Not protecting marriage -- attacking gays
Last week Patrick Oliphant pointed out in the Boston Globe out that many of the so-called anti-gay marriage initiatives (8 of 11, to be exact - Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah) went much farther than 'merely' denying gays the right to be married. From "The Gay Marriage deception," via the Washington Monthly:

In pivotal Ohio, for example, the voters may not have realized it but they voted to strip people of the right to contractually arrange distribution of assets, child custody, pensions, and other employment benefits. They most definitely were not 'protecting' marriage; they were attacking gay people. That is why the political and business establishment there, including Republicans, opposed the measure.

The evidence is that the voters who approved it also opposed its actual contents. In the official exit poll Tuesday night, 27 percent of the voters said they support full marriage rights, 35 percent supported civil unions, and only 27 percent oppose any legal rights for same-sex couples. In other words, to underline the importance of artifice and deception in our sound-bite culture, the voters approved a measure opposed substantively by 62 percent of the very same voters.

...and by a 62-38 margin, by the way.* Put differently, these initiatives made it impossible for gay couples to avail themselves of even the "legal incidents" of marriage -- to use the words of the Musgrave Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). Not surprisingly, this gives the lie to Bush's purported openness to civil unions:

President Bush embodies this incoherence while he manipulates the sentiments cynically. Just before the election he tried to say he supports the rights of states to have civil unions, though he would have opposed them as governor of Texas. He also supports a federal constitutional amendment that would both limit 'marriage' to man-woman couples and permit states to ban civil unions.

Finally, note that even the redrafted second clause of the FMA would arguably prevent Ohio voters from ever overturning their decision: "Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman." (emphases added; state laws had been included in the prior draft.) Since most state ballot measures including this one amend state constitutions, the FMA threatens to make anti-civil union/gay marriage initiatives a machine that can only go in one direction.

Your president is George W. Bush, and he approves of all of this. But even now he won't come right out and say so. Is he a hypocrite and a coward?


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* Via the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. -- Answer: 24. The question is left as an exercise for the reader. (Alternative answer: 52.88, but let's be charitable.)

UPDATE, 11/19: According to a blogger from Georgia, the ballot itself was deceptive in that state: voters saw only the question"Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and woman?" even though the actual wording included a longer section (b)also denying the "benefits of marriage" to same-sex couples. See also this dishonest description on the Georgia state web site. According to a 11/4 Washington Post article, Lambda Legal, a gay legal rights group, is planning to challenge the Georgia election results on this basis, and similar challenges may occur in other states. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:00:00 PM -- |    

 
Trust, don't verify
The usually sensible Anne Applebaum completely misses the point about paper trails for electronic voting in her Washington Post op-ed column today, "In ATMs, Not Votes, We Trust":

Most Americans now conduct at least some of their financial transactions without paper, or at least sleep happily knowing that others do. Yet when it comes to voting -- a far simpler and more straightforward activity than electronic bank transfers -- we suddenly become positively 19th century in our need for a physical record.

It is, if you think about it, quite inexplicable. [...]

...just ask yourself this question: Are you really sure that your bank isn't using secret software to steal $9.72 from your retirement account every week? And if the answer is no, why aren't you up in arms about that, too?

Answers: (1) Yes, I'm sure. (2) The answer isn't no.

The reason I'm sure, of course, is that I can (and often do) read my bank statements, decide I agree with the transactions described, and compare them to my own past and present records of what's going on, like pay stubs, credit card bills, or IRA statements.

More to the point, if my bank, or my credit card company, or for that matter the corner gas station suddenly announced they simply weren't going to let me see records of those transactions, I'd take my business elsewhere. And so would Anne.* Sure, paper trails get ignored after a while. But that's precisely because trust and verifiability is established by having them.

Applebaum concludes with a lot of unseemly tut-tutting about paranoia and the supposed American penchant for conspiracy theories. She'd do better to give some serious thought to why some state officials, in Maryland for example, have fought tooth and nail against paper trails and other precautions for electronic voting. It is, if you think about it, quite inexplicable.


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*And so would even a trained economist like Alex Tabarrok (co-author of the "Marginal Revolution" blog); back in March he made much the same bad point Anne did. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Well then, let's make a new rule
Utterly Contemptible GOP Watch -- the Washington Post and others are reporting that the House Republicans will be changing their leadership rules so that if Texas D.A. Ronnie Earle indicts Tom DeLay (see below), he won't have to step down from his position as Majority Whip.

The rule had been adopted to position Republicans as more politically virtuous than Democrats, whose Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski was under indictment. Now that it's inconvenient, down the drain it goes. All hail The Party of Responsibility!

Earle has it right -- there are way more clowns in that Volkswagen than you dreamed possible.

(Via Mark Kleiman, who waxes wroth; see also Charles Kuffner who mentions the "Volkswagen" item below -- thanks Charles.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:46:00 PM -- |    

 
Frontline tonight: "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?"
Via Joe Hill Dispatch, I noticed that there will be a FRONTLINE about Wal-Mart tonight with the title "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?":

FRONTLINE offers two starkly contrasting images: one of empty storefronts in Circleville, Ohio, where the local TV manufacturing plant has closed down; the other--a sea of high rises in the South China boomtown of Shenzhen. The connection between American job losses and soaring Chinese exports? Wal-Mart.

It's on tonight at 9pm on PBS; I plan to watch. See below for some of my own thoughts on Wal-Mart. Full disclosure: I'm not a union member, I was once a NAFTA supporter, and I still lean pro-free-trade -- although not with countries like China that suppress real unions. So maybe I'm not a totally reliable friend of labor yet. In the meantime, though, I'm certainly for Wal-Mart employees getting a better break. Assuming they are, too, I think that means unionizing Wal-Mart.

At any rate, I've added the very informative "labor blog" and "joe hill dispatch" to my blogroll on the left. Check them out! And if you watch the Frontline show, I'd like to know what you thought of it.


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UPDATE, 11pm: Excellent documentary -- even allowing for reporter Hedrick Smith's occasional wide-eyed questions (e.g., roughly, "You mean the prices after the low price point aren't necessarily the lowest in town?" -- golly!). There was a strong focus on the pricing power and China angle -- justifiably, in a one hour piece. Key quote, roughly: "Wal-Mart and China are a joint venture." That story is really daunting, and the piece is persuasive that Clinton and others made a huge miscalculation in thinking China would be importing much of anything to compare with their exports. The China focus came at the expense of looking at Wal-Mart's labor policies. Watching a store employee pep rally, it occurred to me that given how careful Wal-Mart is with everything else, they may try to be just as careful with who they hire -- i.e., no skeptics, no troublemakers. The Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey is the designated free-trade advocate; the discussion between him and Smith was pretty thin, I thought -- which may mean Lindsey just doesn't have that much to offer beyond free-market dogma.

BTW, Hedrick Smith will be doing a "Live Chat" at the washingtonpost.com tomorrow at 11am, if you have questions for him. Meanwhile, Frontline has a viewer reaction web page that already has a lot of responses. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Watching clowns climb out of a Volkswagen
It's time to catch up on the various jams House Majority Whip Tom DeLay has got himself into; "Justice DeLayed," an article in Mother Jones by Lou Dubose, is just the ticket.

The main legal difficulty for the DeLay machine involves TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee), which, as Dubose explains, achieved its goals by distributing about $1.4 million in donations to Republican candidates for the Texas state legislature. This paved the way for the notorious redistricting plan that put Texas in the national spotlight last year, which in turn spun off a number of other "Texasgate" incidents, including DeLay staffers pressuring the FAA and other agencies to reveal the whereabouts of Texas Democratic legislators trying to prevent the redistricting by leaving the state.

Now several DeLay associates, including key aide Jim Ellis, have been indicted under Texas law for soliciting corporate donations to TRMPAC -- illegal if the funds were not used for administrative expenses. Dubose reports:

Ellis, the DeLay aide who helped set up TRMPAC, told the Texas Observer that there was a simple explanation for the discrepancy -- the $600,000, nearly half of the committee's total expenses, had been used exclusively for administrative purposes and therefore didn't have to be reported to the state.

The investigation is proceeding slowly, but district attorney Ronnie Earle is on the case:

Ronnie Earle doesn't buy it. The 62-year-old district attorney is approaching the end of 27 years in office and has said he would have retired were it not for this case. Earle has the somber countenance of a hanging judge and a sense of humor as arid as his West Texas origins.

Investigating the TRMPAC case has been slow, he says, because it's like 'watching clowns climb out of a Volkswagen. There are a lot more in there than I imagined.'

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UPDATE, 11/16: Mother Jones editor Julian Brookes interviewed Lou Dubose in "Nailing the Hammer" in October (DeLay's hardball political tactics earned him that nickname.) It's an interesting look at DeLay; the quick summary is that DeLay is strongly anti-regulation, truly fundamentalist, and not above playing that for all it's worth, and that he "wants to rule more than he wants to govern." Dubose is also the co-author (with Jan Reid) of "The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress," which Texas blogger Charles Kuffner highly recommended to me in an e-mail.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |    

 
He regrets the error
David Brooks, "The CIA versus Bush," New York Times, 11/13/2004:

Not that it will do him much good at this point, but I owe John Kerry an apology. I recently mischaracterized some comments he made to Larry King in December 2001. I said he had embraced the decision to use Afghans to hunt down Al Qaeda at Tora Bora. He did not. I regret the error.

(Via Bob Somerby) Here's what Brooks regrets -- from "Osama Litmus Test," New York Times, 10/30/2004:

But politics has shaped Kerry's approach to this whole issue. Back in December 2001, when bin Laden was apparently hiding in Tora Bora, Kerry supported the strategy of using Afghans to hunt him down. He told Larry King that our strategy "is having its impact, and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way."

But then the political wind shifted, and Kerry recalculated. Now Kerry calls the strategy he supported "outsourcing." When we rely on allies everywhere else around the world, that's multilateral cooperation, but when Bush does it in Afghanistan, it's "outsourcing." In Iraq, Kerry supports using local troops to chase insurgents, but in Afghanistan he is in post hoc opposition.

(emphasis on "strategy" added) The relevant part of the Larry King 12/14/2001 interview with Kerry (again, via Somerby):

CALLER: Hello. Yes, I would like to ask the panel why they don't use napalm or flame-throwers on those tunnels and caves up there in Afghanistan?
KING: Senator Kerry?
CALLER: My golly, I think they could smoke him out.
KING: Senator Kerry?
KERRY: Well, I think it depends on where you are tactically. They may well be doing that at some point in time. But for the moment, what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way.

(Emphasis on "tactically" added.) So Kerry was saying there might be better tactics than flamethrowers, he wasn't saying anything about the wisdom of relying heavily on hired Afghan warlord troops.

Just all for the record. See Somerby for appropriate commentary, especially about the spectacular hackery of Tim "I'm the sorriest excuse for a journalist ever, Big Russ" Russert. But yes, Brooks gets a brownie point for admitting what a sorry hack he is. Does anyone ever check the record, or do they just all regurgitate what ever the fax from the White House says? posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:30:00 PM -- |    

 
The road back: take on Wal-Mart
Last time I wrote that I had some ideas about what Democrats could be doing next. The first thing is simple and general: become more active on whatever level keeps you in practice and gets you "out there" among people who don't necessarily share your views.

I say this mainly to myself, of course; I don't know how comfortable or persuasive you are speaking to strangers or acquaintances about your political views. Blogging didn't do the trick in my case, at any rate. I tend to want to look a last few things up on the Internet, which isn't often an option on the phone or at a doorstep.

The second thing I think Democrats should do is this: we should officially and unofficially support unionizing Wal-Mart, and we should take an active interest in reversing the decline of unions in this country. That may sound far-fetched and off-topic, but I think it isn't.

What's wrong with Wal-Mart
According to a 2003 Forbes ranking, Wal-Mart is among the top 10 companies in the American economy, and it is said to be the second largest employer in the U.S. after the federal government. And it got that big in ways that Democrats should oppose: Wal-Mart squashes competition and loses net jobs for the regions it bestrides, and it teaches management to fight dirty to keep unions from organizing. From a Jim Hightower article, "How Wal-mart is Remaking Our World":

"Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization," reads a company guidebook for supervisors. "You, as a manager, are expected to support the company’s position. . . . This may mean walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct."

I've written about Wal-Mart before. It's arguably freeloading off local taxpayers to provide health care and other social support to their employees, and the company is not even above cheating employees of their pay. It's also the target of a huge class-action discrimination lawsuit by women, and it's increasingly using Chinese suppliers to pressure American ones into price cuts that will cost jobs elsewhere in the economy (quite a change from founder Sam Walton's original marketing ploy -- "Buy American!"). One analyst comments,

From years of watching the company's retailing practices and occasionally shopping at its stores, I have come to the conclusion that a big factor in Wal-Mart's extraordinary success is its ability to source from China an ever-growing array of low-cost products to satisfy the voracious appetites of American consumers.

The plus side, at least on paper, is rising U.S. "productivity" and lower prices for Wal-Mart consumers. But what I've described tells me that productivity and cheap consumer goods, like any thing else, can come at too high an price when the full bill is presented.

That's admittedly not an economic analysis on my part, just a human judgment. I think we need to insist on decent living wages for people who work hard, and not allow their employers to exploit them or take advantage of local governments for the privilege of running local small businesses and suppliers into the ground. As Harold Meyerson put it:

It may just be me, but I don't recall the moment when the American people proclaimed their preference for an economy driven by Wal-Mart to the one driven by General Motors. It is, after all, one thing to live in a nation where the largest employer wants workers to make enough to afford its cars; quite another to wake up in an America where the largest employer wants workers to make so little they'll be compelled to buy low-end goods in a discount chain.

A USA Today report published in early 2003 provides some economic details:

Wal-Mart's impact on wages was first felt in rural towns in the South and Midwest where Wal-Mart got its start. Often, it became the biggest employer overnight, setting wage rates for all retailers, experts say.

Now, its impact on retail employment has spread nationwide, contributing to slower wage growth throughout the sector, economist Zandi says.

Pay for retail workers rose 43% from 1990 to 2001, vs. 50% for non-retail workers, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. No one knows exactly how big a part Wal-Mart played, Zandi says. But its influence is "undeniable" because it created more jobs in the 1990s than any other company, he says. More retail jobs are on the way. Wal-Mart plans to add 800,000 workers in the next five years. U.S. retailers are expected to add 3.1 million jobs by 2010, the government says.

Manufacturers, which pay more, will add fewer than 600,000 jobs in the same period. Labor unions that represent factory workers are alarmed. They say Wal-Mart, in demanding ever-lower prices from suppliers, has helped drive thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs abroad, where labor costs are lower.

Now they worry about Wal-Mart's push into the unionized supermarket industry. Wal-Mart has no unions. That means its employees earn less than those at competing supermarkets, says the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Wal-Mart's hourly pay averages $7 to $8 an hour, vs. $11 at Kroger, Safeway and other competitors with unions, says UFCW spokesman Greg Denier.

The first line is a reminder that Wal-Mart is not just a deserving political target, but a useful one over the next four years: it was spawned in "Red State," rural territory, and its roots remain there. To the extent Democrats and union organizers can succeed in bettering the lot of Wal-Mart workers, they will have found allies across the country, in precisely the areas Democrats need support, among precisely the working people from whom they need to earn it.

Labor and the Democratic Party
There's been a lot of handwringing about the Democrats needing a "story" to go with their policy prescriptions. I submit that whatever that story is, it can use Wal-Mart as an example of how untrammeled corporate power is no better for the American citizen than any other kind of overweening power is. "Citizens working together" would be my synopsis of the Democratic story, and I think helping the AFL-CIO or the SEIU organize Wal-Mart should be part of that story.

Mark Schmitt, a while back, wrote that at least up until now "there never has been a progressive movement in the U.S. that didn't have labor at the center, and the ups and downs of progressive change have roughly coincided with the shifting power of labor to stand up to capital." He pointed out a great column by David Broder in a September Washington Post, The Price of Labor's Decline. Broder wrote:

In the 10 quarters since the recession officially ended in late 2001, 47 percent of the real national income growth has gone to corporate profits, and only 15 percent to wages and salaries.

Even if you add in the cost of health insurance and other benefits, as you should, the workers got only 43 percent -- well below the 61 percent average in eight previous recoveries. This is the first post-World War II recovery in which corporate profits grabbed a bigger share of the growth than workers' pay and benefits.

For those who think a Wal-Mart economy is the American future, the falloff in labor's influence is no cause for regret. But I suspect the country will continue to pay a price -- and not just union families -- until labor regains a place at the economic and political table.

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UPDATE, 11/17: Marc Brazeau takes up my idea in the "Wal-Mart Beat" section of "Joe Hill Dispatch." Marc is cautious: "It's tricky. A lot of people work at Wal-Marts. Some would like to see a crusade against the companies business practices. Many more will see an attack on their employer as an attack on their livelihood." Good points, which I comment on over there. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:13:00 AM -- |