Cherokee Freedmen update

The Cherokee Freedmen issue hasn’t been much in the news lately, but it’s still going on. The Hill has an update:

A dispute between the Cherokee Nation and members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) looks likely to continue despite a lobbying push that the tribe had hoped would resolve the issue.

[...]

The Cherokees hired the Podesta Group, a firm with strong Democratic ties, in July and signed on McBee Strategic Consulting in October. Several Native American groups have passed resolutions condemning the bill. More than 6,000 letters have also been sent to Congress in opposition to the legislation, according to an attorney for the Cherokees.

Meanwhile, CBC lawmakers, who have joined Watson in protesting the Cherokees’ decision, plan to meet with the Department of the Interior’s assistant secretary of Indian Affairs, Carl Artman, to discuss the Freedmen in the coming weeks, according to a Watson aide.

To respond to something that’s been popping up in comments here, several of you have argued that the Cherokees are their own nation, with the right to do what they want, and “outsiders” should keep out of it. But since when are nations exempted from criticism? If the Cherokees want to be treated like grown-ups in the community of nations, they have to be ready for the attention, both positive and negative, that comes with the position. And if a nation pursues a policy that others see as an extreme injustice, it’s not unprecedented for the international community to take action.

Take for example the sanctions against South Africa during Apartheid or against Iran to stop them from pursuing nuclear weapons. You can argue for against those actions for individual cases, but you don’t get to claim nationhood and then walk away free of all claims.

Is it unfair that the United States has done far worse in its past, and in some ways its present, but is too strong to be challenged by an outside power? Of course. But that is a rather flimsy excuse for the Cherokees’ own bad behavior.

Update: I don’t want this to be misunderstood. I am not saying the actions regarding the Cherokee Freedmen are anywhere as bad as Apartheid, even if they are discriminatory. Nor are they half as bad as what the U.S. has done to American Indians. But being a victim of discrimination does not justify turning further discrimination against another disenfranchised group. And whether or not a sovereign Indian Nation has the right to do it, it is wrong.

someone finally gets it

On paper, iTunes is a great model for distribution of music, movies, and TV — unlimited downloads, from single tracks to full albums, at reasonable prices. But for all it has going for it, I’ve never been able to get past the terrible design of the application itself: bulky, slow, poor navigation, DRM bullshit, and incredibly annoying attempts to take over all your music playing functions. I don’t have an iPod, and I don’t share Apple’s vaunted aesthetics. Ideally, I want to go to a webpage, download my music, and be left alone.

It looks like the Amazon MP3 store has done just that. Here’s hoping the music companies figure it out.

(my first purchase: The Klezmatics sing Woody Guthrie! It’s like an album designed specifically for me.)

el pote que derrite

This excellent USA Today article looks at the effect on the economy of Oklahoma’s strict new anti-immigration law. Namely, many employers are facing a crisis of figuring out how to replace Hispanic employees disappearing en masse to other states. The anti-immigration forces have always argued that these workers are taking American jobs and using up our social services, while others argue for a net positive effect of both legal and illegal immigration, so it will be an interesting case study.

Even if it’s revealed that immigrants benefited Oklahoma, the debate certainly won’t end. Fears of immigration are as much if not more about cultural anxieties as economic ones. Of course the cultural concerns are even more misguided and in many ways racist, but for the same reason they won’t be amenable to being disproved by objective numbers. Looking too deep into our immigration fears is to witness some of the worst parts of the American psyche (as when the conservative focus group watching the New Hampshire debates disapproved of McCain’s call for a “humane” immigration policy).

Photo by Flickr user Crashworks used under a Creative Commons license.

great expectations

Anyone paying attention to politics in the last week has one lesson to take away — Stop paying so much attention!

If you care about policy, about where the country is going, about government and representation and all that jazz, more power too you. But don’t caught up in the minutiae of a bizarre and impossible to predict primary process. Especially do not take seriously what is filtered through the media playing the “expectations game,” which translates to, “If everything does not turn out exactly how we predicted, this represents a real change in the candidates/American people,” instead of implying that the people making those predictions are overstimulated buffoons with the attention spans of a gnat. (one gnat, to share between them)

Update: Ezra Klein says it more politely –

My main takeaway from the primaries? Covering them is exhausting. They’re inescapably panoramic, messy, sprawling, and unpredictable. They don’t lend themselves to graphs or data. The traditional methods of reportage only offer two ways to cover the race: From the campaign’s point of view, or from the reporter’s. Nobody knows how to cover it from the perspective of the voters (which is different than the perspective of a voter). In theory, very little of use is learned — at least so far as the horserace coverage goes — in advance of the results. But so very much is written. The end product entertains, but it only appears to inform. In reality, it speculates and arranges facts and observations such that they form plausible hypotheses on essentially unknowable questions — questions that will, soon enough, be answered with real data.

Photo by Flickr user Macropixels used under a Creative Commons license.

(bi)party time

Jack Shafer runs down the accomplishments of bipartisanship:

Writing slavery into the Constitution was perhaps the greatest triumph of nonpartisan compromise in U.S. history. The denial of suffrage to non-property owners and women ranks up there, as do prohibition, the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and the so-called war on drugs, declared by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s and waged bipartisanly by every president—Republican and Democrat—since.

Moving to the contemporary period, we discover that monument to bipartisan accord: the Patriot Act, which passed the Senate 98-1 and the House 357-66. So unified in pursuing the common interest were legislators that they barely debated the bill, and few read it. The No Child Left Behind Act passed with near unanimity, even though nobody much cares for it today.

Washington’s elected officials sing the song of bipartisanship every time they sit down to negotiate and distribute earmarks to their states and districts. Earmarks serve as both bipartisanship’s grease and its energy supply. All those “petty” partisan political differences fade as Rep. John Murtha wheels and deals for his district and bridges to nowhere get built over every chasm and ditch in the nation.

more on the moderates

The Norman Transcript relates two very different reactions to the Boren/Bloomberg event yesterday. From Democratic state Rep. Wallace Collins:

“I didn’t hear any of them speaking about issues like ethanol, which I believe is a diversion. They were in power for almost a decade. Why did they let us get eight more years down the road? Why now?”

Collins also questioned the group’s “lack of action” on issues such as the Iraq war, or campaign mud slinging.

“None of them had the nerve to speak up and talk about the Bush administration,” he said. “I didn’t hear any of them talking about the war. And where was that bipartisanship four years ago, eight years ago? Look at what the Swiftboat veterans did. Did anyone on this panel say that was terrible?”

He makes a strong point, which relates to what I said yesterday. In this decade, the main accomplishment of the so-called moderation of these leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, has been to give political cover to the Bush administration’s pursuit of extremist policies. Take one member of this group, Christine Todd Whitman. On her resignation from the Environmental Protection Agency, the New York Times wrote:

She also found herself in the awkward position of having to renounce and rewrite various rules governing industrial air pollution, rules she had vigorously defended when she was governor of New Jersey.

Finally — and again under White House pressure — she initiated a review of key sections of the Clean Water Act that some fear could weaken longstanding protections for wetlands and streams.

And from her Wikipedia page:

On June 27, 2003, after having had several public conflicts with the Bush administration, Whitman officially resigned from her position to spend more time with her family. In a later interview, Whitman claimed that Vice President Dick Cheney’s insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, led to her resignation.

Think about that. Whitman resigned from the EPA in 2003. The article relating her real reason for leaving was published in 2007, long after it could do any good. If she had any guts to stand up for “moderate” beliefs, she would have done it back when the extremists were at the height of power and causing the most damage, not now that they are discredited.

Another example — Chuck Hagel has made many admirable criticisms of our disastrous foreign policy in recent years, but all the good talk has never translated into actions. Newsweek reported that at the time of the Iraq War resolution, “Hagel took to the Senate floor and spoke in damning, eloquent terms of the folly of the whole affair.” And then he proceeded… to vote for it.

Certainly many people had positive responses to yesterday’s event. An Oklahoma City pastor and professor was quoted:

“It’s a great day for OU and a coup for president Boren,” Myers said. “Instead of the rest of the country looking at Oklahoma and thinking that all that comes out of here is strange, extremist views, they see this forum.” [...] “We’re just on the cusp of change,” he said. “Our young people are now realizing they’ve been sold a bill of goods. I hope this becomes the model for other universities to follow.”

And maybe he’s right. If people take the right message from it, that engaging in politics, protecting the environment, and having a non-crazy foreign policy is important, then all for the better. It’s just that based on their records, the members of this panel are not the people to take us there.

stay classy, media

Ordinarily I avoid TV news like the plague, but primary madness got the better of me.  Thus, I just saw Tucker Carlson ask on MSNBC whether Hillary Clinton tearing up on the campaign trail, in the midst of a grueling campaign and a plummeting position in the polls after spending the last year as the front runner, was “real or part of a larger strategy.”

I don’t know where he went from there, due to turning off the TV in disgust.

Sadly, John Edwards’ reaction was not much better.

I’m not even a Clinton supporter, but come on, people!

independents day

I’ve just returned from Boren and Bloomberg’s Old People With Microphones Hour. Here is what I learned:

We need to be bipartisan, or maybe nonpartisan. In any case, all of the political candidates need to provide specifics. But also a grand strategy. And we should have a national unity government, like Churchill! (Shh… nobody mention the differences between a presidential and parliamentary system,)

The greatest generation sure was great! As were Lincoln and FDR. Are we… the lousiest generation?

Let’s talk policy. The most recent energy bill doesn’t do nearly enough. (No arguments there.) If we fought WWII in 4 years, we can do more than change our light bulbs in that time. (Again, not arguing with that.) So what to do? Carbon tax? “Clean” coal? CAFE standards? Nuclear power from sea to shining sea? Better not go there… too (gasp) partisan!

If you think you’re a leader, and nobody’s following you, then you’re just taking a walk. We need to have duties instead of rights, because that’s the difference between a democracy and a republic. We’re all entitled to our own opinion, but not our own facts. That’s why we started public education when we kicked King George out of the country, so the citizens can look out for themselves! Except now they aren’t voting. But look for where the independents are voting in primaries. (Shh… nobody mention that independents are a jumbled mix of leftists, libertarians, anti-immigration nationalists, the confused, the disengaged, and the ignorant.)

College football rivalries!

9/11 sure did unify the country, though. Why can’t we have something like that again?

More seriously, the whole event was pretty much what you would expect from a committee of old politicians all gathered to agree with each other. Any controversial bits were weeded out, leaving only cliche and strenuously inoffensive calls for national unity, problem solving, and bipartisanship. And since a good portion of the panel was former or current Senators, there was plenty of bloviation and rambling.

The national press turned out in masses to see this thing. And they clearly had one thing on their minds: is Bloomberg going to run? Unfortunately, it was about the worst possible setting for any reporter to get at that question. The panel was so large, and the panelists so long-winded, that only two or three questions were asked. Even the questions that did get through were not given real answers. It was just an excuse for the assembled crew to go speech-making.

And if all of this results in a Bloomberg bid for the presidency, which is the only way it could genuinely impact anything, it would have the perverse effect of dividing the electorate and preventing any one candidate from winning a majority. This is at a time when we so obviously have one party interested in protecting the environment, supporting the poor and middle class, controlling the deficit, and achieving universal healthcare, and the other party specializing in obstructionism, politicization of everything, and endless war (I’ll let you guess which is which). Obviously even the better party has plenty of flaws, but the place to improve those is not as an independent threat to give everything back to the bad guys. The place to work for positive change is inside the, okay, I’ll say it, Democratic Party. Those who really want national unity should be working to give the Democrats a large enough majority to claim it, and then work inside the party for those constructive changes that we all agree are needed.

In this situation, a Bloomberg run would be hugely irresponsible and a blow to everything he claims to value.