Che and Evo: ¡Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

As the wide scale release date for Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Che, starring Benicio del Toro as Ernesto “Che” Guevara, draws near, the second half of the movie, Guerrilla, needs to be placed in a proper historical context.  The first half of the movie has a more accessible plot considering the general populace is more familiar with the Cuban Revolution. But what about Bolivia during Guevara’s involvement there?  What about Bolivia today?  The small South American nation seems to be left out of worldwide political discourse for the most part.  Soderbergh’s biopic about the radical ideologue will certainly increase awareness not only about Che and Marxism, but also his continuing struggle that is embodied by current Bolivian president, Evo Morales.

Che is concerned mainly with two pinnacles of its namesake’s existence.  The first half of the film, The Argentine, covers the Che’s involvement in the Cuban Revolution alongside Fidel Castro.  The latter half, Guerrilla, follows Guevara’s final revolutionary attempt in Bolivia.  His endeavor eventually fails, and he is executed for his subversion.

Guevara’s activities in Bolivia came during a time of quasi-military rule under President René Barrientos of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement. The Barrientos administration attempted to maintain popular support within the peasantry while blatantly serving foreign interests, mainly the United States.  The president had initially come to power through an armed coup d’état in 1964 while he was serving as vice-president.  He would later be elected with help from the military.

After recovering in Prague from a failed revolutionary effort in the Congo, Che began to meet with Bolivian dissidents in late 1966 or early 1967.  With a band of Cuban soldiers and supplies from Havana, Guevara made his way to the Ñancahuazú region of Bolivia where a military training camp was set up.  There he began to recruit and train Marxist-sympathizing peasants.  The recruiting process was largely unsuccessful given that the Communist Party of Bolivia did not support his guerrilla movement.

In total, a ragged band of about 50 guerrilla warriors began an armed assault against the Bolivian army.  They won a few small victories throughout 1967, but the tide turned against them as Barrientos, with help from the CIA, took a strong stance against Guevara’s efforts.  Guevara’s small forces were quickly encircled by the Bolivian military and subdued in October of 1967.  Che himself was captured and placed in a schoolhouse where he was later executed. Reportedly, his last words were “shoot, coward, you are only about to kill a man.”  The execution had been ordered by President Barrientos himself.

Barrientos’ decisions surrounding the quelling of Guevara’s movement and his local supporters would eventually lead to his political demise.  During the onslaught against Che’s troops, a group of Bolivian miners came out in support of the insurgency.  Barrientos sent soldiers to extinguish this spreading sentiment.  This resulted in the soldiers massacring approximately 30 civilians of both sexes.  His authoritarian actions in both situations led to the loss of what popular support he still had.  In order to regain his popularity, the president took to traveling around the Bolivian countryside and explaining his actions.  While on this journey, Barrientos perished in a helicopter accident in 1969.  The country then plunged into decades of political and economic turmoil that lasted until the early 1990s. The political situation remains unstable even today.

Che’s gift to Bolivia would not be his dream of a violent revolution, but his socially progressive ideals.  He also encouraged anti-capitalist sentiments within the largely indigenous populace.  These concerns would later form the basis for the backlash to neoliberal globalization and neocolonialism imposed by the international community.

Evo Morales was elected to the presidency of Bolivia on December 4, 2005.  Since then he has carried on a legacy that began in his country with Che.  He is the first indigenous president of Bolivia and is seen by many as the first step to throwing off the shackles of Western imperialism.  He raised the minimum wage by fifty percent soon after his election.  In a landmark move, he partially nationalized Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America after Venezuela.  In doing so, he has exponentially increased the amount of capital available to the national government.  This has allowed Bolivia to heavily invest in social welfare programs, which have been largely successful; as of December 21, 2008 Evo Morales has declared Bolivia an illiteracy-free region.

Despite Morales’ success and popularity, in early 2008 there was an autonomy movement in the Santa Cruz regions, the wealthy area of Bolivia, which was instigated by wealthy oligarchs.  This move led to rioting, which was reportably supported by the US ambassador to Bolivia.  The ambassador was promptly expelled from the country for his alleged subversive position. Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, in a show of solidarity with Morales, also expelled the American ambassador to Venezuela.

The US “War on Drugs” has also been a point of contention for Bolivian policy as the coca leaf is a traditional herb used by the indigenous people there as a remedy for altitude sickness and as a mild stimulant.  Morales, a former coca farmer and union organizer, has allowed for more legal production of the plant.  In response to this action, the United States has placed Bolivia on its narcotics blacklist and has stopped all aid to the poorest nation in South America.

All of these events culminated in an unsuccessful attempted coup against the Morales government in 2008.  The coup may have been tacitly supported in my opinion, although not very vocally, by the government of the United States.  Unanimously, the leaders of every South American country came out in support of the Morales government, and Hugo Chavez pledged military support for his political ally.  The coup failed, but some of the regions were granted a level of autonomy as a result of the coup attempt.

The rejection of US authority when viewed with Guevara in mind can be seen as a continuation of his beloved revolution.  Although for now, mass bloodshed has not been necessary to attain progressive goals in Bolivia, the future is uncertain. Recent declines in worldwide commodity prices put many of Morales’ social programs in jeopardy. This has the potential to lead to tumultuous times not only in Bolivia, but also throughout Latin America. Time will tell whether a socialist democracy can survive such an economic shock. As such, history will either view Guevara and Morales as idealistic failures or heroic humanitarians.  As for me, I’ll hope for the latter.

Robert Gates: Beyond Politics

Hacking off the people that got you elected is a dubious way of beginning a presidency. Why on earth then would President-elect Obama draw the ire of some Democrats by keeping Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Bush appointee, in his cabinet?

“Change” has been the mantra of the Obama machine’s public face from day one. It catapulted him from an obscure, yet “articulate and bright and clean” (thanks, Joe) junior U.S. Senator from Illinois to the next President of the United States. As such, the Obama campaign promised a transparent administration that would redress the excesses of power wielded by the unitary executive under Bush’s wicked little coven. We would see an end to the war in Iraq and a realignment of our foreign policy that would lead to open communications with those nations deemed unworthy by the Bush cadre. Good God, don’t let any of THOSE guys stick around for his new “change” administration.

The thing is, Secretary Gates isn’t really one of those guys.

In fact, Robert Gates has served seven presidents, both Republican and Democrat, during his years with the intelligence community. He is notable for being the only director of the CIA to rise in ranks from an entry-level position to director (DCI). He wasn’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and earned his directorship in 1991 the hard way. In fact, he was up for the job in 1987, but shadows of doubt about his role in the Iran-Contra affair took their toll on his nomination. There were intimations that he may have been complicit in suppressing irregularities that should have been reported to Congress during the affair. However, Gates, unlike many, was completely cleared of any wrongdoing. In fact, during those confirmation hearings, he gained a measure of introspection that the current administration lacks, as noted in his memoirs:

I would go over those points in my mind a thousand times in the months and years to come, but the criticisms still hit home. A thousand times I would go over the ‘might-have-beens’ if I had raised more hell than I did with Casey [former director of the CIA William]  about non-notification of Congress, if I had demanded that the NSC get out of covert action, if I had insisted that CIA not play by NSC rules, if I had been more aggressive with the DO in my first months as DDCI, if I had gone to the Attorney General.

Gates’ political alignment is a little vague, but he most certainly leans conservative. Some sources cite him as an Independent, while others quote him as saying “I consider myself a Republican.” However, his foreign policy ideals were shaped by those conservatives who did not necessarily hold with the current administration’s neoconservative “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” absolutist philosophy. Rather, Gates could be better identified with the more rational “realists” of the first Bush administration. In fact, during his service as deputy national security adviser during the Bush 41 administration, Gates worked closely with then director Brent Scowcroft, some even referring to Gates as his protégé . Scowcroft has been vilified by the neocons for his vocal opposition to the war in Iraq, and his influence on Gates should not be underestimated.

Gates’ work with the Iraq Study Group before his nomination to Secretary of Defense should also be considered closely. This group consisted of a bipartisan team of heavy hitters, including former Secretary of State James Baker, former representative Lee Hamilton, and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The group’s recommendations, published in 2006, significantly differed from the course of action taken by the Bush administration. They favored a substantial shift in responsibility for Iraq’s security from U.S. to Iraqi forces and opined that “by the first quarter of 2008…all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq.” Instead, we got the surge. The surge, arguably, was effective, but Gates’ presumable role in advising the group in matters of intelligence steered them towards their conclusions that a troop reduction was the wiser course. It is a testament to Gates’ integrity that he listened to his better judgment rather than the rantings of the hawks. Gates maintained a rational voice and was the farthest thing from a sycophant to the neoconservative prevailing interests of the administration.

Gates’ reliance upon his own well-founded deductive ability over hard line party rhetoric became even more evident during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense. When asked to describe his motivations for accepting the nomination to the position, Gates stated that he believed “very deeply that one of the fundamental factors in our success in the Cold War was our ability to have a broad, bipartisan agreement on the fundamental strategy on how to deal with the Soviet Union” and that “it is imperative, in this long war on terrorism that we face that could go on for a generation, that there be a bipartisan agreement.” That philosophy of bipartisanship stands in stark contrast to the Bush administration’s politically unilateral attitude.

Even more revealing is his thoughtful, realistic understanding of relations with Iran and Syria. When asked by Sen. Byrd, D-West Virginia, if “an attack on either Iran or Syria would worsen the violence in Iraq and lead to greater American casualties,” Gates paused gravely, and replied, “Yes, sir, I think that’s very likely.”

What one gathers from studying Secretary Gates is that his actions are guided by his assimilation of experience and an exceptional understanding of the geopolitical world around him. He is no slave to demagoguery, and has a history with the more levelheaded elders of his party. His agenda seems one of a true civil servant as opposed to a political ladder-climber. He has used his ascendancy to power to effect cautious, intelligent policies that are much more self-guided than adherence to any particular political dogma. President-elect Obama seems to value these characteristics as virtue enough to override divisive political considerations and has entrusted the defense of the nation to such a man of intelligence, independence, and integrity.

Your Earth Matters

In 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published. It influenced a generation and for many it marked the beginning of the environmentalist movement and the first time the voice of reason was pitted against the interests of the corporations that would rape the planet in pursuit of profits.

But even before it was published, Carson herself was beset with viscous threats of lawsuits and public derision, including suggestions that this scrupulous and published scientist was a “hysterical woman” incapable of writing such a book. Huge pushback against Carson was organized by the entire chemical industry lead by the biggest names at the time, Monsanto, Velsicol, and American Cyanamid. The efforts at discrediting her were faithfully supported by our own government’s Department of Agriculture and many in the media.

In 2006, Al Gore’s Movie An Inconvenient Truth was released. I can follow this sentence with almost an exact duplicate of the paragraph preceding it; practically changing only the names “Carson” to “Gore”. In almost 45 years, while progress on environmental issues has been made -so little has changed.

I was born in 1961, a year before Silent Spring was published. I do not have the answers on how to save the planet, but I feel my generation bears the responsibility to do so. I have spent the last quarter of a century as a print and broadcast journalist who has had many stories on sustainability, environmental issues, and green technologies both published and aired on national television networks such as Discovery and PBS.

Reason will only be understood when it is given a voice that people will hear, and I would like to be that voice with Your Earth Matters, here at Demockracy.com

Beginning in the New Year, I will be probing these issues weekly.  Through this new column, I hope to expose the truth about sustainability and discuss the myths and realities about wind, solar, and the creation of a green economy and green infrastructure. I will introduce the most promising green technologies and debunk those that are just pipe dreams and empty promises. We will take a serious look at global climate change and its impact on everything from poverty to politics.

Your Earth Matters will be an eye-opening exploration that will allow you to better see this planet as the one living, breathing, interconnected sphere it is. I hope you will enjoy the journey.

Obama’s Progressive Street Cred

The selection of Rick Warren for the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration is troubling, to say the least. Many progressives are rightly outraged at the selection of a man who is virulently anti-choice and homophobic. Yet, this is only the latest in a series of Obama decisions that has left many progressives wondering who it was, exactly, they voted for. Apparently, “change” looks a lot like the Clinton administration. Rahm Emanuel is back. So is Eric Holder, formerly Deputy Attorney General. Most conspicuous of all, Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State. A bevy of liberal-but-not-quite-progressive apologists have tried to explain away all of Obama’s decisions. Here is a list of some of their justifications:

• Obama is pursuing Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” approach. Authors of this justification also cite Lyndon Johnson’s phrase: it’s better to keep one’s enemies “on the inside, pissing out” rather than “on the outside, pissing in.” By keeping his enemies in the White House, those enemies are not in Congress or on K Street trying to defeat his plans.
• Remember how we all said for six months that Obama’s qualifications don’t matter? Not so much. As such, he’s surrounding himself with a group of people who have experience working in a presidential administration, and the last Democratic presidency was Bill Clinton’s, so it only makes sense that he would choose people from there.
• Obama is sneakier than he seems (think I, Claudius, I suppose). He’s putting a lot of center-left (and, in some cases, center-right) Washington establishment politicians in key positions to pay lip service to that establishment. Don’t worry, it’s only a front. The real reforms are going to happen, but from behind a veil of mainstream non-reform. That’s the only way he can get things done down there.
• Obama does not want to continue the divisive politics of George W. Bush. Even though it might anger those on the hard left, Obama would rather heal and reconcile than punish.  Turn that cheek!

Some of these justifications are disturbing. The last one, that Obama should be conciliatory instead of punitive, is put forth by people who believe that the crimes of the George W. Bush administration should not be investigated. The country needs to heal, they say. It’s time to get on with the business of the United States, where “business” is defined so as to exclude investigations of the previous administration. Of course, this logic ignores the fact that the law has been broken. As Glenn Greenwald has observed, politicians are more than ready to throw the full force of the law at marijuana dealers, but when it comes to prosecuting their own, politicians are equally ready to be lenient, even though the marijuana dealer harmed no one and the politician may have, oh, I don’t know, been responsible for torture, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless wiretapping at the least. When crimes are committed, they should be investigated and prosecuted – not just for poor people, but for everyone, including politicians. For Barack Obama to suggest that Bush administration criminals should go free is to suggest that politicians live in a special class above the reach of the law. It also encourages more illegal activity in the future, once it is known that the government won’t prosecute those activities.

Furthermore, it’s not even up to Barack Obama to decide what is or is not investigated. The cult of personality surrounding him is great (in fact, it contributed to getting him elected), but even though we like him we must not forget that, as the president, he has constitutional limitations. It was irresponsible for the media to even ask what Barack Obama thought about Joe Lieberman being kicked out of the Democratic caucus. On November 5, Obama’s life as a senator ended, even though he didn’t officially resign the position until three weeks later. The president has absolutely no say – none! – in the operation of Congress. It would be different if Obama were acting in his capacity as a senator, but after winning the presidential election, especially in a nation eager for a new leader, any notion of Obama acting solely in his capacity as a senator would be extremely naïve. Obama must repudiate the unconstitutional powers that George W. Bush has claimed for himself, either through complete fabrication or malicious misreading of constitutional law.

Given his opinion of things like same-sex marriage (he tactfully says that same-sex couples should not be allowed to “marry” as such, but then says that they should have the same rights as heterosexual couples), NAFTA/CAFTA, and Israel, no one could confuse him for a true progressive. Obama’s apologists rationalize his decisions by pointing out that Obama never claimed to be a progressive at all!

Or could they? George W. Bush’s method of saying-without-saying is well-documented. While he never explicitly said that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks, there is definitely a reason why, in 2001, virtually no Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible, but in 2003, one third of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible.

Could it be that Barack Obama, whose campaign P.R. was spectacular, performed the same saying-but-not-saying function? Yes, it is entirely possible that Obama clothed himself in the cloak of progressivism while still wearing the mainstream Democrat’s clothes underneath. He has suggested massive new spending on entitlement programs, but he wants to increase the size of the military. He wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire, but he voted in favor of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that assisted the administration in warrantless wiretapping. His foreign policy goals consist of using real diplomacy instead of threats, but he voted in favor of NAFTA. He wants to provide government health care for people who have no health care, but he stops short of suggesting a universal-payer system like Canada’s or Great Britain’s. Obama’s positions are a wash: for every progressive-sounding idea, there is another conservative-sounding one to balance it out.

Or, on the other hand, it could be that Obama never suggested anything, but that he was forthcoming about his non-progressive credentials. It could be that we, the progressive Americans, were so thirsty for a change that we latched onto the only candidate (outside of Dennis Kucinich) who even brought up the issue of health care reform (at those early Republican primary debates, not a single candidate brought up the issue of health care), social reform, and getting out of Iraq (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards failed on at least one of these). We projected onto him the candidate we wanted him to be, ignoring the fact that he was not that candidate. Did we set ourselves up for disappointment? Yes, that is possible, too.

And then there’s the argument that all this complaining is pointless, that Obama isn’t even the president yet, and we should all just wait and see what happens on Jan. 20. Well, Rick Warren will happen Jan. 20, and that gives me even less optimism that, at noon on that day, Obama will suddenly throw aside his centrist mask and shout, “You fools! You thought I was just like Bill Clinton! But you were wrong! Free health care for everybody!” Agreeing to take part in Warren’s Saddleback (which sounds dangerously like “bareback”) debate with John McCain, Obama could conceivably have been seen as paying lip service to evangelical Protestantism, just like every president since Nixon has had to do. But putting Warren on the bill for Inauguration Day? Imagine if George W. Bush had hired Hillary Clinton to give a speech at his second inauguration. Yeah, it’s like.

Most troubling in my opinion, though, is Obama’s own insistence, ever since March of 2007, when he announced his candidacy, that he is not an ordinary politician. His grassroots, fifty-state strategy was unparalleled in its success. His speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was intelligent and it treated the American people as though they, too, could understand long speeches that contained nuanced thoughts, as opposed to the Manichean sound bites of George W. Bush. His political maturity happened after the Vietnam War era, and, as Andrew Sullivan has suggested, the very core of his being is not instilled with a reflexive fear of Republicans and conservatism.

Conservatism demands the acknowledgment of a false dualism in every aspect of life, with the promise that conservatism will lead people to the correct side of this duality. Democrats buy into this framework and then try to argue the opposite side. The true progressive would never let the Republicans frame the debate and then proceed to work within their ill-conceived framework. To the progressive, there is no debate about whether or not health care should be free, or if there should be a premium for minimum services, or if the government should control it. The answer is: the current system of privatized health care doesn’t work and it should not be repaired, it must be rebuilt from the ground up. Obama appeared unafraid to work outside the existing framework and create a new framework that works in the interests of everyone. “Should it be a public solution or a private solution?” is not the correct question. “What solution is best for the country?” Now that’s the right question. It’s a question that Obama appeared to be asking during the campaign, but one that is being substituted by justifications for increasingly conservative behavior.

Annual Essay Contest

Inspired by the historical 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Demockracy has decided to launch its First Annual Essay Contest. In addition to a substantive prize for the winner, it is our hope that this contest will help further our vision of a nonprofit online policy and politics magazine based upon open dialogue, in-depth analysis and intellectual honesty. As such, although there will only be one grand prize winner, we plan to publish and recognize the work of several runner-up submissions.

Essay Topic:

Four years ago, no one could have imagined that Barack Obama would become the 44th President of the United States. This should be a lesson to us all that a lot can change in four years. As such, Demockracy.com would like you to look forward to New Year’s Day 2013 and speculate about what changes the world is likely to see in the next four years.

Guidelines:

• All essays must be submitted via the form below no later than Friday, January 2 at 5 pm EST.
• All essays must be between 1,500 and 2,500 words.
• Essays can focus on politics, policy, and/or culture. However, we encourage essays to have a primary area of focus (e.g., changes in international affairs, health policy, gay rights, other rights or issues, etc.).
• The unit of analysis for essays can be the world, a nation state, or a group of individuals.

Winners:

• The first place winner will receive a $100 gift card to his or her online store of choice and will have his or her article published as a featured article at Demockracy.com.
• Additional entries may be published at the discretion of Demockracy editors.

Questions? Contact Us.

Submit Your Essay:

Hot Rod, Sweet Caroline, and Preacher Rick

When the highlights of the last few weeks are wiretaps, profanity, political dynasties, and invocation speakers, you know you’re in political dead season. As the awkward transition from fear to hope continues, here is my view of some of the highlights:

• Hot Rod on Tape
  

Yes, Mr. Ego himself, Hot Rod Blagojevich, was allegedly caught trying to sell the U.S. Senate Seat being vacated by President-elect Obama. To be honest, this wasn’t much of surprise to me. Blagojevich has long been known in my state of residence as an alleged opportunist crook. I know many who know the governor, and I honestly cannot attest to anyone ever offering good words about him as an individual. He has been a laughing stock, even among Democrats, for years. Before this scandal, he was said to be leaning toward taking his 18% approval rating into a run for a third term in 2010. There are not many good things that came out of this scandal, but at least we’ll be spared of that. Unfortunately, Blagojevich is showing no intentions of resigning, so this mess should drag on a little longer.

• Sweet Caroline’s Ambition
  

Caroline Kennedy, the once reclusive daughter of JFK that we knew so little about, is actively lobbying New York Governor David Paterson for the appointment to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate.  Caroline finally came out of the her self-imposed political exile this past year, co-chairing President-elect Obama’s VP selection committee, and now has apparently caught the family political bug. This lobbying effort has apparently put Governor Paterson and another political legacy, Andrew Cuomo, in a real bind. Cuomo apparently believes the seat is rightfully his. Outside of these two front runners, there are several very qualified candidates, including representative Nydia Velazquez , the chair of the House Small Business Committee and first Hispanic woman to ever chair a full House committee. Although I would prefer someone like Velazquez, if Paterson is going to go with a big name to represent a state used to having big names to represent it, Ms. Kennedy and the Kennedy charisma make more sense than Mr. Cuomo.

• Preacher Rick and the Angry Left
  

And the left goes crazy… Many on the fringes of the left-wing blogosphere are already one step shy of calling for a primary challenge to President-elect Obama in 2012, in part because of who he selected to give the prayer at his inauguration. This ideological purity litmus test garbage is appalling.  In the aftermath of this election, we’ve seen that there are just as many zany political purists on the left as there are on the right. Would Rick Warren as Secretary of HHS be nuts? Of course. But this, in my opinion, is a benign gesture to the millions of younger evangelicals who bucked the wishes of their parents and voted for President-elect Obama.  Obama has stated from the beginning of his campaign that he would work with everyone. If you agree with him on 1 out of 10 issues, he’ll work with you on that one issue that you happen to agree on. As such, I don’t understand why so many on the far left are so surprised at this gesture. Obama has always been honest about wanting to do things exactly like this.  Were people too caught up in the Obama mystique that they weren’t even listening to what he was saying?

I understand the need by many on the left to “get even” after all the harm that has been done to this country by ideologues on the right over the past eight years. However, seeking revenge for the sake of revenge is no way to make this country better.  President-elect Obama is inheriting the worst domestic and international situation of any president in at least three generations. He’ll need the help of many on the other side of the aisle to adequately face these problems. Is health care reform worth a small gesture such as a prayer? It sure is in my book. As Kenny Rogers once said, “you have to know when to hold them…”  It seems that President-elect Obama will do his best to build up goodwill among a wide array of Americans and save his political capital for more important issues. If you’re looking for someone that you’ll agree with on everything, Barack Obama is not your man. In fact, he never claimed to be.

House of Cards: The Plastic Conundrum

A new batch of rules was put into place by the Office of Thrift Supervision (an agency of the U.S. Treasury) Thursday to help protect consumers from the poor practices of credit card companies. Among other changes, all credit card companies will be required to give at least 45 days notice if any policies are altered, they have to give consumers a reasonable amount of time to make payments, and they can raise interest rates on existing balances only after payments are 30 days late.

But the big story with these new rules is that they won’t take effect until July 2010 – 18 months from now.

So with the economy where it is and with the credit markets being one of the main reasons, why isn’t the Office of Thrift Supervision being tougher on these companies? Why are these rules not being implemented immediately? Because the credit card companies don’t know how to run an honest business – so it’s going to take a while.

These corrupt practices by credit companies did not start back in 2005, but they were certainly perpetuated with the passing of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). This law made it more difficult for consumers to file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy- where all their debts were forgiven – so more would have to file for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy – where they would still have to pay back a portion of their debt. Not surprisingly, credit card companies spent more than $100 million lobbying for this law.

Make no mistake about it, despite its rosy name, the BAPCPA is not consumer-friendly; it assumes consumer abuse in more cases, provides more exceptions to discharge (forgiving all debts), and it allows credit companies to pursue collection without court permission. And if that wasn’t bad enough, what happens after a person finally does go bankrupt? The credit card companies are able to send them piles of credit card offers – all at high interest rates.

Many of these companies may claim they’re making these offers to help the consumer–to give them a chance to rebuild their credit. But more often than not, these consumers go right back into the cycle of debt – buying things they can’t afford and making token payments from time to time as their interest builds to an uncontrollable level–and the credit card companies know that. So really, the BAPCPA was just a way for credit card companies to make more money from newly-bankrupt individuals and not lose as much money from those who would have normally filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.

A key lobbyist for the BAPCPA was the Delaware-based MBNA corporation, who donated to the campaigns of 15 key Democrats—including home-state Senator and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, earning him the nickname Senator Biden (D-MBNA). After months of lobbying, those 15 Democrats finally decided to sit down with their Republican friends and get the law passed. [MBNA has since been acquired by Bank of America.]

So when the Office of Thrift Supervision came out with these new laws, credit card companies didn’t know what to do. They aren’t used these new, consumer-friendly rules. They don’t know what it’s like to have the customer be the number-one priority.

You see, most businesses have a simple business model–create a product, sell the product, and serve the customer. All of the top businesses in the world follow this model with any variations being specific to their own industry. But these credit card companies, they created a product – loaned money – and sold the product – charged interest – but they forgot about their customers. They targeted many individuals who were not good risks. They charged 29.9 percent interest rates, similar to what mafia loan sharks charge on a monthly compounded basis. They increased interest rates without informing consumers and without reason. They paid their executives an insane amount of money (Some 2007 earnings: David Nelms, Discover, $21.8 million; Ken Chenault, American Express, $53.2 million; Rich D. Fairbank, Capital One, $37.4 million; Ken Lewis, Bank of America, $99.8 million). Simply put, they were greedy, manipulative, and deceptive.

The credit card industry needs some time to get everything in order. It takes a long time to tear down decades worth of greed, replace the foundation, rebuild every aspect, and work back into the once-filled niche. The House of Cards has fallen, and those responsible will be under our protection for 18 more months. I wish the same could be said for consumers.

Arab Fiats: Islamicism is the New Communism

While many in the Western world cower in fear of radical Islamic terrorists and the Arab World in general, many of our fears are completely baseless. The truth is that in radical Islamists do not govern any Arab country with a significant population. That’s right, while many people see the entire Arab World as fanatical Islamists, the fact is they control nowhere.

It is clear that the true holders of power have often encouraged the fanatics in order to provide a distraction from the poverty and lack of development in many of their nations. This is in fact a strategy we also see used very effectively in non-Muslim countries. China continues to fan the people’s disgust for the massacres and tortures carried out by the Japanese during World War II in order that the people do not focus on leaders such as Mao Tse Tung, who was largely responsible for the starvation and genocide of his people. President Mugabe in Zimbabwe inflames the people by blaming the British for the cholera epidemic and malnutrition of the population.

In this light, historical lessons of the past century give us some interesting parallels to current realities. In the Arab world of 50 years ago, many countries were embracing communism, not fanatical Islamicism. After World War I, as anyone who has seen Lawrence of Arabia will know, the Ottoman Turks lost their Empire in the Arab World.  Much of it was divided between the British and the French, which caused huge resentment as Lawrence had promised they would have domain in their own nations as payback for their assistance in defeating the Ottomans. The British and the French set up puppet leaders and Monarchs, who assumed full authority when the bombed out European powers deserted most of their empires after World War II. When the European powers left, there was a wide power vacuum in much of the Arab world. The Soviet Union, which had just won the World War II on the eastern front, tried to help fill this vacuum. General Nasser took power in Egypt where Communism was fully embraced for a number of years. The Soviets gave considerable military aid to the Egyptians and built the High Dam in Aswan to control the flooding of the Nile and generate electricity. Communism was embraced by most of North Africa and became very pervasive in Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, communism was only put down violently by the House of Saud when they began to see it as a threat to their power. Socialism was established in Syria and Iraq under the ruling Baath Party. The Baath Party in Iraq had made many improvements for the status of women, education, and medicine before Saddam Hussein became a paranoid tyrant and took up the faith again to try to regain some credibility with his people. Some of these Communists Parties survive in limited forms to this day.

Over the past 50 years, many sons and grandsons of atheist communists have become fanatical Islamists, yet little has really changed in their day to day lives. Their financial situation has not improved, health services have improved minimally, and education has improved little. At the same time, their leaders and monarchs, as they did several generations ago, continue to live lives of uninterrupted luxury, hiding much of their wealth in Swiss bank accounts. They know very well that if they deceive their people to be engaged in rage against the West, whether it be by the Bible of communism or the Koran of Islam, they will maintain their status indefinitely. “The Great Satan of the West has caused their problems, and when he is banished it will be Heaven on Earth for them.”

In this light, it is unfortunate to have political leaders in the Western world who do not see this whole picture. The terrorists can never be beaten by firepower. They are only made martyrs, and like the Hydra, each head that is cut off results only in replication by many more. If we are to win over their minds and souls, tanks and warplanes can never succeed. For the trillions of dollars spent on weapons, how many hospitals could be built, how many wells dug, how many schools built, how many miles of sewers, aquifers, roads. How many farmers’ crops and lifestyles immeasurably improved? How many minds changed in favor of benevolent, trustworthy individuals bringing honest Western help, without questioning the beliefs of the recipients? Mind sets may not change in one generation, but they will in two. If such a fanatical movement can be built in this amount of time, with the power of good will, it can likewise be destroyed.

Complementary to this good will, the Western World must also cut off the leaders of these corrupt nations and city states, banish them from the club until a little more of their wealth, personal enterprise, and interest trickles down to assist their own people. Of course, as long as the Western world relies on their oil for their continued economic growth, this is unlikely. Such is the curse of economic inequality that often accompanies vast national resources in the developing world. Dubai, with relatively few natural resources, has been forced to make that the jump for the good of their people. As other illegitimate Arab monarchs and dictators freeze their Swiss bank accounts and overseas assets, don’t let them ski at our resorts and moor their yachts anywhere in the Mediterranean. Make them unwelcome in our lands. Let them feel the weight of their perfidy to their people. Let’s deal with the illness, not the symptoms.

Circuit Court Strikes Down National Security Letters

One of the more controversial components of 2001’s USA PATRIOT Act is the expanded use of national security letters (NSLs). These are letters given by the FBI to people who have information the FBI wants. The letters, which do not require approval by a judge, amount to a combination search warrant/gag order. The letter requires the recipient to produce information about a third party, whom the FBI is investigating. The recipient is forbidden from discussing, with anyone, the nature of the information requested — but it doesn’t stop there! NSLs also forbid the recipients from even disclosing the fact that they received such an inquiry.

In 2006, an internal audit found that the FBI’s use of national security letters had increased dramatically from 2003 to 2005, and many of those letters were authorized by people who were not in a position to authorize them. In 2008, another audit revealed that the FBI was still improperly issuing NSLs, and what’s more, 60% of the letters targeted American citizens.

Well, in 2007, the ACLU decided it had had enough. It filed suit against the government on behalf of several John Does named in NSLs, alleging that the letters violated the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, since the letters’ gag orders improperly curtailed freedom of speech without “due process of law” (that’s a Fifth Amendment guarantee that means a person cannot be deprived of “life, liberty, or property” without a trial), and the letters themselves were not issued with proper judicial authority. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York agreed, rendering unconstitutional the NSL provision of the USA PATRIOT Act.

The government appealed. On Monday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision in part. It agreed that the gag order provision violates the First Amendment because it is not “narrowly tailored” as is required by the strict scrutiny standard. It also agreed that the government, not the recipient of a NSL, has the burden of defending the validity of a gag order (under the statute, it was the recipient who had the burden of proving the gag order was not valid). The USA PATRIOT Act assumed that the government’s arguments in favor of a gag order were always correct.

With regard to the First Amendment, the Circuit Court found that the statute was overbroad specifically because the gag order does not have a temporal limitation. The government analogized the NSLs’ secrecy requirement to a jury’s secrecy requirement; however, the court disagreed, since a jury may talk about the case once it’s over, but the recipient of a NSL could conceivably be silenced forever, even long after the FBI’s investigation is over.

The court was troubled by the degree of deference to the Justice Department the USA PATRIOT Act requested of judges. I’ll let the Circuit Court speak for itself:

Assessing the Government’s showing of a good reason to believe that an enumerated harm may result will present a district court with a delicate task. While the court will normally defer to the Government’s considered assessment of why disclosure in a particular case may result in an enumerated harm related to such grave matters as international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, it cannot, consistent with strict scrutiny standards, uphold a nondisclosure requirement on a conclusory assurance that such a likelihood exists. In this case, the director of the FBI certified that “the disclosure of the NSL itself or its contents may endanger the national security of the United States.” To accept that conclusion without requiring some elaboration would “cast Article III judges in the role of petty functionaries, persons required to enter as a court judgment an executive officer’s decision, but stripped of capacity to evaluate independently whether the executive’s decision is correct.” Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 426 (1995).

Of course, that was the whole point of the USA PATRIOT Act: to strip from the law the requirement that a judge authorize a warrant. NSLs are designed to permit the executive, with the barest minimum of oversight (if any at all), to gather any amount of information, at any time, from any person, without the authorization of an independent third party. The Bush administration has shown that it would love nothing more than to turn judges into “petty functionaries” who are, at once, required to sign off on a warrant, giving it the appearance of third-party review (and thus legitimacy), while at the same time preventing those judges from conducting any actual, meaningful review. Bush’s Justice Department has argued that the September 11, 2001 attacks were so horrifying that the shock waves rippled through the Constitution itself, ostensibly amending it to create a parallel Constitution for “a post-9/11 world” in which the executive must have unquestionable power to arrest, detain, try, convict, and torture anyone it feels may possibly present a threat to national security. To follow the rule of law that has operated the United States for 219 years would only aid terrorists and put everyone at risk of another attack. These arguments have been refuted time and time again by courts, which — despite attempts at legislation to the contrary — still retain the authority “to say what the law is.” As it turns out, even an event as traumatic as the September 11 attacks cannot spawn into being a parallel, Bizzaro constitution that contains nearly-unlimited executive powers. There is no constitutional equivalent of a virgin birth.

Still at issue is whether or not the government is acting in good faith. Why is this secrecy necessary? Does it stem from an actual belief that disclosure of NSLs will endanger the country? Is it paranoia? Or is it something more sinister, a primitive desire for power and control? Vice President Cheney articulated “the one percent doctrine,” the idea that a 1% chance of a terrorist attack should be treated as a 100% chance of a terrorist attack. On its face, this belief is ludicrous: to be implemented properly, this policy would require a police state of the type seen only in China or the old Soviet Union. Cheney is no dummy, and must therefore understand that The One Percent Doctrine, from both a statistical, policy, and security standpoint, is foolish. Is it, then, a facile attempt to increase surveillance power?

These questions may end up never being answered; Cheney will take them with him to the grave. President Bush has no mind for complexity and thus cannot answer these questions, either. Bush is concerned about his legacy, not unlike Richard Nixon. But Bush’s mind is Cheney’s mind, and while Cheney may be as smart as Nixon was, Cheney does not have the same hang-ups about his reputation. Our only insight into the nation’s operation for eight years will be investigations upon investigations into what our government has been doing and why our government has been doing it.

Lone Star Rumblings: So Goes the Party

Top to bottom, the GOP in Texas seems to be foundering in a sea of disillusionment and infighting. Not just nationally, but in the Lone Star State as well, the Republican flock that gave rise to the Bush dynasty seems to have lost its faith.

The State of the Electorate

If a recent poll from Hill Research Consultants, entitled “Beyond Bush: Texas Republicans in an Obama Era,” is to be believed, Texas voters suffer from “Bush fatigue,” believe that the GOP is “arrogant, racist, corrupt, and unwelcoming” when compared to its Democrat counterparts. A generic R vs. D gubernatorial ballot gives Democrats a clear advantage at both the state representative and gubernatorial levels.

Generic Ballot Preferences	Republicans	Democrats
Governor	31%	44%
State Representative	31%	45%

Other points of interest note that “multiple deceased Democrats handily beat still living Republican office-holders in favorability,” and “Republicans are also failing to connect with younger voters and the Hispanic community.” Considering the state of Texas is growing younger and more Hispanic by the day, the Texas GOP seems to be on the wrong side of demographic trends.

So goes the opinion of the electorate in Texas, once the bread and butter of the Republican Party. They seem disillusioned and wavering in their support of the GOP and its direction. Hill, et al., warn that what happened in Colorado, a decidedly red state in 2000 whose governor, both chambers of the legislature, and both U.S. senators are now all Democratic, could happen in Texas. “The time to ring the alarm bell, if necessary, is now,” declares Hill.

Finally, it must be noted that the poll referenced in detail above was taken November 15-17^th, right on the heels of the general election. It’s not unreasonable to speculate that the voters surveyed were encircled by the “Obama halo,” a feel-good sentiment that seemed to wash over much of the country, proud of itself for electing its first African-American president. In general, polls taken in the weeks immediately after an election are not as reliable. Many moderate voters often have a confirmation bias toward the winning candidate or party. However, with that said, the Texas GOP should ignore the results of this poll at their own peril.

Gubernatorial and Senatorial Implications

With the laity in such disarray, it’s no surprise that the Republican Party leadership is struggling to maintain order within its own ranks. Two key Texas Republicans are looking vulnerable, and not necessarily just from Democratic vectors.

Sitting Governor Rick Perry, who won reelection in 2006 with only 39.3% of the vote, announced in April his intention to run again in 2010. Texas does not place limits on reelecting its governor, but a third term would be unprecedented and apparently not necessarily welcomed by some of the Republican elite.

On December 4^th,Kay Bailey Hutchison, the senior U.S. Senator from Texas, filed paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission to form an exploratory committee for the office of governor. The filing was not revelatory, as she’s been dodgy for months about directly answering the “would she or wouldn’t she run” question, and noises were even made about her running against Perry in 2006 and 2002. What was surprising was the speed with which the two camps traded barbs after her filing.

Hutchison initially remarked that there’s “too much bitterness, too much anger, too little trust, too little consensus and too much infighting” in Austin. Mark Miner, a Perry spokesman, replied “Kay Bailout has been talking about running for governor and passing legislation for years, and neither has ever happened.”

It will be an interesting gubernatorial primary in 2010, indeed.

Other Political Rumblings

Hutchison’s U.S. Senate seat does not come up for re-election until 2012. Should she vacate the Senate before then (she doesn’t have to in order to run for state office), the governor has the power to appoint a replacement. The word around the campfire is that sitting Lt. Governor,David Dewhurst, would be at the top of Perry’s short list.

Third behind the governor and lieutenant governor in power, the Speaker of the Texas House is elected at the beginning of each new congressional session, the next one beginning January 13, 2009. Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, whose leadership style has been likened to that of Vlad the Impaler, has held the Speakership since 2003.

He has caused controversy and consternation among both Democrats and Republicans by his heavy-handed use, some would say abuse, of the powers given him as speaker by the Texas Constitution. Not only has he refused to recognize representatives motioning for house rules changes that may challenge his power, he has even refused to allow direct votes to remove him from power brought before the House by half a dozen of his fellow Republicans at the end of the last session. He thought it would set a bad precedent.  Those who have challenged him from his own party have found themselves being passed over for desirable positions that their seniority may have given them dibs on.

No less than eleven representatives, seven of which are from his own party, will challenge Craddick for the Speakership for the next legislative session. On Friday, December 12^th, Rep. Dan Gattis, R-Georgetown, filed a constitutional proposition that would allow the removal of a speaker in mid-session with the approval of 100 of the 150 representatives. Obviously, Craddick is not a popular guy, even among his own people.

Overall Lone Star Outlook

With a core constituency that no longer seems to trust its leadership or the direction the party is taking, the GOP in Texas is a rudderless mess. Its captains can’t decide who should be at the helm, and Texas Democrats are eagerly waiting in the wings to stage a mutiny the scale of which would be rivaled only by the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” In 2010, it looks like they’ll have their chance.

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