Welcome to FromDC2Iowa: Contents & Guide

Over 1,500 blog posts on a variety of topics since 2006.

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3. Who is this blog's author? Nicholas Johnson.

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Summertime Blogging

May 23, 2009, 9:00 a.m.

Summer Reruns
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)

Contents
o Chronological Listing Three Years' 650-plus Blog Entries

o March-May 2009 Listing of Sample Entries by Topics

o Planning for the Fall Semester
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Summer's coming. From the 80-degree days we've been having, and how well the garden's doing, it seems like it's already here.

So while summer is certainly no reason to be closing down the blog it is a time for slowing down the pace of blog entry writing. Or at least that's my intention. When it comes to blogging I find my challenge is not how to keep writing but how to keep from writing.

Three Years, 650 Entries. This blog started in June 2006. So it's about to conclude year three. It now contains over 650 entries -- listed chronologically for you in an online spreadsheet.

For your reading during the next three months, here is a sampling of the topics and entries from the last three months -- roughly one-twelfth of the blog's lifetime (so there's a lot more than this out there!). Even three months involves a fairly substantial and broad range of topics; clearly this is not a single subject blog. Since many of these subjects will continue in importance over time you might want to take a look at some of the entries you initially missed. Moreover, as the listing indicates, many of the entries were chosen because they include a significant number of links to related prior entries and source material you might find useful.

Sampling of Blog Entries Alphabetically by Topic
March-May 2009
Alcohol; Students Binge Drinking; Red Bull. "Drunken Fights and Digital Photos," April 13, 2009 (with links to 8 recent and related blog entries); "Bulls, Bars and Brawls," May 7, 2009

Bicycles; Commuting by Bicycle. "Biking's Many Benefits," May 9, 2009

City Manager (Lombardo) Dismissal; City Council's Handling of. "Lombardo and Mayor McCallion," April 23, 2009 (with links to 3 related prior blog entries)

Economy; Bailouts; Personal Finance. "Economic Salvation Through Marshmallows," May 15, 2009 (with links to 48 related blog entries from September 2008-May 2009)

Fairness Doctrine; FCC. "Don't Fear Fairness Doctrine," March 13, 2009

Gay Marriage; Iowa Supreme Court Ruling. "Iowa's Civil Rights Leadership," April 3, 2009

General Semantics; Susan Boyle. "Susan Boyle as General Semantics Lesson," April 20, 2009 (with links to 17 prior pieces of Nicholas Johnson's on general semantics, and a couple basic texts)

Governance; Lack of City Council Governance Model as Cause of Lombardo Dismissal. "River City Problem: Council-Manager Governance," April 18, 2009 (with links to main governance Web page and "An Open Letter to Regents on 'Governance'")

Health Care. Universal Single Payer and the "Public Option." "Public Option vs. Private Greed," May 18, 2009

K-12; School Boundaries; Roosevelt Elementary. "School Boundaries," March 30, 2009 (with links to the earlier blog entries, "Roosevelt: Valuing Our Schools," March 9, 2009, and "Demolition Disaster," March 10, 2009. The former contains links to, among many other things, seven prior pieces on the issue, some from my time as a school board member, and the latter contains a reproduction of "Long Range Planning Process and Parameters, An ICCSD Board Document," Approved April 11, 2000, which I helped draft)

Newspapers; Economic Decline. "Gannett Shoots Straight -- Into Foot," May 3, 2009 (with links to the related earlier blog entries, "Of Newspapers and Nails," March 8, 2009, and "Newspaper Delivery an Update," March 27, 2009)

Swine Flu. "Smithfield Ham and Flu," April 26, 2009

The Fall Semester. The academic work continues. As a first-time experiment, instead of putting the students' Cyberspace Law Seminar papers online they're working with me and my law school assistant to produce a hard copy version, a book tentatively titled Virtualosity (for reasons to be explained in the book) that should be available in Iowa City bookstores and from Amazon in a month or so. In addition to revising and updating a Fall semester course I've taught before (Law of Electronic Media) I will be teaching for the first time this Fall what is called a "First Year Seminar" at the University of Iowa (small enrollment classes for entering undergraduates, with grades but no exams for the students and no pay for the professors). For mine the focus will be general semantics, and I'm looking forward to it. But it requires the creation from scratch of a whole new course.

So while I continue to have deadlines coming at me, and you have other things to do than read blog entries, I thought I might spare you my 49th essay on global economic collapse.

Hopefully, I've pretty much made my position clear by now: Obama's ties to the financial community, the despicable disparity between the multi-trillion-dollar handouts of taxpayers' money to the guys who brought this on and the trickle down (if that) for their victims, the capitulation to corporate interests generally, the futility of bailouts for GM and Chrysler when bankruptcy was inevitable, the reckless headlong plunge into a future of wild inflation and debt ($70 trillion) our great grandchildren can never pay back, and so forth.

The same can be said for the other topics listed above, and those discussed in the 650-plus blog entries during the 11/12ths of this blog's lifetime that weren't included there.

But I tried once before to slow up the blog entry writing and found that my good intentions -- like those regarding dieting -- were almost immediately overcome with a series of events that simply cried out for my comments (or so I thought at the time). Thus, I won't be surprised if there are events from time to time during the next three months with similar effect.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

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Biking's Many Benefits

For the Week of May 10, 2009; posted May 9, 2009, 5:30 p.m.; May 11, 2009, 6:45 a.m.; May 13, 2009, 7:30 a.m.; May 14, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

Bike for Life
Bike to Work Week
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
It's "Bike to Work Week," Rob Daniel, "Organizers Push Bike to Work Week," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 9, 2009, p. 3, and time for me to pedal my annual spiel for the wheel.

[And see also, Rachel Gallegos, "Bicyclists Take It to the Streets," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 11, 2009, p. 3A; Mike Kilen, "7 tips for enjoyable biking to work," Des Moines Register, May 11, 2009; and "Why I Ride My Bicycle," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 11, 2009, p. 7A ("Seven Iowa City area women write about why they ride their bikes to work and their riding experiences as we kick off Bike to Work Week." Those seven biking authors are: Susan Beckett, Wendy Brown, Erin Fleck, Diana Harris, Karen Kubby, Feather Lacy and Mary Lohse Shepherd); Rob Daniel, "Biker Beats Car, Bus in Annual Bike to Work Race," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 12, 2009; Editorial, "Working Toward a Bike-Friendly Community," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 13, 2009, p. A13 ("One step in the right direction is the Metro Bicycle Master Plan recently produced by the JCCOG Regional Trails and Bicycling Committee"); ; Brian Loring, "The Advantages of Biking," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 13, 2009, p. A18 ("With so many bicycle owners but so little bike riding in the United States, there is great potential to increase the role that bicycles play in daily commutes and other frequent trips"); Editorial, "Public Bike System Would Unclutter Downtown and be Eco-Friendly," The Daily Iowan, May 14, 2009, p. A6; Rob Daniel, "Biking, Walking to School Nets Rewards," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 14, 2009, p. A3.]

[And here are a couple additional links (among potentially hundreds) to biking resources: Bike Iowa (with links to many resources, including 68 Iowa bike clubs); Bike Cult; and for a couple places to get started in Iowa City, the 30th Century Bicycle; the Iowa City Bike Library; and World of Bikes.]

Think you can't do it? Click here to see why I answer your concerns with "Oh yes you can!"

Thirty-seven years ago I published a book titled, Test Pattern for Living. (Although long since out of print, it is still available for free downloading, and has maintained its own devoted cult following over the years.) The benefits of biking received an entire chapter in that book, and I have been extolling them ever since.

You see, the point is not that there is a single benefit from biking, but a lot of that benefit. The point is that there are so many multiple benefits from biking, each of which provides a lot of that benefit. They are spelled out in this blog entry, so I won't repeat them all here. But examples would include the sheer joy that comes from more oxygen in the brain, the beneficial reduction of obesity and heart attack risks, the greater speed of commuting and ease of parking, and the virtual elimination of expense (compared to operating a car) -- a not insignificant benefit at any time but especially during the current global economic collapse.

As a young boy, I started using a bike to deliver the Des Moines Register to my neighbors (a bike the Register enabled me to buy at a discount with my paper route money). Later, in the 1970s, I rode across the state in the RAGBRAI event with Donald Kaul for a number of years, reporting on it for National Public Radio. That three-speed RAGBRAI bike, with its rod brakes, still hangs in the garage these days. (I was told this museum piece was of a design originally created for the bicycles of postal delivery persons in India, and later for the bicycles that became the backbone of the Viet Cong's very effective transportation system during the war. "U.S. Army Transportation Museum," Wikipedia ("The museum has an extensive Vietnam War exhibit, including . . . bicycles used by the Viet Cong").)

Today my somewhat more modern (but still inexpensive) bicycle is mostly used for daily commuting, as well as exercise and recreation along some local trails. (For years I jogged almost every day as well -- in Washington, through the woods of Glover Park, just outside my door. The toll it took on my knees has eliminated that exercise option in recent years, but for some reason my knees seem to still like biking.)

As life has a way of coming full circle, this past year marked the publication of my son Gregory Johnson's book, Put Your Life on a Diet -- already in its second printing. Although it is compatible in theme with Test Pattern for Living, and also has a chapter on transportation advocating bicycles, it is otherwise unique, very much up-to-date, and grows out of his leadership with the "small house" movement -- as suggested by the book's sub-title: "Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet." And see "Life Mobility Transportation Group - Bicycles, Electric Cars, and Greener Alternative Fuel Modes of Travel," on his ResourcesForLife.com Web site.

I've made no effort to update the bicycling chapter from my book, reproduced below.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a different time from today. So you'll need to update the statistics if you want to use them. And the sentiments are very much 1970s' -- though the conclusions, social and ecological conditions haven't changed all that much.

It was a time of political and economic change, and one of my goals was to see if I could help contribute to a year in America in which there would be more bicycles sold than automobiles. (That goal was accomplished, as you'll see from a quote in what follows.)

In the 1970s there was also a good deal of artistic as well as other creative experimentation. It was represented in this book with the fact that the Foreword was sheet music (written by Mason Williams) and the chapters consisted of quotes on the even numbered (left hand) pages, and my text on the odd numbered (right hand) pages. As I described that feature in the Introduction,

[A]ny honest author will admit he has drawn heavily from the writings of others. I have emphasized this fact by the use of quotations from diverse sources . . . [One] reason I have emphasized the quotes is that my search involves the discovery of common themes . . .. When different people start saying the same thing -- when a blue-collar worker expresses frustrations similar to those of college students, when the teachings of Buddha are consistent with the insights of psychiatrists, or when ecologists echo the sentiments of poets -- I feel excitement. If you want, you can just read the quotes, and skip my text entirely -- or read it later.

In today's reproduction of the chapter the quotes are indented and blocked and my text goes to the margin. Page numbers are indicated as, e.g., # p. 110 #.

Antidote to Automobiles
[Test Pattern for Living, Chapter 7]
# p. 110 #

We might have to slow down a little or perhaps even sit quiet occasionally to develop better taste. One can't think very deeply at 70 miles an hour.
-C. E. Warne


My new pattern requires renting new cars at the airports as needed. I am progressively ceasing to own things, not on a political-schism basis, as for instance Henry George's ideology, but simply on a practical basis. Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.
-R. Buckminster Fuller


When you drive a car, you drive a reflection of your self. And, in the case of the 1971 MGB, it's a reflection of someone very special.
-MG advertisement in Time

# p. 111 #

So far, we have approached alternate life styles almost in terms of hedonism: What feels best for you? What will remove the pain of living in a corporate state -- other than the drug life (whether alcohol, tranquilizers, or others) that only brings more ultimate pain? But what we so often discover is that the very products, activities, and attitudes that make you feel better also have significant social advantages: They use less of our nation's precious natural resources, they pollute less, they make less noise, they add to the pleasure of others, they enable each of us to live in a society in which we can grow in individual worth and fulfillment, they are more aesthetically pleasing, they make for better citizenship, and they are even more economical. Take bicycles, for example.

I ride a bicycle -- not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice. I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution by tonnage in the United States. It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile. Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are driving for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all. No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your

# p. 112 #

The most natural form of locomotion, walking has been In use since before the Invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire. Reliable and totally non-polluting, it offers convenience -- no parking, no cost. Invigorating, it promotes health and gives you the chance to think.
-Paul Swatek


Automobiles insulate man not only from the environment but from human contact as well. They permit only most limited types of interaction, usually competitive, aggressive, and destructive. If people are to be brought together again, given a chance to get acquainted with each other and involved in nature, some fundamental solutions must be found to the problems posed by the automobile.
-Edward T. Hall

ANNOUNCER: Sidney spent Sundays shelling at the seashore. Then Sidney started digging the Mustang -- the great original . . .. Now Sidney's making waves all over. Last week he saved three bathing beauties. (And they all could swim better than Sidney!) Only Mustang makes it happen!
-a television commercial

# p. 113 #

convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure, and care for.

You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good. You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells, you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind. And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap. You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts it should last almost forever. Your satisfaction comes from within you, not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people: folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrols," men unloading trucks. Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters, but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limou-

# p. 114 #

On a different speed scale, bicycles could move 2.8 times as many people per amount of space. If a bicycler can make 10 miles an hour, the car would have to exceed 28 mph to rack up more passenger miles on the same system of streets. But the New York City average speed for cars during rush hour is only 8.5 mph, 13 mph on the feeder roads. It's a fact that today in many cities you can make better time aboard a bicycle than in a car.
-Paul Swatek


Make your second car a bicycle.

Consider the advantages that the bicycle has to offer -- low cost, no pollution, and convenient to park.

For under $50 you can get a bicycle fitted with enough trimmings to make it practical for going shopping and carrying a small child. The cheapest car costs about thirty times that.

A bicycle is also inexpensive to operate, maintain, and insure.

Bicycles are quieter than any form of motorized transportation, produce no pollution, and use up no fuel.

A bicycle takes up about 1/30th the parking space of a car.

In city traffic today, the bicycle is often faster than the car or bus.

Bicycles give the rider the sort of healthy exercise that many Americans usually do not get.

Riding a bicycle makes it possible to get a better appreciation of a beautiful day, or a pleasant ride through the park.

. . . The New York Times quoted a 32-year-old millionaire who pedals up Fifth Avenue to social engagements in a dinner jacket as explaining, "It's much easier than fussing with a chauffeur."
-Paul Swatek

# p. 115 #

sine. Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.

Notice that bicycle riding also has some significant social advantages over the automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year, permanently maim another one hundred and seventy thousand, and injure three and a half million more. The automobile accounts for at least 60 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all carbon-monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year. One million acres of land are paved each year; there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon. Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems -- not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages. Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary bumper-repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.

The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.

The bicycle does not kill or maim; it does not pollute; it does not deplete natural resources; it makes no noise; it takes a great deal less space; and it is very much cheaper. (You can buy a brand new bicycle for

# p. 116 #

Commuting by bicycle? Is this some kind of put-on? It may sound like a joke to motor-minded America, but in the rest of the world nobody is laughing. In countries that are willing to take it seriously, the bicycle [is] transportation. Switzerland, for example, which traditionally places a high value on peace of mind and purity of air, has more bicycles than automobiles. In Amsterdam -- a national capital with roughly the same population and climatic conditions as Washington, D.C. -- 150,000 people ride bikes to work every day. Hundreds of thousands more commute by bicycle in other European cities. The same is true in much of Africa and Asia.
-Thomas R. Reid, III


This year an estimated 10 million bicycles will be sold, compared to a projected 8.6 million new cars.
-Friends of the Earth

# p. 117 #

little more than what it costs to operate an automobile for two weeks.) Although the bicycle makes a direct assault on four great problems that plague the modern city -- traffic, noise, parking, and pollution -- urban planners have overlooked it in their search for solutions to the urban transportation crisis.

It is more than ironic that America can invest so much stock faith and rhetoric in the competitive marketplace of commerce and yet ignore the "marketplace of ideas" (to use a phrase by Mr. Justice Holmes) by tolerating the television monopoly that is used to merchandise Detroit's peculiar dreams of the appropriate automotive life style -- with all that life style's attendant social ills. My own commission, the Federal Communications Commission, has been instrumental in encouraging broadcasters' censoring off the airwaves the messages from ecology groups (like Friends of the Earth) that would cry out against the urban devastation being wrought by Detroit's automobiles. (The FCC decision, fortunately, has been substantially reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.) In perhaps one of the greatest advertising overkills of all time, we Americans are being grossly oversold an automotive product and life style (bigger, faster, sexier cars) that we neither need nor may really want, and that will surely eventually kill us with its exhaust by-products and lethargy-induced heart attacks, if it does not get us first in a crash. This may serve the corporate profits of the automotive, oil, steel, cement, and road-building industries, but it is shortchanging the American people.

There are other ways to get around.

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You, too, can have a happy Bike to Work Week -- 52 weeks every year! Try it.

Think you can't do it? Here are some suggestions/answers/arguments that say, "Yes You Can!"

1. I'm just not in shape. Bikers come in all shapes and sizes -- physically and in terms of fitness. You can join them. Haven't biked during the last 20 years -- or ever? Start slowly. Don't go out and buy the most expensive one in the shop (even though a perfectly good new bike will only cost you roughly 1% of what a new car would cost). Rent, or borrow, a bike and take a ride around one city block in your neighborhood. Gradually extend your distance -- a half-mile, a mile (10 to 12 blocks), five miles -- over the course of a month. Doesn't it make you feel better? Isn't it kind of fun? Buy a used bike. Make sure it's properly adjusted to your size, and the tires are kept properly inflated -- and that you wear a helmet and follow some simple safety rules (see 6, below). Don't worry about the hills; they will seem to be much less steep with time. Until those leg muscles develop just get off the bike and walk it up the hills that are a little too difficult, even when you've geared down. And remember, there's no shame in walking; every biker has done it on some occasion; and besides they'll just think you had to get off because you have a flat tire.

2. It's too far to my job. What do you mean by "too far"? That it will take longer than you'd like? (It may actually save you time; see 4, below.) That you have to dress up for work and might dirty your clothes? (There are answers for that, too, in 5, below.) That you'd have to bike on unsafe streets? Yup, once again, see 6, below. Bear in mind, I'm talking about biking to work in Iowa-sized towns (up to and including Des Moines); I'm not advocating biking along Los Angeles' freeways from Pasadena to Santa Monica every morning.

3. There are a lot of things for which I need a car. (a) I'm not suggesting you not have access to a car when you truly need one, only that you probably truly need one less often than you think. (b) If you and your partner have more than one car you might be able to share one, and cut your costs in half. Or maybe rent one over occasional weekends for heavy shopping, or trips out of town. (c) The average person expends 1500 hours a year for their car: [1] the hours you must work to earn the money for car payments, repairs, insurance, licensing and fees, gas and oil, [2] driving to, waiting for, going back to pick up your car, and other time consuming efforts associated with those tasks, and [3] the hours you spend actually driving the car for your own purposes. The average distance driven is 7500 miles per year. At 1500 hundred hours, and 7500 miles, that's an average of 5 miles per hour -- a good brisk walking speed, and much, much slower than what you can do on a bike. (d) Many of those "needs" you fulfill with your car may not really be "needs." (e) You'd be amazed how much you can carry with a bike. [1] Small and medium-size objects can be put in a jacket pocket; or, if they won't fit there, in one of the various-sized baskets available for bicycles. [2] Regularly have larger loads? Groceries? Laundry to the laundromat? There are reasonably priced bicycle trailers that are lightweight and easy to pull that quickly snap into and out of their connectors.

4. I don't have the time. Put aside the fact that you're only getting 5 mph out of your car (see 3(c), above). Assume that wasn't true and that the only time required by your car was the time spent getting from one place to another. Traveling by bike is, worst case, not significantly slower than a car, and often actually faster. [See, Rob Daniel, "Biker Beats Car, Bus in Annual Bike to Work Race," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 12, 2009.] Why is that? Bikes' advantages, among others, include the combination of (a) being able jump on your bike and go (without opening the garage, warming up the car, backing out of the drive, getting into traffic), (b) bike trails (with no stop lights), sidewalks and bike lanes (faster than sitting in rush hour traffic), and (c) being able to pull up and park right outside the door of your destination (rather than having to look for a parking place or drive round and round in a parking garage).

5. I need to dress for work. (a) Do you really? Midwestern workplaces are much more casual than those on the East or West Coast -- and more casual than any were in the 1950s. (b) I knew a multi-millionaire in Manhattan who used to bike, in black tie, to formal events. I see men in suits biking in Iowa City. Clearly it is possible to do. (c) There are alternatives. Combine your biking with a stop off at a gym; shower, and keep your good clothes, there. I've often found myself working in buildings that have showers in the restrooms. Many people who walk to work wear one pair of walking shoes while walking and carry (or keep at the office) another pair they wear at work; you might be able to carry, or keep at the office, the clothes you need there.

6. I just wouldn't feel safe. You're less likely to be seriously hurt moving around town on a bike than in a car. OK, I know the data can be debated for hours without reaching agreement. The point is that, with some minimal precautions -- just as with driving, walking, boating, or any other activity -- you're safe on a bike. "Car emissions kill 30,000 people and car collisions kill 46,000 each year in the U.S. . . . 725, 629, 665, 732, and 693 cyclists died per year in 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, and 2000 respectively." Bicycle Almanac. Those are pretty good comparative odds. Actually, most bike accidents are the result of ignoring some of those simple safety practices: biking against, instead of with, traffic; running red lights; biking without a helmet; riding too fast, or going in and out of traffic; biking at night without a headlight and flashing rear red light -- and, of course, OWI. If you're going to ride on sidewalks a bell is a courtesy as much as a safety device.

7. What would I do on days that aren't perfect biking weather? What if it's a bitter cold winter day? Or a real summer scorcher? Or it's raining? Hey, nobody's taking attendance; you want to skip a day, skip a day. But once it becomes a habit you may end up doing what a lot of bikers do: ride your bike every day -- unless it's a safety issue. I never bike in tornadoes; if you wouldn't be safe in a car you probably aren't safe on a bike. It's conceivable fog or rain would be so thick as to impair vision. And when roads are so icy that cars can't stay on them bikes probably can't either. As for cold, the folks who are really cold in winter are the ones standing and shivering at a bus stop, or scraping the ice off their windshield. Biking helps keep you warm. Besides, cold weather is easy to deal with; we midwesterners call it "layering" -- the colder it gets the more layers of clothing you put on (paying special attention to feet, hands, head and face). I once walked across Iowa City in 100 below wind chill weather just to see what it would feel like; it was as comfortable as any other temperature for which I've been adequately dressed. Heat's another matter. There's no limit to how much additional clothes you can put on in the winter, but there are limits to how much you can take off in the summer (though you wouldn't know it to see some summertime bikers). So why do 7000-10,000 bicyclists from Iowa and around the world take a week out of their lives, and pay the costs, to ride across the entire state of Iowa during the peak of summer heat in July? Because it's just that much fun to do. And the heat? If you're moving along at 15 mph or so, and sweating, you have the equivalent of the comfort of a fan blowing on you and evaporating that moisture. You'll be a lot more comfortable that the folks sitting in their lawn chairs along the route. (But you do have to remember to keep taking liquids and electrolites.) Rain? You're not going to carry an umbrella while biking, but there are lots of rain gear outfits to choose from that will keep you warm and dry. (Just remember to keep your bike chain oiled to avoid rust.)

Any other reasons why you say "I can't" to which I can respond, "Oh, yes you can"? Just put a comment on this blog entry and I'll try to give you an answer.
_______________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #

Obama's Move to Right Shows Self-Defeating Weakness

July 1, 2008, 7:30 a.m.

What If It Turns Out That . . .
. . . Liberals Tacking to the Right is a Dated, Failed Strategy That Doesn't Even Work?

[Related:

Nicholas Johnson, "Change We Can No Longer Believe In," June 22, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Holding Obama's Feet to the Fireside Chat," June 24, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "The Bundling Business," June 26, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "Will the Real Obama Stand Up -- For Us?" June 27, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "Pragmatic Idealism," June 28, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "Obama's Geometry: Triangulation," June 30, 2008.]

With the transformation of Senator Obama's campaign from a primary campaign to a general election campaign the public's and media's perception is that he's been making some pretty sharp turns to the right on such subjects as NAFTA, public financing of campaigns, government funding of faith-based programs, the death penalty, Israel, tax cuts for corporations, regulation of guns, FISA and immunity for telephone companies caught illegally spying on Americans.

This blog -- which has been a supporter of Senator Obama -- has been exploring the issues this raises with regard to political campaigning in general, Senator Obama's campaign in particular, and his most effective winning strategies. (See links, above.) So have many others (most of whom were also at least leaning in Obama's direction) in the mainstream media and blogosphere.

Today's blog entry addresses the possibility that when liberals shift to the right in general elections they lose; that whatever else may be said about the ethics of electorate manipulation, it's a failed strategy.

But first, to recap, yesterday the entry laid out four categories of voter response to a candidate's change in positions -- to which Stephen Ducat provided a fifth:

1. My candidate doesn't support all my positions. Few sophisticated "political people" would express this objection. They are satisfied with the Rolling Stones' advice: "You can't always get what you want/But if you try sometimes you might find/You get what you need." For them, elections have always involved the compromise of picking the "least-worst." But there are some voters who would rather stay home, or cast a protest third-party vote, than vote for someone who's less than their perfect, ideal candidate.

2. There's one issue that's a deal breaker for me. Folks on either side of an emotionally charged issue, such as abortion, sometimes feel that who may end up getting appointed to the Supreme Court, say, trumps for them the candidates' positions on all other issues combined. Others are more willing to give a little on their most important issue so long as the candidate is "right on the issues" with regard to everything else they care about.

3. My candidate is shifting his/her positions from the primary to the general election campaign. However discouraging it may be, most voters have come to accept that some shift in their candidates' positions from primary to general is just a natural part of real politique in America.

4. It turns out my candidate is a very different person, with very different positions and approaches, from what they represented themselves to be. Some voters feel essentially betrayed when they discover they've been manipulated into supporting a candidate based on that candidate's either clearly expressed or vaguely implied misrepresentations. Such voters may respond by voting for someone else, staying home, or at a minimum cutting back on or eliminating their campaign contributions and volunteer time. This is most serious when the candidate's "brand" has been one of courage, character, change, idealism, high moral ground, progressive populism, and a "new kind of politics" -- as was the case with Obama.

To which Stephen Ducat has added,

5. Apparently my candidate "does not believe in his own ability to reframe certain key issues in a way that makes . . . liberal principles intellectually clear and emotionally compelling." In other words, it's not that Obama actually holds and advocates conservative Republican beliefs; and it's not that he's willing to do so just to get elected. The problem is that he either doesn't have, or at least is not willing to show us, the leadership qualities we need in a president who can move our country in a more rational and progressive direction. Apparently, notwithstanding his Harvard Law School education and record, either he doesn't have the ability or he isn't willing to put in the effort, to come up with compelling ways to sell the public, and lead the political establishment, toward innovative reforms that will better serve the public interest.

Stephen Ducat, "Understanding Obama's Recent Right Turn," Huffington Post, June 29, 2008.


And Compromising Principles Isn't Even a Winning Strategy
This morning we examine a sixth suggestion from Glenn Greenwald.

You may think it's morally reprehensible for a candidate to misrepresent who he or she is, and the positions they hold, for the purpose of manipulating voters, who would not otherwise have done so, into supporting them. Or, you may think that's just good old pragmatic politics.

Glenn Greenwald suggests we need to put those considerations aside and more thoroughly examine the data and answers to three questions: (1) "did that strategy ever work?" and, if so, (2) "have the times changed sufficiently that it no longer works?" (3) If a candidate wants (or needs) to project "strength" can it be better done by appearing to drift toward, and ultimately adopt, Republican positions (on national security, torture, war, and spying on Americans) or by consistently opposing those positions?

Could it be that by his "move to the center" Senator Obama is not only alienating his most fervent former supporters -- now feeling something more akin to betrayal than mere buyers' remorse -- but he is also projecting weakness rather than "strength" to the Independents and Republicans looking for a "strong" presidential candidate?

(Greenwald also refers in this piece to Senator John Kerry's campaign in 2004, a subject I addressed at the time in Nicholas Johnson, "What's Kerry Thinking?" May 15, 2004.)

Here are some excerpts from his article:

. . . In 2006, [Republican Congresswoman Nancy] Johnson [who had served 12 terms from a Republican district, and beat her challenger in 2004 by 22 points] was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the "false choice between war and civil liberties." Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy's opposition to warrantless eavesdropping . . ..

Johnson's final margin of defeat was 12 points. Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy -- as he runs for re-election for the first time -- recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

That pattern has repeated itself over and over. In the 2006 midterm election, Karl Rove repeatedly made clear that the GOP strategy rested on making two National Security issues front and center in the midterm campaign: Democrats' opposition to warrantless eavesdropping and their opposition to "enhanced interrogation techniques" against Terrorists. Not only did the Democrats swat away those tactics, taking away control of both houses of Congress in 2006, but more unusually, not a single Democratic incumbent in either the House or Senate -- not one -- lost an election. . . .

Earlier this year, Bill Foster made opposition to the Iraq War a centerpiece of his campaign -- and emphatically opposed both warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity -- and then won a special election to replace Denny Hastert in his bright red Illinois district.

As the 2008 election approaches . . . it's actually difficult to identify [Democrats] who have any real chance of losing. That's how weakened the GOP brand is and how vehemently the country has rejected their ideology and politics -- in every realm, including national security.

So what, then, is the basis for the almost-unanimously held Beltway conventional view that Democrats generally, and Barack Obama particularly, will be politically endangered unless they adopt the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and National Security, which -- for some reason -- is called "moving to the Center"? There doesn't appear to be any basis for that view. It's just an unexamined relic from past times, the immovable, uncritical assumption of Beltway strategists and pundits who can't accept that it isn't 1972 anymore -- or even 2002.

Beyond its obsolescence, this "move-to-the-center" cliché ignores the extraordinary political climate prevailing in this country, in which more than 8 out of 10 Americans believe the Government is fundamentally on the wrong track and the current President is one of the most unpopular in American history, if not the most unpopular. The very idea that Bush/Cheney policies are the "center," or that one must move towards their approach in order to succeed, ignores the extreme shifts in public opinion generally regarding how our country has been governed over the last seven years. . . .

[W]as John Kerry's narrow 2004 loss to George Bush due to the perception that Kerry -- who ran as fast as he could towards the mythical Center -- was Soft on Terrorism? Or was it due to the understandable belief that his rush to the Center meant that he stood for nothing, that he was afraid of his own views -- the real hallmark, the very definition, of weakness?

By the time of the 2004 election, . . . [Bush said] "Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand."

Bush's ability to project "Strength" came not from advocacy of specific policies, but from his claim to stand by his beliefs even when they were politically unpopular.

For that reason, isn't the perception that Obama is abandoning his own core beliefs -- or, worse, that he has none -- a much greater political danger than a failure to move to the so-called "Center" . . . ? . . . That narrative -- that he's afraid to stand by his own beliefs -- appears far more likely to result in a perception that Obama is "Weak" than a refusal to embrace Bush/Cheney national security positions.

What's most amazing about the unexamined premise that Democrats must "move to the Center" (i.e., adopt GOP views) is that this is the same advice Democrats have been following over and over and which keeps leading to their abject failure. It's the advice Kerry followed in 2004. It's why Democrats rejected Howard Dean and chose John Kerry instead.

And in 2002, huge numbers of Congressional Democrats voted to authorize the attack on Iraq based on this same premise that doing so would enable them to avoid looking Weak on National Security. The GOP then based its whole 2002 campaign on attacking Democrats as Weak on National Security and the Democrats were crushed -- because, having accepted rather than debated the GOP premises, there was no way to challenge GOP National Security arguments. What makes Democrats look weak is their patent fear of standing by their own views. A Washington Post article last week on Obama's move to the center included this insight:

"American voters tend to reward politicians who take clear stands," said David Sirota, a former Democratic aide on Capitol Hill and author of the new populist-themed book The Uprising. "When Obama takes these mushy positions, it could speak to a character issue. Voters that don't pay a lot of attention look at one thing: 'Does the guy believe in something?' They may be saying the guy is afraid of his own shadow."

[If] . . . "Strength" means what the GOP says it means . . . it's a framework within which Democrats can't possibly win, because Republicans will always "out-Strength" Democrats . . .. [O]nly by challenging and disputing the underlying premises can Democrats change the way that "strength" and "weakness" are understood.

The Democrats had such a smashing victory in 2006 because . . . there was a perception (rightly or wrongly) that they actually stood for something different than the GOP in National Security (an end to the War in Iraq). . . . The advice that they should "move to the center" and copy Republicans is guaranteed to make them look weak -- because it is weak. It's the definition of weakness.

The most distinctive and potent -- one could even say exciting -- aspect of Obama's campaign had been his aggressive refusal to accept GOP pieties on National Security, his insistence that the GOP would lose -- and should lose -- debates over who is "stronger" and more "patriotic" and who will keep us more safe. The widely-celebrated foreign policy memo written by Obama's adviser, Samantha Power, heaped scorn on Washington's national security "conventional wisdom," emphasizing how weak and vulnerable it has made the U.S. When Obama took that approach, he appeared to be, and in fact was, resolute and unapologetic in defending his own views -- the very attributes that define "strength."

The advice he's getting, and apparently beginning to follow, is now the opposite: that he should shed his prior beliefs in favor of the amorphous, fuzzy, conventional GOP-leaning Center, that he should cease to insist on a re-examination of National Security premises and instead live within the GOP framework. That's likely to lead to many things, but a perception of strength isn't one of them. . . .

UPDATE: . . . Many Democrats support Bush policies because they believe in them. Others don't believe in them but are persuaded that they must support them in order to be re-elected. Still others have no beliefs at all other than their own re-election and do whatever they perceive is most likely to achieve that. Here, I'm simply taking the political argument at face value -- that Democrats must "move to the Center" in order to win -- and arguing why that's empirically false.

Glenn Greenwald, "The Baseless, and Failed, ‘Move to the Center’ Cliche," Salon.com/CommonDreams.org, June 30, 2008.

Thus, there appears to be both good news and bad news.

The bad news is that by following the consultants' advice to engage in manipulating, triangulating, and misrepresenting who one is and what they believe a Democrat may well lose both their soul and their election.

The good news is that there is an alternative, and that staking out positions on the issues can be a win-win. By avoiding the advice to appear "Republican-lite," by having core beliefs, distinguishing them from those of the Republicans, holding to them, making a persuasive and even emotionally appealing case for what one believes, a liberal Democrat can not only come across to voters as "strong" and a person of integrity, he or she can have the satisfaction of both doing the morally commendable thing -- AND WINNING!

# # #

Pragmatic Idealism

June 28, 2008, 9:30 a.m.

Don't Drop Out; Do Tune In
I received an email this morning from a reader following yesterday's blog entry that I think really requires a recognition and response from me.

While continuing to support Barack Obama, I have been sharing in this blog some of what I have been discovering about his history, actions and true positions -- positions that are somewhat at variance with what he has been willing for his supporters to assume.

Nicholas Johnson, "Change We Can No Longer Believe In," June 22, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Holding Obama's Feet to the Fireside Chat," June 24, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "The Bundling Business," June 26, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "Will the Real Obama Stand Up -- For Us?" June 27, 2008.

Garry B. Trudeau, author of the widely popular Doonesbury comic strip, has been addressing the matter this week from his own insightful perspective. He's depicting a woman whose job involves an Obama Web site designed to promptly counter the untrue charges that move around the Internet at the speed of light.

On Thursday, for example, she's working at 4:00 a.m., having noted that "some slimbag blogger" is circulating that "Obama's back on Drugs." On Friday there was this exchange with her friend: "You wouldn't believe some of the stuff that's out there!" He replied, "Yes, I would. I've heard some pretty bizarro claims myself." "Like what?" she asks. He says, "Like he's the second coming of Lincoln." She smiles: "Oh, I checked that one out -- it's true."

Today . . .








she's saying in the first three frames, "Yup. A new post from a known bad actor." "This wingnut has put more lies into play than anyone on the Web . . ." "Oh, damn!"

"What is it?" her friend asks. She replies: "Legitimate criticism. We're not allowed to touch it."

Frankly, I wouldn't even consider what I've been writing as "criticism," legitimate or otherwise -- though I wouldn't expect rabid Obama enthusiasts to agree. I think of it more as a matter of sharing with others what I am discovering about the candidate I have been supporting and intend to continue to support. I just think the more full and accurate our perception can be of our candidates the better -- and the less likely to leave us with greater cynicism and buyer's remorse when we discover, after we've elected them, what we've done.

And I certainly would not want anyone to come to the conclusion that what I am leaving them with -- let alone encouraging -- is no option but to drop out of the political process, or vote for a third party. So here, with little or no editing, is the incoming email and my emailed response.

I've voted in every election, primary and general, since I was 18.

After reading your blog entry from today ["Will the Real Obama Stand Up -- For Us?" linked above] I'm done. What's the point?

We're doomed. OK, we're probably not doomed; we'll all most likely be dead before the grand experiment completely fails; but America is going the way of the Roman Empire. Things are going to get very ugly, especially for those who will be around after 2040 or 2050.

You said: "Does any of this mean that you shouldn't vote for and otherwise support Senator Barack Obama for president? Not at all."

Yeah, right. Are you serious? I'd say you laid down a very good case for not only not supporting Obama, but for not participating at all. Either that, or voting for a Green Party or write-in candidate.

Any shred of idealism I had left is gone.

We had a pretty good run -- 230+ years isn't too bad, relatively speaking. Maybe others will learn from our mistakes.

To which I have responded:

Want to know why you should still vote?

Consider the absolutely worst case. And no, I'm not suggesting this is a real portrayal of our political parties. It's exaggerated by many orders of magnitude to make a point.

Two criminal gangs are competing for control of your neighborhood. The police are corrupt and take money from both gangs in exchange for not interfering. One gang leader is notorious for burning down residents’homes (whether they are inside or not), tying up the parents, and making them watch as they pull out the fingernails of their children.

The other gang leader is campaigning in the neighborhood for your support. He says, “It’s true we’ll insist on stealing your car, and we may break your arm in the process if we have to, but at least we’re better than our opponent.”

Would you really not care, not express a preference, for one over the other?

In fact, I think the choices offered you by the two major parties are far, far better than that -- while still being very significant.

The Republicans may not do much to help you after your home is destroyed by natural forces, but the only ones they deliberately destroy, and the only people they torture, are civilians in other countries.

The Democrats may permit those who provide goods and services to raise their prices on you (pharmaceuticals, gasoline, and virtually everything else), and permit the banks to take your home from you -- in exchange for campaign contributions -- and they may not provide you universal, single-payer health care so you can fix your broken arms, but they are not personally participating in the thefts or intentionally causing you physical harm (if you’re willing to overlook workplace injuries that OSHA is supposed to be preventing, but is too underfunded and misdirected to do much about).

In short, there IS “a dime’s worth of difference” between Obama and McCain -- actually probably at least $1000 worth of difference. You may wish for more, but to paraphrase the former Senator Everett Dirksen, "$1000 here and $1000 there and pretty soon you're talking about a lot of money."

I really do believe that Senator Obama is more likely than Senator McCain to pursue diplomacy before going to war, more likely to shift the tax burden toward the wealthy, more likely to work with the other countries of the world, support treaties (like Kyoto, and land mines), and improve our international reputation and relations, more likely to provide a better health care plan, more likely to promote alternative energy sources, campaign finance reform and financial aid for college students, and less likely to give away public lands to private profiteers -- among a great many other things that could be mentioned.

It is true that third parties have, in the past (and can in the future), provide an incentive to changes in the positions of the two major parties. But I really do think the best approach for a rational voter, inclined in that direction, is the advice given by Molly Ivins regarding Ralph Nader (and repeated recently by Paul Street): In what may be a close election, only vote for a third party candidate if you live in a state where there is virtually zero likelihood that it will end up doing anything other than going overwhelmingly for either Obama or McCain -– in other words, if it is virtually impossible that you voting third party could make a difference in who gets the electoral votes from your state.

That is, don’t risk that your exercise of the luxury of voting third party might actually cause the Republican candidate to end up winning the national election.

Meanwhile, there is a rational basis for a rational idealism. The fact is that MoveOn.org and other Internet efforts have, and do, and will continue to, make a difference; the recent Senate blocking of the FCC’s ownership rules expansion is only the latest example. There is not, yet, drilling for oil in the Alaska wilderness. Senator Grassley was embarrassed into withdrawing his $50 million grant of taxpayers’ money for his friends' "indoor rain forest” project. Locally in Iowa City, the SEIU was able to organize the nurses in the University Hospital; and Wal-Mart’s proposed expansion, normally a slam dunk, was stopped by organized local opposition.

I have recently been watching the DVDs of HBO’s series about President John Adams. It has been a reminder that from the birth of our nation until now there has always been a struggle between the forces of Jefferson and those of Hamilton -– a struggle that remains to this day (see, e.g., Paul Street’s noting Obama’s ties to what are still called Hamiltonian groups).

What is "democracy"? Democracy IS a struggle; it's a process not a destination. I’m calling my next book “Are We There Yet?” And the answer is, of course, that we are not. There is a "there there;" and we need to keep it always before us; but it's unlikely it's a destination we'll ever reach.

We’ve come a long way from the early days when the only folks who could vote were: (a) white, (b) males, (c) over 21, (d) who owned land and John Jay could assert that it was only right that “those who own the country should govern it.” Hell, we've come a long way from the 1950s when I was clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals judge whose court covered the states from Texas through Florida, Jim Crow laws were enforced, and you had to pay a poll tax to vote.

And, lest it be overlooked, the Democratic Party’s two finalists this year were a woman and an African-American – candidates from groups that, not that many years ago, could not even vote, let alone realistically run for office.

So, don’t abandon your idealism. Just revise it from time to time to keep it realistic and pragmatic. And stay in the struggle. We need you.

If and when you, too, may despair try to reflect on these things, get a good night's sleep, and come back into the fray determined to make the most of what democracy makes possible.

# # #

Will the Real Obama Stand Up -- For Us?

June 27, 2008, 7:40 a.m.

Obama, We Hardly Knew Ye
Given Iowa's essentially year-long primary this time, I've been blogging about this presidential race for a good many months.

And so it with some considerable embarrassment that I confess it has only been this week that I've begun to look very thoroughly beyond Senator Barack Obama's own writings in taking a much closer look at his near-three-year path to the presidency, his voting record, his major financial contributors, and his shifting positions on the issues.

Nicholas Johnson, "Change We Can No Longer Believe In," June 22, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Holding Obama's Feet to the Fireside Chat," June 24, 2008.

Nicholas Johnson, "The Bundling Business," June 26, 2008.

The blogosphere generally has been doing the same.

As of this morning NPR's "Morning Edition" picks up the story. Renee Montagne and Mara Liasson, "Obama Edging Toward Center," June 27, 2008. Charles Krauthammer may not be the most unbiased source of commentary about Democrats in general and Obama in particular. But that's all the more reason not to be giving him the ammunition to shoot with. See, Charles Krauthammer, "The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama," Washington Post, June 27, 2008, p. A17. CBS' Jeff Greenfield has noted Senator Obama's "relentless march to the center." Kyle Drennen, "CBS’s Greenfield: Obama’s ‘Relentless March to The Center,’" News Busters, June 26, 2008.

And see, Michael Powell, "For Obama, a Pragmatist’s Shift Toward the Center," New York Times, June 27, 2008:

Barack Obama has taken a stroll this week away from traditional liberal political positions, his path toward the political center marked by artful leaps and turns. . . .

“A presidential candidate . . . [hopes] their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. . . .

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for generations a liberal Democratic lode star, was no easier to define. He slipped and slid his way through the 1932 election. “Herbert Hoover called him a ‘chameleon on plaid,’ ” Mr. Dallek said.

Mr. Obama has executed several policy pirouettes in recent weeks, each time landing more toward the center of the political ring. . . . Mr. Obama describes his new turns as consistent with long-held beliefs. . . This most observant of politicians has throughout his career shown an appreciation for the virtues of political ambiguity.

The NPR list of issues on which Obama has "edged" is a long one (as are the lists of others) -- starting with the flip-flop on public funding (which started my, and others', second looks earlier this week) through this former constitutional law professor's convenient conversion yesterday to the NRA (and now Supreme Court's) interpretation of the Second Amendment, while supporting the conservative wing of the Court's enthusiasm for the death penalty the day before.

(Just for the record, and to keep this in balance, (a) I can't imagine my voting for Senator John McCain in November, and (b) when it comes to flip-flopping for political convenience Obama can't hold a candle to McCain.)

Let's parse a bit this business of candidates' positions on "the issues."

The Candidates' Conundrum. Anyone who follows politics is aware that our political system creates a bit of an embarrassing inconvenience for any Democrat or Republican wanting to run for office. The membership of both parties, as parties, tends to over-represent their extremes. Candidates have to run in, and win, party primaries before they can even run, let alone win, general elections. So Republicans run to the right in primaries and return to the center for the general. Democrats do the reverse: run to the left in primaries and return to the center for the general election.

This need not require them to lie. With a sufficiently mixed record of voting on genuinely held beliefs one can merely select carefully which are presented to which audiences at which times; a Republican might, for example, campaign on "tax cuts" during the primary and "environmental protection" during the general.

Of course, it's also possible to obfuscate, deny and lie; to miss votes; to develop a voting record on amendments and bills that permits one to say that one voted both for and against a given piece of legislation; to acknowledge that one has changed positions.

The Voters' Contribution. "Single-issue voters" don't make it any easier for candidates. A candidate who honestly acknowledges that with $40 trillion in unfunded obligations, as a responsible office holder he or she is going to have to raise taxes, is going to lose a good many potential supporters' votes. Ditto for issues like abortion, "God, guns and gays" -- regardless of the position taken.

Positions vs. Character. However, most voters are sophisticated enough to know that our political system is never going to produce what they might consider the "perfect" candidate or elected official -- nor enable them to accomplish much in the center of our corrupt system even if it did. Those voters are willing to support a candidate with whom they disagree on an issue or two.

But character issues are, for many, another matter -- even though they may arise from a candidate's changes in positions: President Clinton's lies about his extra-marital sexual behavior, or President Bush's lies about going to war. A candidate who represents himself or herself to be one thing, to embody a cluster of character qualities, or positions on public policy issues, and then turns out to be something else can also be perceived by voters as having a character flaw -- regardless of the issues in question.

And Senator Obama is dangerously close to creating that problem for himself. He has promised "change we can believe in." He has said he wants to "turn the page," to abandon the "old politics," to rid the system of the influence of PACs, special interests and lobbyists. He has, admittedly, been relatively careful not to promise anything more specific than "change," but he has clearly left some impressions as to how our government, and our lives, will be different with him as president.

If it turns out that we cannot "believe in" either the specifics or the impressions he's left us with, that in Washington's shell-and-pea game of corporate money and influence he has only put the pea under a different shell while we weren't watching, that (as, in fairness, Senator Hillary Clinton pointed out) the only reason he is not taking money from lobbyists is because he is getting it directly from those who pay those lobbyists, then -- precisely because he has presented himself as a new kind of politics -- he is in more trouble than if he had not built his campaign on the inspirational moral high ground he chose.

Government of, by and for the Corporations. As the embedded George Carlin routine that I put in yesterday's blog entry explains (Nicholas Johnson, "The Bundling Business," June 26, 2008), those with the power and influence in this country still believe, as Noam Chomsky quotes John Jay as saying, that "The people who own the country ought to govern it."

To me this is the single most important issue in any election.

Are the candidate's primary loyalties with you and me? Do they walk the walk when it comes to standing up to the powerful special interests -- or is it all just talk, if even that? Do they believe, as Senator Joe Biden said in Iowa on more than one occasion, that "there are some things worth losing elections for"? Or do they agree with Vince Lombardi that "winning is the only thing" -- that their re-election for life is more important than what they do once in office?

Is their willingness to "reach across the aisle" just another name for a willingness to capitulate to whatever the largest campaign contributors want? Are their attempts to appeal to the masses -- whether the evangelical religious right or the 1.6 million "small donors" of Obama's -- a genuine reflection of their desire to serve those people, or merely an effort to amass the votes necessary to win an election under our system, in order that they may then continue to serve those who own them?

I don't really care when people of good will get together to address the problems of the poor if they decide that food stamps are better than distributing cash -- so long as their analysis and ultimate decision is driven by data, research, and reason, and a desire to truly help "the least of these" in America, rather than polls and the preferences of corporate lobbyists. In short, it's not where they stand on the issue, it's how they got there, and why, and who urged them along the way, and with what.

Tammany Hall's Boss Tweed used to say, "I don't care who does the electing, just so long as I do the nominating." Today it is not a political boss, it is the corporate-financial-wealthy complex that does the nominating -- for both parties.

And when we who do the electing neither notice nor care we deserve the prices Congress authorizes the pharmaceutical and oil industries to charge us, and the other ways in which our elected officials "further comfort the comfortable and further afflict the afflicted" -- to turn on its head the "Mr. Dooley" line written for him by Finley Peter Dunne (and subsequently used by many).

All of which brings me to Paul Street.

For there is an enormous difference between being (a) slightly disappointed that a candidate whose positions and values one knows well and agrees with needs to bend and misrepresent those positions slightly in order to win a general election -- knowing with great confidence that they will return to who they really are once elected, and (b) being very, very disappointed to discover that the positions one's candidate is taking to win a general election are, in fact, "who they really are."

Which is now the case with Barack Obama? Are these new-found positions he's taking something we can excuse and overlook, knowing that he'll return to who he "really is" after the election? Or do they represent who he really is, and has been all along, and will continue to be once we put him in the White House?

Paul Street is no McCain supporter:

John McCain is a chronic liar and Olympic-level flip-flopper . . . -- on tax cuts, offshore drilling, lobbyists, immigration reform, and more. He also happens to represent an extremist and dangerous right-wing agenda . . .. There's more than "a dime's worth of difference" between the two candidates . . . because the Republican standard-bearer and party is so dangerously far right. Once, again,as in 2004, this isn't "Coke" (the Democrats) v. "Pepsi" (the Republicans): it's corporate-neoliberal Coke versus arch-authoritarian and messianic-militaristic Crack.

Paul Street, "Obama Lies," ZNet, June 22, 2008.

But neither is he drinking the Obama Kool-Aid. I won't string this out with lengthy quotes, but here's an illustrative sample:

During the pivotal Iowa campaign, Obama sought to burnish his populist "tinge" by telling a misleading story about his response to an Exelon nuclear accident that outraged Illinois residents in late 2005 and early 2006. . . . [R]adioactive tritium was discovered in a home drinking well near the plant and Exelon revealed that this substance came from millions of gallons of water that had leaked from the plant over many years. Exelon had not been required to report the leaks since the radioactive discharges had not reached the level of what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission called "an emergency."

Last November, Obama told a campaign crowd in Iowa that . . . [the bill] was "the only nuclear legislation that I've passed. I just did that last year," Obama claimed, eliciting "murmurs of approval."

But, as the New York Times reported in a front-page story two days before Super Tuesday, the truth of what happened after the Braidwood leak was very different . . .. Times reporter Mike McIntire noted, "Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon, and nuclear regulators. . . . But contrary to Mr. Obama's comments in Iowa, it ultimately died . . . despite the removal of language mandating prompt reporting. Instead, the bill simply offered guidance to regulators . . .."

* Obama had received at least $227,000 in campaign cash from Exelon since 2003.

* "Exelon's support for Mr. Obama far exceeds its support for any other presidential candidate."

* Exelon executives met repeatedly with Obama's staff to discuss Obama's ultimately diluted and aborted bill.

* Obama's chief political strategist David Axlerod had worked as a consultant to Exelon since 2002.

Paul Street offers many more such examples, but this provides a sense of Street's take on Obama's record and positions.

Street has written a book about Senator Obama, Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics, which should be available before the election, and published an earlier article in Z Magazine that is actually much tougher than the "Obama Lies" piece: Paul Street, "The Obama Illusion," Z Magazine, February 1, 2007.

Even assuming that 50% of it is not true, even assuming that 90% of it is not true -- and I have no less basis for believing that it is not all true than I have for believing that any of it is not true -- it makes a shocking read for any liberal or progressive who is supporting Obama because he is perceived as "one of us."

Here are some excerpts from the piece:

If the Democrats' candidate in 2008 is Obama, we can be sure that the right-wing Republican noise machine will denounce the nation's potential first non-white male president as a dangerous "leftist." The charge will be absurd, something that will hardly stop numerous people on the portside of the narrow U.S. political spectrum from claiming Obama as a fellow "progressive." Certain to be encouraged by Obama and his handlers, this confusion will reflect the desperation and myopia that shaky thinking and the limited choices of the U.S. electoral system regularly instill in liberals and some squishy near leftists.

So what sorts of policies and values could one expect from an imagined Obama presidency? There is quite a bit already in Obama's short national career that has to be placed in the "never mind" category . . ..

Never Mind
Never mind, for example, that Obama was recently hailed as a "Hamiltonian" believer in "limited government" and "free trade" . . ..

Never mind that Obama . . . has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neoliberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and "other Wall Street Democrats" to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party . . .. Or that he lent his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance to neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman's ("D"-CT) struggle against the Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Or that Obama has supported other "mainstream Democrats" fighting antiwar progressives in primary races . . .. Or that he criticized efforts to enact filibuster proceedings against reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Never mind that Obama "dismissively" referred -- in a "tone laced with contempt" -- to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as "something of a gadfly." . . . Or that "he posted a long article on the liberal blog Daily Kos criticizing attacks against lawmakers who voted for right-wing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts." Or that he opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Or that he told Time magazine's Joe Klein last year that he'd never given any thought to Al Gore's widely discussed proposal to link a "carbon tax" on fossil fuels to targeted tax relief for the nation's millions of working poor . . ..

Never mind that Obama voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill that rolls back working peoples' ability to obtain reasonable redress and compensation from misbehaving corporations . . ..

In an interview with Klein, Obama expressed reservations about a universal health insurance plan recently enacted in Massachusetts, stating his preference for "voluntary" solutions over "government mandates." The former, he said, is "more consonant with" what he called "the American character" -- a position contradicted by regular polling data showing that most Americans support Canadian-style single-payer health insurance.

Never mind that Obama voted to re-authorize the repressive Patriot Act. Or that he voted for the appointment of . . . Condaleeza Rice to (of all things) Secretary of State. Or that he opposed Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) move to censure the Bush administration after the president was found to have illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens. Or that he shamefully distanced himself from fellow Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's forthright criticism of U.S. torture practices at Guantanamo. Or that he refuses to foreswear the use of first-strike nuclear weapons against Iran. . . .

Embracing Imperial Criminality
. . . Consistent with his denial and embrace of Washington's imperial ambitions, Obama has refused to join genuinely antiwar forces in calling for a rapid and thorough withdrawal of troops and an end to the occupation of Iraq. In a critical November 2005 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Obama rejected Rep. John Murtha's (D-PA) call for a rapid redeployment and any notion of a timetable for withdrawal. Obama's call for "a pragmatic solution to the real war we're facing in Iraq" included repeated references to the need to "defeat" the "insurgency"—a goal that means continuation of the war. As commentators Ford and Gamble noted in a critical analysis of Obama's CFR address: "In essence all Obama wants from the Bush regime is that it fess up to having launched the war based on false information and to henceforth come clean with the Senate on how it plans to proceed in the future. Those Democrats who want to dwell on the past -- the actual genesis and rationale for the war and the real reasons for its continuation -- should be quiet. Obama and many of his colleagues are more interested in consulting the Bush men on the best way to ‘win' the war than in effecting an American withdrawal at any foreseeable time."

Obama's November speech to the CCGA advocates a vaguely timed Iraq "scenario" in which "U.S. forces" might remain in the occupied state for an "extended period of time." Obama advances a "reduced but active [U.S. military] presence" that "protect[s] logistical supply points" and "American enclaves like the Green Zone" (site of one of the largest and most heavily militarized imperial "embassies" in history) while "send[ing] a clear message to hostile countries like Iran and Syria that we intend to remain a key player in the region." U.S. troops "remaining in Iraq" will "act as rapid reaction forces to respond to emergencies and go after terrorists." This is part of what Obama meant when he told a fawning David Brooks that (in Brooks's approving language) "the U.S. may have no choice but to slog it out in Iraq" . . .. Never mind that the recent mid-term elections and a mountain of polling data show that the majority of Americans support rapid U.S. withdrawal, as do the vast majority of the Iraqi people -- the purported beneficiaries of Cheney's "dreams of democracy."

The only polling data that Obama referenced in his CCGA speech and in the foreign policy chapter of his recent book is meant to illustrate what he considers to be the real danger in the wake of the OIL fiasco: that Americans are leaning dangerously towards "isolationism" and thus turning their backs on the noble superpower's global "responsibilities." . . .

"He's a Player"
Liberal bloggers and writers at places like Daily Kos and the leftmost sections of the corporate-neoliberal punditocracy (e.g., Frank Rich at the New York Times) can speak and write all they wish about the "progressive" potential of a Barockstar presidency. As David Sirota rightly observed last summer, Obama is "interested in fighting only for those changes that fit within the existing boundaries of what's considered mainstream in Washington, instead of using his platform to redefine those boundaries. This posture," Sirota notes, "comes even as polls consistently show that Washington's definition of mainstream is divorced from the rest of the country's (for example, politicians' refusal to debate the war even as polls show that Americans want the troops home)." It is because of Obama's "rare ability to mix charisma and deference to the establishment," Sirota finds (in an overly respectful assessment), that "Beltway publications and think tanks have heaped praise on Obama and want him to run for President."

But then, Obama would never have risen so quickly and remarkably to his current position of dominant media favor and national prominence if he was anything like the egalitarian and democratic "progressive" that some liberals and leftists imagine. In the corporate-crafted and money-dominated swamp that passes for "representative democracy" in the U.S., concentrated economic and imperial power open and close doors in ways that preemptively suffocate populist potential. Big money is not in the business of promoting genuine social justice or democracy activists (so-called "gadflies" like Wellstone, to use Obama's description). Viewing public policy as a mechanism for the upward distribution of wealth, it promotes empire and inequality by underwriting what Ken Silverstein calls "the smothering K Street culture and the revolving door that feeds it . . .."

Obama (a former editor of the Harvard Law Review) knows this very well. He's been "trimming his sails," as he likes to say when he's telling more genuinely progressive interviewers . . . why he had to support one corporate or militarism-friendly policy or position after another. He's been expressing his deep deference for the national and global politico-economic establishment in accord with harsh plutocratic realities. He has had to make his "charismatic" way through Mammon's polyarchic vetting rounds, impressing the critical gate-keeping powers-that-be with his "reasonable" commitment to working within the existing dominant domestic and imperial hierarchies. . . . As a Washington lobbyist recently told Silverstein, "Big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn't see him as a ‘player.'" . . .

Consistent with his secret identity as a corporate "player," Silverstein notes, Obama assiduously supported the ethanol-promoting objectives of the Illinois-based firm Archer-Daniels Midland, which has provided him with private jets on at least two occasions. He has also defended the interests of Illinois' gigantic electrical firm Exelon, America's leading nuclear plant operator . . .."

Does any of this mean that you shouldn't vote for and otherwise support Senator Barack Obama for president? Not at all.

Some are comfortable with keeping the governing in the hands of "those who own the country," "the business of America is business," and all that. You may be one of them.

Even if not, you may agree that there is, indeed, "a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats," and that it is that difference that makes you a Democrat -- notwithstanding the fact that, when it comes to corporate welfare (and the campaign contributions it produces) there often isn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties.

Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, your party affiliation (or lack thereof), there is a value to knowing what you're likely to be getting -- if for no other reason than to avoid a very severe case of buyer's remorse come 2009.

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Gazette's Flood Plan, Floodplains & Greenbelts

June 21, 2008, 7:45 a.m., 12:40 p.m.

Gazette Increases Volume of Chorus
This morning, June 21, The Gazette adds its powerful editorial voice to the growing chorus of support for flood prevention methods that work with, rather than against, Mother Nature. See blog entries, comments, quotes and links in, Nicholas Johnson, "Greenbelts, Greenways and Flood Prevention," June 16, 2008; Nicholas Johnson, "Floods and Football," June 17, 2008; Nicholas Johnson, "Flooding, Greenbelts & Catching Up With State29," June 18, 2008; Nicholas Johnson, "Greenbelts and Floodplains," June 20, 2008.

While Iowa’s catastrophic flooding has been widely blamed on the deluge that fell from the sky, hydrologists, conservationists and government officials told the Washington Post this week they believe man is to blame, too, possibly even more than Mother Nature.

From farm drainage tiling, to parking lots that smother once permeable pasture or wetlands, no one denies that man’s development activities have changed the pace of storm water runoff, sending it shooting toward waterways instead of slowly meandering as nature intended it to, into the ground.

The bottom line: Mother Nature’s wet wrath is something largely out of our control. But our landscape is ours to shape.

Our lessons should have been learned in 1993. But we’re wiser now, a nation that is getting more comfortable with living “green.” So from this flood forward, we can and should be better stewards of our land, doing everything within our control to mitigate the chance of future catastrophic flooding. In the coming months, officials from the national level to the local need to take objective looks at just how much humans played a role in intensifying the floods so that we can know best where to make changes in policies and educate the public about ways to they can help. . . .

Within urban areas, the storm water runoff practices of both residential and commercial development should be looked at from the perspective of a flood-devastated community . . ..

With flood-recovery estimates now in the multi-billions, ponder the financial burden of such shortsightedness. Our river has no more patience for it.

Editorial, "Our Role in Lessening Nature's Wrath," The Gazette, June 21, 2008, p. A6.

The Press-Citizen, which has run a number of op ed columns endorsing Mother Nature's Flood Control Plan (see links at the top of this entry), has yet to clearly editorialize in support of such an approach. Although its editorial this morning was at least consistent with it:

Other residents now recognize how the [Normandy Drive] neighborhood has been in a state of danger for decades -- ever since it was built within the floodplain.

That's one of the reasons why some of the Normandy Drive residents themselves may be asking the city to buy out such endangered residential areas. And that's why the city -- especially if FEMA funds are made available -- should give that offer serious consideration.

Editorial, "Residents Had Enough Warning for Evacuation," Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 21, 2008, p. A18.

It also ran an additional op ed supporting a much more direct analysis and proposal regarding such things as Greenbelts and wetlands:

Iowa is experiencing flooding yet again and Iowans will be taking actions to reduce and mitigate flooding in the future. Among those options should be the reconstruction of wetlands and -- when cellulosic biofuel production becomes feasible -- the conversion of croplands to certain energy crops that help reduce flooding. . . .

Farmers have lined up to enter land into voluntary wetland creation programs but most are turned away because of a lack of funding. These wetlands benefit society by providing wildlife habitat, cleaning the water and helping to control floods. One acre of wetland can prevent between 1 million and 1.5 million gallons of water from entering a flooded waterway by acting like a sponge. . . .

[O]ne acre of wetland can also filter out most of the nitrogen and sediment from up to 100 acres of adjacent cropland. When the water is slowly released it is far cleaner. . . .

[F]undamental changes in cropping patterns enabled by cellulosic biofuel production, if carefully implemented, could dramatically reduce Iowa's flooding. . . .

Growing prairie would dramatically reduce Iowa's flooding and soil erosion problem. Prairies, like wetlands, reduce flooding because they soak up tremendous amounts of water and release it slowly. Under matching soil types, slopes, saturation and weather conditions, a prairie will retain a far greater portion of rain than a corn or bean field. Prairie protects the land and water far better than conventional corn or soybeans.

Cleaner, more stable streams benefit society in other ways as well. With prairie, streams that dry up and die in the dry season are more likely to continue flowing. More desirable game fish would repopulate Iowa's steams and migratory waterfowl could head north out of Iowa healthy rather than malnourished, and our waterways would be more pleasant and safer for recreation.

Flooding is a problem of small impacts spread over many acres. Solutions therefore can come in the form of many small changes spread over many acres. Shifting a significant number of acres of corn and beans to prairie energy crops would dramatically reduce the amount of floodwater flowing off our fields. . . .

Andrew Hug, "Reducing Iowa's Recurrent Floods," Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 21, 2008, p. A18.

State29 has a couple more blog entries well worth reading, State29, "Rebuilding It As Greenspace," June 20, 2008, and State29, "The 500 Year Flood Plain Myth + Stupid Spending," June 21, 2008 (with a sensible and serious proposal for where the new federal building in Cedar Rapids should be located).

John Barleykorn commented on yesterday's blog entry, "I think that many of us are looking at issues like storm water runoff and conservation design. We have to re-think conventional curb and gutter urban design standards." He goes on to mention and link to an intriguing commercial firm that I intend to check out.

And for those who consider themselves friends of or stakeholders in the University -- or would just like to help out -- here's a word from UI President Sally Mason that speaks for itself and requires no commentary from me:

To University of Iowa Alumni, Friends, Contributors, and Hawkeye Fans across the world:

Your University is facing what may be the greatest challenge in its 160-year history.

Many people have contacted us asking us how they can help, and in response we're offering a way to do so from wherever you may be.

Unprecedented flooding throughout Eastern Iowa has already impacted our entire arts campus and much more -- including beloved landmarks such as the Iowa Memorial Union, the UI Museum of Art, our music and theatre buildings, and Hancher Auditorium.

Although it appears the flooding on campus has crested, the high water will still inflict significant damage to the more than 16 UI buildings that took on water. The Iowa River is slowly receding, but it will take months and years for the campus to fully recover.

You can help by making a gift online today to the UI Flood Relief Fund. Please go online to http://www.givetoiowa.org/floodfund to lend your support. Gifts of all sizes are needed and appreciated, and our first priority is to assist UI students and employees who have been displaced from their homes by the flooding. After addressing these most immediate human concerns, we will use contributions to the fund (as available) at my discretion to address other areas of flood-related need throughout the campus.

I encourage the UI community and Iowans generally to help –- whether through volunteering or other sharing of resources –- as they can with the relief efforts for those parts of the state most affected by the flooding. A good place to start in assisting our friends in Johnson and Linn Counties is by visiting www.corridorrecovery.org.

The University of Iowa community has always been far larger than our physical campus, and the Hawkeye spirit has overcome many challenges in the past. I am confident this University will emerge stronger than ever before. UI students, faculty, staff, and community members showed tremendous teamwork and resolve in last week's massive sandbagging efforts. If you'd like to join them in helping us rise above this crisis, please visit http://www.givetoiowa.org/floodfund.

Our heartfelt thanks for all of your encouragement, and for your ongoing generosity.
ON IOWA!

Sally Mason
President
The University of Iowa

P.S. For the most up-to-date information on the UI and the Flood of 2008, and for a large gallery of photos, visit the University's flood information web site at http://uiflood.blogspot.com/.

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