Moving!

Blogging has been fun (not) but I suck at all of it except  the writing part.

So I'm moving to Daily Kos, where smarter people will do the make-look-pretty part.

See you over here.

Rand Paul Is Not a Libertarian

"Senator" Rand Paul (R/Teahadist-KY) is a duplicitous lying bastard who specializes in talking out of both sides of his mouth. He, not McConnell, not Boehner, not Cantor, should be enemy number one of the American Progressive movement, and the Conservatives should throw him out if they value their political lives. 

Let's review the case. 

He claims to be a Libertarian. He decries President Barack Obama, claiming he acts like a king, invoking language from the American revolution in a cheap petty attempt to gain some traction for this completely asinine argument. Lest we forget his temper tantrum over gun control, this nut attempted to convince us all he was standing up for our civil liberties and that Obama was some sort of tyrant who had issued just piles of these executive orders. Never mind that as a matter of public record this is utter bullpucky. Never mind that Reagan issued twice as many orders as Obama. Most certainly never mind that these kingly proclamations were little more than hey underling do your job. Obama was a king! He was a tyrant! He's coming for your guns and going to repeal the Second Amendment! It has nothing to do with Rand's ties to a hyper conservative gun nut fringe right of the NRA. Rand Paul is just a good ol' Libertarian from Kentucky!
There are other examples of this turd of a politico wearing a Libertarian skin - like the drone debacle. His own party told him to sit down and shut up on that one. One particularly ornery Republican Senator continues to beat up on Rand Paul, too. Of course, these days, Paul is back to "King Obama" and the NSA with this PRISM nonsense. 

Now anyone who knows me knows I think the 2008 FISAA as well as the Patriot Act and their renewals are violative of the Fourth Amendment and should be struck or repealed. On this, admittedly, I agree with Rand Paul. I would remind my readers that likewise, stopped clocks are right twice a day. On PRISM, the actual policy stand is Paul's stopped clock impersonation (as is the rest of his record if the clock was stopped circa 1940). But let's not kid ourselves, Rand Paul is still too clever by half. You do not charge up to the Supreme Court with a petition. You have to go through the lower courts first to get to the Supreme Court, as SCOTUS does not generally have original jurisdiction on much of anything. Luckily, someone has already done that. Rand Paul should not be filing another mega-suit. He should be filing an amicus brief and getting senators to sign on to it for Jewel v. NSA. He should - but he won't, because that would be reasonable and Rand Paul is a loon. 

It is critically important to note that "Libertarian" Rand Paul will fight for your rights (as he defines them) as long as you're what he considers a red blooded American. If you're not, his true Tealiban colors peek out from the Libertarian makeup and he turns into an ultranationalist neoconservative. Rand Paul swears the comprehensive immigration reform bill negotiated by the Gang of Eight can't pass the House - and he may be right. The Bath Salts Caucus in the lower chamber won't vote for anything, and the Republican Caucus as a whole may be about ready to make the Hastert Rule have some teeth, at least for their Speaker. Rand Paul could do the sensible thing and line up behind the bill like Kelly Ayotte already has. That, however, has no glory for Rand Paul. No, he needs a stronger bill. He needs to be the conduit through which the bill passes - him, and only him, not the democratic process. Rand Paul will be the singular reason immigration reform happens, according to Rand Paul. What's he calling for? A stronger bill. We've heard this line before. What he will demand is that the border be hermetically sealed so not even the wind can cross, and then we can tackle the immigration piece.

I could go on. His position on gay marriage is dog whistle - let the states decide is how we kept segregation in the south. He's a die-hard pro-lifer. He's an anti-Obamacare doctor who has no plan to replace it. He thinks the way to save Social Security is to cut benefits. He thinks that a Congress that can't pass anything, at all, should review every single rule the Executive produces - which means it wouldn't have time to do anything else. He pushes and honestly believes conspiracy theories. Do not be deceived. Rand Paul is not a Libertarian. The man is just stark raving crazy. The fact that he is still talking further poisons the American political atmosphere every time he opens his mouth. Rand Paul needs to sit down and shut up.

Fourth Amendment Tax Problems

I need to throw a tantrum. 

We have at present a fistful of scandal that all revolve around a failure of checks and balances. 

Let's start with the IRS. 

The media and both sides of the aisle are crying viewpoint discrimination. Everyone seems to agree that these poor helpless (har har) Tea Party activists were unfairly targeted. This is indisputably so, and wholly irrelevant. 

Let me make you an analogy. Let's say you and a friend go to a cockfight. You both place the same bet and win. The guy running the cockfight decides he thinks your friend is a Mexican, so he's going to wait two weeks to pay him. What grounds does your friend have to sue for discrimination? Is it not unfair of the guy running the fight to not pay your Mexican friend? Of course it is. But it's all ill gotten gains, and you cannot sue for that, because it is unjust for you to receive them at all.

501(c)4 statute reads "exclusively", not primarily. The IRS has no authority to make the change. This was questioned by the Kennedy administration, and the IRS' response was basically well this is how we've always done it. That is not an answer. We are starting to see these questions asked in congressional hearings now, but the obvious answer is as swift as it is efficient. Police power lies in the Executive. The IRS answer to the Treasury which is part of the Executive. The whole (c)3/(c)4 debacle could be solved with an executive order, and not even from Obama. Jack Lew could order the IRS to change the regulation to comply with the law. I have no earthly idea why this has not happened. 

Then there is the spying hoopla. We discuss whether or not we have privacy. We discuss the partisan implications of the usage and timing of this program. But we have to claim utter stupidity, all of us, to not be fully aware where legal authority for this program came from. It's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance  Amendments Act of 2008. We have seen this movie, we have heard this outrage. Most of the players are even the same on the outrage end of it. Yet what are we doing? Apparently suffering from collective amnesia. Under Bush, we both hated the practice and it was a big hairy deal because it was illegal. So rather than leave it be illegal so our government cannot do this, Bush beat Congress into passing FISAA. Now, we find out that FISAA has metastasized into the government snooping through the whole entire internet. PRISM is not a proper legal outcropping of FISAA. Whatever legal counsel read that it was got it very, very wrong (as the Bush legal counsel did with a lot of things). FISAA does not authorize dragnets. FISAA does not OK the government shunting the entire internet off into a secret room to snoop through it. FISAA creates secret courts that issue secret wiretap orders. The intent is not for the government to say "hey, Verizon, give us everything you got, oh and you can't acknowledge this ever ever." The intent is for the the government to be able to say "hey, Verizon, so there's this guy, here's his number, we want all his records, and the records of everyone he's ever called as well, and it's national security so shut up about it." 

Now, there are those (Lindsey Graham, I'm looking at you) who say they don't care if the NSA has their number because NSA is "keeping us safe" (and then shriek BENGHAZI!! at the tops of their lungs). Really? Have you noticed that this same buffoons praising the NSA for keeping us safe are also howling blue bloody murder on the IRS mess? Don't snoop through my stuff - but snoop through my stuff. This, like the overwhelming majority of right wing positions is not tenable. It's not even coherent. The Government has a need and a duty to from time to time breach the privacy of private citizens. Applying for super special treatment where you don't have to disclose your income nor be taxed on it nor pay tax on your expenditures (which 99.999% of Americans have to do) is one of those times. Any group, right or left, should be scrutinized to the utmost and if they do not meet the statutory definition of a 501(c)4, then the status should be denied. If Congress has decided they prefer the regulatory definition, then they must change the statute. It appears that a block of Democrats in both chambers have actually read the law and understand that the actual real live scandal at IRS is not scrutiny, it's an illegal regulation. 

Flip side of the same coin, picking up your Verizon phone or logging into Facebook is not one of those times the government has any duty or need whatsoever to rifle through your material. I have a right to privacy in my home. It is a gross violation of my Fourth Amendment rights for the Government to just up and decide it has the authority to bypass me and go to service providers and demand records of them. I the Government is obtaining warrants that allow them to search all of the world wide web, I'm sorry but the "world wide" part obviously flies in the face of the "particularly describing the place to be searched" in that pesky Constitution thing. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot pick and choose the amendments, that's not how the game is played. The rule are you follow all the rules all the time, and when you break them bad things happen to you.

But bad things aren't happening to anybody. The Teahadists are, thus far, keeping their 501(c)4 statuses. PRISM is ongoing. For whatever reason the Obama administration has not elected to simply kill these practices off. It wouldn't be without precedent. On DOMA, Obama refused to defend the law any further, calling it unconstitutional. He could refuse to use PRISM any further, too. He's the President, that's kind of his job to not do things that violate the Constitution. Same goes for the IRS mess. Dear underling, fix this, as in yesterday, sincerely, POTUS. We straight up railed against tyranny when Bush did this. Yet somehow, when Bush mallyhacked the rule book, it all became magically OK. Except it didn't. The Supreme Court punted on this one, kicking the only suit on FISAA so far down the road that it's somewhere in the next county. This will have to be addressed through legislation. Where are the Democrats we elected in 2012 to stop this crap from happening? Silent. For that matter, where are the so called "civil libertarians"? Also silent. Shame on them all for that. The solution to all of this is as obvious as it is appallingly ignored - follow the damn law.

All I Have To Say

I know full well the vitriol of Ray Ceo, Jr. I've been the target of it, albeit under a fake "name", if you can call what he used that. I first met him as a volunteer for the Democratic Party in 2012. Ray and I don't see eye to eye on how the game should be played. We don't terribly often agree on policy. If there's a primary, chances are he and I are making our decisions on candidates along extraordinarily different lines, and more often than not arriving at a different selection. Ray and I have fought, have bickered, and in the time I've known him I'm pretty sure he's spent less time talking to me than not talking to me. 

But, then, we are both proud liberal Democrats. I remember on election night, while everyone was anxiously awaiting Arizona's results, I kept ducking out to check for one lone referendum - in Maine. I held my breath for that vote. Part of the reason I am in Arizona to begin with is the failure of simple anti-discrimination laws in my home state years ago. Sitting there in 2012, at the Democratic Watch Party, it was all so deeply intensely personal again I could feel it in my bones. I'd been up for at least twenty some hours that day, slept for at most twenty some hours that week. I sat there in Kyrsten Sinema's suite knowing full damn well that I could say I had done absolutely, positively, everything I could for the Party that had given its all for me. My President's healthcare reform gave me back my future. My party threw its arms around equality. My own home congressional and legislative districts fielded candidates with whom I felt so closely aligned with that the title "representative" felt entirely and deeply true. In that moment I was an all capital letters bright blue Democrat, surrounded by people I knew and loved, and who knew and loved me, brought together by this amazing, unified, Democratic juggernaut.

Then it happened. All four marriage equality propositions went our way. It was pure, unadulterated joy. I remember springing up in the middle of the room and hopping around with Ceo like school kids on a snow day. We had won. As the results came in from across the state and the nation, there were the races we obviously won, the ones we obviously lost, and the ones we would be waiting what seemed like forever for official results. But the wins I knew we had that night, to me, were personal. Four more years of Obama guaranteed Obamacare would not be overturned, and I would never worry about a layoff or a lifetime limit ever again. Marriage equality moved forward, even being legalized for the first time by popular vote in my native Maine. Home in Arizona, we sent Kyrsten Sinema to Washington, the first openly bisexual member of Congress, on a race we could all point to and know that there, right there, the thing that happened in the party is the thing that's supposed to happen in the party. The candidates stayed true to our principles, they carried our messages of hope and equality, and in the end, we were able to unify behind a single champion. The darkness may not have entirely ended, but we could definitely see the dawn.

After the election, I volunteered for the reorganization convention, where I remember seeing the numbers up on the wall and being so proud that I had helped cause that to be. I got to collect ballots for our new incoming executive board. I saw someone who had truly inspired me during 2012 become our new County Chair, a trusted friend become the Secretary, and I had to be talked out trying to get my Precinct Committeeperson appointment form filled out and signed right there on the spot. Since then I've become engaged with other project, some higher profile than others, some national, some local, but it is a special point of pride to me that I, Jo D Hafford, was duly appointed to the office of Democratic Precinct Committeeman for Madison Park.

From that vantage point, I have had the privilege of meeting other like-minded folks who likewise want more for their communities, for our friends and neighbors and loved ones. I've met men and women who are absolute powerhouses and have had the privilege of helping them succeed. I've met candidates, up close and in person, and been allowed the space to ask them the hard questions that I personally wanted to ask. I've even gotten to see my name on a political mailer. In all my non-partisan workings, these men and women have cheered me on, placing our shared values and culture front and center, imploring me every step of the way to do all that I can for our causes. Almost without exception, the men and women I have met through politics here in Arizona have been not just good people, they have been the very best people. They have given me back my self-worth and restored my hope. I won't name them all, God knows I'd miss more than a few, but I hope they know who they are, and I hope in some way I can make them proud some day.

Here and now, though, my energies are behind growing our future. I am committed to the notion that if our students tell us they are not safe, we are obligated to make them feel safe. I believe the way to effect real, permanent, positive change in the community is to grow new leaders, to deepening the bench of people who have not just the passion but the building blocks for change. I am vested in projects to connect us all, because we are stronger together. I am doing the kind of work I love - the kind that unites us all. 

Of course, we are not all so lucky. Sure there's City 6, where we are all of one mind. But outside of that, I have friends scattered across other races where sides must be taken. I do not envy them one little bit. I will cast my ballot in Phoenix City Council District 4 this year for one of the Democrats running, though I can't decide which. I've met the majority of them, had the opportunity to question them, seen them engage the public and run clean campaigns so far, even heard them embrace our shared values and principles. There are reasons I like several of the candidates, and for all the best reasons I am honestly undecided in this race. City 8 is not terribly much different. There are two really great candidates, with great credentials and real community support, and I am confident they would either one do right by their constituencies. On this, I am not from South Phoenix, and I feel it would be somewhat inappropriate for an activist from midtown to tell the folks down south who should represent them. They should listen to these two great candidates and decide for themselves which one they want. We believe in the democratic process every bit as much as the Democratic values, and it's good to see them both alive and healthy in one of our most important, core communities. The County Party is doing the absolute right thing there by cheering on all our good Democrats, and I'm happy for that fact. 

What they are getting wrong, though, is confusing the D on a piece of paper with what we all together have decide it means to actually be a Democrat. It is anti-Democratic, for example, to oppose sunlight legislation. It is anti-Democratic to oppose fully funding public education. It is anti-Democratic to oppose collective bargaining. It is anti-Democratic to oppose immigration reform. It is anti-Democratic to demonize the LGBTQ community and deny us equal treatment under the law. We are indeed our brothers' and sisters' keepers. I would go so far as to say the act of standing up for one another is an appropriate thing for to do and strengthens us. 

You can imagine the gut wrenching churn in my stomach, then, seeing Warren Stewart's name on a flyer for a fundraiser. Now, I am not Ray Ceo. This is not where the vitriolic rhetoric of being killed or burned or whatever gets inserted. The Party is not backing Stewart as a candidate by listing him any more than they are backing any of the other candidates they've listed. But in the cold hard light of day, though the purpose of listing him may not be endorsement, there is still a purpose. In a fundraiser, the purpose is not to highlight the candidates or give them a soapbox. The purpose is to get the candidate's supporters to show up and donate $20 in exchange for a ticket, because the party really needs your $20. Now, I know the individuals who would have made this decision. Of all the horrible conspiracy theories one could think up against these people, of all the accusations that could be thrown, I don't believe any of them. I am ultimately confident that in inviting all three declared candidates who were actually Democrats by registration, that they felt they were being just as fair as they possibly could be, and they're right. It is fair to invite and list everyone - but it is not necessarily just. 

We must stand by our values and principles. While I understand that there may be a cost to be paid for that, this is not a fact that has ever stopped us before. We are not just any Democrats, we are Arizona Democrats. We know better than most what it is to take a beating for your beliefs, and we do it over and over again. Now there is a narrative out there that Stewart's position against marriage equality is no different than Obama's before he "evolved", but this, simply put is a false bill of goods. One cannot read Stewart's statement and then take that position with a straight face. Besides, this is not about marriage equality. This is about a man who said members of the LGBTQ community are not capable of loving sexual relationships. This is someone who has said homosexuality is like adultery and bestiality. This is a man who said that supporting marriage equality will "mislead and/or confuse" our youth - which is code for the old slander that the gays are coming for your kids. If the line ended at him personally as a Baptist not supporting same sex marriage, I'd call it a day, but this is not that. This is naked homophobia and bigotry. What Ray Ceo gets right, the signal in all of that noise, is that it is unjust for the same Party that threw itself heart, mind, body and soul behind equality to sit silent in the face of those remarks. 

I've heard all manner of reasoning of why it is still basically impossible for the Party to officially repudiate Stewart or even his actions, and they have run the gamut for me from not right to stomach turning. At one point some well-meaning soul even trotted out that tired "well it's Obama's '08 position" line or malarkey, and I can't help but think he or she simply didn't know just what malarkey that line was. These are good people. I simply refuse to believe that they would bow to political expediency and throw a constituency to the wolves on purpose, though they may think it necessary to hope that the LGBTQ community will grit our teeth and bear one more blow for the team. My friends, that shall not be necessary. It does not need to happen, and there is a clean, elegant rationale as to why not. 

The Party decided for various reasons after 2012 that it would not take sides in Democratic primaries - period. If two Democrats ran for one seat, the Party would do what it does best and ensure the democratic process works, producing a candidate we can all rally behind. By law, Phoenix city council primaries are not Democratic primaries. Simply put, that rule does not apply here. Warren Stewart is not running as a Democrat. He can't run as a Democrat. He's running as a Reverend. We can't make party registration the litmus test, either. At present, the Party is already backing an independent in another race. There's also the problem of sham candidates. The Arizona House Minority Leader is subject to a recall. If Bob Thomas find some sham of a candidate willing to put a D after its name, the Party cannot sit there and do nothing. All of the metapolitical issues aside, it would be absolutely stupid for the party to not be able to defend its leader. The party as a whole and my district in particular should absolutely be allowed to get the torches and the pitchforks and run the phony-baloney "D" back to whatever swamp in Mississippi that Bob Thomas crawled out of. The obvious litmus test, then, is the platform. It's rather quite simple. Can the other candidates claiming to be Democrats honestly be said to be in alignment with our values? Yes. There are multiple candidates, however, so the Party should still decline to pick a favorite. Think of it as less a seal of approval and more an inspection sticker. The Party could, to the best of my knowledge, simply decline to invite or decline to acknowledge candidates in non-partisan races based on their alignment with the platform. The Party realistically could if it so chose go so far as to hold candidates in non-partisan races accountable for their words without violating its pledge not to tamper with Democratic parties because, by definition, it is not a Democratic primary. They realistically should be free to denounce the position that homosexuality is the same as bestiality, or to at least call upon the candidate in question to recant a policy position that we find utterly reprehensible to our values. 

There's also an opportunity in here to build a path out of a reality in which we cannot defend an incumbent from a sham Democrat in a partisan primary, and it's actually the alternate way the Party could choose to hold Stewart accountable for his words. When a Republican challenges one of our own, we leap to point out the Democratic positions. From education to Social Security, we have no problems underscoring the differences between our guy and theirs. We race to defend our own as the other side takes its swipes, and denounce the opposing position as illogical, immoral, or both. Warren Stewart did not take a swing at another candidate on the campaign trail. The statement that caused so much ruckus is directed at the President, and we should defend the President. It is foolish to refuse to defend an attack because of a line item in a voter registration record. In the 2012 cycle, a number of folks changed their registration to Republican in the name of asking Ken Bennett to investigate as a constituent request whether or not Mitt Romney is a unicorn, much in the same way Bennett claimed constituent requests prompted him to investigate Obama's birth certificate. Needless to say, the R on a piece of paper did not move Ken Bennett much, since the aim was obviously a strike at their party leadership. He questioned it, he came to the right conclusion, and rejected the bogus affiliation. We should be able to walk through the same exact paces and reach the exact same conclusion if and when it should happen in our ranks. We should question what a supposed Democrat is doing calling the President's ability to lead into question, and reject the bogus affiliation if that's truly how he feels about it. 

Having said all that to say this - I will still go to the County Party's fundraiser, because for one, they really do need my $20, and for two, I am not interested in taking away from the Party's genuine and real effort to pay tribute to the remarkable diversity within the party. I am not interested in fighting my friends. I will support no boycotts, and call for no resignations. I will say that the Party can, and should, decry actions and statements that are offensive to the platform. I have laid out my logic as to why they should do it, and how it is consistent wit their existing rules and mores. To me, the sole question is whether or not the Party bosses view the platform as worthless words on paper, or if they truly have the courage of their convictions.

Declaration of War

Once upon a time, by which I mean the 2012 primaries, I cut my teeth in Arizona politics walking for Chad Campbell, Lela Alston and Katie Hobbs.  It was not my first foray into activism and politics, not by a long shot, just my first here.  Now, I am a very, very wonky Democrat, so it was absolutely not enough for the party to tell me hey here's the people we're walking for, have your canvass pack and go.  No, no no, I had to look up their individual legislative records.  I had to learn for myself that these were not just people with "D" after their names, these were good, honest, upright legislators, worthy of my time as an activist and my vote as a citizen.  

Now, don't get me wrong, I know and I love Lela and Katie.  I have held conversations at great length with these fine women and can honestly say without reservation that their heart, mind, body and soul are unreservedly dedicated to our causes.  But the pitch at the door? 

"See this guy here?" and I'd point to him out of the trio on the lit, "This is Chad Campbell.  He's the Minority Leader.  We have to keep him."

The rest of the pitch varied.  Some doors I talked about transparency in government.  Sometimes tax giveaways for corporations.  If they asked about jobs I talked about his Buy Arizona bill.  But at every door what was consistent was that this man was obviously made of brass to stand up there with a tiny little caucus, knowing full damn well the Tea Party was going to mow us all down, and fight for all he was worth because that's what we sent him down to the Capitol to do.  I did not sell Chad at the door as a legislator.  I sold him as a hero.

I can still sell him as a hero.  We demanded a plan for safety, and Chad Campbell gave us one.  The right wing rolls out crazy bills to cut funding to our schools and redirect it to "merit" (read: give to charter) programs, and there's Chad Campbell in the media, swingin' for all he's worth.  And Medicaid?  When Brewer departed from the embargoed speech to beat her chest like a Democrat and call for AHCCCS expansion, Chad Campbell was first in line to throw his arms around that position and seize on an opportunity to work across the aisle, not in the name of bipartisanship, but because expanding Medicaid is the absolute right thing to do.  

Bob Thomas and the Tea Party think this is a reason to take him down.  In a sense, they're right.  If I had a full frontal lobotomy and became a Tea Partier, yes, I'd probably paint a target on Chad Campbell.  He's our leader.  When it comes to the on-the-ground fight for Arizona, Chad has chosen to put himself at the tip of the spear in the absolute worst of times.  Taking him out would deny us our hero.  It would be a humiliating, demoralizing loss. It would stand to reason one would simply manipulate the system during an off year, take advantage of structural weakness and resource deprivation, astroturf an operation out of thin air, and take him down. 

Bob Thomas, you have made one critical mistake.  I still live and breathe.  

I have met so many in this district, in this state, that want nothing more than an opportunity to go to war with the Tea Party.  We have borne all we shall bear at their hands.  The ALEC legislation, the voter suppression, the privatization, the humiliating disrespect of the President, the accounting chicanery in the budget - we are simply done with it all. I expected the war to come in 2014, when the Governor would be up, and probably MCSO as well thanks to Respect Arizona.  But Bob Thomas and the Tea Party think they can roll into Central Phoenix and take down not just any elected, but the Minority Leader?  Chad Campbell has made me proud as champion of our issues at the state legislature.  He has stood and fought for us all.  We must all stand and fight for him. 

This means war.

Know Thy Enemy

A few days ago, I started writing about the uncharacteristically public repolarization on the Right - and then I had a brief conversation with a friend on whether or not the Libertarian takeover had or had not been completed, and realized it is probably worth while to put us all on a bullet train to Crazytown so we can at least say we've seen the place before we describe the ways in which it is on fire. 

It is worth noting the Republican Party was not always bat crap crazy, nor were they always so far to the right.  Once upon a time the Democrats really were on the Left, and the Republicans were the moderate party.  Liberals wanted an energy policy and women's liberation and peace and free love and a peanut farmer in the White House, and that's the agenda they pursued.  The old GOP, the classical conservatives who wanted nothing more than to hang onto what they viewed as  "traditional America" sought to do nothing more than what Conservatives always do - stand athwart the path of history and attempt to stop it.  Now, this vision of America is not the same thing that side preaches today as "traditional America".  We're talking a vision of a nation comprised of very big towns and small cities, and a whole lot of rural countryside.  This is a republic that is decidedly a republic, with a notably weak central government, strong states, and cities that are free to organize (or not organize) themselves as they see fit.  This is a very grassroots vision of the power structure. It is also a vision that, for a myriad of reasons, did very badly at the ballot box up until Carter's election.  

Carter, however, was a bit of a failure as a President.  If the Right wanted a weakling to pillory, they got one in poor Jimmy.  From the energy crisis to the hostage crisis, Carter's presidency would ultimately end with him appearing to lead a weakened nation with an economy circling the drain.  Enter Ronald Reagan and the Neoconservatives.  The Neocons made a very, very, simple argument - wasn't the nation better off before these damn Liberals got ahold of it?  Gee whiz but wasn't that boom after the war great?  We had a great big military and all these suburbs and June and Ward and the Beav had their white picket fence and damn it June stayed home and Wally and Julie get together in the end, not Wally and Jack.  What the Neocons did, which was and remains unthinkable to Liberal and Progressive alike, was to select a leader that was a mouthpiece and little more.  Ronald Reagan, outside the Iran-Contra mess, was not the brains of the operation.  He was a small time movie star who looked and sounded good on the talking picture box.  In light of what was widely viewed as an overly soft and unsuccessful foreign policy on Carter's part, Reagan's promise to create this massive, behemoth military and usher in a new era of Pax Americana played extremely well - 489 to 44 well, to be exact. 

Reagan made good on that promise, too.  He grew government faster than any administration of any party before or since, but he painted this defense spending as being somehow special and set apart from other government spending.  The world was a super duper scary place, but the almighty American military would keep us safe.  All of that military spending and excess did indeed make the nation seem secure and powerful, and created one hell of a bubble, which exploded on the watch of Bush 41.  Clinton booted him out of office on a moderate platform of tax reform and balancing the budget as a cure to the nation's fiscal woes - which it was, and it worked.  More on the moderation of Clinton later, but for now, what you need to know is Clinton successfully stopped the Neocons from being the new singular principle of the GOP.  

Enter Newt Gingrich.  

Newt Gingrich's entrance gets its own whole paragraph.  Let me make this clear: You cannot understand the state of modern American politics without understanding the impact this one man had on his party.  This is the man who wove together the Religious Right, the Neoconservatives and the Libertarian wing of the party into a singular unholy alliance.  This fractious caucus was damned to failure from its inception, but Gingrich beat it into a parliamentarian opposition the likes of which America had not previously known.  As long as there was a strong enough, charismatic enough leader beating the drum, his orcish army would march.  And march it did.  Welfare reform, a balanced budget, tort reform - Gingrich did in fact bring the whole damn Contract with America to the floor, though much of it failed.  More importantly, Gingrich's Republican Revolution won elections.  Republicans took the US House for the first time in forty years, as well as a majority of state legislatures for the first time in fifty years.  From Pennsylvania to Arizona, Republicans did not wage a war so much as an electoral blitzkrieg, and the names from those races are still familiar - Santorum, Kyl, and Dubya all turfed Democrats out of their seats on this huge insurgent wave in 1994.  

Now, say what you will about Gingrich's politics, that is not the conversation we're having here anyway, but when the establishment of any given party looks at a tactic that works this well, they're going to wrap their arms around it, cuddle up to it, and whisper sweet nothings in its ear.  So, too, with Gingrich's revolutionary hot mess.  Never mind that the three sects welded together by Speaker Gingrich had deep-seated irreconcilable differences, this machination worked.  It won elections.  It raised money.  And above all else, it crashed through what used to be an unstoppable Democratic juggernaut.  So the GOP Establishment cast aside the old ways, the party of Eisenhower was effectively dead, and this new creation rose up to take its place. 

Therein lies the problem.  The party of Eisenhower was a self-sustaining thing.  Eisenhower did not create it, it already existed.  It had core values it had organized itself around.  It did not require a leader to hold the pieces in place.  The new GOP had no such singular core, it had three cores competing for dominance, and they would not be sated by the promise of power sharing.  They would need a ruler - the Uruk-hai must have their Saruman.  When Gingrich fell, that role fell to Dubya.  With Dubya gone, we have a problem.  There is no more Saruman.  The 2008 election produced the ever so lackluster nominee of John McCain.  Poor John is clearly going a bit wing nutty in his old age, but he was simply too moderate for the GOP orcs.  Instead, they coalesced around Sarah Palin.  It was Palin, not McCain, who co-opted the Tea Party moniker from the Libertarians.  That movement originally sought to eschew the perceived bad policies of the Neocons and the Religious Right.  Palin, whether consciously or not, recognized the message of small government and lower taxes as part of the insane Republican tripartate message from Hell and muscled her way in.  She used the name. She held her own Tea Party events.  She showed up at Tea Party events.  She effectively muted Libertarian dissent by screaming right up over top of them and rather than organizing them into her movement, she just plopped her movement on them like Dorothy's house gone horridly wrong.  

Of course, Sarah Palin lost her race because John McCain lost his.  This, again, leaves the little orcs with no leader.  They did the only rational thing for a blood thirsty race of small minded peons who lust for fresh kill.  They began to kill the weakest of their own kind.  During the 2010 cycle, the GOP Establishment very much - and very obviously - lost control of its foot soldiers.  The establishment did not want Sharron Angle.  They absolutely did not what Christine "I Am Not A Witch" O'Donnell.  But the Tea Party would not have anyone else.  They would only accept the purest of the pure.  Only the very orciest of orcs would be chosen to lead the marauding horde.  This insane mob mentality drove them clear through the 2012 primary cycle, too.  The Establishment tore down more than a few Tea Party favorites - like Herman Cain.  Some self destructed - like Michele Bachmann.  One saw the writing on the wall and bailed early before his bones could be gnawed - and hopefully Mr Huntsman comes back once the crazy in his party has burned itself out.  But one man wanted the job so badly he was willing to try to control this horde.  He fired up what can only be described as a low orbit ion cannon of dark money to pulverize his only real competition - the original Saruman, Newt Gingrich.  But the Massachusetts Moderate moniker stuck.  He was forced to run too far to the right, forced to pick a VP too far to the right, in order to keep the horde in line.  He barely managed to keep control of that twisted army, but it cost him the election.  This renders the intended super weapon of the original alliance, this bastard child of three incompatible ideologies we know today as the Tea Party, irrevocably on a path to its own demise.

Yes, the Tea Party still has its strongest orcs in office - the likes of Eric Cantor, for example.  That movement is not dead, and the Republican Party as a thing in the world is not going to die.  But already the old Establishment is pushing back, the Neoconservatives are paying the price for 11 years of warfare, the Religious Right is literally dying off, and a very real revolt among the Libertarians is under way.  All this in the midst of fallout from a historic election (which had some serious ramifications within the party's primary, to say nothing of the general), and an economic crisis that they created and they are being largely held responsible for by the voting public.  The internecine warfare that must play out next is already underway, and merits discussion in and of itself, but this, in short, has been the path from moderation to chaos.  This has been the creation of our modern enemy.

Technical Difficulties

I am tired of not talking about this, so I am going to talk about this.  It will not be an easy post.  Abuse survivors, this may be triggering.

I hate the lead-up to Saint Valentine's Day.  Every year, when the candy-filled, heart-shaped boxes come out, there is invariably some moment at which some part of me goes completely off the rails.  I begin to vacillate between alternate states of crazy, between totally emotional and totally cold.  Simple as it is, rational me goes on strike and all my broken glory conquers all.

I can't remember his name.  I wish I did, it would make the telling easier if I did.  He was from Sarajevo.  I don't recall if he was an asylee or refugee or just a regular immigrant.  This is not a detail lost to the ravages of time, it is one I never knew.  All I knew was he was smart, and he seemed nice, and told me I was pretty and that he wanted to be my valentine.  

He lived in Manhattan, just south of Grand Central Station, and at the time I lived at Columbia.  We made plans to meet at his house.  The original version was we'd meet up at his place, we'd go to dinner, and then whatever happened, happened.  I showed up at his apartment.  It was beautiful.  He had phenomenal views of midtown, ample space, the sorts of things that identify a Manhattanite as a member of the upper echelons of society.  A few glasses of wine turned into the bottle, and plans of going out turned to plans of staying in.  

I remember at one point in the evening thinking to myself perhaps I should not go all the way.  Perhaps it was late into the evening. Maybe I had led him on.  I was drunk, I was half naked, I was already there in his apartment, of course he would think as any man would that I wanted for all of this to happen.  So when I told him no, he wrapped one arm around my neck, and one around my waist, and paid me no mind.  

I didn't fight back.  I buried my face in the pillow, scarcely able to breathe, my throat clenched in the crook of his arm as it were.  He whispered in my ear, told me I was so good, to just let him finish, that he wanted this so bad.  I have no concept of how long it took.  When he was finished and got up off me, he told me it was my fault, that I had come to quickly (which was untrue, I had not come at all), and next time I should try and hold off.  I said nothing to him.  I gathered my bearings, dressed myself, and told him I had to go.  He offered to call me a cab - and I just left.  He made no effort to stop me. 

It is four and a half miles from Grand Central Station to Columbia.  My heart, mind and soul had left my body.  I was nothing more than two feet, walking up Broadway.  I wanted to be dead, and in a sense, I was.  I got to my dorm room, took the elevator up, and by some freak occurrence my friend Robby was up and online.  

I didn't have it in me to tell him what had happened.  I could not summon up the appropriate words.  I asked instead if I was a bad person, if I were a slut or a whore.  I asked if I had done bad things.  Was I a tease?  Did I lead men on?  I'm not sure how he saw through my bullshit but he did, and he zeroed in on what I wasn't saying.  Somehow, and I still don't remember how, I got in contact with my friend Samrong, who lived in NYC, and walked the mile further uptown and slept like the dead on his hardwood floor. 

I never went to the authorities.  I probably could have had him deported, could have exacted if not justice at least vengeance, but I never did.  I stayed silent.  I was - am - so horridly ashamed that as a man I was too weak to have prevented this from happening.  Of course, as a gay man, as a bottom, it was all too easy to envision being painted the vengeful bitch.  I couldn't fathom being questioned on this.  We'd had the conversation of what he and I were into sexually.  If that's what I liked and told him it's what I liked how should he know the difference?  To him, I was a slutty gay boy looking for some dick, and that's what he gave me.  

This is the part that for me, thirteen years late, still breaks down.  It's not about the sex - it's about control and violation.  Every time I have not been able to talk about it, it has felt the same.  Every time I have been dismissed as unable to understand the issue because I am male, it has felt the same.  The misandry that follows this whither it may roam feels no different than his arm around my neck, choking me, silencing me, controlling me.  It makes the world a very difficult place to live in.

I am still not fighting back.  On this, the fight has gone out of me.  All that remains is an enfeebled voice, learning to once more speak in the hopes of comforting somebody else.

Leaving Phoenix

Before I write the rest of this post, a disclaimer.  I love my city.  I moved to Arizona almost eight years ago, and the entire time, regardless of where my actual address was, I considered myself a Phoenician.  When I finally left renting behind and bought a house, I would not hear of living in the 'burbs.  It was Phoenix - and very specifically central Phoenix - or I wasn't doing it.  I'm at 12th and Osborn now, smack middle of the block.  I absolutely love living in a densely populated urban center where I can hear the birds in the back yard.  There are world-class cultural venues on my doorstep.  Every day I get the most spectacular view of Central Phoenix on my way to and back from work, courtesy of the HOV ramps from the 51 to I-10 East and back the other way, and every day it makes me smile. 

That said, Phoenix is a screwed up place.  There is too much undeveloped land.  It is strangled by inadequate infrastructure.  It labors under a "plan" that can barely be said to exist and badly needs to be reworked, if not tossed and rethought thanks to the great recession.  In just one school district, my own, you get schools that get their As, and schools that rank meager Cs, and if you travel too far in any given direction those A-rated schools get farther and fewer between.  We are awash in drug addicts.  Homelessness remains a chronic problem, and you can't take an offramp anywhere in the city's core without seeing panhandlers or signs of them.  Our historic buildings are forever at risk of the wrecking ball, victim of a city that has yet to make the pivot from reactive to proactive preservation policy.  Perhaps, though, worst of it all, Phoenix feels like the diaspora of community.  Where other communities would naturally take root and grow, where any other city this size would have its Chinatown, its Little Italy, its various immigrant enclaves and religious hubs, Phoenix has something that somewhat resembles a gayborhood, something else that somewhat resembles a barrio, a cluster of historic districts, and all those other communities have shattered against a ground so hard it can scarce be dug or tilled.  It has crossed my mind, I must admit, to give up on any cultivation and leave.

But I can't leave here.  Despite having stood at South Mountain and understood the depth of John 11:35, I cannot leave here.  I see a city that is the test bed for liberalism.  It is the argument built on desert sand that man is only bad due to bad structures and bad policy, and that if we abolish those he will naturally right himself and form new ones.  We can point to example after example of completely bad policy.  There is, of course, everyone's favorite hated Arizona policy - SB1070.  We could decline to comply with it.  It is an unfunded mandate, and we could very easily direct our police force that not one red cent of Phoenix's monies will pay for its enforcement.  The city could refuse to pay for holding, transferring, or processing individuals under SB1070. We would in effect revert to our de facto status of sanctuary city.  The reality, folks, is that "illegal aliens" have been living in Phoenix for as long as there has been a Phoenix to live in.  The cleaning lady is not a threat to public safety - but the meth dealer you already have sufficient cause to hold very much is a threat, and he will be just fine in a jail in this country, rather than hurled across the border a free man. 

It gets more obvious.  Take the PHLOTE forms.  These things serve one purpose and one purpose only - to take kids from Spanish-speaking homes, segregate them out of the classroom, impede their progress, and make them feel stupid and inferior for not speaking perfect flawless English like the white kids (who can't read, by the way).  This shunts students into a program that makes them take English and only English, and nothing but English, until a test designed by English-speakers decides it is OK for them to study things other than English with students that speak English.  Who decided this was a good idea?  Why are we doing this?  We've all seen Arizona's God-awful completion figures.  If you take a chunk of students, and you make them not study content, for years, you are willfully causing that God-awful completion figure to exist.  Further, you are ensuring that those children never get a chance to exchange ideas with peers that share their interests outside of their own linguistic block. Castaneda v. Pickard be damned, there is no legitimate educational need being served here - and the readily-available metrics quoted by the Governor herself should bolster our legal cover should such cover become necessary.  Phoenix should inform the State that we intend to find a way to circumvent AZELLA, and then do so.  

Though, city government could do more than nullify bad policy from the State.  There is the matter of this foolish method of revenue collection the city uses - sales tax.  We charge 2% on everything that is purchased within city limits.  Land taxes, on the other hand, are peanuts.  My fellow Phoenicians, I would like to take this moment to inform you that this is how you ensure your tax structure attempts to rob the poor for your revenues.  It isn't effective.  It isn't even efficient.  It creates onerous bureaucratic burdens for business.  It diminishes the purchasing power of every single consumer in city limits by 2%.  That's an economic drag.  At an assessed value of $12.3 billion (yes, billion), you could sneeze on the property tax rate and abolish the 2% sales tax.  You wouldn't even have to do it in a revenue neutral way and you'd still cause virtually no economic pain.   Let's say we wanted to raise twice the amount of tax through property taxes as we do now from sales tax - which would be about $1.2 million.  We're talking a property tax rate increase in the pennies to get completely rid of the city sales tax.  Gone Adios.  Two percent more stuff being purchased in exchange for everyone pays one percent more property tax.  Yes, this requires a referendum, but really, how do you make an argument against a fairer tax policy that raises more money and causes less pain?  The neighboring cities might hate it, but then, they might copy it, too.  In a city of 1.5 million people, making on average some thirty-six grand a year, this is an impact of somewhere in the $600-$700 per person ballpark that would not be spent on taxes, and could be spent on goods and services.  Let's say my late-night napkin math is way off.  Let's say this only restore $300 in purchasing power to every Phoenician on average.  This is still $450M back into the local economy.  In exchange for this huge boom in purchasing power, we are going to ask everyone that owns land - i.e. the business that will profit handsomely off all this new purchasing power - to pay a wee little sneeze more in property taxes.  If you can find me the business leader who will not trade a $0.02 per $100 assessed value property tax increase for 2% more sales, I'll give you a quarter (and I'll probably slap him).  

Now, property taxes are only valuable on property that is developed.  Vacant lots are death to the tax base. They erode the value of the land around them.  If only there were a way that the city could invest in itself!  If only some provision of the charter allowed the city to engage in industry!  Oh, but if only some legal framework existed whereby the city could snatch away a piece of land at these locked-in-by-law bottom of the bust land prices and fruitully employ it!

Oh wait, there totally is - and if we're smart we'll hijack money from Washington to do it.  Follow the crazy idea. 

Remember the drug problem I talked about up above?  Addiction and mental disorders receive parity for treatment under the Affordable Care Act starting in 2014 - including under Medicaid.  There simply aren't the facilities in existence to treat them all and deal with them all.  The city charter explicitly authorizes the city to engage in industry by whatever means necessary.  Under eminent domain, the city would only need to pay the appraised price, and 2012's Prop 117 ensures that those valuations will stay in bargain-basement territory for the next decade.  The city could snap up derelict buildings and empty lots, create its own clinics of all manner - from urgent care to general practices to STD clinics to, yes, addiction treatment centers - and start scraping people up off the street and putting them back together again.  If private practice can do this profitably, what on earth stops public practice from likewise doing it profitably?  It's not like the market for health care is so small that behemoths like Banner will get crowded out any time soon.  Hell, at customary rates, these facilities would pump money back into the city coffers at a brisk clip, and create scores of high-paying healthcare jobs in fields and communities that tend to be woefully under-served.  We could pair this with existing drug interdiction programs and instead of just the incessant chain of incarceration that costs money and drains resources, maybe rehabilitate so much as a handful through a process that creates resources and maybe, just maybe, will let that person become a productive member of society instead of a felon.  We would no longer need to let our fellow men die by the wayside.  

The industry piece of it goes on, mind you.  APS would hate it, but we could use the roof of absolutely every government building and every single parking lot that the city of Phoenix owns, lease it all out for solar panels, and save a fortune on electric costs.  Considering the absurd amount of recyclables the city takes in every year, we could likely work a better deal than just handing it over to whomever - like a public-private partnership to bring an actual recycling plant to Phoenix, and create good, high-paying, blue-collar union jobs to take up some of the slack from construction as we transition from growth to sustainability.  We could get into housing, into parking, into pharmacies - into whatever hole in the local economy city government chooses to plug up, just by exercising existing power under existing law, and we can get a quick cheap easy half million a year on a no-brainer of a tax change that I can't fathom the voters not going for, if we can just be brave enough to do it.  

That, however, is why I love Phoenix.  Phoenix is a brave city.  It exists in one of the harshest climates in the nation, and yet it has matured into the nation's fifth-largest metropolis.  It dares to think of places like airports as being friendly.  There was a once upon a time, not too long ago, that it even dared innovate, and innovate successfully, on public policy.  If this city is going to rise up again, if we are going to permanently establish our own prosperity, if it is going to make of itself the fertile soil in which communities can take root instead of barren waste where they whither, then it must be brave again.  Personally, I do not believe Phoenix's best days are behind her.  There will be no leaving Phoenix for me.

Confessions of a Policy Wonk

I, Jo Hafford, resident of Phoenix, Arizona, am a liberal policy wonk.  During the 2012 campaign cycle, when folks were bemoaning how similar the parties were, I knew the policy differences not from the Sunday shows but from their white papers - which I read, though I don't think Mitt Romney did.  Simpson-Bowles? Yeah, I know why that didn't pass, and will never pass, and should never pass.  Even here locally, in my fourth-bluest-in-the-state legislative district, I felt it necessary to read the House Minority Leader's legislation before making like a good little volunteer and falling in line (turns out he's farking brilliant on policy, but more on that at a later date).  

There is, however, a problem with trying to be this familiar with policy, to say nothing of honestly loving the process that no one should watch up close.  There are vast swaths of public policy that are unabashedly stupid.  No, I'm not talking about the fiscal hara-kiri.  That, for liberals, is genius, and at least short term will glue budget talks to the things that are actually in the budget - like do we want taxes, or do we want education, for example.  I'm talking about things like the milk mess.  

The milk mess would not exist were it not for a piece of legislation that never really got overturned, it just got papered over.  Think of it like having a hornet's nest in your house, but instead of removing the hornet's nest, you get some really heavy wallpaper and just keep gluing another layer up there every few years.  The mechanism that will (and I mean will) drive milk to $8 a gallon, to say nothing of the price of everything from cheese to chocolate, is still there in the statute.  It's there for want of a single sentence in the Farm Bill - repealing not the Agricultural Act of 1948, but the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938.  That, Speaker Boehner, is your Soviet-style dairy policy, that ties commodity prices to the commodity producer's standard of living.  The reality is good ol' American capitalism and ingenuity have rendered that thing more or less useless, and it should go, but it doesn't.  It is not still in the law because we don't know how to repeal a law - the House of Representatives symbolically repealed Obamacare 31 times, they totally understand repeal.  It just never occurs to them "Hey, this law is crap, let's get rid of it."

There are other chunks of stupid in American policy.  Everyone's hair is on fire over President Obama having given Congress a raise of about $900.  Here's the deal - by law, Congress has gotten a cost of living adjustment for decades now.  They've routinely rejected it for years.  For the last two years, there has been a pay freeze in effect for all civilian employees of the federal government - all of them - and the only getting around it is by executive order, which we've done, for two years.  Prior to that, cost of living adjustments were made by a matter of statute since forever, but what we've actually paid federal civilian employees has been dictated by the President since Bush 41.  

That's right, kids.  Doesn't matter if we're talking Biden or a petty warrant officer.  If your job in federal government falls somewhere in the purview of the Executive, your pay has not been tied to your performance, or your tenure, or even a collective bargaining agreement for the last generation.  The President picks up a pen and essentially decides, "OK, I will pay you this much," and that's what we pay you, by way of executive order.  The average American wouldn't run a hot dog stand this way, much less the governing structure of the world's largest economy.  But on we putter with this really asinine piece of policy that nobody seems to be willing to call out for what it is.  The last attempt at a federal merit system was Carter, and Reagan chucked that along with everything else Carter tried to do, and we've never looked back.

Then there's the other thing we haven't tried to do since Carter - energy policy.  Right now, it is a popular trick of demagoguery to rabble on about gas prices.  It's like the common wisdom that when you're really desperate, and everyone is ignoring you, stand up and holler "TWO DOLLAR GAS!" as loud as you can, and the media will instantly hand you the microphone.  Two dollar gas is never coming back, folks.  Saudi Arabia can't support itself at the oil prices necessary for two dollar gas to be profitable ever again, and we'll do well to stick around three dollars for the near future.  As the middle eastern OPEC nations become ever less stable - and have to throw around ever more largess to keep themselves in power - expect the price of oil to trend upwards over time, and take the cost of gasoline with it.  Even after we throw a bazillion dollars at Big Oil, and even after Big Oil returns the favor with the lowest gas prices in the world (and they do), we are never ever ever going to see long term trendlines for gasoline, or for fossil fuels in general, trend down.  Shan't happen.

So what's a wealthy, developed nation to do?  Simple - you pull a Germany and build something else.  You do this part, yes, through debt, but part through starting to siphon off these massive oil subsidies, and let the price of gas (and the tax revenues it takes in) drift upwards.  Yes, this is hardcore economic engineering, but all policy is engineering of some sort.  We could repurpose existing oil subsidies to retooling gas stations to provide hydrogen, for example.  Or encourage oil companies to go into your local apartment complex, sign a deal with the property owner, and stick a recharging station in all of those spaces.  Hell, they could get really clever and convert the covered parking to solar panels in some parts of the country.  Or, as a nation, we could decide you know what, screw you Big Oil, we're gonna build that ourselves.  We could take all those billions, build our own infrastructure, reduce our dependency on gasoline by orders of magnitude, start buying back gas vehicles, and let Big Oil shrivel down to Medium-Sized Oil.  But we don't, because we talk about gasoline prices as if they were a barometer of anything in the universe, which they aren't.  That, my friends, is stupidity in American policy making at work. 

I could talk taxes.  Tax policy in America is really, really stupid.  From income tax to estate tax to sales tax, it's all so bloody dumb I could scream.  We all know sales taxes are hideously regressive.  We all know estate taxes are ham-handed efforts to prevent dynastic control of the economy (news flash: didn't work).  We all know we have the highest corporate tax rates in the world that nobody pays.  So what do we do?  We nibble around the edges of this splendidly stupid section of policy, and bicker about a measly 3% in the rates.  Really?  3%?  Y'all want to fight over $800B when we need closer to $4T?  The one whole sole and only reason I am not throwing a full-on tantrum over this right here and now is I'm working on a better plan.  

This brings me to the confession I must make as even just a minor policy wonk.  Everything, everything, has a highly technical plan to fix it.  I am doggedly interested in these highly technical fixes.  It's why I write this blog, why I'm politically active, and why every time I hear John McCain on TV I have to check myself for signs of an aneurysm.  On policy, you will never hear conservative and liberal policy wonks prattle on the way demagogues and ideologues do.  This was Paul Ryan's tell of how we knew he was not one of us - no real wonk in this life is ever going to hold up a damn philosopher as the backbone of a plan, ever, unless there's one out there I'm not aware of named Calculator.  This is how we know John McCain is not one of us, too.  When your objection is "lead from behind", when your answer to everything is boots on the ground and arm the rebels, you have stopped looking for technical solutions to achieve a definitive goal.  You're just a war hawk.

Government has definitive goals because society has definitive goals, and society has definitive goals because the individuals that comprise it have definitive goals.  We should not be bickering about what those goals are.  The blatherskite of how American America can be and in America we have these American values that are American and blah blah blah from our politicians should be screamed down for the blatherskite it is.  Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, Amendments 1 through 26 - got it.  These things do not need further defining, nor do they necessarily need tidbits like "Christian" or "traditional" or "English-speaking" jammed in them.  These things need to be indefatigably worked toward.  I confess that I want for the public discourse to be focused to the exclusion of all else on policy that does just that, and does it in a provable, mathematically sound way. And I confess that every time I hear someone rattle off an unprovable or flatly untrue talking point because they don't have a logical, well-reasoned counter, I want to whack them with an abacus.