Paul Soglin: Waxing America

City of Madison Snow Removal. Yay.

Thursday's storm was a tough one. From a removal standpoint, the Streets Division would love a storm to hit at 11:00 pm and end at 3:30 am so they could clear the streets before the rush hour starts. Yesterday's storm was well underway for the morning rush hour and was still disrupting the evening rush hour.

City crews cleared the streets in handy fashion. Nice job. It was critical that for the depth of the storm, six inches, the city had sufficient equipment on the streets.

It was the same workers, the same supervisors who attacked the storm. The difference in fighting this storm as opposed to the December storm is that relative to the depth of the storm, the city dispatched more equipment.

On Socialism, Golf Courses, Blackwater, Water, Turkeys And Other Things

There are tens of thousands of public golf courses in the United States. Except for a group of Milton Friedman economists,  I doubt that the millions of right-wing Republicans who play them consider that to be socialism.

The same may be said of other public services. Water systems, streets, and libraries are all forms of socialism under the modern definition.

The right wing has a convenient mechanism for sorting out what is socialism and what is not. If there is a public good, then the government should provide the service. National defense is the most common example. If the subject is a private good,and if the government provides the service, then we have socialism. Heath care and education come to mind.

After all, there is water for sale from Nestle and many others. As for national defense, we have Blackwater and others providing on-the-ground combat service in war zones.

All of which gets us to the central point, namely the definition of public good and private good. My public good is a government function; your public good is socialism.

That reminds me. If we ever do privatize the golf courses, obviously we sell the land to the bidder with the most cash who will undoubtedly put the land to the highest and best use, which is probably not golf. Maybe a factory or a real estate subdivision when the economy improves.

I do not recall the few thousand people who gathered at the April 15 Tax Party applauding Representative Paul Ryan suggesting he was a socialist although he voted for the bailout bill. This the same Paul Ryan that accuses the President of bringing European Socialism to the United States.

All of which takes us back to the best definition of all this which is my own turkey theory of government. If there is no profit in it, and the right wants government to provide it, then  it is a legitimate function. As soon as a profit is to be made and delivery of the service is no longer a turkey, it is socialism and needs privatization.

Go figure.

(A friend recently wrote and asked my thoughts on President Obama's 'socialism' which inspired these thoughts.)

Kevin Barrett: Someone Else's Billy Goat

My old friend, AFSCME union leader, Dode Lowe, used to have an appropriate saying for the occasional loose cannon among his members.  When confronted with a questionable individual that the union was forced to defend, Dode used to say, "He may be a billy goat, but he is our billy goat."

Those of us who defended the University of Wisconsin from narrow minded assaults this past year, often had Kevin Barrett held up to us as an example of a misguided teacher who was a waste of taxpayers' money. This is the Barrett who doubts that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center was the work of foreign terrorists, but offers suggestions that perhaps domestic operatives were responsible for the attack.

Barrett is now running for Congress, as a Libertarian in Wisconsin's Third Congressional District.  As John Nichols notes in The Capital Times column on Friday:

Barrett will shake up District 3 race

...Barrett, a convert to Islam who has argued for a number of years that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "had nothing to do with Islam" and that "the war on terror is as phony as the latest Osama bin Laden tape."

...A Republican legislator, Whitewater state Rep. Steve Nass, condemned the university for a man critics describe as "a conspiracy nut."

...A 10-day review by UW Provost Patrick Farrell of Barrett's teaching record and his plans for the introductory class determined that Barrett would fairly represent a variety of viewpoints in his course -- and was thus fit to teach.

Those of us who believe that professors should be left alone to teach as long as they are open and fair, will continue to defend his right to espouse his bizarre world view.

On the other hand, now that Barrett has solidly aligned himself with the Libertarian Party, it gives me great comfort that everyone knows he is someone else's billy goat. It was last year that I repudiated Barrett and Ward Churchill as not being part of the political left.

The Libertarians and the conservatives can have him.

So there.

The Betrayal of the 9/11 Victims and the Rest of Us

We stop to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on Americans and peace loving people all over the world. Tragically, the world is a more dangerous place than it was six years ago as opportunists and charlatans played to our patriotism.

Terrorists grow in an environment of chaos, poverty, and resentment. There were no terrorists in Iraq in 2002; now it is a breeding ground for hatred and murder. It is only a matter of time until Pakistan is thrown into civil war.

The lack of communications and orderly command lead to the tragic deaths of hundreds of firefighters and police officers as well as civilians. Recommendations to install those communication systems made in the 1990's were ignored by New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.  Even today they are not fully implemented.

Patriotism is not braving the television cameras, strolling  strutting across the deck of an aircraft carrier or wandering about the twisted wreckage.

Patriotism is stewardship, protecting the innocent and the Constitution.

Rudy Giuliani: First Amendment Terrorist

In 1997, Rudy Giuliani focused on bus advertising, not NYC security, fire and police communications, or the location of the command center.

As a reader of New York Magazine , I followed the abuses of the Big Apple's mayor. The prospect of Giuliani becoming President is scary.

When personally offended Giuliani is quick to react without much thought. Valerie Plame would not have been outed, she would have been shot, Benjamin Franklin's printing press would be torched, and the Watergate would have been bombed, not burgled.

That year, New York magazine advertised that it was ''Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for.''

The mayor was not amused and immediately ordered the ads pulled from the city buses:

A unanimous panel of the federal appeals court in New York (2nd Cir.) lifted an emergency stay in early December that had prevented New York magazine from running a controversial advertisement ridiculing New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The unanimous three-judge panel ruled in an expedited appeal that the advertisement did not irreparably harm the city, permitting the magazine to resume the campaign.

The court also denied the city's request to halt the campaign until a full appeal is heard.

The controversy began in late November, when Giuliani pressured the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to pull the advertisement from city buses. The ad claimed New York magazine was "possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for."

Giuliani said he objected to the advertisement because it violates his rights to privacy and is not protected speech under the First Amendment. City officials also cited a state law that forbids city officials to allow their names to be used for commercial purposes.

For the full case: 1ST AMENDMENT VIOLATED BY REFUSAL TO DISPLAY AD WITH NICKNAME OF NYC MAYOR ON BUSES.

Arlen Specter Makes a Deal: Sells Out The Constitution for Power

In the December 4 issue of the The New Yorker, KILLING HABEAS CORPUS Jeffrey Tobin writes of habeas corpus and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA):

... Specter who, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, after leading the fight to preserve habeas corpus, at the last moment voted for the Administration’s plan restricting it...

Specter went into negotiations with the White House and his own party, knowing that his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee was at stake. He caved.

...It is hard to believe that the Arlen Specter of the nineteen-eighties—the maverick who defied his party on an issue of the magnitude of the Bork nomination—would have considered yielding on a question as fundamental as habeas corpus ...

He destroyed the foundation of Anglo-American jurisprudence and took us back to the days of the Star Chamber Courts.

...Specter is hoping the courts will restore the rights of the detainees to bring habeas cases. “The bill was severable. It has a severability clause. And I think the courts will invalidate it,” he told me. “They’re not going to give up authority to decide habeas-corpus cases, not a chance.” Others are less sure.

When you look at Specter's record on all matters Constitutional in 2006, the man has no shame. He signaled all year that he was unprincipled and shallow.

As part of a series of posts this year on Specter and his failure to protect the Constitution of the United States, we wrote:

There is no doubt that this is inappropriate - Specter, (unauthorized wiretaps) did nothing regarding the illegal wiretaps.

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) has solved the illegal Bush spying by selling out his country (no court authorized warrant). The wiretaps under the old program were made illegal, but Bush or a subsequent president could start a new warrantless search program.

Senator Arlen Specter (Rep-PA), true to form, sold out his nation and its people in orchestrating a so-called compromise with the Bush Administration (illegal wiretapping)...

Senator Arlen Specter's treason continues unabated as America moves towards a police state. Unlike President Bush, who openly flaunts his totalitarian proclivities, Specter is attempting to codify this incipient fascism. (July 19, 2006, habeas corpus.)

Here is what the bill really did:

• Legalization of the president's program of warrantless surveillance on Americans, a program that is illegal under current law and unconstitutional.
• A diminished role for the court that oversees the NSA's warrantless domestic spying, making oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) optional -- and we know that when this administration doesn't believe in getting court warrants even when required, making them "optional" is making them non-existent.
• A new, unconstitutional process for challenging surveillance, via a secret appeals court composed of judges hand-picked solely by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who supports expansive presidential powers.
• An information blackout by the Executive Branch against the Congress or our courts when it comes to the names and number of Americans monitored by the spying program. Without any oversight, countless journalists, lawyers, hotel clerks and others will inevitably be swept into round-the-clock monitoring of their phone conversations, indefinitely.

Remember the deal Specter made in 2004 with Senate Republicans to get the Judiciary Chairmanship? The "assurances" he made in private?  It turns out Specter sold out the Constitution.

(Historical footnote: Specter is credited as the staffer of the Warren Commission that came up with the bizarre theory that a single bullet killed JFK and wounded John Connolly, despite the seemingly unforgiving laws of physics.)

UPDATE:  At a Vermont post-election party last weekend, Senate Judiciary Chairman-to-be Patrick Leahy signaled that he will take the opposite tack from Specter:

He related a conversation where he was recently asked if President Bush should be "worried" that he was now to be Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The crowd started cheering.

"No, no" he said, calming the crowd, as if to be prepared for a softening of his rhetoric.

"No, he shouldn't be worried. He should be terrified."

And the room exploded.

Leahy went on to assure the crowd that, unlike "some in the administration," he'd "actually read the Constitution," and went on to promise that no judges nominated to the federal bench who would ignore that Constitution would ever get past his committee.