The Tyranny of a Short-Term Majority

A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America."

That reasoned argument against what de Tocqueville called "the tyranny of the majority" is a total crock. A bunch of hooey. Liberal claptrap from a French intellectual with no real understanding of democracy. Never mind that James Madison agreed in the Federalist Papers, warning of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" -- Madison was just some loonie leftist. The majority is all-powerful. If you can get enough people to agree with you, you can do anything you want to anybody. There are no such thing as rights, only privileges that can be voted away at any time. Get enough people together and you can even take someone's First Amendment rights away -- if people don't like what you're saying, they can use the power of democracy to shut you the hell up.

So sayeth that great American patriot Kenneth Starr. Best known for an unsuccessful witch hunt against then-President Bill Clinton, Starr is the dean of Pepperdine law school -- which makes you wonder what kind of education Pepperdine law students get for their money.

At issue was California's Prop. 8 -- a ban of same sex marriage. The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that gays and lesbians had the right to marriage. Prop. 8, which passed as a referendum, would remove that right and retroactively undo the marriages that have occurred since the court's ruling.

But, since the court ruled that marriage was a right, not a privilege, Prop. 8 became a classic example of the "tyranny of the majority" -- with a simple majority vote, Californians took a right away from a minority group. The ballot measure is now in California's Supreme Court, where Ken Starr -- representing Prop. 8 supporters -- argued yesterday that there's really no such thing as "rights." At least, not if you're in the minority.

"Swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence if one is weak, enjoy all one's rights if powerful: that's my doctrine," wrote the Marquis de Sade. Starr apparently agrees.

Raw Story:

The people "have the raw power to define rights," he told the court while arguing in favor of invalidating over 18,000 marriages.

"The right of the people is inalienable to change their constitution through the amendment process," said Starr. "The people are sovereign and they can do very unwise things, and things that tug at the equality principle."

Chief Justice Ronald George posed a hypothetical: what if the majority demanded the right to free speech be revoked?

"After much banter back and forth, Starr says they do," reported Advocate.com. The Los Angeles Times reported similarly on Starr's alarming response.

So, if the majority votes that you should shut up, by God you'd better shut the hell up. In Starr's world, rights are a legal fiction. The founders basically argued that the person and the person's rights were one thing, inseparable -- "unalienable" as the Declaration of Independence put it. But Ken argues that your rights are granted to you by majority rule and can be taken from you at any time, presumably for any -- or no -- reason. As I've already pointed out, those aren't rights, those are privileges. Starr argues that people in California -- and Americans in general -- don't actually have rights.

What the right is really worried about here is the "normalization of homosexuality." When you get right down to it, same sex marriage is harmless -- it can't possibly have any effect on your life if your not in that marriage. If you're outside that family, what that family consists of can't possible harm you. There is no rational reason to oppose marriage equality.

However, "rational" is a bad description of the religious right. They're so panicked at the idea that same sex couples would be considered just people and not monsters that they're willing to give away all the guarantees they have to any rights at all. By Starr's argument, people could literally vote to bar Christians from holding office. But hey, that's better than having to look at two male or two female dolls on top of a wedding cake.

But the "normalization of homosexuality" is pretty much a done deal. Regardless of how people feel about marriage equality, the idea that homosexuality is some sort of national problem is losing ground rapidly. The religious right isn't just losing that fight, they've lost it. Same sex marriage isn't a question of "if," but "when."

A Harris Interactive poll taken after the 2008 elections found that "Three-quarters of U.S. adults (75%) favor either marriage or domestic partnerships/civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Only about two in 10 (22%) say gay and lesbian couples should have no legal recognition." The numbers for legal marriage alone, as opposed to civil unions, was evenly split between pro and con.

This "normalization" train has left the station.

But the most desperate battles are often fought at the end of the war. That's when the craziest tactics will be tried. The religious right would burn the village in order to save it, by giving away any guarantee they have to any rights in exchange for a victory in a losing battle against marriage equality.

If Ken Starr really wants to argue on behalf of the tyranny of the majority, he might keep in mind that public opinion is moving away from him. It won't be long before he's in the minority, subject to the whims of the mob rule he advocated.

Unfortunately, when that happens, I don't expect him or any of his allies to shut up and "swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence," as the weak and rightless should.

Maybe we can all take a vote and make them shut up.

-Wisco

Nuclear Power, a Guaranteed Money-Loser

It's become fashionable lately to tack the words "safe and clean" before the words "nuclear energy." It's hard to understand how an industry that creates waste so toxic it has to be buried deep in the heart of a mountain can be described as safe or clean. You'd think a better description would be "dangerous and poisonous."

But one word that's never used in connection with nuclear power is "cheap" and it may be that the best kept secret regarding nuclear generation is that it costs taxpayers a huge amount of money. In fact, nuclear power is practically guaranteed to be a money loser -- Wall Street won't finance plants -- and it's almost inevitable that every new generation facility will require an infusion of federal money at some point.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), "Originally conceived as providing power that would be 'too cheap to meter,' nuclear energy was seen as the future of the electric industry. Reality quickly overtook this utopian vision in what has been called 'the largest managerial disaster in business history,' leading to two bailouts of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s."

In fact, UCS warns that, if we go ahead and expand nuclear power generation to the extent that the industry wants, we'll wind up bailing them out to the possible tune of more than a trillion dollars.





In a report titled "Nuclear Loan Guarantees -- Another Taxpayer Bailout Ahead?" [PDF], UCS makes a good case for taking a skeptical look at nuclear generation from merely a financial standpoint. Add questions about nuclear waste storage and the grossly understated carbon footprint of the process and we have "unsafe, unclean, and expensive" nuclear power. Starting to look a little less attractive now, isn't it?

"With estimates of the capital costs of the next generation of nuclear plants now quickly rising, the industry is again seeking massive assistance, aiming to shift the financial risks away from the companies building these plants onto taxpayers and ratepayers," the UCS report tells us. "A principle mechanism for such risk shifting is a new federal program of loan guarantees for nuclear power plant construction. The nuclear industry and its advocates in Congress have now proposed a huge expansion of this program before it has even begun."

As we've seen with other bailouts, the idea is that the industry enjoys privatized profits, but socialized risk. Which is really the only way that the industry could exist. When the industry was born in the '50s, it was heavily subsidized with the belief that the technology would eventually become economically feasible. In 1962, the head of the head of the Atomic Energy Commission reported:

Nuclear power is on the threshold of economic competitiveness and can soon be made competitive in areas consuming a significant fraction of the nation's energy... [E]conomic nuclear power is so near at hand that only a modest additional incentive is required to initiate its appreciable early use by utilities.

By 1963, the "economic competitiveness" that was so "near at hand" resulted in cost overruns for plants of $800 million to $1 billion. By the '70s, this resulted in what Forbes called "the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale." By 1976, nuclear power -- which had been estimated to cost $1,630,000 per megawatt -- cost $4,377,000 per megawatt.

"Nuclear power plants abandoned by their sponsors cost the nation almost $50 billion in today's dollars, according to a 1992 study by economists Charles Komanoff and Cora Roelofs," UCS reports. "Specifically, the 100 nuclear plants canceled from 1972 to 1982 cost about $10 billion. Fifteen more plants canceled in 1983 and 1984 added $11 bil;lion to that figure. And more cancellations after 1984 (such as of Washington Public Power Supply System's Units 1 and 3 in 1985) may have added another $4 billion.Together, these costs total $25 billion, or $40 billion to $50 billion in 2006 dollars." Ratepayers and taxpayers "bore as much as one-half to three-quarters of the costs of these abandoned plants."

Those predictions of the technology making nuclear power competitive never came to pass. Nuclear generation remains a money loser. In 2007. six Wall Street investment banks (CitiGroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley) informed the Department of Energy that they wouldn't extend loans for new nuclear generation facilities unless taxpayers took every penny of the risk.

"We believe these risks, combined with the higher capital costs and longer construction schedules of nuclear plants as compared to other generation facilities, will make lenders unwilling at present to extend long-term credit..." the banks wrote in a letter to the DoE. "[L]enders and investors in the fixed income markets will be acutely concerned about a number of political, regulatory and litigation-related risks that are unique to nuclear power, including the possibility of delays."

Nuclear power is officially a bad investment. When Goldman Sachs and Citigroup turn you down as too risky, you've got a really awful business plan. And that business plan is guaranteed by the feds, since no one else will take on the risk. With as many as 300 new plants proposed as part of a new "nuclear renaissance," we'd be on the hook for as much as $1.6 trillion in loan guarantees.

That's serious money to invest in an industry that has yet to be competitive with other industries. Nuclear energy is a pretty lousy investment in the future.

-Wisco

It's Not Hypocrisy if You're a Republican

I hope the RNC chairman will realize he's not a talking head pundit, that he is supposed to be working on the grassroots and rebuilding it, and maybe doing something about our open primary system and fixing it so that Democrats do not nominate our candidates.
-Rush Limbaugh, before RNC chairman Michael Steele apologized to him this week.

Both yesterday and today, we have had callers from Texas who are foot soldiers, enlisted officers, in Operation Chaos. Both of these gentlemen, one in Austin, the most recent from Galveston that you just heard, not only voted for Hillary Clinton in the Texas primary, but they went a step further. They went back and caucused. Operation Chaos operatives went back and caucused. These two are just two of many. These two are now delegates to the Texas state convention. They are delegates for Hillary Clinton to the Texas state Democrat convention. They will be there undercover.
-Rush Limbaugh, bragging about interfering in the Democratic primary, 2008.

Oh my golly, Rush Limbaugh's a hypocrite! What a shock. When Republicans use states' open primary systems to interfere in Democratic nominations, it's labeled "Operation Chaos" and bragged about for months on end. When Democrats interfere in Republican primaries (and this is the first I've heard of it -- I think this might be drug-induced paranoia on Rush's part), it's a terrible abuse that must be "fixed."

Of course, Rush Limbaugh's brilliance is entirely overrated. His "Operation Chaos" was a huge bust, as our current president demonstrates. His cunning plan to sink the Democrats' chances in '08 worked out about as well as you might've thought. Obama won by an electoral landslide, complete with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. "Operation Chaos" was not a success.

While it's fun to point out what an empty space Rush Limbaugh really is, that's not my point today. What I've got in mind is GOP hypocrisy -- it's all over the place lately.





Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Despite slamming an omnibus spending bill for being loaded down with earmarks, Mitch himself has tacked on $75 million in earmarks for his home state of Kentucky. Calling the budget "legislation that is 8 percent above what was anticipated to be spent," he blamed Democrats for loading it up with pork, saying the bill had been "plussed up by the new majority."

"It’s pretty clear we have a double standard here," said Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. She added that boulders are raining down on "people who live in glass houses. The leader of the Republican Party is getting twice as much in earmarks as the leader of the Democratic Party."

McConnell will vote against the bill, knowing that it's going to pass any way. That way, he can get his earmarks while complaining about all the pork. Mitch McConnell is a hypocrite.

On another front, Republicans are learning that tactics that were the worst thing ever when they were the majority are wonderful tools of democracy now that they're in the minority.

Politico:

...In a letter to the White House, the Republican senators said Obama would “change the tone in Washington” if he were to renominate Bush nominees like Peter Keisler, Glen Conrad and Paul Diamond. And they requested that Obama respect the Senate’s constitutional role in reviewing judicial nominees by seeking their consultation about potential nominees from their respective states.

“Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward on that nominee,” the letter warns. “And we will act to preserve this principle and the rights of our colleagues if it is not.”

In other words, Republicans are threatening a filibuster of judges if they're not happy.

The letter was signed by the entire Republican senate. "My, how times have changed," reads a post a Right Wing Watch. "I seem to remember a time, just a few years ago when President Bush was in office, when the Republican understanding of the Constitution's 'advice and consent' clause was that it entitled the President to make nominations of his choosing while the Senate's role was merely to confirm or reject his nominees."

Put another way, the Republicans called foul on filibustering judicial nominees. In fact, they were so appalled that Democrats would even threaten to do it that they moved to what they called "the nuclear option" of changing senate rules to eliminate filibusters. It took a bipartisan "Gang of 14" to reach an agreement and save the filibuster.

But that was then, this is now. Whenever Republicans feel the need, they're fully prepared to go full-on hypocrite. Since all 41 GOP senators signed the letter, it pays to go back and look at what they thought of the Democrats' threat to filibuster.

"Finally, neither filibusters nor supermajority requirements have any place in the confirmation process," Sen. Sam Brownback wrote. "Those tactics of obstruction should become the historical relics they deserve to be. The country deserves, and the Constitution demands, a prompt, thorough debate and a fair up-or-down vote on Judge Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court, and I look forward to being an active participant in that process."

"We have a Democratic leader defeated, in part, as I said, because I believe he was identified with this obstructionist practice, this unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his judicial nominations," Sen. John Cornyn said at a press conference. "And so a rule change my [sic] ultimately not be necessary. If it is, as Senator Specter has observed, there is precedent for it. And indeed, if necessary, I trust we will move to the so-called -- what I call the constitutional option, which is the ruling from the chair, upheld by the majority of the Senate."

"What we're seeing now is unprecedented," said Sen. Charles Grassley. "Judicial nominees with clear majority support have never been denied a vote by a partisan filibuster until two years ago, and now we've got 10 qualified judges with majority support being held up. The Democrats are denying the Senate its constitutional responsibility of advice/consent by systematically denying appellate court nominees an up-or-down vote. And we can't find anywheres [sic] in the Constitution that says a supermajority is needed for confirmation."

But, now that Republicans are in the minority, none of that is true anymore. It's cool to filibuster Obama's nominees, since it'll be Republicans who'll be doing it. That's not hypocrisy, that's... hell, I'm stuck. That's practically the definition of hypocrisy.

The worst thing about all this is that those few zombie voters still supporting Republicans will buy it all. Where they supported fighting the filibuster before, they'll buy all the arguments for filibustering judicial nominees now. When Rush Limbaugh said that screwing with Democratic primaries was the best idea anyone ever had, they went right out and did it. But when Rush accuses Democrats of doing the same, it suddenly borders on criminal. When Mitch McConnell complains about pork, they all freak out. When he loads the bill up with pork of his own, they'll look the other way.

Republican leaders get away with hypocrisy because Republican voters are just as hypocritical. When you've trained your voters to accept cognitive dissonance, the past doesn't actually exists. Republican voters exist in the Zen-like mindset of cattle -- there was no then, there is only now. Nothing that happened before now actually happened. There is no continuity of thought, no evolution of philosophy, because contradictions must be allowed to stand ignored.

It's nothing new for the Republican party, where hypocrisy is a way of life.

-Wisco

A Trickle When We Need a Flood

It's one of those good news/bad news things. Yesterday, the Justice Department released nine of the Bush administration's secret memos [all PDF] detailing legal opinions on the president's "War on Terror." What they reveal is a frightening disregard for American principles. Knowing that some of these memos would eventually come out, the Bush administration renounced the arguments put forward in them -- days before the new president took office.

McClatchy Newspapers:

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Justice Department renounced some of its own sweeping legal justifications, which were enacted after the 9/11 attacks, for spying on Americans and for harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

In a memo written five days before President Barack Obama took office, Steven Bradbury, the then-principal deputy assistant attorney general, warned that a series of opinions issued secretly by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose."

Bradbury said he wrote the 11-page document to confirm that "certain propositions" in memos issued by the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 "do not reflect the current views of this office."

They were just spitballin', throwing ideas at the wall to see which stuck, running them up the flag pole to see who saluted. Never mind that, from 2001 to 2003, those legal opinions remained unopposed by the Bush administration -- unused bullets in their arsenal of legal defense.

And, believe it or not, this is the good news part -- that these memos saw the light of day at all. The bad news is that the Obama administration is sitting on "dozens" more.





"We welcome the Justice Department's decision to release these memos, some of which provided the basis for the Bush administration's unlawful national security policies," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, in a statement. "These memos essentially argue that the president has a blank check to disregard the Constitution during wartime, not only on foreign battlefields, but also inside the United States. We hope today's release is a first step, because dozens of other OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] memos, including memos that provided the basis for the Bush administration's torture and warrantless wiretapping policies, are still being withheld. In order to truly turn the page on a lawless era, these memos should be released immediately."

Among the unreleased documents are legal arguments detailing "Legal standards for intelligence methods," "Laws and treaties regarding treatment of prisoners," "Criminal charges against American terrorists," and "Options for interpreting the Geneva Conventions."

And the released memos are bad enough. One argues that the president has king-like power to take away a person's rights. "The power to dispose of the liberty of individuals captured ... remain in the hands of the president alone," it reads.

Another stated that the First Amendment was basically a privilege, not a right. "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," it said.

"[White House legal counsels John Yoo and Robert Delahunty] said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects," the New York Times reports. "They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers." In other words, the president could use troops as police without declaring martial law.

"One of the central facts that we, collectively, have not yet come to terms with is how extremist and radical were the people running the country for the last eight years," writes constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald. "That condition, by itself, made it virtually inevitable that the resulting damage would be severe and fundamental, even irreversible in some sense. It's just not possible to have a rotting, bloated, deeply corrupt and completely insular political ruling class -- operating behind impenetrable walls of secrecy -- and avoid the devastation that is now becoming so manifest. It's just a matter of basic cause and effect."

These memos came out as a result of an ACLU request under the Freedom of Information Act. However, while the ACLU requested "dozens" of these documents, the Obama administration has released nine. You'd hope more are on the way and that this isn't just the administration throwing the ACLU a bone.

But it very well may be the latter. The Obama administration has been surprisingly helpful to the previous administration's policy of secrecy. While it may be that these remaining documents are still under review -- they've been declared state secrets, after all, and it would be foolish to release them without being sure you're not giving anything away -- it may also be that Obama's unwilling to give up all the power Bush and Cheney centralized in the Oval Office.

"[E]ven a quick review of these newly disclosed documents leaves no doubt about their historical significance," writes Greenwald, calling them a "grotesque blueprint for what the U.S. Government became" under Bush. Greenwald says these aren't just memos (they're all very large files, not just notes), but rather "the official and formal position of the U.S. Government -- at least of the omnipotent Executive Branch -- from the time it was issued until just several days before George Bush left office..."

So that's the bad news. There are more of these things still secret than those that have been revealed. If these are the only memos that will be released, then it'll be hard to argue that Obama's not protecting Bush and, by extension, the expanded executive powers Bush claimed.

Those powers are a legal fiction and applying them is an abuse by default. Hanging on to Bush's legal arguments can't possibly serve any purpose helpful to you or me. It can only help a president abuse his office.

-Wisco

The Conference of the Crazy People's Action Committee

In years past, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) has earned the nickname "Crazy People's Action Committee" with its right wing religious fanaticism. Speakers at CPAC conferences have used the opportunity to warn against the Homosexual Menace and the way "undermedicated" "psychotic" leftists were destroying the judiciary by only allowing "activist judges" to sit on the bench. It was about abortion, it was about evolution in schools, it was about how the only way to be a good person was to be a good Republican Christian.

A lot has been said about this year's CPAC conference -- which wrapped up this weekend -- but one thing that few have noted is the toned-down nature of the religious lunacy. It was still the Crazy People's Action Committee, but the craziness has shifted focus. Feverish warnings of God's judgment have been replaced with feverish warnings of creeping socialism -- which, in CPAC World is synonymous with communism, which in turn equals fascism. That fascism was an anti-communist movement is lost on these people since, let's face it, the audience they're speaking to are as ignorant as they are crazy. Where CPAC used to be a gathering of religious nutjobs, it's now become a gathering of people like Joe the Plumber.

So I guess the good news is that if you ever needed proof the conservative movement was abandoning the religious right in droves, I give you the 2009 CPAC conference. The bad news is that this doesn't mean they're any saner. Not that the movement conservatives have moved away from the religious right entirely -- you can still find groups claiming that homosexuality can be "cured" with prayer -- but it's clear that they're no longer front and center in that movement.

Still, as the lunacy shifts focus, it becomes no saner nor closer to the mainstream. Mitt Romney, for example, won the conference's straw poll -- making it two consecutive wins for Mittens. After winning last year's poll, Willard went on to fail to buy the Republican primary with masive infusions of his own money. Clearly, CPAC doesn't represent even the mainstream among Republican voters.





But the real news comes from a split in the movement. On one side, there's Newt Gingrich, who argues that conservatives need to offer better policies (while, in actuality, offering recycled ideas from the past).

Meanwhile, the Pasha of GOPerstan -- Rush Limbaugh -- disagrees. Conservatives don't need better ideas. In fact, that's crazy talk. Not surprisingly, the nation's leading reactionary advocates a reactionary strategy. "Well, the one thing, and there are many, but one thing that we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now," Rush said. "I don’t want to name any names. It’s not the point. But I talk to people about the Obama budget or the Obama Porkulous bill or whatever else TARP 2 whatever it’s going to be, and they start talking to me in the terms of process and policy. I say stop it."

Don't talk about policy, don't talk about governing. Who needs ideas? You just stand against everything that voters gave government a mandate to do in the last two elections, then watch a grateful populace sweep you back into power.

Like I said, the Crazy People's Action Committee.

This is where the Republican party finds itself these days. It doesn't actually stand for anything, it just stands against things. It's been developing for a long, long time, this self-definition by what they oppose. You could probably trace it back to the redbaiting from the '50s. That list of things they oppose has grown over the years; abortion, gays, immigrants, Muslims, environmentalists, the secular-minded, science, liberals, taxes, peaceniks, feminists, the poor, college professors, intellectuals, the United Nations, France, people who say "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas," etc. How do you know when you're right? When you disagree with someone from that long list. Follow your jerking knee.

In other words, Rush is advocating that the GOP become the backseat driver -- because everyone likes that so much. Criticize, oppose, but never, ever offer a legitimate alternative. Better ideas are for chumps.

Of course, Limbaugh's strategy offers no way forward. Successful obstructionism means no progress whatsoever. It means getting your truck stuck in a ditch. This is the base's version of success -- a sort of forced stasis.

I've always said that when a conservative talks about change, it means they want to change things back. In right wing world, things used to be perfect, until liberals came along and screwed with everything. Change has always been bad, so American society should be unchanging -- like a fly trapped in amber. No forward movement should ever be allowed.

If the Crazy People's Action Committee conference has showed us anything, it's that the conservative base has absolutely nothing in common with the average voter. They may have shifted away from the religious right, but they're still the same distance from the center as they've always been. The Republican party continues to court the fringe at the expense of the majority and that can't possibly work out well for them in the long run.

-Wisco