State of the Union

#1 line: "...the Constitution means what it says."

Farmers Branch: why not STV?

A judge has ruled that the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch cannot enforce its new ordinance against renting apartments to illegal immigrants. The judgment apparently held that the city created its own way of determining whether or not a resident was legal, a responsibility that belongs only to the federal government.

I would be against this ordinance for a couple of reasons: first, because it seems likely to lead to some harassment of people who are legal, but happen to be Hispanic; second, because if all communities adopt similar ordinances, it probably won't cut the number of illegal immigrants, but it could have a very substantively negative impact on the conditions they and their children live in.

What interests me more, however, was further down in the article:

The federal suit, on behalf of three Latino voters who live in Farmers Branch, claims minorities are underrepresented because of the at-large city council system.

It seeks the creation of single-member districts, in which a city council member is elected to represent a specific section of the city. Both large and small cities with diverse racial makeup use the system, said Rolando Rios, the attorney leading the suit.

Activists say if the method had been in place, at least one Latino candidate would have been elected to the council and could represent the group. All five council members are white men.

This assumes that the only or, at least, primary way to represent a voter is by racially descriptive representation. This may be true on this issue, but as the article notes, all five current members of the council are white men. What about women? What about representation on the basis of nonracial issues?

Instead, the plaintiffs would have the city box itself into a racially charged model of electing its City Council by creating seats "reserved" for Latino voters (much like, of course, the U.S. Congress), at the expense of other forms of representation, and at the expense of "disenfranchising" the minority-majority white population in the "Latino" district.

Why not ask, instead of a district model, for a proportional representation model--in particular, the single transferable vote? STV would maintain the system of citywide representation while representing what voters want to see represented.

This is just, of course, a microcosm of the U.S. system in general: if we just took measures to make things more proportional, there'd be no need for ridiculously gerrymandered districts [warning--PDF] to satisfy someone's exclusive concept of "representation." Then the Texas legislators would never have to go to Oklahoma again!

The first debate!

From my delayed viewing of the first Democratic candidates debate on MSNBC...

Hillary Clinton: Worst response was the first part of the debate, on Iraq. Repeated the insufferable line about how we gave Iraqis the "opportunity for freedom." Her health care response started interestingly, as she emphasized the middle class that already has insurance but is struggling to afford premiums, then she went on to say something along the lines of getting the most out of our current system before we pay any more for something else. What does she mean by that? Her website has no policy, so I don't know! She did take the opportunity to redirect a possible criticism of Obama (opportunity handed by the moderator) into Bush criticism.

Barack Obama: Barack was, as usual, pretty generic. His health-care response was straight out of The Audacity of Hope. He took a few opportunities to emphasize the need for a national movement. Three candidates had a question on the abortion decision, and all three took different angles; Obama emphasized women's choices in concert with families, doctors and clergy (he didn't miss the chance to throw that in). My favorite answer of his was actually to the question "what is your biggest mistake of the last four years?". He was the only one to answer nongenerically, saying that he should not have left the Senate during the Schiavo case but should have stayed to fight for families' privacy.

John Edwards: I was unimpressed with Edwards on Iraq (he seemed smug about his position) or on his wealth. His SCOTUS response was to emphasize the need for a Democrat to appoint the next justices--predictably for a trial lawyer. He did win points for having the most specific health-care response.

Bill Richardson: I wasn't actually aware of some of Richardson's positions before the debate. He was good on Iraq--the most specific and committed of any of them. Said if he were president he would withdraw everyone before 2007 is out. On health care, said that there's a lot of waste and that it should be cut, and no raising taxes, but no specifics. Top three priorities: out of Iraq, energy independence, climate change.

Joe Biden: Biden wins points with me for saying "If we want the best students in the world, we need the best teachers in the world." Otherwise, his response on Iraq seemed to be a mandate to the Iraqis! Good responses on gun control, the NAACP and South Carolina, and on his mistake ("overestimating the confidence and underestimating the arrogance of this administration"). When asked if he'd be able to be president despite some of his notorious errant comments, stated, "Yes."

Chris Dodd: I don't think he said too much to stand out. He put a lot of emphasis on his experience and political background, which isn't necessarily the way to go. Good responses on why welfare recipients should not have drug tests, and on justifying civil unions by "thinking if it was your own kids" (though I disagree with his opposition to gay marriage).

Dennis Kucinich: Alternated between awkward (which he always is), unrealistic (international peacekeepers in Iraq!), and somewhat decently principled (in response to abortion, America needs a "culture of life" that includes a lot more than just abortion). But hey, we should support his campaign because it "comes from the heart."

Mike Gravel: Who is this guy? He tried to grab attention by criticizing Iraq and the other candidates over, and over, and over again, hijacking a question about nuclear energy and turning it into terrorism and why the war was wrong. Rambled about Congressional strategy to pass a law to end the war in Iraq. Tried to engage Barack in an argument (along with Kucinich) while Hillary stood in the middle rather awkwardly. Says all the "top-tier candidates" "scare [him]" and seems to imply they will support an Iran invasion. He might get a little attention, but not sure what he'll get out of that...

Overall: No huge winners or losers; this was really more of a warmup. Richardson is a rational guy with a couple policy stances that seem a little off with the base. Obama, Clinton and Edwards said nothing new. Biden is probably the biggest riser.

Franken posts some good numbers

AP reports that Al Franken has raised almost as much campaign cash as Norm Coleman so far despite not even starting until February. Franken has received big donations from figures such as Tom Hanks, Larry David, Lorne Michaels, and Kevin Bacon.

Quote of the night: "Franken has held two fundraisers in California this year -- one in Los Angeles and one in California, said his spokesman, Andy Barr."

Phone solicitation!

What is it with the inability of phone solicitors to deliver their lines with some sort of emotion? I've received two calls so far from Obama For America, and while I'm sure the operators are volunteers who are convinced of the mission of the campaign, they don't convey it to me! What they are able to convey is that they've been sitting next to the phone too long. (They also thanked me for my donation in February. What donation?)

At any rate, I just get annoyed by donation calls, being newly out of college and not particularly affluent, and I wish they weren't so necessary. Can't say they haven't been effective despite it all, though.

Political typology

According to Pew's political typology, I am a "liberal." No surprise there...

It states that 17 percent of the public are liberals; 19 percent of registered voters are liberals.

Some Barack links

I know I haven't really been present lately, but things have been busy... check out the other home for details.

I'm just gonna come in here with a couple of links. First, The New York Times has an article on Barack's law-school days, detailing his rise from unknown to first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was respected, the article says, and well-known for his ability to compromise and to not exactly let you know what his own opinions were.

Another of Mr. Obama’s techniques relied on his seemingly limitless appetite for hearing the opinions of others, no matter how redundant or extreme. That could lead to endless debates — a mouse infestation at the review office provoked a long exchange about rodent rights — as well as some uncertainty about what Mr. Obama himself thought about the issue at hand.

I don't think it's a drawback that Obama can be coy about his own opinions. Just because he can be doesn't mean that he always will be, all the time, or that he can't commit to opinions that he has.

Meanwhile, Barack has called for universal health care by 2013. No details yet, of course, but good to see that he is a part of this positive trend. I'm sure he will be able to find a way to nestle it into a dialogue-friendly approach.

Finally, while tooling around on YouTube I found this video of Barack on the Daily Show a year after his election as Senator, in November 2005. It's worth a watch--he's a funny man.

Update: Yeah, yeah, I can post the streaming video... I'm still not used to this whole thing. See below:

Health care: now on everyone's agenda?

It's encouraging that Bush wants to make expanding health coverage a significant part of his State of the Union, and plans to introduce a new plan.

Not that his proposal is good; the reviews I read seem quite negative, as do the (smarter) observers in the NYT article, and suggest that the main burden of this would fall on the middle class. Of all the issues in politics today, I probably know the least of the intricacies of health care, and I can't claim to know whether or not this will affect the disproportionately large expenses of our country on health care, or the inefficiencies, duplications and price-gouging that plague our private sector. But it's good to see that (thanks in large part to state plans like in Massachusetts and California) the issue is now on everyone's national agenda as an action item of perceived importance to voters.

Now, if we could just achieve that for the environment, like they've done in Canada...

Which Gulf is that again?

The New York Times published an editorial on the progress of rebuilding in New Orleans (not much) and how many people may get evicted from temporary housing because 18 months have elapsed.

The last sentence:

"Our grand plans were never laid, our brightest minds were never assembled, our nation’s muscle and ingenuity were never brought to bear in any concerted way to overcome the crisis of the Gulf."

Bush on 60 Minutes

Good questions.

My favorite quotes:
"I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That's the problem, here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq."
"I think I'm a flexible, open-minded person, I really do. Take this policy. I spent a lot of time listening to a lot of people."
"[Saddam] was a significant source of instability."
"A unified Iraq, a young democracy will provide the stability we are looking for."
"Sometimes you're the commander-in-chief, sometimes you're the educator-in-chief, and sometimes you're both when it comes to war."

SWEET! THE PROBLEMS IN IRAQ ARE SOLVED!

As much as I try to stay away from Iraq, now I am optimistic. At first, I thought the fact that Bush was going in his own direction might possibly be like before, when he ignored everybody else to pursue an entirely inane strategy. But, according to The New York Times, there is a new foolproof plan as part of the Bush team's new proposal:

Plan Sets Series of Goals for Iraq Leaders

Even better,

Without saying what the specific penalties for failing to achieve the goals would be, American officials insisted that they intended to hold the Iraqis to a realistic timetable for action, but the Americans and Iraqis have agreed on many of the objectives before, only to fall considerably short.

Yes, but now we have something different, because

Plan Sets Series of Goals for Iraq Leaders

Sounds awesome! I am thinking about what the goals could be right now, perhaps:
(1) When you say you're going to confiscate cell phones, mean it.
(2) Establish a committee to talk about establishing cooperation between ethnic groups, and not have any parties walk out of the meetings, or any member of the committee disappear.
(3) Establish militia quotas so that only 90% of the personnel in any given government ministry can be members of the minister's party's militia. (They can still have 100% of the guns, though).

Before I am berated for sarcasm, has the Iraqi government actually done any of the above? (Maybe #3 in a few instances). Seriously, a government that cannot even carry out an internationally-watched execution with dignity, nor control its own supposedly loyal personnel to the point that they violate the ground rules for the procedure, cannot be trusted to carry out anything.

And perhaps I am a little pessimistic and cynical, but when the president rejects the proposals of a bipartisan study group and the feelings of the voters who demolished his party in the election due to this very issue, I expect better than a "series of benchmarks" and keeping already-tired troops in the country another few months.

Audacious hopes

It is early to be making decisions about a presidential primary. And really, it is too early for anyone to be talking about it, but thanks to the ridiculous American system, we are.

So, who is lined up so far? We have Democrats Edwards, uh... Kucinich... Vilsack... and of course not officially yet, we have Clinton and Obama. And there's the possibilities like Bill Richardson. (And how about Al Gore?)

If I followed American politics with the same persistence as Canadian politics, I would be able to make much more specific comments about each candidate. What I can say is that Hillary Clinton's "slide to the center" doesn't impress me and I'm not greatly comfortable with her as a candidate, both for her shifts on issues and for the fact that there is a fairly large bloc that isn't comfortable either.

I read Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, over the break. It certainly is not your standard political book. Obama has some good ideas, and I recognize a lot of my own sentiments in his statements of tolerance and working together towards a common future. I would have liked to see more from him as regards the environment, but he shows me that he understands both sides of most issues, something that is too rare in the prevailing atmosphere today.

Yes, Obama is inexperienced, and yes, experience is generally a good thing. But there's a lot of experienced people who don't know how to follow the Peter principle, and instead keep rising to incompetence. And he will of course face a rougher ride if/when he officially declares his candidacy. But look: Obama will appeal better than Clinton or any other candidate to that elusive "Middle America" (purple voters, I guess they are called).

If Al Gore joins the race (I would assess this "unlikely" at the moment), it would make the decision harder. But even were he in right now, I would still state that I tentatively support a Barack Obama bid for the nomination. It seems like the best hope for me to not have a vomit reflex whenever I hear about what's going on in Washington.

Bush is predicting again!

"If their electoral predictions are as reliable as their economic predictions, Nov. 7 is going to be a good day for the Republicans." --George W. Bush on the Democrats. (see article)

Several possible reactions:

a) Which economic predictions are talking about here? The ones that said that inequality would continue to increase and good jobs would continue to not be created?
b) Or the ones that said tax cuts would close the deficit?
c) Perhaps if "good day for the Republicans" means the day their pensive rebuilding can begin.
d) And if your electoral predictions are as reliable as your Iraq predictions...

My relative optimism

It is finally time to be optimistic again about U.S. politics. Kind of. I mean, the Democrats still have no plan whatsoever, but at least the Republicans will have to stop implementing their plan, and that's worth it.

As I'm still not registered to vote in Texas (oops), I will be voting absentee for, uh, whoever I am registered to vote for in Washington. That means a vote for Maria Cantwell, and perhaps Jim McDermott, or maybe Jay Inslee, if one of those is my representative (maybe it's someone else entirely). Inslee is a good representative of the 1st District and he'll be in Congress for a while to come unless he leaves of his own accord.

On the national level, I'd still love to see Lieberman get beat. Not that I love Ned Lamont (who?) but I hate Joe Lieberman. Here in Texas we have a four-way governor's race that means Governor Perry will probably get reelected somehow. I daresay this won't help Houston's inequalities.

Perhaps more later, but we all know the States isn't my specialty.