buckdata - news and views for an unquiet age

There is heated debate in Washington these days over what to do about our country’s recent unsavory dabbling in torture as an information-gathering strategy.

As with many other instances during the George W. Bush administration in which legitimate duties of government (such as statesmanship) became conflated with and ultimately displaced by punishment, pure and simple, we are all of us coming to realize that Bush-era techniques employed in efforts to extract information from unwilling and even uninformed “informants” went way too far. Not only international conventions but also our own laws and morals were savagely violated by actions taken with a veneer of government approval.

As ever more reeking information continues to seep from the closed drawers of the military and spy agencies, it is clear that the heritage of America’s own dirty war will not go away on its own.

The problem now seems to be what to do about it. Should we go on talk shows and claim that torture wasn’t really torture? Should we-Nuremberg-style-prosecute and punish those who carried out illegal policies endorsed by our then-government? Should we convene a truth and reconciliation commission, so that those who carried out the torture can ‘fess up and hug their surviving former victims? Should we talk the issue onto its deathbed, bury it in paper, smother the legal and moral outrages in subtleties, and move on to health care, global warming and other pressing matters? Or should we see-to paraphrase the late folksinger, Phil Ochs– the pictures of the pain?

What to do? In this case, although I consider myself a progressive, I really would like to see Washington run more like a small business. I ask: “What would Main Street do?”

If I identified an embezzler in my business, I would likely institute controls to identify financial misdeeds earlier and more readily. I might choose not to prosecute the culprit due to concern about publicity. But would I keep the embezzler around to do next season’s taxes?

If I were a small town editor who discovered one of my writers was plagiarizing, I would probably increase my future scrutiny of news stories prior to publishing them. But would I continue to accept articles from the freelancer who burned me?

If I were a carpenter who discovered that a vender sold me wood for a house that was so weakened by wormholes that the house I was building could not stand, I might devise new methods for stress testing my materials before beginning construction. But would I buy again from that vender?

If I, a hapless householder, hire a plumber who recklessly breaks a pipe and lets a stream of sewage spew into my front yard, will I call the guy up again when the garbage disposal stops grinding?

I am not a carpenter or accountant. I do my own cleaning. My business does not earn enough to have employees, let alone ones who embezzle, and my garbage disposal is not broken, but you get the idea.

If I were a new president who discovered his employees had engaged in torture, I would likely devise new methods and policies to keep torture out of government. But would I continue to keep people who authorized it or did it on the payroll?

C’mon. Really? Would you? Would anybody? –buckdata

Friends, family, and acquaintances are raising questions about whether President Obama  can accomplish  what we helped elect him to do. Will the wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will clean energy really be funded? Will Bush-era wiretap and other privacy violations be sufficiently curtailed?  Will single payer health care get endorsed or merely sidelined? Will the entire national pocketbook be emptied into Wall Street?

For her part, buckdata is wondering why money isn’t getting to the people most hard hit by this depression, such as those on the verge of losing their homes, those who have already lost them, and those for whom a tarp is not a government program but a literal roofing strategy in tent cities around the country.

To aid the President—on this issue at least– the following modest solution is hereby submitted:

Let’s all be bankers! Maybe it’s time for the poor and dispossessed and the rest of us to found some banks. Buckdata has a few in mind: First Foreclosure Bank in Stockton, Credit Default Swappers Bank in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, Toxic Assets Bank in Flint, Bonus Plus Bank with a nice Manhattan address, the Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania, and, of course, the online Bank of Buckdata.

Consider the possibilities: Laid off attorneys can volunteer time to help with the charters and incorporations. Laid off Wall Street employees can help us set up the books. Laid off web designers can devote their graphics talents to creating suitable online presence and branding. Impoverished retirees can exhume their mothballed suits and ties to lend us all gravitas at the headquarters front office.

Once the banks are set up, perhaps the homeless, the foreclosed, the evicted, and the about-to-be dispossessed will be able to approach Washington politely, hats (if we still have them) in hand, in search of generous bailouts. After all, a democracy, too, involves a contractual obligation, doesn’t it?

The proposal has a further benefit: If the sheriff’s deputies should arrive to evict us before the bucks start rolling in, we can always live in the vault. –buckdata

Note to readers: This is a satire. The above banks do not now exist. There is no Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania. There is no New Shock, Pennsylvania. No intention to single out particular existing institutions should be inferred from this blog post. This caution is necessary because of an unusual initiative reported in the New York Times on April 8. The article by Graham Bowley and Michael J. de la Merced details a scenario in which ordinary citizens may  be cajoled to invest in private mutual funds which are to be set up with government support to purchase other private institutions’ soured assets. The writers suggest such citizen investments may be envisioned as similar to the patriotic purchases of “Liberty Bonds” during the World War I. In such an audacious climate, formal disclaimers truly become necessary. Without such disclaimers, even well-informed readers may find themselves unable to distinguish pastiche from reality.

Buckdata.com will soon be on Twitter?  Stay tuned.

Huffington Post does it. Raw Story does it. Obama does it, and so too, reportedly, do Republicans like Karl Rove. They all use Twitter.

Twitter is software which allows a registered member to send out very brief messages to others, either from twitter.com’s website or from a cell phone. Recipients can get the messages either on the web or on their cell phones or other mobile devices.  Members can “follow” others’ messages or allow others to follow their own. One can thus send messages like, “I’m doing the dishes,” or “I’m saving the economy” to friends, family, colleagues, and nearly total strangers who have signed up to receive them.

The service is free, except for the instant messaging charges the cell phone carriers may impose.

It’s a neat idea and its time may have come in a way many media watchers not have foreseen. Here’s why: With mounting middle class layoffs, lots more people will have the leisure to try out new technologies, particularly low cost and free ones. Using their new and copious spare time, they will learn how to - as the users of this new communication system put it - “tweet.”

This week, a buckdata.com writer received a solicitation to follow her to date rather scanty Twitter postings. Checking out the profile of the would-be follower, she discovered a discreet link which connected to the sender’s resume.

It is not likely to be the last such.

Readers, brace yourselves for the sight of the new-new media being used the old-fashioned way. The great Twitter job hunt is on!

Monterey Bay Area writer Pat Hanson delivers some practical suggestions for handling a Christmas when material resources are short.

Virtual Christmas Giving: A True Story

I prefer Halloween to Christmas.  You can dress up any way you like, pretend, and have an excuse for putting on a mask.  As soon as retailers start luring us with Christmas decorations and television repeats all those soppy movies, I get depressed.  Some Christmases are more difficult than others, but one that could have been a catastrophe, transformed forever how our family celebrates December 25th.

In 1996, the day before the office Christmas party, my boss called me in to his office and gave me 30 days’ notice. Since summer, I had been the sole support of my husband and teenage stepson after my husband’s  plumbing business tanked. With credit cards at their limit–stretched by one income instead of two to cover the expenses of three–we had done no Christmas shopping and had not even bought a tree.  I did not know how I would be able to numb myself with holiday cheer and forget the reality of my financial situation.  On the way home, tears ran down my cheek as the announcer proclaimed six shopping days left and the shrill voices of the Chipmunks sang, “Christmas, Christmas time is here, time to sing, time for cheer.”

Somehow that week, out of the depths of my despair, I got an idea. We would have a Virtual Christmas. We would each find and wrap up pictures of gifts we would have been thoughtful and generous enough to buy, had there been money to put into circulation! Three days before Christmas I hid the stockings and decorated our ficus plant with lights. We each looked through catalogues, magazines and our hearts to choose five replica presents for one another, and place them under the ‘tree.’ We agreed one of the virtual gifts had to be intangible, like a quality within you would like the other to have.

In addition to the gifts of not only the car, the driver’s license, the baggy sweatshirt and pants, and guitar lessons I wanted to  give to Bobby, there was a fifth gift of “confidence in his own talent” that I wrote on a certificate for a course in entrepreneurship for teenagers, so he could market the artistic skill so evident in his cartoons.

Our teenager really got into it. He gave me concert tickets to Sting and Gloria Estefan, a color printer for my computer, and some Laurel Burch earrings all wrapped in comics from the Sunday paper. This teenager’s conceptual gift to his stepmom was a sign that said, “No Speed Limit!”

Besides a white Porsche, Larry gifted me with a vacation in Hawaii, a new PowerBook, a set of Cutco knives, and a stud from the pages of Playgirl (“for the few times our batteries are out of synch,” he wrote). His conceptual gift to me on a 3×5 card: “I give you the magic sword to conquer your Boogie Man, permission to be gentle with yourself, and license to proceed full steam ahead with realization of your writing dreams!”

For my beloved, I wrapped up the picture of a nose-hair tweezers from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. He would get a car too, a Dodge Viper like the one we saw the weekend we met, plus a leather jacket, more memory for his computer, and a video camera, so he could practice at his dream career: film maker. For his virtual gift, I inscribed words on a magnifying glass that granted utter and absolute belief in himself and in the unlimited power of his creativity.

On Christmas morning, looking at my husband’s face as he stared out at the sunrise with tears in his eyes, I silently sent him that missing one percent of faith that would help us all actualize our dreams.

The virtual Christmas presents worked. It’s amazing how a concept once put in the mind, can manifest in reality.  One year later, we’d moved and my stepson was registered for a course on Art Presentation at the local community college. My husband was finishing the college degree he had abandoned 31 years earlier.  His belief in himself prompted a mid-life career shift to multi-media instructional technology. I had successfully hoisted that sword to my writing fears, was studying screenwriting and had published some freelance non-fiction.

A Christmas Wish, 2008

Imagine: if more American families practiced Virtual Christmas, perhaps the trampling episode that resulted in death and injuries at a Wal-Mart this past ‘Black Friday’ might have been prevented.  With the mortgage debacle, spiking unemployment, major plant and retail closings, stock market crashing, gas prices out of control, escalating credit card debt, increasing bankruptcies, and foreclosures, it is time for more of us to let go of the commercialism that underlies this holiday season.

The conceptual gift I would give everyone right now, would be a perspective that helps him or her see the bigger picture. Guilt, the gift that keeps on giving, be gone! We need eyes that can see things in a way that helps us transcend our struggles to survive, heads held high.  Our individual consumer debt is but a small mirror of the multi-trillion dollar debt our own government amassed in the past seven years, a large part of it for a war most of the world agreed should not have happened. We who are in dire financial straits need to realize this is not all about us. I would virtually gift us all with a view of the human condition that goes beyond our worth being determined by work, our  j-o-b-s.

I would bless us with divine insight as to how the preciousness of each moment must be cherished. How love and forgiveness matter, and little else does. How hugs are more important than deadlines. How breathing deeply and sitting still are more essential than driving fast or shopping or even eating a lot.

May our model for Virtual Christmas Giving help your family as it did ours, to focus on the abundance and potential we all do have, rather than allowing fear pervade this glorious season. It is the power of positive intention that counts. Make your holidays this season virtual and they can still be merry!

©Pat Hanson, 12/02/08  Contact: pat_hanson@csumb.edu

The sight of candidate Sarah Palin blinking and winking as she uttered buzzwords and previously-owned soundbites at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with Senator Joe Biden was not a reassuring one. It has set off another round of blog commentary, this time discussing what her Oct. 2 performance might foretell about a possible McCain presidency.

Here are a few direct responses from Buckdata: Palin is not a team player. She disagrees with McCain about oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. She said so. In the event of her succession to the presidency, would she carry out McCain’s policies? She already likely has plans for expanding the vice presidency.  She said at the debate that the  U.S. Constitution allows this: “I’m thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president…. Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position….”

Palin does not understand how things work or even perceive the need for that understanding. Witness her discussion of climate change. Palin said she would act on its impacts but did not want to “argue about the causes.”

She was not willing to deal thoughtfully and respectfully with the questions posed by the debate moderator standing in for the American people, stating that she preferred to address them directly.  As vice president or president, she would likely choose which questions to answer, or not, as baldly as she did in the debate.

We are already weary of those who smirk, glare, wink, and refuse to account for themselves thoughtfully. We don’t need any more on the public payroll. And, regardless of gender, we cannot–especially at a time of economic crisis–afford a chief executive (or even deputy chief executive) who cannot understand cause and effect.

For additional commentary on the debate, see Don Monkerud’s astute analysis, “Are you Ready for President Palin?”

Watch the debate again, readers. Ponder it somberly.

Another dimension of Palin’s character was not explored at the debate, however: Palin lacks compassion for those in different circumstances. On her blog, Fierce Desire, author and artist Judith Pierce Rosenberg explores an additional issue very important to women that the debate never touched on.

I don’t know much about Alaska, but–riot police activities in St. Paul during the GOP convention notwithstanding– I have heard that Minnesota is a progressive, child-friendly state.

And the federal government is sort of progressive, too, when it comes to protecting children. For example, it is against the Mann Act to bring a minor across state lines for sexual purposes.

But what about when the purposes are political? Are there any penalties—local or federal–for bringing a minor across state lines to display her—unmarried and pregnant–on podium and television for political gain? Legal or not, like Chris Kelly at the Huffington Post, I find this pretty disturbing.

About 20 years ago, when an angry mother in California planted her youngster out in her front yard with a sign around his neck, detailing what she perceived to be her offspring’s wrongdoings, her public humiliation of the child provoked public outrage and disgust.

So we’ve abandoned the stocks and moved beyond Hester Prynn and her scarlet letter. Or haven’t we?

The American heartland was once exemplified by a Grant Wood painting depicting an upright rural family. In Wood’s iconic “American Gothic,” a staid farm couple pose before an arching farmhouse window. He is in overalls, pitchfork in hand, gazing straight at the viewer. She is in a patterned apron and looks to her left with a world-weary face. Times are tough, as their faces show, and they appear a bit puritanical, but neither appears a likely candidate to publicly humiliate a pregnant teen.

But the times are apparently a’changing. Now we have new images for the heartland: a candidate for president whose recurring mantra in his acceptance speech-–kind of like the chanting of a Cold War-era high school pep rally—is “fight.” A man who needs his wife’s assistance to get onto the Internet and who in his maverick independence has plucked up a caribou hunter from Alaska to serve as a political ideal of motherhood and women’s achievement. An honored vet whose vetting is in question. And his choice for vice president is a parent who would do this to her own kid. Wow.

Readers, would you let either of these people carpool your child to soccer practice? Would you hand either one the keys to the car? To the country?

This goes way beyond gothic. It’s American grotesque.

On July 17, President George W. Bush visited California to view damage from the recent wildfires in the state. Speaking in Redding, California, the president said: “One, I always come to make sure that the federal government is coordinating closely with the state government. I know Governor Schwarzenegger well enough to tell you that if we weren’t, he’d let me know. And I want to thank those who work for the federal government for their hard work and willingness to respond quickly and their service to our country.”

Secondly, he thanked the firefighters, noting he had “this special sense that I was with them.” Then he went on to thank “all those who are helping making the effort work here—people are working long hours and the citizens of this part of the world really, thank you for it.”

The president then thanked the Boy Scouts for working on his “Healthy Forests” initiative. He added: “Finally, I’d like to let the people out here know that we’re paying attention in Washington, D.C., we care about you, and that we’ll respond as best as we possibly can.”

Coverage of the speech on the The White House website included comments given in Redding by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had appeared with Bush when the president made these comments. In the attribution of governor’s comments by the White House website, the governor’s name was misspelled.

As of July 18, 2008, meanwhile, the area burned in California reached 907,568 acres, according to figures provided by the CAL FIRE (the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) That’s 1418 square miles burned.

All you gotta do is call?

We Californians love firefighters. They save homes and lives. In fact, with the evacuations in Paradise and the recent fire threats to coastal cities and hamlets, we would like to see more of them here.

California’s National Guard reports an additional 200 of the state’s guard members have just finished training to fight fires on the ground. This brings the total number of California National Guard members called up for actual direct fire-fighting duty to 400. The figure does not include support people, according to the California National Guard’s public affairs office. Altogether some 1,300 California guards are involved in either fighting the fires or in support functions, according to the guard’s public affairs office. By contrast, there are 131 California National Guard troops currently in Iraq. A total of 1500 California National Guard troops are on “federal active duty” either overseas–including Iraq–or elsewhere outside California, according to the guard’s public affairs office.

These are not enormous numbers. They are dwarfed by the 19,706 personnel currently fighting the wildfires in the state. They are dwarfed by the sizes of the impacted areas. The website of the California Department of Forestry—CAL FIRE– reports 230,372 acres as having burned within its jurisdiction since June 20, and that 13,067 residences are threatened. When fires on Federal lands within California are counted in, the total of burned acres since June 20 rises to 702,394, CAL FIRE reported July 10 on its website.

That’s over 1,000 square miles! Maybe we need some help.

“More than 2,500 National Guardsmen continue the fight to save lives, rescue victims, and ease the suffering of those affected by the wildfire devastation in southern California,” the California National Guard last year reported in a press release dated October 26. The 2007 press release added: “More than 14,000 CNG personnel are available to the Governor if he requests additional CNG presence.”

Don’t hesitate, Governor. It’s time to pick up the phone.

Hard choices lie ahead for our country. For years, working at a feminist news service I helped to found, I would have couched the choice in gender terms: A woman would do better. Now, I am not so certain.

As women in America, we have still not achieved equality on a lot of fronts. Anyone who disagrees need only look at her Social Security benefits statement. We can vote, we can mobilize, we can run for office. A majority of the population, we still do the majority of the housework and the low-paying jobs. We still bear the children. And some of these—the poorer ones especially—still go to war.

My husband served in Vietnam. He, like many who experienced that war, is left chilled by Republican John McCain’s joking response to a student’s question about his age. The 70-something candidate is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 16th as responding in part: “Thanks for the question you little jerk …You’re drafted.” I, too, am chilled by this.

A woman could do better, I always told myself. A woman would prize community over its destruction. A woman would understand that it takes a peaceful village to raise children. A woman would not see war as the solution. A woman would make the connection between excessive spending on war and the squeeze on household budgets.

But perhaps that understanding is no longer a shared feminist one. While initially elated by Hillary Clinton’s spirited run for the White House, I was still troubled by the fact that her vote was among those which enabled George Bush to launch a war on Iraq based on fraudulent information. I did not like Saddam Hussein. I do not like the situation now. On the Internet, I see women mourning their dead children in the street. I see figures indicating millions of refugees–families, children.

I voted for John Kerry in 2004, despite severe discomfort with his own vote authorizing the war. Despite his lengthy clarifications, it still sounded to me like complicity. Feeling helpless, wondering whether any of those in Washington consider the consequences of their actions, I attended a candlelight vigil called by MoveOn.org. In following months, I stood in a village center close to home on Wednesday evenings with others from my rural community, protesting the war. Just before the 2006 election, I brought along the flag which had lain on my father’s casket, and we held it up as traffic passed us.

My father was no pacifist. A very private person, he served in World War II. He did not die in battle. A New Deal Democrat, he had worked to mitigate the impacts of the great depression before the war; later, after it, he labored for the success of farmer cooperatives and crop insurance. He did not live to see these times, so I cannot know what he would say today. I know that he valued his country, as do I.

I must speak for my family now. Holding up my end of the flag in 2006, I spoke to my community, to the commuters’ cars, to the bus and delivery drivers, to the headlights. Then a fellow demonstrator, who had held up the other end—for these casket flags are really long and heavy– helped me fold the flag correctly back into a triangular package, as he had learned to fold so many other flags during the Vietnam war.

Last week, a report in the Huffington Post included a tape of Senator Clinton blaming the “activist base” in her party for state caucus losses, and disavowing MoveOn, specifically. This may have seemed an expedient move in the wake of Super Tuesday defeats, but it was unwise. It made caring people into things.

The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats wrote in his iconic poem, “Easter, 1916” that “too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.” I believe that too much expediency can do things to the heart as well: It can cause a candidate to harden hers. It can fracture mine.

It can split a party wide open.

–Shelley Buck lives in Northern California. She was a founding editor of Her Say News Service. Copyright, 2008.