Entries associated with the tag "Politics":

The late congressperson Henry Hyde, speaking at Notre Dame 24 Sep 1984:

"Many of the same voices who hailed the American bishops as 'prophetic' when they tacitly endorsed the nuclear freeze now find the bishops 'scary' when the issue turns to abortion. This is hypocrisy."

An excellent point. Of course, it applies equally the other way around -- these days, to those who talk about the pope's opposition to abortion but ignore what he said about the US war in Iraq.

Henry Hyde was well qualified to speak of hypocrisy, having managed the impeachment of a Democratic president for perjury and then kept quiet about the far more consequential perjuries of his Republican successor. His legacy is that of a partisan first, with patriotism and morality trailing well behind.

H/t Jameson Campaigne for the link.

The important thing about the mainstream media isn't whether they lean one way or the other politically on a particular occasion. The important thing is that they are deeply stupid. Jamison Foster at Media Matters:

"No moderator [in the candidate debates so far] has asked a single question of a single candidate about whether the president should be able to order the indefinite detention of an American citizen, without charging the prisoner with any crime.

"But Tim Russert did ask Congressman Dennis Kucinich -- in what he felt compelled to insist was 'a serious question' -- whether he has seen a UFO.

"No moderator has asked a single question about whether the candidates agree with the Bush administration's rather skeptical view of congressional oversight.

"But Hillary Clinton was asked, 'Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?'"

Robin O'Sullivan reviews American Wilderness: A New History at History News Network. Plenty of juice here, including editor Michael Lewis's swipe at "citizens who passionately oppose oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, yet brashly drive hundreds of miles in gas-chugging vehicles to hike in national parks," but I was especially struck by this passage in the review:

"Donald Worster's epilogue ties protection of wild nature to modern liberal, democratic ideals held by 'ordinary people.' He shows that defense of wilderness has been most successful in nations that support democratic principles, human rights, and freedom of speech -- e.g., Costa Rica, Panama, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada, Norway, and Scotland. In these countries, wilderness is perceived as a place of freedom, worthy of respect. In more authoritarian nations, Worster contends, wilderness is a threat to dictatorial control. He optimistically believes that there is plenty of wild nature left for liberal democracies to protect."

Try substituting "the right to keep and bear arms" for "wilderness" in those last two sentences. Works pretty well, doesn't it?

Once again I am NOT arguing that either wilderness or gun ownership is good or bad. Save that debate for somewhere else. I am suggesting that there's a deeper parallelism. Conservatives tend to think of gun ownership as a kind of protection of freedom and order against lawlessness (from above or from below); perhaps liberals tend to think of "untrammeled" wilderness in the same way. But surely our protection isn't individual (holding a gun or retreating into the wild) but social: an educated, knowledgeable citizenry with a real stake in the social customs (like live-and-let-live) and political institutions (like the Constitution) that maintain order and freedom.

The indispensable Christopher Hayes, now Washington editor of the Nation, puts an old book and a new one in perspective at In These Times:

"Written in exile, while Europe burned, The Road to Serfdom’s simple but powerful thesis was that the encroachment of the state into economic affairs inevitably leads to an encroachment in all spheres. For Hayek and his intellectual descendants -- from Friedman (Milton) to Friedman (Thomas) -- political freedom and economic freedom were inseparable and mutually reinforcing. And over the last 30 years, the adherents of the Friedman/Hayek School have pointed to two coincidental trends in global political economy to back this grand claim: First, the fall of command-and-control economies and the dismantling of welfare states. The second, the rise of democratic governance. With cunning aplomb, neoliberal writers and historians have packaged these two distinct phenomena together as one single story of progress and development. Look: Freedom’s on the march!

"[Naomi] Klein resurrects Hayek’s argument and inverts it, showing how time and again, the 'economic freedom' envisioned by Hayek and his ilk has been imposed at the expense of political freedom, often, Klein writes, 'midwifed by the most brutal forms of coercion.' From Chile to Iraq, majorities empowered to choose their own government don’t start clamoring for flat taxes, privatized post offices and an end to controls on foreign capital. Instead, they often form unions or call for increased social spending. The Shock Doctrine is an encyclopedic catalog of the tactics that governments, corporations and economists have used to impose -- usually over popular opposition -- what Klein calls the 'policy trinity' of the Chicago-School program: 'the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending.'"

Read the whole thing, because Hayes doesn't stop thinking when he finds a good book he agrees with, and he doesn't hesitate to explain how Klein's book overreaches -- a quality too rare at all ends of the political spectrum. The comments are intelligent too.

The business-based Civic Federation (PDF) on Illinois state legislators' ongoing carnival of errors:

"The state has provided short-term funding at the last minute to ward off 'doomsday' dates the CTA responsibly planned for.... The reprieves first borrowed from the agency's future state funding and then granted federal capital dollars to be used for operations."

Better than nothing, right? Wrong:

"Granting temporary funding at the eleventh hour is not only unfair to riders, who suffer uncertainty about getting to work and school, but also costs a good deal of money to the CTA. The agency has to reprogram its fleet and stations in preparation for new fare structures, reorganize its bus system, and place signage to warn riders. The CTA estimates that each 'doomsday' preparation costs $1.5 million."

BTW, "a new bus costs $250,000 and a new rail car costs $1.5 million."

(The Federation supports Julie Hamos's Senate Bill 572, which combines long-term funding and reforms.)

Alex Gourevitch at n+1:

"While Democrats have become increasingly uncomfortable with the anti-democratic consequences of the hard power of the war on terror, they seem more comfortable with a 'soft power' politics of fear: environmentalism. Environmentalism is one of the few movements on the left that presents itself in the same totalizing political terms that the war on terror does on the right, and its influence only seems to grow as the war on terror’s influence declines. The New York Times’ bellwether of elite opinion, Thomas Friedman, recently swung around to the new framework...

"The global warming argument can be as morally coercive as the infamous ticking time-bomb torture scenario, even if the clock ticks slower. It’s not just that we should unite; we are, as Gore puts it, 'forced by circumstance' to act."

Trolls please note that Gourevitch is not making the discredited argument that global warming is nonexistent or harmless. He's talking about the way in which real problems -- terrorism and environmental deterioration alike -- tend to be discussed these days, as if the facts dictate one response and one only.

"In the face of real political opportunities, there is always an element of freedom. One chooses between two alternatives, picks a principle, and commits to it. Imagining ecological collapse as an overweening crisis demanding immediate action and collective sacrifice, with emergency decisions overriding citizens’ normal wants and wishes, is not really a politics at all, but the suspension of politics – there is no political choice, no constituencies to balance, nothing to deliberate. There is no free activity, just do or die. It seems we will have traded one state of emergency for another."

Cato on the Republicans: "The fact is, with the exception of Rep. Ron Paul who trails badly in the polls, none of the GOP candidates has a consistent record of standing for small-government. Sooner or later someone needs to point out that being a conservative means more than being anti-abortion or tough on terrorists."

Sam Smith on the Democrats' front-runner: In a recent poll, "Democrats favored Hillary Clinton to deal with health care by a two to one margin over Obama and Edwards combined -- an absurd judgment given her previous health care legislation that was laughably incompetent and confusing as she attempted to conceal its gifts to the insurance industry.... By 52% to 39% Clinton beats both Obama and Edwards as the one best able to deal with Iraq, even though she is clearly the one with the worst record of doing so this far. By the same margin, she is the one who Democrats think best represent the core values of the party. This may be tragically true in contemporary terms, but before her husband took office the party had dramatically different --and better -- values.... This is a party that doesn't need a candidate; it desperately needs a therapist."

Bitch Ph.D. links to a funny Katha Pollitt column in the Nation. The first part is funny because Katha's correspondent rants and raves about the need to rebuild the left, which was why he won't support Clinton and is instead backing...Obama. (This is a joke, or should be. Anyone who can casually talk about bombing Pakistan ain't no lefty.)

Pollitt doesn't see much space between the three media-anointed Democratic front-runners. She does have an idea what could move her off dead center:

"I could be won over by a candidate who just stands up and speaks his or her mind without calculating the effect of every syllable on some indecisive mini-demographic. Someone who will speak frankly about the disaster that is the war on drugs, say, or call for free college education. I would even vote for a candidate who refuses to name a favorite Bible passage on national television. 'Tim,' this candidate might say, 'I'd be happy to talk Scripture with you over a cup of coffee after the show, but in this country religion is private and personal, and if I'm elected I'll keep it that way.' There, would-be Presidents of America, was that so hard?"

Joe Miller of Factcheck.org reflects on whether its work might be self-defeating, as suggested in the Washington Post last month.

"Debunking myths can backfire because people tend to remember the myth but forget what the debunker said about it. As Hebrew University psychologist Ruth Mayo explained to the Post, 'If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind. Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11.'"

Or maybe not. Spinoza and several present-day psychologists think otherwise. Read the whole thing. Miller concludes, "Humans are not helpless automatons in the face of massive propaganda. We may initially believe whatever we hear, but we are fully capable of evaluating and rejecting beliefs that turn out not to be accurate. Our brains don’t do this naturally; maintaining a healthy skeptical attitude requires some conscious effort on our part...

"As a species, we're still pretty new to that whole process. Aristotle invented logic just 2,500 years ago -- a mere blink of the eye when compared with the 200,000 years we Homo sapiens relied on our brain's reflex responses to avoid being eaten by lions. We still have a long way to go."

I don't know if this is ahead of the curve or behind it, but here are a few sites that can help you maintain a reality-based view of the world:

The Commonwealth Fund takes a first look at the presidential candidates' health care plans so far. The short version: Obama, Clinton, and Edwards would "expand coverage by building on the strengths of the current system--pooling risk in large groups, generating efficiencies through employer-based coverage, and building on the success of public programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). In contrast, Republican candidates Governor Romney and Mayor Giuliani would rely on tax incentives to induce consumers to purchase individual insurance coverage -- now the weakest part of the insurance market." Read the whole thing here.

Factcheck.org reviews the Democratic candidates' plans to get out of Iraq. Short version: the front-runners are in no hurry.

Public Agenda's a good place to find out if the people are behind you, or running the other way. It finds that "the American public sees climate change as a global problem that requires global cooperation—and U.S. leadership." Six in ten say global warming should be a top priority for U.S. diplomacy, and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) "say it's realistic to believe that international cooperation can reduce global warming."

What other sites in this vein have I missed?  

The good old days weren't. Matthew Yglesias at the Atlantic:

"It really is remarkable that for all the bellyaching about the decline of bipartisan behavior in DC there's very little attention paid to the fact that there are actual reasons this has happened beyond Newt Gingrich being a meany and bloggers being too shrill. The Jim Crow South gave rise to an odd structure of American political institutions whereby both of the parties contained substantial ideological diversity. This had the benefit of setting the stage for a wide array of cross-cutting alliances. It came, however, at the cost of consigning a substantial portion of the population to life under a brutal system of apartheid ruthlessly upheld through systematic violence."

Hat tip to Brendan Nyhan, who elaborates with graphs and everything: "In short, the rise in bipartisanship was driven by Southern Democrats. Now that they are an endangered species, we've returned to the historical norm of sharp partisan conflict."

In the world of American politics, you don't have to walk very far in any direction to find yourself up against racism and the comfortable ability of white people to forget about everyone else.

Why are the netroots so moderate compared to previous left-of-center movements? Peter Beinart at The New Republic makes two standout points, but RTWT:

They aren't into third parties because of Ralph Nader. "Until Nader, no progressive third-party candidate had dramatically pushed American politics to the right--as Nader did when he helped elect George W. Bush. In the process, he discredited progressive third parties for a generation. Had Nader--once a liberal icon--showed up at YearlyKos, he probably would have been booed." And rightly so, IMHO.

And they aren't into revolution because that's so 20th century. "It's the first broad-based liberal movement to emerge since communism's demise. In the Progressive era, it was conventional wisdom on the American left--asserted by everyone from Eugene Debs to John Dewey--that socialism was historically inevitable. Then, during the Depression--until Stalin's alliance with Hitler and the news of his terrible crimes brought most leftists to their senses--the Soviet Union became a real-life model of what revolution, as opposed to mere reform, could achieve. Even in the '60s, the shift towards outright resistance coincided with an enthusiasm for revolutions abroad....The Soviet Union is gone, and, virtually without exception, leftist revolutions in the third world have ended in tears.

"The netroots feel the American system has gone fundamentally wrong; that, in some profound ways, it has become less just, less decent, less free. And yet, the American system is all they have. It can be reformed, turned into a better version of itself. But it can't be overthrown because there is nothing with which to replace it. Markos Moulitsas is an idealist in a post-utopian age."

"Just as [philosopher John] Rawls challenged us to think about the rules for a fair and just society as if we had no idea whether we ourselves would be born into that society rich or poor, or black or white, so too we can think about government as if ignorant about whether our preferred party would be in or out of power."

That's attorney/author Edward Lazarus at FindLaw, suggesting that it might be possible to agree on some golden rules that would stick regardless of which party was running things.

"I suspect that a bipartisan group of former top staffers to the Senate Judiciary Committee could agree on a fair number of basic ground rules about how the judicial confirmation process should work. Topics for potential agreement might well include such questions as: Should home state Senators have a veto over nominees for local seats on the bench? (Most probably would say yes.) Should secret holds be allowed? (Most probably would say no.) Should every nominee be entitled to a floor vote? (Most probably would say yes.) Should filibusters be allowed on this issue? (Most probably would say yes.) What kinds of information are truly relevant and necessary to evaluate a nominee? (Most would probably name the same categories of information -- regarding, for example, the nominees' present and past views and the quality of his or her analysis of legal issues.)"

Even if some such agreement were reached, any politician or handler who was determined to govern only from the base and to hell with the opposition might not honor the agreement or care about the long run. So I don't know how realistic the idea is. Wouldn't sensible conservatives have honored the Golden Rule, or at least had qualms about larding unilateral powers onto the Chief Executive given the possibility of a President Edwards?

Mark Lilla, formerly of the University of Chicago and now of Columbia University, previewed his forthcoming book The Stillborn God in this weekend's New York Times magazine. (No wonder he moved away; can you imagine trying to publish something this intelligent anywhere in the Tribune?) Some of the questions he tackles: Why hasn't religion melted away like it was supposed to, and why is fanatical religion so much more attractive than the milquetoast liberal kind, and what is to be done?

"Quixote" at Shakespeare's Sister thinks he missed the point -- religion's just the hot air spewed by power-hungry politicians, Ahmadinejad, Bush, whoever.

I think Quixote missed the point, which is, why is a certain kind of religion still useful to the power-hungry? But the debate's off to a good start.

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber has a long and high-quality review of arguments about libertarianism. Among other things he quotes Cosma Shalizi:

"On the one hand, the sanctity of private property and private contracts is held to be a matter of inalienable natural right, guaranteed by the fundamental facts of morality, if not a basic part of Objective Reality; capitalism is the Right Thing to Do. On the other hand, much effort is devoted to arguing that unfettered laissez-faire capitalism is also the economic system which will produce the greatest benefit for the greatest number, indeed for all, if only people would just see it."

In fact, of course, this is wishful thinking. Both "free markets" and government action have mixed records. Chicago's Democratic machine has been stifling economic growth and stealing from taxpayers for at least two generations of Daleys, and if anything it is more entrenched now than two generations ago. The makers of lead paint and cigarettes spent decades and killed and disabled many people long after they knew their products were dangerously toxic, and only government action has limited or ended this evil.

One washed-up movie actor to the contrary, government is neither always the solution nor always the problem. Duh.

Shalizi again:

"Now, if the empirical track-record of what are conventionally called free markets is decidedly mixed, there are three courses of action open to the libertarian. (1) Embrace the natural-liberty argument wholeheartedly, and say that we should adopt laissez-faire even when it hurts us, because it’s the right thing to do. Unsurprisingly, moral austerity in defense of liberty finds few takers, though it has some. (2) Argue that the empirical track-record of alternative economic arrangements is actually no better than that of free markets (that, e.g., every instance of market failure is at least matched by an instance of 'government failure'), so that’s a wash, and accordingly we should go with the market solution, since that respects natural liberty. (3) Argue that, appearances to the contrary, free markets really are optimal."

The first two options are intellectually honest; the third is not, but it remains popular, as Shalizi says, in part because "it can be well-paid."

On the occasion of Karl Rove's departure from the White House, All Things Considered broadcast an account of his tenure there that never mentioned his major ambition: to make the Bush presidency a political turning point and establish right-wing Republican hegemony for decades, much as FDR's New Deal set the terms for years after his presidency.

Turn off your radio and read the straight dope on Rove in September's cover story in the Atlantic (not yet online Monday) by Joshua Green. Rove aimed to do five things en route to his hoped-for political realignment: "establish education standards, pass a 'faith-based initative' directing government funds to religious organizations, partially privatize Social Security, offer private health-savings accounts as an alternative to Medicare, and reform immigration laws to appeal to the growing Hispanic population." The only one of the five to be fully realized was No Child Left Behind; Social Security privatization in particular became a political albatross on Bush's second term even before Katrina revealed the administration's true character.

Green brilliantly dissects both how Rove's bull-in-a-china-shop style crucified slow movers like Kerry -- and how that style failed when it came to changing policy in Washington. The contrast with Reagan's successful handling of Social Security reform is devastating.

NPR did mention that Rove wouldn't be doing political consulting in 2008. Apparently none of the many Republican candidates wants to be tied that closely to George W. Bush. Can you imagine Democrats in 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968 wanting to distance themselves from Roosevelt?

Talk about the "virtue of selfishness" was moderately amusing before it was turned into turgid books, and now, flaming megalomania. The Ayn Rand Institute objects to our selling weapons to Saudi Arabia because we are unknowingly the Masters of the Universe:

"In response to both the Saudi threat and the Iranian threat, our response is not self-assertion, but self-sacrifice. When Saudi Arabia spreads a terrorist ideology around the world, we do not punish that regime, we punish ourselves by rejecting the lifeblood of our civilization [they mean oil]. And when Iran unleashes even more terrorist aggression, we do not destroy that regime, we imperil ourselves by arming our Saudi enemies and hoping it will somehow protect us...

“America, the most moral and most powerful nation on earth, has both the right and the ability to end state sponsorship of terrorism. But we will not be able to do so until we abandon our addiction, not to oil, but to the morality of self-sacrifice."

You can read the whole thing here, but it's all delusional. The author, Alex Epstein, is described as a "junior fellow" at the ARI, which seems about right. Judging from this text, he might be about 14. 

Daniel Biss's day job is teaching topology at the University of Chicago. He's also running for the Democratic nomination for state representative in the 17th District. The district, located just west and north of Evanston, went 59 percent for John Kerry in 2004; the seat is now held by moderate Republican Elizabeth Coulson.

What makes Biss different from other entry-level wannabes is that he made the rounds at Yearly Kos last week, and he's been a presence on ActBlue.com, the PAC billing itself as the "online clearinghouse for Democratic action." Since making an impression on the Kossacks, Biss has raised $31,287 from 422 donors on ActBlue.com, placing his campaign second only to John Edwards' presidential campaign's in fund-raising on that site last week [SEE CLARIFICATION IN COMMENTS] -- and a couple orders of magnitude ahead of any Illinois state-level candidate on the site. (Edwards picked up $3.6 million, third-place finisher Rick Noriega, who's running for US senator in Texas, $16,000.) More to the point, this is a significant chunk of change for a candidate running in a small suburban district.

In a phone interview Biss told me he doesn't support Governor Rod Blagojevich's gross receipts tax proposal. Although he says education, transit, and health care need more money, he wouldn't support a tax increase without serious tightening of ethics laws to make sure the money goes where it's supposed to, significant additional tightening of corporate tax loopholes, and provisions like enlarged personal exemptions and increased earned income tax credit to make sure that the burden falls more on those who can afford it.

He thinks netroots groups like ActBlue are a way for left-wingers to do now what right-wingers did after 1964 -- organize locally to change the pattern of politics in the US from the bottom up. Here's his interview at Firedoglake: "I keep coming back to etymology: progressives like progress, which means that we’re focused on the future. Believing in a better future has to also mean planning for and making a better future. And I find it flabbergasting how little of that goes on in our politics today."

Illinois Democrats have failed miserably to govern, by not being able to agree on a state budget for two months and counting. Apparently Missouri Republicans are doing worse -- and their failure is driven, not by faction fighting, but by radical fundamentalist ideology that equates a microscopic assemblage of cells with a human being. As Jason Rosenbaum reports in the Columbia Tribune, (hat tip to Progressive States Network), the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City owns 100 acres there but may invest $850 million elsewhere. Even though Missouri voters have amended the state's constitution to prohibit legislative meddling with scientific research using embryonic stem cells, Republican legislators and the governor continue to try.

"In the event that Missouri embraces policies and enacts laws and regulations advocated by Sen. Bartle and Rep. Lembke, it is unlikely that there will ever be further expansion of the scientific facilities of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Missouri," Stowers spokeswoman Laurie Roberts said. "To do otherwise would be akin to expanding a newspaper operation in a jurisdiction that had abolished freedom of press."

Paul Street, formerly of the Chicago Urban League and now blogging from Iowa City, summarizes the Democratic front runners' position on reviving nuclear power, and questions Obama's image construction as opposed to his reality:

"Edwards has the right answer: nukes cost too much and are unsafe.  Hillary waffles but agrees with Edwards that nukes are too dangerous at present.  It's left to Obama to actually advocate 'explor[ing] nuclear power as part of the energy mix' (as if it hasn't already been deeply explored for decades and found to be [a] too expensive and [b] too unsafe)."

Whence Obama's position?

"For a big part of the answer, please follow this link to Barack Obama's  'Top Contributors' on the 'Open Secrets' web site of the Center for Responsive Politics - the venerable campaign finance watchdog group in Washington DC.  There you will see that Obama's third largest campaign contributor (after Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros.) so far is Exelon Corporation ($191,000 through the second quarter of 2007).  Exelon is the parent company of Chicago's notorious Commonwealth Edison utility and is owner and operator of what it calls the "nation’s largest fleet of nuclear energy plants."

Obama's already shown a depressing willingness to truckle to the worst of the Democratic Party -- its unwanted and unnecessary intervention in the suburban primary race to replace Henry Hyde, and its coronation of an incompetent County Board chairman on the hereditary principle. Is this more of the same, or just a reasonable difference of opinion?

Andrea Althoff of DePaul University and the University of Chicago Divinity School has a short but nuanced take on the question, how will Latinos vote next year? Read the whole thing at History News Network.

The shorter, less-nuanced version, generalizing across many different nationalities and experiences, is that "Latino Catholics still outnumber Latino Protestants to a large extent, and these Latino Catholics prefer by and large the Democratic Party over the GOP....In the long run, however, the Republican Party may benefit from the conversion of Catholic Hispanics to Protestantism."

Barbara O'Brien at The Mahablog is impatient with Americans' belief in belief (hat tip to Slacktivist):

"The statistics suggest that more people 'believe in' the Ten Commandments than actually know what the Ten Commandments say. And I don't care what religious tradition you call your own; just 'believing in' something that you don't practice or understand or follow is crap. It's not even religion... 

"[Susan] Sontag said that when George Bush said Jesus was his favorite philosopher [in 2000] 'Bush didn't mean, and was not understood to mean, that, if elected, his administration would actually feel bound by any of the precepts or social programs expounded by Jesus.' She's right. We all understood that, even before we knew Bush very well, and isn't that remarkable? These days Jesus is little more than the Right's team mascot." 

Sure, hypocrisy is bad, and it's easy to shoot down. But make sure your argument does what you want it to. There are plenty of right-wing theocrats who know their Bibles as well as Christopher Hitchens does.

Would The Mahablog really feel better if Bush could reel off the Ten Commandments, and if he did believe his administration was bound by them? I doubt it. The real point is this: you and I are free to think that Jesus, or Krishna, or Loki, calls us to make, say, immigration policy more generous, or less generous. But when we go into politics we have to make the case based on values and reasons that everybody can buy into, not just one brand of belief.

Alec Dubro at TomPaine.com reported on last month's "Taming the Corporation" conference and asked the question few reformers and social movements ever ask seriously: if we're so right, why aren't we winning? The answer in this particular case (my paraphrase) is that since the death of Marxism, the left has no systematic alternative to offer.

"The U.S. may be a police state," Dubro writes, "as anyone who protests against the WTO will find in out in short, ugly order – but it is not, for most people, a totalitarian state. People tolerate, or actively embrace, corporate rule not primarily because they’re cowed by the police, but because they aspire to the promised gifts of the program...

"We get from corporate culture: big homes, comfortable cars, investment counselors, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, personal watercraft, beachfront condos, hundreds of TV channels, central air conditioning, cheap airplane flights, cheaper electronic gear, and pizza on demand. You and I may not cherish these things, but millions do, and are not anxious to give them up for a new, uncertain economic system to be named later...

"The vision of a post-corporate America put forth at the conference was one in which security and equality reigned. But that left out what corporate state traffics in: the possibility of success. It’s what the conservatives misleadingly call freedom, but it’s not entirely a fraud. Lots of people want to do better, and we need their support."

Most Americans have figured out by now that W isn't just an annoyance, he's a disaster. But that doesn't mean he's the only disaster, and long-time DC observer Sam Smith of Progressive Review, as usual, is ahead of the pack. Last week he pointed out 11 ways in which the mainstream media (which he insists on treating as singular) are stage-managing, filtering, and otherwise rigging the 2008 presidential race.

If you have links to counterexamples, bring 'em on; so far even the blogosphere doesn't seem to have produced much commentary on this. Smith, who's a Green Party member, has been unrelenting in his criticism of both the Clinton and Bush families, and so as far as I can tell he isn't welcome in either echo chamber. His MSM indictment:

"It created the Barack Obama myth out of whole cloth. A political lightweight from the Chicago Democratic machine with a virtually non-existent record has been turned into JFK II.

"It has steadfastly refused to report on the numerous scandals associated with Hillary Clinton's past, sending years of corruption, dissembling and abuse of power down the Orwellian memory hole.

"It has not done much better with the true history of Rudolph Giuliani, creating a heroic myth based largely on behavior on one particular day, 9/11, that might have been expected of any mayor of a major city.

"With both Clinton and Giuliani it has particularly avoided their extraordinary connections with criminal figures. Whatever the ultimate import of these relationships are, the voters are entitled to know with whom their candidates have consorted.

"As we have demonstrated with our headline survey, John Edwards has been consistently blacked out of the news coverage despite being ahead of Obama in more than a half dozen states.

"When covered, Edwards has been trivialized or criticized in a manner used on no other major candidate. For example, his wealth has been targeted in a way that John Kerry's never was and Hillary Clinton's
isn't. While it is fair ground to tell about his $400 haircut, it is not
fair meanwhile to censor Obama's parking tickets in Massachusetts that
were left unpaid from college days until he decided to run for
president. Even when Elizabeth Edwards criticized Ann Coulter for her
hateful attacks on her husband, she was later said by major media to
have "defended" her remarks as though standing up for her husband was
beyond the pale.

"The media has bought into the Fred Thompson myth, despite the fact that Thompson - like Obama - has virtually nothing on his resume to recommend him for the job.

"The media has made little efforts to help voters understand the real differences between the candidates as opposed to the variations in their iconic and fantastical spin. 

"The major media has almost totally ignored the GOP vote caging scandal uncovered by Greg Palast.

"The major media has consistently treated majority American positions on the war and healthcare as out of the mainstream.

"And it has largely ignored the ever growing evidence of failure and corruption involving the use of electronic voting machines."

Susan Douglas at In These Times raids the clip file in order to point out that the Republican presidential candidates, in flight from the monumentally incompetent incumbent they've all supported, are wrapping themselves in a tattered, soiled flag:

"Reagan was a dunce and a fabricator. One of his most famous assertions was, 'Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,' and he maintained, wrongly, that sulfur dioxide emitted from Mount St. Helens was greater than that emitted by cars over a 10-year period. (In one day, cars emit 40 times what Mount St. Helens released in a day even at its peak activity.) In 1985, Reagan praised the P.W. Botha’s apartheid regime of South Africa for eliminating segregation, a blunder then-Press Secretary Larry Speakes had to correct a few days later.

"Other examples abound: During a 1983 Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony Reagan told a story about military heroism that New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson wrote never happened. Nelson had checked the citations on all 434 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded during WWII. The scene Reagan described did appear, however, in the 1944 film A Wing and a Prayer. Larry Speakes’ response? 'If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.'"

There's more, including his administration's willingness to trade arms for hostages, something Jimmy Carter didn't do. But Douglas can't acknowledge the fact that Reagan was the John F. Kennedy of the 80s generation: a shining symbol of something that didn't really exist, a glamorous deceiver albeit in a different cause. Kennedy did only what he had to do for civil rights; Reagan did as little as he could get away with for the worshippers of the unborn.

The parallel isn't perfect. By their fruits ye shall know tham, and roughly speaking, Bill Clinton is to Kennedy as GW Bush is to Reagan. 'Nuf sed.

I thought I was going to have to explain why Tuesday's Chicago Tribune lineup (more visibly so in print) treating the three big Monday Supreme Court decisions was idiotic in presenting them all as mere wins for Bushism. But Ed Brayton at Positive Liberty has conserved valuable electrons by doing it for me:

"Just in case you’re getting too depressed about the Supreme Court’s rulings on Monday, I should note that they did get one right in FEC v Wisconsin Right to Life [full ruling here]. It was another 5-4 ruling with the same breakdown - Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy in the majority, Souter, Stevens, Breyer and Ginsburg in dissent. But on this one the conservative majority got it right. The ruling strikes down a provision of the McCain-Feingold law that bans all advocacy groups from airing commercials about issues within 2 months of an election. This is an absurd law and a clear violation of the first amendment. I’m disappointed that it was only 5-4, it should be a 9-0 no-brainer ruling. And I have the same reaction to the liberal minority here that I had to the liberal majority in Kelo: I do not understand[how] anyone who considers themselves a liberal can justify such a ruling."

Suppressing student speech and insulating government promotion of religion from court challenges are quite different on the merits, even if the personnel are the same. 

Brad DeLong has made a stab at how to classify conservatives by their degree of honesty. The discussion at his blog refines it some (and some commenters think conservatism has always been just a con), but here's the first take:

"Class of 2000: People who in 2000 said, 'George W. Bush is not qualified to be president, and we should be really worried about this.'

"Class of 2001: People who in 2001 said, 'I supported Bush in 2000, but George W. Bush is not listening to his honest conservative policy advisers, and we should be really worried about this.' John DiIulio

"Class of 2002: People who in 2002 said, 'I supported Bush in 2000 and 2001, but 911 has unhinged the administration; it's detention and other policies are counterproductive; it needs to be opposed.' Richard Clarke

"Class of 2003: People who in 2003 said, 'I supported Bush over 2000-2002, but enough is enough. That's it. I supported the invasion of Iraq because I was certain there was evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons program--otherwise invading Iraq was just stupid. Well, there was no advanced nuclear weapons program. Invading Iraq was just stupid. Plus there's the Medicare drug benefit. These people need to be evicted from power.' Tim Barnett, Bill Niskanen

"Class of 2004: People who in 2004 said, 'I've been a Bush supporter. I'm a Republican and a conservative, but I've had enough: I'm voting for Kerry.' Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Bartlett, Brent Scowcroft

"Class of 2005: People who in 2005 said, 'I voted for Bush in 2004. But I made a mistake. A big mistake.'

"Class of 2006: People who in 2006 said, 'I know I supported Bush up to last year, but that shows I'm not the brightest light on the clued-in tree.' Rod Dreher, Andrew Samwick

"The class of 2007--people who are now opposed to Bush only because they think Bush will drag the Republicans down in 2008--doesn't count."

This seems like a good idea to me. The point is to acknowledge that there's a stream of thought that isn't liberal that has many good points and is worth debating with -- and to distinguish legitimate heirs to that stream from worshippers at the golden calf that is W. But however -- DeLong lifts a perceptive comment by John Emerson that calls into question the whole project.

A similar stratification of conservatives by the time of their acknowledgment that human-caused climate change really is a catastrophe in the making would be useful.

Is it good news that Jim Wallis of Sojourners is trying to recapture the flag of "religious faith and values" for non-Republicans? (Video of Sojourners' Obama-Clinton-Edwards forum here, comments from "faith bloggers" here.) Sam Smith doesn't think so:

"Whether religion is a good place to look for faith and values seems to vary over time. For example, in the 1960s, ministers were among the most valuable voices of change because they found the best parts of the Bible and acted on it. Now, even in the milder sects, clergy is so busy keeping their budget up and vestry happy that you hardly see a white collar at a demonstration any more. When America finally decides to ditch the disastrous faith and values of the neo-colonial, neo-corporate, neo-corrupt Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years, I suspect that the preachers will return to help lead America's revival, but at present religion collectively is a predominantly evil force in the world and until a lot more religionists become embarrassed about this, it will stay that way."

Two thoughts:

Smith, as a Green Party member, has no trouble seeing the many similarities between W and his predecessors that I for one tend to forget.

Isn't Wallis pushing in the same general direction as Smith would like to see -- in this case, highlighting biblical injunctions to help the poor? So why the venom? 

In the midwest, we have bumper stickers instead of scenery. ("If at first you don't succeed...then skydiving is not for you.") My sister's car is still wearing a Kerry/Edwards sticker from three years ago, but I've been trying to find stickers that don't just blare ("Re-Elect Gore 2008"), but that might act as prybars on the contradictions in people's thinking. My favorite so far is "God Bless Everyone -- No Exceptions."

It is surprisingly hard to find bumper stickers of this type. Right now my bumper has an open slot, and I'm holding auditions. "Who Would Jesus Torture?" is looking good, although some consultants, known as my wife, think that "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" might be less offensive while posing the same puzzle for Christian warmongers.

Suggestions welcome -- or you could answer the question.

Chalmers Johnson at History News Network tells it like is, not the way I'd like it to be:

"As Adam Nagourney of the New York Times reported, by the end of March 2007, at least 280,000 American citizens had already contributed some $113.6 million to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, or John McCain.

"If these people actually believe a presidential election a year-and-a-half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, puts it: 'None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances.... The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them.'"

The federal government can recover from Bush's unerring instinct to do the wrong thing from New Orleans to Iraq. But the constitution may not recover from signing statements, the effacement of habeas corpus, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, torture, and the excesses of the Patriot Act. If the republic ever needed an opposition party, it needs one now.

Antichoice activists, including Illinois' former senator Peter Fitzgerald, love to dwell on the supposed parallel between opposing slavery and opposing the right to choose abortion. Turns out there's another parallel they'd rather forget.

Hat tip to Josh Glenn at Brainiac for tipping me off to Caleb Crain's blog Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, where he compares the first states to abolish slavery and the first states to legalize gay marriages or civil unions. The first five states to allow gay marriage in some form were Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. All five were among the first nine to abolish slavery (Vermont in 1777).

We've had 11 presidents since the end of World War II: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Only one of this motley crew ended his presidency with a higher approval rating than he began. Which? Your clue: he also enjoyed the highest end-of-term approval rating of all 11, around 63 percent. Answer and link below. No fair cheating!

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ANSWER: Mark Kleiman at The Reality-Based Community has the goods, originally from the Wall Street Journal. Truman and Nixon had the record-lowest approval ratings of the bunch, and Truman and W. the biggest collapses during their tenures. The only post-WW2 president more popular at the end of his presidency than at the beginning was Bill Clinton.

In Friday morning's Chicago Tribune, Richard Wronski notes the un-success of the RTA's "Moving Beyond Congestion" lobbying effort in Springfield. Today's email brings news that the Concerned Commuters of Northeastern Illinois will be taking their petitions to Governor Blagojevich's office at the State of Illinois building Monday morning at 10 am. CCNI is the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and "20+ community group representatives and transit activists."

Transit Doomsday has been proclaimed so often, it's easy to forget that it could really come. If the CTA is reduced from an alternative way of getting around to a rush-hour-only convenience, then Chicago will have devolved into a bloated version of Springfield or Indianapolis. These officials and activists are fighting the good fight, but they're caught between a rock and a hard place.

Specifically, they're asking state taxpayers to pony up money that will be managed by Mayor Daley and his appointees, who over the years have shown little ability to listen or to involve the public in setting sensible transit priorities. (What would a real CTA director sound like? Check out this from Beachwood Reporter.) And it's not just bad CTA priorities like the express from Block 37, it's general. I for one would trade every green roof and solar panel in the damn city for a transit system good enough to make driving seem like a fool's errand.

Reality-based Mark Kleiman points out that Rudy Giuliani's performance before and after 9/11, the foundation of his claim to be presidential timber, actually shows what an awful president he would make:

"Granted, he was only indirectly responsible for the radio-frequency incompatibility between the police department and the fire department that cost the lives of large numbers of fireman. But he was the CEO, so in some sense the buck stops on his desk.

"On the other hand, he was directly and personally responsible for the idiotic decision to locate the emergency command bunker in one of the most likely targets; that decision was made by Hizzoner over the vigorous objections of those who knew better.

"How much responsibility he had for misinforming the citizenry about the risks of toxic pollution near Ground Zero [after the attack], and how much damage that misinformation did, remains to be determined, but he certainly could have insisted on getting the truth from EPA, and certainly failed to do so....

"The part of his 9/11 performance most relevant to Giuliani's likely actions as President was his insistence that the law be suspended to extend his term of office, as if no one could possibly fill his shoes. That demand having been rejected, the transition seems to have gone perfectly smoothly."

The Republican faithful will probably reject him for the wrong reasons, unless he sheds even more of his former beliefs than he already has, but if their unhealthy obsession with sex is what it takes to keep Rudy in retirement, hey, that's politics.

David Roberts of Gristmill picks a bone with his friends (writing at TomPaine.com):

"It's often said that conservatives seek out converts, while progressives seek out heretics. That's too often true of the green community. Everyone's supposed to pass all these tests of consistency and commitment before they're allowed to speak out. Gore's got a big house. Arnold's got Hummers. Lester Brown probably pees in the shower. We constantly worry about whether people deserve to speak out about the environment, whether impure spokespeople will tarnish the movement, whether offering people too-easy personal solutions will anesthetize or stupefy them, whether passing imperfect legislation will forever exhaust our political capital. As I've said before, these are the worries and preoccupations of people accustomed to being losers--people who don't believe their cause is broadly compelling."

I'm not sure it's a right or left thing--Illinois conservatives have been killing their own for years now. It is a problem inherent in any movement, going right back to New England Puritanism: are you pure or do you go for a majority?

Also the dynamics are tricky. The other side will use any impurity against you, if only because hypocrisy is easier to prove, and easier for the masses to understand, than substantive wrongness. Even if you disavow purity and hold your nose while embracing the freshly painted green Governator.

Even with the assistance of Paul Krugman, hilzoy at Obsidian Wings remains bewildered by President Bush's apparent ongoing lack of concern for the troops in Iraq:

"Bush could have included enough funds to fight the war for an entire year in the regular budget, rather than relying on a supplemental [appropriation], which is supposed to be for emergencies in any case. He freely chose not to, and also chose not to pressure the Republican Congress into passing a budget on time. Had he done these things, we would not be having this debate, since the troops would be funded through next October."

Is there some clever strategic reason -- or any precedent -- for funding a war through one supplemental appropriation after another? Or is this yet another case of incompetence and political posturing instead of taking seriously a key responsibility of the Executive Branch?

The really bizarre part is that he threatens to veto the supplemental if it contains so much as an advisory date for withdrawing troops from Iraq -- this from a president who regularly issues signing statements amending or nullifying the bill being signed.

My former boss, Illinois Times president Fletcher "Bud" Farrar, writes an appreciation of the last Democratic governor before Rod Blagojevich: Dan Walker (1973-1977), the Montgomery Ward executive whose report on the 1968 Democratic Convention demonstrations described them as a "police riot" and who in 1972 shed his corporate togs, donned a red bandana, and walked the state on an anti-Daley platform to upset Paul Simon for the Democratic guernatorial nomination in 1972.

Southern Illinois University Press will issue Walker's memoir, The Maverick and the Machine, in May, which doesn't shy away from the story of his doing federal time after leaving office (on a charge unrelated to his tenure as governor).

Farrar reflects on the Walker administration's well-known confrontational nature and a personal trait of perhaps equal significance, which he glimpsed during a summer stint at the Southern Illinoisan newspaper in Carbondale: "Just before Walker and his walk entourage showed up to be interviewed, our publisher supplied all of us in the newsroom with red bandannas to put around our necks. Poor Dan, who had no sense of humor, couldn't figure out whether we were expressing solidarity or making fun."

A book with one of the worst titles in history, Mostly Good and Competent Men, chronicles Illinois governors up through Blago. Farrar seems to hope that history will eventually apply at least this description to Walker's term. (FWIW, probably the Walker crowd's most famous alum is now lieutenant governor of Illinois.) What do you think? And if you're old enough to remember his governorship, how did you manage to navigate the web to get here?

Writing at the History News Network, Christopher McKnight Nichols slaps down several presidents and those troglodytes who still worship at the shrine of Mars:

"The domino theory [that if Vietnam went Communist the rest of southern Asia was doomed to do the same] failed by the standard of its own predictions. Communism never took hold in Indonesia, Thailand, or more importantly, in any of the other large countries in the region, most notably, India. There was no cascade effect triggered by the U.S. departure from South Vietnam. The United States continued as an economic and military power. And now, America and Vietnam are trading partners, which President Bush should know as he visited that nation last year. Southeast Asia is a vibrant engine of global commerce and the region has closer ties to the United States now than at any time in the past."

Thus with the liberals' falsehood-based and unwinnable war from the 1960s and 1970s. Now the Cheney administration is peddling the same theory in order to escalate the conservatives' falsehood-based and unwinnable war in Iraq. Nichols doesn't say, but what's up with imagining whole countries as dominos? Is that thought, or a substitute for it?

Former Clinton subcabinet official and professional economist Brad DeLong was asking potential successors a key question in the summer of 2000, seven long years ago:

"I began asking Republicans I know--by and large people who might be natural candidates for short lists for various subcabinet policy positions in a Republican administration--how worried they were that the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush, was clearly not up to the job: underbriefed and incurious. They were not worried, they told me. One of President Clinton's problems, they said, was that the ceremonial portions of the job bored him--and thus he got himself into big trouble. Look at how George W. Bush had operated at the Texas Rangers, they said. Bush let the managers manage the team and the financial guys run the business, and spent his time making sure the political coalition to support the Texas Rangers in the style to which it wanted to be accustomed remained stable. Bush knows his strengths and weaknesses, they told me. He will focus on being America's Queen Elizabeth II, and will let people like Colin Powell and Paul O'Neill be America's Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

"By the summer of 2001 it had become clear to me that something had gone very wrong. Rather than following Paul O'Neill and Christine Todd Whitman's advice on environmental policy, George W. Bush had rejected it. Rather than following Alan Greenspan and Paul O'Neill'S advice on fiscal policy, George W. Bush had rejected it. Rather than following Colin Powell and Condi Rice's advice on the importance of pushing forward on negotiations between Israel and Palestine, George W. Bush had rejected it. And--we were all to learn later--rather than following George Tenet and Richard Clarke's advice about the importance of counterterrorism, George W. Bush had rejected it.

"A strange picture of George W. Bush emerged from conversations with subcabinet Bush Administration appointees and their friends and their friends of friends. He was not just underbriefed but lazy: he insisted on remaining underbriefed. He was not just incurious but arrogant: he insisted on making decisions about things he did not know, and hence made decisions that were essentially random. And he was stubborn: once he had made a decision--even or rather especially if it was a howlingly wrong and stupid one--he would never revisit it."

DeLong's point is that the mainstream media failed to tell this story until the last year or so. What strikes me, looking forward to the most open election since 1952, is how difficult it was even for informed people to predict the character-based catastrophe of the Bush presidency before the 2000 election (the 2004 election is another matter altogether; MSM or no, the evidence was clear to those who cared to see). I know enough to vote only for a candidate who repudiates Bush and his policies, but how can I know enough to avoid getting the same empty-suit-takes-charge syndrome from some other quarter?

I wasn't too thrilled a few months back when Conscious Choice gave generous marks to the city of Chicago on sustainability ("Grade inflation in transit world"). Now in the new In These Times -- yet another can't-skip periodical on my list -- Michael Burgner reports that CC editor Charles Shaw has declined to provide the magazine's 11-point sustainability evaluation system to a senior fellow at the Army Environmental Policy Institute. Said Shaw, "Why would I want to make the army a more efficient, sustainable killing machine?....They see that green is sexy and cool and that people don’t like oil corporations right now. They think they can dress themselves up with it.”

I take his point: a torture prison with a green roof isn't something an American should be proud of. But did Shaw ever ask himself the same question about the corruption machine that is the city of Chicago under Richard M. Daley?

When I see Jonathan Rauch's byline I read the story. Simple as that.

In this month's Atlantic (available here if you're too stingy to subscribe), he argues that gay marriage should be left to the states, as abortion rights should have been -- because such a patchwork nonsolution will make the issue less attractive to extremists on both sides, and allow democracy and compromise to do its work.

About abortion rights, it's an old argument (that the Supreme Court should have butted out) and in some ways an appealing one, but now that he's generalized it I have my doubts. Are Second Amendment issues less extreme because they're usually fought out in states and cities? Did Illinois' Stephen Douglas succeed in defusing extremists on human slavery in the 1850s with his doctrine of popular sovereignty?

Let's leave aside the question of which of these rights exist and how they should be regulated if they do exist. There's a knotty question of political philosophy here, and one that doesn't seem to appeal much to the echo-chamber blogosphere on either side. (As Rauch amusingly documents, Mitt Romney, who's no Stephen Douglas to be sure, has come down firmly on both sides.) So -- when should the universality of justice trump local option?

Don't be too quick with the answer -- murder laws differ from state to state, and what could be more important than the right not to get murdered?

There are legitimate universalizing tendencies on both sides: folks on the left tend to think that your rights shouldn't depend on your address; folks on the right tend to think that the market functions more smoothly when people aren't terrified of living in South Dakota or Mississippi.

2007 isn't just the year of the money in Springfield, it may also be the year of the process -- and if you believe some good-government advocates, a better process might be just what the CTA needs for a life-saving cash transfusion. Now that the Capital Investment Accountability Act has passed out of committee and into the full house, here's the simple version; you can also check out the Daily Southtown opinion piece by Michael McLaughlin of the Metropolitan Planning Council.

The bill (House Bill 801, same as Senate Bill 1582) sets up four state transportation goals. Everything the state spends on transportation is supposed to contribute to:

(1) efficiency -- meaning reducing delays and unreliability, shifting modes (probably from cars to transit but it doesn't say) and managing demand,

(2) economic development -- that is, putting money back into local and state economies,

(3) integration of land use and transportation planning, and

(4) safety -- meaning reducing crashes, increasing security, and encouraging use of "physically active modes" (presumably walking and biking, as opposed to driving).

If the bill is passed, a new Statewide Prioritization Committee will turn these four goals into 5-10 specific criteria for judging all proposed highway, railroad, and transit projects. Judging will be done by each Metropolitan Planning Organization on the local level, a new District Prioritization Committee for each of the state's nine transportation districts at the regional level, and the statewide committee for statewide projects. (FYI Chicago's six-county region is one district.) Within limits, the lower-level groups can each choose how to weight the criteria but they can't just trash 'em.

Top-scoring projects get passed up to the statewide committee, which puts them all together, and on January 15, 2009, the statewide committee is to deliver its "comprehensive project prioritization plan" to the General Assembly and the governor. (If Illinois' political culture should reassert itself and members of the General Assembly decide to clout through something that didn't pass muster normally, they'd have to do it in public, but the law doesn't otherwise constrain them by requiring supermajority votes or anything.)

In other words, a public process to generate rail, road, and bus plans based on stated goals and professional expertise, not political clout. 

Will this complex but transparent and open process inspire more tax support for transportation, including Chicago-area mass transit? That's one of MPC's goals, but for the CTA there's little good news yet, as Sick Transit Chicago reports.