Category Archives: Politics

Hip-motized by Doctrine

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It is interesting how people can adhere to abstract doctrines while reality rages all around them.  In particular, I am thinking of a recent “conversation” with an economist friend. A fundamentalist libertarian, he steadfastly refuses any hint of pragmatism in favor of his utopian idealology promoted by certain Austrian economists.

To the economist, anthing that smells like collectivism of any sort is deemed an automatic throwback to the failed ideals of Marx. It’s all about the individual and his property. Nevermind that any anthropologist will observe that people spontaneously form groups and associations to lessen risks and burdens associated with survival. 

Harm comes to people and society when those with a power position advocate for abstract doctrines over the welfare of citizens.  Notions of political structure, reproductive issues, qualification for acceptance into an after-life, or slavery are all sacred abstractions on which people have taken stands and many have killed or been killed for.

How many people have needlessly died because of the squeemishness of celebate men with the idea of condoms? How much destruction was released in Southeast Asia due to the opposed idealogies of Marxism and Capitalism?

Today, Americans face continued endurance of a broken health care system because certain vocal idealogues profess doubts over “Socialized Medicine”? American health care is already socialized to some extent. But in a way that favors the flow of cash to the coffers of corporate medical providers and insurers. Why do you think Warren Buffett is so enthusiastic about owning insurance companies?  You get paid up front. Surely there are other health care models out there that we can emulate.

There is a Skunk in the Woods

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So what is Karl Rove up to during this run up to the ’08 election? I was reading an article on fascism in America and my minds eye naturally turned to this character. I hear he is writing a column for Newsweek.  But what else is he doing? What is he up to?  Hmmm.  

The “Architect” should be hounded mercilessly by reporters for pictures and interviews a` la Britney Spears. This nocturnal creature should be in plain view during election season.

Passport Control

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According to the AP, emloyees of Stanley, Inc., have beed fired for reportedly viewing the passport records of Sen. Obama.  The New York Times reports that the passport files of Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain have been accessed inappropriately. Whether they revealed more than name, place and date of birth, and social security number remains to be seen.

No doubt this will result in a flood of rule making and billable hours for consultants. It seems to me that there is an alternative to devising higher security for government records.  If the government collected a lower volume of sensitive information, then there is less information that can be inappropriately viewed. 

The gov’t collects a good deal of information from people who fill out forms for some service or consideration. The question is, just how many different data fields are really necessary for a given service? In other words, how much excess information is being collected to satisfy the just-in-case doubts suffered by the gov’t form designer?

Passport information may be a bad example on which to raise this question owing to the gravity of passport issuance.  But the larger questions still exists- Just how much information about citizens is truly necessary to run the government?  Are there any checks and balances here?

Ear to the Ground

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My comments on recession come strictly from news and from petrochemical industry publications. I have not seen any indication that manufacturing of specialty chemicals (at least in the waters I swim in) are as yet affected by the economic turmoil that the lending fiasco triggered. Eventually orders will taper some, but the how much and when is not at all clear.

It takes a while for the effects of a downturn to filter upstream to all sectors of chemical manufacturing. The first effects will likely be a pushback on delivery of existing orders. Then, the period between succesive orders will lengthen as businesses closer to the consumers will start to trim down inventories and throughput.  Finally, sales forecasts will begin to report spotty sales projections 2 or 3 quarters out. Eventually, you run into those weak quarters and have to find a way to limp through them.

The important question relating to petrochemicals (aromatics, naphtha, ethylene, propylene, etc) is where does price elasticity really kick in for hydrocarbon intensive goods as crude prices continue to rise and the dollar continues to devalue? 

Packaging materials like PE, PS, and PP, etc. are very often not the primary product consumers are looking for. They are produced for sellers of consumer goods as packaging materials. The purchasing decision maker is not the person strolling down the isles of Wal-Mart, but rather the product manufacturers who have to package the goods. 

This economic disturbance seems unique. Demand from the global middle class is growing as the US economy falters.  Demand for hydrocarbon fuels and manufacturing feedstocks is strong from Asia for their own consumption. But Asian production is also strongly linked to the demand of their products from the west. Predicting how this thing plays out is very tricky. 

Polymer membranes, HDPE pipe, PVC pipe, automotive assemblies and fascia are all large consumers of hydrocarbon products. Demand for these materials, obviously, should parallel the health of construction and automotive industries. But as the US transitions to a net importer of polymers, the connection to US economics is murky.

I suppose the best business to be in is war profiteering and security, at least as long as a war president is in office. It seems to be shielded from the raw forces of economics. As long as the gov’t can print money, special interests can be paid.  A good career would be as a translator between Arabic and Mandarin.

Dark Sky

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One year ago a couple of us from the observatory gave a presentation before our town board in support of an ordinance for outdoor lighting. The proposal was along the lines of that used by the city of Tucson, AZ. It is really just a type of tweaking of the town architectural standards and is promoted by IDA, the International Dark Sky Association.

A draft of the document was developed and approved by the town board of trustees just tonight. It will come up for a vote in the next meeting. Based on tonights meeting, it should pass readily.

This is the first time a law has been passed where Th’ Gaussling wasn’t some kind of negative example.  Maybe I should have spent my 15 minutes of fame in some other way. Hmmm.

Open Letter to Congress. The Question of Authorship.

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Dear Honorable Members of the US House and Senate,

I write to you in an effort to bring a measure of clarity to the legislation that is drafted and voted upon by both houses of the congress. The matter I wish to address is the matter of authorship of the actual text of bills sponsored by members of the House and Senate.  In the interest of transparency, it seems reasonable for citizens to know exactly who deserves credit for the intellectual content, or the ideas and the language, that is put into law.  We know that the actual legislator is far too busy to do the wordsmithing and idea crafting that goes into the drafting of a bill. In that vein, I believe that the citizens or groups who actually craft the document deserve some credit for the work.

Consider for example, HR 5695.  The header of the document lists all of the sponsors of the bill.

HR 5695 IH

109th CONGRESS2d SessionH. R. 5695

To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for the regulation of certain chemical facilities, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

June 28, 2006

Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California (for himself, Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi, Mr. SHAYS, Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California, Mr. LINDER, Ms. HARMAN, Mr. MCCAUL of Texas, Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas, Mr. SIMMONS, Mrs. CHRISTENSEN, and Mr. FOSSELLA) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security, and in addition to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

But the actual owner of the concepts, the crafter of the ideas is at present unknown. It is hard to believe that the Honorable Representative Lungren spent countless hours in the library of congress researching this bill. How much supervision is given and how close does the language represent the will of the constituents? Somehow, the person or persons who drafted the bill are accorded anonymity in their composition of a bill that affects the entire country.

I believe that the persons and the organizations who draft documents which become public laws should be given some kind of co-authorship or citation. In fact, it should be manditory that they be given co-authorship. Ideas good or bad that wind their way into public law should be traceable to the Author. How else can we find out what they were thinking? Could it be true that major pieces of legislation are being imposed on the people of the United States under the pen of ghostwriters? Who are these ghostwriters?

Kindest regards,

Th’ Gaussling (pseudonym, just for irony)

Political Analysis Paralysis

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The election season is far too long. Every minute of this tedious pageant is filled with relentless microanalysis of the latest minutiae. No nuance is too small for the CNN impresario Wolf Blitzer or the goon squad at Fox News to dwell in an endless vortex of speculation and rhetorical webspinning.

Fox News in particular is incredibly brazen in its rightwing bent. Most hotels in which I have stayed recently favor this news source with a prominent spot on the channel selection. The pretense of neutrality is long gone. They are the Republican Broadcasting Network and have the same saccharin evangelical flavor as Pat Robertsons cable freakshow.  What liberal media? Hollywood? Please. Hollywood is just another kind of freakshow with better costumes.

I can see how countries devolve into unstable conditions where deep ideological differences disrupt the peace and lead to open conflict. I’d be in favor of secession of a few states if these rightwing boneheads wanted their own country. Just keep an eye on the nukes. There is deep frustration in this country and the only thing keeping angry mobs off the streets is relative prosperity.

Republican control is only paper thin. After the ’08 election, Democrat control will only be paper thin. The only thing that has happened in the Clinton and Bush II epochs is that both conservatives and liberals have become more articulate in their opposing positions.

Now I’m microanalyzing. It’s like a disease.

Scalia On Torture

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2/12/08.  Let me paraphrase what I just heard Justice Antonin Scalia say on NPR. In a replayed BBC interview, he said that he didn’t see anything in the constitution that prohibits the use of torture to get information. On the other hand, he said that the use of torture as punishment would be unconstitutional.

This is the first time I have heard this particular bit of analysis. That is the tack you’d expect him to make. A few colleagues and I had the opportunity to sit and have coffee with Scalia some years ago when he was on our campus. I left the gathering with the impression that he is a very formidable character. Defending a case in front of him would be nerve wracking.

It is worth remembering that the Supreme Court’s job is to deliberate and rule on matters of interpretation of the constitution. I would offer that the comments of a justice of SCOTUS are not to be taken as promulgation of moral authority, but rather as constitutional scholarship.

Highly civilized countries like Switzerland, The Netherlands, or Sweden have surely wrestled with the calculus of this matter. I wonder what they have concluded as to the merits of torture.  Maybe they are less squeemish about it than we are.

Addendum 2/13/08:  If you think about what torture really is, it is hard to come to the conclusion that Scalia is offering.  Interrogation torture is a circumstance wherein a person is detained and put under the requirement to disclose information.   To qualify as torture, as opposed to simple questioning, the detainee must be subject to a negative outcome. I think in the normal use of the term, merely serving time in confinement isn’t ordinarily considered torture. The customary understanding of the term includes negative treatment that produces stress, dread fear, pain and discomfort, or injury. 

You could argue that infliction of negative treatment as a result of detainee non-compliance is a form of punishment.  Infliction of negative treatment in anticipation of non-compliance would be cruelty.  To put it another way, if the infliction of pain and suffering is not a result of non-compliance, then it must be cruelty. If it is a result of non-compliance, then it it must be considered punishment.

I’ll have to disagree with Scalia’s assertion. I cannot escape the conclusion that the application of torture in questioning is either punishment or mere cruelty and therefore unconstitutional.

The notion that our form of “negative treatment” isn’t really torture is fatuous and should be abandoned. If we want to allow our elected government to torture people, then we should amend the constitution in the customary fashion to make allowances for this action. My guess is that most thinking adults will not gladly endorse a constitutional right to torture.

Romney Fires Ejection Seat

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Just when I was getting used to the possibility of an epic Mormon Migration to the District of Columbia, Mitt Romney bails from the flaming cockpit of his campaign. At least for the next cycle, we will not see young missionaries in white shirt and tie parking their bicycles at the State Department or the CIA. That Ambassador-at-Large slot for Marie Osmond will have to wait and purveyors of caffeine and intoxicating liquors can rest at ease tonight. No temple garments hanging on the line back behind the White House either.

Utah is occupied by wholesome folk with a really odd theory of the universe. Eventually their time to decorate the Lincoln bedroom will come, but not in 2009.