#MoveYourCows, Bundy

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As a preparation for a segment in our upcoming episode of Arsenal For Democracy this week, I’m posting a bit of background information on the case of the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy who is refusing to pay his grazing fees on Federal land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently started trying to remove his cattle from the Federal ranges, and this brought in the anti-government militia types, resulting in an impasse.

The core of Bundy’s refusal to pay his grazing fees for over twenty years — that’s how patient the BLM has been — is this claim he makes:

“I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.”

 
He believes the lands belong to the state of Nevada, rather than the Federal government, because he doesn’t accept the latter’s existence in the first place (as we’ll discuss in much greater detail on the episode coming out this Wednesday), and so he feels he doesn’t need to pay any fees.

That position runs into an immediate problem (beyond all the Federal court rulings against him), pointed out in The Atlantic, which is that it’s impossible to claim to be abiding by Nevada’s laws and constitution, because Nevada’s Civil War-era constitution demands fealty to and cooperation with the Federal government above all else:

the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States; and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert, or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States. The Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and Perpetuate its existence, and whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority.

 
Woops. Time to move your cows or pay up, Bundy.

For the rest of you more law-abiding citizens, check back on Wednesday night for our radio discussion of this situation, which we just recorded tonight. We take this apart from all angles and look at some of the historical circumstances that brought us to this moment.

Update 4/24/14: Listen to the segment below:
Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81

Find the rest of the episode here.

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How dare you vote for your interests!

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It’s pretty well known that among Fox News’s “infotainment” programming (between its official news segments) the show Fox & Friends is perhaps the most devoid of a link to reality. But it does spit forth, within a vast mine of crap, some particularly putrid gems worth looking at in greater depth.

allen-westOne such recent gem was a segment with Allen West, a hyper-conservative former Congressman from Florida and advocate of the Tea Party movement, perhaps best known for his undying rage toward Muslims. (He is also known, among critics, for his borderline war crimes in Iraq that led to his early retirement from the U.S. Army — a fact the Fox News hosts did not bring up when repeatedly calling him “Colonel West.”)

During this segment, the show asserted (with little daylight between his claims and the hosts’ statements) that the Muslim Brotherhood is about to become a party on everyone’s voting ballots, right alongside Democratic and Republican candidates.

Now, there are many things wrong with that claim (besides the fact that it’s 100% made-up). It’s hard to know where to begin.

For one thing, the framing of the claim is outlandish because anyone could start any party (as many have indeed done) and it would still not be on the same level as the Democrats and Republicans — certainly no more than if I were to launch the “American Easter Bunny Supremacy Party” or whatever. But we’re talking about the network that tried to convince its viewers that the “New Black Panther Party” was a revolutionary force sweeping the nation and oppressing white voters, rather than two old Black men in berets looking cranky outside a single polling place in Philadelphia.

So, for today and the segment in question, it’s probably not worth my time to rehash the theme that Fox News is crafting an entirely fabricated reality that with each passing day shares fewer properties — nay, even laws of physics — with our dimension. If you want more on that, you’ll want to read my popular 2010 treatise entitled “The Right-Wing Alternate Universe.”

(Shout out, though, to their extensive world-building and long-running character development work on this Fox Newsiverse. They should host a con or have a wikia or something, so Fox News Channel nerds can discuss continuity error resolution and alternate timelines.)

Voting bloc

But the real reason I wanted to bring up this segment was the claim that a consortium or coalition of legitimate Muslim-American and Arab-American lobbying organizations were trying to put together a political party. That’s not actually true, as you’ll see from this quotation from the segment, where he elides two entirely different concepts of
1) a political party and
2) a voting bloc (a group of voters who informally vote together based on a shared interest).

From the Informed Comment summary of the exchange (if you haven’t watched the clip yet):

“They’re forming some type of political party, a voting bloc as they call it,” West said.

“In this country!” Doocy emphasized.

“That’s right! To institutionalize policies that favor them,” West agreed, adding that they wanted to “destroy America from within using a civilizational jihad, and that’s exactly what you see happening.”

 
Ok, so in reality (as he tacitly acknowledges without formally acknowledging) no one is actually forming any type of political party. A “voting bloc as they call it” is exactly what every major group of united voters is called in every democracy in the world, but he makes it sound like a concept so exotic and Middle Eastern it just walked out of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights holding hands with Scheherazade.

If all the labor unions in the United States endorse a candidate and organize to get their membership to back that candidate, they have formed a voting bloc, not a political party. They’re not suddenly now “The Labor Party.”

But look at that other remark he tosses in there. He says they (the Muslim/Arab-American interest groups) want “to institutionalize policies that favor them.”

That’s a fancy way of saying they want to pass laws that are in line with their goals (of reducing discrimination against Americans who are Arab and Muslim and of promoting better cultural understanding).

If you listen to the clip of Allen West talking, but then read closely the words coming out of his mouth, it’s the political equivalent of Andy Daly’s (very funny) “Jerry O’Hearn, veteran standup comic” character who just says banal and vacant statements in the expected cadence and rhythm so it sounds like he’s doing a routine, without having to make actual jokes (much like West says banal facts but makes them sound shocking).

Daly has said that he developed the character after he accidentally timed a joke wrong one time and audience members laughed automatically at the pause rather than at the punchline because they thought he had already said it.

Similarly, Allen West can just say normal stuff in a scary way — “a voting bloc as they call it” or “to institutionalize policies that favor them” — and suddenly it has great meaning.

But actually, for the tea party movement, as I’ve argued before, there is great (negative) meaning to the idea of (other!) people voting for candidates that will pass “policies that favor them.” Read more

Slovakia: You get a car, you get a car, everybody pays their taxes.

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Gotta love clever governance solutions. Slovakia is trying to fight business tax cheats who are pocketing value-added (sales) taxes, which hurts both consumers/manufacturers and the government. The country came very close to requiring a bailout last year because its economy and debt situation was such a mess. So their revenue loss solution was to host a lottery with huge prizes, from almost $14k cash to a new car and more. The only thing you had to do to enter was upload receipts for things you had purchased with VATs on them (almost everything).

The government then checks to see if the business paid up the tax listed on the receipt (and the buyer can report fake tax numbers, too). The consumer is entered to win either way. You can enter over and over by uploading lots of receipts — which is why nearly half a million people have uploaded 60 million receipts since the program began last year.

Tax collection began to increase early in 2013 and rose more sharply after the lottery began. Officials say they collected about $512 million more in 2013 than in 2012. How much of that is a result of the lottery may never be clear.

But Mr. Kazimir said that it was surely a big factor, and that it had cost only about $276,000 to get the lottery going. He said the new influx of complaints had already proved that it was not just small businesses that were cheating: Chain stores have also been caught giving fake receipts.

 
It’s been so successful that Portugal just launched its own lottery this past week.

The lottery project has drawn criticism from some Portuguese opposition politicians who say it is a capitalist tool to turn citizens into tax inspectors.

 
Hell yes it is… and there is nothing wrong with that. Tax evasion is a cancer on democratic societies because it both undermines confidence in the fairness of the taxation system and erodes the government’s ability to invest in infrastructure and provides services, which reduces its credibility. And it’s even worse when that evasion is on value-added taxes that consumers and manufacturers have already had to pay up front, without the government seeing a dime. It’s essentially theft from the people, really.

Arming ordinary citizens with the power to help enforce tax compliance strengthens democracy and governance. Doing it in such a light-handed way is brilliant and virtually painless. The only people who lose are those who are already breaking the law and stealing revenue.

You get a car, you get a car, everybody pays their taxes.
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Combat, mental health, and uncomfortable questions

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After the recent (latest) military base shooting, the V.A. urged the media and people generally not to jump to conclusions — suggesting that the shooter suffered from PTSD — that might further stigmatize mental health problems facing some veterans. In the abstract that might make sense, but in context it doesn’t quite. Because that request almost implies that there isn’t any connection — that it’s a myth. Which unfortunately is not the case…

In a Slate article headlined, “PTSD Contributes to Violence. Pretending It Doesn’t Is No Way to Support the Troops”, combat Marine officer-turned-journalist, David J. Morris, looks at historical links between war, PTSD, and home front violence and poses the uncomfortable question:

What if Dept. of Veterans Affairs isn’t trying to protect its veterans from being maligned/marginalized when they tell people not to link shooting sprees and veteran homicides with PTSD — and is really just trying to whitewash the fact that the country sent a bunch of people into very unusual moral situations (and then didn’t help them re-adjust when they got back)?

We absolutely need to do better, and certainly not everyone comes home messed up permanently. But refusing to acknowledge the lasting mental health toll of war for many veterans doesn’t mean it doesn’t last.

The simple fact is that war poisons some men’s souls, and we aren’t doing our veterans any favors by pretending that war is only about honor and service and sacrifice and by insisting that PTSD is completely unrelated to the problem of postwar violence. It’s not only morally irresponsible, it’s scientifically inaccurate.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t want this to be true. In fact, as a veteran who has struggled with post-traumatic stress, I hate that it’s true, but war is an evil thing. As a society we need to face the reality of it head-on so that we can avoid the next war. And despite its official protests to the contrary, the VA secretly agrees with me. Visit any VA hospital across the country and you’ll see what I mean. What’s the first thing you see when you walk in? A metal detector with an armed VA police officer standing nearby.”

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Big government, for the few or the many?

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I believe in the power of big government because I believe (when used correctly) it’s a better enabler of personal economic freedom and advancement to more people than the “free market.” And I believe that more people having those opportunities results in bigger economic growth overall.

That and I’m willing to acknowledge the fact that the U.S. economy only got as big as it did through massive (Federal government) import tariffs and vast (Federal government) land giveaways.

“Big government” — at least in the sense of a government distributing resources on a large scale — has always been with us and always will, though it has fluctuated by degrees and type of resources. The only real change we’ve seen is whether the resources are targeted more toward the few or more toward the many.

So: Do conservatives want personal economic freedom and advancement for “more people” or just “some people”?

April 14, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 80

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AFD-logo-470
Description | Topics: Hobby Lobby contraception case, Catalonia and European nationalism in the 21st century, autism awareness month. People: Bill, Sasha, Persephone, and guest Monika Brooks.

AFD 80

(Nate and Greg are off this week.)

To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post.

Related links

– Think Progress: “If Hobby Lobby Wins, It Will Be Even Worse For Birth Control Access Than You Think”
– Think Progress: “Justice Kennedy Thinks Hobby Lobby Is An Abortion Case — That’s Bad News For Birth Control”
– Think Progress: “A Hobby Lobby Win Would Put Birth Control Coverage In Jeopardy At 71 Other Companies”
– TIME: “Catalonia Independence Referendum Ruled Unconstitutional”
– AFD: “Mocha Autism Network: Autism Awareness Month”

Mocha Autism Network
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Did Egypt’s military organize the protests leading to the coup?

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egypt-coat-of-armsOne man is alleging in an in-depth report by Buzzfeed that his much-cited populist organization, Tamarod, which paved the way for the Egyptian military coup in July 2013 and demanded intervention on behalf of millions of protesters, was actually just five guys in an office whose name and social media popularity was co-opted (or at least force-multiplied) by the military and Interior Ministry as a front group to legitimize the coup. The original organization leaders would send talking points to state television and the Army would rewrite them and then put them out over the air under the Tamarod name anyway. But, then again, he also suspects three of his co-founders may actually have been Army plants all along.

By the end of June, he asserts they were effectively no longer in control of the group as Interior staff began using its offices to stage and organize protesters to rally against the president — down to the logistical level of how many little flags and water bottles were needed. In other words, more like a highly choreographed U.S. presidential convention audience with pre-printed signs than a spontaneous mass demonstration of affection for the military and disgust with the president.

The June 2013 protests always seemed way too well organized (or rather, unusually well supplied) to me, but I tend to hesitate to jump on board with suggestions that may prove to be conspiracy theories. These allegations aren’t necessarily true either — the Buzzfeed reporters had trouble finding anyone who could corroborate his account and he sometimes hinted he had been less ignorant of the situation at the time than he lets on — but it would certainly fit with a suspicious pattern that resulted in a very rapid emergence of a mass produced Cult of Personality surrounding (soon-to-be-president) General Sisi within a week or so of the coup.

Then again, maybe I’m just looking for even more reasons to be disgusted with the idea of millions of people rallying enthusiastically for the replacement of transitional democracy with military dictatorship — and with their Western cheerleaders who, to this day (despite all the terrible things the new government has done or endorsed), can’t contain their excitement for military rule, in their haste to quash Islamic participation in government.