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Is the Die Cast?

Nero fiddled while Rome burned...while George W. Bush has to rely on another guy to write his music. A scathing column by "BusinessWeek" pundit John Carey reveals that GOP pollster Frank Luntz more or less has had to educate the White House on controlling energy policy. (Not to mention ripping all of the proposed ideas.)

Understand, gas prices are a short term political problem. People grumble, but adjusted for inflation these rates at the pump are nowhere near history highs. The long term problem is that high energy prices either will cause the cost of things to go up, diminishing consumer confidence, or people will not experience a rise in wages and cut back spending. It's not what functions as textbook inflation, but it might feel the same to many people.

All the Republicans frothing at the mouth to trumpet their moral confidence and lack of relativism now find themselves at the mercy of Alan Greenspan. If he continues to raise interest rates it will soften the blow causes by inflationary impacts on the economy, but it will also short-circuit the lucrative housing market. That could be the butterfly whose wings start a hurricane of international economic troubles.

And for his part, Bush did little to dispel myths that the Saudi royals are really in charge by his unwillingness to appear forceful towards a visiting Crown Prince Abdullah earlier this week. So perhaps Nero is the wrong comparison. Julius Caesar, after crossing the Rubicon and disobeying the Senate's order to disband his army replied, Alea iacta est. The die is cast.
posted by Thomas at 10:17 PM 0 comments

 
Five Issues More Important to Women than Abortion


The watershed moment in the 2004 election turned out to be the gore-strewn end of the Beslan school siege. Millions of viewers tuning in for the Republican National Convention saw the heavy rhetoric of Dick Cheney and company reaffirmed: terrorists would stop at nothing, even taking hundreds of children hostage. Of course, the Chechen separatists who committed the act have never attacked America. Not to mention the fact that Beslan is far closer to the furnace of war in Russia than any place in the US is to the Middle East.

The Democrats knew the polls saw this was costing Kerry the election, but decided they were smarter than themselves in what platforms to use toward women voters who were susceptible to Beslan-related fears. I say this because in both Nevada and Florida (swing states to be sure) minimum wage referenda passed, the first time that any so called “red states” had increased their minimum wage above the federal standard. Many blue states, however, already had set higher rates. Had John Kerry come to Nevada and Florida and campaigned for the minimum wage, he might have won.

The reason is simple, in Nevada and Florida at least, most jobs are in the service sector. They are usually connected to tourism in some way, and this means that many women find themselves eking out a living at the federal minimum. This is not to suggest that men have it much easier in these states, but almost overwhelmingly single mothers find themselves done in by this scenario more than single men who have no other responsibilities. This hard reality means that pay equality is a sore issue for many women voters who believe that both parties try to woo female voters talking lots about abortion (each pro or con) and not enough about their economic livelihood.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, Dan Balz revealed that DNC Chairman Howard Dean specifically asked for a study of eight swing states by pollster Cornell Belcher. Unsurprisingly the survey detailed that many voters were feeling two sets of anxiety, one economic and one social. Bush’s success was convincing them their cultural fears were greater than their pocketbook worries. Dean promised to realign a new message to reach out and grab these voters.

So what will this message consist of? Here are five platform issues I think we’ll see.

Minimum Wage/Pay Equity: The ship may have sailed in terms of using hikes in the minimum wage to target female voters. But that doesn’t mean arguing for pay equity has lost any of its luster. From Hawaii to Maine, it’s a solid consideration at the nexus of social and economic policy.

Lowering the Cost of Healthcare: Guess who is bearing the cost of unaffordable medicine? The Bush Administration is afraid to force big corporations to provide insurance for its employees. This never used to be a problem until the better-paying jobs left and stuck much of the heartland working for Wal-mart. Just how the Dems want to address the problem is open to interpretation, but it’s a stone-cold lock for 2006 and 2008.

Education: No Child Left Behind is failing, and the hope of the Bush Administration and Republicans is to replace the current system with vouchers. Saying this a few times will prove to be such political Kryptonite that even Bush won’t try to revive the point.

Saving Social Security and Retirement: It’s not about giving people a choice of where they invest; it’s about protecting their pensions. Bush suggesting the stock market is a great place to invest won’t jive well when Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay go on trial next year. Add in the desire of many large employers to shed their pension plans and the desire of several state politicians to privatize state benefits…and…this one is a another hot coal.

Domestic Violence Prevention: Here’s the reality check. In a poll done after the election, this issue was considered a bigger priority than equal pay and abortion to women voters. Though the federal government often does not directly deal with the issue of domestic violence, Dean and company would be wise to suggest something that would heal this rift.

After all, abortion is still important, but neither party should expect to make much headway using it as the sole bargaining chip to attract women voters. Dean’s cageyness and the fact that there are more prominent women in the Democratic Party indicate a chance for redemption. Just don’t be surprised if the issues used happen to be the five above.
posted by Thomas at 7:27 PM 0 comments

 
Primary Colors

The US Congress creeps toward total sideshow, with Tom DeLay’s past finally catching up to him and Bill Frist inching toward changing the Senate rules on filibusters. But don’t ask John Q. Citizen about any of this, all he knows is that he’s never seen gas prices so high. So while wheels continue to spin, the other big event gets set for Monday in Rome. You know, that Papal Conclave thing. And the front-runner for the next Father of the Roman Catholic Church is Francis Arinze. Born in Nigeria, the Vatican is already cognizant that his dark skin might help the faith’s profile.

But that’s not why Arinze is popular. He’s popular because what he is (African) gives the appearance that change is afoot but who is he (a resident of the Vatican state for twenty years) means that most of the changes would probably be token ones. He would not rock the boat on Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (which famously ruled out any sanctioned use of contraceptive pills). He’s the Colin Powell of the Catholic Church.

But if Arinze becomes Pope, he would join Kofi Annan as another West African in control of a major (and in theory peerless) world organization. And does this mean anything? In the sense that both men have dark skin, no. But that they both hale from the most fragile and unstable continent on Earth, yes. It proves that even after all the oppression and environment destruction Africa has seen, the potential is there for rebirth. And it also proves that Africans are able to lead.

And does a black Pope presage better luck tomorrow for other people of African descent in positions of authority and overall? The Republicans love putting in token minorities. Just imagine Bush’s glee in naming Clarence Thomas Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the same year that Arinze became pope. Or how about the year an African country wins the World Cup?

After how painful this month has been privately for the conservatives, that might bring a smirk back to Bush’s face.
posted by Thomas at 4:11 PM 0 comments

 
A Cure Worse than the Disease

My initial excitement that Connecticut’s Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, announced he would file suit against the Department of Education over No Child Left Behind was tempered by a moment of reflection. The Bush Administration probably wants nothing more than to have No Child Left Behind struck down as an unconstitutional “unfunded mandate”. This would allow all parties involved to explore the topic of school vouchers, which is the ultimate hope of a person like George W. Bush.

Vouchers would achieve several of the global themes adopted by the Administration. First, they provide a subsidy to otherwise not-so-profitable businesses that benefit the well off at the cost of America’s poor. Secondly, vouchers would have a chilling effect on the strength and militancy of the Parent Teacher Association. But most of all, vouchers would extend the reach of the Executive Branch down to the classroom floor, without guarantying the success of the schools and without allowing local and state authorities to intervene.

It is true that if ALL unfunded mandates are struck down by the Supreme Court that would put all parties involved in a tough situation. And perhaps this is a true slipknot: every outcome has the potential to be a nightmare. If the federal government has the power to enact unfunded mandates universally, the results could be as disastrous as if it had no power to under any circumstances.

That being said, it’s not like NCLB is a good program or is improving the lot of America’s public school children. Curing it with vouchers however, sounds worse than the disease.
posted by Thomas at 6:44 PM 0 comments

 
Catholicism Goes Back to the Future

Saying that the Conclave of Cardinals might struggle to decide a successor to Pope John Paul II is an understatement. His reign was so long that most Catholics have forgotten or were not alive to see the controversy surrounding his elevation in 1978. If not for “The Godfather, Part III” most Americans would likely not even be aware that there was a controversy to begin with. His predecessor, John Paul I died after only 33 days in office once it became clear that he might amend the major encyclical of the previous Pope, Paul VI. He had rejected the recommendations of Vatican II to liberalize Church additions toward female sexuality and contraception.

But thanks to John Paul II, the Catholic Church squelched this debate only at the risk of trivializing itself in world. His staunch opposition to the Iraq war did nothing to stir Catholic sentiment against George W. Bush in the 2004 election. He waited far too long to address sex-abuse scandals. And for all his talk of standing up to Communism, John Paul II did very little to aid the plight of Catholics in China. He did enhance the retail papacy with World Youth Days and several international visits that raised the profile not just of the Church but of his own office.

But the long reign of a monarch is often deleterious for the people he or she leaves behind. The pressures building throughout the pontiff’s quarter-century rule are about to be released. The developed world’s scorn for Africa roils beneath the surface. The demands of Americans and Europeans for the Church to embrace things such as stem-cell technology will also rumble parishes from California to Krakow. Not to mention the critical shortage of priests everywhere.

This leads me to think that for Catholics, the future may be now.
posted by Thomas at 12:00 AM 0 comments