Nixon, when in China.
Prompted by my grudging paen to a conservative Christian Republican, Michael Bowen of Alabama writes to let me know of his blog, A Minority of One, which he’s dedicating to covering Governor Bob Riley’s (bold! audacious!) plan to render Alabama’s tax code as somewhat more progressive than its current state. I’ve added him to the linchinography, and heartily commend him to your attention on this topic: he’s dug in and found some fascinating stuff. Like the fact that, while timber companies, largely out-of-state conglomerate, own 25% of the state’s land, due to a quirk in the current state tax structure, tax revenues from timber and agriculture properties combined bring in less than 2% of the state’s property tax revenue. [Ed. note— Timber companies own 25% of Alabama’s timberland. Timberland makes up 71% of the state’s land. That 71%, owned by corporations and individuals, brings in 2% of the state’s property tax revenue. Correction supplied in comments by Mr. Bowen. Management humbly apologies for the misreading.] Or that the national Republicans are taking note, and do not like what Riley’s doing; Dick Armey’s coming to Alabama to denounce the plan. Or the rather astonishing efforts of the Mobile Register to spin their own poll: “Survey finds voters oppose governor’s $1.2 billion tax plan,” says the headline—of a poll that’s a 44/43 split with a 5-point margin of error.
Best, perhaps, is his take-down of the odious Christian Colation of Alabama. Their refutation of the proposed tax plan, for instance, cites the Bloomberg Wealth Manager rates Alabama’s tax plan as 9th in the US in terms of “wealth friendliness” towards families, and gives Alabama’s current tax code a B+. Sounds like things aren’t such a raw deal after all, right? Well, Bowen did his homework, and looked at the specs of that Bloomberg Wealth Manager survey. Here’s how they defined the families towards which the Alabama tax code is so wealth-friendly:
He used four hypothetical families whose sources of wealth are highly concentrated in either wages, real assets, mixed (real and financial) assets, or retirement income. Well, that seems fair enough. Here are the asset profiles that he used for the four families:
For the family that derives most of its wealth from salary, we assigned $500,000 in adjusted gross income; $12,500 in long-term capital gains; $12,500 in municipal-bond interest from another state; a home value of $250,000; and spending of $30,000 ($10,000 on food, $2,000 on prescriptions, $1,000 on other medications, 1,000 gallons of gas).
For the family that derives most of its wealth from real assets, we assigned $100,000 in adjusted gross income; $12,500 in long-term capital gains; $12,500 in municipal-bond interest from another state; a home value of $1 million; and spending of $20,000 ($10,000 on food, $2,000 on prescriptions, $1,000 for other medications, 600 gallons of gas).
For the family that derives most of its wealth from mixed assets, we assigned $500,000 in adjusted gross income; $50,000 split among long-term capital gains, municipal-bond interest from another state, and interest from Treasury securities; a home value of $500,000; and spending of $25,000 ($10,000 on food, $2,000 on prescriptions, $1,000 for other medications, 600 gallons of gas).
For the family in retirement, we assigned no earned income; $100,000 split among long-term capital gains, municipal-bond interest from another state, and interest from Treasury securities; $30,000 in pensions; $23,868 in Social Security; a home value of $500,000; and spending of $25,000 ($10,000 on food, $4,000 on prescriptions, $2,000 for other medications, 1,000 gallons of gas).
Let’s review some basic facts, shall we?
- Most Americans believe between 1 and 5 million Americans live in poverty.
- The actual number is 33 million.
- Most American believe the poverty level for a family of four is $35,000 a year.
- The actual classification as set by the Census Bureau for a family of four is $18,104 a year.
- Alabamians start paying state income tax on incomes of $4,600 a year.
- Alabamians who make less than $13,000 a year pay 10.9% of their income in state and local taxes.
- Alabamians who make more than $290,000 pay 4.1% of their income in state and local taxes.
Wealth-friendly, indeed. This isn’t class war; the war is fucking over. This is a class empire. With oppressed class colonies struggling under class viceroys watching their resource-based monoculture economies of timber and chickens and minimum-wage employment get sucked dry right out from under them. Dick Armey is lying when he says of Riley’s plan, “Family budgets are already stretched to the limit and most can’t absorb the strain of losing more money from their paychecks. The Governor shouldn’t pass the mistakes of government on to the hard-working people of Alabama.” That is not what Riley’s doing. Riley’s working to shift the tax burden from them what hasn’t to them what has, and them what has are getting upset. It’s that simple.
Only Nixon could go to China; only Clinton could “reform” welfare. Only a conservative Republican governor, perhaps, could have gotten as far as Riley has in turning back the regressive tax tide so beloved of folks like Grover “drown it in a bathtub” Norquist. That doesn’t mean that Democrats and progressives and moderate Republicans (where the hell are you guys?) who are sick and tired and terrified of the “wiped clean” mentality can’t capitalize on this struggle. Bowen notes a number of editorials from around the country who are taking note of what Governor Riley’s trying to do. Alabama is far from the only state reeling under a budget crisis imposed by the federal government’s gross dereliction of duty. It’s far from the only state whose regressive code could use an overhaul. This has legs. This is a chink in the teflon. This is a turning point. This is the bellweather and the watershed. The day of 9 September, when Alabamians go to the polls to decide the fate of Riley’s plan, is going to be a red-letter day.
And as of right now, I’m cheering for Riley—a conservative Republican—all the way.
Fluff.
Just wanted to counteract the sniggering, condescending, and spiteful links that this piece is sure to generate by noting that my own (admittedly lackluster) interest in seeing Matrix Reloaded just doubled.
Apparently, they serve cake.
So it’s a day for short, pithy, comics-focussed entries about the Spouse. —The Friends of Lulu, a national organization whose main purpose is to promote and encourage female readership and participation in the comic book industry, has announced the nominations for their various awards, to be presented (with cake) at a ceremony during the San Diego Comic-Con, on Thursday 17 July. And it seems one Jenn Manley Lee is up for the Kim Yale Award for Best New Female Talent.
Congratulations, Jenn. You’ve more than earned it.
Tomato, tomahtoe.
The Spouse went and started herself a mild donnybrook on which is easier: prose, or comics; words, or pictures. And you know me: I’m going to say both, and neither, and would you look at this interesting heirloom varietal right smack dab in the middle? (I like having my tomato and eating it, too.) —Anyway. You have a stake in either, or both, you might want to go see what’s being flung about and slap your own two cents into the fray. Me, I’ve got to go see a man about horse.
Currently showing on fine liberal refrigerators everywhere.
Barry’s right: this is a delightfully savage cartoon. —Kick ass and take names, Kevin.
An open letter to Figg Vanderhyde, among others.
I don’t have a septic tank problem. Not even a “septic tank problem (bWqx2M).”
I don’t even have a septic tank. Okay?
So I don’t need to dramatically increase its life and effectiveness with SPC, which breaks down large waste materials into smaller particles and liquids so they pass through a septic system that doesn’t even exist. So I’m not going to try it out by clicking anywhere.
Given that, you might want to stop with the septic tank spam. Utterly wasted on me. Moreso than most.
(I mean, at least the barnyard lesbian lolitas attracting men with larger breasts that went all night were momentarily entertaining…)
I have no response to that.
The increasingly incomparable Daily Howler on why we have the world we do and what we face as we try to change it—
For the record, Carlson had explained Gore’s lousy coverage in real time, in a way that was even more revealing. On Tuesday, October 10, 2000, Carlson appeared on Imus in the Morning to discuss press coverage of Bush and Gore’s first debate. As she noted, Gore was being slammed as a liar because of a few trivial misstatements. Much larger howlers were being ignored—misstatements by Bush about policy matters. Speaking with Imus, Carlson explained the press corps’ apparent double standard:
CARLSON (10/10/00): Gore’s fabrications may be inconsequential—I mean, they’re about his life. Bush’s fabrications are about our life, and what he’s going to do. Bush’s should matter more but they don’t, because Gore’s we can disprove right here and now. We can’t disprove that there’s going to be a chicken in every pot.
According to Carlson, the press had focused on what was easy. She explained in a bit more detail:
CARLSON: You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator or you look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove Gore.
It was “fun” to disprove Gore’s errors! Carlson took her presentation through one more startling iteration:
CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need government, and so they would care more about the programs, and more about the things we kind of make fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t disprove these other things.
What an astonishing presentation! According to Carlson, the press was pursuing Gore’s trivial errors because it was “greatly entertaining” to do so. And why had they ignored Bush’s errors, which she found more significant? Because they weren’t as easy to disprove! According to Carlson, the press agenda had been set by what was “easy”—and “entertaining” and “fun.” It was “sport.”
For extra credit, factor in this amazing Eschaton post on the decline of academia in our political life and the concomitant rise of the think-tank echo chamber. Be sure to follow all the links—if not, you’ll miss Michael Bérubé’s decade-long one-two punch. (Unless, of course, you’ve already seen it. In which case, why hadn’t you told me about it?)
Days like this, I think there’s only one thing left to do, and that’s take Bérubé’s 1991 joke as a serious plan of action:
Just the other day a friend and I came up with the most pernicious academic scheme to date for toppling the West: he will kneel behind the West on all fours. I will push it backwards over him.
Ask yourself what democracy was like.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden reminds us that back on 4 June, the House once again passed an amendment to the Constitution that would grant Congress the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.
Sigh.
It’s important to remember that this is, as Democrats have put it, a Republican rite of spring. Score points with the freepi back home by passing a useless law everyone knows the sensible solons of the Senate will decline to bless with a two-thirds majority. It’s happened that way five times in the past eight years, after all. Yawn, ho-hum, they’re wasting time and money and cheapening the country’s rhetoric, but at least the ACLU can use it to drum up a little more when they pass the hat. So laugh it off: ha ha ha.
But it’s also important to keep in mind the rules are changing:
A telling anecdote: When an employee tried to stop Mr. DeLay from smoking a cigar on government property, the majority leader shouted, “I am the federal government.” Not quite, not yet, but he’s getting there.
[...]
There’s no point in getting mad at Mr. DeLay and his clique: they are what they are. I do, however, get angry at moderates, liberals and traditional conservatives who avert their eyes, pretending that current disputes are just politics as usual. They aren’t—what we’re looking at here is a radical power play, which if it succeeds will transform our country. Yet it’s considered uncool to point that out.
It’s also tempting, at first, to laugh off an attempt by one tiny set of non-governmental organizations to decide that the efforts of another tiny set of non-governmental organizations are detrimental to our country, after all. Pot? Kettle’s on line one. Project much? —But watch what’s happening on the ground:
Last week, Save the Children and Mercy Corps, a Portland humanitarian organization, objected to a demand that all contact with journalists be filtered through USAID in order to qualify for the same development program turned down by CARE, IRC and WorldVision.
The media restriction, which one NGO official called “unprecedented,” was imposed soon after USAID Director Andrew Natsios told a forum of InterAction, the largest alliance of American humanitarian groups working overseas, that NGOs fulfilling U.S. contracts are “an arm of the US government” and should do a better job highlighting ties to the Bush administration if they want to continue receiving funds for overseas projects.
So I guess the point is the old one about eternal vigilance and evil triumphing if good folks do nothing: pick up the phone, fire up the email, contact your Senators, and point them to this eloquent argument that an amendment forbidding the “desecration” of the flag strikes at the very heart of the religions of the People of the Book. Then tell them that food and water and aid for the Iraqis we’ve dispossessed is far more important than keeping some NGOs on message. —We can still do our best to keep the rules from changing. Tom DeLay isn’t the federal government yet, by God, and the sky’s still blue in my neck of the woods.
Though it is acquiring a distinctly greenish cast…
No, I Claudius.
From Patrick Farley, genteel proprietor of that of which androids do dream:
The Which I, Claudius Character Are You? quiz.
(Me? I’m Clau- Clau- Claudius. Who else?)
Take the first left after Venus, you can’t miss it.
Venus:
- Diameter: 5.2 inches
- Location: Budget Traveler Motor Inn (0.7 mile from Sun)
- Construction: Styrofoam ball with fiberglass cover
- Constructed by: Caribou Tech Center (Caribou High School)
- Painted by: Jeanie McGowan, Curator of Collections at the Northern Maine Museum of Science and student at the University of Maine at Presque Isle
- Posts constructed by: Northern Maine Technical College, Sonny Michaud and students
- Base constructed by David Tardie and his students, Loring Job Corps, Cement Mason Program
—Via MetaFilter, the coolest thing I’ve seen this morning: a 40-mile-long scale model of the solar system, from the Sun at the Northern Maine Museum of Science at Presque Isle, to Pluto (and Charon) outside the Houlton Information Center at the junction of Route 1 and Interstate 95. It’s the brainchild of Kevin McCartney, a professor of geology at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, and it was constructed pretty much entirely of donated materials and volunteer labor on a budget of zip, zero, zilch. Here’s the Smithsonian’s write-up:
Just now, newspaper ad sales manager Jim Berry is drilling a hole in Saturn’s post and remembering his first encounter with McCartney at a Kiwanis Club meeting. “I went home that night and said to my wife, ‘I met this guy today. He’s a wacko. You can’t believe what he’s going to try to do.’ “ When he got up the next morning he said, “Wait a minute. This is a great idea. I’ve got to get involved in this. This is just too good to pass up.”
McCartney has that effect on people; one day they think he’s crazy, the next day they’re painting Jupiter’s spot. His list of prominent “squirrels,” as he inexplicably calls his volunteers, runs eight pages long. Add the anonymous students who worked on a planet here or a stanchion there, and McCartney estimates that more than 500 squirrels have pitched in so far. Perley Dean, a retired Presque Isle High School guidance counselor who wears a “Maine Potato Board” baseball cap, got the job of persuading several landowners that what was missing on their property was a planet. “Many of them don’t stay up late at night reading about the galaxy,” Dean deadpans.
To infinity and beyond!
33 vases 33.
I’ve been at a slow boil over a nasty little meme scuttling about the mediasphere the past few days. Goes something like this: “Hey! Only 33 important artefacts were looted from the Iraqi National Museum! (And several thousand minor ones!) Bet those liberals aren’t going to apologize for lying about this any time soon!” It causes the red film to descend over my vision, and the pains in my chest to start up; I get this cramp in my left arm, just thinking about it, and quail at the notion of how much of my own bile and slaver I’d have to shovel to get at a clear, concise, poisonously succinct fuck you.
Luckily, it’s an Augean stable Teresa Nielsen Hayden is well-equipped to clean. A mighty river of truth and perspective is all that’s needed to wash these Billy Rubins clean and reveal their various high-minded calls to “set the record straight” as the pathetic projections they are.
Go. Read. Now.
A long drink of water.
From Orcinus, I learn that somebody off on the dextral side of the Islets of Bloggerhans is challenging folks who find themselves on one end or the other to say something nice about their better halves. —Apparently, bipartisanship isn’t so much like date rape in Paul Muller’s book:
So here’s my challenge – if you are a proprietor of a Democratic blog, and primarily post on how the GOP is the great evil, comment to me on one thing that the GOP has done that’s good. And, if you are feeling adventurous, post something on your actual site that does the same thing. Maybe a local Congressman or Senator has done something good for the area you live in. Perhaps a bill has been supported that you agree with. Maybe you actually gasp like the policy someone has. Whatever it is, let’s hear it.
So I’m game, though I’m afraid I might be spoiling the spirit if not the letter. While Muller seems more concerned with the GOP on a national level, I’d rather highlight the efforts of one Bob Riley, the conservative, Christian, Republican governor of my home state of Alabama. (Thanks to Julia for pointing me to the New York Times spit-take.)
The basic gist of what this red-stater is up to is summed up thusly by a blue-state elitist:
Alabama’s tax system has long been brutally weighted against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600, when even Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using “current use” rules, which significantly lowball its worth. Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.
Governor Riley’s plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries this time, but that he intends to work for that later.
Doesn’t sound much like a conservative Republican, does it?
Perhaps that’s because he takes his Christianity seriously. “Alabamians are used to hearing their politicians make religious arguments,” says the New York Times,
and Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system. “I’ve spent a lot of time studying the New Testament, and it has three philosophies: love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a year.”
In fact, now that he’s steered his plan through the divided, squabbling halls of Goat Hill, and it now hinges on the votes in an upcoming September election, Riley’s counting on religious groups to help grass-roots the plan to victory; Susan Pace Hamill has written a law review article titled “An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics,” and is planning to train speakers this summer to address church groups with this argument.
It’s not the specter of a Republican raising taxes and the progressive shifting of the burden from them what hasn’t to them what has that I’m cheering, though. That’s reason enough, mind, but I’d like to think there isn’t a human being alive who could take a look at a system that taxes a family making $4,600 a year and not want to do something about it. (And yes: that does say a lot about Alabama politics to date.) —And it’s not like I’ve vetted his plan in any great detail, though there are details I quite like—still, there’s some education reform in there I’d want to know more about before signing off on them, education being one of those areas where the word “reform” has been deformed beyond all meaning, and anyway tax policy’s far from my strong suit.
No, it’s that anything at all is being done. It’s that a politician took a look at the problems besetting the voters, the resources available to hand, and then waded in and knocked heads and did something, or tried. Things have gotten to that state: there has been such a gross dereliction and abdication of duty at the federal level (I’m talking Donkey and Elephant here, Paul, so I don’t think I cross your line) that the states are facing unprecedented challenges. Each is rising to the occasion in its own gridlocked, squabbling, bipartisan way: the New York state legislature has told Governor Pataki to fuck off in no uncertain terms, for instance; here in Oregon, we’re going to kill the Hummer deduction. Whether you agree with Governor Riley—and the Alabama legislature, there on Goat Hill—or think he’s making a dreadful mistake, you must admit that they’ve remembered what it is governments are good for, and shown a remarkable alacrity for making it work. —If you doubt it, remember: if the voters of Alabama say yea to the Governor’s plan, a family making $4,600 a year will no longer have to set some of that aside to pay state income taxes.
And it’s also the thrill of seeing a compassionate conservative; of seeing someone who wields religion in politics not as a club for once, but as a beacon. One does not have to agree with someone’s convictions to admire their courage for sticking to them, and one merely needs to turn to John Giles of Alabama’s Christian Coalition for an illuminating counter-example: he feels tax reform isn’t necessary, saying the state “need(s) to cut out the pork completely”; he misses the point of one of the most misused verses of Scripture ever, insisting the key question is “How much is Cæsar’s?”; his response to Susan Pace Hamill’s detailed ethical argument on tax reform is to question her stance on abortion.
I’d like to think any Republican—any Christian—would prefer to be in the party of Riley. Not the party of Giles.
There’s that famous speech Michael J. Fox delivers in Aaron Sorkin’s overrated and underappreciated can President. “People want leadership,” he says. “And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.” We’ll leave off for the moment the President’s pointed response; he Learns His Lesson in the end, and all becomes right with the world. —I’m sure there are aspects of Riley’s governorship that would make me livid. I bet there are things I believe that would cause him to mutter darkly about moral depravity. But for all those differences imagined or not, I can see he’s holding out water for people who’ve been thirsty for far too long.
And that, at least, is something I can drink to.
Portrait of the cartoonist as a young woman.
And no sooner do I post that last than Jenn calls to check up on some blurbage for an upcoming comics show. I give her something defensive and rah-rah, about simple mysteries and unfair denigration, something that flies my McCloudian colors, and then she says, “Go read Dylan’s journal.” —She’s talking about fellow Girlamaticker Dylan Meconis, Pants Presser and contributor to the aforementioned Wary Tales.
“In a minute,” I say. “I’m at work.” (It’s true. I am. But on a break, now. Honest.)
“No, really,” she says. “Go read it now. You’ll like it.”
She was right. So now I’m telling you: go read it.
In just over a month
I’ll be sitting in the cavernous belly of the San Diego Convention Center, happily blocking out the surrounding chaos with a copy of Wary Tales. I’ll most likely be at the table Chris and Jenn are sharing over in the small-press section. Stop by if you get the chance.
Tuppence.
I’m sorry to see Wampum go. Come back soon, MB.
While I maybe don’t read Ruminate This or the watch on a daily white-knuckled basis, they’re invaluable pit stops for every-coupla-day perspective-taking. Keep up the good work, folks.
I used to have Mac-a-ro-nies in my linchinography. Like a lot of people, I find her a sharp-witted writer on political issues, with a knack for digging up (criminally) overlooked perspectives. But her tongue’s as sharp as her wit—too sharp, perhaps. Links drift in and out of my blogroll all the time, for the most whimsical of reasons; it isn’t a secret club, or an intellectually rigorous snapshot of me as a political animal, or a networked affinity group, or even an accurate representation of what I’m reading how often. It’s just a collection of stuff I want to remember to keep coming back to. For a variety of reasons, including what I saw to be disproportionate reactions to others’ posts (friends and not) and dispiriting ad hominem attacks, I decided a while back to remove the Mac-a-ro-nies link. —I still read her from time to time, when pointed to fresh posts by others.
So I wish MacDiva the best of luck. We each of us can only fight the world the way we see it, after all.
But every now and then it’s a good idea to stop and take a look at the way we see the world.
—And that’s all two cents is worth, I think.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern walk into a bar.
The two guys: and you should know that “guys” is being used in its gender-neutral sense. (It does have one, and that sense, I think, is growing. Saying “Oh, come on, guys,” to a mixed group is not unusual, and includes the girls as much as the boys. Encourage its neutrality, says I.) The two guys, then: a terribly common and terribly ancient trope. (One hesitates and in the end does not say universal, mostly because while one is sometimes cheeky, one isn’t stupid.) It’s more interesting when stuff is happening in a—story, shall we say—to be able to talk about it, banter, crack jokes, bitch and moan—and so it’s axiomatic that two characters are more interesting than one. (Three, however, is not necessarily better than two. Four gets downright muddled, unless handled with great skill.) And because we like to be able to tell the difference between A and B, apples and oranges, a hawk and a handsaw, it’s only natural that of these two the one should end up as foil to the other—and naturally enough, vice versa. This isn’t to say that the one must always be funny, and the other dour; one stolid, and one flighty; one cynical, and one earnest; one earthy, and one spiritual; one loud, and one quiet. This isn’t to say that there’s an ur-This and an ur-That to which all such pairings hearken. Merely that, of whatever thing(s) the storyteller (story?) chooses to kick around with the two guys, well, one of them will be on the one side; the other on the other. Just the way things fall out: dichotomy, you know?
Still: it’s fun to map this pair onto that and see what overlaps we find.
—I’m spurred to this line of thought by Molly and Griffen, the protagonists of the Spouse’s sci fi slice-o’-life picaresque. Which is, perhaps, self-indulgent—but if that surprises, hell. You probably shouldn’t be reading blogs. Anyway: Griffen, of course, is C3PO, which makes Molly R2D2. That means that Dan’s Molly, then, and Casey’s Griffen. Scully would be Dan, and Mulder Casey (I’m thinking less of essence than affect, mind); Ponch would be Mulder, and Jon would be Scully. I can never remember which is Starsky, and which Hutch, but Bo is Ponch and Luke is Jon, assuming Bo’s the blond one, and that means Dana’s Bo and Natalie’s Luke, though I don’t think hair color’s all that reliable as a flag of which is which. (Xena and Gabrielle don’t really work so well as two guys, but I don’t think that’s because of subtext. Please.)
And Guildenstern is clearly Griffen; Rosencrantz, indubitably Molly.
Jenn’s between chapters, so she’s let Barry come in and do a short story, “The Argument,” which will be running at Girlamatic for the next couple of weeks. Does this mean that we now have two sets of two guys—Barry’s, and Jenn’s—standing metafictionally at either side of a stage, spinning coins? Not so much, I don’t think. (Every conceit has to break down somewhere.) But I am amused—heartily—to note the extent to which Barry adores Molly. Dotes on her. Lavishes attention upon her. Jenn loves her ladies as equally as anyone can, but Molly’s quiet, stolid, earnest, earthy, and spiritual: she’s not the showboat Griffen is. (Though Molly’s the highlight of one of the more beautiful bits of drawing thus far.) Yet give Barry the reins, and there’s Griffen, perched on the arm of a sofa, in the background, and look how Molly shines.
Then, push comes to shove and we get down to cases, I’m a Griffen partisan. So of course I’m going to be struck by something like that.
You know what I mean?
Thirteen thousand in your name.
If you’re an American citizen, you should know this: in your name, in our name, 13,000 Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern men will be deported from this country. That’s roughly 16% of the 82,000 total who came forward voluntarily during the waves of Special Registration late last year and early this—only to be arrested without warning and detained for for a time without charges.
These 13,000 deportations ostensibly have to do with terrorism—but only 11 of those 82,000 have been linked with terrorism.
These 13,000 deportations are ethnically biased—“What the government is doing is very aggressively targeting particular nationalities for enforcement of immigration law,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the immigrants’ rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The identical violation committed by, say, a Mexican immigrant is not enforced in the same way.”
These 13,000 deportations are subject to political manipulation—Armenians, for instance, were originally targetted for Special Registration, but were removed after intense lobbying.
These 13,000 deportations are intended to close loopholes—“We need to focus our enforcement efforts on the biggest threats,” said Jim Chaparro, acting director for interior enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security. “People may not like that strategy, but that is what we need to do. If a loophole can be exploited by an immigrant, it can also be exploited by a terrorist”—but many of these loopholes result from negligence, overextension, and incompetence at the Department and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
These 13,000 deportations are being overseen by the remnants of an agency known for its criminal disregard for the rights of aliens.
These 13,000 deportations will tear families and communities apart. They will affect far more than 13,000—only men were targetted by the Special Registration. Their wives, sisters, mothers, and children will need to choose between staying behind or leaving with them. These 13,000 deportations will foster resentment and hatred in the very people who had our best interests at heart, sending people back to the very countries they fled to escape persecution, oppression, economic hardship, whose governments they came here to speak out against, to countries that some haven’t seen since infancy. The threat alone has already sent thousands of immigrants over borders and deeper into hiding. These 13,000 deportations will not fight terrorism. They will not make us any safer. They are cruel and mean-spirited. They are unnecessary. They are short-sighted. They will, in fact, make the world more dangerous. They are wrong.
It’s not even as if we’re closing the barn door after the horses broke loose. It’s as if we decided not to bother closing the door at all and instead went around shooting the horses that stayed behind.
These 13,000 deportations are being done in your name.
Tell your congressional delegation what you think about that.
(Thanks to TalkLeft. Earlier Long stories: Niemöller time, Tomorrow belongs to—, Anecdotal.)
