Category: America

Friday, 17 March 2006

Bird Flu for the Birds

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Bird Flu for the Birds

Perhaps I’d feel differently if Bird Flu was the only Big Bad the Big Media has thrown at us in the past 6 years. But it’s not.

Flood. Iraq. Terrorist Attack. Neighbors. Asteriods. First Graders. Blogs. (Maybe I’ll finish finding links later, maybe not.)

Call me cynical, but bird flu feels FUDdy. Especially when something like this comes through.

Jen read Flu. She says we’re due.

That may be. At minimum, the wrong people (everyone) are being told to prepare for something full of ‘ifs’, ‘whens’, and ‘maybes’.

“The H5N1 avian flu virus that has infected flocks on at least three continents and killed 91 people could be the virus that experts fear will mutate.”

(emphasis mine)

91 people have died on record from bird-to-human transmission. No human-to-human cases have been found.

The CDC conservatively estimates 20,000 people die each year from regular flu (the kind we have shots for).

More than 33,000 people have died due to military intervention in Iraq. The official death toll of the Sept. 11 disaster is 2,986.

I still remember the constant threat of MAD thrown at us growing up. I recognize that there were moments in the cold war where it came very close to occurring.

But. It. Didn’t. I think we’ve lost perspective.

Wednesday, 8 March 2006

Four Articles Encouraging Impeachment of George W. Bush

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Four Articles Encouraging Impeachment of George W. Bush

The Center for Constitutional Rights recently released Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, a $10, 144-page paperback they’re encouraging you purchase for your House Representative (that’s where impeachment hearings need to start).

From Onnesha Roychoudhuri’s interview at Alternet.org, here’s the basics of the 4 articles:

  1. Warrantless wiretapping of Americans in the U.S.

    “This constitutes a violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which prohibits and makes criminal any wiretapping without a warrant.”

  2. Falsifications used to justify the Iraq war.

    “You reference any particular day and the administration was making statements that Iraq has a relationship to 9/11, al Qaida and Osama bin Laden; that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In the one and a half years leading up to the war, the time during which they were making these statements, they knew that they were false.”

  3. Torture, arbitrary long-term detentions, disappearances and special trial.

    “Our law is very clear on these things. You can’t torture people, you can’t commit war crimes, you can’t send people to countries where they’re tortured and you can’t set up special courts for trial. The Geneva Conventions are a part of our law…”

  4. All of the prior three articles together

    “If you look at these things together, you see that they are essentially destroying our republic and our democracy. They are destroying the constitutional structure of our government. Therefore, he should be impeached.”

Wow. This list even leaves out Bush’s poor handling of Katrina, Enron, Plame, and the Dubai Port deal.

Impeachment hearings for Clinton were initiated for crimes not at all related to our national security. Everything on this list is a national security and constitutional issue.

Not good for Bush. Not good at all.

Based on a quick Google News search, 4 towns in Vermont, San Francisco, and 28 of the 435 House Reps have voted for investigating grounds for impeachment.

Of those 28 Reps – MNs own Martin O. Sabo. Rock the House, Martin.

Patriot Act Misuse – Ignorance or Opportunism

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Patriot Act Misuse – Ignorance or Opportunism

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for pointing me to Mark Steyn’s excellent ‘Long war’ is Breaking Down into Tedium column in the Sun Times.

Steyn lists out some actually happened examples of companies and financial institutions invoking the Patriot Act without reason. Given the complexities of most legislation and the Asking Questions = Unpatriotic attitude of the current administration, I can see how this could happen.

Fortunately, Steyn provides ammunition if you suspect overly-zealous corporations are misusing the security bill:

“…we have a policy of reporting all erroneous invocations of the Patriot Act to the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that such invocations weaken the rationale for the act, and thereby undermine public support for genuine anti-terrorism measures and thus constitute a threat to America’s national security.”

Sunday, 19 February 2006

Why Health Coverage Shouldn’t be Tied to Employers

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Why Health Coverage Shouldn’t be Tied to Employers

“Weyco and Scotts Miracle-Gro, based in Marysville, Ohio, are in the vanguard of a growing effort by business to brake soaring medical costs by regulating such unhealthy employee behavior as smoking”

Health coverage as a benefit of employment no longer makes sense – financially for employers or employees. Expecting employers to foot the bill and not expecting them to minimize their expense might be a sign of mental illness.

My problem with employer-sponsored plans is their lack of portability. The instability of employers in the dot-com era meant switching plans and doctors every 18 months when I switched business cards – annoying to say the least.

The three benefits I see of individual sponsored plans are:

  1. a better understanding of where their healthcare dollars are going
  2. more direct control over the services that make sense to them
  3. portability

I don’t see these points conflicting with a national health care plan. To me, healthcare is the same type of problem as roads/highways and defense.

J Wynia has a good write up of choosing an individual healthcare plan.

Malcolm Gladwell takes the healthcare = transportation metaphor one step further.

“…imagine if we had employer-based subways in New York. You could ride the subway if you had a job. But if you lost your job, you would either have to walk or pay a prohibitively expensive subway surcharge. Of course, if you lost your job you would need the subway more than ever, because you couldn’t afford taxis and you would need to travel around looking for work.”

Friday, 27 January 2006

Public Information Shouldn’t Require a Subpeona

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Public Information Shouldn’t Require a Subpeona

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately.

I consider all my web searches, this post – and generally anything that’s not email or an instant messsage – public.

Now, I’m cool with 1 million random results from the index being handed over to the government under one single condition – anyone, anyone at all, a PhD candidate, a 6th grader, a homeless political candidate – request and receive the same information.

Yes. In the same way I feel all the security cameras on Nicollet Avenue should be accessible via a web browser by the general public – any of you should be able to request the same information. Outside of quantity – I’m not sure how this is different than Google’s Zeitgeist.

Actually, the fact we don’t have easy access to this information seems like a public disservice.

Saturday, 17 December 2005

Wednesday, 28 September 2005

First Graders With Plastic Butter Knives Are New Threat

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on First Graders With Plastic Butter Knives Are New Threat

Somehow the remote got stuck on local Fox News this evening. Leading to a long armchair parenting conversation about the appropriate punishment for an 8 year old unwittingly bringing a butter knife to school.

In western Wisconsin growing up with all sorts of guns, bows, and arrows in the house, I’m comfortable with the responsibility these items bestow upon parents. To me, declaring any knife a weapon is a slippery slope to outlawing pencils sharp enough to practice writing the alphabet with.

But I digress, for this seems to be an emerging issue with elementary school-age terrorists. First in Richmond, VA – sane parent, insane administration. Then in, Youngstown, OH – administration gives kids plastic flatware then punishes kids for reuse. Finally in Omaha, NE – administration realizes zero tolerance might be a bit insane.

Given the recent history of bad things that have happened in middle and high schools, the restriction of funding, and the No Child Left Behind scorched-earth approach to education, public schools have been slapped punch drunk by the neocon administration. I can see where administrations might be acting a tad off.

Unfortunately, the more administration consider the butter knives used benignly an actual problem, the more parents with the means will pull their kids and their money out of public schools thus privatizing America’s future. Well…unless the parents with means also believe in Intelligent Design. Then I’m cool with it.

Apologies to anyone that clicked the Omaha, NE link earlier and got a coupon for instant biscuits. Not sure how that link got in there, either way – it links to the story now. Thanks to DH for brining it to my attention.

Tuesday, 13 September 2005

On The Federal Government Only Running Military and Post Office

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on On The Federal Government Only Running Military and Post Office

I’m grabbing a late morning coffee at the Dunn Bros in downtown St. Paul. Like all Dunn Bros, this is a great place for eavesdropping (surpassed only by the Nicollet Mall location).

The gentlemen next to me are have a very in-depth political current events discussion. Considering the low number of good coffee shops between here and the Capital, I suspect politics is their day job.

The gentleman in a blue tie is going off on both parties and doing a fairly decent job of articulating the seeming contradictions in their respective positions. Though he completely misses the parenting-style analogy in George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. After this, Blue Tie declared the federal government should run the military, the post office, and that’s it.

I’m not comfortable with how short his list is, so I’m starting my own. My list makes 2 assumptions:

  1. Internally, the Federal Government should only do things difficult for individual states to perform separately.
  2. Externally, the Federal Government is the America’s representative to the World.

That being said, I believe the Federal Government is responsible for the following:

  • Foreign Relations
  • Interstate Commerce
  • Protecting America’s Geographic Borders
  • Protecting Citizens’ Equality
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Monetary Policy
  • Social Security
  • Education
  • Health Care

According to the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, this makes me a Liberal Libertarian. Probably because I answered ‘maybe’ to 40% of the questions and the quiz is published by Libertarians.

Wednesday, 7 September 2005

George Lakoff on Katrina – Failure of Moral Values

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on George Lakoff on Katrina – Failure of Moral Values

In a nice follow up to my earlier There’s No Helping the NeoCons post, George Lakoff comments that Katrina was not only a natural disaster and federal failure, it was a complete failure of the Republican moral and political philosophy.

(emphasis is Lakoff’s)

“The [right-wing conservatives] central principle: Government has no useful role. The only common good is the sum of individual goods. It’s the difference between We’re all in this together and You’re on your own, buddy. It’s the difference between Every citizen is entitled to protection and You’re only entitled to what you can afford. It’s the difference between connection and separation. It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy of Katrina.”

Friday, 2 September 2005

There’s No Helping the NeoCons

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on There’s No Helping the NeoCons

A while back, I read George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. It was extremely helpful in understanding how progressives and neo-conservatives frame issues differently and their underlying values.

From it, I learned NeoCons see asking for help a sign of weakness. That all assistance is charity and charity should be abolished. That if you’re asking for help, then damn it, you just aren’t working hard enough.

Why has it taken so long for the administration to respond? Because deep down, they don’t feel they should.