The Blog

Peter Behrens: Hey America: You Don't Look So Great from Up Here

2012-02-13T19:36:09Z

Okay, America, it's winter up here, and when the snow is flying you'll always look pretty darn good. February through April is when we of the semi-frozen True North escape across the border, stab our cars into snow-drifted airport parking lots at Bangor, Buffalo, or Bellingham, and catch your el cheapo flights to destinations further south: anywhere from Myrtle Beach to San Diego suits us fine.

On the other hand, golf courses, blue skies, and cheerful degrees fahrenheit aside, you are looking kind of... surly these days. Sure, milk is $.50 cheaper a gallon on your side of the line, but we do have universal health care. We may need to stand in line for it, but we have always been a polite bunch and never minded queueing, as long as the line's fair. You used to be, but you don't seem so into fairness anymore, America.

We read about your plethora of fat cats, those masters of the universe, but mostly, in your upstate, northern border towns, we see poor folk and large, sad children returned from desert wars. Granted our perspective is skewed. The two crosscuts of the USA we're most familiar with are your sunbelt and your northern tier from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State to Aroostook County, Maine. Three thousand miles of farms and sawmill towns that used to seem sort of Canadian, except now they don't. Sawmills are shut, farmers are extinct, and much of your Great North Woods seems a hotbed of little but methamphetamine production and military recruitment. That's how it looks to us, anyway, from just next door. Along what used to be our undefended border you've aggressively "thickened" your frontier and you suddenly demand passports from us. Those lines are tedious, those officers aggressive. We don't much want to cross anymore, and if it weren't for the sunshine and the fact our dollar goes a long way these days, maybe we wouldn't.

America, you once elected a brilliant, shiny young president who seemed bold, but isn't, while we're stuck with a dour prime minister who looks and sounds like, well, a Canadian prime minister. Nonetheless, we get the feeling that Canada is moving in the right direction. Partly this is dumb luck: we're a resource economy, producing raw materials that China needs. Our universities are a bargain, and have you tried the brand-new Vancouver subway? It spooks us to see that you are not moving, America. You're dysfunctioning. Living alongside you these days and listening to the contenders in your Republican primaries is like overhearing a crazy family from the Maine backwoods in a loud, weird squabble at the Bangor Mall: everyone threatening, gesticulating, talking trash. The louder these men boast of keeping your military mighty enough to lick all comers, the weaker you seem, America, and so terribly out of touch with the rest of the world. Sometimes -- and we hate to have to say this, we honestly do -- you sound pathetic. Or you would, if you weren't also so magnificently, expensively, and ludicrously well-armed.

Stop obsessing about taxes, you can't pay for two wars without them. Anyway, taxes are not your real problem, you pay fewer of them than just about everyone except the Greeks. Be more mindful of your friends. If this isn't your century, well, so what, they can't all be. Get it together, America. Take better care of yourselves. Mind your health. Get moving again.

Larry Womack: Father Rick

2012-02-13T18:14:09Z

I've come to appreciate Rick Santorum's candidacy as this year's sole remaining window into the unvarnished reactionary id. When Santorum opens his mouth, you don't hear slick rationalizations or even muddled, fuzzy logic. You get a stream-of-consciousness monologue that is unparalleled in its perceptual simplicity.

Take two back-to-back sentences Santorum delivered Friday on the subject of requiring employers --even those owned by religious organizations -- to provide health insurance that covers oral contraceptives. (I'm not sure if Santorum had been informed of Friday's compromise or not. I doubt it would have mattered if he had.) You can almost pinpoint the tree stump in Imaginationland upon which the man is currently sitting.

First, he insisted that, "You don't need insurance for these relatively small expenditures." In reality, the cost of oral contraceptives can add up pretty quickly. Low-cost birth control is what brings 76 percent of Planned Parenthood's five million clients to its clinics each year, and even that can be as high as $50/month. But, of course, no one expects a male, Republican former senator to know the cost of birth control.

More revealing was his estimation of the motives behind the plan. "This is simply," he said, "someone trying to impose their values on someone else, with the arm of the government." Yes, in Santorum's head, if an employer is not allowed to price its female employees out of contraception, its civil liberties are being violated.

I feel compelled to bring a few facts to the attention of Rick Santorum, the Vatican hierarchy and the conservative Evangelicals with whom they are politically aligned.

First and perhaps most importantly, oral contraceptives are not only prescribed for the purpose of preventing pregnancy, but for a variety of other medical reasons, as well. There are also a number of drugs that are no doubt covered by insurers that will have the side effect of causing infertility. So the moral objection to preventing pregnancy is shaky, at best.

More obviously, the employees of Catholic-owned facilities are not all Catholic and probably should not be assumed to hold "Catholic values." An attempt to price these people out of birth control is also then an attempt by the Catholic hierarchy to assign its values to female employees of the organizations it operates. This is wholly unacceptable and, as many who have examined the situation more closely than I have already determined, discriminatory.

And finally, even if all of these employees were Catholic, the above would still apply and the vast majority of Catholics in this country do not actually hold the "values" Santorum and crew seem to believe they should. Not counting "natural methods," 98 percent of Catholic women have used birth control. To put that in perspective, about 4 percent -- double the anti-birth control faction -- say they have "seriously considered" becoming a nun. As far back as 1965, large majorities of American Catholics have even believed their church would come to embrace the pill.

Today, 58 percent of American Catholics believe that, "employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception." In fact, Catholics are less likely than others to oppose the birth control requirement. The only group that is solidly opposed, in fact, is white Evangelical Protestants -- with 38 percent of even them agreeing that employers of all stripes should be held to the same standard when it comes to providing coverage that includes birth control.

Somebody is trying to impose their values onto someone else alright, but it isn't the government oppressing American Catholics. It is right-wing politicians, Protestants and Vatican oligarchs attempting to impose their values on Catholics and employees of Catholic-owned facilities. Rick Santorum is (as he is oft to do) projecting like a madman.

In fact, the very charge of any sort of attack on the Catholic Church is absurd on its face. Clergy of all faiths, including Catholicism, seem to have no problem lately violating the rules that allow them to enjoy tax exempt status, because they know that everyone in government is too afraid of the backlash to enforce them. And wasn't it the Catholic Church that just spent decades engaged in a massive obstruction of justice campaign for which there have been no serious indictments?

Luckily, the values of American Catholics are rarely in step with those of Rick Santorum or their church hierarchy. In 2004, the Boston archbishop threatened to deny communion to Democrat John Kerry over his stance on abortion. Exit polls showed Kerry winning 47 percent of the Catholic vote -- basically matching his performance among all voters. Al Gore and Barack Obama, both just as pro-choice as Kerry, easily carried the Catholic vote. If you're looking for the definitive swing voting bloc, Catholics might be a good place to start. Put simply: You can preach politics from the pulpit, but if you happen to be a Catholic, your congregation probably isn't taking any orders.

What's troubling is that the Vatican's disconnect goes beyond politics, and the church has a long history of choices that are at odds with the simple human decency of the people in the pews.

The church spent decades engaged in a coordinated effort to protect people who were physically and sexually abusing children from that "arm of government" that so troubles Rick Santorum. It then acted with lightning speed to excommunicate a nun for approving a life-saving first-trimester abortion. Even before this incident, the Vatican had already become so outraged by the liberal lifestyles of American nuns that it had launched an investigation into their behavior, without any allegations of wrongdoing whatsoever. If someone is trying to force values on the Catholic hierarchy, I can think of a few places they could start. (And American nuns can probably think of even more.)

Of the values of the average American Catholic on the street, I can thankfully say better. I have never met a Catholic who worked outside of politics or the church hierarchy who thinks that freewheelin' nuns are a more pressing problem than thousands of children being physically and sexually abused. I have never met a Catholic outside of politics or the church hierarchy who thinks that condoms shouldn't be used to prevent the spread of AIDS, because birth control is "intrinsically evil." We can only hope that they might one day be able to impose these values on more people in power.

Many of you reading this would no doubt argue that the core issue is not how wrongheaded or out-of-touch the Vatican/Evangelical/conservative axis' opposition to birth control is, but rather whether or not a religious organization in a free society can be required to pay for anything it (wrongly or not,) believes is immoral. I can see why people would at first glance view things this way. But if we are going to have a serious argument about civil liberties, specifically freedom of religion, I fail to see how anyone can argue that our first amendment rights are best left to interpretation by church oligarchs -- particularly when 98 percent of their flock disagrees. Allowing them to decide for their employees whether or not they can have access to affordable birth control is suppression of personal choice in a profoundly personal arena.

I also don't buy the "work somewhere else" argument. It sounds great, in theory. In practice, that cannot always be done, even in the best of times.

Both arguments also fail to view things in the broader context of where and when religious organizations have chosen to object to their duties as legal employer. Religious protests of this sort seem, lately, to only appear alongside opportunities to advance the political interests of social conservatives.

Take, for example, the Catholic hierarchy's handling of issues relating to marriage. The Catholic Church does not recognize any civil marriage. In fact, given the church's strict rules, it's a pretty safe bet that a great many married Americans who identify themselves as Catholics have never bothered to get married at all in the eyes of their church. Still, church-operated organizations regularly employ people joined in any variety of marriages it does not recognize, happily providing the same benefits that any legal and ethical employer would. So why, in 2009, did the Archdiocese of Washington threaten to stop feeding the homeless if DC allowed gay marriage? They had no problem giving the same benefits to the partners of other employees they officially viewed as living in sin. The church had simply decided that it wanted to prevent civil marriage, which they don't recognize anyway, from being awarded to gay couples. Add to this the fact that just 22 percent of actual Catholics oppose all legal recognition of same-sex relationships and we have a close enough parallel to the birth control situation.

I know, I know -- I keep citing the views of lay Catholics to illustrate how out-of-touch the church hierarchy is. Catholicism, many will point out, is not a democracy. It was once, and maybe it should be again, but it is not at this moment. But that is exactly my point, you see; the first amendment was not crafted to move choice out of the hands of individuals and into the hands of a few powerful, unelected people as Santorum, the Vatican and their far right Evangelical allies would have you believe. Freedom of religion means freedom to practice the religion of your choosing, not freedom for religious organizations to discriminate as employers of people in positions outside the religious operations of their church.

What Rick Santorum meant was that he objected to "the arm of government saying I can't impose my values on someone else." That prospect is what freaks men like Santorum out and that is why a compromise in which employees work directly with insurers is unlikely to placate many of them. It still robs them of the ability to make people submit to their will.

In fact, the more I think about how woefully out-of-touch Rick Santorum is with the views of voters and his fellow Catholics, the more I am convinced that the man should have been a priest.

Vijaya Ramachandran: Africa on K Street: Lobbying Is Not Restricted to the Developed World

2012-02-13T18:02:46Z

This is a joint post with Julie Walz.

The aid community is well-accustomed to pushing for transparency in foreign aid transactions. But are we missing another key flow of money?

A recent article by Geoffrey York, African bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, described a contract signed a few years ago by the Government of Rwanda with Racepoint Group, which was tasked with doing an image makeover for the Rwandan government for a monthly fee of over $50,000. The rationale was that public perceptions of Rwanda were dominated by the horrific genocide that occurred in the 1990s, along with accounts of human rights abuses and media censorship. The contract with Racepoint reportedly aimed to increase the number of stories of Rwanda's successes and block criticism of the government and its alleged human rights abuses. The effort landed more than 100 positive articles per month in newspapers from the New York Times to BBC, increased discussions of travel to Rwanda by 183%, and decreased discussion of the genocide by 11%, according to Racepoint.

In 2007, Racepoint also led a campaign to promote Libya's Gaddafi as an "intellectual and philosopher," in advance of the thirtieth anniversary of his rule. Four years later, Libyan rebels hired the Washington lobby firm, Patton Boggs to help them unseat Gaddafi.

Other African governments have also invested in lobbyists. The Kenyan government contracted one of the top Washington lobbying firm Chlopak Leonard Schechter to restore its reputation after stories of election-related violence dominated the news headlines. It hoped to further U.S. support for its military and intelligence work, fighting piracy and dealing with the deteriorating situation in Somalia. Chlopak Leonard successfully placed positive stories in US media outlets and was able to call attention in Congress to the Somali crisis. President Obama's Somalia policy even includes specific recommendations from the Kenyan government's proposal to fight piracy and terrorism.

It is no secret that leaders of foreign nations routinely hire Washington lobbyists. It's been happening since Nazi agents lobbied Washington before World War II. More recently the cape-wearing "Baron" Edward von Kloberg III represented Saddam Hussein, Samuel Doe, and Mobutu Sésé Seko.

Lobbying can mute pressure on authoritarian regimes, such as the one in Equatorial Guinea. President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been called one of the world's worst dictators and is thought to have diverted tens of millions of dollars from the small country's natural resource earnings. (He also holds the title of the longest serving "leader" in Africa). His government paid the law firm of Lanny Davis millions of dollars to burnish its image. After years of lobbying, Obiang was called a "good friend" of the United States and even got a public photo opportunity with President Obama. Odds are that large oil companies with operations in Equatorial Guinea have some sway in these events. But lobbying is also a key component of Obiang's overall public relations strategy. Currently, his government is represented by Qorvis Communications, which routinely sends out cheerful e-mails announcing the various policy endeavors of one of Africa's most powerful and destructive dictators.

As international lobbying has become more sophisticated, it has also become less transparent. Under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), all lobbyists are technically required to disclose contracts with foreign clients twice a year. This doesn't always happen and in practice there is no penalty for lack of disclosure. Since the 1960s, the United States has not prosecuted anyone for violating disclosure rules. Accessing data that is reported also proves difficult. The Justice Department has posted image files of FARA disclosures on their website since May 2007, yet it is not in a digital format and is therefore not searchable. If you want to know how many clients Qorvis represents, and which members of Congress have met with the company, good luck.

The Foreign Lobbyists Influence Tracker, a product of ProPublica and the Sunlight Foundation is a good start in the direction of greater transparency. While some lobbying by foreign governments is probably benign, in other cases, such as that done by the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, it is clearly at odds with the interests of the population and with broader development goals. What to do about it is a complex question (if you have ideas, please share them in the comments below!) but as a first step, Americans should be insisting on much greater transparency about the expenditures and direction of foreign lobbying activities in Washington.

Dennis M. Kelleher: Protect Taxpayers Now With a Strong Volcker Rule

2012-02-13T17:42:16Z

The goal of financial reform is simple: to protect taxpayers, our treasury and our economy from suffering a repeat of the 2008 collapse by making our financial system safer, sounder and more stable. The cornerstone of financial reform is the law known as Dodd/Frank, designed to make our financial system less prone to crisis, failure and bailout.

One of the rules at the heart of the law is called the Volcker Rule, a long and complex rule named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker that embodies a very simple idea: the very few biggest banks in the country should not be able to make risky bets with borrowed money and count on taxpayers to bail them out if those bets go bad. Commercial banks are supposed to be banks -- not hedge funds, not derivatives traders, and certainly not government-backed gamblers.

The Volcker Rule bans what's known as "proprietary trading," but only at the very biggest banks. A fancy term, but proprietary trading just refers to trades made by banks with their own money as opposed to a customer's money. So if it's the bank's money, what's the problem? The problem is that proprietary trading usually involves very big bets made with borrowed money, and if a big bet goes bad, then the public's money and the treasury's money are at risk as well. That's because the biggest banks won't be allowed to fail so when the bets go bad taxpayer-funded federal support ends up paying off the bad bets.

The biggest banks and their mouthpieces want everyone to forget that very big, very bad proprietary bets were at the heart of the near collapse of worldwide financial markets in 2008. Take Citigroup. It lost almost $40 billion through just one type of trade and tens of billions more on other bad bets, forcing the U.S. government to bail it out with more than $45 billion. The same was true for every major bank in 2008: reckless trading put them at the edge of bankruptcy and the only reason they all didn't go bankrupt is because the federal government bailed them out with taxpayer money to save our economy from collapsing into a second Great Depression. Those banks also want everyone to forget that those Wall Street bailouts cost the US many trillions of dollars and gave us the worst economy since the Great Depression.

No matter how many times the banks and their purchased allies shout it, the Volcker Rule doesn't ban risky bets. If anyone wants to make a big bet on European debt or swing for the fences on some other risky trade, then all they have to do is go to a hedge fund or any one of hundreds if not thousands of other financial firms that aren't too-big-to-fail and therefore don't risk taxpayer money That's what happened to MF Global: it made big proprietary bets with borrowed money; those bets lost; and, it went bankrupt as companies are supposed to do when that happens.

The Volcker Rule just says the biggest too-big-to-fail banks, those that receive federal support and are actually guaranteed federal support by law or practice, are different than other financial firms, so they should be treated differently. Those guarantees -- which protect your deposits and give banks access to money at very low interest rates through the Federal Reserve's discount window -- are designed to protect customers' savings, promote loans to businesses and households that help fuel economic growth, and make sure our financial system doesn't collapse. They aren't designed to provide a safety net for megabanks and their traders making mega-bets to boost their profits and bonuses. But without the Volcker Rule, that's exactly what did happen and what will happen again.

Of course, the megabanks love proprietary trading. Why? Because when they win their bets, they make more money and their bankers take home literally billions in bonuses. And when they lose, somebody else has to pay the bill.

This is make or break time for the Volcker Rule. The public comment period ends today, regulators are finalizing crucial details of how the Volcker Rule will be implemented. Not surprisingly, Wall Street and its army of lobbyists are spending millions in an all-out effort to create giant loopholes in the rule.

The banks throw around terms like "market making," "portfolio risk hedging," and "client trading" to suggest that they are really only acting in their customers' interest. And they claim no one can really tell what proprietary trading is anyway. But former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the architect and namesake of the rule, has said "every banker I speak with knows very well" what is a risky trade that benefits the bank, rather than the customer.

The argument for the Volcker Rule is obvious -- we shouldn't allow risky bets that pay enormous bonuses to bankers if they work, but stick taxpayers with the bill if they fail. That's not capitalism; that's basically a subsidized trip to the blackjack tables. Anyone can go to Vegas, but the taxpayers shouldn't pay for the trip and all the losses.

Dan Kennedy: Mitt Romney, the Inevitable and Unelectable Man

2012-02-13T17:31:38Z

With his narrow victory over Ron Paul in the Maine caucuses, Mitt Romney may have re-established himself once again as the fragile front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

But after losing three states to Rick Santorum and falling behind him by a 38 percent to 23 percent margin in the latest Public Policy Polling survey, the former Massachusetts governor's inevitability appears to be matched only by his unelectability.

From the start, Romney's candidacy has been defined by two dynamics.

On the one hand, there's little doubt that he is absolutely unacceptable to right-wing Republicans, which is to say the people who actually comprise a majority of activists in the nominating process.

On the other hand, I can't remember the last time a serious candidate for national office such as Romney was lucky enough to run against such a weak field of competitors. Santorum and Newt Gingrich are scarcely more credible than Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry. Paul is running for his own purposes, which do not include becoming president.

It's because of my "one hand" that I believed until late last fall that Romney would never win the nomination. It's because of my "other hand" that I gradually came to believe Romney had to win -- and that, in fact, the health of our democracy depended on his keeping genuine loathsome characters such as Gingrich and Santorum as far away from the White House as possible.

After Florida, it looked like it was finally over, and that sullen Republicans would grudgingly do what they were told. After Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, what will happen next is anyone's guess. Romney's craven speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference won't help him much, even if it contributed to his winning its straw poll over the weekend.

Romney's larger problem is that his never-ending repositioning on issues has left him with an unappetizing choice between trying to look like he believes in something -- anything -- or giving in to his urge to tell whatever audience he's speaking to exactly what he imagines it wants to hear. For instance, have a look at the Sunday New York Times story on how Romney shifted from supporting to opposing abortion rights. The late Ted Kennedy was, if anything, being charitable when he once referred to Romney's position as "multiple choice."

If there's still an authentic Romney underneath all the phony exteriors he's tried on and discarded, then it is probably someone without a real political orientation -- a pragmatic problem-solver, too liberal for Republicans (outside of Massachusetts), too conservative for Democrats, too bloodless and unappealing to be able to turn those qualities into a virtue, the way Ross Perot briefly did two decades ago.

I imagine Romney will turn the battleship around and aim the cannons of his super PAC at Santorum. I'd guess that we'll be hearing about disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's (as yet unproven) connection to the former Pennsylvania senator. It may work. And yes, if Romney does somehow manage to stagger to the nomination, he'll still be a more formidable candidate against President Obama than any other Republican.

But what we're watching now is a strange and disturbing dynamic, as Romney -- someone whose qualifications and experience are impressive, whatever his shortcomings as a candidate -- tries to pick his way through the ruins of a once-great political party that has collapsed into a vestigial appendage of the Fox News Channel.

If Romney succeeds, the larger question yet to be answered is whether the Republican nomination will prove to be a prize not worth having.

Keya Dannenbaum: This Valentine's Day, Find Your Perfect Political Match

2012-02-13T17:26:45Z

It's that time of year again. Everyone's looking around for love. No one more so than this year's Republican primary voters.

With the "Santorum Sweep" of three caucus states last week, Romney's so-called inevitability has been supplanted with a new 'undeniability' -- that this primary will go on at least through April and perhaps even beyond. But on what basis will they ultimately decide? Will it be the man with money, with values... or the one who promised them the moon?

For many romantics seeking the perfect partner, the Internet is increasingly the most fruitful resource. A plethora of websites have carefully developed and honed algorithms to decipher that most elusive of riddles -- the human heart. They cull from among millions and find you your perfect match. And if their proliferation is any testament, it seems to work.

If only there were such a solution for politics. Surely if a computer can help me find my mate for life, it can get me through the next four to eight years.

I'm not alone in my yearning. Tim O'Reilly, author of Government as a Platform and definer of the term "Gov 2.0," tweeted in December, "We need an OKCupid for candidates." Of all the dating sites out there, OKCupid makes particular sense for a 2.0 political endeavor. It has an easy and addictive Q&A-based survey system, and it is fundamentally data driven.

An OkCupid for political candidates... sounds fabulous, right? Good news: It's not just a pipe dream.

Indeed, as noted in the O'Reilly Radar (in response to the original O'Reilly tweet), FastCompany, TechCocktail and elsewhere... it's already here. In the form of the newcomer political tech startup, ElectNext.

ElectNext works just like a dating site. As a voter, you select the issues that are most important to you, answer a few questions so the site can determine where you stand, and ElectNext matches you to your candidates running for federal office in 2012. And just as OkCupid pioneered "dating with data," it is through leveraging data that ElectNext proposes to help you vote.

"We are the only organization that is collecting and structuring data on your candidates and their issue positions and connecting you to that data with our matching algorithm," says co-founder and CTO Paul Jungwirth. "Ours is the only tool that helps you easily vote your values not just for president, but currently for all three offices at the federal level and soon even beyond." Amazing.

So if you're a voter who's been searching for love in all the wrong places, give yourself a break this Valentine's Day. Just as eHarmony is your go-to to find the perfect dinner date, give ElectNext a try to find your perfect candidate.

Anne Taylor Fleming: The Female Body as Battlefield

2012-02-13T17:17:53Z

Did I expect this? Did any of us foresee that in 2012 there would be a full-tilt battle about women's health and how it should be handled?

In the thick of the presidential race, with the continuing mortgage mess and a still-precarious economy, this is what engages the most passion -- certainly from those on the right. It seems to be the cultural issue they think can carry them forward.

Continue reading at Politico.

Jason Salzman: Zombie Delegates to Vote at Colorado Republican Conventions

2012-02-13T17:11:51Z

The Colorado Republican Party's selection of Rick Santorum as its choice to battle President Obama has given birth to a new element in Colorado politics: zombie delegates.

These are delegates born at the GOP caucuses last week when caucus goers voted for delegates to represent them at the GOP county and state conventions.

So Santorum supporters, for example, designated delegates to go forth and cast a vote for Santorum at the larger convention later.

But it turns out they're actually zombies, free and encouraged to roam from Santorum to Gingrich to whomever, just like the rest of the GOP voters of late.

You might think that delegates selected at the Colorado Republican caucus would be committed to voting for the candidate supported by the good folks who voted for that delegate.

And, in fact, that's what state Colorado GOP Chair Ryan Call was saying before the caucuses were held.

He told the Durango Herald last week that you should expect the results of the caucuses to be meaningful and lasting. That is, if you believe the GOP delegates are an honorable bunch.

The Durango Herald reported Call as saying:

Those delegates [chosen at the caucuses] are "bound by honor" to vote for the presidential candidates they supported at the precinct caucus, said state Republican Party Chairman Ryan Call. If a candidate drops out before the assembly, his delegates are released to vote for someone else.

But the morning after the caucuses, Call was downplaying the significance of the Stantorum victory, telling KNUS' Steve Kelley:

Call: Last night's preference poll is really just a straw poll. The delegates elected in each of these precinct caucus meetings are now going to go on to participate in county and district assemblies. And then at the state assembly in April is where we will actually be electing the slate of delegates that will be sent from Colorado to the national convention... This is still an open race, and it can be expected to play out over the next couple months.

Kelley asked the exact follow-up question that was on my mind:

Kelley: It begs the question then, Ryan, why do the caucuses if you're not going to secure the delegates for sure?

Call replied:

Call: The caucuses are the first step in a multi-step process. It's that sort of winnowing of the field as the process moves along. It's a very representative, grassroots-oriented process where the folks who took the time to show up are the ones whose votes matter and whose voices get heard.

An impartial observer, like a reporter, might want to know how all those grassroots folks "who took the time to show up" are feeling now, as their participation, not whom they voted for, seems to matter most to Call:

Call: I think the most exciting thing is the level of turnout, the level of participation, and then we move on to the next step.

You'd think delegates would, in fact, feel some commitment to support the candidate they were selected to vote for, as long as that candidate stayed in the race.

I'd feel betrayed, if I voted for, say, a winner like Newt Gingrich, and my trusty Gingrich delegate dumped his chains of honor and switched to Romney at the county or state conventions.

But Call apparently doesn't see it that way, and neither does former GOP Chair Dick Wadhams.

Neither does Ron Paul Campaign Manager John Tate, who thinks his boss has stealth delegates faking it for other candidates:

We are confident in gaining a much larger share of delegates than even our impressive showing yesterday indicates. As an example of our campaign's delegate strength, take a look at what has occurred in Colorado:

In one precinct in Larimer County, the straw poll vote was 23 for Santorum, 13 for Paul, 5 for Romney, 2 for Gingrich. There were 13 delegate slots, and Ron Paul got ALL 13.

In a precinct in Delta County the vote was 22 for Santorum, 12 for Romney, 8 for Paul, 7 for Gingrich. There were 5 delegate slots, and ALL 5 went to Ron Paul.

In a Pueblo County precinct, the vote was 16 for Santorum, 11 for Romney, 3 for Gingrich and 2 for Paul. There were 2 delegate slots filled, and both were filled by Ron Paul supporters.

Reporters should be wondering what the GOP caucus goers think of having zombie delegates.

How committed do they believe their delegates should be to the preferences of the hard-working caucus attendees who selected them?

Glenn W. Smith: We're No Angels: Americans, Church Doctrine, and the Pill

2012-02-13T16:52:55Z

What's all the fuss about Americans not following religious doctrine? Seriously, we all know that none of us dance and drink as passionately as Baptists. Few are as happy with the invention of the Pill as Catholics. Many seem grateful that Jesus' plea to help the poor is taken no more seriously than an Ogden Nash poem.

Oh, I have no doubt that Catholic Church leaders are quite frustrated that their flock no longer does what they are ordered to do by the self-regarding, closer-to-god Church hierarchy. And, it's probably true that Mormons are, as these things go, a little more obedient to doctrine, right down to their underwear, than members of most other faiths. Credit where credit is due.

Lurking behind the church/state controversy over the morally righteous effort to make contraceptives available to American women is the certain truth that even the most devout Catholics ignore the Church's medieval doctrine on this one. The controversy was truly like arguing about the number of angels on the head of a pin. There are no angels; there are no pins. Just pundits and panderers.

Denial may not be a river an Egypt, as the 12-steppers say, but it's broader than the Mississippi in America. If there's anything we do better than escaping religious doctrine, it's denying that we escape it.

Now, it must be admitted that many can get themselves into a snit when they discover that others have also sawed through the bars and run away across the fields. High-tailing it to freedom like the trio of convicts in O Brother Where Art Thou, they look over their shoulders and shout at the escapees behind them, "Get thee back to God's House, sinners!" Their indignation is born of two parents: seeing themselves unhappily mirrored in their doctrine-denying brethren makes their denial a little more difficult; and, they are worried about the lack of parking spaces near the bars, the dance halls, and the contraceptive-dispensing pharmacies.

Speaking of the Coen Brothers' O Brother, the scene where Delmar is saved by the preacher may be the most accurate portrayal of Americans and faith on film:

Delmar: Well, that's it, boys. I been redeemed. The preacher done washed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out. And heaven everlasting's my reward.

Everett: Delmar, what are you on about? We got bigger fish to fry.

Delmar: The preacher said all my sins is washed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.

Everett: You said you was innocent of that.

Delmar: Well, I was lyin'. And the preacher said that that sin's been washed away, too. Neither God nor man's got nothin' on me now.

Secretly, we're all thankful for the First Amendment's separation of church and state. God forbid (pardon the reference) that the State should enforce church doctrines under penalty of the criminal law. If we think we have a prison crisis now...

So what's behind all the hooting and hollering over the Obama Administration's contraception initiative? Why is it that even some progressive pundits are arguing for more deference to the Catholic Bishops on an issue that's not even about religious freedom, but women's health? I think it's because they feel we're not showing enough deference to pretense. That the health of American women would be put at risk by such deference is kind of beside the point to them.

I don't mean to in any way mock religion. Many - most - of us draw deep and abiding values from the faith traditions we were raised in or discovered on our own. I think humans come with a wonderful ability to look for answers beyond what's immediately at hand, and religions can facilitate that and a give us a sense of community, too.

But I do mean to mock those who argue that we must sacrifice women's health on the altar of a religious doctrine no one in America takes seriously. On the other hand, Republicans who think this is a viable wedge issue might discover it's a wedge between themselves and the rest of America. I'm tempted to say, go for it.

David Leopold: Are the Courts Fed Up With America's Badly Broken Immigration Laws?

2012-02-13T16:52:19Z

Last week a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals looked at five immigration cases, turned to the Department of Homeland Security, and effectively said, "Really!? Are you really going to deport these people? Or are you going to use your common sense and focus your limited law enforcement resources on dangerous criminals and national security risks?" The court went on to say, in essence, "How about this, go and think about what we've asked and let us know what you've decided by March 19. In the meantime we're going to focus our judicial resources on more important cases."

The court's orders were the result of a memorandum issued last year by John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in which he announced that the agency would employ "prosecutorial discretion" in its enforcement of the immigration law. Morton ordered ICE agents and prosecutors to focus on the removal of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to our communities -- dangerous criminals and national security risks. Each case considered by Ninth Circuit concerned an immigrant who had been in the U.S. for a long time, had strong family ties, and had no criminal record. Unfortunately, such sympathetic factors are usually meaningless to the immigration law which blindly insists on deportation without regard to fairness, justice, or common sense.

I'll leave it to others to decide whether or not the Ninth Circuit panel overstepped its authority. After all, as Judge O'Scannlain pointed out in his dissent, courts "have only the slimmest authority even to review the exercise of prosecutorial discretion." And while the Morton memo is a common sense approach to enforcing a badly broken immigration statute, it is not the law of the land.

So what was the court up to?

Every day in this country courts are forced to turn their backs on deserving immigrants and American citizens alike because of the dysfunctional immigration law. In courtrooms all across America judges sit helplessly by, their hands legally tied, as the twisted immigration law wreaks havoc on American families, stymies American business, fails to protect people fleeing persecution, and stomps on the due process rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens. Its mean spirited provisions tear husbands from wives, parents from children and brothers from sisters. Like some sinister beast in a horror movie, the immigration law creeps into peoples' lives and destroys them without so much as a second thought about the human suffering it leaves behind.

It's tempting to brush aside the Ninth Circuit judges' orders as improper judicial activism. But that misses the point. Even the U.S. Supreme Court appears to have weighed in on the broken immigration law through its decisions in cases like Padilla v. Kentucky and Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, which derive from the confusing, contradictory, and counterintuitive statute, and signal a major shift in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence toward greater protection of immigrants' rights. Nor is the Supreme Court's concern limited to the law. It has also taken the government to task for its haphazard and illogical reading of it. Late last year in Judulang v. Holder a unanimous Supreme Court called the government's interpretation of a legal provision "arbitrary and capricious" and "unmoored from the purposes and concerns of the immigration laws."

Another, more plausible, explanation for these decisions is that the nation's courts, including perhaps even the Supreme Court, are effectively throwing their hands up and imploring Congress to get to the hard work of fashioning a law that will provide America with a safe, orderly and fair immigration policy -- one that protects American families and businesses and restores civil liberties.

Jeff Madrick: 10 Questions for Economists Who Oppose Manufacturing Subsidies

2012-02-13T16:42:09Z

Why are mainstream economists, right and left, so determined to push back any attempt to subsidize manufacturing in America? The question will arise anew tonight when President Obama presents his budget, complete with tax provisions to support manufacturing. After the president addressed the issue as his first topic in the State of the Union a couple of weeks ago, many esteemed economists seemed to rush to the offense. Obama proposed using tax carrots and sticks to encourage manufacturers to stay here, return here, or get out of those low-wage emerging markets. Some mainstreamers, seeming to represent the conventional wisdom among them, openly scorned the idea. At least one, Laura Tyson, has stood her ground in favor of a policy focus on manufacturing.

I understand the mainstream economic reflex. After working so hard to get world nations to reduce trade barriers for the last 40 to 50 years, they and their successors view subsidizing manufacturing in the U.S. as a retreat. It could provoke retaliation, as well. And moving the world toward free trade makes eminently good theoretical sense -- to a degree. The anti-manufacturing subsidy bias is really a subset of the firm, almost unshakable allegiance to free trade theory among the American mainstream.

I also understand the mainstream neoclassical reflex, having taken a few of those courses. Indeed, sometimes I am a neoclassical myself. When you fundamentally believe that economies adjust efficiently and that the markets will decide, if left unimpeded, which industries should naturally rise and fall, it is profoundly difficult to accept tinkering with matters unless very much warranted. If manufacturing is declining in America, the conventional thinkers say it is largely because first, the same business can be done more efficiently elsewhere, or second, American business has better places to put its money, usually by investing in services-oriented industries, some of them highly sophisticated. There may be manufacturing "market failures" to compensate for, but probably not many.

But here my questions begin to arise. These are by and large the same economists who, as a group, rarely raised public ire over the many subsidies the federal government bestowed on U.S. finance, at least until the recent financial crisis. Who did the American high dollar policy since the 1990s help? Finance, which could import mounds of capital and lend at low rates. Consider how little complaint there was about the interest rate tax deduction. Should you really get an interest rate deduction when you borrow to take over another company through an LBO or a privatization, and then keep a big slice of the equity for yourself? Should you get that deduction for leveraging up your investment bank's trading department or your underwriting of collateralized debt obligations?

Did economists rise in chorus over conflicts of interest with ratings agencies, asymmetric compensation incentives at Wall Street banks, or the almost complete secrecy under which derivatives are traded? All of these were express violations, not merely of progressive economic thinking, but of conservative laissez-fare thinking. If they had done so with the same vigor with which they attack those who want to stimulate manufactures through government subsidies, perhaps I would understand their passion. But they did not.

Since there is plenty of uncertainty -- including my own -- about this issue, let me just pose some rhetorical questions to a phantom mainstream economist in hopes he or she will clarify the issues.

1. Doesn't America already have an anti-manufacturing strategy? It has enthusiastically supported a high value for the dollar since the 1990s. The high dollar raises export prices but, as noted, very much helps Wall Street attract capital flows and lend at low rates. Shouldn't we get the value of the dollar down?

2. Don't Germany, China, and many other countries subsidize their own manufacturing industries? Do you really think the World Trade Organization works all these out? If they do subsidize, isn't it only fair to place manufacturing on a level playing field and subsidize our own?

3. Doesn't manufacturing having a multiplier effect? Some say we can never boost the share of manufacturing adequately. So what if we create even as much as another 2 or 3 million manufacturing jobs. (The president is settling for a couple of hundred thousand.) But wouldn't manufacturing's multiplier effect stimulate the rise of other manufacturing and service industries and the creation of other jobs?

4. How can we get our trade deficit down if we don't sell more manufactures? They account for about seven-eighths of our exports. I know the answer some of you will give: savings. But do you really think raising our savings rate will reduce capital inflows adequately to lower the dollar in order to promote more exports?

5. Without manufacturing, what will we export? Isn't there a point at which we lose too many industries and labor skills to make a comeback? Given the symbiotic nature of business clusters and supply chains, aren't we rapidly losing the subsidiary companies that make manufacturing and exports possible?

6. Weren't persistent trade imbalances a major cause of the 2007-2008 financial crisis as debt levels soared? Don't you worry that the export-led models of China, Germany and Japan are unsustainable? On a worldwide basis, they are really debt-led growth models. How do we get balance without promoting our exports?

7. Isn't manufacturing a source of innovation in and of itself? Isn't that where the scientists and engineers are? Don't we learn and innovate by doing? One commentator recently said that those innovations are exploited by others, so it doesn't matter. Really? Then maybe we should stop promoting R&D altogether.

8. Where will the good jobs come from? You always say high technology. But America now imports more high-technology products than it exports, especially to China. Even Germany has a high-technology deficit with China. I ask again, where will the jobs come from as technology gets more complex? Do you think more education is really an adequate answer, the only answer?

9. Why did the job market do so poorly throughout the 2000s? If you say we can't know where jobs will come from, that the market will decide, then why aren't you worried about the job market's poor performance over the last decade, with huge losses in manufacturing jobs? Again, you say, inadequate education. Yet according to CEPR's John Schmitt, we have not produced more good jobs as GDP grew -- good jobs measured by wages and benefits provided. Is there hard evidence we don't have the labor to fill the high-technology jobs -- and if we did, are there enough jobs going unfilled to make a difference?

10. Will the jobs come from services? The rapid growth of finance has fouled up the numbers. Finance services did provide high-paying jobs, but we now know many of these were phantoms. And the salad days may be over. The other big area of productivity growth in services was retail. We all know what kinds of jobs Walmart provided.

I ask these questions sincerely. The president's program is not ideal, but it is calling attention to a problem. We need an open discussion about manufacturing policy, infrastructure investment, and industrial policy that avoids snooty recriminations and recognizes that no one has all the answers.

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

Ken Allen: How Drones Challenge Our Political System

2012-02-13T16:36:07Z

The use of drones for military purposes is accelerating rapidly, accompanied by some commentary and public discussion of the impact and implications of their use. Thus far, however, the discussion has omitted some of the most important implications of the continuing development of drones. To better understand the problems raised by drones, it is essential to set them within the context of the broader crisis our political system faces today.

The overarching problem our political system faces is political decay, described by such scholars as Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama as the dysfunction that occurs when institutions created to deal with one environment become incapable of handling conditions as that environment changes. In our time, we are witnessing the failure of our institutions, as well as widely held emotions, psychology, values, and understanding, to keep pace with a rapidly changing physical, social, and organizational environment driven by an ever-accelerating pace of scientific understanding and technological change. That decay underlies the intractability of the most serious issues and controversies that dominate our headlines, animate social conflict, and often agonize the consciences of our most thoughtful analysts. Our use of drones and the robotics accompanying them illustrate only one, but a particularly vexing, example of that problem.

The questions our use of drones has raised thus far are not trivial. How much collateral damage (i.e., death of innocents) is an unavoidable consequence of drone use? How much damage is acceptable in killing terrorists and terrorist leaders? Where may drones ethically be used, and on whom? What are the implications and consequences of having killing machines directed from afar, using programs that appear much like video games and could be having approximately the same emotional impact on those who direct them? Will their use cause blowback, breeding more terrorists than they kill? Is the way we are using drones legal? Is it moral? Can it even be reconciled with fundamental Constitutional principles?

A quick review of the functions performed by drones and the devices and practices they have partially replaced dispels any notion that we will find simple answers to all the problems they present. In fact, the old dilemmas were at least as serious, although familiarity has tended to inure us to them. In the past, we firebombed entire cities, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian deaths. During WW II, and the Korean and Vietnamese wars, most incidents resulting in massive civilian casualties did not throw a majority of the American people into a moral quandary, even though there was considerable turmoil about engaging in the Vietnam War in general. Then during the first Iraq war we began to use "smart bombs" advertised as being precisely targetable, so we could hit specified buildings. It turned out "smart bombs" weren't always as accurate as advertised, but while there was some public discussion of this, there was very little concern expressed about the element of intentional targeting. Near the beginning of the second Iraq war, when the U.S. targeted a building in which Saddam Hussein was thought to be staying, little public dismay followed. The "smart bombs" didn't get Hussein, and some question was raised about the targeting of an individual, but not much. Now, with the help of drones, we try to target individuals, with inevitable "collateral damage." That raises questions about whether it is really assassination in which we are engaged and about the "collateral damage." All other things being equal, though, it is hard to argue on a purely moral basis that our current use of drones is really worse than bombing from B52's which, even if it had primarily military targets, was highly inaccurate and inevitably killed a lot of civilians. There is an even wider gap between the firebombing of entire cities and minimal drone use.

All other things are not equal, however. Factors that would not arise without new technology bring new questions. Advancing technology has brought tremendous destructive power within the capabilities of small groups and even individuals. The threat thus presented has evoked terror in entire populations and military responses of a magnitude once reserved for wars among nation states. Drones actually provide a way to step down the destructiveness of our military operations. The relative accuracy of drones and the relative potency of enemies not exclusively situated in or acting on behalf of a nation-state have prompted belief that it is justified to target individuals, including American citizens, who are within countries with which we are not at war. Furthermore, our use of drones has not been minimal. We have apparently targeted rescuers and mourners resulting in substantial loss of life. The American public seems to condone practices that once would have been widely understood to be beyond the pale. ) Our leaders claim the necessities of war, but whatever the necessities are and however war is defined, it remains quite a stretch to maintain our Constitution and laws provide for what amounts to assassination, not to speak of follow-up actions that once would have earned the consensus label of "atrocities." Are we legally "at war" with a non-governmental organization with no identifiable geographic base? How small can that organization be? Will a conspiracy of a few people do? How about a "lone wolf" who nevertheless may have frightening destructive power, especially as that power increases exponentially with advancing technology? How does that fit with, for instance, our history with Mafia figures "everyone knew" to be highly disruptive, destructive, and frequently lethal but whom we nevertheless did not so much as detain without due process of law? U.S. legal authorities may try to draw up fine legal points to obviate the Constitution's seemingly clear requirement that no person shall be deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law, but we are clearly not, as it were, "in Kansas" any more.

Many fine lawyers and serious commentators are already in deep and sometimes horrified arguments about the issues described above, however, and I have nothing enlightening to add to what they have already said and will say, although most of them may not recognize that the context of their arguments is set by political decay. I want to focus on some less morally based and legalistic but probably even more challenging problems.

There is little doubt that we will soon be able to target individuals with almost no "collateral damage." The military is developing mini-drones of highly varied sizes and capabilities. In a few years, they will no doubt be able to deploy something the size of a hummingbird, or perhaps a bumble-bee, that would seek out an individual (who might be identified through image recognition and artificial intelligence) and deliver, for instance, a lethal poison or tiny explosion directly on a target's temple, perhaps after being released from a larger drone. Maybe a swarm of tiny drones will be most practical for certain purposes. Now that is indistinguishable from assassination. The most murderous Borgia would be delighted with such devices.

Leave aside the legal questions and the question of whether minimal use of such devices is more or less moral than the bombing we've traditionally done. Consider that the U.S. government even now has no monopoly on drones, as their use has spread to other nations as well as domestic law enforcement agencies. Sooner or later (and, I would wager, uncomfortably soon) drones and their descendants will be in the hands of terrorist organizations, or even individuals. It is hard to imagine what might be an effective defense against them, and no public figure anywhere, the President of the United States included, will be safe.

It may take only a few prominent tragedies before nations will seek to outlaw any drones they cannot monopolize, and certainly any small drones employing artificial intelligence, just as, for instance, mustard gas was outlawed. Unfortunately, once the technology for making drones is highly developed and widely available, it is hard to see how any ban could be made effective. One can even imagine institutional blocks to a ban in the U.S. The NRA, for instance, will perhaps decide that drones small enough for an individual to carry deserve Second Amendment protection. So-called originalists on the Supreme Court who, even today, think the founders meant to include automatic weapons among the arms they wrote of during our revolutionary period will no doubt have equal difficulty distinguishing between front-loading muskets and lethal little drones. We can expect the Court to be highly protective of any commercial interests that might be damaged by a ban on drones. The manifestation of political decay that has elevated corporate profit above so many values our country once deemed absolute could thus cripple the effort to protect ourselves against even this excrescence of technology. It would be wise to begin control of drone usage now, before corporate commitment to the profits derived from them becomes too great. Unfortunately, leadership in this area does not seem likely from the one nation in the world that currently cannot even bring itself to join the international ban on land mines.

Robert Redford: 24 Hours to Stop the Pipeline - Be the Solution

2012-02-13T16:22:05Z

Every once in a while an opportunity comes along for all of us to be the solution. This is one of those times. We're collecting a half million messages to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in the next 24 hours.

This dirty, dangerous tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest. It's that simple. And the United States Senate, officials of both parties, need to hear that message loud and clear and fast because some of them are threatening to push a bill as soon as Tuesday, to approve it.

Go to www.stoptar.org and send a message. Then turn up the volume and send it to everyone you know....tweet it, Facebook it, blog it...urging everyone you know to become part of the solution in the next 24 hours. Go to www.stoptar.org, please, and send a message.

This U.S. Senate has to stop looking towards the past and move into the new century. If only some of these politicians showed the same level of passion for creating new markets around cleaner forms of energy, as they're showing for crippling a sitting president with a dirty, potentially highly dangerous, old-school Canadian tar sands pipeline.

This struggle is about every parent's fears for our children's future. And this struggle is about every young person's hope for their immediate future. It should be every parent's worst nightmare that these people we sent to Washington to lead us into the future, will continue to embrace the flawed philosophical case for doing nothing.

This do nothing option is the same flawed recommendation that economists made in the 1960's and 1970's to the automobile industry. Imagine something like seat belts being seen as the jobs killer of that day. We should not make the same mistake around energy.

Be the solution. Send a message! Go to www.stoptar.org.

Sheri and Allan Rivlin: How Many 'Third Parties' Will There Be In 2012?

2012-02-13T16:00:05Z

Last weekend, comedian Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for President of the United States of America. This bid is a bit more serious than the short lived candidacy of another comedian, Steven Colbert, earlier this year. Roseanne's plan is to use her celebrity to gain attention for the Green Party, before throwing her support to Jill Stein, the candidate she actually supports for the Green Party nomination which will be decided at the Green Party Convention in Baltimore in July. Roseanne's announcement will not be the last effort to capture headlines on political pages with "third party" bids in 2012 -- and we expect quite a few of them will reach the front pages as well.

The unusual pattern that emerged last year in the contest for the Republican nomination helps demonstrate how easy it has become to have a presidential campaign surge. With voters searching for alternatives, the media hungry for a new story, new online technologies facilitating communications among communities of likeminded supporters, and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision opening doors to sources of unlimited, nearly instant, infusions of campaign cash; many of the hurdles to quick campaign success have been lowered. If the remarkable pattern of monthly Republican frontrunner changes had structural reasons, then the pattern could be repeated in the general election campaign for president next fall, with potentially several minor party or independent candidates rising in the polls and at least for a few weeks onto center stage.

Voters Will Be Searching for Alternatives

Until the recent measured and perhaps ephemeral optimism, the economy has been struggling to gain any real traction and President Barack Obama is still barely breaking even in public assessments of his job performance as the Democratic standard bearer. Mitt Romney is still struggling in his negative-toned effort to secure the Republican nomination against a surging Rick Santorum. Against this backdrop no televised political conversation ends these days without the question "Do you think there will be a third party?" or the common variants: "Will Ron Paul run as a third party?" "Will there be a third party bid in the center, from the Tea Party, or from the Occupy Wall Street supporters?"

Our answer is a bold prediction: There will not be one "third party" candidate in 2012. There will be lots of minor party and independent candidates for president. Several of them may seem like a pretty big deal at least for a period of a few weeks in the long campaign cycle yet to unfold.

First a reminder about terminology: As we have noted, the term "third party" is nearly always a misnomer. There are far too many parties searching for votes in addition to the Democrats and Republicans for them all to be counted as "third" and quite often independent candidates make no effort to actually form a party. We expect it will be the numbers game that finally forces headline writers to abandon the "third party" cliché in favor of the more accurate term, "independent candidate" or as warranted, "Green Party candidate," "Libertarian Party candidate," "Socialist Party candidate," or simply, "candidate for president."

To ask if Ron Paul would run as a "third" party candidate is an insult to the Libertarian Party he represented in 1988, and to the many announced candidates for the Libertarian Party nomination in 2012 which will be decided at the Libertarian Party Convention in May. The question of whether Paul would seek the nomination he has held in the past is one we will leave to the political chatterers. But there is real value in the Libertarian Party Nomination, as well as the Green Party Nomination, and on the left, the Socialist Party USA, in the ability all have shown in gaining access to the ballots in all 50 states or at least several states. And getting on the ballot is what it's all about for independent and minor party candidates for president. There are many hurdles to for a presidential campaign to overcome, but for structural reasons, the game has changed, and many of the hurdles have been lowered.

A presidential campaign needs several things:

A central rationale for voter's support
Money: "the life blood of politics"
The attention of the media
A place in the debates
Access to the ballot in as many states as possible

But the repeated surges in the contest for the Republican nomination demonstrate how most of these barriers have been lowered by structural changes to the machinery of campaigning in 2012. The first of these is lower to the degree that voters are clearly dissatisfied with the choices they have, as they clearly have been for a year with Mitt Romney as the Republican frontrunner and the cast of other hopefuls. It does not take much imagination to see voters may be disappointed with a face-off between President Obama and Romney if he wins the Republican nomination.

After the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case there are many ways to raise campaign money in a hurry, from a single large donation from a billionaire or corporation to fundraising online. All campaigns also now have access to the internet-based techniques pioneered in the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 and perfected in the Obama campaign in 2008 for communicating with supporters and raising money quickly through "crowd sourcing" also known as "money bombs."

The surge and bust cycle of the Republican primaries shows how much appetite the media has for the new story, so any independent campaign can expect press attention to turn their way whenever there is a lull in other news. "Why Not X?" stories will become commonplace for a few weeks until the Opposition Research surfaces from any campaigns that feel threatened by the surging independent candidate and then the press will be just as delighted to write "Here's Why Not X" stories.

There is time for this cycle to repeat several times between now and November. There could be a boomlet in the spring for one independent candidate followed by a surge for another "third party" bid in early summer, leaving time for another cycle to turn before or after the Olympics. Who will emerge as these candidates? Well we may not know their names yet. Herman Cain was not at the top of anyone's list of business leaders six months before he was leading national polls for the Republican nomination. Anyone who has run a medium sized business, commanded troops in battle, been Senator or Governor from any state, could look in the mirror and see a president.

Given the challenge of getting on state ballots, the nominations for the major minor parties are all worth getting and worth watching. The internet based AmericansElect.org has already gained access in 16 states, so it has the chance to become, at least temporarily, much more than a curiosity. This could become a vehicle for Ron Paul or former governors Buddy Roemer or Gary Johnson. But Americans Elect does not have to be the only game in town. Anyone that can raise a big pile of money can hire a whole mess of lawyers, and gain access to a few state ballots.

Bruce Reyes-Chow: We Are Christianity: An Open Letter To Frustrated Christians In The United States

2012-02-13T15:51:25Z

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

My name is Bruce Reyes-Chow and I too am a Christian. I am also a Presbyterian minister, a husband, a father and a Democrat. Identifiers claimed, I write to you today because I am frustrated with the singular version of Christianity that is dominating today's public and political discourse.

Like many of you from across the theological and political spectrum, I am disturbed by the religious rhetoric that is defining Christianity in the United States today: one that employs inflammatory rhetoric over civil discourse, favors easy-answers over nuanced thought and seeks political victory over the common good. This is not the Christianity that I live. I believe that faithful Christians -- from "liberal" to "conservative" -- can vigorously disagree on significant social and political issues like abortion, marriage equality, health care, etc., without tearing down the dignity of the other, giving up the complexities of faith or inflicting pain upon another member of the Body of Christ.

³⁷ Jesus replied: '"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." --Matthew 22

The Christianity that I embrace compels me to follow God's calling into the world, and to do so with vigor, discipline and love.

I am generally against unity based on a negative, but we are at a time when remaining silent is a luxury that we can no longer afford. For if the current dominant version of the Christian faith continues to be cast as the one true version, the great diversity of our collective thought and theology will further cease building up the body as a whole. At some point our participation in the abdication of the Christian voice in the United States to the version of Christianity that politicians, pundits and the media would like it to be can no longer be tolerated. Unless we want our Christian faith to continue to be defined for us, we must seize this time, join our voices and reclaim the diversity of Christianity in the United States that we all know exists.

All together now: We are Christianity!

Because there is a broad expression of Christianity in the United States and lifting up a singular alternative would only perpetuate the idea of one "right" Christianity, taking a pledge or signing a contract would be silly. Instead, if this letter resonates with you -- Blue Dog Roman Catholic Democrat or a Log Cabin Episcopal Republican -- you are invited to publicly claim your spot in the larger Christian family by adding your name to the "We are Christianity!" petition and/or liking and uploading a photo to the Facebook Page.

Other than that, I hope that you will take every opportunity to model graciousness, extend respect and shower dignity as you passionately, publicly and faithfully live and express your Christian faith.

May the peace of Christ be with you.

Bruce Reyes-Chow, Christian

This letter originally appeared on Reyes-Chow.com.