The cure for the AMT: The Carbon Tax

A few weeks ago, in the context of my carbon tax thread, I noted the synergy between our trillion dollar infrastructure bill and a carbon tax. That's a spend-side synergy though, so in the interest of encouraging my one GOP reader I'll mention there's also a tax-side synergy.

America is hooked on the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). You can disregard all the Bush blather about cutting taxes, because he hasn't cut my taxes at all -- he's basically only cut the estate tax that affects very wealthy people. That's because I pay the AMT.

Inflation and economic growth will drive more and more Americans to pay the AMT. This is good in a way, because it's a built-in tax engine, though I think this has already been incorporated into social security and medicare projections. (Meaning if we actually did anything about the creeping tax aspect of the AMT our current huge deficits would see modest.) On the other hand, Republicans are allegedly supposed to hate taxes (true, that's not the way the Bush administration behaves, but it's the theory).

So here's the deal. Make the Carbon Tax "tax neutral". Use it to replace the AMT.

The roads will still need rebuilding, and medicare and social security will still be underfunded, but that's a political discussion. Providing a planet for our children is more important than getting our nation's finances in order.

So there you go Republicans -- embrace the Carbon Tax and axe the AMT. Let's see a candidate come out and say that ...

The dinosaur you ate yesterday

You probably ate an avian yesterday -- a turkey or chicken perhaps. You ate a dinosaur ...

Velociraptor was just a scary turkey, say scientists | Science | The Guardian

... Velociraptor, which was much smaller in real life than its screen version, was a one-metre tall, two-legged predator that lived more than 70m years ago. Equipped with large claws on each leg, it was a close relative to the earliest birds.

In a study of the fossilised forearms of velociraptors found in Mongolia in 1998, palaeontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History found 'quill knobs' - bumps where the feathers used for flight in modern birds are anchored to the bone with ligaments. His results are published today in the journal Science.

'The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like velociraptor,' said Professor Norell. 'Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds.'

Because of velociraptor's relatively short forelimbs, the feathers would not have helped it to fly. The researchers speculated that the feathers could have been passed down from smaller ancestors that did fly but would have served other functions such as display, shielding nests, temperature control or to help stability.

Geezers like me still tend to think the dinosaurs became extinct, but my son Ben's books talk only about the 'extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs'. The dinosaurs that attract our imagination were probably all avian dinosaurs, so, truly, they never did become extinct. Now that's a successful design ...

Distrusting climate models - it cuts both ways

The newest rational attack on global warming fears is to denounce climate models as unreliable predictors. It's true that these attacks are often motivated by tribal allegiances, perversity, fear, denial and bribes -- but they're still important. Semi-rationalist opposition helped establish that CO2 is rising, and helped establish that we have been warming for over a 100 years, and warming faster over the past 10-20 years.

Now that those battles are done, we have to justly fight the battles over the reliability of climate simulation. I'm not making bets on this one, I think the deniers may have a case. Simulation is hard, the models may not work.

Of course (insert evil laughter), this cuts both ways. The models may exaggerate climate change, or they may underestimate it. Observational data from the arctic shows that in that region the models have been consistently too conservative (emphases mine)...

The North Pole Is Melting: Scientific American

... As a result of atmospheric patterns that both warmed the air and reduced cloud cover as well as increased residual heat in newly exposed ocean waters, such melting helped open the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time [see photo] this summer and presaged tough times for polar bears and other Arctic animals that rely on sea ice to survive, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Such precipitous loss of ice cover far outpaces anything climate models or scientists have predicted.

This new record low continues the trend of steadily shrinking summer sea ice. "We're already set up for a big loss next year," Serreze notes. "We've got so much open water in the Arctic right now that has absorbed so much energy over the summer that the ocean has warmed. The ice that grows back this autumn will be thin."

In fact, a German expedition on the icebreaker Polarstern has revealed that existing Arctic sea ice in the center of the ice cap is only about three feet (one meter) thick, 50 percent thinner than it was just six years ago. As a result, more melt water is mixing with the salty seawater and pulses of warmer Atlantic seawater have intruded into the Arctic Ocean.

Whereas the South Pole remains protected by differing geographic, atmospheric and oceanic conditions, the North Pole is undergoing rapid change not seen in at least 6,000 years and perhaps as much as 125,000 years, and which may spread to lower latitudes. "It is reasonable to think that if you lose the sea ice cover that is going to have an impact elsewhere, in the midlatitudes," Serreze says. Some modeling studies of such effects have suggested drought in the western U.S. or changes in precipitation patterns across Europe.

Serreze expects the ice will bounce back somewhat next year, if only because he cannot imagine it shrinking any more so swiftly. But ice-free summers in the Arctic may become the norm in the near future. "At this point, I'd say the year 2030 is not unreasonable" for a summer without sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze says. "Within our lifetimes and certainly within our children's lifetimes."

When that occurs, the Arctic Ocean may become a spooky, foggy place, haunted by diminished populations of spectrally thin polar bears clinging to life in residual habitat. "It's going to be a different world," Serreze notes. "The observed rates of change have far outstripped what we projected."

The antarctic is mercifully protected, but as goes the Arctic, so goes Greenland. That may lead to faster sea level changes than the simulations predict, but I expect they will be in line with estimates of ancient climate impacts on Greenland.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, we live the future. Our climate in the continental center is very affected by arctic conditions. The Feds have moved southern MN into a new climactic zone, outdoor ice skating is disappearing, Nordic (cross-country) skiing is finished in the metro area, snow sledding now requires artificial snow, the northern snowmobile industry has collapsed and we're building lots of indoor water parks to get the kids through increasingly dull winters.

Carbon tax, anybody?

Network TV commits sepuku - Fake Steve Jobs gloats

NBC and ABC can't help themselves. It's like watching a slow motion multi-train wreck. Forbes' "Fake Steve Jobs" provides the pithiest summary...

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: We're thrilled about this NBC download service:

... NBC is making a big deal of saying that the downloads will be free. Free! Free! Did you hear me? Not 99 cents like that greedy bastard Jobso, but FREE! Well they made sure the word 'free' would get into all the headlines but when you read the stories a little more closely you find the warts. Like, the commercials will be embedded into the shows and you won't be able to skip over them. Like, you'll only be able to download to a Windows PC. Like, they'll only be free for seven days after broadcast. Then they dissolve. If you want to get them later, you'll have to pay. How much? Um, ah, mwah mwah oh did we mention that they're free for the first seven days?

Oh, and if you want shows from ABC, you can go to AOL. (And yes, heads are rolling at Disney over that deal. More on that later.) Money quote from the story about the ABC-AOL deal: 'The consumer is probably becoming confused. He will need to go to AOL to watch ABC. CBS programming is on the iPod. NBC will be doing direct downloads from its own website. NBC and News Corp (NWS) are starting a joint online venture called Hulu.' So, fair enough. Bring on the big media cluster fuck. Roll out all the different systems that don't work together. Bring on all the different kinds of software...

Wow. The demographic that wants to watch commercial infested television on a Windows PC must be absolutely HUGE ...

[Caveat: I get hives when I think of watching commercial TV, so you may assume my opinions on this topic are particularly ill-informed.]

Ramstad - another bad sign for the GOP

I met Jim Ramstad a few years ago, while he was doing a walkabout at my employer's - a major donor of his. He was a bit of a puzzle; an intelligent if misguided man who ran with the GOP. He owned the 3rd district, a suburban zone west of Minneapolis. His retirement is great news for the Dems, and another bad sign for the GOP (emphases mine):

Ramstad's exit sets off a scramble in 3rd District

Citing fatigue and political isolation, U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad triggered a scramble by potential successors with a surprise announcement Monday that he is retiring from Congress next year after nine terms.

Ramstad, 61, had barely finished announcing his decision when at least five potential candidates declared an interest in going after his seat while other potential hopefuls were mentioned..

...He said he has grown tired from the relentless physical grind of service in Washington and weary of being a lonely centrist in an increasingly polarized legislative body.

... The congressman called himself one of the last of a "dying breed of Republican moderates." He has increasingly called on Washington politicians to "work in a more bipartisan and pragmatic way," as he put it Monday. "People need to put aside the harsh rhetoric on both sides of the aisle."

Although Ramstad has long easily cruised to reelection, he warned that the Third District "is not a safe Republican district," pointing out that Bill Clinton won it twice, John Kerry almost won it and it currently has more DFLers in the Legislature than Republicans.

... About a month ago, during a session at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Ramstad said he had been feeling increasingly isolated in his party as it has tacked to the right.

... Ramstad said he has no plans to return to politics. Instead, he wants to teach and work with people suffering from chemical addiction and possibly work a stint in academia.

He is now cosponsoring the mental health "parity" legislation with Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., whom Ramstad has been mentoring since Kennedy's high-profile car crash, which was related to prescription drug use....

... He broke with his party five times this year in key votes, most notably against the troop surge in February. He voted with Democrats to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour over the next two years, to allow the government to negotiate directly with drugmakers for lower prescription costs and to implement recommendations by the 9/11 Commission.

He also voted for a bill that would repeal tax cuts to oil companies and fund renewable energy programs.

He voted with the GOP against a troop reduction in July and for funding for the war without withdrawal deadlines in May.

Ramstad basically voted as a Clinton Democrat, I wonder if he ever considered switching parties. The Dems could never have defeated him for that district, but now it's definitely in play. If nothing else, it will suck GOP resources to defend it.

It's a measure of the fall of the GOP that it's losing its last highly electable centrists. The next election may take them to the point where they either reform or become irrelevant. I'm hoping for reform -- the Dems without a rational opposition would be like Apple without ... errr ... like Apple 2007.

Squanto and the non-Puritan non-Pilgrim "Fathers"

As a Canadian I'd been spared the folklore of the first American thanksgiving, so I was surprised five eight years ago when I chanced upon a neglected monument in a decrepit park by the town of Squantum, across the harbor from Boston. The monument park was near the closed causeway to Moon island and its mysterious Potemkin Village.

From GeoMapped Images

Who, I wondered, was Squanto? Why was the nearby town evidently named after him?

When I returned home I read what was then known of Squanto, the one man who connects both Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. I later learned that in his own language his name meant the equivalent of Satan. We don't think the "Pilgrim Fathers", of whom only half were religious and that half was Separatist, not Puritan, knew what his name meant. Had they known, they would have considered that a most curious omen.

Today the Wikipedia entry isn't a terrible introduction, but it's been vandalized and seems too incredible even for a life as astounding as Squanto's:

Squanto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

.. Tisquantum was kidnapped and taken by Georgie Weymouth in 1605, according to the memoirs of Ferdinando Gorges. According to Gorges, Tisquantum worked in England for nine years before returning to the New World on John Smith's 1613 voyage... [jg: that's Jamestown I think?]

Soon after returning to his tribe in 1614, Tisquantum was kidnapped by another Englishman, Thomas Hunt. Hunt was one of John Smith's lieutenants. Hunt was planning to sell fish, corn, and captured slaves in Málaga, Spain. Hunt attempted to sell Tisquantum and a number of other Native Americans into slavery for £20 apiece[citation needed].

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England (London, 1622) wrote that some local friars, however, discovered what Hunt was attempting and took the remaining Indians, Tisquantum included, in order to instruct them in the Christian faith.

Eventually, Tisquantum escaped to London, living with a John Slany for a few years, and then went to Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland. Attempting to avoid the walk from Newfoundland to his home village, Tisquantum tried to take part in an expedition to that part of the North American east coast.

He returned to Ireland in 1618, however, when that plan fell through...

He returned once more to his homeland in 1619, making his way with an exploratory expedition along the New England coast. He was soon to discover that his tribe, as well as a majority of coastal New England tribes, had been decimated the year before by a plague...

Tisquantum finally settled with the Pilgrims and helped them recover from their first difficult winter by teaching them to increase their food production by fertilizing their crops, and by directing them to the best places to catch fish and eels.

Whatever Tisquantum's motives, he ended up distrusted by both the English and the Native people. Massasoit, the sachem who originally appointed Tisquantum a diplomat to the Pilgrims, did not trust him before the tribe's dealing with the pilgrims...

On his way back from a meeting to repair the damaged relations between the Natives and the Pilgrims, Tisquantum became sick with a fever... He died a few days later in 1622 in Chatham, Massachusetts, and is now buried in an unmarked grave on Burial Hill in Chathamport, overlooking Ryder's Cove...

The Encyclopedia Britannica entry is briefer but only slightly less incredible (no trip to Ireland):

Squanto was born into the Pawtuxet tribe that occupied lands in present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Little is known about his early life. Some authorities believe that he was taken from home to England in 1605 by George Weymouth and returned with explorer John Smith in 1614–15. He was, in any event, seized with other Indians by one of Smith's men, Thomas Hunt, who took them to the Mediterranean port of Málaga, Spain, to be sold into slavery. Squanto somehow escaped to England and joined the Newfoundland Company. He returned home in 1619 on his second trip back to North America only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by disease.

During the spring of 1621, Squanto was brought to the newly founded Pilgrim settlement of Plymouth by Samoset, an Indian who had been befriended by the English settlers. Squanto, who had been living with the Wampanoag tribe since his return from England, soon became a member of the Plymouth colony. Because Squanto was fluent in English, Governor William Bradford made him his Indian emissary, and he then served as interpreter for Edward Winslow, the Pilgrim representative, during his negotiations with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags. Squanto died while guiding Bradford on Cape Cod.

Squanto's side trip with the Newfoundland company meant he was away when the plague depopulated most of the northeastern US. I'd read that it was Smallpox, but the descriptions didn't sound like Smallpox. If anything, it was even nastier. Modern historians apparently suspect Bubonic Plague, probably delivered by French fishermen off the coast of what is now Maine. The Europeans were relatively resistant -- though I wonder if plague didn't play a role in the 50% mortality rate of the "Pilgrim Fathers" during their first winter in America.

When Squanto returned home, after his astounding exile and enduring all manner of suffering, he would have found everyone he knew was dead. He himself only lived two more years, but during that time he saved the half-dead English immigrants. Without his training they would have certainly died. As it was the Pilgrims lingered on for a few years, before giving up and being absorbed by the massive Puritan migration that followed them. They were all but lost to history, until the Civil War led to a mythic reinvention of the first (euro) "Americans". [Update: see comment from GTT, I got this from the IOT lecture - In Our Time: The Pilgrim Fathers.]

For a bit more on this topic, though not enough on the most amazing figure of early euro-american history, do listen to In Our Time: The Pilgrim Fathers.

Oh, and the next time you serve that turkey, pause for a moment to reflect on the short, turbulent, violent and astounding life of Squanto. He paid a high price and ought not to be lost to memory.

Update 9/22/07: Jamestown. Plymouth Rock. John Smith. Myles Standish. A boat of religious zealots and roughneck desperadoes. The Black Plague. Slavery. Exotic locales. Alien cultures. The death of a civilization. Through it all ... Squanto, who's name meant Satan (or Lucifer?). Come on you-tubers, a dolt could make a classic movie of this material.

Kafka and the twilight of twentieth century aviation

Kafka would have understood.

I laughed when the "puffer" went off. I was in the "puffer" because of an "SSSS" on my boarding pass. I got the SSSS because I was on a one way flight over two airlines. I was one way because my 6:30 am Northwest Airline flight was canceled (probably for lack of a pilot [jf: actually, the engine couldn't be repaired]). The 6:30 am was a rescheduled flight from the 3:45 pm of the day before, which had a "slight mechanical". We sat for an hour or so waiting to learn about the delay, but we were never told anything -- except that the hotels were full. We knew, by word of mouth, that the mechanical was a bird that had shut down an engine on approach. Nobody expected the flight to leave.

I extorted a $15 breakfast voucher from NWA. That'll show 'em.

Another day, another airline anecdote. They're piling up. NWA can't stop birds from knocking out engines, but the problem is their system is so over-stressed it has no capacity to absorb shocks and surprises. Instead, everything piles up. There are no seats on outgoing planes anywhere. What was once a delay of a few hours becomes a day's delay.

After 9/11 I thought videoconferencing would catch on. I was wrong. 9/11 did not disrupt airline travel for me nearly as much as this constant drip-drip systemic dysfunction. It's costing the US economy a fortune's fortune.

Maybe this is the year Cringely will be right. More than that, maybe we'll look back and say that 2003 was the apex of 20th century air travel, that we're moving into something new and unpredictable ...

Update 9/20/07: I did get home, only out 24 hours, $200 in additional expenses, and 4 hours sleep and 6 hours of work (I worked on the plane, so it wasn't at total loss). A few other events along the way emphasized the key point of a system strained past the breaking point:

1. When we arrived to get a NWA flight in Sacramento NWA's computers had crashed -- so there were no seat assignments. I thought we'd have a "Lord of the Flies" free-for-all scramble for the seats but the plane was half-empty (alas, it would have made a better story if we'd fought to the death for the seats ...).
2. My employers costly travel service is supposed to cut costs when these things mess up, but I listened to their hold music for a total of 40 minutes when the first flight was delayed. I presume they were swamped by my colleagues suffering similar screw-ups across the nation.
3. As a final jest, my seat on the last flight was broken and would not recline. I used to report broken seats, but they're very common on NWA and I've noticed the attendants never take notes when I report these things. I have a hunch their memories aren't any better than mine ...
   

Krugman's blog

The day that the NYT ends Times Select Paul Krugman's blog launches:

Introducing This Blog - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

...For now, though, the important thing is to realize that the story of modern America is, in large part, the story of the fall and rise of inequality.

I don't believe the official story that Krugman played no role in the end of Times Select.

NYT frees Paul Krugman

I held out against TimesSelect for a year, then gave up and sent 'em $50. They've now given up the struggle.

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times

....Those who have paid in advance for access to TimesSelect will be reimbursed on a prorated basis...

...Many readers lamented their loss of access to the work of the 23 news and opinion columnists of The Times — as did some of the columnists themselves. Some of those writers have such ardent followings that even with access restricted, their work often appeared on the lists of the most e-mailed articles.

By which they mean Krugman. I wonder what role he played in this ending, I thought they'd hold out longer. If his contract was up he might have threatened to leave.

They don't talk about the role blogs played in excerpting and republishing the paywalled content. Too bad there are no journalists there to dig a bit deeper into the story.

Welcome back to the real world Frank and Paul ... and the others ...

Scroogled - a jaundiced view of Google's future

Cory Doctorow is a privacy campaigner and a professional writer. He combines the two in Scroogled.

Conclusion? Live life as though everyone knows what you do and think today. That's not true yet, but it's not too early to start ...

Greenspan on the weak: it is right that the parasites die

There's a very dark thread in many libertarians, a thread that ran through Fascism as well. In theory a Libertarian might choose to help the weak, but object to being forced to give aid; in practice many of the true believers seemed to feel that justice, arising from the ethical primacy of the superior, requires the death of the weak ...

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism - New York Times

... Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “The Fountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began praising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples, according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand’s papers. He was attracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”...

... Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

He was 25 then, and infatuated with power in general and Ms. Rand in particular. Still, it is an extremely revealing statement. I wonder if he felt that it was ok to exterminate the parasites if they weren't dying off quickly enough.

I'm sure he's doing some book tours. I look forward to someone asking whether he's reconsidered his attitude to the feeble, and whether most of the religious right falls into the parasite category.

Maybe we can't drink the water ...

I've always been a tap water guy. Maybe I need to switch to wine ... (emphases mine)

Battling tainted water:

...Groundwater contaminated with industrial chemicals lurks under vast portions of the Twin Cities metropolitan area even though more than $200 million has been spent over two decades to combat the problem. The contamination, a legacy of once-prevalent industrial dumping, persists beneath communities from Edina to New Brighton to Woodbury. In Washington County, the spread of underground pollution is turning out to be worse than anyone thought.

A Star Tribune examination of groundwater monitoring reports, maps and other records has identified 20 significant plumes of contaminated groundwater underlying parts of 35 metro communities. If added together, the polluted zones would equal an area 2½ times the size of Minneapolis.

I doubt we're unique. We'll be cleaning up the ground water 100 years from now -- if we're lucky. Ethanol biofuels, by the way, are very hard on ground water ...

Broken hearts at WSJ editorial offices: Greenspan on Bush and Clinton

I came, by chance, on yesterday's WSJ. The lead story was that Greenspan thinks Bush, Cheney et al have betrayed American and the "libertarian" GOP, whereas Clinton was brilliant. Today The NYT picks up the story: "Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits."

My first thought, was how the WSJ editorial page was going to spin this. The barking mad rabid loons that write the editorial page loved Greenspan almost as much as they hated Clinton and adored Cheney/Bush.

The answer, of course, is obvious. Yesterday's WSJ editorial page had no reference of any sort to the paper's lead story.

I'm enjoying their broken hearts ...

Frank Rich: comments on the forgotten war

Frank Rich used to write about culture and the arts for the NYT, that gives him a special interest in the mass psyche. The most interesting parts of his post-Petraeus commentary are about how the American gestalt has grown bored of War ...

Will the Democrats Betray Us? - New York Times - Frank Rich

SIR, I don't know, actually": The fact that America's surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week's festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff.

Not that many Americans were watching .... New bin Laden tapes and the latest 9/11 memorial rites notwithstanding, we're back in a 9/10 mind-set. Bin Laden, said Frances Townsend, the top White House homeland security official, "is virtually impotent." Karen Hughes, the Bush crony in charge of America's P.R. in the jihadists' world, recently held a press conference anointing Cal Ripken Jr. our international "special sports envoy." We are once more sleepwalking through history, fiddling while the Qaeda not in Iraq prepares to burn...

...there were some eerie symmetries between General Petraeus's sales pitch last week and its often-noted historical antecedent: Gen. William Westmoreland's similar mission for L.B.J. before Congress on April 28, 1967. Westmoreland, too, refused to acknowledge that our troops were caught in a civil war. He spoke as well of the "repeated successes" of the American-trained South Vietnamese military and ticked off its growing number of combat-ready battalions. "The strategy we're following at this time is the proper one," the general assured America, and "is producing results."

Those fabulous results delayed our final departure from Vietnam for another eight years — just short of the nine to 10 years General Petraeus has said may be needed for a counterinsurgency in Iraq. But there's a crucial difference between the Westmoreland show of 1967 and the 2007 revival by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Westmoreland played to a full and largely enthusiastic house. Most Americans still supported the war in Vietnam and trusted him; so did all but a few members of Congress, regardless of party. All three networks pre-empted their midday programming for Westmoreland's Congressional appearance.

Our Iraq commander, by contrast, appeared before a divided and stalemated Congress just as an ABC News-Washington Post poll found that most Americans believed he would overhype progress in Iraq. No network interrupted a soap opera for his testimony. On cable the hearings fought for coverage with Britney Spears's latest self-immolation and the fate of Madeleine McCann, our latest JonBenet Ramsey stand-in.

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their "Briefing for America," as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.

Even if military "victory" were achievable in Iraq, America could not win a war abandoned by its own citizens. The evaporation of that support was ratified by voters last November. For that, they were rewarded with the "surge." Now their mood has turned darker. Americans have not merely abandoned the war; they don't want to hear anything that might remind them of it, or of war in general. Katie Couric's much-promoted weeklong visit to the front produced ratings matching the CBS newscast's all-time low. Angelina Jolie's movie about Daniel Pearl sank without a trace. Even Clint Eastwood's wildly acclaimed movies about World War II went begging. Over its latest season, "24" lost a third of its viewers, just as Mr. Bush did between January's prime-time address and last week's.

You can't blame the public for changing the channel. People realize that the president's real "plan for victory" is to let his successor clean up the mess. They don't want to see American troops dying for that cause, but what can be done? Americans voted the G.O.P. out of power in Congress; a clear majority consistently tell pollsters they want out of Iraq. And still every day is Groundhog Day. Our America, unlike Vietnam-era America, is more often resigned than angry. Though the latest New York Times-CBS News poll finds that only 5 percent trust the president to wrap up the war, the figure for the (barely) Democratic-controlled Congress, 21 percent, is an almost-as-resounding vote of no confidence...

As a commander in chief Petraeus is at least an improvement on Cheney, though it's a bit worrisome that he wasn't elected. Rich continues his editorial with demands that Obama and Clinton declare a withdrawal date, conveniently forgetting that Edwards has received no support for a similar position. Rich's advice is at odds with his key observation: Americans have forgotten about Iraq -- and bin Laden too, for that matter. They won't respond to rhetorical reminders.

So what should Rationalists be hoping for?

Nobody should have any trust, of any sort in anything coming from executive branch. They're either lying (Cheney et al) or delusional (Bush et al). The Senate, I think, has the constitutional authority to develop their own channels to the truth, but the Senate is only barely Democrat. It won't be easy, and it may not be feasible.

My own recommendation for the Democrats (that should get their attention :-)!) and for Edwards, Obama, Clinton, is to make this their central theme. "We need information we can trust, and we're going to do whatever is constitutionally allowed to get it."

Historian wanted: The American Liberty League and 1930s fascism

I knew that America had had a quite vigorous fascist movement in the 1930s, but I hadn't read about the "American Liberty League"...

Damn Interesting » The Revenge of the Fighting Quaker

In the early 1930s, a secret collection of prosperous men are said to have assembled in New York City to discuss the dissolution of America's democracy. As a consequence of the Great Depression, the countryside was littered with unemployed, and the world's wealthy were watching as their fortunes deflated and their investments evaporated. As men of action, the well-financed New York group sought to eliminate what they reasoned to be the crux of the catastrophe: the United States government.

To assist them in their diabolical scheme, the resourceful plotters recruited the assistance of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, a venerated, highly decorated, and considerably jaded former Marine. It was the conspirators' earnest hope that their army of 500,000 Great War veterans, under the leadership of General Butler, could overpower the US' feeble peacetime military and reconstitute the government as a more economical fascist dictatorship...

...The credibility of MacGuire's claims was reinforced when he produced evidence of considerable cash resources and made some eerily accurate predictions regarding personnel changes in the White House. He also accurately described the still-secret but soon-to-be-announced American Liberty League, a high-profile group whose stated purpose was to "defend and uphold the Constitution." The League's principal players were comprised of wealthy Americans, including the leaders of DuPont, JP Morgan, US Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Colgate, Heinz Foods, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire. There are some who claim that Prescott Bush– father to the 41st US President and grandfather to the 43rd– was also entangled in the scheme.

On 22 August 1934, upon his return from a fact-finding trip to Europe, Gerald MacGuire dropped all pretense when he met with General Butler at an empty hotel restaurant. He indicated that his financial backers aimed to assemble an army of half a million disgruntled veterans, sown from the seeds of the original Bonus Army. He also stated that the group would like Butler to be the leader of this force. "We've got three million [dollars] to start with on the line," MacGuire claimed, "and we can get three hundred million if we need it." ...

...In the autumn of 1934, General Smedley "Old Duckboard" Butler finally sprang into action. A crowd of journalists surrounded him as he addressed the nation in a press conference. But the General did not demand the surrender of the United States government. Instead, he related to the reporters the details of the secret pro-fascist plot, and described the principal players. "The upshot of the whole thing," he explained, "was that I was supposed to lead an organization of five hundred thousand men which would be able to take over the functions of government." The Old Gimlet Eye, it turned out, had been playing along with Gerald MacGuire in order to glean information about the plot. Though Smedley Butler had indeed grown weary of being a government-sponsored "gangster for capitalism," he was still a true patriot. Butler's associate– Paul Comly French– was in actuality an undercover reporter for the Philadelphia Record and New York Evening Post. The two men testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), delighted to disclose all they had gathered from MacGuire. Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander James Van Zandt also testified, stating that he had likewise been approached to lead such a march on Washington.

The Wikipedia article points to a web page with more details and names:

... Who were the men making up this organization? There was, of course, its chairman, Jouett Shouse, a GM executive, former chairman of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party, and former president of the Association against the Prohibition Amendment. Then there were Alfred E. Smith and John W. Davis, former Democratic presidential candidates; Congressman James W. Wadsworth (who would eventually become the father-in-law of Sen. Stuart Symington); Nathan Miller, a director of U.S. Steel and a one-time governor of New York; John Rascob, another GM executive and former Democratic national chairman; Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., head of General Motors; Ernest T. Weir of Weirton Steel; Dr. Samuel Hardey Church, head of the Carnegie Institute; David A. Reed, former Republican senator from Pennsylvania; Hal Roach, motion picture producer; Sewell Avery of Montgomery Ward; Joseph B. Ely, former Democratic governor of Massachusetts; Howard Pew of Sun Oil; James Beck, constitutional authority; and the Du Pont brothers—Irenee, Lammot, and Pierre.

Nice to see Sloan was into all kinds of management improvements. Note the bipartisan membership, lots of people hated Roosevelt. I wonder what Kerry's wife might have heard about the Heinz family connection, but I doubt GWB will tell us much about his grandfather's role.

There's one book mentioned, but, best of all, there's a BBC History broadcast (7/23/2007) you can listen to, or much better, turn it into a podcast:

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

Thomson is asking the right question, the curious thing about this story is how little curiosity there's been about it. Well, maybe the time is right to learn more ...

DI is really a great blog ...

Update 9/25/07: I've finished listening to the BBC History broadcast (7/23/2007). It's not bad, but it suffers from melodramatic narratives, faux suspense, and cloying music. Clearly the BBC History shows are not quite in the same league as "In Our Time". The connection to GWB's grandfather, Prescott Bush, is pretty weak. PB was employed by a company that allied itself with Nazi Germany and had a connection to the people who organized the quasi-fascist Liberty Alliance, but that's all they mentioned. The Heinz, Dupont, JP Morgan, Sloane, etc connections to the Liberty Alliance stronger are stronger; they were probably fascist sympathizers back when that meant a corporate-government union rather than Auschwitz.

The national archives on the affair are remarkably slender, and it does appear that a significant part of Smedley-Butlers testimony was excluded -- indeed, the chair of the "House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities", then chaired by John McCormack (presumably a democrat) and Samuel Dickstein (republican?) admitted as much. The details were to be kept secret pending a full investigation, but that investigation never happened. No record is available now of anything but Butler's accusations, and the NYT article (see below) hints that Butler didn't have any physical or corroborating evidence.

There's a possibly historically significant twist to this. It's plausible that Roosevelt used the bad publicity, and the Liberty Alliance connections, to arm twist force Morgan, Heinz, Dupon, Sloane et al to cooperate with the "New Deal". One wonders if he could have pushed through the New Deal without that leverage. If so, then it's plausible that an american-fascist plot was key to the success of Roosevelt's New Deal, and thus, arguably, to the defeat of Hitler's empire ....

Here's the coverage from the NYT archives for Nov 21, 1934:

Gen. Butler Bares 'Fascist Plot' To Seize Government by Force; Says Bond Salesman, as Representative of Wall St. Group, Asked Him to Lead Army of 500,000 in March on Capital -- Those Named Make Angry Denials -- Dickstein Gets Charge. GEN. BUTLER BARES A 'FASCIST PLOT'
November 21, 1934, Wednesday

A plot of Wall Street interests to overthrow President Roosevelt and establish a Fascist dictatorship, backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, was charged by Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired Marine Corps officer, who appeared yesterday before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, which began hearings on the charges.

The fully NYT (PDF) article has more details:

• MacGuire was a bond salesman for Grayson M.P. Murphy & Co, I think Grayson was supposed to have created the Liberty Alliance.
• General Hugh Hackson, an NRA administrator was alleged to be the dictator in waiting
  
• JP Morgan and Co was supposed to be leading donors
• Only the two chairs of the House committee heard the testimony

Reading the NYT article today it feels as though the uncredited journalist was a bit skeptical ...