some people disagree).  He is saying that a prevalent school of political thought — loosely and differently defined by many people, just as is “conservatism” — is not only not to be tolerated; it is the disease in America, and needs to be extinguished.

This is a blind left handed broken arm stone’s throw from advocating the murder of people who have differing political beliefs — that is, the differing beliefs that form the backbone of democracy.

As for advocating outright murder, if people really think that that is what Beck is saying, it is hard to understand how they are not angrier.

Not homicidally angry, but effective, powerful, and repeated action taking angry.

But apart from some ranting and raving here and there (which is also quite different from making a powerful, effective, and saturating presentation),  there is little sign of this, as Beck and his brand of wild misinformation and incendiary inflammation continue to dominate the airwaves.

Even if they don’t believe Beck was subtly justifying violence, the fact that Beck’s repeated and often time maniacal yet overwhelmingly popular manipulations go so repeatedly unchecked and unilluminated by the same “left” that can’t stand him, and considers him a “nut,” is a testament to just how ineffective the left is at defining the issues, questions, personalities and discussion in America today — or their recognition of the need to do so.

If somebody who was one of the two most popular radio commentators in America, and who had a nightly news program on the most watched “proclaimed” cable News Channel in America, stomped up and down on stage while repeatedly underling his/her devil word,”conservatism,” calling it a “cancer” that needed to be “cut out,” and “eradicated” (not to mention many far other more egregious things Beck has said and done), the right would be up in arms.  Figuratively, and probably, literally, too. They’d be taking the reigns of the debate and making the entire case for the nation, in unison, repeatedly, and beating the kowtowed media over the head with it until it knew not what else to parrot besides their talking points, rather than the story itself, under the false balance guise of “one side of” the news.

The left doesn’t do this.  Why? Because they “know” Beck is a nut case.  And they “know” everybody else knows this too. So no real effective and saturated country wide case need be made.

As for those people that have made Beck close to the most influential commentator in America today?  They don’t count. They’re just an illusion.  Just like Adkisson. Or some of the folks that the DHS, in a report initiated under the Bush Administration, were concerned enough about to write an anti terrorism report on.

To some of the “Left” (and maybe even center — as the far right takeover of both the Republican Party, the “News” Channel that started it all, and talk radio in America have often demonized the center as “far left liberals” as well), and despite the fact that Beck is incessantly peddling rampant misinformation along with quasi violence inciting rhetoric, a democracy is not based upon the quality of its information, because “everybody knows better” — everybody already has all the information they need!

But not only does “everybody” not know that Beck is profoundly wrong most of the time, but sometimes, they take his rantings as literally, if not more so, than he does himself.

This is a disturbing fact to someone who similar to Beck believes a potentially oppressive over controlling government is a real cancer. But not as big a concern as Beck, in his maniacal misrepresentations and rampant misinformation, and what, unchecked as it presently is, that does to our democracy — when correct information is the lifeblood of a democracy; and if anything, and ironically, misinformation, not this or that idea, would be its cancer, or illness.

If one believes in democracy, then it is not ideas which should concern that person; it is misinformation which undermines the foundation of necessary, reasonable discussion of those ideas and the underlying facts. If one does not believe in democracy, well, then, it is “ideas” — specifically ideas of “those who have other ideas you may not like or understand” (or that you think you don’t like, perhaps because you have been completely misled on them, by Beck, and many other people) who you think don’t think like you”), which are the problem; and which, according to Beck, need to be eradicated, like  ”disease,” like a “cancer.” Just like they would be in a totalitarian society,while Beck makes these pronouncements to cheering crowds who are ostensibly motivated onward by freedom.

In an insipid promotional and reality disconnected online Washington Post “forum” that promoted both Beck and a recent book of his, Beck stated:

The only [sic] that would destroy America is us, from the inside…..I think we’re in the same situation here [Similar to Iran with little choice between the two candidates.] Bill Maher said this weekend that Barack Obama was George Bush Lite. What are we fighting over? What is the difference between these two parties?

This is the same Obama that Beck has likened to a ghoul, bloodsucker, and vampire, who could only be stopped by driving a “stake through its heart,” and one of the two parties’ whose “base” political philosophy, he has repeatedly stated, was the disease in America, that needed to be eradicated and cut out like a cancer.

Beck also asserted:

There are reasons to speak out, but tearing ourselves apart over these scraps of freedom is odd. We’ve stopped melting together. Our strength was that we were a melting pot.

Actually, it is Beck who, along with other factors, is tearing this country apart. And the left, Democrats in general (and — this blog trying to be a failed exception — the make believe center, the moderate right, the “punditocracy” class), and the media, are allowing him to do it.

In that same Washington Post forum, and in response to the seemingly fake question: “Should liberals be afraid to say what they believe about the best way forward for the U.S.?” Beck stated:

No. During the Iraq War, for anyone who cares to know the truth, I was on the air chastising people that were saying that Hollywood should shut up or that if you have a different opinion you should shut up. I was of the opinion that there’s nothing wrong with vigorous debate, what George Washington called the “battlefield of opinion.

So long as that battlefield does not include what, depending on how broadly it is defined, ranges up to about half or a little over half of the country’s political philosophy:  in which case it is not just “wrong,” but a cancer, a “disease,” that needs to be eradicated and wiped out.

Debate is good. Just so long as it’s debate that Me, Glenn Beck, is okay with.

A guy named Adolf Hitler thought the exact same way.  The same Hitler who lead the Nazis that Beck repeatedly and more than a little ironically labels nearly everyone he disagrees with (or thinks he disagrees with.)  That is, when he is not calling for whatever it is they stand for, to be “eradicated.” Like the cancer that it is.

Beck, of course, is not the only one.  Among others, two other leading talk show hosts — one of whom also has a popular nightly program on the same “self proclaimed” news channel which runs Beck’s nightly program —  have manifestos to this disease, as a “mental illness,” the “enemy within,” and as part of the trifecta of evil along with “despotism and terrorism. (Books by these two, along with those of a third radio personality who also has a very popular show on the same station that Run’s Beck and the other commentators,were found in Adkisson’s House after his homocidal rampage.)

Beck is just the most extreme, the most manipulative, the most incendiary, the most misinformed, the most influential; and, what makes him the most dangerous of all and just like another man in history, the most mesmerizing and innocent appearing.

Unblemished Risk Assessment on Climate Change Reduction.

Cornell economics Professor Robert Frank offers up a solid op-ed in today’s New York Times on the economics of climate change. (Calling it a big step up from this recent climate monstrosity in the Times is an understatement):

Organizers of the recent climate conference in Copenhagen sought, unsuccessfully, to forge agreements to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. But even an increase that small would cause deadly harm. And far greater damage is likely if we do nothing.

The numbers — and there are many to choose from — paint a grim picture. According to recent estimates from the Integrated Global Systems Model at [M.I.T.], the median forecast is for a climb of 9 degrees Fahrenheit by century’s end, in the absence of effective countermeasures.

The gist of the piece is that based upon non political, objective, logic based risk assessment, and basic economics, there really isn’t a decent case against immediate climate change redress. Summarizing, Frank notes:

In short, the cost of preventing catastrophic climate change is astonishingly small, and it involves just a few simple changes in behavior.

The real problem with the estimates is that the outcome may be worse than expected. And that’s the strongest possible argument for taking action. In a rational world, that should be an easy choice, but in this case we appear to be headed in the wrong direction.

(A few quick examples of how the market could be motivated to effect much of this change on its own, while preserving personal choice and promoting growth at the same time,  are here.) Ironically, the piece could have painted a stronger picture for action and been more objective and accurate at the same time.  For example, it concludes:

Most people would pay a substantial share of their wealth — much more, certainly, than the modest cost of a carbon tax — to avoid having someone pull the trigger on a gun pointed at their head with one bullet and nine empty chambers. Yet that’s the kind of risk that some people think we should take.

First, and more controversially, this follows the common and likely erroneous presumption that addressing climate change sensibly “costs” money rather than simply serves to shift what constitutes GDP.   But more pointedly, Frank’s assessment is based upon a probability of 10 percent of a rise of 12 degrees or more.  Yet the same M.I.T study Frank relies upon for this, as noted earlier in the piece, projects the median rise to be 9 degrees. (In other words, half of the projections come in above 9 degrees, half lower, if no remediation action is taken.)  Thus, to continue the analogy, the other chambers are not “empty.”

Frank notes this himself earlier:

Essentially, the risk is that if current estimates turn out to be wildly pessimistic, the money spent to curb greenhouse gases wouldn’t have been needed to save the planet. And yet that money would still have prevented substantial damage. (The M.I.T. model estimates a zero probability of the temperature rising by less than 3.6 degrees by 2100.)

Thus, NONE of the chambers are empty; and half of them are not that far off from the 12 degree “bullet.” But what was left out of this assessment is that if current estimates turn out to be wildly pessimistic, there are still other significant reasons why the expenditures would not have been a waste.

First off, as noted above, they won”t serve as “true” expenditures in the long run — but will shift what we do spend our GDP dollars on. So if they “do nothing,” we probably would have preferred having more flat screen TVs (metaphorically speaking) and instead we will have more historically stable CO2 levels.  But since in the long run happiness is not correlated with absolute levels of wealth, but rather an ongoing increase in growth and job opportunities, even this is fairly trivial, again, in the long run. (Implementing cleaner, less destructive fuels prompts jobs and GDP growth the same as building a few extra flat screen TVs does.)

But they won’t do nothing, even apart from the climate change issue.  Much of the climate change challenge stems from fossil fuel use.(The rest stems from deforestation, changing agricultural practices and grazing ruminant livestock, and other sundry causes.) We have to get off of these anyway. They are finite. Extremely so in the case of oil. We might as well get off of them now.

And in addition, fossil fuels also cause considerable harm in addition to being largely responsible for an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to levels that on a sustained basis may well be unprecedented in the past fifteen million years:

They are responsible for a large proportion of our atmospheric pollution, CO2 (which is not a “true” pollutant), aside.  In the case of coal, they are also responsible for a majority of the toxicological poison mercury that is bio-accumulating in our food chain. Also in the case of coal, they are responsible for a significant amount of degradation to the natural landscape and watersheds where coal is mined. (Sometimes even causing the irreversible destruction of entire mountain tops).  And in the case of oil, they are responsible for unnecessary national security vulnerabilities created by relying upon, and sending hundreds of billions of dollars to, foreign oil selling regimes overseas that we often view as hostile to our interests.

Another interesting aspect of the piece is when Frank notes that we may be “headed in the wrong direction.” Quoting Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, Frank notes:

“Global warming is bad, but it doesn’t make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don’t feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning.”

But we’re also headed in the wrong direction for a few other reasons. Number one is an incessant parade of nonstop misinformation on the topic, along with poor media coverage of it.

Number two is that climate change is abstract. We can’t feel it, touch it, taste it, see it, or smell it. Sure, we see and feel the weather everyday, but climate change is a decades long process; the weather at any particular time is all but irrelevant, and of course, all over the board.

Number three is that, perhaps given a natural desire to believe such conclusions, people tend to confuse the lack of precision or absolute certainty on climate change with the certainty of the physics that underline the phenomenon; including the certainties that heat drives climate (ultimately through the oceans), heat trapping gases trap heat, and levels of heat trapping gases have ratcheted upward at geologically breakneck speed to extremely high levels — and are still climbing.

Number four may be the most infrequently mentioned, yet, after misinformation, perhaps the most important.  An increase in atmospheric trapped heat is ultimately going to warm or otherwise alter the planet, and produce some sort of radical change (likely warming) through the oceans.  It takes an extremely long time to heat up oceans. (And, as we would expect, oceans are slowly retaining more and more heat.) Decades, if not more.  For this reason, among others, there is a considerable lag in climate change between cause and effect.

That is, given natural variability, we won’t “know” the effects of climate change (as opposed to mere, bizarre, variability) for years. And even then we still won’t because there will be multiple decades of effect built up in the pipeline.

It’s abstract, it’s in the future, and there are considerable cause and effect, and potential variability lags on top of that.  Those things, however, do not make it any less real. We are, however, very counter productively, treating it as if they do.

If we purchase a stock at 100 dollars, and we knew it had an 80 percent probability of going to zero, and a 20 percent probability of going to 125, we would sell it in an instant. And at a steep discount from 100 dollars, also. We would never go “but we don’t know with certainty that it is going to go to zero” as a rationale for doing nothing.

But that is precisely what we are doing, with respect to climate change.  The precise number of the effect is all but irrelevant when it comes to future harm.  What matters is the range of likely outcomes, their expected probabilities, and likely, attendant harm for each.  Somehow — perhaps through natural confusion over the science, and the four reasons listed above along with the one posited by Gilbert and Frank — we are completely confusing this.

The suspicion here is that misinformation driven by ideology is in fact playing the leading role, with the other factors merely facilitating the process and allowing for easy and in many cases, perhaps even earnest, confusion and misinformation promulgation on the issue.

He “Could Have Had Other Issues” — Such as Extreme, Psychopathic Beckism

New Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown:

You don’t know anything about the individual. He could have had other issues. Certainly, no one likes paying taxes, obviously.

He could have had other issues.

Brown, as part of his same answer:

They want us to help solve the problems that are affecting Americans in a very real way.

The issue here is a homicidal act of extreme domestic terrorism, and new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown appears to be  trying to turn it into a platform for the legitimization/explanation of anger at the government.  To wit; they are angry at the government for not “solving problems,” while, Brown neglects to mention, simultaneously in many instances being angry at the government for trying to solve problems rather than stay out of the way.

Consider the following, unfortunately, very real situation — the very same one to which the new Massachusetts Senator was referring:

Man is angry at IRS.  Man burns down his house (where his wife and daughter live), on purpose. Man flies his airplane into an IRS building killing and wounding innocent people – just like al-Qaeda did in New York and Washington D.C., in 200 (but  thank God, with far fewer casualties).

Scott Brown’s response?  ”People are angry.”  ”They want us to help solve problems.”   “He could have had other issues.”

The Dallas Morning News Reports:

Stack apparently set fire to his house in Austin and posted a long anti-government screed on the Web. It had Thursday’s date and was signed “Joe Stack (1956-2010).”

In it, the author cited run-ins he had with the IRS and ranted about the tax agency, government bailouts and corporate America’s “thugs and plunderers.”

“I have had all I can stand,” he wrote, adding: “I choose not to keep looking over my shoulder at ‘big brother’ while he strips my carcass.”

While he “strips my carcass.” Is there any chance this person did not listen to a lot of Glenn Beck?

Read about what Beck is really telling people, while arrogant and privileged pundits, who seem to have little understanding of what is going on with Middle America, while ironically scolding other arrogant elitists, scoff at his influence or importance. Here is Beck, the same person whom the Washington Post promoted:

Beck: “I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.”[xii]

Beck, further back, “I want to kill [Rep.] Charlie Rangel with a shovel,” several times.

…[Beck] – playing out a mock poisoning of Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and stating he was thinking about doing just that…”“every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames”…..he even poured pretend gasoline (water) out of a gas can onto a guest, and held up a lit match to simulate what he suggested President Obama was doing to the American people…

…[Obama's] “letting the terrorists onto the streets!”

[Showing a picture of Obama and other Democrats made to look somewhat ghoulish] “…These bloodsucker vampires are not gonna just be satisfied with sucking the blood out of (business),  their thirst for power and control is unquenchable. They will not stop… Either the economy becomes like the walking dead, or ya drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers“…

“Al Gore’s not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. … And you must silence all dissenting voices. That’s what Hitler did.”…

““Gun sales are going through the roof,” because “…a lot of Americans aren’t paying attention to this…the poem…first they came for the Jews and I didn’t stand up because I wasn’t a Jew? ….in the end, I think this is the problem. First, they came for the banks. I wasn’t a banker….I didn’t stand up and say anything. Then they came for the AIG executives….Then they came for the car companies — and I didn’t say anything………Until it gets down to you — most people don’t see they are coming for you at some point.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Beck:  Riling up hatred, and blatantly misinforming people left and right.

The way to fight encroaching  Big Brother is to work for limits on corporate power, work for better and more accurate information, work against misinformation, work for transparency and accountability in government, work for increased, rather than continually decreasing privacy rights, and work to increase checks upon government and majority power. Many of those who are complaining about government the most, have been the more active supporters of the opposite of many of these same things — particularly when it comes to unchecked, government power, and civil liberties.

But this American, non Islamic Terrorist, suicide airplane bomber named Andrew Stack thought Big Brother “stripped” his carcass. This person who had a tax issue (who apparently wanted to use his home as a church deduction) thinks, or thought, everything he did, he did himself?  He never drove on roads built by others? Attended schools built by others?  Enjoyed the freedom of a country protected by a military, composed of others? He never sold, bought, or used a product that depended upon the creation of wealth from millions before him, and millions other during his own time here?  He lived in a vacuum?   Even the plane he flew, he  built from scratch, from materials he created out of tree branches in his back yard, after figuring out how to build an airplane, and also how to fly, himself, just like the Wright Brothers did, right?

No. Perhaps he purchased the airplane.  And he was able to make the money to buy it because of his own efforts, and the efforts of everyone else, now, and before him.  Not in a vacuum.  And he was able to buy it because of the efforts of others;  to be able to build it, to be able to create and gather the materials and technology to build it.  And for the knowledge of others to build it. Just like almost everything he probably ever did outside of the the one thing that the same far right seems to rail against — relate to nature and the outdoors, smell fresh, unpolluted air, dive into unpolluted waters, gaze across unpolluted vistas, eat unpolluted food.  Pretty much everything else, aside from the other things that matter most besides justice — friendship, family, love — evolved with and from the multiple efforts of others, creating, working, laboring striving, both before him and contemporaneously.

This is not in the least any type  of  screed against individualism or individual liberty.  This is by far one of the more pro individualism, and pro strong individual liberty websites out there.  But it is a brief screed against anarchy.  The idea that we all do things in a vacuum, is a sad fiction. Yet we want Washington to “butt out” when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals from the potential infringements by others (or, sometimes, perhaps for better reasons, but those seem to be more classically Liberal causes today), but help “solve our problems” at the same time.

We all benefit, and, in some ways, occasionally, are harmed, by the efforts and productivity of those who came before us, and who exist with us now.  It can’t be any other way.  If mankind truly were Angels, it might be that way.  But we would have no reason for government. No form, no order, we would all be perfect beings.  (And there would be less purpose in existence — everything would already be perfect, the unattainable, that toward which we strive, measuring our success by some barometer of what we think it might be, and how far off from it we are.)  But it doesn’t work that way. We’re human, not Angels painted on a canvas come to life.

This is also a brief screed against blatant misinformation, propaganda, scapegoating, and hatred.  Because that is blinding us to the threat of actual encroaching government power, while scapegoating only those we disagree politically, or “government” itself — whenever it is a government, it seems, that we did not vote for — for all fears, real and imagined.

As the third comment quoted here, notes:

…It’s interesting that this movement was quiescent during the eight years of the Bush administration, when the federal government clearly violated people’s civil rights…

Think back to 1995, when the deadliest act of terrorism prior to the September 11 attacks was perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was a member of a militia, he was partial to libertarianism, he blamed the federal government for just about everything wrong with society…

Or think back even farther. In the 1920’s there was a certain political party that started out in Bavaria. A grass-roots party when it started, it attracted people who hated the federal government, and who were partial to conspiracy theories especially ones about Jews. It had no clear leadership until an enterprising fellow named Adolf Hitler came along. The rest, shall we say, is history.

Think this is a complete fiction? Here’s a random comment from the Seattle Post Intelligencer link above going over Brown’s statements:

Posted by unregistered user at 2/18/2010 5:14 p.m.

Deceptive choices – you have been getting lessons from capital hill.

My selection: He isn’t rationalizing it, he’s trying to understand it.

We all should. Just because you can understand or empathize with someone doesn’t mean you justify their decision as rational. BIG DIFFERENCE.

Brown was trying to undersand his actions.  People are “frustrated with Washington” (what else is new), so he flew an airplane, in a suicide bomb attack, much like Al-Qaeda did, into a building filled with innocent people. Now Brown understands it.  People are frustrated with Washington. But overseas, people of course are not frustrated with America.  Then there’s the far more troubling “emphasize” suggestion:

Empathize with someone? He empathizes with someone who purposefully flew an airplane into a building, murdering and maiming innocent people? What do we think about people overseas that emphasize with al-Qaeda?

America better wake up, or Glenn Beck will be right about one thing, that ironically, our collective (and, most notably, media) acceptance of his ignorance and hate filled rhetoric is contributing to; America will unravel from the inside.  Exactly what al-Qaeda — which, also ironically, is an overseas Middle Eastern version of conservatism taken to extremes — wants.

(Edited 7-29-10)

NY Times Tom Friedman: More Bills is the Stimulus and Image Rehabilitation America Needs!

Friedman, January 30:

It is a shame because here we are as a country scrounging around for a few billion more dollars of stimulus to help our unemployed and small businesses — when the biggest stimulus of all is hiding in plain sight. And that is ending our political paralysis and the pall of uncertainty it is casting over everything from the cost of my health care to the cost of my energy to the way our biggest banks can do business.

Are we really being held back because we don’t know what our health care is going to cost?  Because we don’t know the cost of energy? Who is being held back by this.  What legislation would change this.

Energy prices have fluctuated for decades. Setting a bill that helps motivate us toward better alternatives would certainly be good for the environment, good for national security, and probably, in the long run (despite constant presumption to the contrary) good for the economy. But it does not necessarily mean we will suddenly know any better what “energy” costs. This is the nature of the market.

Friedman is sometimes perceptive (and at other times, not so much). But his quoted paragraph above seems like pure babble, that otherwise sounds and “appears” clever; something that there is far too much of masquerading as informed commentary these days.

As for the paralysis that Friedman speaks of, paralysis is not necessarily bad, if it keeps bad legislation from being passed. But he blames both sides for this paralysis on the one hand, while calling the Republicans the party of “just say no” on the other.

He also says the two “sides” should meet in the “middle.”  Why should the two sides “meet in the middle.” What if the “middle”as defined in this fashion is not right? What if the Republicans are right on some things (though right now, it is hard to see what) and Democrats are right on some others (not much easier to see what).  Does “meet in the middle” mean we pass the best bills? Doesn’t articulate the best principles, and reasons why they apply, create the best bills?  And is it really a failure to “meet in the middle” that is prohibiting this?

Democrats have a solid majority of the House, 59 of the 100 seats in the Senate, and the support of the White House. If they put together a good bill, couldn’t they also sufficiently show why it is a good bill to the few Democrats or Republicans holding it up?  (And if Democrats are so worried about a filibuster, maybe they ought to stop letting themselves be bossed around constantly by the minority party. After all, it’s not like they could stop anything themselves when they were the minority party for most of this decade (with bad ramifications, too.))

If Democrats can not put together a good bill, then there is nothing to pass. If they can put together a good bill, and show why it is, and they are still blocked by a few recalcitrant Democrats and almost the entire Republican Party, then maybe the issue is not one of “two sides not being able” to “come together,” but others negatively paralyzing the system.  Others who then lose at the voting booth, if this is 1) the actual case, and 2) once again, effectively shown.

Of course, with Rahm Emanuel, who doesn’t seem to believe in showing anything, leading White House strategy,* it’s up to Democrats in Congress, or the DNC; or maybe once again we will have the “paralysis” that Friedman writes about until Republicans can come back in and start passing things again, just like most of this past decade.

In other words, it comes down to two things, particularly with a significant majority in both houses, and the support of the White House. Putting together a good bill or bills, and effectively showing this, both to the country, and to their fellow Congresspeople: Not, as Friedman says, simply “meeting in the middle” regardless of what the various parties are claiming they want. That leads to more of the same over burdensome special interest favoring legislation that people like Friedman are often complaining about (and often correctly), in the first place.

As for why the rest of the world is starting to view our country as more unstable — the concern driving Friedman’s article — it’s not because we are not passing bills, with possibly the small exception of energy. The reason for the energy exception is that the world knows climate change is a global problem and we are still the leader of the free world, and by far largest per capita contributor to the climate change problem. (A problem that almost half the country seems to have become convinced does not exist, by the way.) And we are not seeming to do much to lead on this issue.

But for the most part, the world is not viewing the U.S. as potentially less stable than normal because of a failure to pass health care or some derivative and market traders favoring cap and Trade system, whereby much of the money that should be going into productive growth and problem redress instead goes into traders pockets;** it is probably because of the massive run up in debt, the recent financial crisis, and all of the heavy rhetoric that continues to emanate out of this country, combined with, perhaps, to some very small degree, what Friedman references; A Congress that can’t seem to get anything done — despite the fact that many think that in general, a Congress not getting anything done is a good thing sometimes.***

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*Emanuel has been routinely credited with orchestrating a masterful Democratic victory in Congress in 2006.  There is little conventional wisdom in an America that is currently chock full of erroneous conventional political wisdom, that is as off base as this.  It is the equivalent of taking over a football game in the fourth quarter, leading 31-0, and squeaking out a 30-28 victory when the ball sails wide right on a field goal try in the waning seconds.   Most people will vehemently disagree with this — particularly those in a media which endlessly parroted this assessment as if unambiguous fact  – but that’s the nature of conventional wisdom that has become entrenched as gospel.  But in 2006 the Bush administration was becoming very unpopular, concern over Iraq and foreign policy strategy was becoming alarmingly high yet the Bush Administration unfortunately was not up for re-election, and there was more anti – incumbent Congressional fervor than at any point in modern history (only to be outdone, yet again, by 2008 of course), and second term majority parties typically lose almost what the Republicans lost in 2006 under normal circumstances.

**On the flip side of this, a cap and trade system does offer some efficiency advantages. By allowing the market to fully determine how it wants to meet certain targets, more effective measures can be accomplished at less cost to the initial polluter in the first place. But in the long run, all this system is doing is rewarding an inherent right to pollute to certain entities, above which threshold they can not go — or must purchase credits from someone else. If an inherent right to pollute does exist where such pollution is contributing to a potentially alarming (and still underestimated) global problem, then everyone should have the right equally. Yet such a system is fundamentally predicated on the opposite principle — past behavior.

In the long run, simply taxing the processes is more efficient and less costly.  (Former Bush economics advisor, Bruce Bartlett, in Forbes, agrees.)  Politically unpalatable as this sounds, it is the most efficient and most “market equalizing” approach to leveling the playing field between harmful and nonharmful production processes. There is no reason that a “tax” should be frowned upon until and unless this country has no taxes; which so long as we have government and not anarchy, is a bit far fetched.  And of the many taxes that are levied, this would probably be the fairest and by far the most productive. Not only does it raise revenue, it avoids having to simply prohibit behavior that destroys the environmental quality of the world for everyone, which behavior some people might otherwise be willing to pay for — which is everyone’s right, so long as that harm is somehow integrated into the marketplace, and marketplace decisions.

Cap and trade does not accomplish this nearly as efficiently in the long run, but instead creates an entire separate market that has no value in and of itself, other than to avoid this more straightforward approach and the politically unpalatable tax word.

Not that some haven’t tried to use the term  anyway, for cap and trade (and, creatively, there is some small truth to it).  But then these “some” — in this case ex half term Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, here also argue that the way to getting off of the energy sources that are compromising national security, polluting our environment, and contributing massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere via the geologically instantaneous release of carbon that took millions of years to accumulate, is “the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!.” And, of course, if there is one thing that is correctly known with certainty in the otherwise uncertain “art” of economics — and what, essentially, compromises “economics 101,” is that of course the answer, completely the opposite of what Palin insisted, does lie in making the behavior we want to move away from, scarcer and more expensive, relative to the behavior that we want to move toward.

Here, something that is not quite as efficient, but that can speed up the process, and add political appeal, is to take the funds derived from discouraging the energy reliance sources and processes that we need to move away from, and using part of it to encourage production and usage of the (cleaner, non finite) energy sources and processes that we need to move toward.

***The most recent incarnation of the health care bill in the Senate, to many — as much as this country probably needs health care reform to reign in rocketing public and private costs, extreme inefficiencies, and to provide better coverage and care for people — serves as an example of precisely this.

Lesson One: Learning How to Control Congress with a Minority

Today’s lesson plan is brought to you by the Republican Party of America.  It is designed to teach the other major political party in America, how to control Congress with a minority.

We interrupt this special presentation, with a special announcement, and question, from the Democratic Party.

Thank you very much for your assistance in teaching us how to control Congress with a minority.  We appreciate this very much, and it is truly something that we do want to learn. However, before you teach us this, can you please teach us how to control Congress with a majority and the White House?

Republican Party response: “That was whene we were in power over the past decade.   But don’t worry, if you didn’t take copious notes that time around, your opportunity will come soon enough again.”

Health Care Now or Else: How Some Democrats See It

(Update below)

Hendrik Helzberg’s recent “Beware of Sudden Downdrafts,” column in the New Yorker serves as a classic example of why Liberals are often horrific at politics. (The other half of the equation is the fact that they think they are good at it, and often tend to be extremely self righteous, defensive, and argumentative about this — usually with far more passion than for actually showing to the country why their policies or position on a particular issue is correct or important, which they far too often take for granted as being “self evident” along with all of the rhetoric that cuts against it “self evidently” irrelevant, when it is not.)

Helzberg:

Whether yesterday’s upset in Massachusetts turns out to be a catastrophe or merely a setback now depends largely on the grown-upness, or lack of it, of liberals in the House of Representatives. I don’t see any way out of the darkness right now other than for the House to tighten its stomach muscles, pass the Senate version of the health-care bill A.S.A.P., and move on to jobs and the economy. The Senate health-care bill, however inferior to the House version, is vastly superior to the status quo. The only alternative I can discern is no bill at all—a political, substantive, and humanitarian failure that would reverberate for a generation.

This is a popular theme. As many leading commentators and “bloggers” have noted, anybody who “knows anything” knows that if this is not passed right now, and with this bill, 1) it can not be passed, and 2) it can not be brought up again, 3) it if is nothing will get done, and 4) it can not be brought up for years (along some version or another of their opponents being able to otherwise irrelevantly say “ha, you tried it and it didn’t work, you can’t try it again.”)

What Democrats, and perhaps, in particular, some liberals, tend to miss is that while it is theoretically possible that this is true, it is only true because of one reason: Democrats allow it to be played out this way, which fits in precisely with how their opponents want it to be played out, and for no good reason.

That is, there is otherwise absolutely no reason otherwise for ANY of the impediments made up above, to be true. That is, if this bill is not passed; it can be passed later. It can be brought up again. Something can be done. The bill can be changed. The bill can be improved. The bill can be more effectively sold. Opponents to the bill can be more effectively framed — particularly if a better bill is passed, and the reasons why it is better focused on, sold, and repeatedly illuminated. (Instead of Democrats simply taking for granted that “everybody knows (or thinks) this” already.)

It all comes down to the reasons why, and more importantly, the reasons that are given and sold as to why.

If there is a need for the bill, which it seems that Liberals and most Democrats (and some Republicans in fact) believe there is — some very very strongly — then Democrats can pass a bill. A good bill. Having a quagmire because of misframing and opponent deception is not a reason to pass a a bad bill or stop and never re take up the process, it is a reason to take control of the debate, make the bill address the issues more sensibly, and sell the bill. If Democrats think it is a good bill right now (those that do), then the same arguments apply. Sell it. If it is a good bill, with a majority in the Senate, you can sell it. Martha Coakley is all but irrelevant.

That’s politics. It’s come down to numbers because Democrats haven’t worked to frame the issue, or control the debate, or concoct a bill that actually addresses the root of the problem, or show why, or address the real concerns that those opposed to reform have, or stop letting Republicans they disagree with dictate to them in Congress, by making a powerful and effective case against them, without simply belittling them as if it is all so “obvious” to everybody.

What is expressed in Helzburg’s column above is pure abject defeatism. And it is exhibit A in why and how Democrats now almost always allow their opponents to control the debate.

Update: From the super popular online Daily Kos website, a recommended front page piece with about 400 recommends, 580 comments (and counting), February 1, 2010.  This title is mostly metaphor, and a little bit of hyperbole; but it’s not satire, and is in support: Ezra Klein: It’s this bill, or everybody dies.