Gore’s Speech A Proper Transcript
For those of you who enjoy reading transcripts here is Gore along with all the applause etc>: Transcript: Former Vice President Gore’s Speech on Constitutional Issues
Breaking News
Al Gore Gets It Right
Now I am not a huge Al Gore fan: he screwed up enough in the 2000 election to allow Bush to win, and the rest is ugly history. Since then he’s made a few speeches that make sense. This one [courtesy of USAToday] is his latest Text of Gore speech.
You may or may not agree with everything Al Gore says, but he has a point: why is it that our national security, post 2001, is so severely threatened that we need to erode civil liberties to the degree that Bush seems to think fit? We didn’t need to do those kinds of things in World War 2, arguably a far greater threat.
Now for the realist in me: there is no way that talk of impeachment will get anywhere. The Republicans, who fell over themselves trying to oust Bill Clinton, will not allow it. That’s hypocrisy for you. Bush has broken the law. The debate over the Patriot Act was a charade: Bush didn’t need legislation to do whatever he wanted, he just neede a compliant Justice Department.
Strange how a party that talks relentlessly about Constitutional correctness doesn’t mind shredding it when it’s inconvenient.
Anyway, at least Al Gore spoke out. Pity he found his voice a few years too late.
Peter Radford / Economics, Politics /
The Federal Deficit Increases … What a Surprise!
The White House has reported that the Federal Deficit is climbing once more rather than declining as it did last year. The New York Times reports the story here: Deficit Will Climb in 2006, White House Says.
There is absolutely no news in this. The Repuiblican Party’s efforts to roll back entitlement programs demands that they pursue reckless fiscal policies becasue they know that they cannot get electoral approval for their aganda. Americans are hooked on public programs like Social Security and don’t want them to be abolished. So the Republican strategy is to undermine them by claiming that cuts ‘have to be made because of our fiscal crisis’. Of course they omit to mention that they created the crisis in the first place.
In the meantime, the White House blames Katrina expenses for what the call a temorary increase in the deficit. This is nonsense. The problem is the deliberate reduction in revenues via those infamous tax cuts. Federal revenues are at levels we haven’t seen since the early 1950’s. This is despite the so-called war on terrorism which needs funding [although the Pentagon budget is remarkably unchanged in its priorities from before 2001, so the war on terror has apparently had no imapct on the way in which money is spent]. So we are borrowing to pay for the so-called war, which is why I refer to it as ‘so-called’. Real wars cost real dollars and are paid for by the tax payers. Since no one seems to be willing to pay for this one I assume no one thinks that it’s very important. Even more to the point: amidst all this red ink Congress still talks blithely about cutting taxes even more! Blatant hypocrisy like this is shocking. But then the Republicans have been extraordinarily successful in lying about their intentions without being called to task.
That’s why there’s no news in this release. Until the financial markets punish America for being a banana republic, which looks unlikely at the moment, we cannot expect a sound economic policy to emerge from Washington. It will happen sooner or later, and the longer the delay the worse the implications of the punishment will be.
Corruption
While we are on the subject, Transparency International is a non-profit based in Berlin that keeps tabs on worldwide corruption and its effect on society. You can find them here: Transparency International.
Their 2005 Corruption report ranks the U.S. at number 17. I wonder whether the current outbreak of scandals in Washington will push us further down the rankings. Then again I notice that 16th to 18th is a pretty consistent place for us. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for until our system is fixed so that cheating isn’t such a temptation for our elected representatives.
Abramoff and DeLay
I have not commented on the Abramoff scandal because of the wealth of good commentary available elsewhere, like here: Talking Points Memo. But now, with DeLay throwing in the towel at last, seems like the time to say something.
Let’s keep this very simple: the American system of government is riven through with corruption.
First is the inordinate amount of money that flows through the political system. It is astonishing that Americans tolerate an electoral system where the person with the most money has a vastly enhanced chance of getting elected. It is virtually impossible to get elected to the Senate without being a millionaire. Is that really democratic? Wherever there are rivers of cash there are opportunists like Abramoff lurking to influence ambitious people like DeLay.
Second is the ability of individual members of Congress to append spending on pet projects to any piece of legislation. They can slip these ‘earmarked funds’ anywhere with the result that billions of dollars are spent annually on projects that have had no scrutiny and are entirely personal to the legislator. Since everyone does it there is no incentive to exert control — the ethics committee is entirely silent on the subject — and most often these earmarks become paybacks for lobbyist support. These earmarks may be small individually, but they add up to a large network of payoffs and wasted public money.
Third, the legislative process itself militates against oversight. For instance this year’s budget proposal, which ran to over 700 pages was presented to members of the House the same day that they were supposed to vote on it. I doubt whether anyone knew what they were voting for, yet it is the foundation of how we spend hundreds of billions of dollars. This broken process explains the odd loopholes and special interest favors that litter practically any legislation: it is an open invitation to corruption since members who are well connected can slip in clauses buried way at the back of a bill without having to worry that a debate will ever reveal, let alone scrutinize, them.
The reaction to the Abramoff scandal will show us whether Congress understands the damage that practices like these do to democracy. Right now I am skeptical because the reaction has been more a case of handing over Abramoff’s cash — Hastert has given his $69,000 to charity! — than fixing the operating rules that gave him his ability to wield influence in the first place.
It’s vital that Congress cleanses itself: we need it to exert itself as a counterweight to the secrecy and subterfuge of the executive branch. I would like to think it had moral authority when it did so.