As you know by now, Republicans had a bad Election Day last week, but how bad? Well, Democrats did better than expected everywhere and liberals won the day on issues up to voters:. Here’s a quick review of what happened:
-President Obama was re-elected, and, well, it didn’t end up being that close really. He won the electoral vote 332-206 and 51% of the popular vote.
-Democrats gained two seats in Senate (Senators-Elect Elizabeth Warren and Joe Donnelly of Massachuseets and Indiana, respectively) and kept their current seats except for Nebraska. However, Independent candidate Angus King of Maine won and is expected to caucus with the Democrats. That would bring their number from 53 to 55. A pretty good showing given they were expected to lose seats and possibly the majority in this election cycle.
-House Democrats also had a net gain of seats, though the total number is not known yet with some races still uncalled. Some of the most notable winners were former Reps. Alan Grayson and Carol-Shea Porter who return after losing in 2010, Patrick Murphy (defeating crazy Rep. Allen West), Tammy Duckworth (defeating crazy Rep. Joe Walsh), and our own Pete Gallego (taking back Ciro Rodriguez’s seat).
-Texas Democrats also scored other major victories: a net gain of 7 seats in the Texas House and Sen. Wendy Davis winning re-election, denying Republicans supermajorities that can suspend the rules in both chambers.
-Democrats also did well in other state legislative races, gaining majorities in the Colorado House, Maine House, Maine Senate, Minnesota House, Minnesota Senate, New Hampshire House, New York Senate and Oregon House; and gaining super-majorities in the California Assembly, California Senate, Illinois House and Illinois Senate. Expected to do a lot worse, Democrats only lost one gubernatorial seat in North Carolina.
-Lastly, progressive ballot initiatives also passed across the country: voters legalized same-sex marriage in Maine, Maryland, and Washington state and a proposed ban in Minnesota failed, Colorado and Washington approved decriminalizing marijuana and Massachusetts approved it for medical use, an anti-Affordable Care Act initiative failed in Florida, and California voted to ease their ‘three-strikes law’ and do away with the two-thirds rule to raise taxes.
(Disclaimer: Though originally published on October 29th, this post was not viewable until today due to web server issues, so it has been updated.)
Just 24 hours until Election Day, Nate Silver’s model currently shows while the race is very tight nationally, President Obama has an 91% chance of winning the electoral college (and thus, re-election). Democrats also seem to have the early voting advantage.
Five Thirty Eight also shows Democrats have a 95% chance of retaining the Senate, with the possibility of a net gain given Richard Mourdock’s crazy rape comments and the Nebraska race looking closer than thought. The House seems sure to stay under Republican control (though Dems will gain some seats), so Congress will be divided no matter who wins the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans will likely add to their majority of governorships. No one seems to have a prediction for who will hold the majority of state legislatures, but Democrats likely face redistricting hurdles.
Lastly, here’s a look at some of the most important state ballot measures across the country.
Hey Texans, early voting starts today! It runs through Friday, November 2nd (Election Day is Tuesday, November 6th). You can find out where to vote here.
While the presidential race may be the most exciting, we know that we Texans will have very little influence on the outcome given the electoral college. And not all of us live in competitive congressional or state legislative district either, but all of our votes are important in the statewide races:
-I’ve mentioned Paul Sadler before. He’s the Democratic candidate running against Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz to replace Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. To say he is an underdog would be an understatement, but he has (shockingly) been endorsed by both the Dallas Morning News and Fort-Worth Star Telegram, which should given his campaign some needed attention.
-State papers are also endorsing Keith Hampton, a Democrat who is running for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, where the death penalty has become a major issue against Republican incumbent Sharon “we close at 5″ Keller. He has (again, shockingly) been endorsed by the DMN, Star-Telegram, Houston Chronicle, and was the only Democrat endorsed by the San Angelo Standard-Times.
Also, since I live in Denton, I’m going to give a shout out to to Mary Brown and David Sanchez, Democrats running against State Rep. Myra Cronover and Congressman Michael Burgess, respectively.
Go vote!
Mitt Romney got a bounce after the first debate, but the polls seem to again be stabilizing. With less than a month to go before Election Day, President Obama is more or less where he was prior to the Democratic convention (still over a 70% chance of winning, according to the Five Thirty Eight model).
While the presidential race has tightened, the Senate races continue to look better than expected for Democrats. Retaining control now seems most likely even if they lose some seats, with an outside possibility of a net gain. Democrats will likely gain House seats, but most are skeptical that they can get the 25 needed for Rep. Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker again. That is also the same situation with the Texas House, but perhaps with more significant consequences:
Ninety-nine of the 150 seats in the Texas House are virtually uncontested, but the fight is on for the remaining 51 districts, with Democrats intent on whittling away at the Republican supermajority that ramrodded through legislation last year.
House rules require a quorum of 100 lawmakers to do business, and with 101 Republicans last year, Democrats could only use parliamentary procedure to slow down their conservative agenda. Lawmakers can suspend rules, including the Texas Constitution, with a two-thirds majority. But with new House districts drawn to reflect the 2010 census, Republicans will likely lose their supermajority and their ability to work unchallenged.
Lastly, there’s not much on the gubernatorial races. Dems look likely to lose at least 1 seat, fighting to keep two others.
With less than six weeks to go until Election Day (and early voting already starting in some states), Nate Silver at the Five Thirty Eight blog is now predicting President Obama has an 80% chance of winning the Electoral College. Democrats also now have a 70% chance of retaining control of the Senate (no official forecast on the House, but most observers think it will be difficult for Democrats to win enough seats for a takeover, but things could shift as they did with the Senate outlook). First Read released their Senate rankings today:
*** First Read’s Top 10 Senate takeovers:
1. Nebraska (D): Unlike the other Dems running, Bob Kerrey is getting no traction
2. Maine (R): This is no longer a slam dunk for Angus King
3. Montana (D): Why Montana over North Dakota? Tester is an incumbent with a record
4. North Dakota (D): See above
5. Massachusetts (R): This is the nastiest race in the country right now
6. Wisconsin (D): Who would you rather be — Tommy Thompson or George Allen? We think you’d rather be Thompson
7. Virginia (D): See above
8. Nevada (R): Demographics and Obama vs. Romney are keeping Berkley in the race
9. Connecticut (D): McMahon is running perhaps the best challenger race in the country
10. Indiana (R): Will Mourdock have to beg Dick Lugar to do a final TV ad?
*** The rest (in order): Ohio (D), Florida (D), New Mexico (D), Missouri (D), Arizona (R), Hawaii (D), New Jersey (D), Michigan (D), Pennsylvania (D), Texas (R). Note: As of now, we don’t expect these races to flip, but they do suggest where the winning side might not crack 60%.
The fact that Missouri is out of the top ten is one big reason Republicans are no longer favored to win control, and is entirely attributable to Rep. Todd Akin’s shocking and ridiculous “legitimate rape” comments.
As for Texas, if you don’t know much about the Democratic candidate Paul Sadler, here is his website. He may be a long shot, but he needs your support!
Well, I don’t have it, so if that’s what you came for, sorry. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, catch up by reading this (and if you don’t know who Warren is, read this). The short version is that at some point she claimed Cherokee heritage and her opponent Scott Brown decided to make it an issue by claiming that she doesn’t. Frankly, I don’t think it’s likely that she does. So many people claim Cherokee heritage that mostly we Cherokees just laugh it off. Her “high cheekbones” remark is about par for the course in my experience. The phenomenon is a constant irritant, but basically we have more important things to do than worry about all the wannabes.
But let’s go back to the controversy. I want you to think about why it would matter whether she’s Indian or not. I honestly couldn’t begin to tell you how many people in the US actually believe they have Indian blood, but I do know that a substantial quantity claim it. As for why, I’ll let that be addressed by other people. In itself, the idea that a white person is erroneously claiming Native heritage is not surprising. Many White Americans have a legend of a Native ancestor, and quite often it’s specifically Cherokee. As to why it’s that particular tribe, it’s impossible to say for certain but there’s a decent answer posited in this book. So it should be clear that it’s really not even uncommon for Whites to claim Indian blood that they don’t have. Most of the time, this does not become the source of a huge controversy, and yet this time, when that claim got mixed up with politics, it did. I have nothing to say about the woman’s heritage, but if you want to read about the current status of the controversy on that, look here.
Again, the question is why it’s a source of controversy. It’s not that the conservatives who object to Warren would like her more if she was Indian, nor would they like her less (since that’s impossible). No, it stems from the fact that they believe she used a false claim to further her career. But do you notice what that assumption says? It rests on the other assumption that being a Native American confers special privileges. I can’t even begin to say how wrong that idea is. On the bare face of it, if Affirmative Action could elevate moderately talented and intelligent public school graduates to Harvard professors, I’d be a Harvard professor! And yet the conserva-wackos firmly believe that racial politics would somehow cause an American Indian to be elevated far above their station. I’ll leave this link here and you can read that idiocy for yourself if you want to, but let me summarize it for you: “Minorities get unfair promotions, preferential hiring, and are treated like gods by stupid liberals”.
I can assure you that such privileges do not exist, but let me go back specifically to Warren. From this article in The Atlantic:
The head of the committee that brought Warren to Harvard Law School said talk of Native American ties was not a factor in recruiting her to the prestigious institution. Reported the Boston Herald in April in its first story on Warren’s ancestry claim: “Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn’t recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.
“‘It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn’t mention it to the faculty,’ he said.”
He repeated himself this week, telling the Herald: “In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, the story continues to circulate that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed some kind of affirmative action leg-up in her hiring as a full professor by the Harvard Law School. The innuendo is false.”
“I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned,” he added.
That view was echoed by Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who voted to tenure Warren and was also involved in recruiting her.
“Elizabeth Warren’s heritage had absolutely no role in the decision to recruit her to Harvard Law School,” he told the Crimson. “Our decision was entirely based on her extraordinary expertise and legendary teaching ability. This whole dispute is fabricated out of whole cloth and has no connection to reality.”
And that’s the second arena where an absence of evidence should have some weight. If there’s no easily located evidence that Warren has Native American ancestry, there’s also no evidence Warren used her family story to boost herself into a Harvard job.
Now that’s a defense of Warren specifically, but in general, the fact of a person’s ancestry never does play any role in whether they get a job that they “don’t deserve” (although it’s for damn sure a factor in making sure they don’t get jobs they do deserve). The irony of this situation is that in fact, Harvard hired yet another White applicant, when they actually could have been performing some affirmative action and been out there recruiting a Native American. I can’t understand how the conservatives who are up in arms over this “scandal” can’t even see the idiocy of their position. They’re arguing that via affirmative action, a woman who falsely claimed Native American status was hired when the fact that Harvard hired a White woman basically proves that they weren’t even looking for a Native American! That’s how ridiculous it is to believe that she got an unfair advantage over her White competitors!
I don’t think I can reiterate this point enough: our race does not gain us preferential treatment. It simply does not, unless you count preferential treatment in being hired by The Cherokee Nation to work at a casino. If it did, would we not be in more academic positions we hadn’t earned? Would we not be executives in more corporations? I sure wish I knew how to take advantage of this privilege of mine and get rich without earning it!
PS. The Local Crank has written a great speech Elizabeth Warren can use for free that would help her extract herself from this situation more gracefully.
I was reading this article about a small publishing company which decided to reject Amazon and I felt that while some of the concerns with Amazon’s price-dropping model were addressed, the entire issue really wasn’t covered. Obviously, if you haven’t read the latest news about Apple and the DOJ’s antitrust charges, you should go ahead and read a little background information on that before getting into this.
To summarize this article, a small publisher got tired of competing with Amazon for sales when Amazon could sell the books much more cheaply by willingly taking a loss (or even just a smaller profit) on them when the small publisher can’t do the same without going out of business. The problem for this particular publisher of children’s books is that they tend to rely on face-to-face sales (“book parties” I guess) and their model simply can’t compete with Amazon, so they’ve decided that they’re not going to. Since they import these books from the UK, they’ll sell them on their own and make a larger profit on fewer sales, I guess. I suppose this is supposed to be similar to the plight of many small bookstores today (and even some not so small) and how they cannot compete with Amazon on pricing when Amazon is willing to take a loss on just about any book sale. This links back to the recent antitrust action against Apple in that Amazon is willing to undersell the physical copies of the books with the e-book version. Obviously, this hurts the publishers and bookstores. Bookstores lose the cut of the sales they would have made in a physical sale, and publishers lose the higher profit they would have made on a hardback sale vs. the e-book sale that actually was made. And yes, it should be noted that the publisher is getting a cut either way. It’s just less of a cut.
The number one victim here is real bookstores. I’ve read people on many news articles before now lamenting the loss of this beloved institution. One commenter on the NY Times article linked above has this to say about the tradeoff: “I live in a college town, a big college town. The last independent book store closed some years ago. Yes, I can have things ‘drop shipped’ to me in a jiffy, but the loss of the last bookstore for our community has been felt on all kinds of levels. In a town like ours, the bookstore is a destination, a place for book clubs and speakers, for authors and readers to meet.” It’s true that Amazon does not provide these services, nor can they (at least, not in their current business model). If you are a dedicated reader, bookstores must hold some special place in your heart for giving such an inviting space to browse all those new releases and things like magazines that the library never seems to have enough of. But honestly, even though I’m a three or four book a month (plus magazines, plus online news, etc, etc) kind of reader, I’m not looking with despair upon the destruction of the bookstore as we know it.
First off, let’s get some history out of the way. It just occurred to me that some readers (if I have any) will be too young to remember the days before big-box bookstores. As much as we enjoyed Borders or Barnes & Noble, one should keep in mind that they were the Target and Wal-Mart (respectively) of bookstores (although ironically, it’s B&N that actually came from Target). In a nutshell, Kmart (man, remember that?) which was then ascendant, was already in the book market with Waldenbooks (and do you remember when they were selling Apple computers in their mall stores?) and acquired Borders in order to merge the two in the hopes that Borders would manage to pull the struggling chain up. Most of the stores were either closed as Borders expanded its big-box stores into more markets, or rebranded as Borders Express. A similar story occurred with B&N. They bought up the B. Dalton’s stores that Dayton (which became Target) spun off. But see, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton weren’t independent, small bookstores. They were mall chains. People didn’t necessarily see their introduction as a good thing, since they drove truly independent bookstores under with their aggressive underselling. Does this story sound familiar? Yes, I’m making the point that people are lamenting the decline of the thing that destroyed actual independent bookstores. I liked Borders Books because they typically had a really good selection of manga and comics. I might occasionally go into B&N just to browse and I might pick something up.
But let’s face it, bookselling in America had become incredibly corporatized already, and that wasn’t altogether a bad thing. Those attacking Amazon as an evil corporation either have no memory of having said the same thing about about Borders and B&N, or they’re hypocrites (granted that one reason some have no memory of it is because they aren’t old enough to remember that era). But that’s not my point. My point is that for those saying that Amazon becoming a monopoly will lead to controlling what you read, the old bookstores did that to a far worse degree than Amazon ever could or would. Way back in the day when there were a lot more little bookstores out there, they could all be niche stores because none of them could compete for all the customer, but most of them carried the same stuff they all thought would sell. The respectable ones like B. Dalton and Waldenbooks did carry some books on sexuality, but finding more than two non-fiction titles on LGBT issues would be a challenge, and finding any erotica like they have for the straight ladies (because let’s be real, that’s what most of the romance books are) that was not for straight people would be even harder. There were actually bookstores that serviced those different populations, but you were out of luck if you lived out in the boonies. There were no “alternative” bookstores in East Texas towns like there were in Dallas. Aside from that, there were quite a few books you just wouldn’t find if you went to most bookstores because there weren’t that many people to buy them. Books on UFOs, sure, but books by atheists about atheism? Not so much. Borders and B&N came in and it was like a revolution! Suddenly you could find tons of books for sale on tons of topics that you’d never seen before! Sure, there was far too much self-help material, but that was offset by being able to find a hundred or two sci-fi novels you’d never heard of. It was a great alternative to having to mail-order books that you selected in a catalog you had mailed to you (yes, young people, we used to actually send in our orders via mail with a little check or money-order included). I read a very relevant passage in a Wired article recently, so if you’ll allow me a rather extensive quote from an interview with Marc Andreessen:
My bet is that the positive effects will far outweigh the negatives. Think about Borders, the bookstore chain. Amazon drove Borders out of business, and the vast majority of Borders employees are not qualified to work at Amazon. That’s an actual, full-on problem. But should Amazon have been prevented from doing that? In my view, no. Because it’s so much better to live in a world where that happened, it’s so much better to live in a world where Amazon is ascendant. I told you that my childhood bookstore was something you had to drive an hour to get to. But it was a Waldenbooks, and it was, like, 800 square feet, and it sold almost nothing that you would actually want to read. It’s such a better world where we have Amazon, where everything is universally available. They’re a force for human progress and culture and economics in a way that Borders never was.
Now this sounds like a good story to me. But what other people felt is that the personal connection they’d had to their little neighborhood bookstore and bookstore owner and employees was gone. The big-box stores just couldn’t replace that level of interaction and personal knowledge. It was like going from a Safeway to a Sack n’ Save. I don’t care about that kind of thing, and at the time it seemed like most people who bought books didn’t either, because most of the small independent bookstores disappeared, except for niche (like comic book) or used bookstores. People loved the variety and the prices when the store put something on sale. Not to mention that going to Borders just made you feel like one of the cool people.
But enough reminiscing; here we are now where few bookstores are left standing, either major or minor chains. Most have succumbed to the economic pressures of e-books (which mainly means Amazon, although not exclusively) and the recession. Barnes & Noble remains, although no one knows for how long. It turns out that people love low prices and convenience so much that they would forgo the pleasures of perusing the shelves in a physical bookstore for the chance to either order a book online or achieve instant gratification with an e-book they download to their Kindle (or Nook or iPad or Kobo). Since Amazon has been vastly more successful at establishing themselves in the e-book market than either of these competitors (much less Sony), they have already established a near monopoly on the market.
Many people writing about Amazon argue that readers will ultimately be hurt by Amazon’s predatory practices. One argument goes that after Amazon establishes their monopoly and crushes the competition, then they will jack up the prices and consumers will be stuck with higher prices than before as there is no competitive pressure to bring them down. Another argument is that if publishers are strangled, the all-important process of editing will cease to be. We’ll be left with a sea of self-published crap to wade through in a vain effort to find the true gems we should be reading. Another argument is that without anyone else selling books, Amazon alone will decide what we read. There are others, but I’m not going to bother listing them all. Refuting them individually isn’t what I aim to do so it doesn’t matter.
I perceive two main camps of those who are unhappy with Amazon’s business model. The first camp is angry that they’re driving real bookstores into the ground with their low profit margins. Amazon can undersell its competitors in books because it makes a profit on quite a lot of non-book merchandise. That’s not really an option for bookstores (certainly didn’t work for Borders). Those who desire face-to-face customer service want the experience of going to a real bookstore. I would assume they’re not the kind of people who go for self checkout at the grocery store either. I can’t criticize this motivation. The customer is free to want what they want, of course. Unfortunately, the days of ubiquitous bookstores may be coming to a close, and hardbacks may become a specialty market. The low price of the direct-to-door model that Amazon has seems to be winning over the majority of book buyers, and I doubt anything can reverse that trend (except possibly for Americans suddenly having a lot more cash to spend). It may be that bookstores that sell new books to the lower-income market will go the way of the dinosaur while used bookstores and Amazon take up the slack in that market, with other bookstores specializing in catering to upscale markets where the customer is paying as much for the experience as the item.
The second camp of unhappy non-Amazon fans are those who are concerned for the publishers. While I don’t feel that the ease of self-publishing e-books is a bad thing, the truth is that the more books are out there, the more you need people who dedicate all their time to bringing you good books. Right now, I think it’s fair to say that publishers are still focused on doing that with paper books. Thinking about the time before the internet and before everybody had access to a computer, publishers were basically responsible in every way for getting all books out to readers. Now, there were definitely more books being written than every got published, but they weren’t all good and worth reading. Or, at least, they weren’t worth reading to almost all readers. Occasionally, some of these terrible books got through, but the publishers had to pick and choose because it would have been impossible to print them all. They had to be printed in sufficient numbers to make the cost of producing them worth it, so they had to print one book a hundred-thousand times and couldn’t print a hundred-thousand books one time. The technology did not make this possible. Of course, this meant that the publishers were trying to pick the books out that would be read by the most people and sometimes they were successful. But at the same time as they were doing this for commercial purposes, it often resulted in fantastically good books getting out to the masses. You can’t look at this as some kind of evil thing, it’s simply the nature of mass production.
It is now possible for anyone to “publish” their own work, even if it’s only on a person’s own website. There are millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people writing books every year. It seems like at least half the people I know consider themselves to be writers, even if they haven’t been published. This may, occasionally, result in a work like Fifty Shades of Grey, which began life as a Twilight fanfic. This particular example also illustrates the particular power of e-books, as evidently people felt more free to download it than to actually pick it up as a book. If the crowd can do that, what do we need with publishers? I don’t know, but I do think that the publishers can certainly find some way to use their expertise to remain a vital part of the process. I mean, right now, there are people publishing fanfics of just about every fictional world you can think of. Pokemon, Dragonball Z, Star Trek, Star Wars, every TV show you can think of, it’s all out there. That stuff isn’t going to be successful, but I’m betting a lot of people think that if they just change some names, they’ve got a real book. Fifty Shades is an early success, but I know that others are going to be attempting to take advantage of the same phenomenon. Right now, there is no central clearinghouse of user-submitted fiction. There might be some websites attempting to take that on (I don’t know and I haven’t looked for such), but they’re not there yet. Amazon has a lot of stuff, but frankly, they’re not that great at pushing any of it to me. And so, as an individual wading through a sea of self-published internet books, when someone does invent some way for individual writers to submit all those books and for individual readers to look at them, I’m pretty sure at least 50% of the stuff recommended to me will be Star Trek fanfic (and I’m completely uninterested in reading about Kirk and Spock melding more than their minds).
If anything, publishers can still be play the role of getting the product to me that I’m interested in. Masses of people reading the same book doesn’t mean it’ll appeal to me, and I’m too turned off by bad prose to appreciate anything but a work of genius if it’s poorly written (an example is The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson; some really bad writing with an incredible vision). Anyway, it’s up to the publishers to figure out how to be middle-men in an era when there’s not really any barrier between a writer and a reader. But I think someone has to be there to point readers in the right direction and to help writers write better. Sometimes the writer actually needs some critical input into their work, and frankly, Perkins’ editing of Thomas Wolfe in Look Homeward, Angel resulted in that being a better book than the sequels. I don’t think that kind of constructive editing can really ever be done away with, and I hope we don’t eventually live in a world where we only get raw, unedited works from authors.
The last point is, I think, made perfectly by Andreessen (whom I quoted in the above article):
Anderson: One last question for you. Software eating the world is dematerialization, in some sense: These sectors of the economy get transformed into coding problems. But I’m wondering whether there is an economic path by which dematerialization leads to demonetization—where the efficiency of the software sucks economic value out of the whole system. Take Craigslist, for example: For every million that Craigslist made, it took a billion out of the newspaper industry. If you transform these big, inefficient industries in such a way that the value all accrues to a smaller software company, what’s the broad economic impact?
Andreessen: When Milton Friedman was asked about this kind of thing, he said: Human wants and needs are infinite, and so there will always be new industries, there will always be new professions. This is the great sweep of economic history. When the vast majority of the workforce was in agriculture, it was impossible to imagine what all those people would do if they didn’t have agricultural jobs. Then a hundred years later the vast majority of the workforce was in industrial jobs, and we were similarly blind: It was impossible to imagine what workers would do without those jobs. Now the majority are in information jobs. If the computers get smart enough, then what? I’ll tell you: The then what is whatever we invent next.
It’s not Amazon’s fault that they’re putting bookstores out of business. That’s the face of the changing landscape of bookselling. They’re profiting from the introduction of disruptive new technology. Nor is it their problem to figure out what all those people are going to do. I certainly hate to see anyone losing a job these days, but there aren’t too many flint-knappers around either, and we’re not complaining. The world moves on.
The biggest idea that I want to get through to readers is that the rise of Amazon doesn’t imply some monopoly on books. For one thing, as soon as publishers get over their obsession with DRM, anyone’s website can become a bookstore. It’ll be as much about the experience you want to have as going to a physical bookstore is now. It’s just that people haven’t realized yet that this is a game anyone, and I mean anyone can get involved with. Publishers’ obsession with copyright control is what’s tying them to booksellers like B&N and Amazon, and that’s a choice they’re making. You know how bullies will taunt kids with the whole “quit hitting yourself” routine? Well, it’s like that, except in this case the kids are grabbing the bully’s hands and making him hit them in the face! Why can’t you buy a third party e-reader and buy books through direct download from the publisher’s site? It’s because they want DRM on there. If Amazon can kill bookstores by underselling them on hardbacks, publishers can just as easily strangle Amazon by underselling them on e-books. But do they? Nope, for the above reason.
Printed books will never die. The business model may be completely different from the way it is now, but there’s no way books will ever just completely disappear, and as soon as publishers catch up to the 21st century and start making their books available via Print on Demand, people will be able to have any book they want any time they want it. But whether they do or not, we should recognize we’re embarking on an age when more information will be available to more people than ever before. As a reader, I do believe that knowledge is power, and that if it’s a hell of a lot easier to get masses of e-books out to students in Africa than it is to ship them millions of physical textbooks, then that is how we ought to be getting books to them.
The method by which books get to us is simply a product of the age we live in. It always was, and it always will be. Some day, there will be something beyond the internet. Some day, people may wonder why our “books” have no sound or video embedded in them. Would we hold the people of the future back from having more knowledge (thus more power) than we did? I don’t like that vision of the world. I can’t tell you not to mourn the passing of bookstores, but I can tell you not to mourn the passing of books, as they have not died nor are they in any danger of it, and that is a fact we should be rejoicing in.
I don’t typically care for psychological portraits that purport to explain someone’s political beliefs or motivations, but somehow I found this dissection of conservative activist Maggie Gallagher’s anti-gay marriage a compelling read. There’s no short blurb worth excerpting really, but if you find yourself wondering how Gallagher can write some of the things she writes, I encourage you to read the article in full. Take it all with a grain of salt (it is psychological exploration after all) but the article is well-researched, and compassionately written. Strangely it has had the affect of making me more sympathetic of Gallagher (though not of her positions, which I find mostly revolting.) It’s hard to be completely sympathetic of someone who would deny others freedoms because they themselves have no appreciation of those freedoms though, and as always it’s difficult for me to understand political inclinations that are premised on entirely irrational beliefs. Still, an overall interesting read.
Ex-government officials are being paid to shill for terrorists in D.C. This isn’t exactly news, except in the sense that the issue has come to light again because of reports that Israeli intelligence is sponsoring Iranian terrorists who are in turn assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists on behalf of Israel (and, ahem, us.) From the Huffington Post article I link to above:
The MEK’s delisting campaign is funded by a fluid and enigmatic network of support groups based in the United States. According to an MEK leader, these groups are funded by money from around the world, which they deliberately shield from U.S. authorities. These domestic groups book and pay for their VIP speakers through speaker agencies, which in turn pay the speakers directly and take a fee for arranging appearances. That way, the speakers themselves don’t technically accept money from the community groups. If they did, they might discover what their speaker agents surely know: That most of the groups are run by ordinary, middle-class Iranian Americans working out of their homes — people who seem unlikely to have an extra few hundred thousand dollars laying around to pay speaker fees and book five-star hotels to bolster the MEK’s cause.
The speakers are just the type of national-security heavyweights a plaintiff terrorist organization needs. In addition to those named above, the commissioned figureheads include Obama’s recently-departed National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones; former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; onetime State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow and former CIA directors Porter Goss and James R. Woolsey.
Retired military officers are popular — former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark and former Commander in Chief of United States Central Command Gen. Anthony Zinni have both addressed MEK groups. Yet more speakers appear to have been chosen for their deep political ties, such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former New Mexico Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and former 9/11 Commission Chairman Lee Hamilton.
Oh, and Howard Dean.
Now, giving speeches on behalf of a group that is officially designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department is apparently not considered “material” support of terrorism (perhaps because the terrorists are actually supporting Dean et al.?) Greenwald (link above) however, lists a few things that are considered material support by the U.S. government:
A Staten Island satellite TV salesman in 2009 wassentenced to five years in federal prison merely for including a Hezbollah TV channel as part of the satellite package he sold to customers; a Massachusetts resident, Tarek Mehanna, is being prosecuted now ”for posting pro-jihadist material on the internet”; a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, Jubair Ahmad, was indicted last September for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube that was highly critical of U.S. actions in the Muslim world, an allegedly criminal act simply because prosecutors claim he discussed the video in advance with the son of a leader of a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba); a Saudi Arabian graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was prosecuted simply for maintaining a website with links “to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel” and “jihadist” sites that solicited donations for extremist groups (he was ultimately acquitted); and last July, a 22-year-old former Penn State student and son of an instructor at the school, Emerson Winfield Begolly, was indicted for — in the FBI’s words — “repeatedly using the Internet to promote violent jihad against Americans” by posting comments on a “jihadist” Internet forum including “a comment online that praised the shootings” at a Marine Corps base, action which former Obama lawyer Marty Lederman said “does not at first glance appear to be different from the sort of advocacy of unlawful conduct that is entitled to substantial First Amendment protection.”
So remember that kids; the First Amendment only comes into play when you’re being paid to speak on someone’s behalf.
We must also remember, as Daniel Larison helpfully points out, that terrorism is only TERRORISM (and not “terrorism”) when it’s being conducted by someone we don’t like against someone we do like. When it’s by someone we do like against someone we don’t like, then it’s…not terrorism:
…Israeli state sponsorship of a terrorist group is acceptable because it’s in a good cause. Tobin assures us that this is not just any old cynical “ends justify the means” argument. No, according to him this is “an entirely defensible strategy in which a vicious and tyrannical government’s foes become legitimate allies in what is for all intents and purposes a war.” Never mind that it is “for all intents and purposes a war” because the Israeli government is supporting acts of terrorism against Iranian civilians. Tobin is saying that it would be “immoral” not to partner with a terrorist group to kill Iranian scientists.
In related depressing matters, a plurality of Americans believe that we are justified in attacking Iran to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. A plurality isn’t a majority, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that number has crept up and will continue to creep up as we here more and more about the “danger” of Iran in the media, and as more political figures make hay out the issue to score points in the election season. All this makes sense intuitively, but step back for a moment and just marvel at our astonishing and casual arrogance. Following an entirely unjustified and failed war in Iraq, and in the midst of a difficult and unresolved war in Afghanistan, and with our economy in a delicate and uncertain recovery, there is a large percentage of Americans who think that the wisdom of striking Iran is inarguable. The consequences don’t merit consideration, it is beneath us to consider whether there are non-violent alternatives to ending Iran’s nuclear program, and to consider whether we even have the moral right to strike Iran, and kill hundreds or thousands of Iranians over weapons that will almost certainly never be used against us, is practically un-American. Honestly, it makes me wonder what it must be like to live in a country that doesn’t think (or, God forbid, doesn’t even have the option) to solve its national security issues with force.
February 8th, 2012 Diplomacy
The arguments against striking Iran are pretty persuasive. What should we be doing instead? I think this is a pretty good summary of the diplomatic approach we should be taking:
Iran’s objectives for weaponizing (were they to do so) –becoming a stronger regional force and deterring a conventional military attack–would be better addressed diplomatically. Unlike a military strike, deft diplomacy could move Tehran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Association. While this would allow Iranian enrichment activity to continue, it is the best way to ensure Iran does not arm. In other words, destroying nuclear facilities would address the symptoms while worsening the underlying disease. In order to prevent Iran from weaponizing, U.S. policymakers will need to address Tehran’s motives.
In addition to normalizing economic relations, Washington could reintegrate Iran into the international community, push for Iran’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, and provide security support to compensate for the lost deterrence capability. More meetings with Iran won’t generate a good campaign slogan for Obama, but bargaining has worked.
In 2003, Libya opened up its nuclear program to IAEA inspectors in exchange for full reintegration into the international community and normalization of economic relations. NATO intervention following the 2011 Libyan uprising, and subsequent ousting of Qadaffi, might not have been possible had Tripoli succeeded in weaponizing. Several other countries, including South Africa and Brazil, gave up their programs peacefully with a mix of incentives and international pressure. There is no guarantee, given the current rift between sitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as the lessons Tehran’s leadership likely drew from Qaddafi’s abandonment of Libya’s weapons program, that Iranians would be receptive. But we will never know until we try.
She also notes that unfortunately, like Vali Nasr, that little of this is viable in an election year. That does not mean however that a strike on Iran, by us or Israel, is necessarily inevitable, or that it must happen prior to the elections. If we can get through the rest of the year, a re-elected Obama might be willing to give this effort another go once it becomes apparent that sanctions will not force Iran to abandon it’s nuclear program. One can hope at least.
