Part-Time Pundit

Columbia was Right in Hosting Ahmadinejad

The controversy surrounding Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia is still roiling the campus and the legislature. Representative Duncan Hunter, a non-factor in the Presidential race, has threatened to cut all federal funding from Columbia for hosting the event. It's just not no-name presidential candidates hungry for airtime that are complaining. Conservative groups across the spectrum are complaining too.

The purpose of a university is the free exchange of ideas. Conservatives, rightly, complain that conservative ideas and ideals are stricken from the marketplace of ideas. This undermines the function of the university, leads to de facto indoctrination, and even causes the atrophy of "liberal" thought because it never has to defend itself. In such a system of censorship, everyone loses.

Here, the tables are turned. The president of Iran, a country we are likely to start bombing in the near future, was given a podium and a microphone on an American college campus. He had to face audience questions (and dodges them like the best of our own politicians). No one confused Ahmadinejad's speech with a political rally.

Now you have "conservatives" who once complained about censorship  seeking to employ their own. It's one thing to disagree with having the speaker; it's another to make the extraordinary and unprecedented threat to strip a university of all federal funding and federal grants. No one has a problem with protests. However, we don't need some politician deciding what does or does not get to be said on a college campus. Hunter, by injecting himself into the debate this way, shows that he has more contempt for the United States, its Constitution and its people than Ahmadinejad.

A college campus exists so that all sides of an issue can be aired and debated. This is not fostered by limiting the information flow on a conflict with Iran to only information released by the White House Press Office. Ahmadinejad is a world leader, a key figure in current events, and he's the exact right person that should be giving a talk or two on a college campus. Students and academics should get the information first-hand, not sifted through the lens of the media.

Academic freedom and free speech in general, have plenty of means at their disposal to deal with unpopular or just flat out wrong ideas. Going hog-wild and shutting down talks because someone denies the Holocaust is what the Europeans do.  It is alien to the ideals this country was founded on. Allowing people to speak freely exposes error far quicker than any government censor would.

In fact, the reasoned people who respect America's founding principles and emphatically reject Ahmadinejad's policy and rhetoric felt no need to start bringing down the hammer on anyone giving him a microphone. This quote from Mike Baker sums it up:

If you’ve heard him talk in the past, you could be pretty confident he was going to maintain his seat on the crazy train. In reality, our best defense against Ahmadinejad is to make sure he always has a microphone in front of him and the cameras are rolling. You would have to be psychotic, heavily medicated or enormously naïve to walk away from that speech thinking "… huh, seems like a reasonable and clever fellow.”

In fact, if he had been allowed to go to Ground Zero and display his antics there, there would be no debate about going to Iran and we'd already be halfway to Tehran by now.

The reality is, no one had to go to this talk. His ideas were forced on no one. People went because they wanted to go and it does not follow that they agree with what he said (I've been to many talks in which I disagreed with the speaker). It's one thing to disagree with those ideas, it's another to stomp your feet and demand censorship. The "conservatives" demanding sanctions on Columbia should spend their time learning the founding principles of this nation they claim they want to conserve.

September 28th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Around the US, Columns, Iran, Politics | 4 comments

If Congressional Approval Falls Below 10%, Do We Get to Have Another Revolution?

The latest Zogby poll shows that only 11 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. This is contrasted with Bush's underwhelming 29% approval rating. These polls show that Americans of all political stripes are losing faith in their government. Congress' all time low (prior to this poll) is 18% approval. Do we get to disband the government and write a new Constitution if it falls below 10%? For comparison, most foreign governments suffer a coup at these approval ratings.

The partisans on both sides will likely use this poll to show how the other party is ruining America. That's what they do and most people have adopted this approach. It doesn't matter who has the most coherent policy, it just matters how you can spin things to show the other party as a moral evil. This line of thinking misses the point.

The poll shows that the average American and the average politician are simply disconnected. The concerns of the average American aren't represented inside the Beltway and it shows that what's huge news on the cable news channels and in the latest partisan shouting matches isn't what matters most to Americans. And America is fed up.

It's not about a single issue, it's about the sum total of all the issues that America cares about that go ignored or are actively worked against by our politicians. Our candidates are pre-selected by party insiders where people who aren't "team players" (i.e. party hacks) are actively discouraged from running. Sure, they'll take your money but they want yes men in office.

We have representatives from every corner of this country in D.C. Yet all issues are effectively nationalized. How does a representative vote on a particular bill? With his caucus, not with the intentions of his constituents. There are rare exceptions, some of those are honest principled men, many are just media whores who like the press image of being a "maverick". And America is fed up.

This poll shows a population that is conditioned to think that the government will fix the big problems. The sub-prime mortgage fallout (which hasn't begun fully to set in) is a great example. Sure, we had banks with overly liberal lending habits that gave money away to people not likely to repay it. They should know better considering most every economic crisis in history was started by bad lending practices. However, the people taking out those loans aren't even on the radar. People don't think that the average citizen should be responsible for making bad economic decisions, it's the government's job to bail them out. Yet, the government consistently fails at doing so.

Katrina is another great example. Governmental failures abounded at every layer of government. The mayor did not use all the assets he had to protect his people. Over two-thirds of the police department walked off the job (and got free vacations to Vegas). Gov. Blanco and the Louisiana state government were more interested in embezzling disaster money than buying the equipment they needed. When it all came to a head because the governor and mayor did everything wrong, FEMA wasn't up to the task to clean up after them. The government told the people they would protect them, but it was the people who took care of themselves who came out of Katrina unscathed.

In every direction one looks, one can find a promise of government to help and that promise being broken. Corruption is rampant in both parties and the talking points that one party is more corrupt than another are simply absurd. Looking at the field of 2008 presidential contenders, it looks like it'll be more of the same. How much lower do approval ratings need to fall until Americans insist that things change?

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September 26th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Congress, Elections, Politics | one comment

Greenspan is Right about the Republicans and the Economy

Many on the right are lamenting the "conversion" of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and will likely start to discredit him for committing the unforgivable heresy of praising Clinton and criticizing Bush. Specifically, he praised Clinton for his fiscal-minded policies and focus on the spending deficit. Conversely, he criticized Bush and the Republican Congress for its out-of-control spending and divorce with fiscal discipline. He has it exactly right — the Democrats did not win in 2006, the Republicans lost.

In the information age, or more appropriately the disinformation age, pundits on both sides will spin Greenspan's remarks and globalize them into what they aren't. Greenspan remains, legitimately so, a libertarian Republican. This is not an endorsement of Hillary-care which will likely be re-introduced if she gets elected. However, the fact remains that at least "tax and spend" liberalism is mathematically coherent compared to "tax-cut and spend" Republicanism. Call it what you want, but it's not a conservative policy and that is why the conservatives have not bailed out the Republicans in 2006 and aren't contributing at high levels in 2008. The Republicans had a golden opportunity to cut the massive waste and pork from the federal government's budget and showed themselves all too ready to increase it at far greater levels than any Democratic administration.

Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, spells out some of his criticism and praise of US economic policies of his time at the helm of the Fed. The timing of the book could produce real intelligent discussion on economic policies, but sadly it will not. We don't debate ideas, we duel with soundbites.

The fact remains, deficits do matter. The technical term for a family that routinely deficit spends is "bankrupt". The sub-prime mortgage fallout is just another case of what happens when families do this in bulk. Our deficit spending has driven the dollar to record lows against the Euro. Other nations and central banks are concerned about our spending habits and are acting accordingly.

When a few Chinese ministers threatened to sell their US dollars because of policies toward the Yuan, the threat was real. To be fair, this was probably two ministers trying to make inroads into the Communist Party of China, but we should all stand up and take note that our policies have introduced a significant risk of foreign manipulation to our economy. Someone has to make up the difference between our spending and our tax revenue. In this case it was foreign countries like China who may not have our best interests in mind when they make their financial decisions.

President Bush rarely used his veto pen until the Democrats took over Congress. The result was an out-of-control appropriations process where almost every significant bill was laden with pork spending such as the "bridge to nowhere". Pundits can point to Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) who took a $100,000 payoff all they want, but conservatives expect better from their people and don't want politicians who are just as corrupt as Democrats. Illinois Republicans learned that lesson with George Ryan and the result was that the Illinois Republican party is defunct and no longer capable of winning statewide office. The national Republican Party should look at how rampant corruption and waste worked out for the Illinois Republican party… that's their future unless they get it together.

That said, Greenspan is, as are most conservatives, for "tax-cut and spending-cut" and corruption-free policies. Judging from the field of 2008 Republican nominees, it is doubtful that any of them are up to the task of pruning the budget to end the deficit or cleaning up the corruption in Congress. This is why Newt Gingrich is also right that there is an 80-20 chance that there will be a Democratic (probably Hillary Clinton) president in 2008.

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September 17th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Economics, Politics | 2 comments

FEC Evasion and the Regulation of Political Committees

The Federal Election Commission has recently ruled on the complaint filed against Kos Media (of DailyKos.com fame) that alleged it was running a political committee and did not file the required disclosures. The case was MUR 5928 and the documents are available via the Commission's Enforcement Query System (put 5928 in the case field). The interesting point of the dismissal is how it avoided answering the complaint.

The FEC, in their ruling said "First, the complaint does not allege, nor does publicly available information indicate, that Kos Media is owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate." (Page 5, lines 17-18). They state this because if there was such an allegation or if Kos Media was a political committee, the media exemption doesn't apply. The problem is the entire complaint's sole focus is the fact that Kos Media is a political committee. That was exactly what I alleged. They simply ignored that, pretended I was alleging something else, and dismissed the complaint. This means with about a two-page long pleading and a $350 filing fee, this decision could be overturned trivially on appeal.

The more important issue, however, is the idea that FEC regulation is censorship. This is indefensibly false and every single blogger who claimed that it was goes to show that most bloggers aren't about facts; they are about hysteria and fear-mongering. It simply is not reasoned commentary but rants coming straight from the black helicopter crowd. To prove this answer the following questions:

Are the RNC and DNC political committees?

Do they have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of members?

Are they regulated by the FEC?

How, in the decades of such regulation, have those hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people been silenced?

The fact is, they haven't. Disclosure is not censorship by a long shot. We could argue about McCain-Feingold, but even if this complaint succeeds that law doesn't apply in this case anyway. FEC regulation has not shut down the RNC and DNC, I certainly get enough of their mailings. People still talk about politics even though they are members of a party. Western civilization as we know it has not collapsed. For an organization like Kos Media to whine on one hand about censorship, but on the other call for actual censorship in saying FOX News doesn't have a right to be on the air is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. Apparently they believe the government shouldn't control who has the right to be on the air… they believe they should have that editorial control.

In between posting agitprop worthy of a Michael Moore movie and posting the victimologies about how a well-funded, well-connected multi-million dollar corporation is oppressed because a private citizen legally petitioned his government, there are some other interesting facts. Namely, Kos' attorney keeps issuing sometimes overt, sometimes vague threats. If they're so right, why do they need to keep threatening to file SLAPP suits when they know full well there is absolutely no cause of action. It's likely because they have something to hide.

At the end of the day, the issue is still not about regulation of blogs. It's about regulation of political committees who organize online. If Kos Media wants to be in the business of electing Democrats, that's fine. They just have to register like every other political committee doing the same thing.

On Business Law Matters

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September 8th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Elections, Law / Legal Issues, Politics | 3 comments