One of the things I’ve come to realize is that gridlock is a good thing. I just finished, rather belatedly, reading Bruce Bartlett’s Imposter, which dissects the Bush failure and makes a good case for a VAT instead of the Fair Tax. I was struck by this passage:

[gridlock] is regularly denounced by political scientists and party leaders who believe that it promotes stalemate and is a barrier to dealing with pressing national problems. However, their idea of effectiveness – lots of legislation being passed – doesn’t necessarily jibe with that of the general public, financial markets or fisacal conservatives. For them, “effectiveness” often translates into unnecessary government meddling, declining stock and bond prices, and expand government.

It should always be remembered that when something really needs doing — responding to 9/11, going to War with Germany or building a highway system, government goes non-partisan — or at least, as O’Rourke observed, until the contracts are being handed out.

The first thing every schoolchild learns about the US government is that the Founding Fathers intentionally divided power among the legislative, executive and judicial branches; separated the legislative power between the house and the Senate; and created a federal system with strong state governments as a check on the national government. [MS – I doubt they learn this any more.] They deliberately avoided creation of a parliamentary system such as they have in England, where party control of the legislative and executive branches is necessarily the same. [MS – Don’t tell Neal Boortz!] The Founding Fathers wanted legislation to be slow and difficult to pass, not easy. This would weed out ill-advised measures that have momentary popularity …

Like the prescription drug program or campaign finance reform. But here’s the money quote:

Some analysts argue that rather than creating stalemate, gridlock actually contributes to effective legislating. Because each party has veto power over the other, once cannot run roughshod over the other and must therefore reach out to the other at an early stage of the legislative process and draw it in, thus creating stable compromises that can become good, lasting law.

Reagan’s tax cuts; Clinton’s welfare reform…

When one party is completely shut out, as Republicans were in 1993 and 1994 and Democrats are now [2005], they have no reasons to cooperate and a strong incentive to conduct a scorched earth policy.

Such as scuttling Social Security reform.

This forces the governing party to pass legislation using only its own members, which often means compromising with the most extreme elements within the party, when better legislation would have resulted from forging a deal with the other party.

Detainee Treatment Act. Patriot Act. Iraq War Resolution. Terri Schiavo. Think about how much of George Bush’s tenure has driven by the extreme Right — a minority even within conservative circles.

I bring this up because Congress just went on recess. And it occured to me that for the first time since 2000, they went a whole six months without screwing us in some way. No massive spending hikes, no oil subsidies, no Terry Schiavo’s dragged (or wheeled) into the halls of power, no multi-trillion-dollar expansion of Medicare, and no more rights eroded for the War on Terror.

Gridlock, I missed you! Welcome back! All is forgiven! Long live gridlock!

If anyone read this blog, posting this would get me in heap big trouble. But no one read the blog and I’ll probably be out of a job by January anyway.

Anyhoo . . . this is one of the most racist things I’ve ever heard:

When white Americans were asked to imagine how much they would have to be paid to live the rest of their lives as a black person, most requested relatively low amounts, generally less than $10,000.

In contrast, study participants said they would have to be paid about $1 million to give up television for the rest of their lives.

The results suggest most white Americans don’t truly comprehend the persisting racial disparities in our country, said Philip Mazzocco, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus.

“The costs of being black in our society are very well documented,” Mazzocco said. “Blacks have significantly lower income and wealth, higher levels of poverty, and even shorter life spans, among many other disparities, compared to whites.”

Why do I say this is racist? Well first of all, because it’s being used to justify reparations. But mostly, because these people are essentially saying that the problems associated with black people are a deterministic result of their skin color. That being black automatically ruins your life. Lower income, lower wealth and poverty have nothing to do with dropping out of school, having kids out of wedlock, getting involved in drugs or crime — all of which have been shown to be the primary factors involved in poverty and all of which are choices. If a black person makes good choices, he’ll still be poor and die young. If a white person makes poor choices, he’ll still be rich and live a long life.

In most cases, the participants were told to imagine they were actually black, but had always passed for white. The imagined race change required no physical transformation, just a change in public status.

So in other words, if I found out I was black, my wealth would magically drop by $150,000, my Ph.D. would be taken back and I’d get hypertension.

Finally, some participants were given a similar scenario except all references to blacks, whites and America were taken out. They were asked to imagine they were born into the fictional country of Atria, and were born either into the “majority” or “minority” population. They were given a list of the disadvantages that the minority population faced in Atria (which were identical to the real disadvantages faced by blacks in America). In this case, white participants in the study said they should be paid an average of $1 million to be born as a minority member in Atria.

Complete shit. Atria is not America. They are asking me to compare a fictional country with institutionalized racism against a real country with affirmative action. That’s like pointing to the viscous treatment women suffer in Islamic countries and asking men how much they would need to become a woman. It depends on the country, jackass. Where you are is who you are.

And again, none of these problems afflicting blacks involve bad choices or decision making. Everything is deterministic. No one can rise above his circumstances. Blacks are helpless and need money to raise them up.

To hell with this. Why don’t we spend a little less time doing dumbass social experiments and a little more time getting blacks to stay in school, stay off drugs, shun crime and not have kids out of wedlock? But then again, if blacks didn’t have any problems, there wouldn’t be money to be made race-baiting at the Ohio State’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

Yes, the Right is actually promulgating the idea that the Vice-President of the United States is not part of the Executive Branch.

But then that nettlesome *reality* gets in the way:

Article. II. – The Executive Branch

Section 1 – The President

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Here’s the bullshit the Right is trying to push on us: The Vice-President is authorized by the same article — in fact, the same sentence as the President; he works in the same building; he is able to assume the duties of the President when the latter is out of commission for some reason (as Cheney has done).

But, no, he’s not part of the executive branch.

Jesus Christ, how low will these dipshits go to protect the Administration? Is there no line of shit that emerges from the White House that Boortz, Limbaugh and Hannity won’t happily frolick in?

They know damned well that if Al Gore had tried this nonsense, they would have laughed. They know damned well that if Cheney invoked executive privelege, they would defend it. But — once again — they are for more interested in supporting Bush than supporting the law, the Constitution or basic decency and liberty.

What bothers me is that the Administration is trying to cloud an issue with lawyer talk and loopholes. By claiming that Dick Cheney is neither fish nor fowl — bound by rules of neither the executive nor the legislative — they are trying to create another realm of lawlessness in which they can do anything they like.

As with “enemy combatants”.

Or rendering.

Or “authorizations of military force”.

Remember what I said about how a national energy policy was dumb?

Yup.

A push from Congress and the White House for huge increases in biofuels, such as ethanol, is prompting the oil industry to scale back its plans for refinery expansions. That could keep gasoline prices high, possibly for years to come.

Doh! And Duh!