Posted by paul novak on August 7, 2010 at 12:47 am
Warning. Political ranting ahead……
While the partisan credulous bask in the false security of their “safe” jobs and precarious health insurance plans decrying the evils of their chosen opposition, Americans spend another day looking for work that doesn’t exist and grapple with the reality of being denied healthcare for easily treated illnesses because their own health insurance was cancelled when they fell ill. While the partisan credulous lockstep with their political idols and hold the party line regardless of its irrationality or consequence, Americans worry for their children’s futures.
When politicians rally their faithful and the partisan credulous heed the call, they enjoin the mindless war of manufactured false ideologies, demonizing those who question or disagree. They attack and battle over ephemeral beliefs and impractical, nostalgic, obsolete and irrelevant values that should they win the war, hold no hope for repairing the damages caused by the battles. As this country continues to struggle with unemployment, recession, illegal immigration, and a changing world stage that threatens to thrust us into obscurity and irrelevancy if we cannot bring ourselves to face the facts of reality, the partisan credulous would claw each other like rats on a sinking ship; they will go down and drown like the rest, and all their clawing and biting will do nothing to stop the rush of the water.
We cannot continue to label and divide ourselves with ridiculous and asinine party affiliations. We cannot continue to judge the character and moral value of our fellow countrymen on their political leanings. This kind of internal division and strife is responsible for much of the senseless death and destruction that currently holds large portions of the globe in the grip of darkness. Do we really want to become like those nations divided by imaginary lines; where political murders are commonplace and no one trusts anyone? Where freedom is hollow and your neighbor may be your blood enemy simply because of his thoughts?
We are rushing headlong towards a future where our country’s biggest threat comes not from some outside aggressor, but from within, from ourselves. Our national identity, our sense of community and country is becoming lost in a sea of uncontrolled and undirected immigration, confused incomprehension of constitutional law, ludicrous political correctness, greed, and unrestrained abuse of bastardized capitalist ideals. We have no right to point to the left and scream, “It’s all your socialist programs fault!”. We have no right to point to the right and accuse, “Your irrational right wing lunacy is tearing this country apart!”. We have only ourselves to blame.
We can only look to ourselves and realize that it is our own gullibility, credulous natures, and irrational behaviors that have allowed politicians and corporate leaders to exploit this nation and ourselves in their quests for power and fortune. It’s our fault we are in this mess and rather than accept responsibility for the mess, like spoiled children we point the finger and blame Johnny next to us. We don’t need a third political party to balance things out. We don’t need political placating and promises to “find a way to reach across the aisle”. We need to remove the aisle. We need to do away with the division.
We need to tell our politicians to stop the ideological warring, and get back to doing the job of running this country, of addressing the problems that plague us. We need to retake our country from those who have made the war of political ideologies the be all end all of the game. I say outlaw the organized political party. From where I am standing, I can’t see a single thing to lose by doing so. In fact, it looks to me like we have nothing to lose but one hell of a lot of dead weight.
Continue Reading
Posted by paul novak on May 21, 2010 at 7:49 pm
I hate second guessing myself. It’s worse when you made a decision in opposition to an irrational minority as vociferous as the Tea Party. It doesn’t matter if your objections have nothing to do with ridiculous claims of Marxism or over-taxation; they’ll still insist, “We told you so!”. Never mind that they never had a valid point to begin with. It’s irrationality, it’s what they do.
It’s even worse when at the time of that decision, your options were as limited as the ones presented in the last election where we had the choice between an untested and unproven, yet intelligent and intellectual presidential candidate, and one who’s judgment and career left more than a little to be desired. Seriously, who picks as a running mate someone who can’t even name a single magazine they claim to have read more than once or twice?
It’s with heavy heart that I accept that our president, the guy I had hoped would be the arbiter of the so badly needed renewal and reform of our political system, has already succumbed to that very system. In less than two years, he has started showing all the signs of bias and credulous ideology that I had hoped his intelligence would allow him to exert restraint over.
After a string of optimistic achievements and policy decisions, it appears he is caving in to political correctness and partisan pandering. Rather than take a truly intellectually honest approach to the immigration situation in Arzona, he has chosen to instead ignore the rule of law, in favor of embracing minority perceptions. Illegal immigration is not a social problem facing American citizens. It is a security problem facing our nation. The constitution and our laws clearly dictate where our government’s responsibilities lie in this matter, and it is only by deliberately ignoring those laws and responsibilities that our president can insist on opposing enforcement. This has concerned me greatly. If our president is not willing to support our immigration laws and the efforts made by states to enforce them, where does it end?
Today marks another blow to my confidence in president Obama’s ability to truly effect reform and improvement of the political and economic systems that underpin our country’s strength. In the approval by the Senate of the reform bill, it’s been heavily played up that this is the most sweeping reform since the great depression. If you want to accept merely on technicality, then this is indeed true. The bill heading for law however has some serious problems. Because much was made of the government’s bailout of large corporations and financial institutions, a lot of the bill has been geared towards preventing this from happening again.
The problem however is not that the government performed these bailouts. They were necessary. The problem is that they were necessary at all. In probably his biggest blunder ever, President Bill Clinton at the end of his term signed the Graham-Leach act, and effectively destroyed perhaps the most important and effective piece of financial regulation ever devised. Even before this signing destroyed Glass-Steagall, forces were marshalling to pounce and exploit the newly exposed weaknesses of our financial system. Most notable of these were Citigroup, which at the time was in direct violation of Glass-Steagall under the assumption that G&S would be repealed before compliance would be forced.
Thanks to historic lobbying efforts by groups such as Citi, it was indeed removed. Immediately afterwards, huge mergers were created, and the risking of depositor funds began with a vengeance. In short order, all manner of schemes and shady tactics were devised to increase and inflate depositor values, with sub prime loans and mortgages being the most notable of these. Even before all of this took place, the more rational among our politicians and economists warned of the inevitable collapse that would follow. In less than 5 years, this collapse began, within 7 it was here.
This new “sweeping and historic” reform does absolutely nothing to repair this damage. In every effort by democrats and moderate republicans to force control of derivatives and the risking of public deposits, corporate influenced politicians have won out. Every measure intended to return some of the control Glass-Steagall once provided has been met with implacable opposition, and proponents of true and effective legislation have lost. In effect, we have done nothing about how we have gotten here, and ensured that should it happen again, and it will, we will have even less ability to deal with it.
President Obama has failed on these counts, and they are issues that will directly determine the state of our nation in a very short period of time. We are not looking at possible problems five or ten years down the road. We are looking at problems hitting us in less than two, and hitting us hard.
Objective and unbiased consideration of these subjects paints a pretty clear picture. Illegal aliens are in violation of our laws, and are having a detrimental effect on our nation. The large majority of Americans are in favor of enforcing the laws. There is no factual basis for bending or changing these laws. The mitigating factors are weak, and do not outweigh the greater good of legal citizens. Thus, efforts should be towards enforcing our laws, penalizing those who violate them and closing the loopholes that allow for exploiting illegal aliens. Yet president Obama for all his vaunted intelligence and pragmatism, has done nothing of the sort, and has indicated he has no intentions of doing so.
In the matter of financial reform and regulation, he has allowed a weak and ineffectual piece of legislation to gain approval instead of fighting for true reform and regulation that would have made the most difference. We don’t need to outlaw future bailouts. We need to outlaw the practices that made them necessary. What is heading for his desk is not reform, and will serve only as a technical victory for the president and a major victory for Wall Street, while at the same time representing a major loss for the American citizen.
I am rapidly losing my faith here. While I will never regret choosing Obama-Biden over McCain-Palin, I fear that I will eventually come to regret having given a damn at all.
Edite May 23rd
New financial rules might not prevent next crisis
Well gee, it took until AFTER the legislation heads for final reoncilliation that these concerns are mentioned in the press? Seriously, if anyone doubts the power of Wall Street, look no further than this.
Continue Reading
Posted by paul novak on May 14, 2010 at 9:40 pm
For background on this rant, visit The Other98% and their page on their open letter regarding the new law in Arizona. It bothered me mainly because they are an as yet untested group yet had an excellent platform that appeared to be based in a rational opposition to all the irrational rhetoric against our new presidential administration. With this letter, they have completely destroyed any credibility they may have had as a legit voice of the majority, and solidly placed themselves within the same framework of irrational partisan ideology as the Tea Party.
From the very opening, this letter makes clear that its authors are approaching from a political ideology, and not from a basis in reason or rationality. There is so much mischaracterization and disingenuous proselytizing in it that it is very hard to take it even a little bit seriously.
I’m disappointed more than anything, as my initial reasons for patronizing The Other98% involved the very worthwhile voice it gave to the reasonable among us who understand that running a country costs money, and that our current administration is in fact doing a pretty good job all things considered.
However.
With these forays into the illegal alien debacle, (I refuse to even allow them to be called illegal immigrants, because they are not immigrants, but foreigners who are in this country in violation of its laws and nothing more) The Other98% obliterates any resemblance it had to a non partisan voice of reason that represents the majority.
This could have been avoided, by eschewing the usual PC rhetoric and partisan leanings in favor of an honest appraisal of the situation. Instead, 98% has chosen to stand firmly in the camp of those who simply refuse to accept that this country is a nation of duly enacted laws, and that no amount of pleading for special consideration changes the fact that illegal aliens do not have a right to be here. From its opening statement of Tyranny in America, to its claims that any attempt to enforce immigration law is defacto racial profiling, this letter is a poorly constructed exercise in irrationality.
The authors further demonstrate a complete naiveté in understanding how the law works, or how police officers enforce the law in the performance of their duties. In the very first paragraph, a fallacy is established and cemented as premise, which deconstructs the heart of the letters intent. It erroneously asserts that because of the law passed in Arizona regarding illegal aliens, native citizens will be required to produce “papers” on the whim of law enforcement officers.
Despite the fact that the writers assert that this law means we will all suddenly have to carry with us proof of citizenship, the reality is that this simply isn’t true. To begin with, in almost every state, we already have to carry our “papers” with us wherever we go, especially when driving or engaging in any activities that require us to establish our legally earned privileges such as driving a vehicle, or require us to prove our identity such as when cashing a check. These are not “papers” as the opponents of Arizona’s law like to assert, but necessary forms of identification that protect citizens and the government. Drivers licenses, state ID cards, SS cards, and the like all serve to provide us with a way to reasonably assure ourselves that someone is who they actually claim they are.
Unlike the term “papers” so commonly bandied about which originated from Nazi Germany and Hitler’s efforts to identify and purge Jews. Producing papers in Hitler’s Germany meant that you had to produce your government issued cards identifying not if you were a legal citizen or who you said you were, but that you were not part a government designated ethnic group.
The connotations reaching back to Nazi Germany and the atrocities facilitated by the use of government papers designating people for oppression and genocide is disgusting, and Arizona in no way deserves such comparisons. Far from “defacto” racial profiling such as “papers please”, just like in any other normal performance of his duties, a police officer merely asks for identification.
Whether he is stopping you for a broken taillight or questioning someone about shoplifting, he is perfectly well within the law to ask for it and few would argue that it is not necessary, nor that it is racially motivated. Neither is race involved when someone fails to produce identification, and failure to do so constitutes reasonable suspicion a person is possibly in violation of the law since the mere act of failing to produce it is alone often an offense.
With reason established to further investigation, it is entirely logical that an officer then make further efforts to identify the individual. Whether this is through requesting another form of identification, checking whatever name is proffered against official databases, or noting whether information supplied matches or contradicts other information such as a vehicle registration, an officer is again entirely within the law to do so.
This happens every day across the United States, and to date, no one has brought suit claiming this is some sort of racial profiling. Going further, assuming that an officer has conducted preliminary investigation and found an individual has not produced identification, cannot provide reasonable explanation as to why he has not, and further cannot provide any supporting evidence of his legal status, whether it be no outstanding warrants or pending legal actions or judgments he is under obligation to comply with, an officer is then even further justified in continuing his investigation. It is at this point, that circumstantial indicators come into play. Can the individual speak any English? Can they provide explanation of their activities?
It should be obvious by now, that racial considerations are not only unnecessary but irrelevant here. You could put a blindfold on an officer, and he could easily form suspicion that an individual is not who they claim to be, may have outstanding actions against him pending, and that further investigation is warranted. It is at this point, that an officer has the discretion to either take the person into custody for further investigation, or let them go, and none of it has anything to do with their ethnicity. Which again, happens all the time in the United States, and is neither tyrannical nor dictatorial in nature.
The only thing this law does, is encourage police officers to also include the possibility that an individual may be in this country illegally, and bases this possibility on the reasonable logic born of the fact that in Arizona, there is an above average statistical chance that they are. This is no different than law enforcement noting an upswing in drunken driving incidents and instituting a program of stopping and checking drivers at random. It is no different than officers noting an upswing in late night crime, and stopping more people on the street for random checks. It is no different at all.
The problem here is that we as a nation have forgotten our own history. Although we are a young country, we have established a rich and proud cultural heritage that was in large part born of the early twentieth century period of legal immigration. It used to mean something to people who saved, worked, fought, and earned their way to becoming an American. It was a source of pride to have learned English, passed the tests, and earned the right to call yourself an American. We have forgotten what being an American means, and just how important our identity as Americans is to our sense of national pride and cultural togetherness.
No longer do we have masses of immigrants doing everything they can to learn about our country, learn our constitution and history, and fighting for a chance to become a legal citizen and build a new life for themselves and their families through honest work and accepting the responsibilities of a legal citizen to this country.
Instead we have illegal aliens ignoring our laws and insisting on insulting our national identity by throwing theirs in our faces by ignoring our flag in favor of displaying their own. Exploiting and abusing the rights held by legal citizens by cheating their way onto our social roles, and demanding they be given the same rights and benefits as legal citizens in open defiance of our justice system. They cheat the system and force legal citizens to bear the burden of their presence through strained social programs, reduced wages, lost revenues, and unprosecutable crimes. They expect us to change our culture and our society so that they can survive in this country. They expect Americans to learn their language, support their cultural beliefs, and ignore our own if it is unacceptable to them.
They demand support and inclusion at the expense of our own citizen’s rights and needs which justly come far far before theirs.
That is the true wrong here. That is the real travesty. And the real Tyranny is not in asking someone to identify themselves. No. The real tyranny is in trying to force the legal and lawful citizens of this country to accept the burden of allowing millions of people to enter this country illegally, and forcing them to change their lives, their culture, and their national identity just so those who enter illegally will be happy here.
Truth is, if you are not interested in respecting our laws? If you are not interested in taking the time and trouble to learn what it means to be an American? If you cannot be bothered to put yourself out for something as piddling as becoming an American citizen in both heart and mind? Then perhaps, just maybe, we shouldn’t worry ourselves about accommodating you.
I sincerely wish Arizona good luck, and salute them in their efforts to enforce the laws that our Government under the obligations dictated to it by the United States Constitution has failed to uphold. I am sorry 98%. But you are just plain wrong on this one.
Continue Reading
