Brett Kavanaugh is playing semantics

DJT's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh supposedly said to Susan Collins that Roe v. Wade is 'settle law'. C&L posted Lindsey Graham's comments.

My opinion:

It is highly disingenuous for any nominee to the Supreme Court including Brett Kavanaugh to call any Supreme Court decision "settled law." For any American not sitting on the Supreme Court, all their decisions 'settle law' (as determined by the U.S. Constitution. Justices on the Supreme Court use their Constitutional power to 'settle'/'resettle' law according to their procedures. As a non-Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh can legitimately claim he personally considers Roe v. Wade 'settled law'. But as a potential Supreme Court justice, that statement is using semantics to deceive the public. Lawmakers know this; Brett Kavanaugh knows this and Brett Kavanaugh's nomination shepherds know this. It is the people most impacted by Supreme Court decisions who do not know this and in a democracy, that is reprehensible.

When lies are/aren't lies?

Every schoolchild has heard the thought experiment: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it,does it make a sound?

I was thinking about this with regards to 'POTUS' DJT's incessant lying. With any lie, there are two participants - the liar and the recipient. Does the intent of the liar or perception of the recipient change the value or intent of the lie? For the U.S., this is not merely a thought experiment. The answer will have broad and long lasting implications for the future of the country, especially in regards to Constitutional rights, freedom of press/speech and transparency.

If a lie is told by someone without the intent of lying, is it a lie? [American press tends to say no. The intent of the liar is more relevant than correcting the lie for the sake of viewers.]

If every pronouncement is presumed to be a lie, is it a lie? [In some respects, this is fiction... But we are currently living under a president who seemingly cannot utter a truthful statement.]

What is freedom?

Mike Lux asked this at C&L. My response:

In the novel, "The Kite Runner", the narrator's father said all crimes are forms of theft. For today's Republicans, freedom is their freedom to commit any and all variants of theft on anyone not in their tribe, especially for personal gain or profit. This same freedom does not extend to 'outsiders'. For progressives, freedom is the right of all people to live meaningful lives so long as they are respectful of the rights of others. The progressive view of freedom does not have an out-group.

This is my impression of how each group defines freedom. I agree with what I've assigned to progressives. I just doubt that nation-states are the best way to organize societies to deliver that form of freedom. All nation-states concentrate power and concentrated power is inherently about mass reallocation of power; in other words, a form of theft.

A different metric

I am often confused by names of political/economic systems like fascism or oligarchy. This happened again at a recent Truthout post. My proposal:

Thanks for the historical perspective. But there is another metric which is rarely, if ever, used to define the spectrum of socioeconomic systems, one of power concentration.
democracy = power is determined by voters

capitalism = power concentrates in owners; owners game the system to determine who has the opportunity to own
slave capitalism = power of owner extends to owning workers/laborers
feudal capitalism = power concentrates in owners to extent they control many work/labor conditions including wages and residency
communism = power concentrates in members of single state party committee
oligarchic capitalism = power concentrates in small number of owners
monopoly = power concentrates in one corporation and their owners
fascism = power concentrates in one political party

The point is that the concentration of economic power has parallels in the concentration of political power. The terms/names used to describe each system often overlap in meaning and thus, can be confusing. It would be better to use a sliding scale to represent power concentration; something along the lines of the Kinsey sexuality scale. On a scale of 0-10 (low to high) how is political power distributed? How is economic power distributed? Based on Gillens and Page, political power score is roughly 7.6 in favor of the economic elites <http: www.vox.com="" 2014="" 4="" 18="" 5624310="" martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained="">. Based on stock ownership, the economic power scale is about 6.6 - top 5% owns about 2/3 of stocks <https: www.salon.com="" 2013="" 09="" 19="" stock_ownership_who_benefits_partner=""/>. The latter is not the best metric of economic power; actual score is likely significantly higher. This type of granular information is more useful in accurately describing power relationships than misleading names/titles/terms.

Press failure

Comment at Crooks and Liars with video clip of Sean Spicer 'gaslighting' the press:

I blame the press for the sad state of affairs. Right wing news grew, profited and flourished under the failure of the mainstream press to contain their lies and doublespeak through benign neglect. Now we have a press secretary whose starting premise is a half truth which he follows with a ninety degree pivot to a full lie which rotates in a different direction to increase the base of the lie then he turns back around to accuse the press of misdirecting/misleading. Even a partial description of the spin is dizzying. 

I'm tired of DJT and company telling me what 'the real story is' and what's important. I want the truth.

Entitled to not pay taxes

Comment at Truthout post critiquing the America Health Care Act:

The Republican 'health care plan' is a rich people entitlement plan to not pay taxes that support social wellbeing. Ironic: rich people are actually for entitlement plans (Republican 'health care plan') even when they constantly bash non-entitlement 'entitlement' socialized pension (social security) and socialized health care (Medicare/Medicaid/VA) plans.

Note: How about TrumpSCare for 'Trump Sub-optimum care'?

Money & economy

Comment drawn from Richard Wolff video at Truthout:

For workers who 'exchange/sell' their labor to employers for wages, money is stored labor. With money, people exchange their stored labor for objects containing stored labor or services (direct labor). Value of land must then reflect how much labor must be invested to return profit. 

Prof. Wolff said something with even more prolonged implications than his comments about money - workers work to support themselves (and their families). This means the purpose of economies - production, consumption and exchange of capital - is to support the wellbeing of people. The wellbeing of people is not restricted to the current generation, so this includes the long term sustained wellbeing of people. This means profits are not necessary to economies and even more interesting, industrial sectors which do not support human wellbeing are anti-economic; think arms and military industrial complex.

Update: mistake in the original "...profits are necessary to economies..." It has been corrected above.

No Principles of Economics?

The latest episode of Economic Update, Where Economic Theories Clash, strongly implies something I feared regarding the field of Economics. In it, Richard Wolff called Neo-classical economics, Keynesian economics and Marxian economics 'theories' of economics which implies they have undergone some form of validation or testing (scientific theories are vigorously tested before they are called 'theories'). But in real economies, each of these 'theories' has failed in one permutation or other. This suggests that Economics has no unifying principles. [To use the physical sciences as an example (again): the Theory of Evolution is a unifying principle in biology - it connects all living organisms and justifies the study of model organisms to better understand life; Atomic Theory is a unifying principle of chemistry - it predicts the behavior of all matter.] An example of a possible unifying economic principle is the presumption that functional economies must yield profit; this would have strong implications for capitalism.

This is particularly troubling when it comes to policy. All public policy is economic policy and it is argued and made on the basis of Economic theory. If Economic theory is as poorly developed as implied above, then for all intents and purposes, Economic theory is ideology without basis in empirical principle. As it stands now, the science of climate change has very strong physical evidence backing it and thus should drive energy policy. In its stead, we have nonsense 'economic' arguments that the cost of protecting the biosphere is 'too expensive'. Policy makers are balancing the future of humanity against the profiteering of capitalists at our ignorance. If science can detangle systems as complex as climate to predicted global climate change, it should be able to apply similar methods to answer the question of how to best structure economies for the sake of mankind. Economies should serve humanity not the other way around.

economics is life

Economics is life because economics is how workers provide the necessities of life. In exchange for labor, workers earn the means to purchase food, clothing, shelter and all other sundries. But the policy and practice of economics does not account for the inherent life aspect of economics. Instead, economics is defined as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" [Wikipedia]. And this has allowed governments and policy makers to couch the purpose of economic policy only to the end goal of creating capital, another word for wealth and profit.

With a 'pro-economy' argument, essentially every decision of the DJT presidency is intended to generate profits for the owner class without regard for workers. Oil pipelines have been approved at the risk of contaminating the soil and water necessary for human consumption and agriculture. Health care reform to profit insurance providers is under consideration at the risk of workers losing medical insurance or essential benefits with the projected likelihood of decreasing overall life expectancy.

These policies literally put profit over life. And that is completely contrary to the purpose of work. If work cannot provide the means to survive, their is no reason or purpose to work. So the current definition of economics is incomplete. It needs to include a purpose, the survival and wellbeing of workers. And because workers are always making more workers in the form of children, wellbeing has to extend into time, the sustained survival and wellbeing of workers.

Economic policy that must take the long term wellbeing of workers in account would change the nature of geopolitics and culture. It would be a positive change.

Accounts due

It common knowledge that climate related treaties do not count all contributions to greenhouse warming when deciding what industrial/economic sectors to target for mitigation. From a political perspective, this may make sense - for example, the politics and narratives of food production makes it a very difficult sector to modify in terms of public opinion and policy. But it is essential that we remember that the physical, geochemical, chemical and biological phenomena of climate change occur independent of human wishes, wants and intent. Natural systems don't care about human societies and politics. Human contributed changes in greenhouses gases alters natures' normal accounting of global climate. Global accounts, or 'books', cannot and will not change just because human policy decides that certain economic sectors are exempt from greenhouse gas mitigation efforts. By granting exemptions, we are essentially creating a false set of greenhouse gas accounts. The real greenhouse gas/ climate change accounts are kept by planet Earth. Cooking the books to ease the passage of international treaties won't save us when the climate accounts are due.

When nice is not nice

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly this past Saturday. And like many public figures, death compels hagiographic remembrances...

He was a consistent jurist; he was enthusiastic and lively; he was best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg; he was steadfast and sincere in his beliefs.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a number of years ago about his friends and which, if any of them, could be considered 'nice'. (Most of our mutual friends are nice; most of his are questionable :).)

The division comes into play over the superficial usage of 'nice' which describes people who are overtly pleasant and polite. These are good conversationalists who do not stir the pot in social situations. But there's the deeper sense of 'nice' which involves a spiritual generosity that goes beyond many people. To be truly nice, there must be an intentional care to not harm others, regardless of a personal relationship. Nice people value their friends, their relationships (with people and the environment) and they behave in accordance with their values. A 'nice' vegetarian avoids leather goods for example. Using this definition, nice people are not obligated to be pleasant but nice people make the very best friends. (By the way, nice doesn't include rigid or judgemental. Many evangelical and fundamentalist religious followers fail in this. I fail when I judge members of religious communities.)

Going back to Antonin Scalia, many of the articles written about him since his death focus on his superficial niceness. But his rulings as a Supreme Court Justice and his legal philosophy run opposite of the deeper meaning of nice.

I actually prefer a president who is nice in the sense they value much of what I value but not nice in that they are ruthless in fighting to achieve what I want to achieve. But on the Supreme Court, we should have properly nice Justices; humanitarian jurists with impeccable judicial scholarship who interpret the Constitution in a manner meaningful to the issues of today. The late Justice Scalia failed in this regard. Cross your fingers and hope his replacement will be better.