Back in the good ol’ days, you’d merely text your old pal I.B. Loaded, CEO of Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. Loaded’s given you tons of cash over the years for your campaigns. He, his wife and children, his employees, his vendors — all have seen the wisdom of slipping dough to you, your official campaign committee, and, of course, your “Leadership PAC.”

And, of course, Loaded would have his Gulfstream V (I mean, rather, his corporate-owned private jet) fly into Reagan National to pick you up (after, of course, a taxpayer-paid car and driver deposited you, your luggage, and golf clubs there). Loaded himself would be on the plane to entertain you and see to your every need. After you’d both consumed a few hits from Loaded’s stash of 40-year-old Glen Garioch, he’d probably steer the conversation into an arcane tax-policy issue that would likely benefit Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. to the tune of millions of dollars.

You’d be the only passenger on a sophisticated jet costing $59 million with an hourly operating cost of about $7,000. Yet, before 2007, you’d only pay the cost of first-class airfare to LA — maybe a grand or less, depending on discounts. Then Congress shut the door to corporate-provided air travel by passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And this week, those idiots at the Federal Election Commission reopened the door.

The act plainly states “a candidate for election for Federal office … may not make any expenditure for a flight on [a noncommercial] aircraft unless … the candidate, the authorized committee, or other political committee pays … the pro rata share of the fair market value of the flight.”

But the FEC changed that by redefining when a member of Congress is or is not a “candidate.” Here’s the explanation from The Campaign Legal Center:

Yet the FEC today adopted a final rule nonsensically declaring that a candidate is not a “candidate,” for the purpose of this statute, when that candidate “is traveling on behalf of another political committee (such as a political party committee or Senate leadership PAC).” Instead, where a candidate claims to be traveling “on behalf of” their own leadership PAC, or one of the many committees controlled by their political party, or any other political committee—the old rules apply, allowing that candidate to pay the price of a commercial air ticket instead of the price of the private plane the candidate is actually flying on.

To make matters worse, FEC Chairman Walther published a statement explaining his decision to provide the necessary fourth vote for the final rule put forth by his three Republican colleagues on the FEC. Preposterously, Chairman Walther cited comments filed in the rulemaking proceeding by the Campaign Legal Center, together with Democracy 21, suggesting that we support this new rule gutting HLOGA. Chairman Walther wrote: “The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 agreed and indicated their support for ‘retain[ing] the existing reimbursement rate structure for non-candidate travel.’” (emphasis added). While we did support retaining the old rate for non-candidate travel, nowhere in our comments did we suggest that candidates should be considered to be engaging in non-candidate travel through the simple expedient of claiming that they are flying “on behalf of” their leadership PAC or other federal political committee. Chairman Walther should know better.

Candidate travel is candidate travel—period.

The FEC’s new rule illegally contradicts the plain meaning of the statute. Unfortunately, gutting or ignoring federal law—that Commissioners would have written differently themselves—has become a recurring habit for the FEC. In an earlier rulemaking, the FEC gutted the intent of another key aspect of HLOGA, allowing lobbyists to easily evade required reporting of bundled campaign contributions.

Provision of non-commercial travel by corporations (and unions) to members of Congress or federal candidates is simply more legalized corruption.

So I wonder how long it will be before enough members of Congress step up to close this loophole by updating the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Days? Weeks? Next century?

As a felon, Jefferson has had equally despicable company: Rep. Andrew J. Hinshaw, R-Calif. (accepting a bribe); Rep. Charles Diggs Jr., D-Mich. (payroll kickback scheme); Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa. (accepting bribes from FBI agents impersonating Arab businessmen); Reps. John Murphy, D-N.Y., Frank Thompson, D-N.J., John Jenrette, D-S.C., and Raymond Lederer, D-Pa. (Arab businessmen bribery scandal, a.k.a. Abscam).

And Rep. Mario Biaggi, D-N.Y. (extorting money from a defense contractor); Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill. (sex with underage campaign worker, bank fraud); Rep. Walter Tucker III, D-Calif. (accepting and demanding bribes); Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill. (felony mail fraud); Rep. James A. Trafficant, D-Ohio (bribery, conspiracy and racketeering); Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (accepting bribes from defense contractors) and Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio (Abramoff scandal). I’m sure readers can name more.

The collective misfortune of these men is that they got caught. Each undoubtedly said to himself, “I am invincible. I am a member of Congress.” They all assumed membership in the biggest-of-all-members-only clubs provided a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the real reason they believed they could get away with accepting bribes and committing extortion is that members of Congress have been doing it legally for years.

Jefferson may serve 13 years. Prosecutors say he probably earned less than $400,000 despite seeking millions in illegal bribes from “oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa,” said The New York Times. But he’s raked in about $6.45 million in campaign contributions since 1990, half from political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics database. More than $600,000 came from lawyers and law firms. (Wonder if the sharks will return his calls now.)

Prosecutors focused on the $90,000 federal agents found in Jefferson’s freezer. The public should have been more focused on Jefferson’s legal sources of campaign bucks, in the same way it should have paid less attention to the penis of that other two-faced Louisiana legislative poseur, Sen. David Vitter, and more attention to the sources of his campaign funding.

We the voters, the people who have watched health-care costs starkly climb ever higher, who see taxes rising exhorbitantly at all levels, who witness the quality of education for our children wither, who watch jobs vanish overseas and unemployment rise, and who are frightened that decades-old safety nets are tattered beyond repair, have become so inured to the corrosive role of money in politics that we forget that politicians are continously but legally bribed by monied interests. And it should stop.

Ask Glenn Greenwald of salon.com. In a video for Larry Lessig’s change-congress.com, he explains how Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., are threatening to filibuster any health-reform plan with a public option. Lieberman, says Greenswald, is “drowning in campaign contributions” from the health-care industry — more than $2.5 million — and his wife landed a cushy job in 2005 with PR flacksters Hill & Knowlton, representing pharma giant Glaxo. Several months later, Lieberman sought to steer incentives to Glaxo to develop vaccines.

“This is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery, that runs the United States Senate,” says Greenwald. “Only in this case it is particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.”

Bayh’s wife, says Greenwald, “sits on the board of directors of WellPoint, one of the largest health-insurance companies in the nation. [The Bayhs] own, by their own disclosures, between $500,000 and a million dollars in WellPoint stock. … When Sen. Lieberman threatened to filibuster the public option … the value of the stock of the health-care industry skyrocketed … and personally benefited the finances of the Bayh family.”

Bayh’s wife was paid more than $2 million between 2005 and 2008. Bayh, in 2008, received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the health-care industry, says Greenwald.

“It’s really clear corruption,” says Greenwald.

Politicians defend their financial associations with large corporations (and unions) and wealthy individuals. They call it “campaign financing.” Sadly, we’re too accustomed to this shameless dance now, aren’t we?

A member of Congress, or someone who aspires to be one, gets on the phone and calls people who have lots of money. Often those people run very large enterprises, such as corporations (or unions). Those corporations, driven by the dictum “maximize shareholder income” (or, increasingly, “maximize CEO compensation”), would like members of Congress to make those tasks easier. Politicians say such donations only provide access to their ears, not their actions. The big corporate and PAC donors — or their hired lobbyists — say they’re only legitimately promoting the causes of their companies and clients.

Bullshit. It has been known for decades that lobbyists are often in the room, helping congressional staff write — or writing themselves — legislation. Earlier in this decade, tax-law experts from General Electric shaped an export tax reform bill that saved GE hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lobbyists’ dictation of politicians’ words and deeds has become even more blatant. New York Times reporter Robert Pear wrote Nov. 14 that lobbyists wrote and sought to have supportive statements about health-care reform placed by members into the Congressional Record prior to the Nov. 5 vote:

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. … Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. [emphasis added]

A lobbyist created the messages and supporting documents and e-mailed them to members. Lobbyists denied any malevolent intent. Said one, quoted anonymously by Pear: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”

In the past five years, Genentech has spent nearly $10 million on lobbying expenses. In the past decade, Genentech has contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates. Pear reports Genentech’s PAC has made contributions to some of the members who used its talking points and that company officials had hosted fundraisers for some.

And, of course, there’s no quid pro quo, right? Wrote Pear: “Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, ‘There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.’” [emphasis added]

Bullshit again. It is, as Greenwald says, legalized corruption. Imagine if I, as an individual voter living in a rural district, had asked my congressman to insert under his name words I wrote about health-care reform into the Congressional Record. He would say no. (Or rather, the staff member I’d get shunted off to would say no.) But when Genentech said jump, 42 members of Congress asked, “How high?”

Don’t kid us. It’s legalized corruption. Remarks members of Congress revise and extend into the Congressional Record, we now see, have been actually written by lobbyists. So what do the clowns we elect to office do for the $174,000 we pay them (and with very nice health-care bennies, too)?

A handful of Republican senators, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C, think they have an answer — a constitutional amendment to limit how long a person may serve in Congress. Apparently, senators would get 12 years, while representatives would get only six years. (Imagine that bill’s conference committee, eh?) On his Senate website, DeMint writes:

As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork, in short, amassing their own power.

Don’t be misled. After all, what’s to prevent the current system of lobbyists, legalized corruption, and greed from buying new sets of politicians every six or 12 years? Being new, they’ll come cheap, too.

Members of Congress need mountains of money to obtain and retain political power. They spend hours each day dialing donors and asking for, or demanding, campaign contributions. That’s the extortion part of the equation. Donors demand at least an ear and now, we see, actual words printed in the Congressional Record. That’s the corruption part. All that separates many uncharged and unjailed members of Congress from Jefferson and his imprisoned pals is an FBI wiretap.

Changing the politicians through term limits has little merit. Instead, get rid of the current system of campaign finance. If members of Congress were willing to bail out banks with hundreds of billions of dollars, demand that they allow the public to outbid special interests. Lobby members of Congress (yep, I said lobby) to drastically and dramatically overhaul public election financing. Demand that members of Congress place in the federal budget each year sufficient billions of dollars to pay for every federal and statewide election in the country. Give incumbents and challengers alike plenty of public money. But cut them off at the financial knees if they accept a single dime of corporate, union, or PAC money.

If our politicians continue to insist on being bought, let the public do the buying.

Still, this whole “marketplace of ideas” is a marvelous concept. Perhaps the most marvelous concept in history. Drawing on the Miltonian belief that if people are allowed to enter the agora and freely state their cases, then “the truth will out” (that is, an educated and informed citizenry will unerringly perceive the truth and that weaker ideas will be disregarded in favor of stronger ones), our nation’s founders crafted a Constitution that assured people the right to voice their opinions, free from government intrusion. Yes, the formula has its problem spots – Americans have religiously rejected the “educated and informed” part, for instance, and there have been embarrassing questions reagrding who, precisely, got to be a “citizen.” Also, the framers seemed not to foresee that we’d get to a point where governmental threats to the exercise of speech paled next to those posed by private institutions. Still, all that said, it’s hard to argue that Americans have made a lot of hay with our 1st Amendment guarantees since they were enacted, and even an imperfect marketplace of ideas beats none at all.

This week presented us with a sparkling case study of the marketplace of ideas at its best. A few days back it was announced that conservative pundit and noiser-without-peer Rush Limbaugh was part of a group seeking to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. The agora fairly exploded in conversation. A number of players and the head of the NFL Players Association wanted no part of a man who’s established a reputation for … racial insensitivity? The owner of the Indianapolis Colts (a Bush/Cheney spporter, as it turns out) promised to block any bid involving Limbaugh. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell finally got around to offering that “Limbaugh’s divisiveness is not what the league needs.” Columnists, pundits and bloggers (including S&R’s own uber-cynic, Dr. Sid Bonesparkle) weighed in with a broad range of takes (mostly anti-Rush, it seems). Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had things to say, and we’d have felt cheated if they hadn’t.

Many of these voices were informed and credible. Others were driven by prefabricated ideologies instead of facts and reason. And a boisterous debate was had by all. In the end, the brazillionaire heading the investment group, St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts, put two and two together. Realizing that Limbaugh was an 800-lb albatross hanging around the neck of his NFL aspirations, Checketts unceremoniously kicked him to the curb.

The wonderful thing about the whole episode? This is precisely how our nation’s founders envisioned our democracy working. An idea was presented. Interested parties, informed or otherwise, had their say. (Remember, the framers knew there would be irresponsible voices in the public debate – that was part of the equation.) Marvelously, it was all enabled immeasurably by the Internet, which Al Gore, love him or hate him, saw as the ultimate tool of Jeffersonian democracy. From a 1994 address:

“And the distributed intelligence of the [Global Information Infrastructure] will spread participatory democracy… I see a new Athenian Age of democracy forged in the fora the GII will create.

The entire public debate was conducted free of coercion from the government. And in the end, the marketplace decided, governed by its collective conscience, that Limbaugh’s participation was not in the best interest of the league, the ownership group or the free market. An idea was tested and found wanting. Dave Checketts made an informed decision.

In theory, we should now be able to tune in and listen as Rush, disappointed though he may be, extols the virtues of the marketplace. After all, that is his core ideological concern – that free enterprise and the marketplace of ideas be allowed to determine the value of products and propositions, right?

Part of my job as a journalism professor is to recruit students. Because I was a journalist, I’m interested in finding bright, hard-working young men and women who’d like to follow the calling of the public service mission of journalism. (I remain optimistic, perhaps foolishly.)

Parents of prospective students, of course, routinely ask: “What’s your record on job placement?” That I can tell them, based on surveys of our grads six months after matriculation. (And it’s an excellent record, too.)

But here’s the question I dread:

My daughter says she wants to be a journalist. Even if her financial aid package is half your $35,000 per year cost — and rising at 5 percent a year — and despite what parents can pay, she may end up with more than $30,000 or $40,000 in student loans. How long will it take for her on an entry-level journalist’s salary to recover her investment?

Surveys of journalism school grads from recent years say salaries in the mid-20s are customary. Entry-level print journalists earn a little less (in some cases, a lot less, as my graduates tell me); PR, advertising and some broadcast jobs earn more. That parent envisions an ROI on the family’s investment in the daughter’s education at three to five years or more. That’s at a private school; presumably, a public school grad would fare better.

If that young woman is bright, she’ll do her homework. She’ll ask me before sending in her enrollent deposit for the names of recent grads who landed daily print jobs after graduation. After getting their permission, I’ll give them to her. They’ll tell her this:

They love being journalists. They love telling a good story. But they detest working 60 or 70 hours, nights and weekends, for 40 hours’ pay. They detest the unpaid furloughs imposed by corporate managers looking to cut costs. Their raises, if profferred, lag significantly behind inflation. Because of numerous rounds of buyouts and layoffs, fewer older, experienced reporters and editors are available (and willing) to serve as mentors. Young journos are tired of seeing assignments that serve more as fluff than substance. They thought, as journalists, that they could make a difference. They are discovering that the current structure of the industry prevents that, frustrating them. Their health-care plans suck. And they’re tired of providing their own reporter’s notebooks.

That prospective student may still attend my journalism program — but if she’s keenly aware of her ROI, she may apply her time, treasure and talent to mastering the skills of a journalist only to apply them to other avenues of communication that pay more. She’ll learn to observe, record, analyze, organize and present. But she’ll do that concocting advertising and PR campaigns instead of digging up the dirt at city hall that unpaid “volunteer” amateurs and bloggers don’t do well or at all. That’s because those stories — the mundane but necessary stuff of holding government accountable — don’t drive traffic to blogs.

Yes, I paint a bleak picture. Yes, it’s overdrawn. But scratch journalists in their mid-20s, either at print jobs or small-market broadcast stations, and you’ll hear all these threads. And yes, there are a number of emerging avenues for distribution of journalists’ work operated by laid-off journos, foundations, non-profits and for-profit, online-only startups. There are places she can work as a journalist. But then there’s that ROI calculation: Making a difference vs. paying the bills and student loans.

I wonder where the journalists will come from who will be around 10 to 20 years from now to cover the financial funeral of Social Security, the continuing debate over health-care reform, the attempt by President Hillary Clinton to amend the constitution to allow her a third term and the still unfolding drama of Brett Favre’s 15th “retirement” from the Toronto Argonauts.

Thousands of journalists at daily papers have lost their jobs in just the past few years. Generally, they’ve been the older, more experienced journalists. Bean counters figure they can hire two, maybe three cub reporters for the dough they pay an experienced journo making Guild scale and excellent benefits after 25 years. And that’s if they hire at all.

Studies show that the nation’s journalism schools are cranking out about 12,000 graduates every year. But is the trend line of those who wish a journalism career with a public-service aura ascending or descending?

Where will the next generation of skilled, committed journalists come from if the perceived ROI of a journalism education is so dismal?

As we all know, the nation has been alive with discourse of all flavors over the current state of the health care system and the insurance industry. Recently, Senator Baucus has brought forth his proposal, dubbed by some critics (rightly so, in my opinion) the “Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”

Please listen: The very reason we need the government to intervene is because millions of us have a Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. Private industry has already proven that it cannot be trusted to look out for its bottom line and simultaneously safeguard and maintain the health of the American people, even if some of us are misguidedly rallying in the streets against our interests at the urgings of their preferred Chicken Littles of media and industry.

It is my belief that what needs to be accomplished is the affirmation of every American citizen’s right to a basic level of health, security and well-being above a private company’s right to make a profit, which it currently does in part by conveniently discounting and disregarding its customers’ human rights at its whims. Private insurers need to know, as my mother would say, that “your rights stop where another one’s starts.”

Legislation that hands millions of new customers directly over to health insurers, who have made clear that they give their profit motives precedence over honoring their commitments to their policyholders, sometimes with deadly consequences, is simply a conversion of taxpayer money into more income for the industry and a tacit acceptance of its horrific business practices.

As a taxpayer, I have no qualms about the cost of health care reform–I consider it our duty to one another as citizens, as a community, and as a nation. How do you think it looks when Washington puts us all further in hock frivolously throwing money down the toilets of the banking industry, tax cuts for the rich, and Iraq, to cite a few recent examples (our last president tried to flush Social Security as well), and then tries to tell us that we’re not entitled to a health care system that won’t be tainted by continued rewards to an industry with no reservations about flipping us the middle finger and leaving us for dead when we dare get sick? Why are regular people being taught to accept the ever-growing obligations to war, to creditors, and to failed industry, and at the same time not to make an across-the-board investment in one another as this nation’s human capital: workers; thinkers; doers; entrepreneurs; taxpayers; human beings?

I am free to help pay your medical bills, and those of my grandparents, and for those of us in states of extraordinary need, but not for a system that’s going to be there for me, free from the tentacles and inflated costs of private interests, even if I don’t have the right job, the right friends, a trust fund, a winning Powerball ticket, or the good fortune to remain healthy and free of accidents between now, at the age of 29, and my 65th birthday, should I find myself again without income or coverage?

Is continued corporate captivity the thanks we are going to get from our representatives for supporting them with our votes and paying for their salaries, benefits and pension plans? We not only sacrifice our own salaries, benefits and pension plans (and for many of us, our homes) for others’ bad decisions and greed, but now we can expect to be groomed to accept some compromise from Capitol Hill that may or may not improve our lives while the jackpots continue to flow upward?

A hostile climate has been created for every working person in this country. We have been told for years by the powerful, privileged and obscenely well-compensated that we are going to have to do things like “tighten our belts” and “weather the storm” (or, as some have called it, the “rough patch”). We’ve individually and collectively been subjected to repeated assaults on our financial well-being, our employment opportunities, our civil rights, our health and our futures by an ever more demanding section of the population so far insulated from what we are truly facing. One can turn on the television and at any given time watch a politician, executive, “industry expert” or news reporter talk about our right to access affordable health care, even though they themselves would never fathom or accept such treatment, as though United States citizens were no better than numbers on a balance sheet or some rogue band of freeloaders trying to burgle the upper class.

We all know who is really being burgled.

Let me tell you something: I don’t care to hear what anybody in a position of privilege has to say unless they have truly done their homework or they have first-hand life experience to back it up. I don’t care if some insurance executive is going to have to postpone the construction of his exact replica of the M.C. Hammer mansion in Dubai if he doesn’t get some additional payoff from the American public. I’ve got skin in the game here, too, and you and the rest of our representatives have the opportunity to come through with flying colors for me and for my fellow citizens. We’re all counting on you, even those of us who don’t know it or won’t admit it because it wouldn’t fit their politics or their way of thinking to do so.

We as Americans need to join the rest of the West in providing each other, across income, party and racial lines, with a guarantee of basic care not as some so-called “middle-class entitlement,” as I have heard wafting condescendingly out of the windpipes of more than one multimillionaire, but as a long-overdue recognition of our needs and our rights, and perhaps the making of amends over the treatment so many of us have endured from entities that have been allowed growing and crippling control over the quality, course, and length, of our lives.

If a strong stand is not ultimately taken on our behalf, it will be a damning and ominous indicator of what this country truly thinks of me, my neighbors, my family, my friends, and the rest of my fellow citizens. I implore you: Keep an irrevocable public option on the table and stick to your guns on it. To be blunt, some of your colleagues absolutely will do their best to beat you over the head with whatever you do, so you might as well make it worth doing in the first place and roll with the punches so that we, as a nation, will come out better for it. I don’t want something for nothing, as the elites would put it–I want something better for what I have put in and will continue to put in, and the people of this nation have more than paid for it in service to their employers, their families, their communities, their country–and some with their lives.

Thank you,
A. N. Cargo
Denver, Colorado (CO-01)

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the 182 nations of the world had a combined GDP of nearly $60.9 trillion (or $60,900 billion) in 2008. But comparing the GDP data to the Fortune 500 data produces the table at right (click for the top 182 nations and corporations each, in order). If Exxon Mobil were a country, it would rank 25^th in the world, right between Norway and Austria. Wal-Mart would rank 27^th, sandwiched between Austria and Taiwan. Chevron would rank 28^th, ConocoPhillips 42^nd, GE 49^th, GM 59^th, Ford 60^th, and AT&T, H-P, and Valero would be ranked 64-66 respectively.

In fact, all of the Fortune 500 would rank above the 40 smallest national economies in the world. And the smallest company on Fortune’s list of the 1000 largest U.S. companies would be larger than the national economies of 28 entire countries. Exxon Mobil’s revenue is greater than the combined GDP of the 78 smallest countries (out of a total of 182) in the world.

And yet the Supreme Court took the unusual step of ordering a hearing during the court’s recess in order to hear legal arguments over whether corporate money could be spent to influence elections and whether the current bans on most such money in politics were constitutional. And indications are that the conservative majority will likely rule to overturn nearly 20 years of precedent and rule that it is constitutional for corporate money to be spent directly to influence local, state, and federal elections.

According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, the four liberal justices were the ones quoting from the U.S. Constitution to support their questions and arguments:

Justice Ginsburg reminded Olson that it is living persons, not corporations, who are “endowed by [their] Creator with unalienable rights.” Justice Sotomayor, too, picked up on this theme, emphasizing how the Supreme Court had rewritten the Constitution to create the fiction that corporations are persons entitled to the same basic rights as human beings. If we are looking to constitutional first principles to topple precedents, she asked, why shouldn’t we also look at the cases that invented corporate constitutional personhood and “imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics”?

Several of the court’s conservatives are supposed to be Originalists, judges who believe that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed at it’s writing (except for amendments, of course) and has not changed since then. Granting state creations the rights guaranteed to flesh and blood people when the Constitution doesn’t mention state creations is hypocrisy of the first order. It’s also an example of the very judicial activism than the Senate Republicans who voted against confirming Justice Sotomayor feared she would bring to the court. Perhaps the most activist judge on the Supreme Court today, defined by being the most willing to overrule Congress, is Antonin Scalia.

At present, corporate profits may not be spent to directly influence elections. This has historically been the case because corporations can live effectively forever and amass financial resources that no individual person could equal, and because legislators and courts have been concerned about corporate influence corrupting the political process. In essence, these are many of the same arguments that federal law uses to ban foreign nationals and governments from donating money to political campaigns. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, there are no foreign governments suing for free speech rights to influence elections.

The problem twofold – corporations are presently considered people, and money is considered speech. Corporations were defined legally as people for the purposes of limiting personal liability in the event of a business failure. But one of the results is that corporations have claimed the rights guaranteed to real people in the Bill of Rights, specifically the First Amendment right to free speech. And because the Supreme Court declared, in Buckley v. Valeo, that spending money equals exercising the right to free speech, corporations are now claiming that their money should be given identical rights to the money of individual citizens.

There are at least two direct solutions to this problem. The first would be to overturn Buckley v. Valeo. This would make money no longer equal to speech and could be an even more significant change in legal precedent than overturning 100 years of campaign limits on corporate donations to candidates. It would also require the conservatives on the court to go against their known personal ideologies.

The second is to redefine corporations so that they are not considered individual people for all situations. This would certainly require federal legislation and would probably require state legislation as well. It would also require that the economic and political powers at the state and federal levels voluntarily relinquish the power that corporate money (via PACs today, possibly via direct contributions in a few months) brings them.

Neither is particularly likely given the composition of the Supreme Court and the major influence of money in politics today.

Eventually, though, if the laws are overturned, enough companies will corrupt enough politicians with direct donations that they’ll overreach, and the public reaction will be swift and unstoppable. And when that happens, Exxon Mobil’s money and Wal-Mart’s money and Chevron’s money will be as untouchable as money from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Both of which have smaller economies than either Exxon Mobil or Wal-Mart.

Woe be to the rest of America.

To a rational, thinking person, the rise of idiocy in America seems like a baffling phenomenon. People laugh in the face of logic and willfully ignore facts, preferring to listen to the gut instead of the brain. Intellectuals, experts, and scientists get vilified or dismissed for having expertise. Discussion gets shouted down by anyone able to shout nonsense loud enough.

Pierce plunges into the maddening crowd to explore this phenomenon in his new book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.

His adventures through idiocy take him, for instance, to a Creationism museum where dinosaurs have saddles. He visits a talk radio convention to listen to right-wing hosts pat each other on the back in the name of freedom. He looks at legal battles over textbook adoptions. He delves into conspiracy theories, Masons, and Templars. In an especially excellent chapter, Pierce explores behind the scenes of the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case from 2005, where emotional sensationalism and political grandstanding obscured the medical facts of Schiavo’s case.

“If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress,” Pierce says, “we have done so by moving empirical debate into the realms of political, cultural, and religious argument, where we all feel more comfortable, because there the Gut truly holds sway.”

The problem with trusting the Gut is that the Gut can’t always be trusted. “Good ol’ common sense is almost never common and it often fails to make sense,” Pierce says.

Pierce readily acknowledges the proud tradition America has for crack-pot ideas and cranks. In fact, such eccentricies are vital to the proper functioning of the Marketplace of Ideas. “Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that not only should people hold nutty ideas, but they should cultivate them, treasure them, shine them up, and put them right up there on the mantelpiece” Pierce says. “This is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy. In fact, it’s the only country to enshrine that right in its founding documents.”

As one of the organizing conceits of his book, Pierce traces the career of great American crank Ignatius Donnelly—land settler, sometimes-politician, and believer of Atlantis and Ragnorak. Contrasted against that is the career of Founding Father James Madison, a disciple of the enlightenment who believed passionately in the protection of free speech. Both men thrived in America at opposite ends of the American spectrum; America had room for both.

But in Idiot America, Pierce says, the idiots have no patience for—and want to leave no room for—anyone with enlightened, educated minds. Nonsense rules, and Pierce says that’s a serious problem because it comes with “a dangerous denial of the consequences of believing nonsense.”

Whereas cranks like Donnelly peddled their ideas because they believed in those ideas, modern American Idiots peddle their ideas because those ideas move units or forward a political agenda. The ideas themselves don’t mean much so long as someone can make a buck or gain political leverage.

Pierce places the blame squarely on American conservatives. “If this book seems to concentrate on the doings of the modern American right,” he says, “that’s because it was the modern American right that consciously adopted irrationality as a tactic, and it succeeded very well.” Pierce does little to hide his left-leaning biases, which sometimes get to be a little much and too holier-than-thou. Perhaps it’s understandable, though, considering how palpable his frustration and anger are.

“It is, of course, television that has enabled Idiot America to run riot with modern politics and all forms of public discourse,” Pierce says, although he points a damning finger at talk radio as “the driving force in changing American debate into American argument.”

Pierce lambasts Idiot America for making a devil’s bargain, “exchanging (rather than mistaking) fact for fiction, and faith for reason, and believing itself shrewd to have made a good bargain with itself.”

Pierce doesn’t seem too hopeful that the problem will go away any time soon, but despite his obvious cynicism, the text carries an undercurrent of faith in the American system to eventually right itself. The alternative, he implies, would be an intellectual Armageddon that would cripple democracy itself.

Idiot America provides sympathetic audiences with the chance to vent alongside Pierce. Other readers will find well-researched investigation laced with snarkiness.

As for the idiots who won the culture wars—they will probably pick up Pierce’s book, look at the cover and get a Gut feeling that they wouldn’t like it. The people most in need of Pierce’s wake-up call will be the ones least likely to get it.

Rule-makers claimed that this protected European consumers from poor quality, but it is hard to argue that a lump on the side of a potato alters its flavour or nutritional value in any way.  A welcome respite came on 1 July 2009, when 36 classes of produce were deregulated.

European risk-aversion is built on the complacency that comes with good fortune. Companies have accepted high taxation, used for social entitlements, in exchange for protectionist agreements.

The credit crisis has exposed an interdependency that confounds unemployment targets, raises prices, and leaves state finances mightily exposed to the experiences of a small number of national champions.

With their political and economic support in disarray, lobbyists have had a ready ear amongst politicians.  The most successful are from the motor industry.  France, Italy, and Germany, amongst others, have all launched scrappage schemes to support the sale of new cars.

The argument for this favouritism is straightforward.  Motor manufacturers are large employers and they are in danger of collapsing under the weight of their inventories and falling consumer demand.

 With state support, car makers get to sell new cars and governments get to promote employment and investment, while also reducing carbon emissions from old cars.

There are many arguments against the subsidies.  Many people would have bought cars anyway.  The sales period has simply been compressed, leaving a precipitous drop later.  All tax payers are subsidising new cars for a few.

These are fair comments.  But they are misleading, giving the impression that supporting an economy involves supporting specific industries within that economy.

Governments are meant to be custodians of a nation’s wealth, both present and future.  An investor who only ventures his own money can take as many risks as he likes.  One who represents the multitude needs to take greater care, ensuring that their risk is evenly spread.

Unfortunately, like compulsive gamblers, governments have chosen to bet once more on a small number of industries in the hopes that they’ll recover their losses with a new throw.   By biasing their support, governments are stating, unequivocally, that they believe consumers are wrong and should be paid to keep buying things they may not want.  That Germany and France are now, tepidly, emerging from recession will only reinforce the view that such guess-work is brave leadership.

Yet the crisis is a tremendous opportunity to confront voters with the need for substantial economic restructuring.  While the crisis has focused people’s attention, politicians have the space to introduce a plethora of reforms that have been held in abeyance; from raising the retirement age, to healthcare reform, to ending innovation-sapping and trade-distorting subsidies.

Markets may fail, but their capacity for constant reinvention and experimentation ensures that new ideas can become successful as old ideas are found wanting.  The bounty coming out of the stimulus bills could have been used to gracefully collapse obsolete industries and pay for the retraining and further education of those with a chance of finding new jobs, or covering those who cannot.

By choosing a single winner, governments have yet again put off the difficult decisions for later.

The problem was deeper—Griffiths has written a straight history here, but without the philosophic context. We’re told that Paine was a great man, and we hear bits and pieces of his writings, and we see him engaged with both the American and French revolutions. But we don’t get a clue about his seminal importance, or about why Paine changed the world, and for the better. To be fair, Paine had such an eventful life that it’s difficult to get it all in a two and a half hour production. But what was left out was much of the meat, and the key to why Paine was important—one of the most important men who ever lived, in fact. It was still an enjoyable evening at the theatre—but also a frustrating one. If you knew something about Paine, you were probably bothered by what was left out; if you didn’t know much about Paine (which is certainly the case here in the UK), you left the theatre no wiser, really. I almost hate to say this, but this would have been a more interesting play if Tom Stoppard had written it. That way we wold have had endless conversations about the philosophical and political issues that Paine dealt with–and these were intensely important at the time, and still are.

Richard Attenborough has been trying to raise funds for a movie of Paine’s life for decades now. Attenborough also is behind this production, which actually seems to be adapted from the screenplay that Griffiths is developing for Attenborough (Griffiths was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for Reds). What a movie Paine’s life would make! I bet Craig T. Nelson would make a great elder Paine, with Ed Norton playing the younger Paine. As a young man, he apprenticed to his father’s trade as a staymaker, making corsets. He later ran away to sea and joined a successful privateer. His stays in London and Lewes before moving to the colonies were characterized by a range of activities, including attending Royal Society meetings in London. His peripatetic and not very successful businesses career included several years as an excise agent for the Crown, and after the death in childbirth of his first wife, his second marriage was never consummated, ending in a permanent separation. He made his way to the colonies (barely surviving the voyage) bearing the endorsement of Benjamin Franklin, whom Paine had met in London. In America Paine added an “e” to the spelling of his name, engaged in what he is now best now for, pamphleteering, and served in Washington’s army during the first years of the campaign. After the war, Paine engaged in anti-slavery activities (apparently writing the preamble to the Pennsylvania law that abolished slavery, the first of many in the United States), continued to write on behalf of the new American government, and pursued his scientific interests.

Following his return to England 1787, Paine spent most of his time writing pamphlets on various subjects, and designing and seeking funds for the construction of a single arch iron bridge. Paine received patents for his bridge in England, Scotland and Wales, and was able to develop a model for public view. (A version of the bridge was later built on the river Weir in Sunderland, although it appears Paine never received any funds from this.) Bridge design epitomized 18th century engineering technological and engineering investigations, given the importance of river traffic during this period. In 1791 he published the first instalment of Rights of Man, primarily as a response to Edmund Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution. This book was also wildly successful (and, incidentally, has never been out of print), and led the English government to attempt to prevent its publication and circulation.

Fleeing to France in 1792, he was tried in absentia for seditious libel in England, and convicted, during which time he published the second instalment of Rights of Man. This laid out the foundations of the modern welfare state—including universal suffrage and state care for those over fifty. Initially he was welcomed by the new French government, to which he was appointed a member, but later fell out of favour by virtue of his support for the Girondists and his opposition to executing the deposed King. During the Reign of Terror, Paine narrowly escaped the guillotine he was meant to face by the efforts of his fellow prisoners while he almost died of fever. During his year in prison, he did manage to have The Age of Reason published, and it became Paine’s third best-seller, astonishing for a work whose main characteristic was an attack on organized religion, particularly Christianity. Eventually freed in 1794, he remained in France (apparently never learning to speak French) before finally returning to the United States in 1802, and published his fourth book, Agrarian Justice, an attack on land holdings, in 1797.

By this point Paine had become extremely unpopular in both England and the United States. In England, he had been declared an outlaw and under sentence of death following his conviction for seditious libel. In America, his attack on George Washington (which was not completely unjustified, since Washington apparently did nothing to get Paine out of French prison when he had the opportunity to do so), and the attack on Christianity in The Age of Reason, ensured that he was no longer a popular figure. He was even denied the right to vote. But Paine remained undaunted, even refusing a deathbed conversion in 1809 while he lay dying when pestered by priests. What a pain in the neck! What a movie!

The traditional view of Paine was that after an undistinguished career in England he somehow appeared, out of the head of Zeus, as a radical thinker in America. Griffiths’ play perpetuates this view to some extent, although it does make some nods to Paine’s interests in science and engineering—but these aren’t really developed as being integral to Paine’s character. Craig Nelson (yes, a different Craig Nelson), in his admirable biography of Paine published in 2007, argues, however, that Paine was not radical by Enlightenment standards—rather, he was square in the mainstream of much enlightenment thought. Paine, according to Nelson, is an example of what the Enlightenment produced in England, but even more so in America—-the self-made man who prospers from self-improvement.

As Nelson points out, Paine was born into the segment of the population that came to refer to themselves as “mechanics”—the purveyors of manufacturing and industry before the Industrial revolution. Paine spent several years in London attending lectures at the Royal Society and other scientific organizations. He spent time in coffee houses, forming friendships with other mechanics who were engaged in similar pursuits (and coming into contact with Franklin in the process). He bought himself a set of globes and various scientific instruments. His scientific interests were well-known at the time both in England and in America. He became an accomplished public speaker and debater. None of these attributes were unusual in late 18th century England or America. Following the colonist revolt, Paine returned to science, developed several inventions (for which he obtained patents), and pursued his interests in bridge design. His close friendships included the chemist Joseph Priestly.

It was precisely this segment of society, both in England and in America, that embraced the Enlightenment fully. The growth of the merchant class in England (and Scotland) and America was driven by mechanics who developed and embraced new technologies, new forms of business, new ideas of science, and new ideas of government. They were endless tinkerers. Their intellectual mentors were men such as Newton, and Hooke, and Franklin—especially Franklin. These were men who conversed regularly with one another through letters, or in coffee houses in cities such as London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham and Philadelphia. They represented the emergence of a meritocracy, and if this concept became popular in England, it found a virtual home in America. No wonder Americans were ready to listen to Paine’s arguments in favour of the natural rights of men to govern themselves, and against the evils of hereditary monarchies. Paine’s genius lay in his ability to present these views to as wide an audience as possible. Jon Katz, in a long article eminently worth reading, has suggested that Paine should be regarded as the moral father of the internet, and he’s right.

John Adams, second President of the new United States of America, had little regard for Paine, whom he considered a radical and a rabble-rouser. Here is how Adams described Paine in 1805:

I know not whether any Man in the World has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between Pigg and Puppy, begotten by a wild Boar on a BitchWolf, never before in any Age of the World was suffered by the Poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine.

For most of his life, this was often the view of Paine from those in power. Paine happily reciprocated, regarding Adams as a potential despot, on the basis of Adams’ support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, which represented the first (but, sadly, not the last) attempts by members of the American federal government to limit the rights of its citizens.

Paine was the most influential political writer of the 18th century. He was not a political philosopher, such as Hobbes, or Hume, or Locke. Paine was a proselytizer. He crystallized American and European discussion of two of the defining political questions of the age—why should we need kings? Why should not the creation and operation of government be the work of all men, and not a select few? Paine’s influence derives not solely from the fact that he was able to effectively articulate arguments that all men had the right to govern themselves, but also because he was able to explain these issues in a way that all men, not just the Republic of Letters, could take part in the discussion. As a result, Common Sense, Rights of Man and The Age of Reason were the best selling books of the 18th century. Paine chose not to profit from the books, donating proceeds to the American and French governments instead. Proceeds from Common Sense went to purchase mittens for Washington’s troops. Unsurprisingly, Paine was broke for much of his life.

After his 1774 arrival in the colonies he became, almost by accident, editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, which shortly thereafter became the most widely-read publication in the colonies. Paine’s writings, even before the publication of Common Sense, had a notable impact on the debate regarding whether America should declare itself independent from England. (America was not then “The United States of America”, a term actually coined by Paine.)

And pamphleteering was an established form of intellectual and political exchange during the 18th century. Paine was participating in an established literary tradition. Common Sense itself was a remarkable and unprecedented publishing phenomenon—-in its first year of publication, an estimated 250,000 copies were published (rising to about 500,000 over the next several years, including counterfeit editions), in a country of 3 million. It was translated into multiple languages, and was a best-seller in France. Paine’s pamphlets during the war (collectively given the title The Crisis), especially in the winter of 1776-1777, were of critical importance for maintaining support for the conflict during the early (and darkest) days of the war. The line “These are the times that try men’s souls” derives from the first of these, at a time when Washington’s army was in danger of collapsing.

But it was Common Sense that established Paine’s reputation. Prior to its publication, the majority of colonists (as well as the majority of delegates to the second Constitutional Convention, which convened in late 1775, and culminated in The Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776) were still in favour of some sort of negotiated settlement with England over the issues of taxation and the rights of colonists, according to Nelson. Following its publication in January 1776, sentiment swung strongly towards total independence from England.

What were Paine’s arguments? First, he argued for the superiority of representative government over a monarchy. Paine’s arguments here mostly focussed on the evils of monarchy and aristocracy, or any social system where power resided in hereditary privilege. (One wonders what he would make of the raging nepotism in today’s media.) The second argument focussed on why this was the appropriate time to break from England, and throws in lots of statistics on subjects such as the cost of maintaining navies. But Paine’s main argument, that America’s parent country was Europe, not England, had a particular resonance among Paine’s readership. While most of the leaders of America (and the revolution) were of English descent, Paine suggested that only about one-third of the colonists were of English descent—Paine believed the majority had come from a broad range of European countries. There’s a bit of sleight of hand here—there were significant numbers from Scotland and Ireland at that point, but Paine specifically does not call them English. In Pennsylvania, where Paine lived, Germans made up a third of the population by 1770. Paine would be including slaves in the population as well, and at 1770 there would have been about 700,000 slaves in the colonies. But, whatever Paine’s numbers, the arguments all carried weight, and had an immediate impact at the optimal time for the emerging nation.

Paine called himself as “a citizen of the world,” although he also insisted that he was an American citizen. But Paine spent most of his life in England and in France, not leaving for the colonies until his 37th year in 1774. He returned to England in 1787, from which he then had to flee following publication of Rights of Man in 1792. He went on to live in France for ten years, before returning to America in 1802, where he died in 1809. One is reminded of Nietzche’s comment to his mother that he wasn’t sure if he was a good German, but he hoped he was a good European.

This year is the 200th anniversary of Paine’s death, and the two Thomas Paine societies, the one here and the one in the US, have been having all sorts of events to commemorate the occasion. And not a moment too soon, either, considering the pressure on the rights that Paine held dear by any number of governments, including that of the United States, a government (and a country) which is unlikely to have ever emerged without Paine.

In Jack Shepherd’s wonderful short play, In Lambeth, Paine and William Blake are having a conversation in Blake’s garden the evening before Paine flees for Paris, while angry royalist mobs roam the streets. (The meeting really did take place.) Paine says of himself:

I’ve been called a firebrand! A fanatic! A traitor! A devil! Now that seems just a bit of an overstatement to me. I’m a fairly ordinary and above all a reasonable man. And I want the country to be governed in a reasonable way. And that’s all I want. But if that means turning the word upside down, then I’m the man to do it! And if it then entails taking the world by the ankles and giving it a God-almighty shake, then by jumping Jesus I’ll do that too!

And he did.

The above stamp is the only one ever issued anywhere to celebrate Paine, as far as I can tell. It was issued in 1968, and designed by Robert Greissmann, after a painting by John Wesley Jarvis.

(Full disclosure–much of this cribbed from an earlier post, to be found here)

It’s no secret that I don’t agree with the GOP on much of anything these days, but there’s kind of an odd element to my conversations with Republican acquaintances lately: a lot of them profess significant disagreement with the platform and policies of their party, too.

Taken in a vacuum, this is hardly surprising. After all, America is the land of disagreement, and there aren’t any parties out there that are acting in significant accordance with my views. So individual Republicans at odds with their party and with others in the party? Makes perfect sense.

We don’t live in a vacuum, though. We live in a complex series of interrelated contexts, and in context the reservations of my Republican friends merit further scrutiny. For starters, those who aren’t on the bus with our current media-enabled popular revolution seem to be the majority.

For these folks I have a word of advice: you have some ugly problems, and they need confronting today.

Republicans vs. the Republican Party

We recently had a little round-and-round here over Sara Robinson’s article on “Fascism in America.” Sara argues, persuasively and with detailed evidence, that the Republican Party represents a looming fascist threat for the United States. She doesn’t use the term “fascist” as a casual pejorative; she uses the word in a specific way and she defines precisely what she means by it. A couple of our readers took exception, with our friend Lara Amber (a very smart, progressive mind, by the way) finding something personal in the analysis:

Most Republicans are nice people, they aren’t “racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage.” (Nice way to shut down any discourse with anyone across the aisle by the way, way to go Sara! -sound of head hitting desk).

My response there, which I stand by, was that Robinson wasn’t talking about the individuals who comprise the party, but was instead describing its official apparatus. To be sure, the GOP has members who are guilty of everything Robinson says in that passage, and probably more, but I don’t read her as overgeneralizing to the extent that Lara believed. Still, Lara is like me – there are Republicans in her life, good people whom she respects and cares about. So the tendency to say “hey, wait a damned minute” is perhaps understandable.

But herein lies the proverbial rub: as Lara herself notes, the GOP is currently experiencing something of a leadership crisis. Right now its visible leaders are (to Party chair Michael Steele’s dismay) primarily media nutbags and hatespewers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. It’s also being “led” by a variety of well-funded astroturfers and “activist” organizations – these are the invisible hands manipulating the strings of the teabagger revolution, the birther conspiracy and the faux-ragers who have invaded the townhall health care “debates” – and fueled by the Fair & Balanced^® press. You have occasional appearances by political luminaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman (who’s now saying she’ll run for president if Jesus asks her to – where’s Sam Kinison when you need him?) and plenty of yammering by Congressweasels in the pockets of the insurance industry who are desperately trying to distract us from opinion polls showing that a vast majority of citizens want real health care reform built around a public option. And so on, and so on.

If you were asked to rebut Robinson’s characterization of the GOP – “racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage” – there’s not a lot of evidence out there in the public eye this summer that would serve you very well. So let’s take all this and see if we can summarize in a way that we can more or less agree on. How about this:

The Republican Party leadership is currently dominated by reactionary and corporatist voices that are not in line with the beliefs and values of a significant percentage of the party’s members.

(Yes, I’m more than aware that the Dem leadership is corporatist and out of step with what a good number of its members believe, too. We’ll deal with that another day.)

The second problem facing my GOP friends is even more troubling. In short, your party, your voice and your official political agenda are being hijacked by the most ignorant, unsavory, hateful and toxic elements in American society. Some examples:

• A woman yells “Heil Hitler” to an Israeli describing the benefits of his nation’s health care system.
• Gun-packing thugs “exercising their rights” near Obama rallies. (Thanks to Brandon for this link.) Here’s some more armed intimidation.
• By the way, that last dog-and-armored-pony show was orchestrated by a radio host with militia ties. This particular patriotic’ approach to defending the Constitution apparently involved plotting to blow up federal buildings. You know, like that other patriot, Timothy McVeigh.
• Former GOP Congressman Virgil Goode is making the rounds speaking to hate groups.
• Let’s not forget the murder – in church, no less – of Dr. George Tiller.
• And let’s not forget that other right-wing media consumer (Hannity, Savage, BillO) who walked into a “liberal” church and opened fire.
• By the way, these folks have the Constitutional right to carry guns and intimidate you, but you don’t have the right to put a bumper sticker expressing your beliefs on your car.
• Gordon Liddy is still roaming free, by the way.
• More examples of the cradle-to-grave crazy here…
• God wants gays, Barney Frank and Barack Obama executed.
• Just remember, violence is inevitable, and it’s Obama’s fault.

I could go on. But do I need to?

If you’re a reasonable Republican, all this has to trouble you (and I’ve heard enough Republicans say that it does to know that  I’m not imagining things). The issue isn’t that all GOPpers are like the fruitcakes running loose here in the Summer of Hate. In truth, this silliness is the work of a minority that isn’t big enough to do much damage at the ballot box. So since they can’t win using the techniques prescribed by law – you know, campaigning, voting, that sort of thing – and since their opinions are shared by so few (again, national polls on health care say over 70% of Americans favor a public option, for instance), they’re trying to get their way by being the loudest. By resorting to rhetorical misdirection and deceit when reason and fact are so thoroughly stacked against them. By pitching the most obnoxious tantrums. By resorting to base terror, intimidation and thuggery. By playing on the media’s insatiable thirst for noise.

The worst part, from the perspective of the rational Republican, is that a lot of these barking loons probably aren’t even members of the party (although the money behind their organized, choreographed hissy fits certainly is). Of course, at least one GOP lawmaker seems more than willing to welcome the lot of them aboard, and the average citizen may not expend the energy necessary to differentiate all the players aligned against Obama.

The Mandate

If you don’t control your image, your image will control you. – Dennis Green

If you are, in fact, an educated Republican who prefers to deliberate your way to conclusions thoughtfully, these are dangerous times. Because thanks to the way the system is rigged – and let’s understand who rigged it this way and why – most of what you hear through Big Journalism channels is inaccurate, at best, and most of what you hear through alternative channels is noise, at best. And those who do have something intelligent to say? Well, there aren’t many cameras pointed in their direction. Reason and fact aren’t as exciting as townhall cage matches.

I spent a lot of years (beginning in the early 1980s) saying, to any coherent Christian who’d listen, that they’d better get serious about taking back their religion from the jihadists on the right. Now I’m saying it to every Republican who was offended by what Sara Robinson wrote and who is watching the Summer of Hate unfold with a little unease.

You need to find a leader and take back your party – either that or walk away from it in ways that make your disapproval unmistakeably clear. You may think these people don’t speak for you, but they are speaking in your name, whether you like it or not. And at the moment, nobody is doing anything to correct the notion that everybody to the right of Barack Obama is a rabid hyena.

The Post knows better, Mr. Alexander writes:

The Post has strict rules on the use of anonymous sources. They’re spelled out in detail — more than 3,000 words — in its internal stylebook. But some of those lofty standards are routinely ignored. Others are unevenly applied.

Anonymous sources have their place in news gathering. Whistleblowers who make charges of malfeasance against governments or corporations need protection against reprisal. Victims of sexual assault similarly have been granted anonymity to protect against reprisal or demonizing. Sources in crucial national security stories may need protection. Sometimes, the grant of anonymity is the only way to obtain information that will serve the public interest.

“Anonymous sources are critical to newsgathering — and to informing readers,” writes Mr. Anderson. “Without a guarantee of confidentiality, many sources wouldn’t share sensitive information on corruption or misconduct.”

But far too many journalists and their editors use anonymous sources routinely without more critical assessment of the consequences. So should such journalists be surprised at the erosion of their credibility?

You know anonymice when you see them:

• said one of the FBI agents involved with the case who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
• said a senior Pentagon official, who requested anonymity when discussing internal decision-making.
• said one Democratic strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Obama campaign has banned any comments on the selection process.
• The advisers—who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity—
• a former Countrywide executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to discuss the program.
• said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
• The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue
• said a member of local union bargaining team, who insisted on anonymity because union officials said they would not negotiate in the news media.
• according to two sources close to the negotiations.

These anonymice were published last year in The New York Times, the Post, the Los Angeles Times or the Wall Street Journal. Slate’s Jack Shafer and intern Kara Hadge collected them and placed them in a database — complete with a five-point ranking system of the merit of the mice. (Oh, it’s fun. Go read more of these.)

Some anonymice have merit. Here’s one of Mr. Shafer’s examples from the Post:

Several EPA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that throughout the process, White House officials instructed the agency to change their calculations with the aim of reducing the “social cost of carbon,” a regulatory term that reflects the economic burdens stemming from greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Shafer rates this as creditable: “Don’t you love it when bureaucracies battle one another? This anonymouse is worth the bother.” His sarcasm aside, EPA officials needed protection from a White House that undercut and misrepresented the work of EPA scientists, adversely affecting public policy.

Mr. Shafer says, “Often a journalist has no alternative to attributing his information to an anonymouse when reporting, say, a criminal investigation or from a war zone. Likewise, many national-security stories cannot be reported without citing unnamed sources. The NSA story, the CIA prison story, and the torture story could not have been undertaken without anonymous sources.”

As an example of appropriate use of anonymice, he cites the Dana Priest rules. (Ms. Priest is a national-security reporter for the Post.) The best reporters, Mr. Shafer argues, dig for detail from anonymice:

They’re disciplined about their use of anonymous sources, and give more credence to whistleblowers than blowhards. They present multiple sources, increasing the likelihood that the information is accurate. They serve their readers, not their sources’ agendas. And the information they publish is remarkably specific—proving dates, locations, events, circumstances, participants, quantities, and the like … [emphasis added]

Clark Hoyt, the Times‘ public editor, writes that the newspaper’s policy says anonymice should be “a last resort when the story is of compelling public interest and the information is not available any other way.” [emphasis added]

True, many stories of public interest relating to crime and national security may need anonymice. Anonymous sources led to reporting by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada on the BALCO steroids scandal for the San Francisco Chronicle. (Then again, some of the sources proved a tad shady, raising some old questions about anonymice.)

The Post and most large news organizations have policies regarding use of anonymous sources. But are they properly adhered to?

The Times‘ Mr. Hoyt writes that the newspaper’s policy forbids some uses— but that doesn’t prevent them from appearing in the newspaper:

The policy says the newspaper will not allow personal or partisan attacks from behind a mask of anonymity. Yet an anonymous Yankees official could trash Alex Rodriguez (“His legacy, now, is gone”), and an anonymous Jets official could say that the team did not want to sign Terrell Owens because he would have poisoned it and torn up the locker room. A competitor of an Internet start-up was allowed to slam its business model without his name being attached to his belittling quotes. [emphasis added]

Anonymous sources, used properly and improperly, are here to stay. And it’s not just traditional media anymore. Blogs have become notorious for abuse of anonymity. So have other social media.

So what do readers (and viewers; TV does it, too) do when confronted by an anonymous source in a news story — or blog post? Just ask one question.

Cui bono? Who benefits from the anonymity?

Slate’s Mr. Shafer includes that information in his database. If the perceived benefit is not for the reader, then the anonymouse is, well, probably bogus. Over the past few years, I think the benefit of anonymice has shifted even further to the source. Anonymice float trial balloons on policy. They goad opponents behind anonymity. They belittle, undercut and lie about someone or something, all to the anonymouse’s advantage. The advantage increasingly goes to the source because reporters and editors allow it.

So why do reporters continue to use such cunning, deceitful anonymice? Two reasons.

First, overwork. There are simply fewer reporters these days. The revenue crisis in the newspaper industry has seen thousands of reporters laid off or bought out, especially those with years, even decades, of experience. The talent pool is shallower. Fewer reporters with lesser experience feel the pressure to do more stories — stretching their professionalism, perhaps, too far.

Second, preservation of access. Reporters working beats may have to use an anonymouse against their better judgment — to make sure the anonymouse doesn’t shut them out of future stories.

Sometimes, the public interest is well served by use of anonymous sources. But, as two reader representatives of major newspapers write, anonymice have become more a vice than a virtue. Readers are the losers in this framing game.

My first experience with the UK was registering my company and opening business bank accounts. In South Africa, as a local, it takes two months to register the company and another three months to then open the bank accounts.

In the UK, it took 24 hours. And I walked away with a personal credit card, despite having no credit history. This, by the way, after the collapse of the credit industry. Not that I’m complaining.

This vote of confidence allowed me to rent a small apartment just outside the centre of Oxford. I was told that, living alone, I could apply for reduced rates. I’m used to dealing with municipalities. So, I fortified myself with a jug of coffee and a book, and phoned.

An actual human being answered, which was a surprise. I was expecting one of those multiple-guess things.

“Hi, I have just rented an apartment and I live alone. I gather I can have the rates reduced. Who do I speak to?”

I now prepared myself for the inevitable paper-chase. The chap asked for my account number and then followed up with, “Right, and how else can I help you?”

“No, just that,” I said.

“OK, well then, thank you so much for calling and please call again should you need anything else.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I stammered. “Are we done?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “All done. I’ll send you a letter just confirming these changes.”

And that is what life in the UK is like. People do their jobs. That is startling. But, I’ll put that in perspective for you in a bit.

Love

My then partner and I struggled with contact. We spoke every day. We were able to see each other on the rare occasions that the broadband connection in South Africa held and we could use Skype. The rest of the time were the daily spoken words. Of love. Of missing someone else beyond the bearing of it. Of hoping and begging the universe that, one day, we will be together.

But it would never be an easy decision for her to leave, for reasons too personal to write about in such a public forum.

In September, she visited, at the tail-end of the English summer. She fell in love, as I knew she would, with the country and the people and the beauty of it all. In a really ugly restaurant that a friend had recommended, with mannequin heads and arms fighting out of the walls, I proposed.

It wasn’t romantic, but it was inevitable.

I returned to South Africa in April to be married.

A year away had changed me. The edge that I had – that protective screen – was gone. I could see, for the first time, how brittle everyone in South Africa is. How you act to protect yourself from others. How close to the surface the violence and rage is.

In the UK, if someone stops you in the street to ask for directions, you’ll probably tell them and chat briefly in friendly conversation. In South Africa, outside of a few obvious tourist spots, you will be pushed away with a look of fury and fear.

I felt like I was suffocating. I hated it. I was scared and worried. I only wanted to get away. To be safe.

My new wife and I would be leaving for the UK together. Starting a new life. But first, we would have to settle the old one.

We queued at the Department of Home Affairs for our official marriage certificate. It took a whole day to move, slowly, through the queues. There were only two people assigned to handling a queue of 70 people. Behind them, papers were piled randomly, yellowing, damp and rotten. Dozens of people sat in the open office and drank tea, oblivious to doing their jobs.

“Your certificate will be ready in six weeks,” we were told.

“When will it really be ready?” I asked.

“In three months.”

“Really?”

“Maybe.”

I left the documentation with my parents. It is now four months since we put in the application and Home Affairs tells us they have no record of the application (despite receipts, copies of applications, copies of receipts of applications and my father’s regular calls to verify progress) and can we please apply again. I’m thinking it’ll be easier to simply get remarried in the UK.

A few months ago, frustrated beyond measure while waiting for an identity book – without which a South African cannot work, cannot live – a young man walked into a Johannesburg Home Affairs office and held the entire management at gunpoint for several days. It is a mark of the national despair with bureaucracy and inefficiency that he was celebrated and cheered as a hero.

Work

South Africa has a new glass ceiling. It is a limitation on professional work. The country has an appalling skills shortage. But the shortage is not of top analysts, engineers or scientists (which they don’t have either) but of artisans and managers. In summary, the layer of people who are sufficiently skilled to even understand the intense and intellectually-driven computational analysis that I do no longer exist.

I’ve discussed this with colleagues and my business partner. South Africa is still a grand investment destination for capital assets (mining, plant, machinery) but definitely not if you are in the services sector. South Africa’s income inequality is legend. But it is very distorted.

Relative to their efficiency and productivity, both the unionised unskilled and the CEO manager-level are overpaid and underworked. The skilled level of professionals are underpaid relative to any measure you care to name. That is why the bulk of them are emigrating.

Companies in South Africa are conservative and unlikely to try new approaches to risk management (my profession). My only work in the last two years in South Africa was the equivalent of license-plate manufacturing.

In the UK, I travel extensively. I have worked with some of the largest companies in the world where my ideas and opinions are listened to, discussed and frequently employed. It is, professionally, one of the most fulfilling periods of my life.

Life

A month ago, South African newspapers were crowing about the sudden return of many expatriates to the country from the UK. “Life isn’t as good over there,” was the general consensus.

But, again, let’s put that in perspective. A person who graduates with a weak high-school certificate is in the minority in South Africa amongst so many who don’t graduate at all. You are considered “skilled” and in demand in labour-intensive businesses.

The 25% of long-term unemployed South Africans are, in fact, unemployable. They have no skills or abilities that are of any use at all. If the government hadn’t introduced minimum wages and minimum rules of employment, perhaps they could get a job in a Chinese-style sweatshop. That — without debating the merits or concerns of such an approach — isn’t permitted.

So they remain unemployed.

This gives many South Africans a false sense of superiority. Graduates arriving with these qualifications in the UK find that they are not in the middle, they’re at the bottom. For, even in South Africa, these are the absolute minimum requirements to secure work. But here, the majority have these skills.

Young South Africans find themselves competing with Indians and Poles and Australians for the same jobs. Many give up.

Yet the highly skilled, such as myself, are in demand. My wife was employed only a few weeks after starting to look for work here, and is still receiving job offers. An astonishing number of local businesses are owned by South Africans; all doing very well.

Skills are skills, even in an economic downturn.

And the quality of life is outstanding. Certainly, there are issues (and I could spend hours writing about the dismal performance of state-run healthcare) but life is treasured here.

And that is a good thing.

The last year has been difficult, but it has also been rebirth.

—

Return to Part 1: One year an immigrant: a resolution

I have seen snow before, but never lived in a place where snow thrusts itself into your daily life. The familiar landscape of fields, farmlands and wilderness was utterly transformed. I could see just how much wildlife lived around me. Bunnies hopped. Deer loped. Birds scratched.

I took a morning off, just to go see what the massive Port Meadow would look like. I got only a few yards on my bicycle before becoming glued in the snow. So I walked. It was magnificent.

I arrived in Oxford at the end of April 2008, leaving South Africa for good on 27 April: Freedom Day. Ironic. The day that South Africans celebrate as the day of the start of majority rule has now become my own private memorial to personal liberty.

A pain that only has one resolution

I have a friend who owns a micro-coffee roastery back in Cape Town. He has burned millions of rands over the past few years as he tries to get South Africans to enjoy high-quality coffee. It is killing him, that slow awful and agonising murder that the self-employed experience. Every day you are reborn and die again.

Business people aren’t the only ones to experience this pain. Maybe you had a relationship like that? A love which is on fire and filled with light and colour and texture, and agony. For you never quite connect in the most critical places; that of mutual respect, adoration and compromise. One of you is making all the running while the other lives exactly as they please, ignorant and immune to the consequences.

It’s a destructive relationship. You put everything you can in, but you’re burning yourself out.

Maybe that relationship turns around. But there comes a point where, no matter how that relationship ends up, it no longer has meaning for you.

I’ve been through a few of those. Personal, business and ideological relationships that I put my soul and spirit and determination into. Even where they worked I found that the success was ashes in my mouth.

South Africa had become like that to me and the only solution was to leave. Frank McCourt who, more than any recent writer, has done so much to lift the “glamour” of poverty had this to say:

“Very little is written about poverty…You see part of it. You see Dafur. You see Chad. That’s African poverty…you see this all the time. You almost become accustomed to it…you can send in rice…but that doesn’t heal them…beware of giving energy to desperate people. They are going to use it.”

Beware of giving energy to desperate people. Good advice. But, when I left, I also left behind a life, friends, favourite places, favourite things, and my fiancée.

Putting it in perspective

I had a long chat with a Swedish chap who was complaining, “Don’t you find England dangerous? I hate the public transport and I never feel safe. By the way, what’s South Africa like?”

I looked at him, dumbfounded. “If this is how you feel about the UK, you’ll probably not want to get off the plane when you arrive in SA.”

So, my perspective is coloured by a comparison to a country with one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, the highest rape rate, a government so corrupt that the cabinet now is dominated by convicted (and accused) fraudsters who have dismantled the judiciary and appointed apparatchiks to head up the newly emasculated state departments.

There’s a joke about Jacob Zuma, the morally suspect new president, which goes like this.

President Zuma suffers a heart attack while having sex with his seventh wife, a 14-year-old school-girl from the rural North. He gets taken, by accident, to a public hospital, but the doctors are out on strike and the nurses are all asleep in an unused theatre and he dies without ever receiving attention.

He ascends to Heaven and stands at the Pearly Gates where St. Peter greets him.

“Welcome to Heaven,” says Saint Peter, “Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a Communist around these parts, so we’re not sure what to do with you.”

“No problem, just let me in; I’m a good Christian; I’m a believer,” says Comrade Jacob.

“I’d like to just let you in, but I have orders from God Himself. He says that since the implementation of his new Affirmative Action Policy, you have to spend one day in Hell and one day in Heaven. Then you must choose where you’ll live for eternity.”

“But I’ve already made up my mind. I want to be in Heaven,” replies Zuma.

“I’m sorry … But we have our rules,” Peter interjects. And, with that, St. Peter escorts him to an elevator and he goes down, down, down … all the way to Hell.

The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a lush golf course. The sun is shining in a cloudless sky. The temperature is a perfect 22C degrees. In the distance is a beautiful club-house. Standing in front of it is Thabo Mbeki and thousands of other Communist luminaries who had helped him out over the years; Tokyo Sexwale, Peter Mokaba, Tony Yengeni, Schabir Shaik and thousands more. All the ANC leaders are there, everyone laughing, happy, and casually but expensively dressed.

They run to greet him, to hug him and to reminisce about the good times they had getting rich at the expense of ’suckers and peasants.’

They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster and caviar. The Devil himself comes up to Zuma with a frosty drink, “Have a tequila and relax, Jake!”

They are having such a great time that, before he realises it, it’s time to go. Everyone gives him a big hug and waves as Zuma steps on the elevator and heads upward.

When the elevator door reopens, he is in Heaven again and St. Peter is waiting for him. “Now it’s time to visit Heaven,” the old man says, opening the gate.

So for 24 hours Zuma is made to hang out with a bunch of honest, good-natured people who enjoy each other’s company, talk about things other than money and treat each other decently. Not a kanga, or scantily-clad woman amongst them. No fancy country clubs here and, while the food tastes great, it’s not caviar or lobster. And these people are all poor. He doesn’t see anybody he knows and he isn’t even treated like someone special!

“Whoa,” he says uncomfortably to himself. “Robert Mugabe never prepared me for this!”

The day done, St. Peter returns and says, “Well, you’ve spent a day in Hell and a day in Heaven. Now choose where you want to live for Eternity.”

With the ‘Deal or No Deal’ theme playing softly in the background, Zuma reflects for a minute … Then answers: “Well, I would never have thought I’d say this. I mean, Heaven has been cool and all but I really think I belong in Hell with my friends.”

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down, all the way to Hell.

The doors of the elevator open and he is in the middle of a barren scorched earth covered with garbage and toxic industrial wasteland, looking a bit like the eroded, befouled informal squatter camps around South African cities, but worse and more desolate.

He is horrified to see all of his friends, dressed in rags and chained together, picking up the roadside rubbish and putting it into black plastic bags. They are groaning and moaning in pain, faces and hands black with grime.

The Devil comes over to Zuma and puts an arm around his shoulder.” I don’t understand,” stammers a shocked Zuma, “Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a club-house and we ate lobster and caviar and drank tequila. We lazed around and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and everybody looks miserable!”

The Devil looks at him, smiles slyly and purrs, “Yesterday we were campaigning; today you voted for us.”

—-

Continue to Part 2: One year an immigrant: so you see…

According to the article, six letters ostensibly from two minority groups within Rep. Perriello’s district were forged by one or more employees within Bonner & Associates. One letter was on letterhead from Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit group devoted to solving Hispanic issues in Charlottesville. The other five were supposedly from the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP. All six letters were from people who did not work at the groups and two claimed organizational titles that do not exist. S&R has obtained copies of the letters in question: Creciendo Juntos forgery and NAACP forgery.

The Daily Progress article reports that a partner with Bonner & Associates traveled to Charlottesville to apologize for the “mistake” and to inform Creciendo Juntos that the employee responsible had been fired. However, Creciendo Juntos executive committeemember Tim Freilich wrote in a letter to Rep. Perriello that:

This was not a “mistake.” This was a deliberately and carefully forged letter that used the logo, address and name of Creciendo Juntos without authorization. (from Daily Progress article)

Given Bonner & Associates’ history of astroturf lobbying and outright deception, it’s difficult to dismiss Mr. Freilich’s concerns.

According to the Daily Progress article:

The AARP Bulletin reported in 2006 that the “60 Plus Association” hired Bonner & Associates in 2003 to manage what it called an “Astroturf” campaign against prescription drug legislation in Minnesota and New Mexico, meaning that it was an artificial version of a grassroots campaign.

Bonner & Associates hired callers to identify themselves as members of the 60 Plus Association and urge residents to ask their governors to veto the legislation. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer later admitted that it had paid Bonner & Associates to undertake the campaign, AARP reported.

Furthermore, in an article originally published by the Baltimore Sun and reprinted at Common Dreams, Bonner & Associates was exposed as using similar tactics to oppose the prescription drug plan on behalf of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group.

Although the tactics outraged some supporters of the prescription drug bills, those behind the campaign defended their actions as legitimate.

Welcome to the big leagues, they said.

“It’s a great exercise in the First Amendment,” said Jack Bonner, founder of Bonner & Associates, the Washington lobbying firm hired by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) to kill the legislation.

The Baltimore Sun article goes on to describe the basic way the campaign worked: Bonner & Associates faxed misleading letters on Consumer Alliance letterhead to people in various purchased databases and the returned signatures were then attached to a petition against the drug benefit that was presented to legislators. Furthermore, the contact that supposedly worked for Consumer Alliance was revealed to be a Bonner & Associates employee – after he lied to a reporter about his employer.

In a response to a request for PhRMA to be honest, the Sun article quotes Jack Bonner as saying “It’s democracy. That is what this is about.”

Since this story broke in the Daily Progress this morning, there has been a widespread and growing uproar about it.

Carl Pope of the Sierra Club issued a press release that said, in part, “the alleged forgery of letters from organizations dedicated to protecting their communities forces one to question who is really behind the efforts to block America’s progress towards a clean energy economy.”

Paul Blumenthal, blogged at the Sunlight Foundation that “this story was worth flagging as I’d imagine it is the clearest cut argument for [grassroots lobbying disclosure]” and “Bonner & Associates has not filed a lobbying disclosure report since 2001, so we have no clue which client is paying the firm to forge letters and lie to lawmakers.”

Senator John Kerry wrote a diary entry at Daily Kos that reads in part:

Nothing should surprise us anymore after we’ve seen powerful interests mislead about the science, twist the facts about climate change, resort to a whole host of tactics to try to hide a simple fact: the earth is in trouble because of manmade greenhouse gasses, our planet is getting closer and closer to a dangerous tipping point, and we must do something about this immediately.

But I have to say, this appears to be a desperate distortion too many….

This moment is too important, the crisis is too grave, to let our debate be distorted by under the radar screen gutter moves – this one the most egregious example yet reported.

A blog post at Blue Virginia compared Bonner & Associates to the Tea Party Patriots, who told their members to call legislators and lie about their residency. And the blog It’s Getting Hot In Here made their opinion of the tactics abundantly clear just by the title – “Fraud? Identity Theft? Impersonation? All In A Day’s Work.” And Wonkette is most assuredly not amused.

This story has also started to get some legs in the legacy media. Keith Johnson, writer of the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog, said the following: “The fight over impending climate-change legislation in Congress appears to be getting dirtier.” Johnson also pointed out that Bonner & Associates has worked against climate disruption policies in the past, specifically organizing a “web-based grassroots campaign ahead of the U.S. vote on the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s.” Mention of this has also shown up in The Hill’s Briefing Room blog.

Ultimately, though, whether Bonner & Associates will be punished for lying and forging letters on official letterhead will not be determined by activists, bloggers, or reporters. Jack Bonner and Bonner & Associates were accused of ethics violations for the group’s activities on behalf of PhRMA, but the charges were dismissed by the Maryland State Ethics Commission. If, as TPMMuckraker blogger Zachary Roth believes, additional letters turn up in other Representatives’ offices, then the probability that this was a single rogue, overzealous employee (as Bonner & Associates has claimed) goes way down. Similarly, there’s a chance that Bonner & Associates might potentially face one or more legal actions as a result of these letters. A case could probably be made for fraud and impersonation, possibly for trademark infringement. And I feel confident that lawyers could find more charges as well.

In that same vein, Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachussetts, Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, has taken an interest in this story:

My Select Committee will immediately begin an investigation of the extent and scope of this activity.

I can assemble with others to complain about the government. I can petition the government for redress of grievances. I can practice a religion free of government interference. Most importantly, I have the right to speak my mind. I can say whatever I want about the government short of advocating violence against it. I am free to speak or write critically about the actions or inactions of my government.

I can be a critic of my government because for hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of Americans before me fought and died for my right to do that.

In this young century, however, Americans have suffered increased assaults on their rights — especially privacy — by their own government, all in the name of the proclaimed need for “national security.” Because of fear, government continues to attempt to foreclose on constitutional protections.

Government may erode constitutional guarantees in the absence of the watchful eye of the governed. Rights not exercised may become rights lost. It is an obligation of citizenship for Americans that they continually critique and comment on the actions of their government. That is how we shape our government. Failure to do so allows government to shape us and our rights instead.

At the moment, America has a slew of problems confronting it — record unemployment, a shrinking economy, two foreign wars, a two-party system run amok, and an enormous fiscal deficit, just to name a few.

As we toss the steak on the barbecue and watch the fireworks today, let’s keep in mind the rights and riches we do have, the historical cost of attaining them, and the future risk of losing them if we fail to speak up when government displeases us.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office:

Barack: Hey everybody, what’s the difference between a progressive and a toilet?
Rahm: I give up, Mr. President.
Barack: The toilet doesn’t follow you around after you use it.
[Entire Cabinet]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A few days ago Chris Bowers, one of the progressive blogosphere’s smarter and more influential voices, announced that he was becoming a conservative Democrat. His reasoning was compelling. Let me sample a bit for you (and encourage you to go read the rest as soon as you’re done here).

You can “endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes” to keep you in the Party. “You get ten times the media mentions that one gets being a progressive.” You get “more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors.” You can “hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want” with no consequences at all. “You get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own.” If you bitch about it you get “threats about never hearing from the White House again.” You’re “far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama’s cabinet by 7-1.” And that’s not nearly all.

Okay, so maybe Bowers isn’t really abandoning his fellow progressives. Maybe he was just being a smart-ass to make a point. I can’t say I approve of such tactics, but hey, my old pal Jonathan Swift was known for the occasional snark, so who am I to judge?

The point is that progressives have a beef with the new fauxcialist administration, and regardless of what you think about their issues, their analysis or their personal hygiene, a review of the facts certainly justifies their pique. Think about it.

• Obama the Campaigning Man was pretty clear in his disdain for the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama the President has apparently decided that gay rights can wait. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Don’t bother.)
• Candidate Obama was balls-to-the-wall about greening the economy, and I mean yesterday. President Obama, whose favorability rating is running better than 2-1 for, seemed unable or unwilling to expend some of that political capital on the just passed ACES bill, which many experts think will accomplish diddley (or worse). (Again, whatever the eventual reality about this bill turns out to be is irrelevant – the point is that Obama did not act in accordance with the more progressive stance he had taken earlier.)
• And what about health care? A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for “a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.” How overwhelming, you ask? Overall 72% were in favor of the “public option,” and 57% said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to get it. Hell, 50% of Republican respondents want it. So, you have very high approval ratings. And you certainly have a significantly greater mandate than George the Conqueror did after nipping John Kerry in 2004. You have significant majorities in both houses of Congress. You have overwhelming popular support for a public option. And you can’t get it done? Seriously?

I’m sitting here trying to figure out why corporate America, which would stand to benefit tremendously from having the burden of insuring the citizenry lifted from its shoulders, isn’t in open revolt. (That part of corporate America that doesn’t include the insurance industry, I mean.)

It has been observed that the Republicans seem to be more effective with a minority than the Dems are when they have the entire country by the balls. GOPpers derail the train by threatening a filibuster, but the Democrats can’t seem to head off a bad idea with a damned-near buster-proof majority. How the hell is this possible?

This, of course, is what’s known as a “rhetorical question.” The butt-obvious answer is that the contemporary Democratic Party is not really a party, at least not in the same way that the GOP is. Instead, it’s a bizarre amalgam of progressives, “moderates,” bipartisan fetishists, “New Democrats,” DINOs and opportunistic Republicans (see Specter, Arlen). The median at present lies significantly to the right of Richard Nixon, who despite the recent revelation that he was in favor of abortion in the case of half-breed fetuses, posted a record that would make him pretty darned progressive by 2009 standards. (Good thing you dodged that bullet, huh Mr. President?)

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence. As far as the “responsible” centrists are concerned, progressives are the late-date with no self-esteem, the unwitting fat chick at the pig party.

So, what to do?

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

I’m no expert on the rules of the American legislature, so I’m sure there are nuances I’m missing. Nonetheless, I imagine the Republican wing of the Democratic Party would wet itself. And in the short term this could be very good for the GOP, which would find itself in the plurality.

Longer-term, though, it seems like the progressives can make an argument – and one that is supported by some actual evidence – that they represent the will of a goodly slice of the American public. Even better, given how the youth vote seems to be trending, they can also argue that their hand is going to strengthen over time. Are these premises accurate? Hard to say. But they are testable hypotheses, and the posit is certainly plausible enough to be worth examining.

Maybe the remaining Dems respond by making the reality of the situation official and decamping for the GOP. Maybe the Blue Dogs and the “moderate” wing of the GOP abandon those pesky snake-handlers on the right and form a new “centrist” coalition. Who knows. If that did happen, however, America would at least have the refreshing luxury of an opposition party that, you know, opposed. We could get all that corporatist DC clutter, which thrives because it dominates both parties, up for a real referendum. What a campaign hook – America vs. the Beltway.

Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

And what business is it of ours in any case? If you’re so excited about freedom on its bloody march, then start walking. But my best honest guess is that the majority of Americans now weighing in on a contested election in a country that a good many of them can’t find on a map don’t even understand what’s happening in Iran.

That’s the problem.

Don’t look at me. My knowledge of Iranian politics is not enough to choose sides. Because Mousavi opposed Ahmadinejad does not mean that he’s a beacon of hope and freedom. This is not a revolution to bring down the Iranian system anymore than the candidacy of President Obama was a revolution. Elections are merely refined power struggles of the elite.

Fitting, then, that a group of people who make a living at such power struggles should weigh in on the matter. The US House of Representatives – that august body of a good many personages who voted “yea” on such bold initiatives in freedom as the USA PATRIOT Act – is inserting itself into the domestic politics of a foreign nation in the name of the downtrodden yearning to be free. Bitter irony, anyone? (Except Ron Paul, who may be the only sane one of the lot.)

Bloggers are proudly proclaiming their acts of what the US Government would define as cyber-terrorism if it were done to a government website.

You are not a part of the revolution.

Is the situation interesting? Yes. It’s tense and the stakes are high. But this isn’t our nation, nor is it the great push for freedom and democracy that we’re pretending it is. It seems that we like to believe that we chipped at the Berlin Wall. We believe that we stood in front of the tanks in Moscow. Or at least we believe that people do things like that because they want to be like us.

We’ve got it backwards. We don’t have the guts to take to the streets like the Iranians…or even the French. And we know we don’t have the guts. That’s why we take such vicarious pride in these events.

A socio-economic elite has pilloried the majority of Americans for decades now with barely a whimper. It hasn’t always been that way, and once upon a time “This Land is Your Land” was a song about revolution. But you’d never know it unless you heard Pete Seeger slip the last two verses in as they were originally written. (I’d twitter it, but there are too many characters.) Now if it was those old-time Wobblies standing vicariously with the people on the streets of Tehran, then it might be worth something.

It’s not.

Nor would the US have erupted in a similar way if the organs had announced a McCain landslide. We would have gone to work; paid our taxes; and bitched a lot. We like our stepping out of line with others taking the police beatings. If anyone in the US might do it it would be the rabid right, but at the teaparties they only dunked bags into cups of water…because they didn’t want to break the law. And that just about sums up America’s revolutionary spirit.

Unless, of course, it’s someone else’s revolution. You may not know this yet, but what the rest of the world hates about us is that we have a nasty habit of sticking our noses in everyone’s business and telling them what to do, what’s right and what’s wrong. And it was not only George W. Bush; it’s also the guy who’s so proud of his cyber warfare conquests.

Wear the green. Follow the tweets breathlessly. Cheer on the brave souls willing to get their skull kicked in for something. But if you want a revolution you’ll have to get your own.

And you don’t, so you won’t.

Even as President Barrack Obama waxed eloquent in Cairo, Egypt, on the moral imperatives of the community of nations, public opinion polls released in the United States revealed that, by a substantial percentage, its citizens believe torture is an acceptable option for interrogation of suspects deemed terrorists by various US governmental agencies. In addition, other polls show a majority of the American public hold the opinion that the all-American theme park of state torture, located at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open for business and continue to welcome guests from around the globe, taking them for the ride of their lives through the dark id of the American psyche.

These revelations should not come as a shock. Torture, official secrecy, and other sundry apparatus and accouterments of the national security state are about the only viable enterprises remaining in this declining nation. Moreover, one of the defining traits of the insecure (both among men and nations) is to stand, bristling in a paranoid posture, with feet planted in stubborn defiance of changing circumstances, snarling at invisible threats and imagined affronts, as life moves on with indifferent grace.

Recently, in the latest in a series of setbacks and self-inflicted wounds, the national identity of the United States sustained another humiliating blow when General Motors was driven into a ditch, declared totaled, and then stripped and sold for spare parts. This event throws a rod into the smoking engine block of the nation’s dream machine: The automobiles manufactured in Detroit were once symbols of American power, freedom of mobility, even sexual allure. But the world has sped ahead, leaving the US wheezing dust in its wake: The era of high horsepower and American ascendancy, with its glinting chrome conceit and reinforced steel illusions of unassailable power, now sits upon concrete blocks rusting in the automobile graveyard of history.

At present, and for many years now, the American automobile culture has meant little more than feckless commuters stalled in traffic, alternatively sullen and seething in their powerlessness. Yet, this is not the time to throw a populist pity party: The people of the nation face a future circumscribed by their own lack of self-awareness and their refusal of civic engagement. Year after year, they have displayed avidity for little more than the rigged, roadside attractions of the corporate carnival; hence, traffic is heavy on this lost highway, all lanes are jammed on the superhighway to Clowntown, U.S.A.

Seemingly, the nation’s hopes are only being kept flickering by caffeine, antidepressants, and the naive belief that they — accepting, as Americans have, since birth, the narcissistic mythos of the consumer state — are a special breed whose God-kissed destiny would forever fall outside the failures and contretemps of earthly life. Therefore, Americans cling to the core conviction that there should not be any consequences for their own oceanic apathy, child-like credulity, and small time cupidity in regard to their relationship to the elitist power brokers whose financial chicanery and political scheming determined their hapless fate.

Both prole and plutocrat set the wheel in motion, and both wait for some kind of deux ex machina, whereby Fortuna will smile once again on the hobbled nation, and restore it and all its special children to their rightful place — up above the world of regret, reflection, and amends — back upon their highchairs of infantile entitlement. And while the populace waits in vain for the Goddess of Luck to rise from the wreckage of their vanity, they still have a glut of junk food, guns, and porn (some of the last remaining goods produced by the nation) to act as palliatives … miserable substitutes — that they are — for sustenance, feelings of empowerment, and eros.

At present, the citizens of the US moan “poor us” as they stagger through this “time of crisis.” The American people seem as helpless as pitiful puppies whimpering before the multiple and multiplying perils of the present. Yet, they are not wronged innocents, made blameless victims because of their hapless but well-meaning credulity. Nonsense. US consumers have been the beneficiaries of the mad dog policies of the American corporate/national security state nexus. Greedily, they devoured the scraps dropped from the tables of the oligarchs. This PitifulPup/Mad Dog Syndrome defines the era, and is the collective mode of being of citizens of the American Empire (regardless of the public relations makeover the Obama Administration is attempting to pull off worldwide).

For meaningful change to occur, Americans must look deeper into themselves and into the collective soul of the nation. Not far beneath the bristling ego structure of the torturer (and his enablers in the general population) is a quaking pup possessed of a monstrous need for absolute control. Incongruously, the torturer is terrified by his victim. The torturer, like the empire itself, cannot control the vastness of life (he sees the world’s uncontrollability as a ticking time bomb somewhere near him he cannot locate) — but his victim, the human fragment of the world quivering before him, can be (must be!) totally dominated. Or so it seems within the fear frothing mind of the Mad Dog torturer. But this does not suffice: The absolute domination of one solitary human being cannot bridle the uncertainty inherent in life. The torturer’s dread cannot be assuaged. In the same manner an alcoholic cannot dominate a bottle of booze by will power, a power drunk nation cannot subdue its terror by practicing torture.

And what is it that invokes such fear in the people of America? Deep down, Americans are stricken with abject fear by the fact that it is impossible to continue being the dominate power on the planet and being indulged, like spoiled children, with all the benefits and privileges such a position affords. The United States tortures to maintain the global status quo. Remember: “Our way of life is non-negotiable.” We’ll torture or kill anyone (even ecologically, the planet) for a tank of gas and a bag of Cheetos (or any of an assortment of tasty, salt-rich snack foods).

If this preposterous way of life was a classic, Madison Avenue ad campaign, its catchphrase might be: “Bet you can’t torture just one.” Or: “Go for it!” Or the latest offering of glistening snake oil that has been marketed to the nation: “Yes, we can.”

But, as far as investigating US governmental policies of torture and then prosecuting its architects and operatives goes, the Obama administration’s mantra has degenerated from, “yes, we can,” to “no, can-do.” Unless President Obama reverses course, he will prove himself not to be an agent of change, but another water-board carrier for the psychopaths of the status quo.

Such a high level of denial only increases the intensity of the murderous libido that flows beneath the surface of American life — that chthonic river of repressed rage surging within the psyches of the besieged laboring class, who, despite being burdened by debt slavery and chafed by ever-diminishing prospects, still clutch the kitschy iconography of the god of the consumer state. Although that god has fallen, it will not go solemnly to the boneyard of dead myths.

In the contemporary US, debt slavery, a lack of future prospects, the constant threat of bankruptcy and homelessness, and the danger of gun violence are all very real; yet, day and night, alluring media mirages beckon Americans into a blinding wasteland of false hope. Daily existence feels unreal — a constant, hollow communion with electronic phantoms. A chasm of alienation opens between the polarity of unreal expectations and degraded real life situations. Toxic shlock syndrome sets in.

The sense of alienation is so profound that many citizens on the political right believe that President Obama cannot in reality be a citizen of this country; his name is too foreign, his skin possesses a hue too different from their own. His birth certificate must be as bogus as an IOU from Bernie Madoff. He can’t be a real American; he seems no more real, nor connected with the concerns of their lives, than any other ghost in the media hologram.

But guns feel real to these troubled folks. The weapon’s weight in their hands wards off an unfocused sense of dread; its heft, momentarily, mitigates feelings of being helplessly adrift … Looking down the precise beauty of its barrel distills down hazy hatreds into identifiable targets. Within their fog-shrouded minds, the very presence of that “slick-ass usurper” in the White House causes the ground to feel less than solid beneath their feet. Ergo, guns must be stockpiled; massive amounts of ammunition stored for ballast. These treacherous days, that are so muffled by the white noise of uncertainty, must yield to something as clear and decisive as the crack of a rifle shot.

A collective tantrum rages on the right, as their ranks hold their breath and hoard bullets. In the enveloping darkness of political powerlessness, they are sleeping with their Sarah Palin night-light on, then tossing fitfully awake attempting to mollify themselves by gazing mindlessly at Fox News crib mobiles, then scanning the heavens craving a Happy Meal apocalypse.

“I won’t share my toys; they’re mine! I want my tax cut lolly! Now!” Their sippy cups runneth over with rage. Overweight, evincing a junk food engendered, toddler-like waddle, and blubbering in their snit fit of thwarted id, they resemble heavily armed Teletubbies in the throes of an angel dust-induced psychosis.

The nation seethes with cranky, overgrown babies who kill. How could it not come to this, when the nation tortures like little boys plucking the wings from hapless flies? But the Empire of Perpetual Id cannot be sustained. What Obama apprehends, and was the underlying theme of his Cairo stem-winder: The people of the world have grown weary of our brattiness. They wish to rouse us from our long nappytime of exceptionalism. The world has moved on, while too many Americans sit bawling in their toxic innocence.

Meanwhile, the most special children whose privileged faces were ever touched by the golden light of the sun, the elite of Wall Street, bang their silver spoons on their skyscraper highchairs, whining, “We want more bonus candy, We want to go for a ride in my Gulfstream Jet stroller, We want to go play in our Dubai sandbox — Gimme, gimme! — Now!”

Every four to eight years, presidential elections are held in the United States of Infantile Omnipotence in which we attempt to personify the nation with an adult face. Usually we fail: Bush with his crankiness and his tantrums of mass destruction; Clinton with his oceanic overreach and his inability to delay gratification; Reagan with his senile, regressed-to-childhood naps … He even called his wife, “mommy.”

Barrack Obama appears to be an adult. Yet, in our childish national psyche, panicked and paralyzed because its arrested development has left it bereft of the ability to navigate the complexities of a rapidly changing world, having Obama as the face of the nation is like The Portrait of Dorian Gray — but played out in reverse — and produced as a pop-up book.

Worse, it appears the nation’s collective mode of being might proceed straight from infancy to decrepitude, only briefly stopping in puberty for a session of online porno-induced masturbation.

Phil Rockstroh, a self-described auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com.

You will want to know what happened. You may not immediately want to know what someone else thinks or feels about what happened. That may come later. You first want someone to tell you clearly and with minimal subjectivity what happened with no opinion or impression attached.

You live in a second-hand world. You need someone to observe the world first-hand when you cannot. Who will you trust to faithfully do that for you?

Sociologist C. Wright Mills described this half a century ago in the book The Politics of Truth:

The first rule for understanding the human condition is that men live in second-hand worlds. They are aware of much more than they have personally experienced, and their own experience is always indirect.

The quality of their lives is determined by meanings they have received from others. Everyone lives in a world of such meanings. No man stands alone directly confronting a world of solid facts. …

[I]n their everyday life they do not experience a world of solid fact; their experience itself is selected by stereotyped meanings and shaped by readymade interpretations. Their images of the world, and of themselves, are given to them by crowds of witnesses they have never met and never shall meet.

Yet for every man these images — provided by strangers and dead men — are the very basis of his life as a human being.

Your information needs may be summed up by three questions: How does the world work? Why does it work that way? What will be the impact on me?

The answers reflect the raw data of empirical observation and a neutral explanation of phenomena eventually followed by analyses laced with points of view. Those “crowds of witnesses” offer that information in many forms — books, movies, art, advertising, television, music, and the various means by which journalism and pseudo-journalism are distributed.

You first need to know what happened. But doesn’t it increasingly seem that your principal sources are also those who didn’t witness the event first-hand either? Doesn’t it seem as if your first notice of what happened comes from a second-hand source who is not a witness at all? Is that source someone using the pretense of a witness, someone who imbues that initial report with analysis laced with a point of view, pre-coloring and presaging your first impression? Which do you need first — a subjective point of view or one as objective as possible?

Reflect on your information needs. (Not your wants — that’s a different post.) What do you need to know? Why do you need to know it? Who will credibly tell you?

Mills’ analysis of understanding the human condition anticipates the digital world you live in. Your second-hand world consists of, in Mills’ words, “stereotyped meanings and shaped by readymade interpretations.” From what source do you not receive pre-digested reports?

If you want information without a point of view shaping it, perhaps you need Anne. She is a Fair Witness in Robert A. Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Her employer, Jubal Harshaw, is asked to demonstrate her capabilities. Harshaw points to a building and asks Anne its color. Her reply: “White on this side.” In Heinlein’s fictional world, a Fair Witness has total recall, is fully impartial, and makes no intuitive or analytical leaps beyond what she can witness (such as assuming the color on the side of the building she cannot see).

A Fair Witness is the antithesis of a Spin Doctor. Anne, the Fair Witness, is a source of unfiltered fact. You are left to divine the meaning of that fact in a context uniquely yours.

In the midst of this high-noise, low-signal digital information age one S&R writer called “Shoutworld,” no Fair Witness appears to exist. Traditionally “objective” sources of information increasingly have colorized what happened through an ideological, self-centered, or selfish lens. The numbers of those sources who minimize the predigestion of what happened declines daily.

You eventually may find that subjective witness reports are necessary to help you ascertain context, importance, and meaning. On what basis, however, do you trust their authors?

If all your information sources tell you what it means before telling you what happened, how certain are you of what, indeed, did happen?

These are skilled people with diverse interests and even more diverse points of view. Three are college professors. Also writing for S&R have been or are an Hispanic activist from Texas; a foreign affairs writer who specializes in nuclear deproliferation issues and civilian casualties resulting from armed conflict; a gay staff cartoonist; a management consultant specializing in organizational behavior whose clients include 20 percent of the Fortune 500; an ex-pat South African economist; three experts in popular culture; a former director of the Berkeley Stage Company and statistical demographer for the U.S. Census Bureau; a professional stage actor; two stay-at-moms; a photographer; and occasional guest columnists.

However, we all share one trait: We are volunteers. We don’t get paid. We have other lives, other responsibilities, other people dependent on us to make a living. As business models go, ours sucks. Modest ad income and passing the hat means S&R remains a labor of love. But can love be a sustaining force for the online medium in the absence of profit?

In the Beginning of Blogging, it was all so exciting. Thrilling, even. Putting up a post, watching the stats, seeing who read your work, where they were — and how many read your stuff. Generate those hits. Yeah. That was heady stuff.

Is it still?

Most individual and group blogs are dependent on volunteers. It’s rare that a Huffington Post can raise $37 million to sustain the enterprise. (Of course, HuffPo has “volunteers” too, doesn’t it?)

The print newspaper industry continues to collapse in terms of revenue, profitability, and numbers of paid, professional journalists. So the dominant use of volunteers to inaugurate and maintain sites featuring commentary and/or advocacy journalism becomes an increasingly important public-interest issue.

Most S&R writers are ideologically progressive but rarely hew to party lines. As the S&R mission statement says:

Scholars & Rogues is a diverse band of thinkers, social analysts, activists, grousers, jesters, and troublemakers. We’re different in many ways, but we share a general belief in progress, a conviction that smarter is better, and a passionate distaste for convention.

That statement mirrors the intent of many capable bloggers. Many (but perhaps not most) bloggers seek to simply make things better. We have particular issues or problems that occupy our blogging attention. We are exceedingly dependent, though, on the research of others (those paid professional journalists whose stories we link to) to support points made in our posts.

But those posts, which leaven “objective” journalism with (usually lucid) commentary, add substance to debates of public interest. Yet the majority of bloggers are not paid for their work. What will become of community blogs such as S&R as the corps of volunteers 1) lose interest, 2) lose access to reliable, verifiable information produced by journalists, 3) lose equal access to the Web as politicians favor corporate control of the Internet or 4) just need to spend more time at the day job in a bad economy to make ends meet?

Note that newspapers, in the early days of online news Web sites, had links where volunteers could post community news. Now, that didn’t work out so well, did it? Let’s hope community blogs fare better.

Volunteerism is the principle means of support for community blogs such as S&R. Many such blogs, blogs populated by smart, capable people (see our blogroll), no doubt face the same pressure the volunteers at S&R do: Keep pumpin’ out the posts. Keep the conversation going. Keep the debate fresh and focused. But it’s difficult, as a volunteer, to pump out as many posts as I’d like. (I do like to get eight hours’ sleep each night.)

At some point, as B.B. King would sing, “The thrill is gone.” I hope most of us aren’t there yet, but it’s increasingly a problem faced by those bloggers who believe in candid, civil, and common-sense conversations in the public sphere — yet have family and job responsibilities elsewhere.