Example:

What Bush said:

“I said when I was running for President, I supported ethanol, and I meant it. (Applause.) I support it now, because not only do I know it's important for the ag sector of our economy, it's an important part of making sure we become less reliant on foreign sources of energy.” – Bush at South Dakota Ethanol Plant 4/24/02

What actually happened:

According to the AP, Bush’s 2004 budget proposes to eliminate funding for the bioenergy program that funds the Dakota Ethanol Plant he visited. [4/22/02]

John Perry Barlow has written a surprisingly even-handed message to Farber's list that says: "With the possible exception of Bill Gates, Dick Cheney is the smartest man I've ever met." So, he asks, what's going through Cheney's head? How can the world's only super-power protect its global interests and stabilize the world? Answer: By acting like "the Mother of All Rogue States, run by mad thugs in possession of 15,000 nuclear warheads they are willing to use...By these terrible means, they will create a world where war conducted by any country but the United States will seem simply too risky and the Great American Peace will begin."

Yes, that Cheney is brilliant! And the plan can't fail ... so long as the people we're subjugating can't get their hands on any box cutters.

Weinberg: On the other hand, staying in Iraq with inspectors on an almost indefinite time would be vastly cheaper in terms of money and lives than having a war. Unfortunately, the administration, through its tremendous buildup and through its words and actions, has really painted itself into a corner. They've made it very difficult for themselves to accept a revised, renewed, revivified regime of inspections. It's hard to see how this administration is not going to start a war. They put themselves into a position where they can hardly not. The way that this crisis has been handled by our administration is unbelievably clumsy and stupid.

Bruce Sterling: I have to concur. May I ask my fellow pundits here, if any of you besides me actually went to that (antiwar) demonstration?

Weinberg: No.

Sterling: Six hundred cities. It was the largest demonstration in the history of the human race. I didn't see that covered on Fox News. Now, the people inside the Beltway have been drinking their own bath water. They believe their own hype. They have no idea that the first regime change they're likely to see is going to be Tony Blair's head on a platter.

IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE that we should have reacted to the attacks of September 11, 2001, by curtailment of civil rights, by defiance of laws, and by resort to overwhelming force, for those things are the ready products of fear and hasty thought. But they cannot protect us against the destruction of our own land by ourselves. They cannot protect us against the selfishness, wastefulness, and greed that we have legitimized here as economic virtues, and have taught to the world. They cannot protect us against our government's long standing disdain for any form of self sufficiency or thrift, or against the consequent dependence, which for the present at least is inescapable, on foreign supplies, such as oil from the Middle East.

"Size of protest, it's like deciding, 'Well I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group.' The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security - in this case - security of the people... Democracy is a beautiful thing, and that people are allowed to express their opinion. Some in the world don't view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree."

Update

Q Thank you, Mr. President. What do you make of the fact that millions of people across the globe have taken to the streets to protest your approach to Iraq? And if you decide to go to war, how do you wage a campaign in the face of such stiff opposition?

THE PRESIDENT: Two points, one is that democracy is a beautiful thing, and that people are allowed to express their opinion. I welcome people's right to say what they believe. Secondly, evidently some of the world don't view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree. Saddam Hussein has gassed his own people. Saddam Hussein has got weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein has made -- defied the United Nations. Saddam Hussein is providing links to terrorists. Saddam Hussein is a threat to America. And we will deal with him.

[snip]

Q Given the size of the protests in England over the weekend, do you have any concerns that Tony Blair might pay a serious political price for supporting you on Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: I think any time somebody shows courage, when it comes to peace, that the people will eventually understand that. First of all, you know, size of protest, it's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security -- in this case, the security of the people. Tony Blair understands that Saddam Hussein is a risk.

Pete sent one other comment from the same transcript, which, as Pete says, is "just as scary":

THE PRESIDENT: We're working with our friends and allies right now to -- how best to get a resolution out of the United Nations. As I say, it would be helpful to get one out. It's not necessary, as far as I'm concerned.

Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and author of Terrorism and the Constitution, reviewed the draft legislation at the request of the Center, and said that the legislation “raises a lot of serious concerns. It’s troubling that they have gotten this far along and they’ve been telling people there is nothing in the works.” This proposed law, he added, “would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ‘suspicion,’ create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.”

Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., a Japanese-American who spent his early childhood with his family in an internment camp during World War II, said he spoke with Coble on Wednesday to learn more about his views.

"I'm disappointed that he really doesn't understand the impact of what he said," Honda said. "With his leadership position in Congress, that kind of lack of understanding can lead people down the wrong path."

Nature has worked well for billions of years by making vast numbers of very small bets. This minimizes the risk that a single bad outcome could inflict. For this reason, our conservative brethren are correct in asserting Big Government is a problem. To the extent that Big Government represents a bet too big that imposes unacceptable risks, it is a problem that demands our attention. The failure of the old Soviet Union comes to mind.

But the riskiness of big bets doesn’t apply just to Big Government. It also applies to Big Business. And that’s the big bet today’s conservatives ask us to make over and over. The conservatives of course don’t call it a big bet. They call it “privatization” and “consolidation.” But they can’t have it both ways. If they want bigger and bigger bets on business, then we need government to protect the long term good for all by restraining the worst excesses of unfettered market capitalism with its narrow focus and myopic time scales. If conservatives want smaller government, they will have to agree to smaller businesses.

Perhaps the consequences of the GOP agenda – small government and very large corporations – are unintended, but the result is to place profits over democracy. Some examples:

1] Tax policy. Tax cuts are blatantly being used de-fund and shrink the size of the government below the critical mass required for the effective protection of our long term common goals. This is the ultimate Big Business “deregulation” strategy: ever-smaller government with ever-larger, unfettered, corporations.

2] Media consolidation. A handful of corporations and their owners now own and control the vast majority of all our mass media. Should we bet the quality of the information required for effective self-government on so few who have so much profit at stake?

3] Environmental policy. The hydrogen car gambit from the Bush administration is a new Big Bet on a single technology rather than setting a goal and encouraging entrepreneurs and inventors to come up with many smaller bets. [Thanks to David Reed for this example of the Big Bet strategy.]

4] Spectrum. Today we persist in a regulatory approach that forces a “Closed Spectrum” upon us, based on the limitations of technology at the beginning of the 20th century. With few exceptions, only a wealthy elite can use our common spectrum today. Now, however, we could choose an Open Spectrum approach that would enhance the Free Speech rights of all.

5] Corporate Personhood. An old Big Bet is that there should be few limits on the power of corporations. It accorded them the status of individuals, with the same rights and protections as flesh and blood citizens, we have created a class of “persons” with huge wealth and single-minded greed. We need to reverse this Big Bet, removing and excluding corporations from the First Amendment rights intended for human individuals.

6] Civil Liberties. A new Big Bet is restricting our civil liberties in the name of “National Security”. For two hundred years we have put our trust in many small security bets on each and every citizen. Should we now only put our faith in a mammoth government bureaucracy that demands we give up significant private freedoms?

7] Copyright. Just as the free market suffers when too much capital is concentrated in a few hands, the free market of ideas suffers when ideas are prevented from circulating through overzealous copyright extensions. But this madness, in the name of profits, is actually one of the internal contradictions that will self-limit the Big Business bet: Once the abuse of copyright has extinguished the inventive spirit that has energized our culture, the culture will falter in the face of competition from abroad.

8] Balloting. Promoting private sector control of public voting via the computerized voting box is a new Big Bet that corporations can be trusted to run our political affairs. This creates a risk of unknown size for substantial vote manipulation and election fraud. Since the goals of the political process are often in conflict with corporate goals, why would we want the corporate wolfs to count the sheep on the commons?

All of the examples above, as well as numerous others, look like a winning strategy for a take over of our political and civil society by the promoters of the Big Business bet.

In the long run, this is a recipe for the self-destruction of the very things that made us a great nation in the first place. It is ironic that it’s the so-called “conservatives”, with their radical fear of change, complexity and ambiguity, who are foisting this upon us.

The question facing us immediately is: How do we return to many small bets with acceptable risks? How do we restore balance to the relative size of government and the size of corporations? How do we balance a need to maximize the common, long term, good for all with the need to minimize the risks imposed by rampant market capitalism with its self centered goals and very short time horizons?

Those are values too important to be jeopardized in the conservative’s Big Bets on the roll of the dice.

[Thanks to David Weinberger & David Reed for commenting on earlier drafts.]
posted by Jock Gill on 2:13 PM
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