ObamasList.com: For Sale

 
After years of muddy-window transparency from the Bush administration, I welcome with open arms the notion that Obama will use as many channels of communication as possible to reach out and dialogue with the nation. I don't suppose the younger and more wired of us, meaning anyone younger than Wolf Blitzer and more adept at explaining the internet than The Alaskan Felon, were really astonished by Obama's online tactics, but I have to admit I hadn't really considered how it might carry over into the communication policies of the new administration.

So, I dove into the Washington Post article, prepared to be hopeful and energized by a new dawn of real transparency, or at least a bold step towards it, or, hell, after the last eight years, a stumbling totter in the right direction. And I was brought up short, a full-on "eh, what now?", by this passage early on (emphasis mine):

"The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. "

Now, were these lists to be considered really private, they'd have no value, as they could never be used. The very fact that they have value, enough to be used as collateral, implies that they are able to be used for other purposes. Is that what you thought when you signed up?

I understand well that the cause was a noble one, but this feels a little like scooping the pennies from the fountain. The people that joined his movement online had dreams, and I imagine none of them were to be collateral priced out for its marketing value.

Yet this was just an unaddressed aside in the article.

Maybe I'm making too big a deal of this, and it certainly doesn't make me believe less in this man or the potential of his administration. But, I also feel as though he should be called on it, not because it is so damning, but in order for it to become another point of dialogue.

Because the online access to the administration is exciting, but it had better be done well, and carefully, because the nigh-unregulated online mediaspace can be dangerous and privacy issues are of primary importance.

Washington Post: Under Obama, Web Would Be the Way -
Unprecedented Online Outreach Expected

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UPDATE: Can I really call it an update if it is a link to an article older than the original one I cited?

Anyway, The New York Times had an article about Obama's use of social networking as a way to create a political brand, and what changes it might signal to the political landscape. This is worth thought and discussion. It is exciting, especially the prospect that this might undermine party-rule, but I have this nagging suspicion there are some devils lurking in the details.

New York Times: How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

You know what I love about Sarah Palin? Well really, nothing. But I do love that she gets in front of the TV cameras and says stuff like this in response to the unnamed sources from the McCain campaign talking about how she didn't know what countries were in NAFTA and that Africa was a continent, not a country (emphases mine):

“Those were taken out of context and that’s cruel. It’s mean-spirited. It’s immature. It’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news.”

Oh please, please, please sweet merciful Sarah Palin's Imaginary God, please make her the face of the Republican Party for the next generation.

Her and that crazy Mitt fellow.

Even Murdoch Gets The Blues

 
Interestingly absent from Obama's presser on Friday was the gravitas (averted gaze) of Fox News. They weren't physically AWOL, mind you, they just didn't get called upon. It's a detail that for the most part flew under the radar, but it's fairly piercing. It will be intriguing to see how the conservative network will adjust to a Democratic Party holding the White House and a majority of Congress. In the immediate days after the election, the likes of Major Garrett, Britt Hume, and Chris Wallace backpedaled and miraculously softened their stance on Obama, praising him with accolades and various marks of acknowledgment for everything from his campaign, to his community-organizing past (gasp, Rudy!), to his power of uniting and inspiring people at the national and international levels.

Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist who is writing an authorized biography on Rupert Murdoch's career and family, claims that even Murdoch is embarrassed by Fox News. In spite of objections from Mr. Murdoch (naturally, one must save face publicly), Wolff describes great strain in the relations between Mr. Murdoch and two of his top executives---CEO Roger Ailes and Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation. Wolff fired back at Murdoch's camp---which had obtained an early draft of the book, despite much hush-hush on the manuscript: "I’m obviously annoyed that they’re looking at an early version of the book, and a purloined one at that. In essence News Corp. is holding stolen goods.”

The story from the New York Times continues: "The objections raised on behalf of Mr. Murdoch came after an article on Mr. Murdoch and the book was published in Vanity Fair in the October issue in which Mr. Wolff wrote that Mr. Murdoch was making friends with liberals and that he had soured on Fox News and Mr. Ailes.

“For a long time, he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch,” Mr. Wolff wrote in the October Vanity Fair piece. “And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed — he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly.”

The question that has many in the media scratching their heads is why Mr. Murdoch agreed to give such open access to himself and his family. “It’s a big question,” said David Drake, the book’s publicist at Doubleday. “It will always remain a mystery.”

But while we may rejoice at the metaphorical wheels coming off Fox News' wagon, let us not forget what Mr. Murdoch truly is: a risk-taking entrepreneur, media mogul, and---in effect---a corporation. He understands that on 5 November, 2008 the environment changed and the rules were re-written. If he wants to continue to rake in the profits, his coverage needs to change. If he keeps Fox on its current track, the network will become marginalized and its shareholders will lose money. It's quite simple and analogous to the T. Boone Pickens endorsement of green energy. Men like these know very well the power of "green." In the end, it is truly the only thing that interests them.

The Green Buildup

 
One of my great hopes for the upcoming Obama presidency, coupled with the Democratic majority in both house of Congress, is a final turn away from the concept of "trickle-down" economics. Even Alan Greenspan admitted that he had underestimated the greed inherent in our economic system, a greed that has for decades prevented funds pumped into the top from actually reaching the bottom.

My in-laws are convinced that such a change in economic policy philosophy will mean the bankruptcy of their business, which has been in the family for 60+ years. Yet they provided to my mind the quintessential example of why trickle-down doesn't work the day they were showing us the photos and plans of a second house they were building on the sunny, dry side of our state while, without hint of irony, explaining to us how they had just cut the hours of all of their employees so as to avoid paying for health care benefits.

Anyway, the plan that turns away from trickle-down economics and make the most sense to me is the Green Buildup, a generic term I'm applying to the calls by Thomas Friedman and Al Gore among others for the government to dump massive cash into developing new clean-energy technology and infrastructure, and retro-fitting exitsting systems to mitigate current energy usage.

This just makes sense to me. It puts people to work, which can only help the economy as those people spend their earnings back into the system, creates opportunities for businesses, and works to solve our energy problems in a way that both addresses environmental concerns and strengthens our security position by decreasing dependence on a finite resource largely concentrated in some of the most politically unstable regions in the world.

What's the downside? That isn't a rhetorical question - I actually want to know what potential downsides or stumbling blocks could undermine this plan. Because, in absence of serious concerns, I'd put this on the agenda for day one of the Obama administration.

apres le honeymoon, le deluge

 
I honestly want to keep hope alive, be the change I wish to see, and all those platitudes. Really I do. I cannot pretend, though, to feel confident knowing that the constitutional law professor I helped get elected might just be more of the same, perhaps cloaked in blue as opposed to red. (Interesting to find this on the AP on the same day my Sunday New York Times magazine features a cover story on whether or not Obama will roll back Dubya's executive power-plays.)

I guarantee someone will argue that without executive orders we wouldn't have the Emancipation Proclamation or the WPA. (We also wouldn't have had those pesky internment camps during World War II, but who's really counting?) My issue? There is no real constitutional basis for executive orders. Call me crazy (or call me Ron Paul), but I thought the Constitution was, like, the law of our land; a document which organizes our branches of government and specifically states the scope (and limitations) of all three branches. I also thought that if we the people (including the President) felt hemmed-in by the law of the land, we have a means to amend our Constitution. I don't like the idea of one person having sweeping, broad power over the government, even if I agree with him on most things. I was hoping for change, remember?


(For shits and giggles: the Wikipedia page on U.S. executive orders. Please note the length of Dubya's list in relation to the entire list.)

loopholes and first impressions

 
Hi everyone. Thanks for the warm welcome. 

I tend to lean toward environmental issues so I figured I would share a story that appalled me as my first post.

Sources:
Dow is suing the Canadian government. 
NAFTA is encroaching on Canadian Sovereignty.

So, a chemical ban on lawn insecticides in Quebec has now put the Canadian Federal government in a position to be sued for damages by a U.S. corporation. Individual provinces, like Ontario, are joining Quebec in banning chemical insecticides so it's probably not unlikely that those will go towards increasing the suit. 

"Chapter 11 allows foreign investors to sue the governments of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico if they feel that their profits have been restricted."

I probably should have known about this already. But, I didn't. It's absurd to me that we agreed to open ourselves to interference like this. I'm already disgusted with Canada's current environmental record, but let's just say that we did try to do something that might make a bit of a dent, it's all up for discussion with American and even Mexican companies if they deem the law as a challenge to selling their poisonous products in the marketplace! I already have a problem with the definition of corporations and what it allows them to do and not do. There's just no way that we can allow them to have the power to challenge a foreign, or local, government. I mean, this is obvious, right?

Even with the U.S. in the trouble it's in, to Canadians, it is apparently still to be chased and serenaded. Our own Bush holdover, Stephen Harper, is rushing to build bridges with the Obama administration. Of course, working with the ideas Obama has would be useful, but we have a yahoo Prime Minister who wants to smooth the way to Canada's continuation of its current rampant destruction for profit, rather than a meeting of the minds to shore up problem areas of NAFTA that leave Canada and Mexico at unacceptable disadvantages.

You'll find more on that story over at my site.

Let's Get Definitive

 
First of all, if the election proved anything, it's that the nation, at heart, is Center-Left, not Center-Right, as the monkeys on FOXNews, and elsewhere in the liberal-biased-news-media, would have you believe. Weren't they calling him a socialist as recently as a week ago? We are to take them at their word, are we not?

Secondly, it is a mandate. The days of sweeping landslides are a thing of the past. It would be impossible to rule out the possibility of it happening it again in the future; realistically speaking, we are not likely to see a president win with over 50% of the vote anytime soon. Certainly, Obama won by a larger margin than did Bush either time around, and they were making the argument for a mandate then. Tell you what, we'll adopt Keith Olbermann's term for it, and it'll be forever be known as a "neo-mandate."

Next, so long, bubbelah. Time you were neutered, and if the Reps want you so badly, go for it. We'll see how that'll play with your current supporters, assuming you have any. Besides, there isn't an example of you behaving like a Democrat during this election season, so, it's not like you weren't already gone.

The argument has been made that with Lieberman on board, Democrats would inch closer toward the filibuster-proof magic number of 60 seats in the Senate. Which is an understandable goal, but if it means swallowing the bitter pill of having Lieberman in control of some major committee, then no, it isn't worth it.

It isn't what "Rahmbo" would do...It must be admitted, there's something about the prospect of Emanuel being Obama's arm of the law that is somewhat tantalizing.
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