Democracy for Sale. New York City has disgraced itself in undoing a term-limits law enacted by the people in one referendum and confirmed in a second referendum. The City Council, knowing full well that the people favor term limits and have twice voted for them, unilaterally overruled the people! Think about that: the Mayor and Council of NYC have decided that they are not the servants but the masters of the people, and have the right to undo the will of the electorate expressed in direct elections TWICE. How can that possibly be permitted? What has happened to this country?
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A judge(tte) ruled that the Council could vote for their own re-election and that was not a conflict of interest! Now councilmembers as well as the Mayor can have three four-year terms in office. And in four years the City Council can make it four terms, and four years after that, five terms, or simply abolish term limits altogether — term limits the voters TWICE enacted in direct referendum. And no one, not the State Legislature in Albany, not the Federal civil-rights authorities, not the courts of the State of New York, has lifted a finger to stop this destruction of democracy in New York City. How could this happen? How can it possibly be legal to overrule the electorate and undo a referendum by legislative fiat?
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It happened because New Yorkers are the biggest bunch of sheep and wusses in the Nation, with not so much as 1/12th the guts of people in any other city. New Yorkers put up with more sh*t than the people in the next thirty cities put together. That may be largely due to the enormous proportion of New Yorkers who were born elsewhere, and are only legally citizens. They do not have the value system of Americans but of the various hellholes they fled. They brought ugly bits of the ugly cultures they came from, among the worst of which bits is toleration for dictatorship.
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Now, Michael Bloomberg, a BILLIONAIRE, has been spending tens of millions of dollars on ads for re-election, for months already on an election that will not happen till November, and even tho it would seem that not a single ad for anyone else has aired. I live in Newark, NJ, which receives NY television stations, and Bloomberg ads are all over the tube, at all hours of the day and nite, but I have yet to see even one ad for anyone else. That is corruption, bare-faced, bare-knuckled plutocracy using an enormous personal fortune to BUY election to an illegitimate third term for an evil little dictator, one of those mini-men who overcompensate by seeking power by any means. I haven't even seen so much as one nonpartisan ad urging New Yorkers to strike back at the people who overturned their vote in two referendums by voting against all of them, starting with Bloomberg in November.
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Why isn't anyone stopping him? There is apparently something about the office of Mayor of New York that drives people crazy. The last mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, who was forced out by the term-limits law because he wasn't so brazen as to demand the City Council abolish it, wanted to stay on after his legal term expired, with the excuse that the then-recent 9/11 attacks had created an unprecedented emergency, and New York needed Giuliani's experienced leadership to recover from the disaster. Michael Bloomberg would have none of it, but forced Giuliani out of office promptly on time. What a HYPOCRITE! Now the bastard Bloomberg insists that a situation not one fortieth as difficult for New York as the post-9/11 era, a simple recession, requires the extraordinary measure of overruling TWO referendums so NY can 'benefit' from his 'experienced leadership'!
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If The System won't protect us from dictatorship by billionaires, there may be only three things that can stop the total destruction of New York's democratic civilization: (1) resounding defeat for Bloomberg at the polls, which seems most unlikely when a billionaire has drowned out all other voices in a constant barrage of propaganda in all media; (2) massive, unceasing demonstrations in the street, demanding not just that Bloomberg remove his name from the ballot but that he actually resign now, and demanding as well that every councilmember who voted to overrule the people also resign, now; (3) violence. One bullet thru the head of each would-be tyrant can speak hugely louder than the hundreds of thousands of ballots in TWO referendums that demanded term limits.
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The City Council vote that voided the people's term-limits initiative was 29 to 22. Surely there are 30 bullets in New York City, one for each councilmember and one for Bloomberg. Of course, there's no reason to stop with one bullet per tyrant. Lead is recyclable. We have guns today that can squeeze off dozens of rounds in a single minute, which would be more certain of killing the tyrants than a single shot. Naturally, there will be some wussy commentators who say that violence even against tyrants is never justified, and will even pretend that some fundamental legal principle is at stake, such as conspiring to overthrow the government. No, assassinating people who have hijacked the government is not overthrowing the government but restoring it. The mayoralty will remain, the Council will remain. There will just be new people in those political offices, people so chastened by what happened to their predecessors that they will at once both restore term limits and write new City Charter provisions barring any future Council from voiding the will of the people as expressed in a direct referendum.
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Thomas Jefferson, who adhered to the two-term limit for President even tho it was only a tradition established by George Washington, not a law nor constitutional provision, famously said:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Naturally, neither Michael Bloomberg nor any of the councilmembers who voted to overrule the people believe that any New Yorker has the guts to kill them, especially if s/he must risk their own life in the attempt. But we do have hundreds of thousands of young people in uniform risking their lives in distant countries for what they have been told is the defense of liberty. How bizarre it is that while they stand on the front lines, thousands of miles from home, the enemies of liberty are destroying democracy thousands of miles to their rear, right here at home. These soldiers will come home to find that while they were away, everything they were told they were fiting for had vanished. Might they then take up arms again to win it back? We needn't wait for the betrayed to come back. We can fite at home against the impending death of democracy, as one way to show appreciation for what our young people are risking in Afghanistan. Do them the favor of not making their sacrifice pointless.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,327 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:04 PM links to this post

 
A colleague here in Newark alerted me to a broadcast tonite of Michael Moore's landmark documentary Sicko on cable tonite. He forwarded an email from MichaelMoore.com that says in part:

"Sicko" airs on The Movie Channel tonight at 8:00 PM. It's also scheduled to air on The Movie Channel on July 27th at 4:05 PM and on TMC Xtra on August 2nd at 10:45 PM and August 5th at 2:15 AM and 7:30 AM. ...

There are people around the country who are holding "Sicko" viewing parties this weekend in their homes. ...

We are in a critical time regarding which direction the health care debate is going to go. Make your voice heard. And be armed with the facts. Watch "Sicko" again!

I replied to my Newark-activist ally:

SICKO should be shown every few days on BROADCAST TV until Congress enacts and the President signs legislation creating a single-payer system. The people who need single-payer the most can't afford cable. And the showings should be everywhere until Congress understands that the people want single-payer and until even the Radical Right gets so disgusted with claims that altho all the rest of the industrialized world can have universal healthcare with a single-payer system, somehow we can't.
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Sicko showings should be bracketed, beginning and end, by PSA's that say, at the start, "This film shows that Canada, France, Britain, and other industrialized countries all have universal healthcare paid for by progressive income taxation that doesn't crush the little guy, and implicitly asks, 'If they can do it, why can't we?' " At the end, the PSA should say, "How is it that every other industrial country can provide equitable, universal healthcare without being financially ruined, but we can't? Are all those other countries smarter than we are? Better than we are? Wiser, more decent? Richer? Well, they can't be richer, can they? Jingoist Rightwingers keep telling us, pridefully, that we're the richest country in the history of the world. So why can't we afford universal healthcare with a single-payer system that countries much poorer than we are, manage to pay for easily? Don't accept excuses. If Canada can do it, we can do it. If Britain, France, and Japan can do it, so can we. Don't let the Radical Right tell us we can't do this. Of course we can. And don't pay any attention to protestations from John McCain, a man who was born in a Government hospital and has had Government healthcare every single day, his entire life! If McCain could have Government healthcare from birth to this very day, and hasn't died from neglect, surely he should not resent other people having the same Government healthcare that has kept him alive and well, into his late 60s. Those Republican members of Congress who don't want YOU to have Government healthcare ALL have Government healthcare themselves. Every last one of them. What do you call it when people decry Government healthcare out of one side of their mouth but ask for Government doctors to take care of them out of the other side? Oh, yes: hypocrisy! The United States should have the best and most equitable healthcare system on this planet, and can, but only if the People DEMAND it. Write your Member of Congress and BOTH your Senators. Write the President. (You can find their contact information at our site, www._____.org.) Say "Yes we can" have universal healthcare under a single-payer system. It's embarrassing to say that Canada can do something but we can't. Oh, yes we can!"

(I ordinarily place here the current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties". But that site is down right now. I don't know why.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:19 PM links to this post

 
"An Historic" Idiocy. Twice in this evening's ABC World News broadcast, the odious phrase "an historic" was uttered. Charlie Gibson actually dared to say "an istoric", dropping the H-sound to justify the idiotic affectation of "an" before an H. No, Mr. Gibson, the H in "historic" is not silent — you stupid, stupid bastard. Do you say "the istory books"? If not, why would you say "istoric"? Because you're a pretentious, ignorant fool, that's why. You heard other people saying "an historic" so thought that was correct. But the rule is that "an" is used ONLY before a vowel sound. Sound. Not written letter.
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That noxious affectation finds no justification in the history of English nor in the smooth flow of sounds. I also m now hearing "a" before vowels on television! Sometimes you can graciously forgive such use as accidental: the speaker started to say one word, that started with a consonantal sound, but at the last instant, after having already said "a", substituted a different word, that starts with a vowel, and chose not to backtrack to fix the indefinite article, lest that draw attention to the mistake. But I have heard "a" before vowels in what seemed well-considered statements. I have even heard President Obama say it at least once. Listeners who cannot believe the President of the United States would make such an inexcusable mistake dismiss such an utterance as a mere change of mind. Is it?
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Here's a usage note from the American Heritage Dictionary online:

Word History: The forms of the indefinite article are good examples of what can happen to a word when it becomes habitually pronounced without stress. An is in fact a weakened form of one; both an and one come from Old English an "one." In early Middle English, besides representing the cardinal numeral "one," an developed the special function of indefinite article, and in this role the word was ordinarily pronounced with very little or no stress. Sound changes that affected unstressed syllables elsewhere in the language affected it also. First, the vowel was shortened and eventually reduced to a schwa [symbol]. Second, the n was lost before consonants. This loss of n affected some other words as well; it explains why English has both my and mine, thy and thine. Originally these were doublets just like a and an, with mine and thine occurring only before vowels, as in Ben Jonson's famous line "Drink to me only with thine eyes." By the time of Modern English, though, my and thy had replaced mine and thine when used before nouns (that is, when not used predicatively, as in This book is mine), just as some varieties of Modern English use a even before vowels (a apple).

Some warrant for the affectation "an historical" might be seen in the usage note at "a":

... Such adjectives as historic, historical, heroic, and habitual, which begin with an unstressed syllable and often with a silent or weakly pronounced h, are commonly preceded by an, especially in British English. But the use of a rather than an is widespread in both speech and writing: a historical novel; a habitual criminal. Hotel and unique are occasionally preceded by an, but this use is increasingly old-fashioned. Although in some dialects an has yielded to a in all cases, edited writing reflects usage as described above.

The key phrases above, however, that void any attempt to justify an absurd and irrational use by educated Americans of "an" before a sounded-H are: "British English" and "old-fashioned".
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American news anchors and reporters should not be affecting old-fashioned British speech. It INSULTS modern Americans to tell them, in effect, that British English is better than American — when it is not remotely as good. As an example of the inferiority of British English, R-dropping dialects have hundreds more homonyms than American.
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The United States has always been more literate and educated than Britain, in that universal education was fundamental to American democracy but not to British monarchy. The discrepancy in educational levels continues to this day, and American, not British, is the prestige version of what we still charitably call the "English" language but which is actually a world language, 70% of whose native speakers live in the United States. "English" is the most important language in the history of the world, and hundreds of millions of people, in many countries on all continents, are trying to master it at any given time. People listening to American English as spoken by major broadcasters should be able to rely on the correctness of the usage and pronunciation they hear. They should not have to find usage notes in dictionaries to try to grasp why some speech exemplars refuse to abide by a simple, elegantly logical rule: use an before a vowel sound.
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If Charlie Gibson doesn't say "an history", he should be slapped down when he says "an historical". Anyone in an American news organization who says "an historical" should be suspended without pay for a month for each such ignorant and irritating utterance.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,322 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:55 PM links to this post

 
Impeach Panetta — or Defund the CIA. Leon Panetta insists that "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress", even as he supposedly admitted to Congress in a June 24th hearing that the CIA did indeed mislead Congress under the Bush Administration. How, pray, are we to interpret this? It depends, apparently, on what "is" is. What "is" the present policy of the CIA? What WAS the policy of the CIA during the Bush Administration? It is not a quibble.
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The Central Intelligence Agency can be a cancerous growth and a threat to our democracy if it is not answerable to Congress, as we have seen. If the CIA cannot be controlled under Panetta, impeach Panetta. If Congress cannot impeach Panetta, let them cut the CIA's budget to $0.00 — zero dollars and zero cents — until and unless the CIA admits very publicly that it has NOT always briefed Congress adequately or truthfully, and pledges to tell Congress in the future everything it is entitled to know — which is anything at all that Congress wants to know, because Congress represents the people, and the people, at least thru their elected representatives, have an ABSOLUTE RIGHT to know what is being done in their name. We are the ones who are bombed at home and targeted for death abroad when misdeeds of agencies like the CIA antagonize billions of people around the globe. We are the ones who volunteer for the military — or do not — and risk death, in national service, at the hands of enemies that rogues like the CIA and the Zionist lobby make for the United States.
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How many lies or instances of withholding information or misleading Congress by half-truth or implication — or any other type of deception; we really do not need to specify each and every type of deception we can think of, because that only invites CIA to look for something not on the list — constitutes a "policy or practice"? How many constitute only an 'isolated incident', 'momentary failure', 'mistake', 'misjudgment', or, again, anything of that nature, without need of a laundry list that might leave something out?
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"Zero tolerance" is a phrase that represents what has come to be misused absolutism in, for instance, enforcement of arbitrary and capricious codes of behavior regarding "sexual harassment" in schools. But when it comes to Executive Branch agencies lying to Congress, "zero tolerance" is not extremist at all, but the very least we can accept.
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President Obama has threatened to veto an appropriations bill if Democratic amendments that require the CIA to report to such members as Congress itself, in due exercise of its own discretion, demands be briefed. Fine. Congress controls funding. If Obama wants to control the information that Congress — the people — receive from the CIA, then Congress can completely and absolutely defund the CIA. It doesn't have to abolish the agency. It need merely put the CIA's $0 funding into an omnibus spending bill that Obama can either sign or veto. And Congress doesn't have to fund ANYTHING. Obama is not king nor emperor nor Pope. He cannot demand anything from Congress, because Congress's legitimacy does not derive from him but from the people directly, without any presidential intermediation.
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(Congress should certainly defund all CIA publications, such as the World Factbook, that Americans cannot understand because ONLY foreign measures are used — areas are given only in square kilometers, for instance, and there's not one native-born American in a thousand who knows how large a square kilometer is, compared to a square mile.)
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In any contest between President and Congress, Congress must win, because Congress has ALL the money, and the President can do NOTHING without the people's money, voted by Congress. All Congress has to do is stand firm. What does it have to lose? As an institution, Congress is enormously unpopular, for having NOT done the people's will in opposing the misbehavior of President Bush. How much more unpopular could it get for opposing the misbehavior of President Obama?
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The Obama Administration has sold us out over and over again, not delivering the change that candidate Obama ran on. If he won't do what the people want done, let Congress do it, and present him with, for instance, a single-payer healthcare system as a fait-accompli he can either sign on to or veto and thus destroy his reputation as reformer. Obama could become a lame duck in his first full year in office, and a Congress that he seems willing to go out of his way to offend can rise up on its hind legs and slap him down hard. At end, somebody has to stand up for the people. If Obama won't, then Congress must.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,322 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:30 PM links to this post

 
Canada: Anachronism in the Age of Obama? This is "Canada Day", formerly "Dominion Day", which commemorates the day in 1867 when the British Empire fraudulently created "the Dominion of Canada" into a supposedly "independent" country, even tho it was no such thing. Britain did that to keep the recently re-United States from invading to claim Canada as compensation for Britain's malicious assistance to the Confederacy in the Civil War, which had then only recently concluded in a massive Union victory. Britain in effect put the house in Canada's name to keep Britain's moral creditors from seizing "British North America" as damages for Britain's misdeeds.
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In actuality, Canada was not in the slitest independent in 1867, and did not achieve anything remotely like actual independence until 1931, when the Statute of Westminster was passed. Even then, Canadians could not amend their own constitution! — the "British North America Act" — until 1982, when the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau finally "repatriated" (but actually only "patriated") the BNA as a Canadian constitution. From 1867 to 1982, 115 years, Canada was an imitation country, not real. And it served the interests only of the British Empire, of which it was an integral, unwavering part, not of the people who happened to live in the Great White North.
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Canada teaches a hugely false national myth, in which it was the faithful son and the United States the unfaithful son. The U.S. left "the Empire" — which was in its day a magical phrase, imbued with all kinds of majesty and hubris — by 1781, whereas Canada remained "loyal", and scores of thousands of "United Empire Loyalists" were moved (repatriated) out from the abusive hands of the ungrateful scum of the 13 southern colonies to the faithful, pure north, where they provided the impetus for the rebirth of the British Empire, which went on to become even greater than it had been theretofore.
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Unfortunately for this UEL Canadian myth, the British Empire did not love the "Loyalists", nor accord them the welcome into the very bosom of the Empire that they wanted, by admitting their representatives into the Parliament at London that was to govern the whole of the Empire, including the home islands. Rather, the imperialist scum of the London Parliament refused Canadians representation in Parliament fully as much, and as militantly, as they had refused Americans representation in Parliament. Eventually, even the pussyboys of Canada said "Enuf is enuf. Let us in, or we are going out". Parliament said "We are certainly not letting you in to share governance of the Empire, including us in the home islands." So Canadians too did what Americans had, generations earlier, felt compelled to do, and LEFT the Empire. Some observers say that the British actually had to PUSH them out, because they were 'afraid' that if the British Empire didn't 'protect' them, they would be 'forced' into the United States (by their own desires, since the U.S. never so much as officially (or unofficially) SUGGESTED to post-Westminster Canada that it join the Union). Unlike Americans, however, Canadians insisted on ignoring their own "betrayal" of the magical "Empire", and pretended that they never left, but are faithful sons of Empire to this day, with "The Queen" on their money and in their heart. What a bunch of bullshit.
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Once Canada left the Empire in reality, any rational person would accept that it ceased to have any legitimate and intellectually defensible reason for continuing a national existence separate and apart from the United States. To put that a bit more simply, the instant Canada ceased to be part of the British Empire, THAT instant did it cease to have any reason for being. Canada was created by Britain to preserve British interests, period. It was not to protect French Canadians from pressures to assimilate, nor to advance any other purpose. Britain drew the border that we even now live with, purely and simply to preserve British territory from encroachment by Americans. That is all.
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Any rational person would have understood that instantly. But Canadian nationalists were not then, and are not now, rational. Nor honest.
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At first, they maintained the "pretence" of Britishness. They spelled differently from Americans, writing STUPID things like "centre" and "labour". They pretended that Victoria, BC was 'more British than Britain', and Canada preserved the best features of traditional British culture — even tho all Canadians speak almost exactly as do Americans, and not remotely as Britons do. I have been to all ten Canadian provinces, so would warn Canadian-nationalist liars not to try to 'snow' me.
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Then, as it became clear to all the world that Canadians aren't the slitest British — they don't drive on the left side of the road, for instance, like Indians and Pakistanis; they don't say a "broad"-A in words like "past" and "glance", as West Indians and Africans in other former British colonies do; they don't drop R's but pronounce every single one except for the occasional frenchified pronunciation like ma.kób for "macabre", which even some ridiculous and pretentious Americans do — they had to cast about desperately for something that was meaningfully different from the U.S. Merely different wasn't good enuf. To justify maintaining a separation from the U.S., they had to assert that something Canadian was superior to American. They found that, or thought they had found it, in being more liberal than Americans. They insisted that Canada is purer and nobler than the United States, as for instance in providing "free" healthcare for every citizen. Never mind that when Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan first proposed a province-wide public healthcare system (called "Medicare"; where have I heard that before?), he was condemned, in Canada (not just by his political opponents within Saskatchewan), as, for all practical purposes, a "Red" trying to impose "Socialized medicine" upon unwilling Canadians. Sound familiar? That was CANADIAN rhetoric from, among others, striking doctors in 1962.
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For Canadian nationalists casting about desperately for some defensible justification for not joining the United States, the U.S. has been represented as being subject to the will, even whims, of the Radical Right. Canadians could not consent to sully themselves in the impurity and contemptibly fascistic attitudes of the worst portions of American political opinion. Never mind that it is Canadian refusal to vote in U.S. elections that led to the triumph of the Radical Right, a triumph that Canadian votes would have prevented, absolutely and incontestibly. Had Canadians voted in 2000, Al Gore, not George W. Bush, would have become President. Had Al Gore become President, there is no way in HELL the U.S. would have invaded Iraq, tortured prisoners, or done any of the other things that Canadian nationalists use to justify NOT joining the U.S. But Canadians don't want to think about how THEY, thru contemptible aloofness from the political process of the country that means more to the future of Canadians even than their own government, produced George Bush, the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, or any of that. And they sure as hell don't want YOU to think about it — about their GUILT in co-conspiring, thru electoral inaction, in the crimes of the Bush Administration, an Administration that could never have taken office had Canadians joined the Union long ago and Canadian states voted for President. Even ONE major Canadian state in 2000 would have prevented the rise of Dumbya to the Presidency. "Don't think about that. It's not our fault." Yes, actually, it is.
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Politics is about the possible, not the perfect. Canadians pretended that anything less than perfection is impermissible and indefensible. They held themselves aloof from the fray, and permitted the triumph of the Republican Radical Right. And THEN they leapt to point an accusing finger at the result THEY PRODUCED, to say that the United States is intrinsically and irredeemably evil, and they were right not to taint themselves with a Bush presidency — even tho no such Presidency could have occurred had Canadians voted in the U.S. election of 2000. How very convenient: you get to cause the problem but disown its effects.
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That is the behavior of the infants who take their ball and go home when they so much as think they won't get their way. Boycott elections and then complain about the results. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Well, it does if you're an idiot. "We might lose, so let's not compete." Terrific. Hand victory to the enemies of everything you stand for. Brilliant!
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Canadian nationalists are inveterate liars, to themselves as much as to others. They pretend to be more tolerant than the United States. Oh? How many black Prime Ministers has Canada had? How many "aboriginals"? Has there EVER been a nonwhite Canadian prime minister or Governor General? How about Provincial Premiers? How many nonwhite Provincial Premiers has Canada had?
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The Canadian myth is that Canada indulges minority communities, affords them autonomy, and accords them far more respect than does the United States, governmentally or culturally. They have rushed to embrace the moronic and dishonest notion of a nearly-mystical multiplicity in the Canadian identity, the cultural "mosaic". Each piece in that mosaic maintains its separate, intrinsic differentness, and whatever overall impression Canada may make upon outsiders, any sense of uniformity is illusionary, even delusional. No, each piece of the 'mosaic' that is Canadian national identity is autonomous, different, pure and unsullied by adjoining — over a bit of grout — not interacting with other pieces. What a load of crap.
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Canada has the same kinds of ethnic musical and cultural festivals that many parts of the United States have, except that in most places the Canadian festival is a sham, a make-believe vibrant culture that is dragged out once a year for a parade or street fair, then returned to its mason jar. The Ukrainian festival in some Prairie province is less real than the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City. Few people in Canada still speak Ukrainian in the home or on the street. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in NY, NJ, and other parts of the U.S. mainland still speak PR-accented Spanish in the home and with the neighbors. But somehow the United States is assimilationist, hell-bent on destroying all other cultures by eradicating them, as first choice, or subsuming them if exterminating them cannot be done. No.
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The reality, which many Quebecois and Acadien immigrants to the U.S. have understood over the ages, is that yes, the United States is a pressure cooker in which people of every group are indeed expected to learn English and talk to each other in that common language. BUT, if they do that, we don't care what language they speak in the home or among themselves.
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English Canada is fully as assimilationist to English as is the United States. And, a point sometimes lost on outsiders, Quebec is fully as assimilationist to French as the U.S., Ontario, or "British" Columbia are to English.
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The only real "mosaic" in Canada, then, comprises pieces of two types: English and French. Every major piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is Canada is either red (British) or blue (French), in some shade or other. To the extent there is any "mosaic" at all, it is composed of different bits of British red and French blue, with just the tiniest odd admixture of Chinese yellow, "First Nations" red, or "Inuit" brown. English Canada is as relentlessly assimilationist as the most narrow-minded small town of the American Midwest or South.
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So what is left to the claims of Canadian nationalists that Canada is so distinct as to be incapable of integrating amiably and happily into the Great American Union? Nothing.
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What about Canadian-nationalist pretensions that Canada is a voice of civilization and benign action in a tumultuous world community — that the world "needs" Canada's voice of moderation and tolerance? As an independent country, Canada can only run its mouth. As part of the United States, Canadians could actually produce a wiser, more generous worldview on the part of the only country in this region that counts for anything in world affairs: the United States.
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The world's need of Canada's independent voice is as much bullshit as anything else Canadian nationalists drag out to try to justify the unjustifiable separation of Canada from the United States. Ontario or Quebec Liberals are not one whit more Liberal than New York, New Jersey, or California Liberals. And American Liberals FITE for what they believe, in the hurly-burly of American politics, where triumph is not foreordained but has to be won by diligent, intelligent, tireless effort. When votes are close, American Liberals are wheeled in on hospital gurneys to cast their vote in Congress, so deeply do they care about principle.
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Where do we stand now, in "The Age of Obama"? What Canadian politician is more principled than Barack Obama? What Canadian liberal group is more consistently Liberal than the Democrats swept in on a wave of anti-Bush fury on the part of the electorate? How can Canadian nationalists now distinguish themselves ideologically from the ruling Democratic coalition, especially now that Al Franken is to give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? How, now (yes, I know: brown cow), can Canadian Liberals rationalize away their refusal to join the Union, a Union that is in every single way — linguistically, culturally, ideologically — congenial to the great preponderance of Canadians?
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The major political struggle in the United States now is between the people who want a single-payer universal-healthcare system and those who oppose it. In that contest, Canadian votes in Congress would prove absolutely and overwhelmingly decisive. Canadian nationalists want the U.S. to fail to enact a single-payer system, so they can continue to pretend not just that Canada is somehow strikingly unique (tho it is actually almost entirely identical to the United States in every regard) but also that Canada is, morally, massively superior to the United States. At end, doesn't that amount to wishing that Americans will continue to let people without (adequate) health insurance DIE from things that a single-payer plan could cure? Isn't that, then, exactly equivalent to wanting Americans to DIE so Canadians can feel themselves superior?
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Canadian nationalism is an absolute evil, given that Canada as part of the United States would prove massively TRANSFORMATIVE. Canadian votes in Congress every two years and for President every four would MASSIVELY ALTER the nature of the United States as an influence in the world. To understand that that is indubitably true but insist nonetheless that Canada should maintain its independence from the United States is EVIL. Ergo, Canadian nationalism is evil. I will not be lectured by Canadians about anything — until and unless they fite the good fite, in Congress and for President, and help Liberals win a permanent and unchallengeable majority for policies of generosity and enlitenment by the United States everywhere on Earth.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,321 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:54 PM links to this post

 
Government Stealing Twice. AOL hilited today a story about South Carolina's being about to confiscate the winnings of a person who bought a state lottery ticket:

Lottery rules require the ticket holder to show up in person within 180 days of the drawing to claim the prize. That makes the deadline July 1.

Whoever has the ticket must get to one of the state's claim centers — in Columbia, Greenville and Mt. Pleasant — before 4 PM next Wednesday. If they don't, the money will go into the legislature's "Unclaimed Prizes Fund" to help cover public school expenses.

Such a short deadline, indeed, almost any deadline at all for claiming lottery winnings, surely meets the "arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable" standard that invalidates any law. What conceivable difference does it make whether a ticket is claimed within six months, a year, ten years, or fifty years? If someone bought the winning ticket and loses track of it, but eventually does finds it — or his or her heirs find it when cleaning out a house after the owner's death — why should s/he be unable to claim the prize? If the state is able to validate a winning ticket today, it should be able to validate a winning ticket in ten years. Where is the harm?
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An account for unclaimed prizes can perfectly well be created in a bank, and overflow into various small banks around the state, to be used as loans for mortgages, small businesses, college tuition, etc., so it does some good immediately. The interest on that money would be paid to the state for the purposes the lottery is intended to serve. In very few cases would any of the prize money be claimed, but it would be there to do justice to the legitimate winner, whenever s/he managed to find the ticket, in those few cases where the ticket is eventually found. And all the while the money would be doing good in the economy and paying interest to the state.
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The state legislature could reasonably place a 50-year expiry on lottery winnings, as would allow for the situation I mention above, where a ticket is found only when the heirs to a house are cleaning it out after the death of the ticketholder. A state could even fairly provide that a portion of the winnings is forfeited each year a prize is unclaimed, say 2% a year after the first year, so that the state might eventually recapture the whole sum at the end of 50 years. Moderate measures such as that are defensible. Simply stealing money someone is entitled to is not.
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The lottery is unearned money for any state, and has been rightly criticized as taking unfair advantage of the poor, who are more likely than the middle class or rich to spend excessive amounts to take a chance on winning the lottery as the only way they can see to get out of the financial hole or grind they feel themselves trapped in. Some critics, indeed, regard state lotteries as stealing from the poor. I wouldn't go that far, tho perhaps some way should be found to limit how much poor people can spend on lottery tickets (after figuring in winnings). One way that might be done is thru a tax credit on a state income tax for people of specified low income for such moneys as they may have spent on the lottery. To do that, however, we would have to find a way to track such outlays, as by putting on the scannable ticket for submitting numbers a significant and unique identifier, such as, say, the last four digits of one's Social Security number. That would leave enuf of the number unspecified to protect a person's identity but show enuf in a given locality to provide fair certitude of identity for tax purposes. It would also simplify collecting income taxes owed on winnings. Even a tax credit wouldn't work for people who don't itemize on their income tax forms. But society might find some way to lessen the burden on poor people who have a gambling problem.
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It is enuf for Government to raise/steal small amounts from large numbers of people by offering them a tiny chance at a dream. It is far too much for Government to snatch away the winnings from people who leave a ticket in the pocket of a shirt they then leave in the garage or a purse they don't usually use, or who forget to check the numbers for a few months. Government is permanent; individual citizens and their dreams are not. Government can wait to take unclaimed lottery winnings, and draw interest from such funds while waiting. There is no harm in Government's waiting. There is vast harm to a winner whose winnings are seized. The legal concept of "balance of hardships and equities" thus demands that Government pay lottery winners whenever they find their ticket.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,316 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:33 PM links to this post

 
No Crotch-Grabbing. Tho I have not watched any of the program-length tributes to Michael Jackson, I did note that in the coverage on the evening newscasts, his notorious practice of grabbing his crotch during musical performances has been edited away. Good.
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When I heard that Michael Jackson had died at age 50, I immediately thought, "Drugs." In this country, in this era, you are pretty well justified in jumping to the conclusion that a celebrity who dies suddenly at a relatively early age does so from drugs.
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It will be some time before the toxicology results are in, but speculation has already emerged that he will be shown to have died from prescription drugs. I don't know if it was prescription drugs, recreational drugs, or a combination of the two, but if he did die from drugs, his death will not have been for nothing. It will help us wake stupid young people to the reality that drugs are not harmless fun, but were outlawed for good reason, and, in the case of medical drugs, require a prescription because they are DANGEROUS. Then only the people who WANT to be harmed or killed will look enthusiastically upon use of such hazardous chemicals. And if a self-destructive person dies from drugs, the people around will understand that that was a willful act, and be able to use those deaths too as instructive cases, in trying to persuade young people to stay away from drugs.
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The Partnership for a Drug-Free America has a wonderful Public Service Announcement now running that shows two young men (tho called "kids") in a morgue, one dead from illegal drugs, one dead from prescription painkillers. The man in the middle asks "Which one is more dead?" The video should be hard-hitting, and is, for normal people. Disgustingly, some stupid, stupid, evil kids, perhaps on drugs themselves, placed joking comments at the YouTube site where a version of that PSA appears. Some "kids", and adults, deserve to die, and some of those disrespectful clowns may well die young. And feel free to take "well die young" in the sense of good riddance. You can't reach some fools, because they are greater fools than any message can move. Will stoners place jokes on message boards about Michael Jackson's death if it is revealed that he died from prescription drugs? Probably. Everything's a joke to stoners.
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If Michael Jackson died from other cause or causes, not related to drugs of any kind, there may still be some instructive tale to tell. Dr. Nancy Snyderman of NBC News suggested the day of Jackson's death that he was anorexic, under serious stress, and exercising very strenuously (in preparation for London concerts that were to have started in little more than two weeks), and the combination of strains he was subjecting himself to could definitely cause heart problems — fatal heart problems. If her speculation proves true, other doctors with media access will have to evaluate what percentage of what deadly combination could be assigned to which contributing factor, and caution young people against those risks as well. And if Michael Jackson was killed by anorexia, stress, excessive exercise, AND prescription drugs AND recreational drugs, a lot of people might learn a lot of things of value.
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Tho saddened — more than I would have expected — by the news of Michael Jackson's death, I was on the other hand glad that he need no longer suffer from the terrible things he has done to himself. That nose that was so horribly ravaged by quacks under Jackson's insane urging need no longer reproach him nor horrify children.
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Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson ended their famous lives in debt, from different causes. "Fame" doesn't necessarily go with "fortune".
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In the United States today, however, fame often does go with power, and much of what we call "democracy" is little more than name-recognition. People who start out as unknowns have to expend most of their time and campaign funds to simply gaining name-recognition, at all, and then as candidates for a given political office. Any famous person who wishes to run for office thus starts with a huge advantage over an unknown. The famous person need only attach their fame to the office they seek.
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Of course, if there are big negatives to a person's fame, that fame can do them political harm. No one would have wanted Michael Jackson to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, or run any state's Department of Children's Services. But if he had wanted to run for Congress, he'd have had name recognition working for him big-time.
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The deaths of three household names (Farrah Fawcett being the third) in one week reminds us all again that the clock is running, on all of us, and death is the great equalizer: President of the United States or garbageman, billionaire or penniless bum living in a refrigerator box on the street, celebrity or unknown, all of us are being stalked by Death, which will, in good time, get every last one of us. The brilliant comic Steven Wright has a great bit that mocks death: "I intend to live forever. So far, so good." Yes, so far. I wouldn't make plans for a hundred years from now, tho, Steven.
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The grim news this week tells us all: Get your ducks in a row, think about you want to be remembered for, and DO IT.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,316 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM links to this post