Reflecting on yesterday's ruling

Hi, all.  I just need to say some things briefly.

Gay marriage was actually the issue that first mobilized me into politics.  It was quickly eclipsed by my support for a still-elusive employment and housing non-discrimination act, but it was my first big cause.  It's now arguably the only one of my initial goals to have been achieved (though we'll have to see how serious the govt is about forcing Alabama to comply), and I feel weird.  Good certainly- the benefits to those who wish to marry are real, as is the cultural/respectability capital which will accrue to the LGBT community, and many people's lives are meaningfully improved after yesterday.  I know I'm one of them.

It feels so strange though, in some ways I've come full circle- here I am, about to drive up to Iowa to volunteer for a presidential candidate running to Clinton's left, with no job to show for it, and thinking about Gay Marriage.  That's pretty much where I was in 2007.  Funny little world, isn't it?  As Gilbert would say, it "teems with quiet fun".

So here's a victory, and I encourage everyone to check out the opinions on both sides.  (Supreme Court Injustice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent that neither internment of Japanese-Americans nor enslavement of African-Americans "violated human dignity", so clearly lack of marriage rights is harmless, which I think is the clearest display of the conservative philosophy we've seen lately). 

I imagine my reaction is not unlike many- this is such a very personal issue- I mean, it's not like every Gay couple is going to meet up on the same day and get married to their spouses simultaneously at an arranged moment and location a la Putin Youth camp, so thoughts are probably on what this means to lots of individuals as well as to the community at large. For me I'm of course thinking of my partner but also of who and where I was eight years ago, and two years before that when I tried and failed to start a Gay Straight Alliance in middle school, and it's, to put it mildly, trippy. 

So much has changed since then- for one I still thought I was a boy- but there's been so much loving and living in eight years, with the issue of marriage rights never far from my mind.  I'm freer in some ways, sadder in others, and still generally doing everything wrong.  It's hard to think I haven't gotten better at what I do, haven't established myself yet, haven't made things right that I thought I could. 

But a lot is changing- I do feel better now, at least about my body and persona.  I'm happier with the way I look, feel more honest about my mind, and feel that people read me better now that I'm out as transgender.  So much misplaced shame is gone, so much excitement I never felt before transitioning is here now, and I feel more ready for whatever is coming next.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen

Reading Ho Chi Minh

Onto a lighter note, a good friend recently gave me a collection of Vietnamese liberation leader Ho Chi Minh's speeches, and I thought I'd comment on parts of them.

By 1922 Ho was engaging with both the French Communist movement and that of his own country, obviously still under occupation, and he pointed to the role racism on the part of the French and suspicion on the part of the Vietnamese played in inhibiting collaboration between the two movements. The Vietnamese colonial government was plainly terrified of something like this happening- going so far as to ban (enforced with prison time) the circulation, possession, or reading of the French political press in Vietnam. In the light of current resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, this familiar concern is worth repeating: Capitalism creates pressure to find new markets, sources of labor and materials, and this means that jobs are increasingly done in colonized regions where lower levels of development and regulation enable business to rely on what amounts to slave labor or indentured servitude. It seems to me that businesses engage in something of a “prisoner's dilemma” in which their profits are maximized if they have no employees anywhere that requires a living wage or basic human rights, but only if the people in those countries have enough resources to keep buying their products. It seems then that the ideal circumstance for a business would be to be the only one using cheaper labor than its competitors, but since this can't be done, the entire world is now in a race to the bottom. Ho would tell us to recognize all the victims of this system- the slaves in the new sweatshops as well as those condemned to poverty and often incarceration by the amputation of the means of production from the workers who previously serviced them, and to try to work together. This seems particularly relevant in light of rising Islamophobia, deployed to keep us from empathizing with Arabs or Southeast-Asians, frustrating any effort to build a political movement with these comrades in the struggle.

Ho goes on in later speeches to recount colonialist atrocities which, then as now- from British troops raping their charges on peacekeeping missions to the US torture regime in prison camps at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib- escape all accountability. He lists the Belgian regime in the Congo as slaughtering 2/3 of its people, as well as the crimes perpetrated by my ancestral homeland, Germany in our occupation of Namibia- 2 entire tribes with unique cultures were entirely exterminated, going on to say more of the massive death tolls inflicted in French-controlled areas. Domination by foreign powers, be they states, companies, or supra-state organizations, has consistently led to meddling in agriculture and attendant famines, repression of local control, environmental degradation, and gross abuses of human rights. In a time in which we're asked to support further invasions abroad, further ceding of power to corporations, and the forced sale of public assets to private actors, it's always useful to rehash this litany of abuse.

Ho mentions the increased development of a working class in Vietnam as a result of increased capitalization of the economy: this is a typical Leninist perception of the pattern- when people are concentrated in labor intensive enterprises, they become more cognizant of common experiences and the systems which produce them. At this point in Vietnamese history a vanguard party formed- Leninist concept to compensate for the fact that full-time employment is not the most conducive state to political activity and observation, requiring an oppressed people to fund a general staff of political leaders to serve in the vanguard, as it were, of the movement. The concept seems reasonable enough to me. I'll be reading more Lenin next- if I can get through the extensive sections that are just insults of rival movements, I'll try to post a follow-up review of some of his work.

On Patriotism, Ho seems to describe the dangers of nationalism- he holds that love of the state and country has proven necessary to repulse attacks on Socialist development before, a kind of safe patriotism that motivates loyalty rather than xenophobia. This still disturbs me, primarily because I don't think we can point to any successful examples. Even in the Soviet Union, there were significant drawbacks to being any ethnicity other than Rus, and nationalistic loyalty seems to blind us to faults of the group in question, but some sort of union with the forces of nationalism seems to be necessary for anto-colonial Red movements.

There's an interesting response to Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's excesses and the institution of the cult of personality, in which Ho declares his support for Khrushchev's attempts to return the party to prominence over any individual leader (for more details see my thesis part 3), and warning of the danger in any system that recognizes individuals more than systems. This is particularly interesting as an early sign of Ho's preference for the Soviet Union over the People's Republic of China, which was outraged by Khrushchev's deviation from Stalin's example.

Ho mentions the dangers of individualism, and as one who has sparred with more than her share of post-modernists, I found his insights particularly satisfying. Ho points out that showing off knowledge without using it to solve practical problems is an individualistic indulgence that doesn't help anyone.

I'm especially interested in what agricultural reforms were pursued- perhaps someone who knows more could explain this to me, or I'll find the time to seek more detailed history- if Ho is to be believed (and I want corroborating sources) Vietnam seems to have pulled off a successful collectivization with increased productivity, even amid a war with mass defoliation and destruction of Vietnamese crops. I'd love to know how they did it- how to go from a feudal agriculture system to a centrally or regionally planned modern one without allowing in exploitative foreign corporations or enduring severe shortages is quite a feat.

As for Ho's commentaries on constitution design, some fairly standard stuff, much of which I agree with, especially how rights are only available to all in a socialist society- sensible enough. Equality before the law is nigh unattainable in a society with class divisions to say nothing of the racial and gendered hierarchies that intersect with and sustain them. From Ho's public statements, we can see considerable rhetorical caution against Stalinist excesses, while acknowledging the overzealousness of some land reformers.

It all seems quite impressive, and I'm very grateful to Genosse Sam for the gift. I'd love to find some more information especially on the nuts and bolts of Vietnamese land reform and the Party's approach to it at all levels.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen

Leftist Analysis of Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia, Ltd. Or the Flowers of Progress

Hello, all.

Here's the piece I promised the comrades at Kos on Utopia. It's one of Gilbert and Sullivan's last collaborations, and most critics and enthusiasts alike seem to scorn it. My partner and I came very close to getting this staged at our college two years ago, and I still crave a chance to be involved with this show, or at least see it in its entirety. (I've listened to every version of the soundtrack I can find including one which includes the full libretto).

I'd particularly recommend finding “In Every Mental Lore/Let all Your Doubts Take Wing”, “A King of Autocratic Power We”, “Zara's Return”, “It's Understood, I Think”, “Some Seven Men form an Association”, Act 1 Finale, “Society has Quite Forsaken” (the show stopper) and the libretto-heavy penultimate song (the finale is a shameless tribute to British superiority, apparently thrown in to soften the blows landed earlier in the show) on youtube before reading this, but to each her own.

For those who don't know, William Gilbert (librettist) and Arthur Sullivan (composer) were English dramatists active in the late 19^th century. They collaborated on 14 light operas (bearing more resemblance to modern musicals than to opera), 13 of which survive. Their three biggest hits were H.M.S. Pinafore, the Pirates of Penzance, and the Mikado. After their well received twelfth work The Gondoliers, they had one of their many fights and split up for several years. Their mutual patron, Doyly Carte, got them to collaborate for two more projects, neither of which was as successful as their earlier twelve, and this is a pity, because the first of these reunion operas is, in my opinion, the finest they ever wrote. Briefly stated- in order to escape assassination, a king must declare himself, his country, and each of his subjects to be a corporation instead of a person. It utilizes many of the same colonialist tropes as the Mikado while making them even more obviously absurd, and openly attacks the folly of forcibly assimilating other cultures. Most importantly, it contains the earliest “Corporations are NOT people” joke I know of (1893!)

Gilbert's Utopia- the setting for the show- is a supposedly primitive south pacific island which nonetheless has a good relationship with Great Britain (presumably one of the many such alliances made during the Napoleonic Wars), ruled over by the good King Paramount. Paramount wishes to bring his people (whom he has been told to think of as savage, or backwards) forward into the western community of nations by remodelling his society along British lines. To this end, he has sent his eldest daughter, Princess Zara, to study in Great Britain and she has returned, bringing with her the “Flowers of Progress”- experts in British business, local government, army, navy, censorship, and law, to help modernize Utopia. His Majesty has also employed an English Governess- Lady Sophy- to teach his two younger daughters how to be proper, and has fallen in love with her.

King Paramount can do all this on account of being “A King of Autocratic Power, We, a Despot Whose Tyrannic Whim is Law”, but there is a snag in his plans from which all troubles follow: under the Utopian Constitution, the King's power is to be absolute, albeit subject to the approval of two Wise Men (current incumbents Scaphio and Phantis), because the king is required by the constitution to wear a suicide belt, and, according to Scaphio and Phantis, “If ever a trick he tries he tries that savours of rascality, at our degree he dies he dies without the least formality”- as they can then summon the Public Exploder to His Majesty (current incumbent Tarara), whose job it then becomes to detonate the king. So functions the system of government known as “Despotism Tempered by Dynamite”.

These wise men, however are grossly corrupt, holding the king's life hostage every day to extort favorable policy, or more likely, shameful antics from his majesty, compelling him to write scandalous denunciations of his own character under assumed names for the society press, wherein he falsely accuses himself of dancing with housemaids and bathing in rum. They extend their wishes to lechery, aimed at the lovely princess Zara, and they make a pact to force the king to order his daughter to marry one of them!

King Paramount wishes to escape their grasp by any means necessary, and after conferring with Princess Zara and her lover, the army expert Captain Arthur Fitzbattleaxe, he agrees to take advice from Fitz and the other Flowers of Progress. Their recommendations are simple and obviously intended to be fallacious- make lawyers fully mercenary and indifferent to morals, build up public facilities to justify higher property taxes, censor all media hostile to the government, build up your army and navy because the Germans are going at attack Britain and her allies any day now (this is presented as a farcical error in judgment, which I do find darkly hilarious, albeit in a rather tragically different way than Gilbert probably intended), and adopt British corporate law- the Famed Joint Stock Companies Act of 1862, which allowed business to declare capital separate from individual managers' earnings, insulating owners from the consequences of failure. Finally, the banker promises that Britain will soon be governed exclusively by these corporate principles- “The date's not distant”!

There are three jokes that strike me as a bit dodgy, and two of them come here- the good natured but lovably corrupt banker explaining this is named “Goldbury” which I could interpret as a mild anti-semitic caricature, and his song does refer to the Rothschilds as symbols of wealth, which is of course accurate but Gilbert could just as well have mentioned Morgan instead, and I'm a little unsure. Dodgy joke number three comes in the show stopper and will be discussed later.

Inferring that financial immunity may mean legal immunity as well, King Paramount declares that he shall go down to posterity as “the First Sovereign in Christendom who Registered His Crown and Country Under the Joint Stock Companies Act of '62!”, and here ends act 1.

Some time passes ere Act 2 begins. Zara is still with Captain Fitzbattleaxe, and Utopia is thriving without the Wise Men's interference, as the king has declared himself a corporation, “If my speech is unduly refractory, you will find it a course satisfactory, at my early board-meeting to show it up, though with proper excuse you can trump any, you may wind up a limited company, but you can't conveniently blow it up!” and “as long as he confines himself to his articles of operation, we can't touch him!” Conferring with his new advisors (the Flowers of Progress) in song “society has quite forsaken”, Paramount reveals that he has taken their suggestions to heart and created a society nearly as good as Britain. The British colonialists are increasingly shocked as they hear (from the here oblivious king) that these supposedly primitive people have actually surpassed Britain, which Fitzbattleaxe attributes to the absence of parliament, but their attempts to conceal the truth from Paramount show that the Flowers actually know that they've been showed up by these islanders, who have.

abolished poverty, hunger and homelessness

Solved the labour question

Instituted merit-based nobility- especially among authors

brought amicable end to all divorces

Beautified their entire realm to the standards of the richest English neighborhoods.

The song (especially the second verse) is superb- it's only problem is in the stage direction (a really obscure joke) in that the Flowers have tricked the king into arranging the throne room in a style apparently common to the minstrel show- I had to do serious research to even figure out what they even meant by that. This is easy to fix in blocking differently, but it is a stain on an otherwise progressive show, and some productions seem to stage the following dance in a way that looks rather minstrel like to me. No blackface or anything like that is involved, but it could pose a problem to our sensibilities. The song does contain a crack at Utopia's “hereditary races” but in the context it seems to be a use of the old meaning of race- meaning family.

As an exclusively corporate economy, in which everyone can liquidate his corporate self to avoid paying any debt, while keeping his dividends to himself. Obviously, when left to its own devices and to make its own rules, business cannot function, and many who fail to grasp this (especially the villainous Wise Men) suffer greatly in the new economy, but Paramount's leadership delivers relief for all.

Realizing that they have lost their powers of extortion over the king, Scaphio and Phantis plot to raise a revolution in conjunction with the ousted Public Exploder. They manage to raise popular wrath “Upon our Sea-Girt Land” on behalf of the starving doctors and lawyers, since both crime and disease have been abolished under Paramount's unfettered leadership, and Paramount relents, instituting the critical reform of government by party, which is sure to lead to plenty of work for lawyers, constabulary and medicoes, and the day is saved, as Scaphio and Phantis are finally thwarted, and Utopia, Ltd. Is finally free.

What can I say? This is superb- the absurdity of corporate personhood is skewered from the opposite direction, rather the same one as that good chestnut of a bumper sticker that says “I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one” and separating personal benefit from professional action, all while showing the folly of the cultural posturing of imperialism. It also shows the absurdity of a business model that depends on being able to be the only one to get out of common rules. From stuffy 19^th century liberals, this is an astoundingly subversive show with some really catchy tunes. And of course, the prescience of Gilbert's condemnation of the British military for its laughable insistence that war with Germany was imminent is hilarious both as an attack on the military-industrial complex and for its incidental wrong-headedness.

I'd love to get a discussion going about this and what messages we see reinforced!

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen

Special Post- Nancy Pelosi and another 301 members of Congress just Saved the World

Special Post- VICTORY!

Remember in “The Empire Strikes Back”, the infamous (among my nerdy people) Battle of Hoth sequence in the beginning? A handful of rebel troops dug into the snow, facing down the massive AT-AT walkers? Luke, Wedge, and the boys all buzzing around in their speeders, unable to bring down the walkers with blaster fire? But finally, they wrap a rope around one of the walkers, and it tumbles, helplessly to the ground?

Nancy Pelosi wrapped a rope around the legs of the TPP a few weeks ago-namely endorsing it conditionally- conditionally that the government offer job training paid for by raiding the Medicare trust fund. It looked like it wouldn't work- enough conservatives on both sides of the aisle, not to mention the president, were all too willing to cut Medicare, and the package looked likely to pass. The president even took the field personally to lobby the House Democratic caucus to cough up the 8 or so votes needed to pass the package in its entirety to compensate for a few Republicans who may be genuine libertarians afraid at giving corporations veto power over public rights, or may just be completely batshit insane and thought this was something to do with their dreaded “Agenda 21”. Either way, I'm glad they held off, because it gave Nancy Pelosi a chance to save the world.

I'm not kidding.

Pelosi spoke to her caucus, telling them that she could not support the president's demands at this time without better safeguarding American labor. So even though the nasty part passed, the poison pill of Medicare cuts- whose passage was necessary to validate the Trade Promotion Authority bill- went down in flames. The following list consists of things this treaty will open the doors to abolishing by reason of impeding corporate profit- Nancy Pelosi may have just saved

Any and all environmental regulations- mileage standards, California's emissions market, the entire goddamn portfolio of the EPA

Rules against lead in paint and fuel

the minimum wage

the Dodd- Frank banking reform bill

the part of Obamacare mandating employers contribute to their employees' health insurance

Every “buy local” provision in the country

Truth in advertising laws

the GMO labelling movement

the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act- and any future, better bills trying to improve pay equality.

These are all key parts of the Democratic agenda, which the president was willing to sacrifice to sell a few more MonsantiCows to Australia and please his banker friends. What does this say about his priorities?

Unfortunately we're probably not done yet. The senate dealt a similar blow to the TPP two weeks ago, but the conservatives rallied and voted again, successfully this time, in just 24 hours.  Remember, the bad guys did eventually win on Hoth.  Boehner has already promised a second vote by Tuesday. So please, charge the TPP while it's still flipped on its back. Call the capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 , ask for your House member, and tell them to vote no on trade promotion authority, cuts to Medicare, Trade Adjustment Assistance, and the entire bloody Trans Pacific Partnership every time it comes up!

Might also be time to draft a few loveletters to Pelosi. I'm sure she'd appreciate them.

Now, concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer!

Rot Front, Genossinnen und Genossen

German Post 2 Abtreibungsrechten

Abtreibungsrechten sind in Gefähr- Frauen brauchen mehr Freiheit

 Here's a shorter piece, just added in as a bonus this week for our German readers.

Es gibt mehr als vierzig neue Gesetze gegen die Abtreibungsrechte in manche Amerikanische Bundesländern, die von der so-gennanter “Right to Life” Bewegung gegen Frauen unterstützt sind. Ich bin der meinung, dass aktuelle Abtreibungsregeln (Warten-Zeiten, Klinik Mindesgroße, und so weiter) ganz gefährlich sind, und Angriffen gegen den Menschenrechten Amerikanerinnen sind. Ich glaube fest, dass die Abtreibung immer greifbar sein muss, und einfacher durchzusetzen sein soll. Es ist ganz furchtbar für eine Frau der es nicht erlaubt ist, über ihren eigenen Körper zu entscheiden.

Diese Frage ist kontrovers, weil viele Religionsfanatiker wollen, das Frauen ihren eigenen Entscheidungen nicht machen. Diese Glaube ist am stärksten über Sexuelle Freiheit- diese Leute sind ganz erschrocken, dass Frauen Sex haben wann sie es wollen. Diese Frauenfeinde sagte, dass sie¹ will alle Fetusen geboren erlauben, aber die Mehrheit wählt für Kandidaten und Parteien, die niemals die Sozialkasse unterstützt, sondern eine Sparpolitik. Dieser Widerspruch ist, meiner Meinung nach, eine große Schande. Die Religiöser Gegnern Abtreibungsrechten sorgen nichts für Kinder, nur gegen Frauenrechten. Die “Right to Lifers” sind die gleichen Leute, die wollen, dass die Frauen nur in die Küche zuhause arbeiten, und niemals ihres eigenes Geld verdienen. Sie glauben, eine Frau muss ihrem folgen auf jedem Befehl folgen, um ein “Heiliges” Leben zu leben. Meine Parole darauf ist immer- Freiheit für die Frauen, und Freiheit von Religion.

Es ist mir wichtig, die Abtreibungsrechten zu unterstützen, aus manche verschiedenen Gründen. Zuerst gibt es in unsere Geschichte viele religiöser Kriege und Verfolgungen, und ich habe Angst vor alle religiöse-Gesetzen. Zweitens denke ich dass keiner für den Anderen entschieden kann, was einer mit seinem eigenen Körper machen kann. Es ist wahnsinnig, dass einem diese Menschenrechten verloren kann, wenn man nur Sex hat. Sex ist kein Grund, Menschenrechten zu verlieren. Drittens bin ich der Meinung, dass Kinder besser aufwachsen, wenn sie geliebt und anerkannt werden. Unverhoffte Schwangerschaften macht viele Probleme, wie zum Beispiel Armut und Schwerigkeiten für Kinder sowie Müttern.

Ich interessiere mich dafür weil ich weiß, dass die Gleichen Feinde die Frauenrechten hassen, auch mich verfolgen wollen weil ich Transgeschlechterin bin. Wir alle brauchen die Freiheit unseres eigenen Körpers, und die Religiosern in Deutschland so wie die Vereinigten Staten sind immer die Gegnern der Gleichstellung.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen

General update

Hello, all. I wish I had better news this week, but it's all grim.

Britain is pursuing additional massive cuts, the brunt of which are falling on the revenue share allotted to Scotland as punishment for Scotland electing so many progressives. This continues the government's pattern of targeting Scots for revenge- plans for stripping Scottish MPs of voting power (!) in parliament were in this year's Queen's Speech- traditionally written for her by the current government to announce their current plans- and cut after cut has been forced on the entire UK.

Last week, Osborne (Cameron's treasury guy) announced that they're proceeding with privatizing the Royal Mail wholesale, even abolishing the last 30% stake the government was required by law to maintain. Even the BBC has pointed out the striking appearance of insider trading or even outright undervaluing of the Mails that followed the last round of Mail privatizations in 2013, with some of the government's approved buyers making 70% profits within days of the initial sale.

President Obama and Senator Paul have submitted competing schemes to abolish Endangered Species Protection- Obama's plan calls for abolishing all new protections and gradual phaseout of existing ones. Paul's plan calls for setting a five year cap on all protections regardless of species' viability, and requiring the consent of state governors to maintain any protections at all. Obama's plan is obviously more likely to go into effect as a regulatory adjustment, and it is plenty scary enough. Couple this with the administration's renewed love for drilling in the Arctic as well as opening huge new coal reserves to strip mining (containing a total carbon footprint of more then 4 times the reduction which would result from their own energy plan, should it ever even go into effect) showcasing once again the strength of this president's love for the environment.

The Labour leadership contest is continuing to heat up- a new candidate has entered- Jeremy Corbyn, the oldest candidate yet to declare. He's a good representative of what is called “Old Labour”- that is, Labour before Blair made them the second party of privatization and cuts. Seems he got in a bit of trouble for taking too hard a line against Thatcher's evisceration of British manufacturing and imposition of discriminatory poll taxes. He sounds terrific, and I'm reconsidering my support for Creagh. There are four previously declared candidates

Mary Creagh- used to be Labour's spokeswoman on agriculture and the environment (separate from the post of energy and climate change). She seems to be the Ed Miliband in this pack- fairly conservative on a lot of important issues- taxes, union rights, wants Labour to start pursuing the fallacious “aspirational voter” who thinks “I don't want to tax the rich, I'm going to be rich someday because I'm better than everybody else who doesn't make it”, all of which are spectacular strikes against her in my book, but she does have a really strong and active environmental record, and that is the single most important issue in my estimation. She pulled off an impossible victory some years back when her protest campaign managed to convince the Cameron government to abandon its plan to abolish 85% of Britain's forest reserve. I don't know much about Corbyn's environmental record, so unless I find out he's better on it than her, she would probably be my first choice though I do have my reservations.

Edit- as of Tuesday, Creagh has rejected a popular fracking ban. I'm now firmly behind Corbyn.

Yvette Cooper- shadow Home Secretary or something. She seems to be the mainstream of the leadership candidates, and has extensive ties to the last few Labour leadership teams. Pass.

Liz Kendall- the Blairite, shadow health secretary, the privatize everything candidate. Pass.

And Andy Burnham- the union's favourite, and dominant frontrunner- this makes him my third choice behind Creagh and Corbyn.

Penultimately, (back to the states) Wisconsin's budget- already horrendous in its attacks on everything from school funding to the Secretary of State's office, is taking a new tack to ensue ideological reliability in the second state to ban public employees from acknowledging climate change: abolishing tenure and putting university policy and curricula entirely in the hands of governor-appointed boards of trustees. Really, watching Scott Walker go is like Frank Underwood without the stealth. I worry that Underwood references are about to become a new Godwin's Law of political discourse but the extent of Walker's power grab is truly astonishing- from the armed paramilitary goons by mining sites harassing local journalists and staging false-flag “eco-terrorist” attacks to the purge of all opposition from both party and government, to requiring unions to function without charging dues, all while being bankrolled into invincibility by the Koch family, Walker has encountered no meaningful opposition since his first union busting in 2011. No bet on whether he or Bush (architect of the most successful purge of Black voters since 1877) will be the GOP nominee.

Finally, everyone should be calling the capitol switchboard complaining about the administration's Trans Pacific Partnership, which is set to clear a procedural hurdle on Friday with the passage of “trade Promotion Authority” which will suspend all debate on the as yet incomplete measure until after we fully adopt it. Because that makes sense to business. Call at (202) 224-3121 , ask for your House member because the senate already passed this disaster.

This treaty, Obama's current top foreign policy priority, will give corporations in any of the 13 signatory countries standing to sue in a privately run court any member government for loss of profit due to regulation, while eliminating all buy-local ordinances and preferences. The cost in jobs alone will be catastrophic, and this will spell the end, once and for all, of things like GMO labelling, renewable energy standards, and if fully enacted, the minimum wage. The reasoning for supporting it is that apparently it will help us sell our GMO beef easier in Australia, and will make China upset, also we're not supposed to know any of this because the bill is entirely secret- Congresswoman Louise Slaughter D-NY risked serious charges by disclosing this much. Obama has joined forces with the Republicans to deal another body blow to the workers of the world, and render all future regulations subject to a corporate tribunal. Believe in that change.

Solidariät, Genossinnen und Genossen

Designing the Perfect Election system

Designing the Best Election System

Hello, Genossinnen und Genossen.

Last week we discussed the truly abysmal state of democracy (here defined as the proximity between people's votes and the actual result measured in legislature seats) in last month's British election. According to Political Scientist Robert Dahl, Britain is one of only four nation-states among the ranks of democracies and semi-democracies to use simple plurality, single member districts as the method for choosing their legislature. (The United States, France, and Canada are the others). To recap our problems with this system, let's briefly recount the offenses committed by First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) single member district systems

1. Huge numbers of votes are wasted,- extra votes for the winner beyond the second place finisher's total+1 are wasted as the range of outcomes does not change with the margin of victory, and no vote that went to someone other than the winner has any effect on the outcome anyway.
2. A Party/ideology's strength is determined as much by geography and gerrymandering as by popularity, which can produce gross over or under - representation as the case may be- see my previous article for examples from the recent British election
3. The system forces out minor parties by confining representation to groups that command local pluralities, rather than a consistent share of the electorate spread across the entire country, i.e. a plurality party in 1 district gets more representation than a party that has 20% support everywhere but no pluralities. This has the following effects
   1. - A subsidy to the largest one or two parties
   2. Marginalizing the expressed views of even sizable minorities
   3. creating a chilling effect on that expression, by making voting for alternatives meaningless except as a protest
   4. - One positive effect- every locality has at least one legislator dedicated to advancing that region's interests.  This is called Dyadic Representation

It is particularly revealing that whenever we've been in position to dictate another country's constitution (Post-war Japan, Germany, Italy, several others) we've spared them the farce that is our voting system, acknowledging that political science has advanced since our constitution was written.

Now let's talk fixes, and more broadly what our ideal election system would look like. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll be ignoring the titanic power of mega-donations as well as geographic imbalances (equal representation for unequal population) and focusing on how votes are cast and counted.

There are three general alternatives to FPTP

1. Ranked or instant runoff voting- you list candidates in order of preference, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is eliminated, with those votes going to their second choices, and so on until only one candidate remains. Decent at avoiding the chilling effect, but does lead to a lot of shenanigans, as you sometimes have to figure out the optimum sequence to get your slate represented- if there are multiple candidates you could support, you want to make sure one of them isn't eliminated early! This is fun to game out but it doesn't really help us with problems 1 or 2, does it?
   
2. List or Proportional Representation Voting. I LOVE this- it works best the larger the constituency voting as one- ideally the entire country would vote in one election for this to work. Each party nominates a list of candidates in preferential order, up to the total number of seats in the legislature/Congress/Parliament. (Parties can nominate these candidates in different ways, commonly through a national-level primary, which is how I would do it). Some more progressive countries like Sweden require quotas of women's or minority representation among candidates on this list, some even mandating that the subsidized demographic be listed every x spaces on the list to make sure that an unpopular demographic isn't confined to the bottom of the ticket, where they're unlikely to prevail in this case.  There may be other qualifiers- a party may require its candidates to be affiliated with a trade union, or have served in the military, or in some cases profess a particular religion.
   
   
   Voters then cast ballots for this list, and the seats are awarded on a proportional basis among all parties that clear a certain threshold. I've heard of thresholds being set from .4% to 20%, though I'd personally recommend pegging it between 5-15%- too high a threshold fails to address problems 1, 2 and 3, and too low a threshold incentivizes the creation of myriad fringe parties which can then extort the government for their support as seen in the Israeli Knesset and in the Weimar-era German Reichstag.
   Done properly, list voting solves problems 1, 2 and 3. Every vote (except those cast for truly marginal parties) matters equally in determining the composition of the legislature, giving politicians incentives to campaign everywhere, as well as being its own reward, and parties are represented regardless of their ability to win a plurality anywhere. There are a couple of problems with a pure list system though- first, we lose advantage 4- Dyadic Representation.  With a national election, we lose the benefit of each local community having a representative to further local aims in the national legislature.
   The other problem isn't unique to list voting, but it is amplified in this case: you have to choose between denying unaffiliated voters the right to choose candidates IN THE NOMINATING PROCESS, NOT THE GENERAL ELECTION, but still, that is a problem, and undercutting party responsibility by letting people who are unaffiliated with a party's ideas vote on who its candidates will be. Between these two problems, I would move for a closed primary for two reasons (There are ways to mitigate the exclusion of independents, one of which is already happening under a PR system*), and my support for party responsibility- the extent to which a party is about ideas rather than personality, which would be undercut by allowing casually informed independents to influence the nominating process.
   *The list system creates openings for far more views to be represented, so many independents will see something they like under a list system

3. Finally,a multi-member district system. (MMD). This can operate the same as FPTP or Ranked voting except that the top x finishers are awarded seats where x>1. This mitigates problem 1 and solves problem 2 while not sacrificing advantage 4 or alienating independents, but leaves 3 unsolved. Also, being a district system, it is still somewhat contingent on accidents of geography. This is definitely my favorite for incentivizing campaigning everywhere because of the myriad scenarios in which parties should be paying attention to each district. Consider a slightly competitive district (say under a system with 3 members per district) that tends towards one party- the second and third largest parties have every reason to fight for whatever seat they can get in the district, because they can “win” without getting a plurality vote. Or consider a district overwhelmingly loyal to one party- that party has an incentive to compete for every vote, because if they nominate multiple candidates, they might walk away with more than one representative. Meanwhile, if they do this, smaller parties still have a decent shot at a win. Of course, this could be very subject to manipulation (It may conceivably be more valuable to deny a certain opponent a single seat than to win three for your own comrades), so I don't recommend doing this on its own. It is the only meaningful progressive voting reform currently adopted by an American state (Vermont) and has improved the situation a bit. You're still subsidizing the largest parties based on location though, but if you must do a district system, this is how to do it.

Everybody got that? Now we're getting a bit more interesting, with the model first developed by West Germany and Allied diplomats in the late 1940s

Let's hear it for

MIXED MEMBER PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION!- the best system I've seen anybody actually try.

What is it, you ask? Why is our normally calm, emotionally distant hostess describing it so dramatically, let alone talking about herself in a hypothetical third person?

Well, it is just that damn cool, that's why. Basically, the citizens vote in two elections simultaneously, with separable votes. One for a party list, and one for a candidate in a single member district. The threshold in the German example is 5%, and I like it. There are two twists to make this work- there are more legislative seats than there are districts, and any candidate who wins a district is bumped to the top of her party's preferential list, thus mostly preserving the advantages of a PR system while still letting districts do their thing and get dedicated local representation into the legislature. It's also sexy to independents who may want to ticket split, or even vote for a candidate without a party affiliation.

There is still one big problem though- Problem 1. It is very easy for a larger or sectionally stronger party to win more seats than it is entitled to by proportion of the vote. When this happens, the extra seats aren't taken from anyone else, but they are added in as what are called “overhang” seats, thus subsidizing the biggest party.

I think we can fix this- MMPR mitigates problem 1, solves problems 2 and 3, and leaves advantage 4 completely untouched, while giving independents a new option of choosing a party and a candidate who may not necessarily be on the same side. We can further mitigate problem 1 by taking this to the next level, and making the districts be multi-member! This means that each party has incentive to compete for every vote, everywhere for the list, and for any district where they are polling at close to 3^rd place or better. You have all the advantages of a list system, while dividing the advantage won from the district system among the top three parties in a regionally homogeneous country, or far more in a regionally heterogeneous country. What this means is way, way more votes affect the outcome, which means more constituencies will be represented, both in their ability to actually elect people or parties of their choice, and in the attention paid to them during campaign season. What this leaves us with is a system that represents more people's wishes, gives politicians more reason to seek votes in new areas, and can also preserve party responsibility with closed primaries.

To Recap, a Mixed Multi-Member Proportional Representation system (MMMPR patent pending:P), in which voters get to vote twice- once for their district's representative, and another time for a party list would represent far more ideas and constituencies in government, and make sure everyone's vote truly matters in a way inconceivable under FPTP Single Member. We should all do what we can to get this adopted in as many states as possible- it's even possible (not plausible, sadly) that with the repeal of one federal law from 1960, states could choose to do this for their house delegations too!  But even at the state level, there's so much to do, and as long as we're giving this whole democracy idea a shake, we should make sure as many votes as possible actually matter.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen