Monthly Archives: June 2006

NADA

It’s Not Fascism When We Do It!

Vast DNA Bank Pits Policing Vs. Privacy By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer

Brimming with the genetic patterns of more than 3 million Americans, the nation’s databank of DNA “fingerprints” is growing by more than 80,000 people every month, giving police an unprecedented crime-fighting tool but prompting warnings that the expansion threatens constitutional privacy protections.

With little public debate, state and federal rules for cataloging DNA have broadened in recent years to include not only violent felons, as was originally the case, but also perpetrators of minor crimes and even people who have been arrested but not convicted.

Now some in law enforcement are calling for a national registry of every American’s DNA profile, against which police could instantly compare crime-scene specimens. Advocates say the system would dissuade many would-be criminals and help capture the rest.

“This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street,” said Chris Asplen, a lawyer with the Washington firm Smith Alling Lane and former executive director of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. “When it’s applied to everybody, it is fair, and frankly you wouldn’t even know it was going on.”

Dump Duhbya

Orwellian cheeriness that has become a Bush administration specialty

A Fishy Policy
The Bush administration’s big chill on speech isn’t limited to global warming.

YOU’D THINK THE Bush administration would have learned its lesson with James Hansen and global warming. Apparently not. Mr. Hansen, you may recall, is the NASA scientist who was muzzled — by a 24-year-old résumé falsifier, no less — in his efforts to warn about the dangers of climate change. Mr. Hansen, it turned out, wasn’t alone: Other employees working on that issue at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been chastised for speaking out and answering media questions.

Now it appears that this chilling effect isn’t just for global warming. According to a report in Wednesday’s Post by Blaine Harden, NOAA has directed that questions about endangered salmon — which the agency is responsible for protecting — are to be answered only by headquarters, and then only by three officials, all political appointees. Scientists and other agency officials who actually work on the salmon studies aren’t supposed to answer reporters’ questions.

This latest crackdown came — coincidentally, officials insist — the day after a Post article quoted a NOAA spokesman in Seattle as making positive comments about decisions by a federal judge and federal scientists that ran contrary to Bush administration policies on salmon protection.

With the Orwellian cheeriness that has become a Bush administration specialty, NOAA headquarters spokesman Jeff Donald explained that the change was made because “some folks were trying to consolidate a little bit and make sure everything we were putting out was accurate and as up to date as possible.” That’s the kind of helpfulness we don’t need.

NADA

In Praise of Extremism?

The year is only half over, but I have a nominee for the dumbest political opinion column of the year — and it’s not by John Dimdahl, but by Jonah Goldberg (editor-at-large of National Review Online). mjh

The case for extremism by Jonah Goldberg

On issue after issue, the left and right get into a tug-of-war over their preferred policy solutions. And politicians, extreme people-pleasers that they are, try to split the difference. The journalists who cover politicians are cynics and assume that true believers are by their very nature suspicious. Moreover, because politicians and mainstream journalists alike get the most grief from “partisans” of the left and the right, they both assume that the middle is the most enlightened place to be, since they think that’s where they are. But compromise is not always the smartest way to go. Leaping a canyon in one jump may or may not be stupidly extreme, but it’s a hell of lot smarter than the more moderate approach of trying to leap it in two jumps. [mjh: this is the kind of irrelevant ‘reasoning’ the Right considers “deep thinking”]

Lest I seem too bipartisan myself here, it should be noted that the bias against extremism is not a purely centrist phenomenon. It comes in large part from a sustained liberal campaign against conservatives. The most famous illustration of this is probably Barry Goldwater’s perfectly sensible declaration that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. But for a generation of liberals, extremism was something to be found only on the right, never on the left, and Goldwater’s observation was taken as code for extremism liberals don’t like. [mjh: notice another tactic of the Right to blame the Left for its unreasonable reaction to a perfectly sensible Right-winger. Yeah, uh-huh. Good to note that Saint Goldwater had his doubts about conservatism towards the end. He might be called a RINO today.]

Paladins of bipartisan moderation may not realize how responsible they are for today’s polarized climate. In America, it is impossible to gain traction on an idea unless you first assure everyone that it’s not “extreme” or “radical.” Assurances that “this is a moderate, centrist reform,” and that “this is mainstream,” proliferate whenever a policy is put forward. There’s a deep cynicism in the assumption that Americans will only agree to things that aren’t too inconvenient. But, more important, there’s a profound dishonesty to such assurances, which inevitably cause people with opposing views to get very, very angry.

Dump Duhbya

The Death Tax Nonsense

The Death Tax Nonsense says much about the Radical Right. Here is an issue that concerns a tiny minority of the richest Americans. Still, the Radical Right spins it — as they do all taxes — as something to frighten everyone with. This issue alone would show how out of touch Republicans are with the majority and how their true constituency is Wealth (though many of the super-rich see the fairness of the tax). It makes “the party of ideas” look like the vandals sacking Rome. mjh

Sioux City Journal: Grassley sees hurricane recovery costing up to $200 billion

“On the estate tax, it wouldn’t surprise me if nothing is going to happen in the year 2005,” said [Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa]. “It’s a little unseemly to be talking about eliminating the estate tax at a time when people are suffering.”

Repeal/Reform of the Estate Tax – Center for American Progress

At the core of this debate is a simple American principle: we do not believe that because of accidents of birth one group should have unrivaled economic power. Efforts to completely or virtually eliminate estate taxes on even the nation’s most wealthy estates offend basic American values that have long held that economic success should depend on hard work, entrepreneurial spirit and merit rather than one’s original station in life. In the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Such inherited economic power is as inconsistent with the ideals of this generation as inherited political power was inconsistent with the ideals of the generation which established our government.” …

Currently, less than 1 percent of estates pay any tax—with the vast majority of the population owing nothing. In 2004, this translated into an estimated 18,800 estates.[4] Under current law, this number will decline even further as the estate tax exemption rises. By 2009 (when the law will allow a couple to pass $7 million and an individual to pass $3.5 million of any estate to their heirs tax free), less than 0.3 percent of estates will owe any tax.

Sample Chapter for Graetz, M.J. and Shapiro, I.: Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth.

Mt. Rushmore and a History of the Estate Tax by Jim Grote

It is ironic in a country as devoted to individual liberty and free enterprise as ours that the most ardent promoters of a federal estate tax have been some of our fiercest patriots and richest capitalists: Thomas Paine, Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Buffet to name a few. Reviewing the thinking of these four men can only add clarity to the current ideological debate over estate tax reform. One might think of these gentlemen as comprising the Mount Rushmore of the estate tax edifice.

FairEconomy.org – A History of the Estate Tax

Many Progressive Era (1900-1918) reforms resulted from this period, such as: child labor laws, voting rights for women, and the establishment of an income tax, which required the extraordinary step of amending the constitution. The estate tax was another one of these reforms. Those who made the case for the estate tax advanced arguments that are vital to the contemporary debate. …

A second belief was that society played a significant role in the creation of individual wealth and therefore had some claim upon the wealth of the very rich. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed a federal inheritance tax, saying, “The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.” Roosevelt recognized that wealthy citizens benefitted particularly from government protection of wealth and property rights.

The Atheist's Pulpit

Thank God For All This Hardship

Religion – Indonesians see disasters as God’s will – sacbee.com By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer

Battered by one calamity after another, Indonesians have found a resilience that has amazed even foreign aid workers. It’s rooted in a widely held belief that the troubles were sent by God, either as a test of their love for him or as punishment for straying from his teachings.

“Human beings are greedy, selfish and too arrogant,” said Prapto Warsito, a villager who lost his father and house to the country’s latest disaster, Saturday’s earthquake on Java Island that killed more than 5,800 people.

“The almighty one has decided to teach us a lesson,” he said. …

“These (disasters) all come from Allah,” he said Monday. “We must be grateful and tests like this should be met with resolve and humbleness.” [mjh: sounds like a battered wife or abused child who says, ‘he only beats me because I deserve it.’]

Uncategorized

Subject to Short Ridicule

It’s time again for the Alibi’s Ridiculously Short Fiction Contest (108 words max including title, if any). The deadline is Monday, 6/5 at 5pm (how could it not be 06/06/06 at 6pm?); write steve@alibi.com (no attachments). I’ll show you my entries soon. In the meantime, below are links to 2005 and 2004. mjh

alibi . june 16 – 22, 2005
How ‘Bout a Quickie?
The winners of the Alibi’s Ridiculously Short Fiction Contest
By Steven Robert Allen

mjh’s blog — Ridiculously Short Fiction (2004)