Tests of Ideology

So, the sequester is definitely a thing that's going to happen now. And I suppose the messaging from the Republican Party is at least acquiring a new consistency; from what I can see, they're starting to adopt the idea that from their point of view, the sequester is a flat-out win for them. Smaller government is going to happen, and it's going to happen through spending cuts. Aside from the defense cuts, what is there to dislike from the conservative side of the argument?

Anyone familiar with the things I usually write here on this blog could probably guess, then, that I absolutely despise this entire idea. To me, this is going to mean a reduction in the government's ability to function. And in all honesty, that's not really up for debate! Of course less money is going to mean that the government can't do as much.

The question is whether that's desirable. In the article I linked, Speaker Boehner characterized the dispute thusly: that the debate was "how much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government." That's not how I view the matter.

I look at what the government does with its money - with the majority of the federal budget going to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Cuts to these programs reduce the resources available to members of "the American people". These are the people least able to make up for the shortfall. These are the people who we've made commitments to when these programs were created. And the programs that help them are solvent for at least the next several decades.

Then there's defense. I think there are very definite benefits to continuing military development, ensuring that the United States has the most powerful military force in the world. I think that the presence of weapons does not imply their use, and I think it's a very good idea to be prepared for the case (however unlikely) that someone in the world decides to use force against us. I don't think it's in the interests of "the American people" to have a substantially weaker military thanks to defense cuts.

The last category of government spending? Discretionary spending. If people really think it's productive or useful to go through that list item by item, picking individual bits out as unnecessary, be my guest, I suppose? But I don't see how it will produce a smaller government to pull out million-dollar line items from a federal budget in the trillions... and this is the category that includes things like infrastructure and education, things that are absolutely essential to any semblance of a comfortable life for "the American people".

And you know what? Then there's the personal level. I see people lined up for furloughs and layoffs, as the government is forced to cut back on budgets everywhere, including personnel. That's members of "the American people" that now have less money, that are forced to find new jobs (or forced to do less of the jobs they have) because this sequester is going through. I'm sure those people are quite pleased that the government is... now denying them the money they otherwise could have had...?

If there's a simple way to sum this up: every cent of government spending is designed to be a benefit to the American people.

I'm open to having a discussion on that! Perhaps some government spending doesn't actually provide any benefit. Perhaps in six months we'll find that very little harm has actually been caused to the American people as a result of the sequester (although heaven only knows how we'll even make that determination). If that actually comes to pass, I'll definitely need to do some rethinking on how much government spending is necessary or desirable.

I just wish there was a way to have that discussion and conduct that test of ideology without actually screwing people over if things end the way I expect them to.

League of Legends Championship Series

I'm usually optimistic about my ability to change even something as broad as the culture and society we live in. It helps, of course, that I live in a time when I can watch that society change right before my eyes. Little changes, perhaps - maybe the concert features a purely computer-generated singer, instead of a live person, and still draws major attendance in cities across the country from the actual concert (yay simulcasting). Even if it's a little thing, it would have been unimaginable ten years ago.

Or, you know, maybe an online video game kicks off the start to a league that draws hundreds of thousands of viewers on its opening two days of matches.

The League of Legends Championship Series (or the LCS for short) is, perhaps, not that much of an innovation. These kinds of leagues have existed in Asia (particularly Korea) for years, to my understanding. It is most assuredly something new in the United States, if nothing else. And speaking as someone who (currently) lives in the United States, it is quite definitely exciting. (There's also a new European league, for people on that side of the Atlantic.)

I think it's certainly been the case that video games can have somewhat of a bad reputation outside gaming circles. Indeed, anything that takes place online or uses a computer can be negatively defined as "not real", as if something requires physical form to be counted as "real". I should probably back away from the philosophical minefield that I'm about to step into, but suffice to say that I don't think Miku is any less "real" for being a computer construct, to take one example.

And this kind of bias against online society as somehow less than face-to-face interaction is very much alive and well today, in case you were curious. "The online, social media stuff does not matter because it is behind a computer", you say...?

These people in the LCS are making a living off of video games. They are professional sports players, in a very real sense, although perhaps less well paid than some sports stars. We live in a world where the definition of the word "sports" is changing before our eyes - to accommodate this idea of "e-sports", the arrival of video games on a professional stage.

Don't tell me that it can't be done. It's being done as we speak.

(Oh, and in a development as critically important as any of the above, my favorite team kicked major butt, going 3-0 in the first week. Priorities!)

A Tribute to Aaron Swartz

This blog's Internet tag serves as a useful way of getting at everything I've ever written about online society. Shocking, I know, the tag serving its stated purpose! More importantly, in light of recent events, it is an excellent way of reading everything I've ever written about... well, what I have called "piracy" in the past, but what the subject of this post would probably not describe as such.

Yeah, I know, I'm a good three days late. Whenever it comes to writing about major events, this always seems to happen...

I digress. In case anyone wasn't already aware, Aaron Swartz committed suicide a few days ago, at 26 years old. I was only passingly familiar with his work and his ideas, despite the connection that I had to his family (one which I won't describe in detail, in keeping with my tradition of not discussing personal matters in this forum). Indeed, I don't feel informed enough even to provide a summary of his life; I would encourage people to follow the link to the Wired article for that.

Although, given some of the things I have found online in the wake of this tragic loss, I can safely say that I can add one more person to the list of people with whom I would love to meet and talk to in person... or rather, the subset of that list that is made up of the people for which that will never again be possible.

I am too late to discuss his ideas with him in person, but thanks to the Internet which he valued so highly, I have been able to read (some of) those ideas now. And more importantly, I've re-read the things that I've written - about SOPA when that was being considered, about Megaupload when that site was taken down, about the ways the American community watches anime.

I do believe that some of those ideas still stand. I believe that content creators should have the right to determine how their work is shared with others, whether that be posting to the Internet under a Creative Commons license or a DVD collection that costs a staggering three hundred and seventy dollars.

And yet, focusing on that (as I have done in the past) has caused me, in some major ways, to be guilty of missing the point to an almost staggering degree. Re-reading what I've written and what Aaron Swartz has argued for in the past has forced a rethinking of my own thoughts on these issues. Indeed, forced a rethinking on how I reacted to the "crime" which played a major role in this saga, Aaron's downloading of multiple different articles from JSTOR and his intention to make them widely available, although that reaction is one that I never discussed publicly.

To an extent, those reactions have been shaped by my concern over the way society functions now. My desire to play by the rules, and a personality that considers intentionally breaking the rules to be usually unjustifiable. This, then, was my failing: to discuss the issue as if the rules we play under today were inviolable. As if society cannot change. It is a failing that is all the more unbelievable considering the way I react to "society can't change" when the subject is misogyny. A failing that is frankly absurd considering that the rules in question, that led to federal prosecution for his actions, are ones that need to change.

Let this mea culpa, then, stand as my personal tribute to Aaron Swartz. If it were possible, I would beg his forgiveness, in that it had to come to this before I gave his ideas the attention they deserved... and I will work to ensure that I do not continue in the errors that have characterized my thinking on these issues.

My condolences go out to his family and friends, and I would encourage people to visit the memorial website that they have set up in his memory.

May you rest in peace, Aaron Swartz, knowing that your work will not go unfinished.

Right Wing Ideology:Reactions to Newtown

While I could probably be charitably be described as a liberal firebrand, I'd at least like to believe that I'm moderate enough to recognize when my own position is flawed. I try to make a habit of self-examination (as I've mentioned before) and dispense with ideas that have been proven not to work. It's probably arguable as to how successful I am in that respect, but still.

I'd also like to suggest that at least this sets me apart from the right-wing ideologues. Because even in the wake of Newtown, with over two dozen dead and most of those children, numerous members of the extreme right wing have doubled down on the same gun control policies (or rather, the lack thereof!) that brought us to this point in the first place. One would think that this would at least give them a moment's pause!

Of course, the arguments take two positions, the religious and the anarchist. The former is embodied in the first two links, people like Huckabee or Dobson saying that this is the inevitable result of our culture turning its back on God. This, of course, ignores the fact that President Obama made open reference to Christian scripture in his speech in Newtown; that Christians of some type are still the majority in this country - we're clearly in the wrong for daring to support birth control, and abortion, and gay marriage.

I think it's worth noting that this is exactly the same as the Westboro Baptist Church's position: events like these are God's wrath on our sinful nation. And as far as I'm concerned, if that's the way God actually works, I'll burn in hell for eternity before I offer one word of prayer or thanks to Him, much less work to shape public policy to bring it in line with His dictates. Assuming I believed in the Christian God in the first place, which I do not. I'm just grateful that most of the Christians I know don't actually agree with that view of God's will. (I hope.)

More worrisome to me, though, are the anarchists, the latter four people I linked. I'm sure they would not appreciate being labeled with that term, but what else am I supposed to believe? These are the people, after all, who believe that yet more guns are the solution to this problem. Who dare to say that the American people should be prepared to take on their own government, and argue that gun rights are an important shield against the tyranny of the government. Who seem to think that the only way to stay safe is to protect yourself, preferably with as much firepower as you can possibly get.

This really kind of disturbs me. Isn't part of the point of having a government to "provide for the common defense", to quote the Constitution? If I can't trust the government to protect me, why do we even have that government in the first place?

Now, even if I didn't trust the government in that respect (and for the record, I do), obviously I can think of a few other things that the government should be responsible for, given my position on the political spectrum. But those mostly work out to social welfare, which means that your average right-wing ideologue would hate them even more than providing for the common defense.

Given the way these people are reacting to Newtown, I'm left with nothing to do but wonder. What is the government supposed to do in the ideal world of the right wing?

In the Wake of Violence

I am really fucking tired of having to read this kind of story...

Multiple people — including children — were killed on Friday morning when at least one gunman opened fire in an Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT.

I could go ahead and chart out the course of our national dialogue over the next few days. I mean, it's already begun. Although I think in this case the "now they're going to 'exploit' the tragedy to try to push gun control" refrain actually began before anyone on the left actually started calling for stricter firearm laws - indeed, after the president's press secretary specifically said that today isn't the day for that discussion.

For my own part? I'm tempted to ask when the hell is the day for that discussion. I could remind everyone of the utter bullshit that it is for the right wing to whine about 'exploiting' the tragedy, given their past behavior when the guns were aimed at them instead of someone else.

Mostly, though, I'm just tired of this. There are other nations that have actually banned guns outright, you realize. Last I checked, Japan wasn't filled with gun violence to anywhere near the same extent that the U.S. is. China bore witness to an attack on a school this very same day - one in which the perpetrator used a knife. Dozens of people were injured, not killed. And yet banning guns will only make us less safe, we're told.

There was a time in this country when guns were more strictly regulated - when assault weapons were banned, reducing the amount of destruction that someone could cause all by themselves. I haven't found a clear picture yet of what the perpetrators of this mass shooting were armed with yet, so perhaps reinstating that would have done nothing about this incident. And before I even finish writing this, we've got confirmation that an assault rifle was indeed involved. Because it's critical that we be allowed to 'defend' ourselves with weapons that are better suited for mass annihilation, right?

Above all, though, I'm tired of slamming into the same brick wall over and over again, for a discussion that isn't even the one we need to have.

The discussion we need to have isn't the one I laid out above, about the mechanics of gun rights and gun ownership. It has nothing to do with whether banning guns outright would be "effective". Or whether we even could manage to do so in a country with an active set of fringe movements that would no doubt rise up in revolt if the government tried to institute a policy of civilian disarmament. And yet that's always what the discussion becomes, despite the fact that no U.S. administration has ever proposed such a plan for the last century or more.

The discussion we need to have is about the definition of strength. About the society we've built: the society in which any person who refuses to deal out swift and violent death is 'weak', somehow, despite the fact that it takes far more strength to turn the other cheek and ignore provocation rather than react out of hand. Despite the fact that it would take far more strength to admit to ourselves that something is very seriously wrong when our first reaction to dozens of people dead is to say "don't talk about the problem!"

I do believe that there will be situations in this world to which the only practical response will be violence. Today, though, is a day to reflect on the inevitable consequences of resorting to violence - a cost that we have seen in every military action the United States has ever carried out. While I do believe that it is a cost sometimes worth paying, I can say with total certainty that this was not a situation in which it was necessary to use force.

Just I can say with effectively total certainty that every time we avoid this discussion - the one about what violence even is, when we should use it, and how we should react to it - we are repeating the same mistakes that brought us to this point in the first place.

Democratic National Convention 2012

One of the things that President Obama does very well, and has always done very well, is to remind me (and everyone else) that the Republican Party does not have a monopoly on soaring rhetoric and claims to moral purpose. Perhaps it was the song they started playing after the speech that sums it up best? "Wherever this flag's flown, we take care of our own."

We take care of our own. Listening to the President speak, listening to all of the different speeches at the DNC these last few days, I am reminded of why I support this party in the first place. I am a liberal, a progressive, a Democrat, because I believe that government can be part of the solutions to our problems. Because I believe that some of the problems we face are best addressed at the federal level, that government is the best solution for issues of health care and can do a great deal of good for the economic situation.

And on these issues and more, President Obama's speech reminded me of why I'm not only going to vote for him in December but also why I'm now putting in my time and effort to volunteer, to ensure that he is re-elected. I can't say whether or not I would have written this last night, immediately after the speech... but it became a moot point, since I was tasked with running the computers and projectors displaying the speech at a watch party in Alexandria. Kept me more than busy enough to ensure I didn't get home until very late. (Doesn't help that I live an hour away from Alexandria...)

I could recap the main points - highlight the idea that a plan that forces seniors to continue to deal with insurance companies is a travesty, point out the need to improve and modernize our infrastructure and education, emphasize the importance of continuing to support veterans. I could even go over the things I didn't like about the speech; listening to it, I was struck (again) by the idea that I'm honestly to the left of the President on a surprising number of things. But in all honesty, that's what watching the speech is for. I can't possibly do better than his own words. (Although if people want to have that discussion, have at it in the comments.)

So all I truly have to offer is the feelings that the President evoked. The idea that "we take care of our own", as the song puts it. Or, to quote a song even closer to my heart (well, quote my translation of it, anyway), "those who chase their dreams will shine."

More than anything else, I am going to be voting for President Obama in November because I believe that his is that path. That he is the President under which we will take care of our own. That he is the President under which we will be able to chase our dreams... and not just chase them, but reasonably expect to reach them, with the support from the people and from the government that is part and parcel of living in a place like the United States of America.

Having it Both Ways

According to the Washington Post, yesterday an armed intruder (IDed as Floyd Lee Corkins II) entered the Washington D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council and attacked the security guard there, who did his job admirably in preventing the intruder from advancing any further into the building. Said security guard was shot, but is currently in stable condition, so hopefully this will be one of those rare shooting incidents where no one ends up dead.

While it is still far too early to ascribe definite motivations to the shooting, from the CBS report on the situation, Floyd Corkins II had been volunteering at an LGBT community center in the months leading up to the shooting and had made a "negative reference about the work of the Family Research Council" in the moments before opening fire.

I won't mince words here: his choice of action was simply unacceptable. Multiple different LGBT organizations released a similar statement:

We were saddened to hear news of the shooting this morning at the offices of the Family Research Council. Our hearts go out to the shooting victim, his family, and his co-workers.

The motivation and circumstances behind today’s tragedy are still unknown, but regardless of what emerges as the reason for this shooting, we utterly reject and condemn such violence. We wish for a swift and complete recovery for the victim of this terrible incident.

So of course, we began the process of healing and recovery from this terrible tragedy, and thanked our respective deities that it wasn't any worse than it was. Heaven knows I've been accused of "politicizing" tragedies so many times - and I've been doing my best to hold my tongue in the wake of the last, oh, four or five shooting incidents in all of a month. Surely no one would think of trying to make this about...

Of course not.

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, pointed to a recent blog post by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest gay-rights groups in the country. The post, “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference,” called attention to the vice presidential candidate’s scheduled appearance at the FRC’s national summit next month.

“Today’s attack is the clearest sign we’ve seen that labeling pro-marriage groups as ‘hateful’ must end,” Brown said in a statement issued following the shooting.

“For too long national gay rights groups have intentionally marginalized and ostracized pro-marriage groups and individuals by labeling them as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.’”

To the Family Research Council's credit, they have not said anything of this nature, and I'm honestly grateful for that. The National Organization for Marriage could stand to learn from that example.

EDIT, 2315 hours: I want it logged for the record that I gave them the benefit of the doubt, right up until, well...

One day after a Virginia man is alleged to have shot a security guard at the D.C. headquarters of the anti-gay Family Research Council, the organization's president, Tony Perkins, held a press conference to blame the shooting on the Southern Poverty Law Center -- the group that in 2010 named FRC a "hate group" based on the SPLC's documentation of FRC's efforts to "knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people" -- declaring that the watchdog group had given the shooter a "license" to shoot.

So now I speak to the National Organization for Marriage and anyone who might be inclined to make similar statements, apparently now including the FRC itself. I ask you - do words actually have meaning, or not? Because if they do, if calling someone hateful or wrong contributes to subsequent violence against them, then you need to stop and think. Ask yourselves why nine out of ten LGBT students report harassment of some type at school. Ask yourselves what your words are doing to them. Ask yourselves, every time one of them commits suicide, what your actual marginalization and ostracization of those children is accomplishing!

If our words have that kind of effect, that might cause this attack... well, go back and read that statement above. We've answered, as best we can, for the blood on our hands. Now it's your turn to answer for yours. Until you can do that, calling you out as hateful and bigoted will be nothing less than accurate.

Romney/Ryan

By now, I expect you've heard the news that Paul Ryan is Romney's vice president pick. This is not an entirely unexpected development in the campaign, honestly. Ryan is really the closest thing to a policy wonk the Republicans have, especially on the economic side; as the architect of the last two budgets the GOP's put forward, I feel like this pick represents the Romney campaign's desire to centralize economic issues right up until Election Day.

Of course, the fact that I call Ryan the closest thing to a policy wonk that the right wing has should be a greatly depressing sentence for anyone that actually wants the GOP to have any influence over policy at all for the next twenty years. I won't hold my breath though.

Why do I say that? In a word, Ryan's policy proposals are ridiculous. The fact that his ideas are representative of intellectual thought and serious policy proposals on the right wing actively scares me. The budgets that he's put forward would be actively disastrous for everyone other than the top hundredth of one percent of Americans by wealth, cutting pretty much anything and everything from Pell grants to Medicare. And because it's not enough to gut the social safety net (that he's already benefited from, no less!), he's proposed cutting taxes on the wealthy while increasing them on the lower class.

Of course, the crowning jewel here is the fact that this budget is somehow supposed to also reduce the deficit all at the same time. How? That's an excellent question. No one knows. How he can manage to make all these claims when he himself has to realize how mendacious they are is what truly scares me. Any competent economist (and those four don't count as competent, not anymore) can tell that there is literally no way to reconcile all of these competing claims. And yet Paul Ryan is hailed as an intellectual genius, the rising star of the right wing policy wonks.

Anyone who reads my blog regularly could probably have realized before now that I was never going to vote for Romney in November anyway, so in that sense my disapproval means very little. However, prior to today, I would have shied away from voting for Romney because I had no idea which Romney I was going to get; would it have been the hard right wing Romney of the Republican primary race or the more moderate Governor Romney of Massachusetts?

Now, things have changed. Now, I know exactly what I'm going to get out of a Romney/Ryan ticket. I know full well what kind of economic policy we're going to get out of that White House. It is an economic policy that runs counter to any rational consideration of the needs of the United States or of the needs of the vast majority of American citizens. That it can be hailed as a policy masterpiece, by anyone, scares me a great deal.

Denial of the Right to Freedom of Speech

Okay... this is absolutely ridiculous. From Memebase, an absolutely bullshit response to the controversy surrounding Chick-fil-A. And look at that, over a thousand upvotes!

This is not a free speech issue. Nor has it ever been. Nor has any other similar incident (and there have been many more of this kind) ever been a free speech issue. Not if those three words are to have any meaning at all. Their rights to free speech are not being threatened in any way, shape, or form. Unless, that is, the government is about to come in and arrest people for what they're saying or, in this case, doing, namely donating to anti-gay rights groups? I don't have any connections with the FBI, but I'm pretty sure that's not being considered.

And on top of that, let me clarify something here. This is the message I'm getting, from that meme and from every other time someone's said "but what about freedom of speech" when I or anyone else has the sheer temerity to express our disagreement with the things other people say. It goes something like this: Because the owner of Chick-fil-A has the right to express his opposition to gay rights by donating to the Family Research Council, I don't have the right to say that I disapprove of his position and won't be eating at the places he owns in the future?

Because one person has the right to freedom of speech, I have to refrain from exercising my right to freedom of speech?

This is bullshit. It has been bullshit every single time it has been voiced, and will continue to be so. The next time someone says "I don't agree with Chick-fil-A's political stance, so I'm going to boycott them, and I think you should as well" just remember that. And not just for this incident - the next time someone says "I disagree with what so-and-so said, so I'm going to not support their work in the future, and I think you should as well", this will apply just as much. Keep that in mind, because I have had more than enough of this line of argument. It's long past time for it to disappear.

President Obama on Marriage Equality

And just yesterday I called out President Obama for failing in his advocacy for LGBT rights... then this happened. (emphasis from original)

I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Words matter. Knowing that the President has now openly and publicly embraced the idea of marriage for all matters a great deal. It changes the way we as a society think about and discuss the concept of marriage, and it forces a shift in the discussion, normalizing the idea of marriage for all people. It energizes advocates for marriage equality to know that the sitting President of the United States has said this. For being willing to come out and support marriage equality on the record, thank you, President Obama.

However, I said this on Twitter and I'll say it again here: words only go so far. I don't say that to minimize the excitement and energy that has overtaken the progressive movement, because I truly believe that this has had a major impact on us. But there's still more to be done. I, for one, look forward to seeing these words become meaningful changes in national law and policy - the kinds of changes that would truly allow same-sex couples to be able to marry each other across the United States. Especially in the wake of North Carolina's vote yesterday, that's the kind of thing we need more than ever.

Your campaign slogan, President Obama, is now "Forward." Hearing you say things like what came out this afternoon can almost make me believe in your support of that idea of forward progress once again. As long as you're going to stand up and champion real forward progress, I will stand with you.

Socialism in the White House!

Days like these, with posts like this one, make me wonder if anyone actually bothers to educate themselves on what Obama's actually doing in office.

The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware  ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November ~ This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.

Now to be fair, it's not like I haven't used similar rhetoric before - that the U.S. wouldn't survive four years of the wrong president (although I know I've never advocated for armed rebellion). Usually I confine that kind of thing to personal discussions with close friends and family, and given my own ideological bent I'm talking about people like Ron Paul or Rick Santorum. But I have said that kind of thing before, how I don't think the U.S. would actually survive four years of a hardcore Republican presidency.

For the record, I haven't ever said that of Romney. Which isn't to say that I would like Romney being elected as President, because I'm almost dead certain that I wouldn't particularly enjoy such a presidency. I'm just confident that the United States would survive those four years.

Likewise, it's not that I think Obama is all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, there are quite a few things I don't think I like about our current President. I think he's entirely failing in his advocacy for LGBT rights, for one thing, and he's only barely doing any better on reproductive rights or equality for women. Then there's the assassination of a U.S. citizen without trial and the continued problem that is Guantanamo Bay. Believe me, I can find plenty of problems with Obama's policies.

None of that, though, is the impetus for the stuff I quoted above. Hell, I rather suspect most of my problems with the Obama presidency would be counted as positive signs if the people that produced that quote ever bothered to traffic in reality. No, this idea that Obama is a partisan socialist ideologue is simply false, and has been since he took office. That doesn't seem to stop his critics from pretending that he is, but then the modern Republican Party seems to have little time or attention to spare on those pesky, annoying things the rest of us like to call facts. Why should they, when they can just scream "SOCIALISM!" and actually get people to listen to them?

(h/t to Right Wing Watch)

Transportation Issues

Today has turned out to be a rough day. And the worst part is that there was absolutely no reason for this to have happened.

When I have breaks and want to go home, I usually take Amtrak. Train travel is almost always superior to air travel in my opinion, mostly because of two reasons. First of all, the train system doesn't have the same odious, overly-invasive security that the airports do; that alone would be reason enough. On top of that, though, trains are usually more comfortable, providing a power outlet at every seat and much better food.

The downside is one that shouldn't even exist. The train takes considerably longer than an airplane does in transit, traveling much slower along a less direct route. Of course, if we had a functioning high-speed rail system (sorry Acela, you're not actually functional as a high-speed rail system, not like the Tokaido Shinkansen is), it would be a matter of an additional hour or two rather than the five or six is is today.

More importantly, though, trains have to be reliable and effective. The aforementioned Tokaido Shinkansen is a real competitor to air travel between Tokyo and Osaka specifically because it runs a metric fuckton of trains between the two cities (count them yourself) that are effectively always on time. The Acela cannot say the same, not even close. Not when they brag (!) about 10 weekday departures (and today is not a weekday), at least one of which, the Acela 2254, was quite severely late today.

They acknowledged it and apologized for the delay on the train, if nothing else, but that didn't help me catch the commuter rail I was planning on getting to. Had I made it, I could have been back two hours earlier than I actually managed. Looking back, I would probably have taken an earlier train anyway if I were to do today over, but the problem was and is that there weren't any other trains that went with my schedule.

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the people running the aforementioned commuter rail, did no better today. The commuter rail that I missed was at 8pm; the next available train? 11:30pm. Two trains in three and a half hours. I have the $4.75 in fares that I would have paid, and I would happily be giving that to the MBTA, but for the fact that there was simply no train available. And they still get the subway fare from me, for the privilege of riding on a two-car train that was overcrowded to rush-hour levels on a Sunday at nine in the evening.

It depresses me greatly that I know exactly why the MBTA or why Amtrak might be having budget problems. And everything I've laid out is not necessarily a strike against those companies themselves, who I honestly do believe are working as hard as they possibly can with the limited resources they are given. All I can say, though, is that until we work up the will as a society to properly fund transportation infrastructure, this crappy evening will repeat itself, both for me and the millions of other people that try to navigate the chaos that is American public transportation.

Framing the Health Care Debate

So Paul Krugman recently wrote about the health care reform enacted by Obama that's become such a major issue. Given that Krugman specializes in economics, of course, this particular editorial is more about the costs and the effectiveness of health care, both as it was and as it now is under the reform (for however long that lasts). Particularly, it addresses the inability of reform's opponents to make a solid economic case against the reform. I won't even bother quoting it, because you should just read the whole thing.

When I saw that on my Reader page, I was actually excited, particularly because of the timing. I had just gotten into an argument over health care reform over the weekend, and here's a Monday editorial on the issue, what luck! As I read the argument, though, I realized that it wasn't actually going to be of much help. You see, my earlier discussion on the matter hadn't framed it as an economic problem.

That is one way to frame the debate, of course - as a matter of economic policy, in terms of costs and benefits. That's the way a lot of issues have been framed lately by the right-wing, too: dear god, government spending is increasing so much! (It's actually not. As an aside.) And if that's how you want to discuss the matter, I direct you back to that editorial that I opened this post with; certainly I do not have the ability or the knowledge to competently make an argument on those terms.

Another way to frame the debate, though, and the version I encountered last weekend, is as a question of personal freedom. This is the genesis of the court cases making their way through the system, challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate. This is the question that challenged me: don't I have the right not to buy health insurance? It was one that I was honestly unable to answer... well, until now anyway. We all know how it is about coming up with the perfect response long after the discussion's ended, right?

At any rate, my response is actually quite simple. Making it so that employers and insurance companies can deny certain types of coverage (or, as with the thankfully dead Blunt amendment, any coverage for any moral or religious reason) does not make me feel more free, it makes me feel more restrained. Making it so that I have to explain to employers why I need certain kinds of health care does not make me feel more free, it makes me feel more restrained. Making it so that I am at the mercy of insurance companies who can deny me coverage for whatever reason they damn well please does not make me feel more free, it makes me feel more restrained!

And the flip side? Telling me that I have to buy health insurance does not make me feel more restrained. It reassures me that, backed by the authority of the United States government, I will have health insurance, that I will be able to access those rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that I have been promised. It reassures me that the government is actually doing something about its charge to "promote the general welfare" instead of just punting the issue off to corporations that do not give a damn about my actual well-being, only the amount of money that I'm giving them.

In short? Perhaps there is a right not to buy health insurance. (It's worth noting that in the ACA, even though there is a fine for those who ignore the mandate, no criminal action or liens can be imposed on people who don't pay.) But there are no completely unrestricted rights. And the right not to buy health insurance cannot and should not take precedence when it will end up restricting others' access to the same.

Consequences for LulzSec

Hey look, consequences!

According to the FBI, the head of LulzSec, known online as Sabu, is really Hector Xavier Monsegur, a 28-year-old father of two from New York. And apparently, as a report from Fox News states, he's been informing on LulzSec since being caught last June.

The Fox News report itself is here. If you would prefer news from the New York Times, that is also available.

Personally, I very strongly disapprove of actions like those from LulzSec and Anonymous. I mean, seriously, hacking into PBS's website because a program that the network aired was overly negative to Wikileaks? Setting aside the fact that reasonable people will probably still be able to disagree over the value and effectiveness of Wikileaks (we'll come back to that in a bit), and setting aside even the actual content of the program itself, there are ways to make that kind of displeasure known that don't involve committing illegal acts. Especially if you have ties to the communications network that is Anonymous, or the site designed to make information publicly available like Wikileaks!

This, of course, ignores any of the other LulzSec-led hacking attempts during its short time in the public eye, such as those against Sony, Nintendo, or BioWare. I don't even see a point to any of those. Is there one? Am I just not paying enough attention?

What annoys me most are the legions of people that rush to the defense of these groups; there are some examples in the comments on the New York Times piece. There are two closely related main threads to focus on: the "what about the government and/or Wall Street's crimes" angle and the "these people are heroes" angle. (Usually, they're heroes because they expose the depredations of the government or of Wall Street.)

For the former, I will repeat the same damned line that no one seems to fully understand yet: the existence of greater crimes does not mean that lesser ones vanish. Saying "but this is worse!" merely redirects the conversation, and in no way answers the question that started it.

The question that started it, then - are they heroes? No. Not even slightly. Hackers such as LulzSec are at best vigilantes, doing whatever they damn well please in defense of whatever morality they can justify themselves with. And as it stands, carrying out such actions - anything from hacking a corporation's server to revealing classified information - is illegal, and rightly so. I tend to believe that there are things the government keeps secret for a reason, after all.

If you disagree? By all means, reveal the secrets, take whatever action you believe is necessary in defense of information that the public needs to know about, and let the rest of the world judge for themselves whether you were right or not. Frankly, all you're doing is replacing the government's judgement with your own, and hoping that the rest of us will agree with you rather than said government. Regardless of who comes out on top, though, such action is and will remain illegal, and part of making the decision to reveal such information anyway should be accepting that there will be consequences for that action.

In short, as one of my favorite authors said in regards to piracy (which is in many ways a similar phenomenon): own your choice. Right now, LulzSec's leaders are facing the consequences for the decisions they've made. Had they not been willing to accept that when they carried out their first hacking operation, they never should have started it in the first place.

Transportation and Affordability

So it's kind of important that you be able to pay for the basic costs of living. And there are a lot of people out there that can't, as an aside - but problems of poverty aren't what I'm looking at today. You see, even if you take a family with a house and a steady job, we still need to be asking whether or not that family is able to afford that house and that lifestyle. And I just found a new website to play with that looks into some of those questions.

Particularly, it plays into my political pet peeve - transportation and infrastructure. Apparently, housing is considered affordable if it consumes less than 30% of a family's household budget. (I had not known this before.) That said, though, the next largest expenditure for most households is transportation. I can agree that most people don't really think about it - fill the car up with gas when it gets empty, and fix it if it breaks. Right?

Shockingly, that's surprisingly inefficient. It's quite educational to examine the maps they've created, adding transportation costs to housing costs and comparing that to 45% of a household budget. Taking transportation costs into account generally decreases the amount of area marked as "affordable", but oddly enough, there's usually a core of "affordable" territory in the inner city - this is true of Boston, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, and New York at the very least. This despite the fact that housing usually costs more, not less, within the city as opposed to out in the suburbs. You don't think that this would have anything to do with intelligent city design (walkability) and access to effective public transportation such as subways and commuter rail lines, do you?

But surely we should keep building highways, upgrade our national air traffic control network, and spend money basically on everything except the things that make that affordable core possible. Never mind that trains (to a greater extent than almost anything else) rely on a large number of people using them to be cost-effective, and that we have to make them effective before people will use them in large numbers. Nope, we'll just keep building the U.S. so that you have to drive or fly anywhere you want to go, and complain that trains are getting special favors when anyone dares suggest trying to upgrade that aspect of our transportation network.

And maybe when that entire damn map is blue (that is to say, marked "not affordable"), we'll figure out that we've royally screwed over our national infrastructure.

Jon Stewart on Contraceptive Coverage

Where would the world be without Jon Stewart? If nothing else, we'd have one less epic takedown of this entire invented controversy over birth control.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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If there is one takeaway quote, it is this: "You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want!" But the entire video is absolutely worth watching. You should do that now.

The Rise of Rick Santorum

Well, it looks like it's Santorum's turn to be the Flavor of the Week in this Republican primary.

This is something that scares me deeply. Mitt Romney is a classic politician, in that he can be trusted only to say whatever will put him farther ahead in the race in question. He was solidly center of the road during his time as Massachusetts governor, to take one example, going to far as to seek Planned Parenthood's endorsement of his campaign. To be fair, even that kind of centrism is farther to the right than I prefer, truly... but at least it's something I could live with, for four or even eight years. That of course is assuming he is more center-right, in contravention of the way he's been acting this primary season.

Rick Santorum is a right-wing ideologue in the sense that I am a left-wing ideologue - he is a True Believer in the cause of conservatism. Really I shouldn't need to say any more than that to clarify why I fear him and his ideas taking the Presidency; we are representatives of diametrically opposed visions of the way American should be.

But I'm going to point out some things anyway. Not to clarify my intense dislike for him, but to demonstrate why he and I are not the same. While we are both firebrands, his vision of America is destructive in a way that mine is most assuredly not. In short, I explain what precisely I fear to show why everyone should fear his ideas and his vision of America.

I could point to specific policy ideas: his stance on certain military issues is beyond ridiculous. (He is also not a fan of gays openly in the military, despite that now being a settled decision.) Women and gays should, by all rights, be able to serve in the military just as well as anyone else, and inventing this kind of random pseudo-sciencey "women are more emotional" bullshit displays a fundamental disrespect for half of the human population.

Or I could suggest that he has no idea what he's saying. Requiring religious institutions to cover contraceptives is not new, given that the groups complaining often employ people who are not Catholic and should not be bound by Catholic dictates. There already is a narrower exception for specific groups that do employ primarily members of their same religion. And the idea that Rick Santorum should make this about government control is patently absurd. This is the same Rick Santorum who believes the government should be able to ban contraceptives outright, is it not?

And in large part because of his ideology, he is simply immune to criticism. The idea that the modern Republican Party spouts anything even approaching the truth on a regular basis is absurd. While I am so rarely called out on anything I believe, I would like to think that I am capable of listening to valid criticism and changing the way I act, however high my standard of "valid" might end up being.

For Santorum and the conservatism he represents, though, nothing short of a scorched earth policy will ever be appropriate. If Rick Santorum ends up in the White House from January 2013 onward, the society he will work to create will be frightening to behold: a regression to the world of centuries past, where women could be shoved back into the kitchen, where the One True Religion dominated society and government, and where the rich happily took all the money while oh-so-generously handing out tiny scraps of food to the poor.

What scares me more than anything else is that a large part of the Republican Party seems to agree with him.

A Post-Megaupload World

Anyone else tried to access Megaupload recently?

I first realized it here (a new site called Geek Revolt), and quickly went to confirm here (Washington Post) and here (Los Angeles Times). The site's been taken down. Given that attempting to go there itself returns no response, I'm willing to bet that this particular takedown was the oldest and most effective form of computer disruption: physically pulling the plug. And given the indictment against them (thanks again to the Los Angeles Times), I'm willing to bet they're not going to be coming back anytime soon.

Let's be clear here: Megaupload was hosting and distributing large numbers of files without permission. I would not be surprised to learn that there were large numbers of files on there which were being distributed legally, but I would be even less surprised to learn that there was pirated media available on Megaupload, quite possibly in much larger amounts.

As a result, I really can't find it in me to get worked up about this one. If the charges laid out in the indictment are in fact true, then there is every reason to be taking the site down quite permanently, thank you very much. And Megaupload will absolutely have their day in court, with all of the due process that entails - trying to claim that they're somehow not getting that process is kind of absurd.

Connecting this to the debate over SOPA is, likewise, absurd. Irrespective of the timing of the action. If your problem is with the government's action in this case, your problem is with a large amount of existing law, already in the U.S. Code. If it's as problematic as SOPA, by all means bring that to everyone's attention. But this is one site being taken down for demonstrable violations of federal law. Had SOPA already existed, every site that ever posted a link to Megaupload would be potentially in the crosshairs. That's the difference.

I said in my post about SOPA on the day of the blackout that the battle against piracy is going to be a long and complicated one. And I'm willing to agree that it is to some extent futile, in that there will be a countermeasure to any anti-piracy measure enacted. Whether they manage to throw doubt on the government's case against them and are able to return, or whether another site takes up their mantle, there will be another Megaupload. Perhaps its successor will be more under the radar, or perhaps it will be actively ignored for a time. That will not change the facts that brought this particular indictment forward, and it will not stop the government from issuing its indictment against that successor, should the time ever come.

I oppose unreasonable methods of combating online piracy, a category into which SOPA and PIPA certainly fall. In the end, though, I do not oppose reasonable and effective means of combating piracy, whether economic or legal in nature. And I don't believe that the indictment and takedown of Megaupload can be considered truly unreasonable.

Acts of Terror

So the Rachel Maddow show had some interesting news about the latest activities of Operation Rescue.

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I don't even know where to begin with this. This is what's known as respect for life?

And before someone tries to tell me that not all anti-abortion activists are like this... well, first, I'm damn well aware of that, because I know people who are opposed to abortion, and to the best of my ability to tell, they're not homicidal. But the other important part of that is that most of the people I'm thinking of right now are personally opposed to abortion, rather than agitating for its ban as a matter of public policy. And yes, there is a difference.

If you are in favor of a ban on abortion as a matter of public policy, you are by definition in favor of forcing women to submit their own desires to the government's will - in favor of state-sanctioned disrespect for life. There is no getting around that. Shakesville says it far better than I ever could, really, so just go read this. (In fact, I first heard about this story from there, too.)

In short, I don't want to hear about how you of course don't support these kinds of acts of terror. And not just because we both know that one would have to say that if they ever wanted me to talk to them again, but also because this is merely the most extreme example of a disrespect for life that is part and parcel of the movement to ban abortion.

SOPA

Today, a large number of sites (most notably Wikipedia) are blacking out to protest legislation being considered in the U.S. Congress that would have a chilling effect on the Internet's ability to exist.

At first, I was ambivalent, I admit. This was before I understood what the Stop Online Piracy Act (and the Protect IP Act) would actually do, when I was still thinking about the (very real) problem of piracy online. As an anime fan, I'm well aware of the extent of piracy in that community, to the point that piracy has transcended "unpleasant but necessary" to become standard practice. And I've written before about the ways in which that might change and the ways in which it should.

SOPA is not one of those solutions, to anime piracy or to anything else. What it is, is a free pass to major corporations and to the Attorney General's office to demand that all websites censor anything that could infringe on copyright. (There's a more detailed and probably more accurate primer here.) What's more, entire websites can be targeted for blacklisting. Under the terms of this legislation, either of the two videos I posted early on could get my entire blog taken down.

In short, the battle against piracy is going to be a long and complicated one. Pulling out a legal hammer and smashing everything flat will not only cause excessive collateral damage, but will also fail to achieve the stated goals. For that reason, I oppose the proposed legislation in Congress, both SOPA and PIPA. And while I am not going to black out this blog (it's not as if anyone would even notice, given how often I produce content) I stand with those sites that have, and I encourage everyone to stand up and make your voices heard.