GVP's Way is the author's blog including book and movie reviews, thoughts on the craft of writing, perspectives on the business of publishing, and musings on life, politics, and family.
Please enjoy and leave your comments.
He's a walking contradiction
Partly truth and partly fiction
Taken every wrong direction
On his lonely way back home
And there's a lot of wrong directions
On that lonely way back home.
The Pilgrim
Kris Kristofferson
Entries in Political (13)
What Kind of People Are We Anyway?
The conservatives are up in arms. The pundits are full of themselves. The liberals are telling each other "I told you so."
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in the landmark case of Boumediene v Bush. The case involved the rights of an individual who was deemed an enemy combatant and held in the notorious Guatanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The Supreme Court, via a slim majority of an emerging coalition of Ginsberg, Kennedy, Souter, Stevens, and Breyer, ruled that prisoners held at Guantanamo have the right to challenge their imprisonment in the US Courts.
The conservatives believe it's the end of the world--how will we ever be able to combat terrorism if we can't lock up people suspected of terrorism, torture them, refuse them a hearing, and lock them away?
Gary
4 Comments
Three Reasons the Democrats Must Win in 2008
I've supported Hillary Clinton throughout this long and bloody primary season. I believe she is the best Democratic candidate for reasons I've put forth on this blog before. I still believe that and I also believe that she has a legitimate claim to the nomination--she and Obama are basically even in delegates and Hillary has received a stronger popular vote. I also believe she's more electable than Obama against McCain. That said, it looks like the Democratic candidate is going to be Barack Obama.
We all need to get behind him. There are three reasons Democrats must win in November.
1. John McCain is dead wrong about Iraq. We need to get out as soon as possible, as advocated by both Hillary and Obama, so that Iraq and the other Muslim states take ownership of the mess we've created. We need to accept how it all shakes out. Of the two, only Obama realizes that our continued role of policeman is no more than a death sentence for thousands of more young Americans. He will get us out of the mess Bush and the neo-cons created. He will strengthen the homeland against further attacks from terrorists.
Hillary's My Gal
I support Hillary Clinton for President because she's more electable than Barack Obama against John McCain, and the country cannot stand even four more years of a Republican President. Well, maybe the country can, but I'm not sure I can.
I support Hillary Clinton for President because she's seasoned, she's been thoroughly vetted by the press and the country, and she's the first woman candidate with the credentials and experience to lead the country.
Bear Stearns-II
The Fed insists that the action it took in connection with Bear-Stearn's liquidity crunch was not a bail-out. They point to the Bear Stearns' shareholders who saw their stock drop to nearly nothing over just a couple of days.
It's semantics, folks. It's a bail-out, paid for by taxpayers through a Fed and a Bush Administration that let things go too far before intervening. It's a bail-out, not of Bear-Stearns' shareholders, true, but a bail-out of the investment bankers and their management who have already pocketed a ton of money in bonuses.
Bear Stearns-Part 1
My Republican friends are always telling me that the private sector operates more efficiently than the public sector. They want to privatize everything from Medicare and Social Security to garbage collection. I always tell them that corporate efficiency is a Conservatve myth. Anyone who's worked in Corporate America knows that it's rife with stupidity and inefficiency, that it's largely unaccountable to its shareholders, who vote mostly by proxy, and that if a company is big enough and "venerable" enough the Federal Government AKA The American Taxpayer will bail it's sorry ass out. So much for the "invisible hand."
Witness Bear Stearns.
The Right Thing
Last night the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system did the right thing. It approved a "no-bullying" policy that prohibits bullying based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. For the first time, teachers are held responsible for enforcing the policy and due process is put in place for dealing with those whose bully.
I attended the board meeting as an observer--Reilly and I accompanied Mary to her meeting for "Kids Vote," which happened to be taking place in the same building.
Sub-Prime Mortgages and the American Dream
I've been in Houston training bankers this week, earning a little money to support my writing and cooking habits. It's not a bad gig--the facilities are comfortable, the pay is good, and the people are friendly.
But it's caused me to focus more on the economy, lending practices, and the sub-prime mortgage market than I have in recent months.
Several conclusions emerge.
First, the mortgage lending industry likes to tell the story that the sub-prime market arose due to the low interest rates introduced by the Fed following the bursting of the dot com bubble and the 9/11 financial crisis. No doubt, lower interest rates stimulated consumer demand. But what the lenders' story fails to address is the push side of the equation. Lenders aggressively targeted "sub-prime" borrowers and engaged in deceptive sales practices. They hawked teaser rates without fully disclosing (except in the finest of print) the potentially disastrous results of a rising interest rate environment. The loans were designed irresponsibly so that the adjustments on the mortgage were unreasonably large and triggered by seemingly innocuous (to the consumer) economic indicators. The underwriting of these loans was also irresponsible, with lenders bending over backwards to sell product to anyone and everyone who walked through the door. The banks and other mortgage lenders and their individual brokers made a killing with little concern for the people they took advantage of or the potential for harm to the economy in general. The commercial banks and the mortgage lenders made a second killing when they packaged their sub-prime loans as a security that could be underwritten by investment bankers and then resold in the secondary market to hedge funds and other large institutional investors.
First Monday
Today begins the new session of the Supreme Court. I'm tracking important cases on my Supreme Court blog, First Monday, which can be found on this site.
The new session begins in the shadow of recent books by Justices including a new one by Justice Thomas and about the Court including Jeffrey Toobin's book "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court."
As reported yesterday in the New York Times, the current court is about as divided and politicized as any court in history. On the conservative side are Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas. On the other side are Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer. Kennedy is the likely swing vote in many cases.
This is an oversimplification, but it's true that the last term saw a significant number of 5-4 decisions on major issues with the conservatives almost always voting as a block.
What is also true is that the Conservative Block clearly has a political agenda and is adept at thinly masking its agenda with what appear to be well-reasoned legal opinions. Furthermore, for a group of conservatives, who are traditionally opposed to "judicial activism," the Roberts' Court seems more than willing to tackle big issues like "balance of power" and abortion.
It's going to be an interesting session.
The Demise of Justice
Inasmuch as the 9/11 terrorist attacks served as justification for many of the actions taken by the Bush Administration over the last few years, perhaps it is appropriate to consider the recent resignation of Alberto Gonzales on this anniversary of those attacks.
Gonzales, of course, was a corporate lawyer with a large Texas law firm before being appointed counsel to then Texas Governor George W. Bush. Bush went on to appoint Gonzales as the Secretary of State in Texas and as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. When Bush was elected President, Gonzales accompanied him as White House Counsel, then was named to succeed John Ashcroft as Attorney General.
32 Dead
I've delayed in commenting about the shootings at Virginia Tech for a couple of weeks because I needed time to process what had happened.
When all the media blur has cleared--much of which focused on the red-herring issue of whether authorities acted too slowly in response to the first shooting in the dormitory--two things become clear:
- The shooting was the random act of a disturbed young man.
- The shooting was in part attributable to the easy access afforded individuals in this country to semi-automatic weapons.