Why you should vote for congressional Democrats

For the first two years of the Obama administration Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, although not with a fillibuster-proof majority. Consider just a bit of what happened in those two years:

• We turned economic free-fall into a growing economy. When Obama took office I bet that he could turn the economy around. I sold my foreign stock and bought American index funds. I have more than doubled my money. Unemployment is below 6%. We don't have everything we want, but things are a lot better.
• Universal health care became the law of the land. This happened during a brief moment of fillibuster-proof majority. So far, about 13 million more Americans now have health insurance. We have a ways to go, but it's a good start.
• Green energy received a big funding boost. Result: neighborhood roofs are sprouting solar panels, wind mills are going up around the country, we are nearly self sufficient in energy, our greenhouse emissions are down, and electric cars are hitting the road.
• Wall Street and the banks got a new set of regulations to live by. They are certainly tougher than we had before. Time will tell if they are tough enough.

For the last four years the Republicans have controlled the House and, not surprisingly, neither President Obama or anyone else can get any sort of progressive legislation through Congress.

Along the way a funny thing happened in California. The Democrats took over the whole government with a super majority. They could do anything they wanted. What they did was dig California out of a huge fiscal hole and balance the budget. Compare that with the cut-taxes-and-spend, borrow-against-tomorrow reality of the Republicans when they had control in the 2000s.

If we get a Democratic Congress we won't get everything we want, but we'll get some of it, which is a lot more than we'll get from the Republicans. Vote for congressional Democrats.

Leon Panetta has his head stuck straight up his ...

you know what. Why do I say this?

Panetta just published a book. I'm not going to comment on the book because I haven't read it. I have, however, heard Panetta be interviewed and I will comment about the interview. In particular, about Syrian chemical weapons. Panetta's story is very simple:

1. President Obama said Syrian use of chemical weapons would result in serious consequences.
2. Assad, Syria's embattled president, used chemical weapons.
3. Obama did not bomb Syria.

What makes Panetta a jerk is that he left out one teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy fact of enormous relevance. A more complete story goes like this:

1. President Obama said Syrian use of chemical weapons would result in serious consequences.
2. Assad, Syria's embattled president, used chemical weapons.
3. Threatened with bombing by Obama, Assad gave up his chemical weapons (at least the ones we know about).
4. Obama did not bomb Syria.

Given a choice between blowing up bits of Syria and getting rid of a dictator's chemical weapons America is clearly better off getting rid of the weapons. Duh.

It gets deeper though. Suppose we had bombed Assad severely enough to overthrow him. If the Assad regime went down what would happen to all those chemical weapons? The rebels would get them. Who are the strongest rebels? ISIS and other al Qaeda offshoots! Our mortal enemies. Next stop for those weapons, an American city near you.

What President Obama did with the Syrian chemical weapons crisis was brilliant. He got rid of the weapons without firing a shot. Those are weapons that can never be used by Assad or ISIS or anyone else. They are not coming to an American city near you. Oh, and by the way, taking down Assad is a lot safer now.

That's top notch leadership.

Obama and the Economy

With Congressional elections coming up it is time to see if President Obama deserves a Democratic majority in Congress so he can get some legislative help. One very good way to decide if a president has done well is to compare the state of the nation on the day he took office with today. For the economy, I'll do that now.

Just to be clear, I'm comparing the economy January 2009, when Obama took office, and 4 July 2014, right now.

In general the economy in 2009 was in free fall, in the middle of a full blown economic and financial crisis. It was the worst we've seen since 1929 and there were plenty of people that thought it would continue to go downhill. Today the economy is stable and growing. Improvement: vast. Some details follow.

The US economy was losing 750,000 jobs a month. Today it adds a few hundred thousand a month. Improvement: roughly 1,000,000 jobs/month.

The DOW was around 8,000. Today it is over 17,000. Improvement: more than double.

The S&P500 was well under 1,000. Today it is almost 2,000. Improvement: more than double.

Corporate profits were in a nose dive. Today they are near record levels. Corporate profits in 2009 were less than $700 billion. This year they are $1,900 billion. Improvement: $1,200 billion/year.

The government was on track to borrow $1,413 billion. This fiscal year the government is on track to borrow $649 billion. Improvement: $760 billion/year.

There is a whole TV network and a vast hinterland of commentators that will tell you everything Obama has done wrong: large or small, real or imagined, misleading or not. That's fine, but keep your eye on the big stuff, and these economic numbers are big stuff. There has been enormous improvement on Obama's watch, in the face of bitter knee-jerk Republican opposition.

The nation deserves a Democratic Congress to help President Obama out, so vote for your local Democratic congressperson. Who knows, some good stuff might even get done.

Blood in the Water

Lore has it that if there is blood in the water, sharks will attack. If the Republicans are rewarded for shutting down the government over Obamacare, we'll get a similar result.

Budget policy is normally made by Congress passing budget bills which the President signs. These bills last a certain amount of time, usually ending by the beginning of the fiscal year, October 1. If the normal budget bills are not ready by then, Congress traditionally passes a 'continuing resolution' that keeps the government open with spending at the same rate as the previous year. These continuing resolutions usually last a few weeks or months giving Congress time to pass the normal budget bills. There have been continuing resolutions every year since the late 1990s.

This year the Republicans tried to kill Obamacare by refusing to pass a 'clean' continuing resolution (a 'clean' resolution has no other stuff attached, it just funds the government). At first they insisted on a continuing resolution that also eliminated all funding for Obamacare. When that didn't work, they insisted on a partial elimination. Meanwhile there's been a partial government shutdown since there is no funding bill for this fiscal year. This has caused lots of problems, so the Republicans are now trying to pass partial continuing resolutions for parts of the government they like.

Obviously, this is an incredibly stupid way to govern a country. If the Democrats give in and allow Republicans to stunt Obamacare this time, the whole process will repeat itself in a few weeks or months when another continuing resolution will be needed, or when the debt ceiling needs to rise to avoid the government welching on its debt. The Republicans will want more, of course. They'll sense the blood in the water.

There are only two possible good results from this mess:

1. The Republicans are crushed, good governance wins, and a clean continuing resolution is passed. It would help if the Republicans then lost big in the 2014 election. That will put an end to government shutdowns for awhile
2. Some concessions are made in exchange for taking this whole strategy off the table. For example: eliminate the concept of a debt ceiling and make continuing resolutions automatic. This would eliminate government shutdowns indefinitely. You can still cut government spending, just use the normal legislative process.

In either case, neither party could get its way by threatening to hurt America. To get their way they would have to win elections and pass budget bills. You know, good governance.

The short story: if you want good governance, don't put blood in the water. It makes the sharks attack.

Time to End the Drug War, People are Coming Around

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN medical expert, just made a 180 degree turn around and now supports medical marijuana. Click the link to see why. That got me thinking.

One of the monumental failures of government policy is America's War on Drugs. It has imprisoned vast numbers of Americans, made criminals of almost everyone, spent enormous amounts of money, and illegal drugs are readily available to anyone, anywhere in the US (including prisons) at quite reasonable prices. There is another, much better, way to control drug use. See How to Actually Win the War on Drugs for details.

The War on Drugs has a racist result described in a very interesting book called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. To understand the extremely well documented argument you need to know one fact: drug use among African Americans is about the same as among whites but arrest and conviction rates for drug crimes are much, much higher for African Americans. This is how blacks are, albeit imperfectly, kept down. Here's how it works:

1. Drug enforcement is focused primarily on black communities, particularly young men, because 'everyone knows' that black men commit the most crimes.
2. Since everyone does drugs at about the same rate, enforcement focus leads to much higher arrest rates for blacks, particularly young men.
3. District attorneys have great discretion in how vigorously they prosecute, and black men get a lot more vigorous prosecution, in part because 'everyone knows' that black men commit a lot of crimes.
4. The end result is a large fraction of young black men in prison, on parol, or with felony drug convictions which makes it hard, sometimes impossible, to get a job.
5. Joblessness is correlated with violent crime rates. In fact, the higher violent crime rates of black men is entirely explained by the higher jobless figures.
6. Since black men have a higher crime rate, drug enforcement is focussed on black communities ... see #1.

Note that the cost of imprisoning someone for a year is about the same as attending the University of California. Which will make a better citizen, and bigger tax payer, out of a high school kid smoking a bit of reefer?

NOTE: you can make a similar argument about brown people, but I left that out for simplicity.

One way to break this vicious cycle is to get rid of the drug war, which doesn't work anyway. Let's do it!

I'm Afraid to Say, America the Torturers

Two reports have come out reminding us in excruciating well supported detail of what we already should have known:

1. During the Bush administration torture by the U.S. government was widespread.
2. This torture was approved and promoted at the highest levels of government.
3. This torture was in direct contradiction to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishment'.
4. This torture generated little if any reliable intelligence.

These reports are

• The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment
• The U.S. Bi-Partisan Leadership Against Torture on the 25th Anniversary of President Ronald Reagan Signing the Convention Against Tortue and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment.

Under the treaty, torture is a crime against humanity. If the home country of a torturer does not prosecute, any country may step in and bring charges. This happened some years ago when Great Brittian arrested ex-Chilean president Pinochet at the request of Spanish authorities for torture committed in the 1970s and 80s. Senior Bush administration officials would do well to stay in the U.S. to avoid a similar fate.

Of course, if America wakes up to the fact that our most basic laws were grievously violated by the highest officers in the land, and that these crimes severely damaged our standing in the world thus aiding our enemies immensely, we just might prosecute ourselves.

Obama, Republicans and Bipartisanship

Republicans have made a big deal about the lack of bipartisanship since President Obama took office. Of course, it takes two to be bipartisan. Let me remind you of one story from the early days of President Obama's term.

The Super Bowl was a week and a half after the inauguration. It just so happened that there were two republican senators from one team's state and two democratic senators from the other team's state -- so Obama invited all four senators to watch the game with him. To anyone who wanted to work together for the good of the country, this was a golden opportunity. Three plus hours with the new president in an informal setting. Plenty of time to get to know something about him, to present one's ideas and maybe make some deals.

You know how this story has to end: both republican senators turned the invitation down.

This set the pattern for the next four years. Time and again Obama adopted republican, conservative ideas -- only to have republicans immediately turn away from their own ideas, their own initiatives for the sole purpose of saying, in this election season, that Obama failed to get the bipartisanship he hoped for.

Do you want to reward this kind of behavior? Because if the Republicans win this election, it will validate their strategy and the next time they are in the opposition they will do exactly the same thing.