Pittsburgh Conspiracy Theory: Have We a Winner?

On Sunday, while commenting on the Pittsburgh cop killings, I speculated that it would be but a matter of time before someone opined that the suspect was some sort of agent provocateur or government plant, and that the entire incident was staged (as some people believe the 2001 hijackings were) to further some insidious government agenda. My unscientific method of monitoring such an outbreak was to Google the phrase "agent provocateur" and the words "Pittsburgh" and "shooter." The search produced this result: a comment in response to an article on the reactionary Free Republic website, posted yesterday by someone known only as "pnh102." It's the tenth comment on the page.

I can't help but think that the Pittsburgh cop killer was an agent provocateur. Gun control doesn't pass unless there is violent gun crime perpetuated by whiteys immediately preceding it.

On the cockroach principle that, if you see one, there may be hundreds in your home, we could guess that many more people believe something like this.

Meanwhile, the Infowars website, alleged to be an inspiration to the shooter, claims vindication from a study showing that the shooter rarely posted comments on the site and had criticized it for being insufficiently anti-Zionist. But the fact that the shooter felt that Infowars and Prison Planet didn't go far enough in its analysis doesn't mean, as Jones's fans now want to assert, that he opposed the basic agenda of the site. We could just as easily say that they remained in fundamental agreement on the ills plaguing the country ("false flag" attacks in 2001, rule by bankers, etc.) while disagreeing on details of the diagnosis.I don't make the point in order to press any charge against Jones or his sites, but only to suggest that they're not as clearly off the hook as they'd like to think. I will say that if lies contribute to the mindset of a murderer and make him more likely to commit murder as an extreme form of "self-defense," the liars are accountable for lying in the first place, and more so if their lies aggravate other people's pathology to the point of murder. The issue isn't whether anybody programmed a certain person in Pittsburgh to kill people, but whether someone contributed to creating an intellectual environment that made killing more likely. Think about that.

The Confidence Party and the Conservative Opposition

Another intriguing issue of The American Conservative magazine arrived in my mailbox today. Along with an analysis of efforts by progressive Democrats to convert Senator Gillibrand from her "blue dog" moderate-conservative stance, the most interesting item is Sean Scallon's article in praise of Jimmy Carter. You don't expect to see that sort of story in a "conservative" magazine, but it's actually a sign of a self-styled conservatism's struggle to define itself in opposition to the allegedly conservative Republican party. Carter has actually received some positive reappraisals from the Conservative in the past, particularly for his foreign policy. Defending Carter is pretty daring for any conservative, since doing so is an implicit slap at Carter's nemesis and conservatism's supposed saint, Ronald Reagan. Scallon's piece is evidence that some conservatives have begun to question Reagan's legacy.

The author's real subject is Carter's so-called "Crisis of Confidence" speech from July 1978 -- also known (unfairly, Scallon notes) as the "Malaise" speech. This was the moment when Carter supposedly cut his own throat by daring to tell Americans to lower their expectations and live more modestly in order to conserve resources. In Scallon's view, it was an eminently conservative statement. He quotes Carter:

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

Scallon comments: "Self-sufficiency, discipline, sacrifice, conservation, independence, the striving for meaning and purpose beyond material wealth. All of these characteristics were once associated with conservatism." He seems to think they aren't any more. For this he blames Reagan.

Reagan is the face of modern "conservatism," the model Republicans are urged to emulate. According to Scallon, however, the victorious Reagan movement was "a synthesis between New Deal liberalism and nationalistic Cold War conservatism. Reagan never repudiated his four votes for Franklin Roosevelt and soon began gathering elements of the traditional New Deal coalition into his fold -- neo-conservatives; socially conservative Democrats of the Midwest, urban Catholic Northeast, and the Protestant South; and idealistic Kennedy Democrats who could not stomach the notion that a country that put a man on the moon should turn down the thermostat."

Note the sting in Scallon's analysis. The Reagan coalition "agreed on a nationalism that regarded an America with any kind of limits as a place that could never be American in any meaningful sense." Reagan himself "transform[ed] conservatism from a traditional doctrine of prudence, caution, and sustainability -- a tough sell politically -- into a highly marketable brand of American exceptionalism." The icon of so-called conservatism actually pandered to a "you can have it all" mentality inimical to real conservatism. As a result, under Reagan, "government grew, in part through a neat trick called supply-side economics in which the New Deal, the New Frontier and even the Great Society could be offered at low cost to taxpayers through massive levels of borrowing."

In effect, Scallon has committed heresy (from a Republican perspective) by calling Reagan (in effect) a heretic.The quality he denounces in Reaganism, however, is the "optimism" that Reagan's acolytes and imitators insist is essential to the success of both the Republican party and the conservative movement. It is the predictable attitude of the grasping entrepreneurs who patronized Reagan and his predecessor Barry Goldwater. Their ambition and greed didn't sit well with traditional conservative notions, nor with the Founders' classical tradition of hostility toward luxury and great disparities of wealth. Yet the Goldwaterites and Reaganites took over the "conservative" label because free enterprise -- entrepreneurial ambition -- was what America had to conserve against the menace of Communism. To question the values of entrepreneurs was to hate freedom; it was presumed to be un-conservative. Only now, it seems, are some conservatives waking from their stupor -- and even Scallon is careful to praise Goldwater while denouncing Reagan, as if the two men didn't come from the same source.

It's unclear what The American Conservative can do about the situation, but without endorsing their own agenda, which is often too traditionalist, religious and selfish for my taste, I'd advise them to find some way to label the post-Reagan Republicans and apparent pseudo-conservatives that would define them as not conservative. My suggestion is at the top of this post: Call the Reaganites, or the Republicans as a whole if necessary, the "Confidence Party." Confidence is a synonym for the optimism that defines Reaganism, but it also has older, almost hidden meanings. The 19th century "confidence game" is the source for the modern abbreviation, "con game." Conservatives like Scallon may have already drawn the conclusion that Reagan's optimism was a kind of confidence game played on the entire nation. They should say so more forcefully, drawing sharper distinctions between conservatives and confidence men while shaking themselves loose of the shackles of Reagan's entrepreneurial ideology. By defining themselves in definite opposition to the Reaganite con men, they might find themselves in a position to cooperate more with people from the left who have thrown aside their own crippling ideologies. "Left" and "Right" have been frozen in place since the Cold War, but writers like Scallon make me think that the thaw may have begun.

Dalai Lama Meets Evil Cult? NOT.

The word must have gotten up pretty high in the Tibetan Buddhist leader's organization that there was something fishy, or at least so some people think, about the group that was going to welcome the Dalai Lama to Albany, New York later this month. So the word was sent to people in Albany, including the publisher of the local newspaper, that there was too much "stuff out there" that made it too risky, as a matter of public relations, for the Dalai to show up. My hunch is that the lama doesn't really have a problem with the kind of guru that Keith Raniere is alleged to be, but that he or his retainers realized that the association would not look good for them, especially with the Chinese eager to exploit any opportunity to discredit the Tibetan cause. I only wonder what the Tibetans will give as the official reason for cancelling the visit, since "potential p.r. debacle" probably shouldn't rank among the weightiest concerns for such a spiritual leader. Of course, the Dalai is a free man and can go where he pleases, outside China that is, so nothing stops him from going to the state capital if he so chooses. But this story was probably always more about the prestige that Raniere and the Bronfman sisters could win for their organization by bringing such a celebrity to their neighborhood. So much for that, now.

Pittsburgh: Here's Your "Revolution!"

You encounter people like the Pittsburgh cop killer all the time on the Internet. They are conspiracy theorists, having convinced themselves that secret cabals control the country or the world. They believe that their liberties are imperiled so long as they don't feel "free," regardless of reality. They flatter themselves by imagining themselves targets for persecution. According to this report, the killer believed that the Obama administration was going to take his guns away, and that the troops returning from Iraq were going to be Obama's storm troopers. On the Internet people like this are full of big talk about what they're ready to do if conditions in the country get worse. They sneer at people who aren't convinced by their theories, calling them "sheep" for their lack of faith in conspiracist web sites. They fantasize about heading for the hills or the woods with their private arsenals and holding out indefinitely against the government or the gangs or whoever they fear the most. But whatever the theory, the scene in Pittsburgh yesterday was the practice. A creep who couldn't cut it in boot camp, living with his mother and fighting with her over his dog, taking advantage of her call to the cops to stage an ambush and murder three policemen before surrendering like a coward, lacking even the instinctual honor of legitimate madmen. But now you'll see all his counterparts distance themselves from his views. They'll call him a bad egg whose actions had nothing to do with what he read, what he watched, or what he believed. Some will probably even call him an agent provocateur, a creature of the monster government, enacting a scenario designed to discredit all the other conspiracy theorists and gun nuts. They would rather smash the mirror than acknowledge their own reflections on the glass. But it's not what they see, or choose not to, that counts. It's up to the rest of us to figure it out for ourselves.

Update: Here's a defensive reaction from the epicenter of current anti-government conspiracy theory, Alex Jones's Infowars.com. Elsewhere, Jones's people emphasize that he has supposedly never called for violence against the incipient New World Order, although you do wonder how they expect people to react when Infowars propounds the notion that the President is a puppet of a cabal of bankers who want to "enslave" America by taking people's guns away, among other measures. I also happen to think it's cute how these people can have their conspiracy theory both ways, feeding anti-state paranoia and claiming that states inevitably enslave their people (Infowars, of course, having a very low threshold of "slavery") while claiming that the state is actually the plaything of powerful private interests. But I'll give this group credit for so far resisting the temptation to call the shooter a government agent. I still think it's only a matter of time before someone does that.

The Voice of the People?

The scene shifted to Strasbourg this weekend as President Obama and other European leaders moved from London to hold a NATO summit. The occasion is noteworthy for France's return to full membership, more than 40 years after Charles de Gaulle pulled the country out as a gesture of independence from U.S. hegemony. Also this weekend, Albania and Croatia were welcomed into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It sounds silly but NATO has always been primarily an anti-Russian alliance and it remains so today.

Wherever the leaders of the world gather, so long as it's part of the "free" world, protesters gather. At Strasbourg, the protest got ugly and devolved into arson.

I understand that people have grievances and are angry, and are even more angry and aggrieved at the fact that they can't get in the faces of the world leaders the way they'd like. But if they hope to be taken seriously by anyone else they should take pains to make sure their protests don't end up looking like tantrums. Tactics like traffic obstruction, which were tried today, make a better impression than burning stuff. How many people watching news anywhere on earth had their consciousness raised by seeing a hotel burn?

But I suppose I should cut the Europeans some slack. It may be regrettable that they form mobs and burn things, but compared to other options that may be a healthy channel for their youthful rage. The American alternative too often seems to be shooting innocent strangers.

Obama vs. "anti-Americanism."

The President held a "town hall" meeting in France and attempted a measured tone, admitting American flaws while noting those of Europe.

In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive. But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.

There is a regrettable continuity with past regimes in these comments. Obama seems to share many Americans' zero-sum calculation of the proper attitude foreigners should have toward our country. If foreigners criticize the U.S., we accuse them of ignoring all the good we so often do. The implicit corollary seems to be that a proper recognition of "the good that America so often does" would compel foreigners to repress a tendency to "blame America for much of what's bad." But if a European habit of blaming America first, so to speak, blinds them to a history of U.S. benevolence, the opposite happens here, where too many people presume that, so long as we often do good in the world, we can't be to blame for anything that's bad. That doesn't follow. Robber barons and gangsters are often philanthropists outside their normal field of activity, whether as a matter of public relations or clearing the conscience -- or just as a result of a blind giant clumsiness that thinks itself benevolent without seeing the consequences of all its actions. If the President can't think of anything to criticize his own people for apart from arrogance or derisive dismissiveness, than his attitude is little better than his despised predecessor, no matter how much more glamorous he seems in media eyes.

Amoklauf in Binghamton

The latest body count from an "immigration services center" in Binghamton, New York is thirteen, including the apparent shooter. Information remains very sketchy as reporters await a press conference, but speculation comes naturally. Was the gunman targeting immigrants, making this a "hate crime" as well as mass murder? Is there any possibility that it might be gang related? Or is it the more typical scenario we apparently also saw in Carthage NC, with the gunman out to kill a particular person in the building yet happy to take down anyone in his path? It's a very busy afternoon for me, but I'll update this post as I know more.

Update: the death toll is 14, the shooter included, as of 7:00 p.m. The killer is in fact an immigrant, a Vietnam native who is said to have been a familiar face at the facility but without giving warning signs of an attack like today's. I am sort of relieved to learn that the killer was not a native-born American. Now the topic will remain what it should be whenever this happens: how to reform the American gun culture (which is learned, not bred, as the current incident shows) that makes these rampages both possible and more lethal.

Afghanistan: A Right to Sex?

Part of the reason why more Americans have supported military adventures in Afghanistan than those in Iraq is because the Taliban were a group that most could agree was "evil." A leading proof of their evil was their reactionary misogyny, expressed in laws against education for girls and other atrocities. While the President may argue that the main reason to send more troops to Afghanistan is to make sure that al-Qaeda won't have a safe base of operation or organization, many Americans will root for Obama's strategy because they don't want those sexist Taliban monsters coming back to power.

But it was President Karzai, "our boy" if you will, who signed a new law approved by the post-Taliban legislature that affirms Shiite men's right to sex no less than once every four days with their wives, except in cases of illness. Article 132 of a more general family law has aroused hostility from the international community and its feminist vanguard, who have described the offending article as the legalization of rape.

Every report of this kind out of Afghanistan is sure to strike many Americans as a betrayal of their mission to the country. Better conditions for women were supposed to come with the "liberation" of the Afghans, but Article 132 will make some wonder whether the Karzai regime is any better than its predecessor. This might be the time for someone else to say that Afghan affairs are none of our business, but it could be objected that they are our business as long as we have troops there -- that the U.S. has some responsibility for the character of the regime it imposed. But it's not an occupying army's business to enact women's rights, if those are what's at stake in the current controversy. Americans remain in the country to fight the Taliban. They fight them not because the Taliban are superstitious barbarians, but because they're allies of al-Qaeda and are presumed willing to restore the terrorists' old base of operations. Diplomatically speaking, superstitious barbarians who do not aid or abet terrorist attacks outside their national borders must be tolerated by the rest of the world. They can be hated, denounced and even cursed, but it's no one's business but their own what their laws are. It's up to Sunni men, for instance, to ask why they don't enjoy the same rights as Shiite husbands, and it's up to Shiite women to check whether they're required to produce a signed medical excuse if they don't feel up to their conjugal duties, and it's up to Shiite men to determine whether the same law's reported mandating of a right to sex for wives (albeit within a four-month rather than four-day window) authorizes the rape of husbands. I would rather not figure out such things. I pity people who have to grow up in such a place in the 21st centuries, but until we have a world government they're going to have to figure a way out of it themselves.

April Fools: London

Here is raw footage from today's protests against the G20 summit in London, posted on YouTube. A voice in the first clip is yelling "They are the crisis!"

There has been one fatality amid the mayhem, but it's reported that the person died of natural causes, collapsing at one conflict scene.

Here's some street-level footage with some superfluous running (or walking) commentary as the police drive a crowd before them.

Financial district workers were advised to wear casual clothes to their jobs today in order not to attract hostile attention from the protesters.

This bit is from the same source as the last.

When Mr. Peepers saw some of the London footage on the NBC news this evening, he asked me, "Why don't they do something like that in this country?" I supposed that Americans don't like being part of a mob (as opposed to a crowd) like they used to. Mr. P. said that Glenn Beck has been telling his listeners to form mobs, but that goes to show how much influence he has, or how far it actually goes.

In London the news media usually had the best seats in the house. Someone has recorded some Sky News footage of a violent moment and made it available in the spirit of fair use, so I'm using it here.

This was supposed to be "Financial Fools' Day," with a spirit of irreverence prevailing, but I can understand if some people didn't feel exactly whimsical on this occasion. Meanwhile, here is another tense scene, though calling it a "battle" is a bit excessive.

This was only the first day of the summit -- a day when the NBC News anchor could say that perhaps the day's most noteworthy event was President Obama's meeting with the Queen. On that particular program there was more coverage of Mrs. Obama's social itinerary than there was of the protests. Perhaps the proportions will shift later.

April Fools: The Republican Party

You'd think the GOP would take advantage of the occasion to throw the media a curve of some kind, just so the Congressional leadership could yell, "Psych!" and thus make fun of the media. But I fear the Republicans have little of that kind of humor in them. Today they introduced an alternative economic plan, and guess what? It calls for lower taxes and less government spending. You'd almost think it was a gag, and that the leaders would finally assure an appalled public that they didn't actually mean to perpetuate their tired old dogmas. But they were in deadly earnest, as usual. All this proves is that, despite the timing of their announcement, the Republicans are fools twelve months a year.

April Fools: The 20th Congressional District

The people of New York's 20th Congressional District, one of those that borders my own 21st District, thought they'd have a new Representative today. April Fool! The election is too close to call, with Scott Murphy the Democrat leading by less than 100 votes out of approximately 150,000 cast, and thousands of absentee ballots yet to be counted. The counting may take another two weeks as officials await ballots from military people from overseas. If the absentees leave things roughly the same, with Murphy ahead by a sliver, supporters of Jim Tedisco the Republican will almost certainly demand a recount.

It's a fitting finish, however protracted to a campaign that saw both leading candidates do their best to obscure their party identifications. It's also further proof, by way of contrast, of the power of incumbency. Absent an incumbent, the Democrat and the Republican are nose to nose, but last November, on the strength of just one term in office, the Democratic incumbent, the current Senator Gillibrand, buried a GOP challenger in a landslide -- and this was a district that had been entrenched Republican turf until Gillibrand came along.

You could argue that Gillibrand didn't stick around long enough to consolidate Democratic loyalty in her district, and that Scott Murphy suffered for his obscurity compared to "Albany politician" Tedisco. But before anyone jumps to conclude that this was a vote of less confidence in the Democracy, remember the way Murphy was portrayed in Republican negative ads. He was not portrayed as a free-spending liberal or some kook from outside the mainstream. Instead, he was almost always "Millionaire Scott Murphy," a corporate creep who outsourced jobs and enabled bonuses for undeserving executives, and a friend of AIG. Only toward the end was Murphy identified with the usual liberal sins of "job-killing taxes" and the like, but this was always also in the context of his being essentially an insensitive Wall Street type. Likewise, Murphy hardly campaigned as a conventional liberal Democrat, apart from prodding a reluctant Tedisco to take a stand on the stimulus bill. Instead, he played the archetypal populist "outsider" while attacking Tedisco as a career politician who milked the system for his own benefit. As a result of these tactics on both sides, the campaign has become less a referendum on the President, as the national media would like to see it, than a referendum on Murphy himself, the stranger struggling to define himself against pseudo-populist attacks from the Tedisco camp. But the further we get from the actual campaign, the more the media will spin the eventual result beyond recognition, so that someone will say, should Tedisco win, that it was a rebuke to the Obama administration. That will be an April Fool too, whenever you hear it.

Dalai Lama meets Evil Cult?

The Dalai Lama, spiritual heir to the former rulers of Tibet, visits the State University of New York Albany campus in April. The visit is gradually becoming controversial because of the involvement of the Ethical Humanitarian Foundation. This organization is bankrolled by the Bronfman sisters, heirs to the Seagrams fortune, but was masterminded by Keith Raniere, once an alleged pyramid scheme operator and now accused of being a kind of cult leader. From one perspective, I suppose, these are not such strange bedfellows. But since the Dalai is beloved worldwide as a personification of selfless benevolence, even this indirect association with a man who supposedly likes to be called "Vanguard" will probably raise questions among some fans in these parts. SUNY-Albany only agreed to host the event after two other local colleges turned the opportunity down, reportedly because of worries over Raniere's involvement. Beyond that, I can only imagine what the Chinese government would make of their longtime foe's apparent alliance with a group that some people around here regard the same way the Chinese themselves regard the Falun Gong movement. More on this as it develops next month.

Mr. Sociology

"Why is it that the black crime rate fifty years ago, when you could honestly say that black people were oppressed, was much lower than it is today?" Mr. Right asked the room rhetorically. A rhetorical question, in this case, means that he rather than we would provide the answer.

That didn't stop me from asking what the black crime rate was fifty years ago. I honestly didn't know, but I wanted to know whether he had facts behind him or was just making an assumption.

He didn't have specific statistics to give me, but the question inspired a litany of categories, from employment rate to graduation rate, in which he claimed that blacks performed better fifty or more years ago. Then he repeated the question: why are blacks worse off now?

The answer: "White liberals." White liberals in the schools and the media, he claimed, had relentlessly demoralized black youth by telling them that they could not succeed on their own because of the pervasive racism in society. As a result, he presumed, blacks too often opt for welfare dependency or crime.

"Can you cite specific white liberals?" I asked, "Do you have any direct quote where a white liberal says outright that black people can't succeed on their own?"

He said he did, but I'm compelled to notice that he's been in no hurry to produce them.

Mr. Right was in a defensive mood because it had been insinuated that the President's race had something to do with Mr. Right's opposition to him. To an extent that charge is unfair, but as a matter of probability Mr. Right is likely to oppose most black politicians because most of them are liberals or further to the left. I'm satisfied that he doesn't believe in black inferiority, but to the extent that the black political class has an affinity for "progressive" policies, Mr. Right will again find himself opposing most black politicians. He has argued that there's no reason that blacks should automatically be liberals. He's tried to argue from history that blacks should support Republicans because the GOP had been their friend from the time of Lincoln through the early 1960s, while the Democrats had opposed him from the days of Confederate sympathies to the resistance of white southerners to the civil rights bills -- neglecting the fact that the parties switched sides more than 40 years ago. He also points out that Obama's supposed political mentors (Bill Ayers, etc.) are almost all white, so that the President's alleged extremism has nothing to do with his race. But the fact remains that, so long as the overwhelming majority of black voters lean to the left, to oppose liberalism or the Democratic party is to oppose black people, and Mr. Right should not be surprised if some people see it that way. He can be offended, but not surprised. But if he's going to say that blacks lean left because they've been brainwashed by wicked white folks, then we can be offended.

Should Mrs. Obama Get Paid?

I suppose it is unfair from one standpoint. A year ago, Vice President Michelle Obama made nearly twice as much money at her job at the University of Chicago as her husband did as a United States Senator. But now Mr. Obama is the breadwinner of the family, while the Mrs. makes nothing. That fact is bound to annoy a feminist, so as Dana Goldstein reports in the April issue of The American Prospect, there is talk about giving the First Lady her own salary.

Goldstein quotes a feminist blogger on the subject: "We view [Obama's] election as a labor contract between not just Barack Obama and the country, but also between Michelle Obama and the country....Yet she is not getting paid, because she is really viewed as part and parcel of him."

A historian writing in the San Francisco Chronicle offers a dissenting viewpoint."Living 'only' on the president's $400,000 salary, however, [the Obamas] make eight times as much as the average American household....It's hard to see why they need a second income."

Goldstein leans toward the feminist viewpoint. Need has nothing to do with it, she suggests. The main point, as far as she's concerned, is that being First Lady is a job. "The job of first lady is so crucial that our one bachelor president, James Buchanan, appointed his niece to carry out the traditional duties," she notes. But somehow I have a feeling that Buchanan would not have thought of the traditional hostess duties as "crucial." I do not recall him putting his niece in charge of any special task force or sending her as his representative to foreign countries or secessionist states -- though she most likely could not have done worse as a "co-president" than Buchanan did all by himself.

But consider Mrs. Obama's work, Goldstein insists. She has already "embarked upon an unprecedented tour of federal agencies. She addressed tens of thousands of bureaucrats, thanking them for their service and discussing how her husband's economic-stimulus package would improve each department's work."

Goldstein is convinced that Mrs. Obama deserves something for all that arduous effort, but she also sees the opposing point about Mr. O's salary being quite enough for the whole family. Her solomonic solution, pitched to please feminists and budget hawks alike, is to pay the First Lady out of her husband's pocket. "The salary for the first lady should be garnished from her husband's wages," she proposes, "Since we expect our presidents to be just one half of a 24/7 public-relations team, why not pay the president less -- say $300,000 -- and make out the remainder of the check to his wife?"

I admit that I was tempted strongly to appoint Dana Goldstein as an Idiot of the Week. I spared her because it might be awkward to give that honor to someone whose article appeared in a monthly magazine. Instead, I'll create a special category and name Goldstein an April Fool. In doing so, I deny her premises every step of the way. We do not expect our presidents to be half of any team apart from the party ticket on Election Day. I, for one, do not view any President's election as a "labor contract" with his wife. And when Goldstein asks, "Considering the various social and political services the first lady ... renders to the United States, don't taxpayers owe her a salary?" I respond, "Who authorized her to render those services? What right has she to perform any political service? Where are her powers enumerated in the Constitution?" As conceived on the alleged model of the sainted Eleanor Roosevelt and the actual precedent of Hillary Clinton, the vestment of any kind of political power in the President's wife is nothing more than a royal prerogative, and that's un-American. The President's election entitles the President's spouse to nothing except shelter in the White House. Nor does it entitle the President to delegate any of his power or responsibility to the spouse.

But having stated my opinion, I approach Goldstein in the same spirit of compromise with which she proposed splitting the President's salary. I'll agree to pay the First Lady if I get to vote for her. The "two for the price of one" principle that prevailed in the Clinton years is against the spirit of the Constitution. It's bad enough that you have to vote for President and Vice-President together, but at least the running mate's name appears on the ballot, while the conjugal mate's does not. If people wish to make First Lady a responsible political office, that should change. And since we oppose the Bipolarchy practice of tying the President and Vice-President together on a party line, let's set an educational precedent by splitting the First Family ticket. There are, after all, people of conservative mind who might have embraced Mr. Obama more readily, as they might have Mr. Clinton, had they not thought that their wives wanted more power than their due. Why not give such people the chance to vote for the best man and the best woman, even if they're not man and wife? If we aren't to think of the First Lady as merely the President's wife anymore, why should that important post go automatically to the President's wife? Why not instead elect the most worthy woman (presuming the President to be a man and a heterosexual -- or must we?) who is not running for the top job herself? Since there are no term limits currently in writing for the First Lady, why not retain good old Laura Bush as a modest national hostess, or why not recruit Governor Palin to enact the politico-sexual fantasies of Hustler magazine? I don't think I've yet exhausted the possibilities. Sometimes when you've got a toboggan the slippery slope is fun. On to the Constitutional convention!...or else you can all shut up about such silliness as paying the President's wife.

Amoklauf in Carthage

As I write, the only clue we have to the possible motive of the man who shot up a nursing home in Carthage NC, killing eight people before he was wounded and captured, comes from his ex-wife. She says that he'd been diagnosed with cancer and had been telling people that he was "getting ready to go," or words to that effect. For what it's worth, she claims that the suspect had a history of violence during their marriage. Meanwhile, investigators say that the gunman had never worked at the nursing home and had no relatives treated there. That doesn't rule out any relationship to any of the employees, but we don't know enough to speculate further. All we know is that people are dead and the man had a gun. Did he buy a gun in order to go on a rampage some day? Probably not. How many who do, did? Probably the younger ones, the high schoolers here and abroad, but the older ones most likely had theirs at first for hunting or for "protection." How many rampages could have been predicted on the day the eventual killer bought his gun? Your only clue would be the fact that anyone who buys a gun for protection is claiming a right to kill, even if only in self-defense. But how can we predict when someone's going to go on the offensive? Too many people don't bother trying. They simply arm themselves for protection against the day, and so the cycle goes on.

Thanks, Gov. Paterson!

The governor of New York is very unpopular now throughout the state, but in the 20th Congressional District he ought to be a hero. His decision to elevate Rep. Gillibrand to Senatorial honors created a vacancy that must be filled through a closely and expensively contested special election. Money flows freely throughout the district, much of it to local TV stations, and if it makes watching the local news monotonous (a typical half-hour has dozens of ads for Murphy and Tedisco), I suppose it's worth it to see some of the economy stimulated. Now if the politicians and their committees would only go back to traditional practices and bribe a few voters on Tuesday, the election would have an even more stimulative effect, and turnout would increase. That's my modest proposal for this week, but I think it's a constructive one.

The Latest From Europe

The "G-20" are holding a summit in London next week, and yesterday thousands of activists hit the streets to announce their own agenda in advance of the meeting.

While the main action was in London, demonstrations took place in other European capitals. Here's a report from Berlin, with clips from Frankfurt.

Paris and other cities also saw protests. From what I've seen and read, these demonstrations were catch-all gatherings of all manner of grudges and demands -- the usual litany of grievances that come up on every occasion. These were anti-war, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist marches, along with being anti-capitalist. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wonder whether there was a chance of getting more people behind the economic and social agenda of the protests if they weren't burdened with the foreign-policy issues. There have to be people who don't give a damn about Afghanistan or Iraq or Israel or Palestine but have strong opinions on the economic crisis that perhaps shouldn't be linked to any international political agenda. I'm sure some of the protesters could argue how everything is tied together, but they might think about using economic issues to bring people into a movement and waiting until later to attempt to educate them about the rest. On the other hand, they may have everybody who's worked up enough about economic issues to march, and they had to bring in the internationalists and anti-imperialists to swell the ranks. I'd like to think that wasn't the case. In any event, I intend to keep an eye on what's up in Europe this week to see if the continent can offer any lessons to the disgruntled of America. Watch this space for more updates.

Strange Bedfellows in the 20th District

A Glens Falls paper reports that angry Libertarian congressional candidate Eric Sundwall has endorsed his Democratic opponent, Scott Murphy for the 31 March special election in New York's 20th Congressional District. Sundwall admits that there's little affinity between his views and Murphy's, but he declared the Democrat a "man of honor," implicitly denying the same distinction to Jim Tedisco, the Republican candidate. Tedisco has denied any role in the challenges filed by two "private citizens" that led to Sundwall's removal from the ballot, but the Libertarian clearly doesn't believe him.

Despite the district turning "blue" when now-Senator Gillibrand defeated a scandal-ridden incumbent in 2006, Tedisco initially held a wide lead over Murphy, simply because, as an Assemblyman, he was much better known than the comparatively apolitical businessman. Since the campaign began, Murphy has steadily improved in the polls as Democrats from Gillibrand to the President have declared their support. Some reports have the race as a "statistical dead heat" going into the final weekend. Under such circumstances it is possible that Sundwall's endorsement, not to mention distaste at the seemingly unfair way he was treated, may tip the balance decisively against Tedisco. But as I wrote earlier this week, this has been a weird campaign in which the candidates have undergone unwilling role reversals while dodging party labels. I wouldn't dare predict the result.

Look For the Union Libel

Is the decline in union membership among American private sector workers since the mid-20th century the intended result of a reactionary conspiracy or the product of more impersonal historic trends? Those who believe the former think that corporate-influenced governments have imposed unfair obstacles on union organization. They propose the legalization of the "card check" process as a remedy. Congress will consider an "Employee Free Choice Act" that allows for the unionization of a workplace when 50% of the workforce sign cards signifying their desire to unionize. Union supporters consider this a better alternative to current law, which makes unionization dependent on the outcome of a secret-ballot vote.

Predictably, many Republicans oppose the "card check" plan. Jonah Goldberg is a typical spokesman for this view. He considers the scheme undemocratic because it can do away with the secret-ballot elections. According to Goldberg, union organizers intend to use card check disingenuously, encouraging workers to sign as part of an effort to force a secret-ballot vote when the law would make unionization a fait accompli if a majority signs the cards.Goldberg's own argument is slightly disingenuous, since I doubt whether many workers will sign the cards only to force an election if they know that enough signatures mean they get a union automatically. Nevertheless, Goldberg insists that unions will use card check to "shanghai" workers into their organizations.

Are unions afraid of the secret ballot, as Goldberg claims? The answer seems to be yes. In my neighborhood, Goldberg's column appears in the Saratogian. Directly below today's column is a letter from a union supporter. Cliff Ammon of Saratoga Springs notes that would-be Representative Jim Tedisco opposes the "card check" bill because he favors the secret ballot. "I discovered why Mr. Tedisco raved so about 'secret ballot elections,' Ammon writes, "Under current [National Labor Relations Board] rules, management totally controls 'secret ballot elections.'"

The pro-union argument is that the run-up to a secret-ballot election only gives management time to carry out an intimidation campaign against union supporters. "Intimidation" is probably defined broadly here, since it usually consists less of physical bulling of organizer than of propaganda warning or layoffs or outsourcing or closing if the union wins. Whatever the facts behind the complaint, it's pretty ironic to hear the secret ballot denounced as a tool of intimidation by employers. Back in the 19th century, the secret ballot was demanded by working-class voters as a safeguard against such intimidation. Before the secret ballot was a commonplace, it was feared, often with reason, that employers would have observers at the polling place to watch how employees voted, and that workers could lose jobs if they voted the "wrong" way. The secret ballot, it was thought, would keep employers' eyes off the voting booth, freeing workers to vote their consciences fearlessly. But this little narrative was all about political elections. Workplace elections are a different story. Workers normally have no reason to fear that employers would take it out on everybody if the boss's candidate for Congress lost. But the bosses themselves have given workers reason to fear that they'd take it out on everybody if a union won an election.

If you think about it, however, there's nothing workers can do to deter bosses from "intimidating" them so long as current social relations remain in force. There's nothing stopping bosses, once they know that a card check process is under way, from making it known that everyone will suffer if too many people sign their cards. And to be fair about it, employers do share in the general freedom of speech. They do have a right to make a case against unionization, and I doubt a law can be written against the kind of warnings that union people interpret as intimidation. I can understand if Republicans see the card check plan as a scheme to deny employers their right to argue against unionization, though it's naive to think, as such talk would imply, that bosses would be helpless against a card check campaign.

Goldberg seems to think that blaming union decline on intimidation or obstructive laws is a conspiracist libel.

Organized labor is not dead in America, nor should it be. But it's simply not as important as it once was, because the government has an alphabet soup of agencies dedicated to protecting the rights of workers. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, OSHA and the Family and Medical Leave Act make the need for unions far less acute. This is good news for workers, especially liberals, but it's bad news for unions because they need grievances to grow (and the Democrats need unions).

Ammon tells a different story:

The collective bargaining laws and NLRB created in the 1930s have been emasculated since the Reagan administration. Over the past 30 years, union membership has declined through union busting, off-shoring, downsizing and part-timers. Although worker productivity has dramatically increased, they've seen their wages stay flat, lost health care benefits, and seen pensions disappear

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The truth most likely lies somewhere between Ammon's conspiracy theory (which has a good deal of fact behind it) and Goldberg's account of almost accidental obsolescence (which seems to ignore some worker needs (wages, perhaps?) that unions might meet best). Unfortunately in our ideological age, people will choose the history that most closely conforms to their subjective worldviews, and those prejudices will decide where they stand on the card check question.

Another Win for the Bipolarchy

The Twentieth Congressional District of New York is the one neighboring mine to the north. It was Kirsten Gillibrand's district, so it came open when Governor Paterson promoted her to the U.S. Senate. Her seat will be filled by a special election to be held on May 31. The main contestants are Jim Tedisco, a former member of the State Assembly, and Scott Murphy, a businessman.

It has been a strange campaign. Tedisco, the Republican candidate, has been backed by the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, whose commercials identify Murphy, the Democratic candidate, as a Wall Street millionaire, an outsourcer of jobs, an enabler of unworthy bonuses, and in general a poster boy for the practices that have forced the government to take drastic measures. Murphy in turn is backed by the equivalent Democratic committee, which tars Tedisco as "another Albany politician" who's used his office to benefit himself at public expense. Albany is as Democratic a city as you may find, but for the purpose of advertising "Albany" refers to the despised state legislature -- where Democrats also prevail.Only when the committees identify themselves at the end of the ads do you hear the words "Democrat" and "Republican" mentioned in either set of ads.

There is at least one other candidate. He is Eric Sundwall, the nominee of the Libertarian party. This week, however, he was knocked off the ballot after many of the petitions necessary to earn his spot were challenged and found faulty for various picayune reasons. It's assumed that the elimination of a Libertarian candidate should benefit the Republican candidate, but Tedisco denies any involvement in the challenge. It just so happens that in New York State private citizens can challenge a candidate's spot on the ballot. Two such citizens challenged Sundwall, one being a registered Republican, the other belonging to the Conservative party.

On one level, the loss of a Libertarian is no great loss. That party has even less to contribute than normal during a time of major economic dislocation. But on principle we ought to deplore the maneuvering that took Sundwall down. Our electoral system is designed to encourage party-line voting, and the laws exist to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to challenge the reigning Bipolarchy of Republicans and Democrats. Our legislators may as well be Iranian mullahs, given their power to exclude independents from the sacred ballot. Lip service is paid to the principle of write-in voting, but the ballot certifies certain candidates as the "real" ones while implicitly relegating the rest to second class or worse. But if we really want to honor the principle, and if ballot space is so limited that there have to be laws to limit access, the fair thing to do is level the playing field and eliminate ballots altogether. Let's have every name written in, or spoken in if technology permits, and let's have each voter name whomever he pleases for any office, without any prompting from parties. I won't dare promise that outcomes would differ, but at least we wouldn't see any more repeat performances of the sort of legal farce that renders our elections less democratic and less republican.