It’s a sign of how debased our national discourse has [be]come when a major metropolitan daily publishes a letter to the editor advocating crimes against humanity.

Limited use of torture [tiny URL]

….Inflicting pain on one person is not as bad as allowing innocent people to die, and the prisoner in this situation can avoid that pain by telling what he knows.

Instead of prohibiting torture, we should regulate how and when it can be used. It should only be used on people we are sure have important information…

“…and the prisoner in this situation can avoid that pain by telling what he knows…”
Or, the prisoner can make a coerced false confession, eh?

This morning I submitted the following letter to the editor in response:

from: Michael Bersin
to: letters@kcstar.com,
date: Nov 21, 2007 8:05 AM
subject: Limited use of crimes against humanity

To the editor:

I’m not surprised to read a letter to the editor in the Star advocating crimes against humanity (“Limited  use of torture” 11/21/07) given the tortured parsing of the present U.S. Attorney General at his confirmation hearing. I shouldn’t be surprised since it’s apparent that, as a nation, we appear to base our morality, ethics, and legal knowledge on the superficial content of television melodramas.

The prohibition of torture is a non-derogable human right – an absolute under federal law, international treaty obligations, and the peremptory norms of international law. That is, no executive order, no law, and no treaty (even if “the life of the nation is threatened”) can remove that prohibition under any circumstances. To do so is a crime against humanity.

There are several other non-derogable human rights. The analogy of police deadly force presented by the letter writer is a false one. If he wanted to provide a proper analogy in his justification of torture he should have written about “Limited use of murder (extra judicial death)” or “Limited use of slavery”. Now, that would convince everyone that it’s all okay, don’t you think?

Michael Bersin

Well Bush went ahead and vetoed the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill the other day just like he said he would, and he did it in the name of fiscal discipline. Fiscal discipline, my foot, this is about the defunding of the federal government, the promotion of endless war and The Decider’s dubious logic.  The House came within two votes of overriding the veto. The vote was 277 to 141, with 51 Republicans joining 226 Democrats. Imagine that! So close and yet too far, thanks to the efforts of two men from MO.  Namely, Roy Blunt and Todd Akin.  They both voted against the override; the rest of the Missouri delegation supported the override.  Maybe Sam Graves got motivated or then again maybe not.  There might have been too much riding on this for even Graves to stomach.
Calling the bill  “irresponsible” and “excessive” Bush has sought to portray it as part of a congressional plan that constitutes “runaway spending.” The bill provided for a $5 billion increase and included money for education, medical research and other human services needs.  Bush would like to see this budget cut by $7 billion. That is $12 billion less than Congress wants. But this is not about fiscal discipline; it is about Bush’s values. 

If it were indeed about fiscal discipline, why then would Bush insist that Congress finance the $51 billion cost of Alternative Minimum Tax relief (AMT) by incurring higher deficits rather than allowing Congress to close tax loopholes used by multimillion dollar hedgefunders to cover the cost. The tax cuts he protects will reduce revenues by about $250 billion in 2008 and will include $49 billion in tax-cut benefits just for people making more than $1 million a year.
No, this veto is about priorities – whether multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for a tiny number of very affluent individuals matter more than the needs of much of the public.

  If it were indeed about fiscal discipline, why would he push for a $32 billion or 7.5 percent increase for the DOD, and this is over and above his requests for funds to prosecute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or his “war on terra”. He has requested another $196 billion dollars for that purpose. Congress has allocated a hefty increase of $29 billion or 6.6 percent. The Administration’s main complaint about Defense funding is that the large increase Congress provides is not large enough.  There is never enough money for war for the War President. It’s gimme, gimme, gimme.

According to the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities the impact of cutting the Labor-HHH-Education down to The Bush Expectation would look something like this with respect to these specific programs.

K-12 education would be cut by $1.3 billion;
Child care, which would be cut by $33 million; Head Start, which would be cut by $254 million (the equivalent of slots for nearly 34,000 children); medical research, which would be cut by $1.4 billion; (the NIH) health centers, which would be cut by $225 million the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which would be cut by $630 million; and Home-Delivered Nutrition Services Program, which would be cut by $16 million.

In some cases, these cuts would come on top of reductions already imposed in 2007 and earlier years.

If Bush’s position prevails, Missouri will lose $21.1 million dollars in revenue as a result.  That $21 million could go a long way to counter the health care cuts disaster that Boy King Blunt has engineered.  Education, Head Start, energy assistance and Meals on Wheels, all programs in need, are all on the Bush Block for trimming. I guess it is no wonder Sam Graves voted to override the veto.  Sane people everywhere wonder why Roy Blunt and Todd Akin did not. 

Or tickets to the game, to be more precise. It’s a clever way to drive traffic to his website.

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thurday, November 20, 2007

Contact:  Christian Badger
(573)442-7980

Harris Campaign to Give Away Two MU-KU Tickets
Devoted Mizzou Fan, Jeff Harris Will Award Tickets to Winner
  at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on Saturday

Columbia – Jeff Harris’ campaign for Attorney General is excited to announce a special giveaway of two tickets to Saturday’s football game between the Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks. Harris will personally award a pair of tickets what’s being called the “Game of the Century” to the lucky winner outside Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium.

To enter, Missouri Democrats should go to Harris’ website, http://www.ElectJeffHarris.com, and complete the entry form. Entries will close at noon on Friday, November 23, with the winner being selected at random at 3 pm that day.

“Mizzou fans across the state are counting down the minutes until this game kicks off,” Harris said. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to make the game even more special for two lucky Missouri Democrats by giving them a chance to cheer on the Tigers in person.”

The winner of the MU-KU game has a good shot at going to the National Championship game in New Orleans in January.

Ed’s gone. (hat tip: Jason Rosenbaum)

Scott Eckersley has announced that not only he will sue Gov. Matt Blunt’s office for defamation of character, but that he will also sue several, as yet unnamed, Republican blogs for joining in the smear campaign.

Three Democratic senators want all campaign finance contribution limits lifted:  Tim Green (Florissant), Chuck Graham (Columbia), and Chris Koster (Harrisonville).  Tim Green, in fact, introduced the amendment to lift the caps. 

Because Koster has taken a hundred thou from Rex Sinquefield, he’s also taking some political heat.  KMOX radio interviewed him about that question, and he stood firm for lifting the limits.  Here’s the interview if you want to hear it.  Republicans–and these three Democrats–like to muddy the waters with the old “we need transparency” canard.  Yes, we do, but throwing out all caps on contributions is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Just last week, I wrote about senator Joan Bray’s solution to the transparency in contributions problem.

“The public thinks we’re all controlled by money, and we don’t need to do anything more to make that reality or perception,” Bray said. “The public strongly likes the idea of contribution limits. It has expressed that in votes in the past. And we should respect and not resort to indulging ourselves in unlimited contributions.”

Bray argues for legislation that would control the proliferation of PACs and political committees. ….

Here’s an analogy:  If people are finding embezzling too easy to get away with, Republicans think it would be wise to make the embezzlement easy to spot … and legal.  They figure that if it’s easy to spot, the boss can fire the embezzler.  Democrats want to make the embezzlement more difficult to achieve … and illegal.

That’s a no-brainer.

A no-brainer indeed, unless you’re a legislator who prefers to sell yourself and sell the public out.

I’m not being hard on Koster here because he’s a former Republican.  We’re glad to have anybody from the other side who sees that Democratic ideas are better.  And Koster has charisma that would be put to better use promoting Democratic ideals than pushing Republican selfishness.  If he would promote Democratic principles.  But how much good does it do Democrats to have Koster switch parties if he still votes to get rid of campaign donation limits?

And by the way, Tim Green and Chuck Graham also need to repent their votes on this issue and push to limit PACs. 

Because that’s the solution:  limit each party to one PAC. 

Jim Trout, who sued over the no-cap-on-contributions law and won, has said that the old law had bugs in it, but that the no-cap solution was no solution. 

“Take the bugs out, but don’t use a Sherman Tank to do it,” he said in a PubDef interview last January.

What he means by “bugs” is that current law allows legislative committees to raise ten times as much money as any individual can give and there is no limit on how many legislative committees may be formed.  Everybody and his brother can have one.  Furthermore, as even Republicans correctly argue, those legislative committees are far less transparent than straight donations.

Trout would like to see two changes in election law.  First, each PARTY should be allowed one PAC, with a set amount of donations allowed.  That means two PACs in the state instead of dozens.  Second, the campaign limits need to be raised.  Inflation has taken a huge bite out of the limits passed a dozen years ago.  Stamps have gone up, and so has air time.

Senator Koster.  Senator Green.  Senator Graham.  C’mon now.  You know that solution would level the playing field so that ordinary voters would get a fair shake for a change.  Don’t you?

(Tim Green is pictured above and Chuck Graham is pictured below.)

People in Blue States who think Missouri is reliably red are sadly off-base.  It was only in 2000 that the MOGOP finally got their corrupt, fetid fingers around the levers of power, thanks to term limits, which has had the net effect of destroying civility and changing the attitude in Jeff City from  one of cross-party  cooperation to one of “screw you and screw your constituents.”

Well, it turns out that Missourians are more than just a tad sick of the juvenile antics and reckless disregard and selfish scorn for the greater good of the state we all call home that the MOGOP personifies.

And we haven’t even addressed his war on Missouri women yet, but rest assured that my St. Louis sister in the struggle, Angry Black Bitch, and I will be reminding everyone for the next 50+ weeks that Matt Blunt has, since his first moment in office, been the most anti-woman, misogynistic ass ever to lead the state.  Issues important to women were the first victims of his budget-cuts.  He tried to kill the First Steps program (and failed miserably in that quest).  He eliminated family planning and contraceptive funds from county health departments, and put a gag-order in place that prevented employees of those agencies from even telling the poor women served by those agencies where the services might still be available.  He poured acid on the social safety net, reducing the level to receive benefits to the point where a single mother of two who earned more than $350 per month was considered too well-heeled to receive Medicaid for her children.  Kansas City immediately had a hissy-fit and passed an additional sales tax to fund Truman Medical Center and the public health clinics that serve the poor in our community.  Matty B has seen a steady erosion of support ever since he took aim at the poor residents of a largely rural and poor state. 

Recent polling in Missouri shows Hillary Clinton mopping the floor with every Republican contender, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published the results of a poll today that has embattled governor Matt Blunt getting absolutely destroyed in next years gubernatorial race by Jay Nixon, the current Attorney General – who we have elected to that statewide office four times. 

Matt Blunt has been an unmitigated disaster for this state, and we are all counting down the days until January 20, 2009 – which will signal the end of not one error, but two.

State senator Jeff Smith (D-St. Louis) is intent on improving the city’s public schools.  Jeff has plans.  Whether he can get all or any of them enacted by a Republican legislature remains to be seen, but he’s been doing his homework, so to speak, and his plans are based on talking to a wide range of people. 

He talks to St. Louis Public Schools principals, to the teachers’ union, to the head of the appointed board, Rick Sullivan, to educational experts from across the nation, such as leaders of groups like Public Impact and the Education Trust.  He has visited some 38 schools in the city this year, usually unannounced, and guided his own tours through them to spare himself any dog and pony shows.  Jeff wants to know what reality looks like in St. Louis city schools, so that he can best plan how to improve them.

He intends to introduce a bill that would  mandate a number of new programs in districts that are unaccredited or provisionally accredited.  Here’s a sampling:
 

• Free child care would be available for children between three years old and kindergarten who qualify for reduced price lunches.
• Students would stay with the same teacher for two-three years.  Since ten percent of St. Louis city students are homeless, such a program would help a teacher get to know students.  It would add stability and foster relationships that might help keep kids in school.
• Teachers could opt into a voluntary pay for performance program.  Their pay would be partially based on their students’ progress.  Such teachers would give up tenure protection while in the program in exchange for the chance to make, say, one and a  half times their usual pay if their students averaged one and a half year’s progress in a year.  (The program would be funded by a one million dollar state pilot program.)  This program is modeled after one used in Denver, where the overwhelming majority of teachers signed up for it.

To address the severe shortage of teachers in certain subject areas, such as math science, and English as a second language, Jeff is recommending three programs:

• ABCTE certifies teachers without education courses if they pass a competency exam in their content area.  Of course it would be preferable to have fully certified teachers, but Jeff figures it’s better to at least have teachers who understand math teaching math.  Some of them will, no doubt, be poor at communicating with students while others will do well even without education courses.  At least, with this program, half the students have a chance at getting a teacher who can teach them math or science.
• $5000 bonuses would be offered for teachers in the areas of the most acute shortages.  The teachers’ union objects to this provision as well as to the ABCTE program, and Jeff understands their point that all teachers should be compensated as well as possible (and trained adequately).  But students are drawing the short straw as far as instruction in math and science, and that deficiency must be remedied.
• In order to be sure that teachers know the subject matter well enough to teach it, they would be required, every five years, to pass–with 60 percent competency–a test in their subject area.  If they fail, they could retake it within three months.  Jeff believes that 60 percent competency is not asking too much.  (As a retired teacher myself, I agree.  If a teacher doesn’t know that much, he should be gone.)

In addition to the legislation he’s proposing, Jeff also hopes to encourage Rick Sullivan to do everything possible to involve parents.  And knowing that many poor parents have reasons to take little interest in visiting schools (such as working two jobs or never having been that fond of school themselves), he is urging Sullivan to try two ideas to get parents to parent nights: 

• Approach local corporations to sponsor such nights.  For a couple of thousand dollars, they could put out food at ten schools to make it easier and more appealing for busy parents to get there.
• Offer programs for the parents in addition to information about what their children are doing in school.  Such programs might include home repair instruction,  information about tax preparation or help in job interviewing skills.

Jeff’s heart is in the right place as far as helping the city schools, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone in the community backs him.  The teachers’ union is unhappy with some of his ideas, and he took a lot of flak last spring by not opposing the state takeover of the city schools.  Some of his constituents are still upset about that. 

All he can say to his critics is that as he investigates what should be done to help failing school districts, he finds himself to be less of an ideologue and more of a pragmatist.  The state takeover was pretty much inevitable, and he wants to work effectively with those in charge.  (And besides, he sees Sullivan spending a lot of time listening to all points of view about what the city schools need.)

Those who don’t always agree with him will at least grant, I hope, that he’s working his tail off to do an effective job in a dire situation. 

Keep your eye on the ball.  No matter how many e-mails are saved in the future, Matt Blunt is not promising to let anybody see the records surrounding the Eckersley scandal.  As Penrose’s cartoon points out, the governor is doing everything he can to keep that information from becoming public.