[Undersecretary of State Sumner] Welles had caused a scandal when he divorced his first wife and married [Mathilde] Townsend, who was rumored to have been his mistress. Welles’s wealth, power, and profligate lifestyle earned him the enmity of many diplomats and politicians. According to writer Irwin Gellman, [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull “genuinely hated Welles” and conspired to oust him from the department. An incident on a train in 1940 gave Hull the leverage he needed. In the midst of the 1940 presidential campaign, with Roosevelt seeking an unprecedented third term, Speaker of the House William Bankhead suddenly died of a stomach hemorrhage. Wanting to shore up his support in the South, a key component of the New Deal coalition, Roosevelt ordered his entire cabinet to accompany him to the Speaker’s funeral in Jasper, Alabama. But with the ailing Hull unable to travel, it was Welles who traveled on one of the two special trains that transported the presidential party and a Congressional delegation to Alabama. On the trip back to Washington, Welles reportedly drank heavily at dinner. After finally retiring to his compartment late that night, Welles rang for assistance. When an African American railroad porter responded, Welles sexually propositioned him and several other porters who responded to subsequent calls. The administration tried to hush up the incident, giving one of the porters a job at the White House and eliciting Senator Harry Truman’s help in squelching a threatened investigation in the Senate. Rumor of the incident quickly spread …
Writing to thousands of party workers, [RNC chairman] Gabrielson warned that “perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our government in recent years.
Everyone learns about the Red Scare in school, and absorbs feelings about it from our popular culture: either they like it because they believe it was a justified attempt to protect the government from the danger of Soviet infiltration or – more common in my social circle – they dislike it as an example of paranoia run amok, damaging and destructive of all it touched.
But – almost certainly because teachers aren’t willing to go into a topic which is still more controversial than communism – virtually nobody learns in school about the corollary: a concerted effort over years to drive homosexuals out of the government, under the theory that they were almost as bad as Communists.
According to The Lavender Scare, a 2004 study of the subject, homosexuality was as common in the new deal-era DC as it was in Berlin in the 20s (albeit less flashy and open). But then it became the subject of politics.
Headlines warning of “Perverts Fleeing State Dept.” peppered newspapers throughout the country. While members of Congress held hearings to determine how to “eradicate this menace”, jokes circulated about the “lavender lads” in the State Department. The issue was so frequently discussed on the Senate and House floors that one Congressman complained about all the attention being given to homosexuals. … The issue of homosexual sin government, observed columnist John O’Donnell, constituted a new type of political weapon – never used in this republic.” He predicted it would destroy the confidence of the American people in the State Department and might “wreck the administration.” Seeing this as evidence of “depravity in the Roosevelt-Truman bureaucracy,” Westbrook Pegler lamented, “[T]here is no record of comparable corruption in American history.”
The last point is an important one: it is not clear to what degree the scandal-mongers were motivated by an honest belief that homosexuals presented a clear and present danger to the nation, and to what degree they were motivated by the belief that whipping up a frenzy about it could serve to discredit the party which had controlled DC, and the country, for almost two decades. It is said that diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means, and the same might well be said for politics.
All of which goes to show two things: first, that it’s no more than a myth that politics has always stopped at the water’s edge; even in the height of the cold war, the US foreign service was subject to attack for purely political reasons. And second – however frustrating and unpleasant the contemporary “politics of personal destruction” may be, they are not unique, and the politics of our age are no worse than the politics of any other. Politicians have always been willing to destroy innocents in the cause of political victory.
Why we aren’t aquarian communists.
The common right to the use of running water therefore applies only to those cases where the quantity of water is so great that its entire exclusive appropriation is not necessary, having regard to the general objects of the institution of property.
— Grotius
I wonder if this can be generalized to a concept that property need only exist when there is a shortage. Isn’t that the fundamental libertarian-anarchist objection to intellectual property?
In an average year, federal, state, and local governments make more than 15 million arrests and obtain around 1 million felony convictions and several million additional misdemeanor convictions.
–Sentencing Law & Policy
That’s 5% of the country arrested each year, with 1/3 of 1% receiving felony convictions.
Voting
Voting:
A quick rundown of how I’m planning to vote on Tuesday, with (brief) explanations instead of the usual 1000 word tomes.
Governor: Dale Ogden (L). Meg Whitman has spent a fortune failing to convince me that she can succeed at doing what Arnie promised to do. Jerry Brown is more responsible than any single other living politician for helping construct the state of California’s current framework of ungovernability. I reject them both, and am slightly more sympathetic to the Libertarians than to the Greens when I look for third party candidates.
Senator: Barbara Boxer (D). Carly Fiorina came into HP, failed to understand its corporate culture, the motivations of its employees, or what made it a great company, then proceded to change the company in ways which destroyed all three. There’s no good reason to believe she’d be any better in the Senate.
Lt. Governor: Abel Maldanado (R). Gavin Newsom is a spotlight-seeking political hack who managed to make the gay community in San Francisco love him while scoring a massive own goal for their side; then he proceeded to betray his closest friend (and prominent political aide) and his wife, simultaneously. Abel Maldanado is a socially moderate, pro-environment Republican who is willing to vote for compromise budgets. Given this choice, the answer is obvious.
Secretary of State: Debra Bowen (D). She came to office four years ago promising to restrict the use of unverifiable (and unsafe) electronic voting machines. She did so. She deserves re-election for the simple reason that she kept her primary campaign promise, with the result that elections in California are now more secure than they are in much of the country.
Attorney General: Steve Cooley (R). He’s a relatively nonpartisan conservative who supports modifying three strikes; his opponent ran a DA’s office which has been embroiled in a scandal involving the DA’s office not turning over impeachment evidence about cops with disciplinary records involving dishonesty. That was a fundamental failure of a basic job duty, and blaming it on the SFPD should not earn her a promotion.
Insurance Commissioner: why is this an elected office, again?
Superintendent of Public Education: all I know about this is that it’s shaped up to be a race between the candidate backed by the administration and the candidate backed by the teachers. Since I have no children in the public schools, I don’t follow public school politics enough to know more, so I’m inclined to not vote on it.
Assembly: Ray Bell (L). I voted against the Democrat in the primary for reasons involving local county politics (and because one of his opponents was one of the best candidates i’ve seen anywhere in a long time). He’s guaranteed a win in the general election, so I’m voting for a third party candidate to increase their visibility and numbers.
Congress: Anna Eshoo (D). I’m reasonably happy with her as a representative and don’t think any of her opponents will do a better job.
Proposition 19: Yes. It’s far from a perfect bill, but legalizing possession and growth of marijuana, and allowing some legalization of sale, is a step in the right direction. Aside from the (uncertain) situation with respect to corporate drug-free workplace policies, where I’m somewhat sympathetic to the danger that companies may be unable to comply with both this law and federal contracting regulations, my objections to Prop. 19 are that it doesn’t go far enough, not that it goes too fa.r
Proposition 20: No. I voted for the independent redistricting commission for the state legislature, two years ago; how about we give it a chance, and see how it works, before extending its power?
Proposition 21: No. This is tough: more money for parks (many of which were almost closed last year), tied to a minor increase in the vehicle license fee, balanced by free park admission – it’s a reasonable policy choice which I would vote for as a legislator. But I don’t like ballot-box budgeting; it makes the overall state budget problem worse.
Proposition 22: No. More ballot box budgeting. In a good cause, sure … but aren’t they always in a good cause?
Proposition 23: No. A temporary suspension might be in order (although even then, if we really believe that global warming is a problem that must be addressed, don’t we need to address it regardless of whether we’re in good economic times or not?). But this isn’t temporary: the trigger is a condition of extremely low unemployment … meaning the suspension may be indefinite.
Proposition 24: No. (1) Complicated tax policy is why we have a legislature. (2) I like some of the changes the measure would repeal while disliking others. (3) More ballot-box budgeting.
Proposition 25: Yes If a majority of the legislature can put together a budget which is balanced and which doesn’t require tax increases, they should be able to do so.
Proposition 26: No. Increasing the number of things which require a 2/3 majority vote, and simultaneously incresing the number of things which must be sent to the voters for a 2/3 majority vote, is a recipe for gridlock and further structural inflexibility, making it even harder for government to function than it already is.
Proposition 27: No. We voted to create this redistricting commission two years ago. Nothing has changed. How about we give it a try before repealing it?
Puzzling political rhetoric from Alaska
The Fairbanks daily news (by way of Political Wire) reports that Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller “said he would support an amendment for term limits as well as an amendment repealing the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of senators by the public rather than by state legislatures.”
Given that Mr. Miller is one of the tea party insurgents who has recently stunned everyone by defeating incumbent (or near-incumbent, like Mike Castle) legislators in party primaries, this is insane.
I mean: I’m aware that there’s an a somewhat popular argument in conservative circles that repealing the 17th amendment would result in Senators that were more concerned about states’ rights (being creatures of the state Legislatures and, in theory, subject to their control). I assume that’s the reason Mr. Miller is in favor of it.
But it makes no sense when considered in line with the rest of the tea party narrative: if the root of the nation’s problems is that evil politicians have sold out our national patrimony by borrowing money to buy votes, how does it make any sense to divest the electorate of the power to pick Senators, instead vesting it in the hands of the very politicians whom the tea party derides?
This might make sense in a world where the state legislatures had already been ‘taken back’. But they haven’t been.
Proposition 21
Proposition 21 is a microcosm of the difficulty facing California voters, and the structural incoherence of our political system.
The idea is simple: add a $18 fee to the annual vehicle license fee, direct the money to the state parks, revoke the state park day use fee (which is currently levied on a per-vehicle basis) for most vehicles registered in California, and thereby give everyone free access to the state parks in exchange for the fee. (Campgrounds and paid activities would still cost more).
The initiative was put on the ballot after the Governor suggested, as part of last year’s budget deal, that 2/3 of the parks be closed in order to save money; public outrage prevented that from happening, but the danger always remains that it will happen again. So activists organized a drive to put a measure on the ballot to protect the state parks from budget cuts, and to ensure funding for them even when the legislature is searching around looking for money.
So in that regard it seems like a good idea: everyone likes the parks, and closing them to save money in one year is economically foolish (as failure to maintain them will cost more money in the long run, and as closed parks are nonetheless a public nuisance in the sense that we can’t afford to keep people from breaking in, using them, and then either leaving a mess behind or suing the state when they get injured). This measure would take an unpopular dumb idea and put it beyond the grasp of the Legislature.
True, it would impose a flat fee cost on every car owner in the state … but it’s a relatively minor one, and it’s balanced by the fact that the day use fee for state parks would be effectively eliminated, so the cost to most people would be very low. (There’s some danger, as the libertarian opposition to the measure points out, of vehicle fees becoming the twenty-first century sin tax … but we’re not at that point yet).
And yet …
One of the fundamental problems in California over the years has been that the voters, irritated at the Legislature, have repeatedly passed measures making it impossible for the legislature to touch the funding of this year’s sacred cow, or to raise taxes without voter consent; meanwhile, we’ve passed measures requiring funding particular programs and selling bonds (thereby requiring the Legislature to fund interest payments). So with each passing year, the Legislature’s freedom of action is constrained a bit more, and the places it can look to resolve the state budget become more limited, and so each resolution of the budget has a larger effect on a narrower range of state programs, fueling voter outrage and causing the voters to decide that the Legislature can’t be trusted to protect this year’s sacred cow …
That’s precisely the dynamic here: the Legislature considered virtually obliterating the state park system. They decided not to, because the voters got pissed off. But we don’t trust them to continue not doing that, so we want to deny them the ability to do it … without actually solving the general problems preventing the legislature from passing a budget. We’ll carve outt this particular exemption, increasing the pressure on everything else, and not resolving the underlying problem.
Were I a legislator, I would vote for this program in a heartbeat.
But I’m not.
And I remain unconvinced that using the initiative system to mandate particular taxing and spending policies, thereby putting them outside the realm of things the legislature is allowed to effect, is a wise idea.
This is somewhat outrageous:
An unemployed man in Philadelphia got angry at Sen. Bunning after the Senator complained about a debate on unemployment benefits preventing him from seeing a Kentucky basketball game.
So he wrote several angry emails, in which he claimed to live in Kentucky.
Someone referred the emails to the FBI (which suggests that the Huffington Post’s article downplays the content of the email – I assume that sane political staffers wouldn’t refer email to the FBI unless it were truly obnoxious or threatening).
The FBI obtained an indictment: it’s a felony under US law to use a telecommunications devise with the intent to annoy, threaten, and harass the recipient, without disclosing your identity.
So: anonymous angry emails to Congressmen are illegal.
How this comports with the first amendment I’m not sure – and we won’t find out in this case, as the man is pleading guilty.
According to the Associated Press, a candidate running for governor in new york has proposed that underused state prisons be repurposed.
They have underused state prisons? As a Californian, I find the concept incredible: prisons are overcrowded and there are convicts spilling out into the streets, here.
But I digress.
He has proposed that they be used to hosue welfare recipients who would do work for the state while being gaught things like personal hygiene.
The mind boggles.
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