The Important Thing

The Done Deal Health Care is pretty much Old News, no matter the fulminations of our Republican Friends. After all, they got what they wanted, though someone else had to do it for them. That's kind of the way it goes, isn't it? They sure love to rule, but they can't govern worth shit -- except as Banana Republic dictators.

Barack Obama is now the best Republican President since Clinton, so what the TeaBaggers and their ilk are crabbing about is anybody's guess. Crabbing to be crabby, I think. But what do I know?

There was no way either a Medicare for All or a Public Option (whatever that might have been) could be passed in this environment. And there is a reason why: Medicare's costs are going through the roof, and there still aren't any controls on Medicare or overall healthcare costs. Until the cost curve is "bent" -- runs my theory -- our rulers can't do the right thing and institute universal single payer health care. But my suspicion is that once costs are tackled and some containment is instituted, wah-lah, we'll see something like Medicare for All. At least from the rhetoric coming out of Big Insurance, it appears that going after those costs is the major project still to be done. And Big Insurance is not just a Stakeholder but the major player in cost containment.

We'll see. We'll see.

Yes, in the short term, it will be very costly for very many. But kind of like the Enron/California Energy Crisis Thing, people get used to the higher costs. After a while they don't notice. We're going on ten years since the "crisis" that led to raising utility rates in California by as much as 50% to pay off the bonds that were sold to buy electricity at outrageous prices from the market manipulators. We've been paying higher utility rates in California and most of the West because of it all this time, and those higher rates look to be permanent now, because no one -- no one at all -- is talking about lowering them as the bonds are paid off. No, instead, they'll just move the rates around some. So that residents of the Central Valley aren't stuck with $400-500 a month electricity bills every summer to cool their haciendas. Instead, they'll pay $350, and residents of the naturally cooler Bay Area will pay slightly more...

Meanwhile, there is a very important aspect of the overall picture we need to pay a lot more attention to. I've brought up the policies that foster this Endless Recession, the deliberateness of the languid indifference to continuing high unemployment, the forcing of ever more millions into poverty and the underclass "year over year." There are no accidents here, no oopsies. The People In Charge know what they are doing, and what they are doing is carrying out the Neo-liberal phase of our ongoing nightmare.

Jerome a Paris posted something over at dKos the other day that made clear just what has been going on, and how it has affected people in the United States and Britain.

To wit, from the Economist:

IF YOU need an explanation as to why political discontent is so widespread on both sides of the Atlantic, take a look at figures compiled by Dhaval Joshi of the hedge fund RAB Capital. This recovery has benefited companies a lot and workers not at all.

In the US, Joshi calculates that, in cash terms, national income has risen $200 billion since the depths of the recession in March 2009. But corporate profits have risen by $280 billion over that period, while wages are down by $90 billion. One would have to go back to the 1950s to find profits outperforming wages in absolute (cash) terms, and even then it was on a much smaller scale. In Britain, national income rose $27 billion in the last two quarters of last year. Profits were up £24 billion and wages just £2 billion.

Yes. Well, well, well, isn't that interesting? Profits rise as income for the masses falls. And it is policy that it be so. This is no accident.

US productivity has outpaced European largely because the US has been quicker to sack workers. This is a decidedly mixed blessing. In theory, it is good for resources (inclduing labour) to be relloacted to more productive use. Thus it would be OK if the workers were quickly rehired by new, growing industries or if they were at least retrained, but there is little sign of such a positive development.

Of course. People have been forced out of work by the millions upon millions, and they are not being rehired. Well, how about that? Huh. And profits rise. Even paying them a pittance of unemployment benefits is loudly protested by the TeaBaggers, for reasons that -- as usual -- don't make any sense, and radio hate mongers go on and on about the lazy and shiftless unemployed, (used to be Lazy N-Word, but can't say that, unless you're a TeaBagger protesting a member of Congress)...but there are no jobs. Everybody knows that. They aren't being shed quite as quickly as last year, but there is no net gain in employment, either. The United States is down tens of millions of jobs since the Endless Recession began, and our rulers do nothing but get their nails done and tut-tut the sadness of it all. "There's nothing to be done." To paraphrase Larry Summers.

But why should they do anything when profits are UP? Clearly the Recovery is Underway. Rejoice!

Profits are UP because employment is down and because the last few pennies are being extracted from the vanishing middle class through all the bailouts and handouts Washington has been so eager to "help" our struggling industrial and financial sectors with.

Who'd a thunk?

And except for the unformed rage of the TeaBaggers, the People are passive.

Note, from the statistics, things are not as bad, overall, in other countries as they are here. And why might that be? Could it be because their people are NOT passive? Hm? Yathink?

And in Iceland, the People went so far as to say, "Thank you and fuck you, we ain't gonna pay your extortion" Twice. Notice, they've been having some nasty volcanics lately. Maybe they better revisit their intrasigence?

Could be we're dealing with forces of Nature here....

Documenting the Atrocities

Jeebus, the Hysteria.

The stark raving madness surrounding the now-admitted-by-everyone to be a pretty much ideal Republican Health Care Insurance Reform measure so infected the public square and the blogosphere that I just stayed away. The Crazy is catching, and I simply did not want to play.

When you have an amiable drunk like Dick Armey stirring up the masses to Rise and Revolt, and he's the only one doing it, then you know the situation is well out of hand -- and well out of your hands. When Men of Principle like the perpetually peevish Dennis Kucinich can be -- ahem -- persuaded to go along with what is arguably The Best Republican Health Insurance Reform measure evah, then you know the fix is not only in, it has been in for months if not years.

And the hysteria over it just won't quit.

This is politics in America today, and when things get this wild, even though all the Stakeholders are pretty well satisfied, then you know it's all for Show, a Show that is meant to keep the People entertained while their betters abscond with more of their loot.

That nearly the entire blogosphere fell into it and two sites that I frequent -- or used to -- FDL and dKos -- went balls-to-the-wall with rivalry and hysteria, mutual anathema and fury, simply confirmed to me that "Health Care" was being used as a business leader by both of them, with the primary desire and function to increase revenues for their proprietors.

Much as Dick Armey has very successfully done with his "Freedom Works" TeaBagger outfit.

TeaBagging is now the model. First they made it OK to bring up the R-Word, "Revolution". Now they make it OK to be bat-shit insane, and mostly to value myth and falsity over fact to make their point.

The shape and outline of the "Health Care" was set very early on last year, by April or May, and was all but complete by June and July. After that, everything was theatrics piled upon theatrics, and jockeying for attention by all and sundry. It really troubled me that it was being done this way. I still don't know whose bright idea it was to let things devolve into such a continuous goon show, but there you are. "Day of the Locusts" -- and it wouldn't end. It just kept going and going and going...

Couple of things happened, though, that made it almost seem smart (well, that remains to be seen...): 1) the factions pretty much exhausted themselves in virtual combat with one another and with The Powers That Be; 2) the bill that has been (is still in fact being) cobbled together comes across as "Moderate" compared to the foam-flecked fury it has unleashed among the commentariat and the proles. Moderate and wise, considered and responsible, a celebration of the Public Interest, the "Health Care" seems (almost) Just Right. Or something like that.

There is very little energy left to fight the Power, or to fight this fait accompli... or to do much of anything.

Jane posted her Manifesto over the Betrayal, yadda yadda, and something jumped out at me from it: She writes about how exciting and rewarding it was to cover what was going on. As a Journalist. New Media and all that. And then she refers to how difficult it was and frustrating it was to take what she learned as a Journalist and turn it into political action -- ie: to be a Player.

And how the next step has to be this or that to turn political knowledge gained as a Journalist into successful political action as a Player Without Portfolio. Basically to be as influential as any high priced lobbyist on K Street. Or as influential as any other noisy media outfit.

What is the point of Documenting the Atrocities if you can't use them for... good? Well, for what you want.

And this is the core difficulty among political bloggers. They want -- in some cases desperately -- to be Players on the political field, and they want to Win. (cf: Markos, Arianna, Aravosis) They believe that being Journalists is the way to Glory and Winning on the Field. Documenting the Atrocities (in the form of constant Media Criticism) is one of the core functions of the Blogosphere in general, and it is a sure way to -- eventually -- gain Notice. And Notice, somehow, is supposed to translate into Power.

Only it doesn't, not really, when it comes to Blogging. So called Progressives got nothing out of the "Health Care," not even a wink and a nod. At best they got a kick in the nads and a slap in the face, and a demand for their lunch money to boot. And like always, they pay up. It's their role and their function. Surprisingly, Jane has not yet gone into Kali-mode demanding the Heads of all who thwarted her again. Especially the Head of Obama Himself. But one shouldn't be surprised to see her turn when the situation is ripe.

Interestingly, some Republicans are complaining that they got "Nothing." Interesting especially because the measure is for all intents and purposes a Republican measure, barely recognizable as anything but a pay-off to vested interests at the crippling expense of the Public -- the way it is supposed to be in Republican Land.

It's arguably better in that regard than the Republicans on their own could possibly have made it. So what are they crabbing about?

Oh, I see.

They couldn't and didn't do it.

Someone else had to be brought in, Young Mister Obama.

That's the deal.

That's what they're crabbing about. And they will never forgive him for it.

Never.


Note: somebody at the Signing just said, "Thank you. 36 years trying to do this..."

Well, there you are.

Recompression

I've been back in California for about a week, still a little zzzz-y from the trip. Well, it's eleven hundred miles, 20 hours solid on the road, and as many times as I've driven it, it's still something of a challenge getting from here to there and back again.

It's not just a change of location, it's a change of culture.

I've never much cared for Arizona, but passing through it these days is becoming a real chore. Arizona's culture is antithetical to the Indians and the Mexicans who long predated the Anglo interlopers who squat there now and parade around with their guns out, refusing to pay taxes and threatening any brown person who happens by. What with the closure of the highway rest areas and the state parks and the attempts to sell off the state buildings, the whole notion of government of, by and for the People of Arizona has become a sick joke. This is America? No. It's Arizona, and these days it sucks to be there.

In Arizona, nobody wants to pay taxes, so they don't. If the state is really interested in cushioning its bottom line, and the government really wants to sell off its assets and shut down, which is the way they are behaving, then I think they should sell it all to the Indians and lease it back, if the Indians are so inclined. Or let the Indians run things. At least they have casinos, and they seem to run just fine. Tell me, have you ever had a bad time at an Indian casino? I ask you.

In New Mexico, things are different. Thankfully. Or maybe not, it's a little hard to say these days. Not only did I have a visitation from The Plumbers which turned out OK in the end, the house has been reinfested with skunks, and that was pretty bad, and is still not completely solved. In the past, the skunks have been a nuisance, this time they were pests. They nest under the house, with the feral cats. We had eleven skunks trapped and sent to Otero Canyon last year. I don't know how many there are now, but I can bet there are at least two, and probably more. Last year, they got along with the cats pretty well; this year not so much. In fact, there seemed to be a nearly constant war between them, which of course led to endless skunk spray.

There is a specific remedy for it. Vinegar. That's right. If the stink is severe, as it was, over and over, when the cats and the skunks contended, warm the vinegar and spray it liberally, or place a dish full of it in front of a fan and let it blow over the vinegar for an hour or so. Usually, that will take care of the stink, almost like magic.

Keeping the skunks out means making it impossible for animals to get under the house, and that's been the trick. When The Plumbers were there, they opened a hole outside under the bathroom and suggested that the hole stay open for a while to help dry out the area under the house where the water from the clogged drain had collected. I left it open for three or four days, and of course skunks moved in. The war began and it didn't stop until the day before I left. I wouldn't be surprised if it has recommenced.

There's another place where The Plumbers were several years ago when they replaced the supply piping, and that hole, though repeatedly closed up gets dug up by creatures, and the animals get in that way, too. So it's a constant struggle. The fact that we're not there more than a few weeks a year means the struggle is ongoing.

Hate to whine about it, but this time the skunks were much worse than ever before, so we're going to have to find a more or less permanent solution. I have some ideas.

Meanwhile, of course, the NM legislature came up with a grand plan to keep their schools and parks and stuff open: raise taxes on the poor and near poor. Not on the rich, oh no no no no no. Can't do that! This from a Democratic state administration -- Dems all the way down. Outstanding! Outrageous!

And the Rs are salivating. They figure, perhaps rightly, that with only two choices, the Dems or the Rs, the electorate will install Rs come fall, since the Dems have raised taxes on those least able to afford them. So throwing the bums out seems like a clever plan. Except... putting the Rs in will mean no reduction in taxes on the poor and near poor, but it will mean a significant reduction in services, and probably a further reduction in taxes on the rich and on corporations.

Our electoral system is insane.

Your choice is Bad or Worse. Now choose.

Sheesh.

Of course things are no better in California. Arguably they make things in Arizona and New Mexico seem very mild by comparison. Taxes have been raised, budgets have been cut, and still things are spiraling out of control. The rich are refusing to pay any more in taxes, and the unemployment rate is enormous and getting worse. Local governments are going broke, the state is tens of billions in the red, and nobody knows what to do about it or how to do it. Stalemate.

Or checkmate.

So a Hail Mary effort to change the budgeting rules is apparently going to be made, and then we get to pray.

All this is happening while our friends in DC continue to dither.

So I'm slowly recompressing but reluctantly.

After a while, you just get sick of it.

What to do with the Rich

The New Mexico state legislature has been sitting in special session in the Roundhouse in Santa Fe in an effort to resolve projected budget deficits due to the Endless Recession.

The Legislature is controlled by the Democrats, and the Governor is former Clinton apparatchik Bill Richardson. So rather than simply cut the budget, as Republicans demanded, the legislature chose to both cut the budget and raise taxes to raise revenues to cushion the blow of budget cuts.

But this is how they've done it: They chose to raise the Gross Receipts Tax (Sales Tax) by 1/8th percent, to raise cigarette taxes 75 cents a pack and to reimpose a 2% sales tax on food.

These tax increases, of course, affect the poor far more than they do the rich, and New Mexico progressives have been expressing their outrage, disgust, and contempt for the Democratic legislature and the governor. Why do moms going to the grocery store have to pay an extra 2% to the state, while big-box stores and the wealthy continue to receive tax breaks they have been benefitting from since 2003? It is assumed that Richardson and the legislative leadership simply would not accept any tax increases on the big-box stores, corporations and the wealthy. Increased taxes on the poor and working classes, fine.

A minor adjustment to a loophole that allowed the wealthy to deduct their federal tax payments from their income will result in slightly higher tax payments from the very well-off, but the basic problem with the income tax in New Mexico is that it is essentially a flat tax of 4.9% for all incomes from about $25,000 to infinity. While some progressives wanted to add a higher tax bracket for those making over $200,000 a year, the Governor would have none of it, according to reports.

Those least able to afford an increase in taxes will be paying them in New Mexico, and the Democrats -- according to all reports -- will suffer for it in the fall. They will probably lose control of the legislature and the governorship.

I think we know why neo-liberals like Richardson prefer neo-liberal tax-the-poor and hold-harmless-the-rich solutions to budget problems.

The question is, when the only political alternative is worse -- ie: the Republicans -- what are the People to do?

Already, the rich in New Mexico live as nearly as possible apart from the People, behind walls, gates, and often private guards and surveillance cameras. The People have been long-suffering, but this action by the legislature -- and the Governor when he approves the budget and tax increases -- is a forthright slap in the face of the People.

They are to pay. That's all there is to it.

Just as the People are to pay off the gambling debts of the Banksters.

The rich are to be protected.

No matter what.

Election Day

Tuesday was local election day here in New Mexico, but since I am not yet a registered voter here, I wasn't able to cast one of the fewer than 500 ballots that were handed in. The hardware store owner mounted an insurgency against the incumbent mayor. The incumbent had had what could only be called a wretched term of office, with one damn thing after another -- culminating with the recent refusal of Santa Fe to approve stimulus funds to improve the area water supply and sewage treatment. "Dead Man Walking" came to mind when I saw the incumbent holding court in a parking lot down the street from the city hall.

Actually the vote was closer than I thought it would be. The final results were 211 votes for the incumbent, 275 for the insurgent. I really thought it would be a blow out, given all the issues involved, and the Endless Recession and its effects on the local economy, but it was a fairly even fight, and the candidates are good friends. Or were. I don't know how they'll get along now.

The incumbent is a rancher. The insurgent is a merchant. There's always been a tension in the West between the two economic interests, but in a down economy like this one, their differing interests may turn into hostility. We'll see how it goes.

There was a burst of economic activity in town when some stimulus funds were provided for fixing roads and spiffing up signage and stuff. Things seemed to stabilize for a while, then a slow slide down commenced. People are still leaving the area because there's no work. I pointed out in an earlier post how difficult the local situation is even for plumbers.

Just looking around, not having any statistics at hand, I'd say the local population has declined by 10% or 15% since the advent of the Endless Recesssion. The area's biggest employer shut down early in the economic downturn, and nothing has taken their place -- though a couple of businesses (including a micro-brewery) have opened.

In a tiny way, I don't doubt that the anti-incumbent spirit that manifested itself here on Tuesday was part of what will be felt very strongly in the elections this fall. The fact that the Recession will not End, as a matter of policy, and that there is no work for many, and there won't be, no matter what, as a matter of policy, is having a profound effect on the psyches of Americans. Rejecting incumbents is natural under the circumstances, but so often the alternative is worse.

Unfortunately, Americans haven't wrapped their minds around that simple fact yet.

So here's a picture of the pronghorns I saw out in the field yesterday. They were shy and were going to run away when they saw me, then they decided to pose for one picture before they bolted.

1954

While I was rearranging some of the books here, I pulled out the Unicorn Book of 1954, a sort of yearbook of outstanding events of the year. It was a fairly significant year and all, what with H-bombs and Dienbienphu, the Army-McCarthy hearings, Brown v Board of Education, and endless crime.

Given yesterday's post about The Narrative and how news has to track The Narrative no matter what the facts show, I was fascinated by some of the items in this popular history tome from more than half a century ago, especially the strong parallels between the way, say, Eisenhower's approach to the Presidency was reported in almost identical terms to those used to describe Obama's approach.

For example:

In a series of messages to congress in January, 1954, Eisenhower proudly presented what he called a “dynamic, forward-looking program.” To his surprise, it was much criticized as well as much praised. “It was as dynamic as the dodo, “ said Democrat Sam Rayburn, House Minority Leader, “and as forward-looking as yesterday.”

Economically, the program was conservative, though it did urge the extension of unemployment insurance and social security. “In a modern industrial society, “ Eisenhower declared, “banishment of destitution and cushioning the shock of personal disaster on the individual are proper concerns of all levels of government.”

Democrats joked. “The Eisenhower administration, “ said Representative Richard Bolling of Missouri, “has just ratified the New Deal.”

“I thought we voted for a change,” cried Republican Senator John Marshall Butler of Maryland.

“If this is the policy of the Republican Party, “ said John W. Bricker of Ohio, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

This was hardly the unity the President had expected on his middle-of-the-road program, which he thought would attract both liberals and conservatives. It was Eisenhower’s earnest desire to be considered “President of all the people” -- all 163 million of them -- regardless of party or faction. The ideal fetched up against one hard reality: people do not think alike. As Mr. Eisenhower discovered, no President could be above all controversy.

How very much this Narrative resembles the current one. To continue:

After enunciating his domestic policies early in the year, Eisenhower at first pursued a hands-off-Congress program. He felt it was his job as President to recommend legislation but the job of Congress to enact it. When reporters asked about specific bills, he referred them to recommendations made by Cabinet members, adding: "Now the job is up to Congress."

He sincerely believed he could get on with "the toughest job on Earth" by quiet behind-the-scenes patience. He believed that reasonable men in the executive departments and in Congress could and would work together to solve problems logically, on the basis of facts and in line with national welfare.

Indeed. It should be so simple, shouldn't it? Why isn't it?

His friend, General George ("Blood and Guts") Patton, a careful planner as well as a dashing military leader, once pointed to a piece of boiled spaghetti on a table top.

"Suppose," said Patton, "you want to move the spaghetti across the table. If you get behind and push, you'll get nowhere, no matter how much you huff and puff. But if you get in front of it and pull gently but firmly, the spaghetti is far more likely to slide across the table in an orderly manner."

Congress moved slowly. Reluctantly, Eisenhower began to act more like a practical politician, pulling as well as pushing. He was giving "spaghetti" leadership a whirl.

Eisenhower took office in January, 1953. So he'd been in office a year when these passages were written. The frustrations the chattering and political classes had with Eisenhower are very similar to the frustrations expressed by Republicans and Democrats -- and the chatterati -- about Barack Obama. The Narrative seems to be that Presidents who don't act boldly and decisively from the outset are to be criticized and/or dismissed as worthless occupants of the office.

George W. Bush was actually going through this period of criticism and dismissal for lack of decisiveness and bold action (remember his "agony" over stem cell research?) prior to the transformative event of the 9/11 attacks, after which, of course, he was hailed the hero.

Eisenhower never had a transformative event like that from which to "lead" the nation through crisis, though the threat of instant incineration and total annihilation was the constant social and political theme of the era. Yet many Americans believe the Eisenhower Era was something of a Golden Age.

And why not? The Narrative told us everything was fine. Getting better. What's to worry? Enjoy. Laugh.

Sunshine

Cloud formations during monsoon weather in Mountainair, NM, August 2008

Since I don't have teevee here and haven't picked up a paper for a while, and since my internet connection is a slow dialup, I'm kind of cut off from the concerns of The World. The News comes from the radio, primarily NPR, but over the weekend, there wasn't a lot of news on the radio. Instead, there were a lot of features, some of which were very interesting (such as the crypto-Jews of Bernalillo), but which didn't really touch on the Big Stories, like the earthquake in Chile.

I've noticed since the weekend that reporters are having to struggle with the difference between their Narrative of What Happened in Chile, and what they're finding on the ground. The First Narrative was that though the earthquake was far more severe in Chile, there was little damage, hardly any compared to Haiti, because the building standards were so much higher in Chile (subtext: they're White, you know). The Narrative insisted that these Chileans were so much calmer and so much better behaved than those dirty Negroes in Haiti, and they were so much better organized to provide the necessary assistance to the affected regions, they didn't really need international assistance. (subtext: so much better to be Chilean than Haitian, what luck, eh?)

The initial reports were coming from Santiago, where apparently some older buildings collapsed, but the newer ones were mostly fine, and everyone was very well behaved, even snarky, about the earthquake and its aftershocks, and this sanguinity was assumed to be the way things were throughout the country.

The major area of damage and disruption was in and around Concepcion, which of course was inaccessible. Nevertheless, because the Narrative said that things were mostly fine in Chile, reporters took their time getting to the region. Besides it was hard. The roads were impassable. Bridges were down. The airport was closed. They had to go through Argentina. It took a while.

But everything was fine.

They saw little damage, and they heard the death toll was modest, a few hundred. Nothing like the massive death toll in Haiti. So it was like sightseeing for the reporters.

Who finally got to Concepcion, and said: WTF?

Damage in some areas was severe. Hundreds of thousands were homeless. There were no services of any kind. The Government was not providing any food or water, no shelter, nothing, and big aftershocks were continuous. Looting had commenced, and some of the reporters were referring to the looters as "gang members," or "gang leaders." The people were angry and frightened.

The military was sent in to establish order and stop the looting. Most of which was food and water from the markets, but some of which was teevees and toaster ovens. Which can't be tolerated, not in a civilized society. The military arrived, and still provided nothing -- except a show of force to keep the people from salvaging food and water and teevees and toaster ovens from the debris.

The reporters were grateful, as they always are, for the military presence to keep the people at bay, but still they were confused, because their Narrative was that there were no serious problems and destruction was modest, and the people were behaving. And that isn't what they were seeing on the ground, and they didn't know how to report it.

Rather than abandon the Narrative, they tried to blend it with what they were seeing with their own eyes and with what they were hearing from the population. Often their reports were hesitant to say the least, as they groped for words to express their understanding of conditions and what was really going on without violating the Narrative they were supposed to be reinforcing.

There was a tsunami, for example, that did terrible damage along the coast, but there was nothing at all said about it for many days, in part, perhaps, because the Narrative said that the tsunami warning was cancelled and people around the Pacific were annoyed and upset that they had had to prepare for a tsunami that never came.

Of course, I understand that my news is filtered through many layers while I'm here, and much of it is fragmentary at best. And of course by now everyone should be aware of how dominant The Narrative is in the news business, for everything, not just major disasters.

But it's still something of a shock to see it so bare in the case of Chile, and to hear how hard it is for reporters to actually report what's going on when what is really going on diverges so much from The Narrative.

So my question is, what will it take to bring the Sunshine of Truth into the news business? Or is it hopeless? Is it necessary to report on the basis of a Received Narrative to begin any big story, and then adjust it as "more facts come in?" Is this the way it has to be? Has it always been this way?

We fret about the propagandistic nature of much of our news. Yet so far, there isn't really another model that has any traction. The alternative media, including the blogging media, provides a different perspective (sometimes) but it is often as locked into its own narrative, and struggles just as hard with the Truth and telling the Truth if the Truth diverges from the Alternative Narrative.

Snow

View out the back this morning, snow still coming down.

The other day, I posted a picture of a painting that hangs in the north bedroom at our place in New Mexico. It's a picture of a man in an overcoat approaching a log cabin somewhere in the snowy mountain west.

Last night it started snowing lightly here, and right now there may be 3-5 inches on the ground. The storm -- such as it is -- came late. It was expected Saturday night. But that's the way the weather goes around here.

I didn't grow up in snow, so even though I've spent winters in Alaska and Upstate New York (save me from a winter's day in Rochester and/or Syracuse!) I'm still somewhat astonished by the sight of a landscape covered in snow, and just about any snowflake will thrill me. Though I'm getting used to driving in snow and ice -- even drove through blizzard conditions over the Continental Divide -- it's still in the experimental stage.

My New Mexico vehicle is an old Chevy Astro cargo van. Not exactly made for these conditions, but it is surprisingly good in most circumstances, even without snow tires (they're supposedly "hybrids" that work in all conditions -- and they do). Most people around here have Big Ol' Trucks with giant tires. Of course, if you live in the back country, you don't really have much choice. Roads are usually unpaved, they are never plowed, and getting in and out can be a challenge even in good weather. Before settling on this place, we looked at a house outside of Santa Fe that was down a narrow dirt track that crossed a stream, no bridge of course. The house was beautiful, and the setting was breathtaking, but getting to it -- and getting away from it if need be -- was guaranteed to be a trial at all times of the year.

And so it is for lots of places in this Land of Enchantment. As I've said, much of what I and many other Americans take for granted is a struggle for a lot of New Mexicans, sometimes by their choice. For example, unpaved streets are traditional in Santa Fe County and other places in New Mexico, and there is resistance to paving and other such un-green Anglo nonsense. Hardy self-reliance is an integral part of the local culture and social ethic, and yet people do rely on one another.

Tradition means a lot. Despite the fact that we've been coming here for over 20 years and have owned a house here for almost five years, we're still very much neophytes in matters of Tradition. It's unlikely we'll ever become fluent in local Tradition, but you never know.

We've brought a lot of California here, with more to come. That makes us exotics, especially given the fact that most of the Outlanders who move to this section of New Mexico are from Texas -- this area representing for them Freedom from the suffocation of Texas society and culture. While some of the local families have been here for generations, the area was not open for settlement until about 1900 thanks to an ongoing legal dispute between rival (Spanish) families that claimed the land. Ultimately, the court decided it belonged to neither of the disputants and opened it to settlement by all comers. Our place was one of about a dozen that are still standing that were built by the early settlers. Several of them are ruins or nearly so, but most are still inhabited, and that connection with the Old Days is an important consideration around here.

The older we get, the more those Old Days mean to us, too. Any Old Days.

Ack! Plumbers! Again!

Well.

They've come and gone, and they made discoveries.

Those of you who followed the saga of Casa Ché in California know of the seemingly interminable episode of The Plumbers wherein the water heater gave out early one AM leading to replacing all of the supply piping in the house (as well as the water heater) and also part of the drains and sewer piping. There was a break in the drain line out of the bathtub which probably would have gone unnoticed if not for the fact that the wall behind the tub was opened up to put in new copper piping. So all that had to be re-done, even as we thought things were about to get back to normal.

Here in New Mexico our place started out around 1900 as an adobe ranch house more or less in the middle of nowhere; it had no plumbing. Supposedly, this was the house where Toney Anaya grew up, though personally I don't believe it. The story he tells, the house where he grew up had dirt floors and no indoor plumbing until the later 1950s. This house has pretty much always had wood floors (mostly wide pine planks, but the north and south bedrooms have narrow floor boards, not sure what species, probably pine, too, but it actually looks like maple), and there was at least an attempt to put in plumbing in the 1930's as far as I can determine from the old piping and its location. In the 1950's, pretty early I'd say, a bathroom was installed in the older wing of the house, and a kitchen and laundry room were added to the front by enclosing what was the portal. That's basically how the house is now. Though we had a lot of renovations done, it was primarily to rehab the place from a ruin and make it liveable, not to change the footprint.

So yesterday morning, I noticed strange sounds coming from the plumbing in the bathroom. Gurgling, burping, and what sounded like water draining directly onto the ground under the floor. Not good. There wasn't really a back up, either, though the water was draining slowly. I decided I better call the plumbers.

They came, shortly -- within a few hours -- Rich and Chris, local fellows who hadn't had their lunch. They scoped out the situation, heard the sounds, said, "Oh dear," kind of like I did, and they called their boss, Fred, who came to look things over. It sounded like the sewer line had broken, no doubt about it, and Fred gave me two bids to replace the sewer line, one if the break was close to the toilet, the other (much bigger) if it was far and they had to dig extensively. Both were pretty reasonable for what would have to be done, so I said OK, and Rich commenced to open a small hole in the bathroom floor in order to see if he could determine where the break was.

I was in the other room while he and his helper Chris were doing their business in the bathroom. Suddenly everything went quiet. I checked, Chris was here by himself, Rich having left. Chris was peering into the hole.

"What's up?" I queried.

"Ohhhh," says Chris. "It's not broken."

"It isn't?"

"Nope. Gonna go run the snake."

So he does, opening up the cleanout in front of the house. Meanwhile, it seems like the whole world is coming over. Fred had called the utility Emergency Spot number to locate all the utility lines in case they had to dig. So the gas man came, and the electric co-op people came, and the phone man came, and someone from the water and sewer side, the cable guy too, an endless parade of semi-officials, one after the other. It was quite a show.

Chris busied himself with the snake, and sure enough, the drain ran free within a few minutes.

"Is it OK now?" I asked.

"Yup. Shoulda done that first. Rich jumped the gun and Fred just went along. It was only a clog. Rich went to get the bigger equipment, but we don't even need that. Everything's running fine now. I'll put the toilet back as soon as I can get a wax ring."

A few minutes later, Rich shows up looking sheepish. Chris asks if he has a wax ring. He does, so Chris goes to put the toilet back and clean up.

Rich explains what had happened. He said there was a clog pretty far down the sewer line, but the problem seemed to be that the sewer line was broken because no water was backing up into the house, which is usually what happens when the problem is a clog. Instead, he said, they found out when they opened the floor that the water was coming out right below the toilet flange, so it never got into the house, it was just pouring out under it. He said it was really soaked down there and it would be best to leave the hole open for several days to let things dry out. Run a fan.

So the sewer lines are fine? Seem to be. I told him that the supply piping had been replaced just before we bought the house five years ago. It was all that no-break-when-frozen plastic, and it worked well. All the other drains were OK so far as I knew. He said they'd only charge for the clog and a helper, and that was fine.

He asked if he could have the stump at the side of the house. I wondered what for. "Heat" he says. It was the only thing he could afford to keep warm. Oh. I said sure. Take it. It might provide a few days' heat in a good tight stove.

I had to pay for the plumbers at the hardware store in town since they weren't able to take charge cards at the job site. And I learned that there had been very little work for anyone in construction and plumbing and electrics and so on for quite some time. This was a big job, even though it turned out to be only a clog. And the rush to make it bigger, it seems, was in part due to the lack of work for so long before. They weren't trying to over bid or over charge at all -- at least not to my way of looking at it, if what we suspected was wrong had been wrong, they would have had a lot to do, and their charges for it were in line. The problem was, they hadn't tried to clear the clog first, which they really should have done.

And the idea that Rich actually needed the stump to heat his own house -- because he couldn't afford to pay for gas -- made me sad and confused at the same time. Gas (natural and LP) rates are not cheap in this area, but they aren't outrageously high, either. Our house doesn't have central heat. There's a big free-standing gas furnace in the living room and we use electric heaters in the bedrooms when needed. The adobe warms up after a few days and holds the heat. When we're not here, we keep the house at about 50 degrees; when we're here, it's 68-70. We haven't spent a whole winter here, but from the utility bumps in the weeks we have been here during cold weather, we figure winter heating costs at around $250 a month, which is higher than we pay in California -- it's a lot colder here! -- but not shocking.

Well, we say. Compared to what? You'd expect a plumber would make decent money, and heating his house wouldn't be that big an expense comparatively, but it turns out there's so little work in the field, nobody's making much money, and yes, heat is a huge expense comparatively. What I paid at the hardware store went right to paying the bill the plumbers had run up there for supplies and equipment. So... how do the plumbers get paid? I don't know. So yeah, take the stump. Please.

Of course a lot of folks around here heat with wood, either what they can chop or purchase already chopped or pellets, and it is overall, they say, about 30-50% less than gas or electricity. If they can get the wood free, it's gravy. Or at least a warmer few days.

The Endless Recession is partially to blame for this situation, but part of it is just the way things are here and have been for generations. So much of what lucky people like me take for granted is a struggle here -- and it has been for as long as anyone can remember. I realize how lucky we are and how little I really have to complain about.

It was a beautiful day yesterday, the sky an incredible deep blue, the clouds almost too pure in their whiteness. After all the excitement, I went to check for something in the van, and witnessed the most incredible sunset in the west. Well. Compared to what? We've shown pictures of New Mexico sunrises and sunsets to friends in California, and they always remark on how "unusual" it must be. And we say, no. It's practically every day. When I was driving over to the hardware store to pay the plumbers' bill, I caught my breath gazing at the mountains, as I do almost every time I come here. The mountains here are just a stunning sight, like the starry firmament at night, with bright stars all the way down to the horizon, the Milky Way shining bright, like nothing you would ever see in California unless you were in the high mountains on a good night.

Below is an incredible picture taken outside of Flagstaff, AZ, that appeared on APOD in 2008. It's consciously dramatic, showing the San Francisco Peaks enveloped in the clouds they attract (mountains do attract the clouds around these parts) and the Night Sky -- after long exposure. No, your eye doesn't quite see it this way, but the sensation of what you do see, on a clear night in Flagstaff, or from where I am now, is almost as strong.

Here in New Mexico

I bought the painting above some years ago. I don't know anything about the artist, nor do I know the title. I bought it because I liked it and it reminds me of the high desert country of New Mexico and Colorado. There's a place up toward Santa Fe on the local highway that reminds me of the log house in the painting. Of course I wonder what is going on with the man in the picture. Does he live there? Is he a neighbor? A stranger? An angel? A demon? Is he coming back from somewhere? Arriving for a visit? What's the story? Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this was painted as an illustration for a story.

The picture hangs in the north bedroom along with a number of other "blue"paintings -- not all of which are actually "blue" but which seem to carry out a theme. There's a painting of the cliffs and the Pacific in fog near Carmel that's very moody and chilly, which is sometimes exactly what the Pacific Coast is like. There's a painting of magnolia flowers on a table. It's old, painted on what might have been a cardboard box lid, and it's damaged, like somebody dropped a bowling ball on it. Yet hanging on the wall, it looks like it's always been there, and the damage isn't noticeable unless you peer very carefully.

There's a painting of a path through the redwood forest in the far north of California. I'm sure it was painted as an allegory, as the light is very focused ahead of the viewer, through the trees. It's probably fifty or more years old, and that's part of its charm. There are two Bob Ross style "mountain stream/mountain valley" paintings, obviously produced in a commercial setting and originally sold as "wall art." They aren't bad, really, now that they've got some age on them, and they have a certain airy imaginative quality that is spirit-lifting, whether that was the painters' intent or not.

There's also a large watercolor of a one room schoolhouse in California's Gold Country, painted by Art Ellis, who is primarily known as an art supply dealer. It's in a kind of primitive style, and it is highly evocative of the Gold Country but not at all an expected view.

Rounding out the collection in that bedroom is a large copy of Picasso's "Le Gourmand." It's obviously a copy, rather determinedly so, and almost cartoonish in its determination to copy Picasso and its brilliant blues and oranges and so forth. And hanging above the closet is a large Peruvian Andean needlework, in natural wool colors. It's quite charming, but doesn't really seem to fit with the other artworks in the room. Most of the other needleworks are in the hallway, but there wasn't enough room for this particular work there, so into the bedroom it went.

The south bedroom has a Picasso as well, an older print of "The Lovers". In this room there is a painting of what could be a Northern New Mexico homestead, with dog, but it's far from certain that's what it is. It could be California as well, except that in California, the old adobes are generally painted white, whereas in New Mexico they are almost invariably brown or tan.

There's a large watercolor of a floral display, an older R C Gorman print, a huge color photograph of Glacier National Park and "Going to the Sun" chalets, several smaller landscapes, and an impressionist "Paris Street Scene", obviously commercially produced some time in the 1950's. You would think. But something tells me these are still being ground out pretty much the same today.

In the living room are more paintings. There are desert landscapes. One is of the Panamints in Death Valley when the wild flowers are in bloom.




Another (it is a print c. 1944, though it looks like a painting) is of yuccas in bloom in a very green Mojave on a cloudy day. Having passed through the Mojave many times I wasn't convinced the green-ness in this picture was authentic until I was passing through the Mojave on one trip after a storm, and by golly, the whole scene was astonishingly green, and the yuccas were blooming vigorously. There's a landscape titled "Jack Tone Road" -- of what could be orchard trees, but it's not certain, painted in a very vigorous style. There's also a landscape of rolling hills dotted with farms, obviously not California or New Mexico, perhaps Wisconsin?, in an almost primitive style. There are a couple of other random landscapes, plus a painting on something like oiled paper of a sailboat in a roiling sea. Change of pace.

And by the fire, there's a painting of a California Valley Quail sitting on a branch; below is a covey of quail and in the distance is a large California barn. Yes, we brought a lot of California art to New Mexico, which is itself innundated with painters and paintings.

My favorite painting in the whole house, however, is an impressionist-pointilist landscape, very bright colors, of a river flowing between heavily treed banks. In the distance a mountain rises. This mountain has a very distinctive shape, its top a flat mesa, tilted at a jaunty angle. This mountain looks very much like the Pedernal Mesa out of Abiquiu that Georgia O'Keefe painted many times. If that's what is in this painting, then the river could be the Chama River. The only problem with this interpretation is that the area is not nearly lush as it appears in the painting, and the Chama is quite shallow, whereas the river in this painting looks quite deep. I'm suspecting therefore, this is a painting of a composite landscape. But I don't know. I just like it.

I make no pretence to being any sort of art critic or afficionado. I buy paintings and prints when they appeal to me, for all kinds of reasons. Although I have some abstract works, and have myself painted in the style, I don't hang any of them in New Mexico, at least not for now. As is obvious, I have an affinity for a particular sort of landscape -- paintings that evoke places or feelings I "know."

Most of my experience as a painter has been painting sets or doing set and costume renderings for the stage. Some of that has been pretty bold. To say the least. But most is really very mundane... kind of like the paintings I collect. Well, how about that!

I'm on dialup while I'm here so posting might be erratic.

I'm looking out the window at a brilliant blue sky, the sun shining on the big gnarled bare trees, the ancient tin-roofed shed and the coyote fence. There's just a little snow on the ground, but they say that weather is coming this weekend.

Arizona

It appears the State of Arizona has gone out of business. All but four of the highway rest areas are closed, the highway itself is falling to pieces, I hear they're closing state parks and even trying to sell the state capitol.

That's what happens when nobody wants to pay taxes at all. 

Thoughts before traveling

    I-40 outside of Grants, NM. Mount Taylor (Diné: Tsoodził) in the distance. March, 2008.


I'll be on the road tomorrow and Thursday, heading out to New Mexico to assess the situation. I got a call from a former neighbor a couple of weeks ago saying she hoped I be coming out to NM soon. She wouldn't say, exactly, but there might be a problem. I couldn't leave at the time because the painters were coming to paint the house in California as soon as there was any clear weather, which there was and they did. The weather turned ugly, however, and two of the three mountain ranges I have to cross were tied up in blizzards. Best to wait.

As far as I can tell, tomorrow will begin an fairly extended period of mostly clear weather from Southern California to mid New Mexico so I'll give it a try. The van is good in snow, but I'm not that fond of driving in a blizzard (which I've done a few times.) I've never been very good at driving in snow in any case, not having grown up with the White Stuff. When I was out in New Mexico in December, there was snow one morning, maybe two-three inches, hardly a blizzard, and most of it melted by noon. I went to get some supplies, and the lady at the store, perhaps after noticing my Californina license plates, went on at some length about the snowy conditions the previous week and how drivers who'd never been in anything worse than a slight dusting of snow come out there to the country and think they know how to drive. The wind up in the ditches or overturned on a patch of ice, and she thought they were just stupid. She said, "I remember when we used to get six to eight feet of snow at a time every winter. Now, we're lucky to get a whole foot of snow the whole season."

I gave her a look.

"When was the snowfall ever six or eight feet?" (That can sometimes happen in the Sierras, though rarely in one storm. It'll accumulate that much pretty quick, though.) She sort of muttered, "Oh, eight-ten years ago. Maybe 20. You know. It used to be bad. A lot worse than it is now. Where's your place?" I told her. She said, "Well, it's not so bad there, they plow and stuff, so you're probably OK. I live farther out, and they never clear the roads out there." Turns out where she lives, they're lucky to have electricity. And what they have goes out plenty often.

Parts of rural New Mexico are still very old-fashioned. To put it mildly. Our place is on a paved road, of all things. Electricity. Natural gas. Running water. Even sewer. Telephone and cable if I want it -- I won't have cable, though, so there's no teevee. Nothing comes in over the air. We can play videos and DVDs if we want. And of course there's radio, from Albuquerque and Santa Fe and parts east and west. It's pretty good in New Mexico, unlike some other parts of the country. Variety of formats, stations, and programming, some of it in Spanish, but New Mexico Spanish, which is distinctive, and I'm still learning some of its idioms. Some of the radio broadcasts are in Native languages, primarily Diné (Navajo), but also some of the Pueblo Keresan, Tiwa and other languages as well. And one of our old radios brings in good, clear shortwave stations from all over the place, including China and Europe. Some of it is in English!

UPDATE (02/24/10)

I like the fact that it's "starting" to dawn on some of the hotter legal shots on the Intertubes that the Department of "Justice" is pretty much irredeemably corrupted and politicized. Hm. Seems to have something to do with Careerist Margolis and his history as a "fixer" to smooth over otherwise inconvenient actions -- or as the case may be, lack thereof. Bmaz over at FDL gets into some of it. The sad thing, of course, as always, is that these revelations are given with only a sigh. As if nothing can be done about it except for Documenting the Atrocities.

For History's Sake. I guess. You know. If anyone ever gets around to probing What The Fuck Happened and all. 

Meanwhile, the Pauliacs have been tramping all over the place. One of the Greater Mysteries to me has been the need so many Libertarians and their fellow travelers have to masquerade as something they're not, for example as "Liberals." Even "Hard Left Liberals" the way Markos does.

They're mostly not Liberals at all, nor are they even remotely "Hard Left," but what happens when they put on this act -- and it is an act -- is that their position gets defined as "Left" or "Liberal" in the media and in the eyes of much of the public, even though they are Libertarians (big or little "L" it doesn't matter) who essentially despise the "Left" and all it stands for. World without end, Amen.

There's nothing more despicable in politics than this habit of The Masquerade. Everybody seems to do it -- if they want to be taken "seriously." They pretend to be what they are not, to believe what they don't, to support what they despise. This is apparently how politics is supposed to be done in the Big Boy's Club, and your position in the Club is based on how many of the Rubes you can fool and keep fooled by your little act.

Obama's mask is more than a little tattered these days, but he still maintains a solid "favorable" majority. Trouble is the minority is moving in for the coup de grace, and it could well be sooner than we think.

But on the Tubes, more and more are rightly questioning the "Lefty" cred of such luminaries as Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Markos Moulitsas, John Aravosis, Arianna and so on. As well they should. Jane has thrown her lot with the Pauliacs and Grover Norquist. Good luck with that. Glenn is becoming more and more strident and shrill in his antipathy toward anyone who doesn't share his rigidity and absolutism, which he calls "principle," no matter how wrong or dangerous it may be. Markos is just a joke. He was never a "Leftist" and his pose as Master of the Hard Left is absurd.  Aravosis has never been anything but a very staid, proper, and basically Old Line Republican who has been severely disappointed by his colleagues who don't support issues of basic fairness and civil rights on matters of Teh Ghey. And as for Arianna, ha ha ha ha.

The only really consistent Liberal/slightly Leftish predominant presence on the Intertubes has been Digby, and she has been moderating her positions for years so as not to raise the ire of the Big Libertarians whose influence on the Lefty Blogosphere is vastly disproportionate to their numbers.

The irony is that there should be no reason for Libertarians to play this little mind-fuck game, especially if they are sincere in their political ideology. Libertarianism may be puerile and impracticable, but it is an American ideology of longstanding, defensible (sort of) on its merits (such as they are), and there is no need to pretend to hold some other political position or to make believe that somehow Libertarianism and Liberal-Leftism are compatible. 

They aren't. In some respects they are mortal enemies. Just as Libertarianism is incompatible with  what is generally thought of as American Conservatism.

Where I'm headed, New Mexico, is full of Leftists -- the real kind -- Libertarians of all stripes, old line Conservatives, real honest-to-god tribes and tribalism, and plenty of pure addled nonsense from all over the political and social spectrum.

There's a reason Aldous Huxley chose it as the site of the Savage Reservation in "Brave New World." Maybe it's time to review.

So... time to pack up and head out. 

So Here's What Has to Happen -- and of course it won't

Protests in Washington DC at the first G W Bush inaugural -- that most Americans still have no idea happened at all -- on January 20, 2001. 

The Department of Justice must be abolished. The Federal Courts must be shut down. The Supreme Court must be reformed and the radical justices must be removed.

Of course it can't happen and it won't happen because no authority will take on the responsibility for doing it. The Congress is a joke, and the Executive has Other Priorities. The People have no direct power -- that they're willing to use -- at all.

Throughout the years since the Supreme Court lawlessly cancelled the 2000 election vote count and awarded the Presidency to George W. Bush, the very concept of the Rule of Law has come undone. It's simply meaningless. And the the fact that the vast majority of the DoJ's legal staff stays on the job no matter what, and the courts continue to follow the lead of a lawless and dangerous Supreme Court, and the Congress tries to come up with even more outrageous lawlessness, and the White House doesn't care and is generally disinterested in the whole mess makes a mockery of "justice" in this country.

Of course the DoJ could be shut down tomorrow if the legal staff walked out. They won't do it, but that would shut it down. If the SCOTUS minority simply refused to participate in any more rulings by that body and requested that, say, the Congress initiate impeachment proceedings -- for the entire Court -- there would be some notice taken.

If the either of those things happened, the Federal Courts could not function. And if all of it happened at once, perhaps the public would notice that the entire federal justice system has become so corrupted and politicized in this country that it shouldn't be allowed to function any longer.

It deserves to be shut down and regenerated/reformed from the ground up.

Which is why it will never happen barring Revolution that overthrows the entire rotten bunch of criminals who rule from behind the gates of their Palace on the Potomac.

Instead of what should be done, we will be treated to more endless arguments over more endless years, arguments over legal minutiae and parsing, we'll see ever more corrupt investigations and prosecutions, more authoritarianism, more autocracy, more torture, more excuses, and more dithering by the representatives of the People in Congress assembled, more outrageous and lawless rulings from the bench, more tired ennui from the legal profession, more careerism, more failure.

This path was laid out when protest against the lawlessness of the Supreme Court's rendering on December 12, 2000, was allowed to fade away and the ruling was widely accepted.

We know what's happened since, in the Name of the Law, and it ain't pretty.

Scott Horton has been chewing this cud for quite a while and his ruminations over the OPR report on the Torture Memos is worth a gander. But like too many others with a JD and a platform in this country, he is resigned to accept this outcome as just another sorry example of Things Gone Awry. Nothing to be done about it now. Pity.

Sigh.

Where are the Lawyers?

In Pakistan, when the government goes off the legal/lawful rails and into the ditch of arbitrary authority, the lawyers rise up, take to the streets, and demand redress, resignations, and restitution.

Not here. No way. A lawyer doing more than filing a suit or a brief? Unheard of! The very idea. Pshaw.

On Friday, the Justice (so-called) Department released the long-delayed OPR report on the malfeasance of John Yoo and James Bybee in preparing the notorious Torture Memos for use by the Bush Administration in coercing information and confessions from captives held in various places throughout our Nation's growing constellation of concentration camps and gulags for Taliban and Al Qaeda and miscellaneous resistance suspects.

The American legal profession demonstrated a signal lack of courage and leadership all through the depredations of the Bush years, and it continues to essentially stand aside as the Obama administration expands on the lawlessness of the Busheviks. The failure of the legal profession to raise its collective voice against the lawlessness that has been the widening American practice at home and abroad will be remembered as not just a failure of courage, but perhaps as the leading factor in the transformation of the American state from a faulty and balky self-governing Constitutional Republic into a thoroughgoing Imperial autocracy.

Some individual lawyers have certainly been both rebellious and courageous in opposition to the Bush regime and its factotums intent on establishing and institutionalizing an Imperial state based on domestic and international surveillance, lawless and arbitrary detention of those deemed to be Enemies of the State, and the projection of force -- through terror, random carnage, and torture -- throughout the world. Individual attorneys continue to stand up, some at considerable risk to themselves, but as a collective, the bar and bench, the legal profession as a whole, has been all but silent, when not actively complicit.

And it has been devastating for the Rule of Law and respect for the Rule of Law in this country and around the world.

This silence and complicity is a lasting stain on the American legal profession. And yet, even now, they evince no shame.

We are well and truly fucked.

The OPR Report

Over at Sully's Place at the Atlantic, the following is quoted from page 144 of the Report:

"I just hope that when all of this comes out, the institution doesn't take the hit, but rather the hit is taken by those individuals who occupied positions at OLC and OAG and were too weak to stand up for the principles that undergird the rest of this great institution," - Deputy AG Jim Comey, in an email to Chuck Rosenberg, p. 144 in the OPR Report.

Yes, well, Mister Comey, the institution has taken the hit, continues to take the hit, and will be subject to the contempt it has so richly earned so long as fundamental reform, from the ground up, is avoided. Not only has the institution of the Department of Justice been potentially irreparably harmed by the refusal of its leaders and staff to resist the imposition of this lawless regime, the entire legal profession has been soiled.

A fine mess.

And as if that weren't enough, the "Justice" Department also announces the official closing of the Anthrax Investigation, with the suicided Bruce Ivins as the only suspect.

Ain't we got fun.

Please enjoy Marcy Wheeler's deconstructions:

The OPR: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/02/19/opr-report-working-thread/

The Anthrax: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/02/19/doj-anthrax-report-working-thread/

On Stack

Burn baby burn.

The other day, a very disturbed middle aged man flew his private plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in what appears to have been a fairly spectacular Propertarian protest at his incessant pilferage by the taxing authorities and the professional classes he turned to for help against the depredations.

They were all trying to take his stuff, so what he did was get up off his chair, turn off his teevee and computers, put a match to his big suburban house, get in his airplane and fly it into the IRS offices -- killing one and injuring some dozen others -- and leave a hearty "Fuck you all!" note to anyone who would question his actions.

OK then. Joe Stack is the latest Patriot Hero.

And the Bourgeoisie Arises.

All they needed was permission and a spark. Now it's on.

Save us all from this sort of crap.

While I point out that this man was a Propertarian who was apparently radicalized to violence in Texas, many have run around claiming "Oh no! He was a Marxist! He mentioned Communism and quoted Marx and denounced Capitalism and everything! See?"

Yes. Well. Apparently the term "Irony" has lost all meaning, and nobody has any idea how you can mention Communism and quote Marx and denounce Capitalism and be a Propertarian.

Is there a public educational system at all in this country any more? If so, what is its function? Can we dispose of it and get another? Please?

I read this man's screed -- hardly the Manifesto it's made out to be -- every single word, and it is plain as day that Joe Stack was a Propertarian pushed to the wall beset by all the demons of hell who were trying to take his stuff. His outrage at what the IRS was doing in trying to assess taxes on his income and property and what he had been through in trying to get help from professionals and at what had happened to his various piles of savings squirreled away for a rainy day and his retirement, and on and on and on was the standard Propertarian litany of woe at trying one's damnedest to be independent of all the fetters of the communal society, only to be subject to the constant theft of one's property the government and the elites. It's never ending. They won't let up.

Well, if you don't want them to get your stuff, what do you do? Of course, you put it in a pile and burn it all to ashes, then you get in your plane and you crash it into the offices of those who have made you so miserable for so long.

Anybody knows that. Arise! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

See how it works?

The Auto-bio

Despite the fact that I've been fairly active on the internets since the latter 1990's (at least), I've never really been one to say much about myself, as I prefer to let my posts and comments speak for themselves.

But I realize my reluctance to say much about myself has given rise to all kinds of sometimes silly speculation and assumptions about me, my background, my interests and proclivities, and most especially about my political ideology.

Anyone who goes by the Internet name of Ché Pasa must be a Revolutionary, right?

Heh.

Well, I'm a rebel, yes. Always been one, no doubt will be one to my dying day.

But Revolution? That's going a bit far. Even for me. And as we know, Real Revolutionaries despise Rebels.

The basics run something like this:

I'm 60-something, more or less "retired", been married (to the same woman) for over 40 years, have been living in Northern California, mostly in the Sacramento area, for more than 50 years. I was born in Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi, part of that great big Post-War Baby Boom. My father was an attorney, from a family of attorneys; Irish-German Catholics. My mother was a rebel, from a family of rebels, a redheaded Irish spitfire, you might say. No religious upbringing or faith for her.

I recently ended a ten year stint as a Federal employee. Before that I was a founder and producing director of a theater company. Over the course of ten years' operation, we produced approximately 140 plays and staged readings of original works. Before that I worked primarily in theater and other show business endeavors like opera and circus and film and so forth for more than twenty years. Before that I was a student, got a degree -- actually a couple of them -- in art and design and theater arts. I've written plays, acted, directed, designed, and produced plays, altogether many hundreds. I've worked coast to coast, and from Alaska to Florida.

We live in California and have a house in New Mexico where I sometimes go on hiatus, and where, when we are completely retired, my wife and I (with the cats) intend to deposit ourselves for the duration. Our house in California has been undergoing periodic and extensive deferred maintenance, like new plumbing and so on. The painters just finished the other day. Now I'm trying to get the windows to work again.

My parents are dead long since and no wonder. My father was born in 1901, my mother in 1911. They lived longer than their parents did. All of my grandparents were dead well before I was born. I had an autistic half-brother who died some years ago in an institution. My half-sister was a therapist at Atascadero State Hospital. She died as consequence of injuries she sustained in a take down of an unruly patient/prisoner with whom she was working.

We have no children of our own, but we have -- sort of -- raised a number of strays, including various nieces. My nephew became another niece a couple of years ago, while s/he was still in the National Guard.

I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat. That means I vote for the Democrat -- if I vote at all. I have been active in the past in party politics in California and in New Mexico, was a very active campaign worker for Howard Dean. I have been involved in numerous social justice campaigns, specifically with the Rainbow Coalition and the NAACP, and a wide range of community groups, going back to my high school days.

As I've written on a number of occasions, I was deeply affected by the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964 and 1965. It showed me that change was not only possible, it was essential if Americans were to salvage the nation and their future from corporate doom. Well, I guess that didn't work out so well.

I participated in the usual protests against the Vietnam War and instigated a few of them. I dropped out in a manner of speaking, and by that I mean I did not follow the staid middle class course laid out for me, but resisted it at practically every turn, resistance which of course made my life somewhat more difficult than it might otherwise have been. And yet my life has been extraordinarily rewarding in other ways. I seem to have a biological intolerance for recreational drugs and alcohol. Damn.

I've organized street theater, marches, protest demonstrations, and various kinds of non-violent actions on behalf of political and social justice.

Your typical. The usual.

While I tried blogging even before Blogger came on the scene, I was never able to sustain the craft; too many other things going on. But Ché (What You Call Your) Pasa -- a name that came from someone who read a comment of mine at Digby's Place (I think) -- has been going pretty well since 2007, so maybe is will continue. I am not in the business of blogging, however, and I have no illusions that my output will ever attract a wide readership. Of some interest to me is the fact that my Tenement Housekeeping series of posts has attracted far more readers than all my political drivel put together.

Go figure.

I spent ten months, from October 2008 to July 2009 as my mother-in-law's primary care giver while she was in Hospice Care At Home. I wrote about that here, too. I am still profoundly moved by the experience and by her example.

And for those who need it, my email address is chewhatyoucallyourpasa at hotmail.com.

Any questions?

[Note: the auto in the picture above is the 1942 Packard Clipper that sat in the driveway of the house where we lived in Santa Maria on California's Central Coast; the sneering (or is it squinting?) boy in the picture is my own self, age approximately 3.]

Formalism and Legalism versus Justice and Sir Thomas More

I ended yesterday's post on this note:

[Note: I would ask those who use the "Giving the Devil the Benefit of the Law" scene in "A Man for All Seasons" as justification for putting terrorism suspects in Federal Court whether they believe Justice was done in the trial of Sir Thomas More. If so, how? And if not, why not? It is the fundamental issue here. And it is, perhaps, what the theme of this whole blog has been.]

The point being, of course, that Sir (later Saint) Thomas More had all the advantages of Law and extensive Due Process as it was conceived at the time, and many, many, many opportunities to recant, confess, sign, -- to do his liege lord's bidding, in other words. And he refused. Adamantly. He refused on the basis of Law, he refused on the basis of Custom, he refused on the basis of Honor, he refused on the basis of Process, he refused on the basis of Conscience and Higher Law, he refused on the basis of the Rights and Privileges of an Englishman, a Gentleman, and on and on.

Yet all the forms of the Court were followed, perhaps too exactly, and all the legal niceties were observed, and Sir Thomas was beheaded at the Tower for his trouble, and the trouble he had given the King. The charge was High Treason; the crime was Sir Thomas's failure to obey.

And I asked, "Was Justice done?"

Perhaps the answer is another question: "For whom?"

The King had a desire, and under the circumstances, a necessity to assert his power and authority over his subjects especially with regard to marriage (his own) and the succession to the Crown. In doing so, he broke with the long-held British royal custom of submission to Papal authority in matters spiritual as well as temporal. In doing that, he violated both custom and law; by his command, law was brought into conformity with his desire. Sir Thomas's refusal to submit to this King's law was the source of the charge of High Treason, which ultimately resulted in his trial and execution. This rid the realm of one dissenter from the rule and authority of the King to assert his power over God's Law -- as it was understood at the time -- but there would be more, oh so many more, and in due time, there would come a Civil War in Britain over such matters as the authority of the Crown over the lives and religion of its subjects, among other things.

Was Justice done in Sir Thomas's case?

If you believe that following the forms and the due processes of the Law is the definition of Justice, then Justice was done. Even if the outcome was wrong in some higher sense, Sir Thomas was not subjected to the arbitrary authority of a lawless monarch.

If you believe that Justice is to be found in the actions taken to fulfill the requirements of the Rules of the Game, in other words, then you cannot but agree that Justice was indeed done in the case of Sir Thomas More.

That was certainly King Henry's belief, sorry as he was about the outcome and all that.

But Sir Thomas was arrested, held and tried on trumped up charges and he was convicted on false witness. Surely that cannot be Justice even to a formalist and legalist for whom all things boil down to following correct procedure and applying the law as it is written and received. But if the charges are trumped up and the witness is false, how is the Law to know that? How is a follower of Legalism and Formalism to know that? And if there is no such knowledge, how can there be injustice when the forms of the law and the rules of procedure are followed?

We know now that the charges were trumped up and the witness was false, and so we can say now that perhaps there was some injustice done in the case of Sir Thomas More, but was it known at the time? And if it was, who knew? Did the Court know? If the Court did not know, then wasn't the judgment of the Court correct according to both Law and Procedure, and wasn't the sentence just under the law at the time?

And yes, Sir Thomas lost his head, but there is nothing to be done about that now, and besides, the Church later canonized him, so he got a kind of comeuppance -- if not exactly Justice -- in the end anyway, didn't he?

Sir Thomas wrote about Justice in his Utopia, and as we consider the differences between formalism and legalism on the one hand, and Justice on the other, we might do well to consider Sir Thomas's own thoughts on the matter.

From Utopia: [A long excerpt]

They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations, whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.


They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws; and therefore they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places the client trusts it to a counsellor. By this means they both cut off many delays, and find out truth more certainly: for after the parties have laid open the merits of the cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to run down: and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labor under a vast load of laws. Every one of them is skilled in their law, for as it is a very short study, so the plainest meaning of which words are capable is always the sense of their laws. And they argue thus: all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may know his duty; and therefore the plainest and most obvious sense of the words is that which ought to be put upon them; since a more refined exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would only serve to make the laws become useless to the greater part of mankind, and especially to those who need most the direction of them: for it is all one, not to make a law at all, or to couch it in such terms that without a quick apprehension, and much study, a man cannot find out the true meaning of it; since the generality of mankind are both so dull and so much employed in their several trades that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity requisite for such an inquiry.


Some of their neighbors, who are masters of their own liberties, having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which they observe among them, have come to desire that they would send magistrates to govern them; some changing them every year, and others every five years. At the end of their government they bring them back to Utopia, with great expressions of honor and esteem, and carry away others to govern in their stead. In this they seem to have fallen upon a very good expedient for their own happiness and safety; for since the good or ill condition of a nation depends so much upon their magistrates, they could not have made a better choice than by pitching on men whom no advantages can bias; for wealth is of no use to them, since they must so soon go back to their own country; and they being strangers among them, are not engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and it is certain that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice or partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice, the chief sinew of society.


The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from them, neighbors; but those to whom they have been of more particular service, friends. And as all other nations are perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any State. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of leagues and treaties. We know how religiously they are observed in Europe, more particularly where the Christian doctrine is received, among whom they are sacred and inviolable; which is partly owing to the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly to the reverence they pay to the popes; who as they are most religious observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs; and when fainter methods do not prevail, they compel them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if men who are particularly distinguished by the title of the "faithful" should not religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in that newfound world, which is not more distant from us in situation than the people are in their manners and course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to escape at; and thus they break both their leagues and their faith. And this is done with such impudence, that those very men who value themselves on having suggested these expedients to their princes, would with a haughty scorn declaim against such craft, or, to speak plainer, such fraud and deceit, if they found private men make use of it in their bargains, and would readily say that they deserved to be hanged.


By this means it is, that all sorts of justice passes in the world for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of royal greatness. Or at least, there are set up two sorts of justice; the one is mean, and creeps on the ground, and therefore becomes none but the lower part of mankind, and so must be kept in severely by many restraints that it may not break out beyond the bounds that are set to it. The other is the peculiar virtue of princes, which as it is more majestic than that which becomes the rabble, so takes a freer compass; and thus lawful and unlawful are only measured by pleasure and interest. These practices of the princes that lie about Utopia, who make so little account of their faith, seem to be the reasons that determine them to engage in no confederacies; perhaps they would change their mind if they lived among us; but yet though treaties were more religiously observed, they would still dislike the custom of making them; since the world has taken up a false maxim upon it, as if there were no tie of nature uniting one nation to another, only separated perhaps by a mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of hostility, and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their neighbors against which there is no provision made by treaties; and that when treaties are made, they do not cut off the enmity, or restrain the license of preying upon each other, if by the unskilfulness of wording them there are not effectual provisos made against them. They, on the other hand, judge that no man is to be esteemed our enemy that has never injured us; and that the partnership of the human nature is instead of a league. And that kindness and good-nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever; since thereby the engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.

One cannot read Sir Thomas's considerations of Justice in his Utopia without recognizing that he is condemning both Legalism and Formalism as means to achieve Justice, and that our own Founders were more than a little influenced by Sir Thomas's vision of what the Law -- and what Justice -- should be in an ideal state and society.

But still the question remains, was Justice done in the trial and execution of Sir Thomas More? If so, how? If not, why not?