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I was reading Pants Party's post about how the christian right is getting its panties all in a bunch about an ad for the Folsom Street Fair... which is totally badass on many levels. Seriously, I LOVE that the Folsom Street fair even exists, and now, I love them even more for pissing off the right... not from what they are doing, but from just their advertisement for it. So rad!
So reading about the hub-bub, I naturally wanted to see the ad. Well folks, here it is... So awesome.
What would you do with a guy who spent the main part of his career working to disenfranchise legitimate (Democratic) voters? Well, if you are the Bush administration, you'd put him in charge of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights voting rights section. While there, he would help transform the section's "historic mission to enforce the nation's civil rights laws without regard to politics, to pursuing an agenda which placed the highest priority on the partisan political goals of the political appointees who supervised the section." Do you think Alberto Gonzales was alone in wrecking the DOJ, and turning it into a partisan republican machine? This guy, Hans von Spakovsky (no, I'm not making that name up!), was one of the guys making the Karl Rove nightmare become reality. As this Slate story explains:
Among his numerous accomplishments at the Voting Section at DoJ, von Spakovsky can take credit for approving the Tom DeLay-sponsored midcensus redistricting in Texas—part of which was later deemed by the Supreme Court to have violated the Voting Rights Act. (To do so, von Spakovsky overrode a 73-page memo written by seven voting-rights experts finding that the DeLay scheme violated the Voting Rights Act by reducing minority voting strength in Texas.) Von Spakovsky similarly pushed for approval of Georgia's restrictive voter-ID law, again over the four-to-one objection of staff lawyers who (in a 51-page memo this time) felt the new law would disenfranchise black voters. State and federal courts later found that statute unconstitutional.
So, given that, what would you do with this guy? Well, if you were any sane person, you'd prosecute him... but Bush has instead given him the Medal of Freedom nominated him to the Federal Election Commission. Oh yeah, by the way, he taped a big "Fuck You Democrats!" note on the nomination. Of course the Democrats control the Senate, and are aware of this joker, so you'd think that they would simply tank his nomination. Once again, you'd be wrong. One Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), voted to allow this jackass out of committee. So now his nomination is going to go to a vote by the full Senate. Damnit, I'm going to be pretty pissed if this guy gets a six year job on the Federal Election Commission after all he has done to undermine voting rights in this country.
Footnote: If you're interested you can read about von Spakovsky's attempts to intimidate Justice Department employees, stifle their appeals, single-handedly disenfranchise thousands of Arizonans and then give false testimony (later modified in written answers) to the committee about it, you can read Dahlia Lithwick's take at Slate and ThinkProgress' rundown of von Spakovsky's past.
You have to hand it to the Bush administration, they are really good at accomplishing the tasks at which they are interested. You see, the whole crew has two basic points of focus; expanding presidential power at the expense of the judiciary and legislative branches of government, and destruction of any government oversight or regulation of business interests. Throw in a generous helping of disdain for virtually any government function, and you have yourself a Bush administration.
Here's a good example of how the Bushies are perfectly willing to sacrifice people's lives in defense of every effort to avoid any regulation on business - "Popcorn Lung." You may have heard of it from the several news reports which have covered the issue in the past six months or so.
Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.
Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
Ok, so after all of the news reports, the State of California has moved to ban diacetyl, and its enactment seems likely soon. Since the Bushies had appointed industry lobbyists to administer the Federal OSHA, those guys were not going to act on their own to regulate the substance. In fact, during the whole Bush administration, OSHA has not issued A SINGLE rule on workplace safety, not a single one.
Since OSHA has been captured by the manufacturers which it is supposed to regulate, the only way to ban this substance is through legislation in Congress. In fact, Congress has done just that, and the House is about to pass a law which would require OSHA to promulgate rules on diacetyl exposure. Guess what... the Bushies have come out against the bill. What a surprise! I guess they figure that the workers whose lives are destroyed just aren't worth the bother...
I used to post about this quite a bit, but I just got tired of it, and just quit. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and not being a homeowner, well, is just plain depressing. When I first moved here, it was an expensive place to live, but houses were not totally out of reach. The first place I lived in, my friends had bought for around $320K. It was a two bedroom house with a garage and an "in-law" rental unit which I lived in. It wasn't anything special, but it was a house in SF. When we all moved out of there about five years ago, they sold it for around double what they paid for it. I'm guessing that the same house would now be on the market for something in the $800K range. When you think about that, it just blows my mind. There really isn't any fundamental reason why housing prices here should almost triple in less than 10 years. Sure SF is a great place to live and there are a lot of rich people here, but it has always been like that, which it was always a relatively expensive place to live. Nevertheless, there hasn't been this kind of price explosion in the past. There were several reasons, one of which is the beauty of the area, some others have to do with deregulation of the banking and mortgage industry, as well as foolish monetary policy by the Fed. Of course, if you bought a house in the mid-90's, well, you're sitting the proverbial cat-bird seat. Hell, if I would have bought a house when I first moved here, I would have my law school loans paid off and then some! But I was a poor student and couldn't buy a house back then... so I sat by and watched as the place I love to live in quickly blew past any hope I had of affording to lay down roots.
Now it looks a bit like the chickens are coming home to roost. I was talking about how this whole price run in housing was totally out of control a few years ago. It simply seemed to me to be built on no fundamentals. The only reason why house prices were going up was because the herd believed that they would keep going up, and banks would lend just about any amount of money to just about anyone. Now the mortgage market is tightening a bit, especially for the jumbo loans which are necessary to buy anything around here. People are starting to realize that house prices will not appreciate at 30% a year anymore. The question at this point is where the prices will stabilize. After the last housing bubble in California in the late 80's, prices declined by a significant amount. If you consider the tremendous run up in prices in the past ten years, the market could go down by a huge amount and still be "up" from where it started. I guess we'll see. For me, it is mostly an academic exercise. I can't afford to buy anything in the Bay Area at this point. All the people who bought two and three bedroom bungalows on my street in Berkeley for $900k in the past year, which were $325k ten years ago, just seem like fools to me. I guess only time will tell who is right...
I just wanted to let you know that in about a minute, the US government will have spent $500,000 on the war in Iraq. Wait another minute.... yup, another half a million dollars.
Just wanted to let you know. In case, you know... you forgot...
A lot of people are frustrated with the fact that although the Democrats have a (slim) majority in Congress, they have been unable to make much headway in winding down the debacle war in Iraq. I'm frustrated too, but knowing how the Senate works, you can see that in the face of a unified republican opposition, there really isn't much that the Democrats can do. Normally, you'd think that you need just a majority of votes to get something passed in Congress... but you'd be wrong. In the Senate, the minority party can Filibuster a law, and thus require it to need 60 votes to pass, rather than 51. This is a very difficult thing to do when you only have 51 Democratic senators (counting Joe Lieberman - which means you only have 50). In the past, the Filibuster was only used on extraordinary occasions, when the minority party felt really strongly that a certain bill shouldn't pass. However, now that the republicans are in the minority, they are using it for virtually every bill. This is the modern republican party at work. Kevin Drum has a great post on this which has been widely discussed on the political blogs.
As you can see, Republicans aren't just obstructing legislation at normal rates. They're obstructing legislation at three times the usual rate. They're absolutely desperate to keep this stuff off the president's desk, where the only choice is to either sign it or else take the blame for a high-profile veto.As things stand, though, Republicans will largely avoid blame for their tactics. After all, the first story linked above says only that the DC bill "came up short in the Senate" and the second one that the habeas bill "fell short in the Senate." You have to read with a gimlet eye to figure out how the vote actually broke down, and casual readers will come away thinking that the bills failed because of some kind of generic Washington gridlock, not GOP obstructionism.
So, for the record, here are the votes. On the habeas bill, Democrats and Independents voted 50-1 in favor. Republicans voted 42-8 against. On the DC bill, Democrats and Independents voted 49-1 in favor. Republicans voted 41-8 against. Would it really be so hard for reporters to make it clear exactly who's responsible for blocking these bills?
So next time you read that the Democrats were unable to pull troops out of Iraq, or pass health and safety legislation, or any other number of good things... just remember, the republicans are pulling out all the stops to make sure nothing moves in Congress. You can bet that they are on the news the next day screaming about how the Democrats are not interested in "bi-partisanship" and are ineffective leaders. Too bad nobody on the news calls bullshit on them...
I've been getting into a new show on the Sundance channel called "Live from Abbey Road." I really love live music, and in my opinion, there really just are not enough live music shows on TV, so I tend to check them out when they come up. As far as I know, the only consistently good live music show on is "Austin City Limits", which is excellent. Now Sundance has this new show, which essentially has various musicians come into the famous Abbey Road studio and ply films them playing a few songs live. I must say, it is great. As one would expect from a show that is taped in a recording studio, the sound is just a pure as you can get. The mixes are really good and overall the sound is just great. The mix of musicians that they have on there is pretty varied. Of the episodes I've seen so far, they tend to tilt towards musicians who are technically good, as well as popular. There is also a fair bit of English and American "indie" type bands on the show. They talk a bit about musicianship and the craft of music, but mostly they just play. Good stuff. Highly recommended. (Iconic, you should really check this out, I especially think you'd dig it.)
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