Dahlia Lithwick briefly chronicles some of the travails faced by returning veterans that try to rejoin civilian society, including the quite high crime rate among this group with the “Department of Veterans Affairs estima[ting] that veterans account for 10 percent of the people with criminal records.”

Now, other groups that exhibit high crime rates seem to be treated with a lock them up and throw away the key mentality but in 2008 a Judge started a program trying to help former U.S. soldiers who had run afoul of the law through a veterans’ court that used targeted interventions that that took into account some of the challenges these veterans faced, such as addiction, homelessness and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. There is at least some evidence that these interventions are both more effective and more humane than a traditional approach would have achieved with these offenders. This model has been adopted by some cities and counties and Senators Kerry and Murkowski have proposed legislation to expand these programs further. These veterans’ courts follow other targeted intervention models like drug courts that have also demonstrated some success. However, successful or not, these programs strike me as unfairly elevating some Americans above others.

This is just another example of how veterans are given rights above and beyond what we have. I don’t want this to come of ungrateful to the heroic service these men and women have given us. I would happily increase the services offered to returning troops. Lithwick cites a Department of Veterans Affairs number estimating that there are 131,000 homeless vets. That is unacceptable and I feel every veteran should have guaranteed housing if he or she is not able to provide housing on his or her own. Similarly, we should be spending a lot more to aggressively provide treatment for PTSD. High quality treatment has a remarkable capacity to fix broken lives and reduce the great pain that veterans and their families suffer from that and other physical and mental injuries brought back from the battlefield. We have not been willing to make the financial sacrifices to ensure that those who risked life and limb for us are treated right when they get back home.

However, I am bothered that a veteran offender with PTSD might get special consideration and treatment while an individual with PTSD from a traumatic event from his or her civilian life would not. Just as I approve of many of the financial fraud protections that veterans get and I don’t, I do think that we should be trying to re-shape our criminal justice system to have better outcomes for offenders-helping them put their lives together and reducing recidivism. When necessary and appropriate, courts should be using drug treatment and mental health treatment to help ensure that offenders are no longer pushed into further crimes by their various demons. Those who didn’t have the skills to navigate society in a healthy and legal manner before should be given those skills during their incarceration. And those on probation and parole should be given the appropriate incentives and guidance to succeed, such as with Hawaii’s pilot HOPE program.

These things are all good things and I suppose it is better that veterans get those things rather than no body getting those things. And maybe we can give extra protections to veterans as a stepping stone to giving them to all Americans. If these extra rights are good enough for veterans-protecting them from real dangers and injustices-then maybe they are good enough for all of us. After all, it is liberty and justice for all, not liberty and justice for a few targeted groups.

Now, the new Heilemann/Halperin book seems to have really gone full-court press at digging up unpleasant dirt. The part on the Edwardses is nasty and the use of an anonymous account of a dead dude’s comment to smear Clinton seems par for the course as well. Of course Halperin, who critiqued Obama’s lack of party going recently, seems to embrace the Washingtonian society mentality and seems to consider recording the gripes of jilted staffers anonymously trashing their foes to be high journalism.

Of course, Reid seems to be his trophy buck. Reid seems to have told Halperin on background, who promptly reported it on foreground, that Obama could have been the first black president due to his lighter skin tone and his ability to forgo a manner of speaking that would be racially coded as black. Except Reid used a less politically correct way of saying it, saying that Obama could “speak with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Now obviously Reid was stupid to have used that word since when the adjective embattled has already been added to your name as an additional title you probably want to avoid having the phrase “race controversy” as the object of any sentence in which you are a subject. And while plenty are defending him or attacking him, I’d add two separate points.

First off, its pretty funny to see the linguistic contortions people are making to rephrase Reid’s remarks. Ebonics gets used to describe what Reid was going for. Various people have referred to a black dialect or an African-American dialect. A commenter on Matt Yglesias’ blog describes it as “Urban African American Vernacular English.” As for me, I think Yglesia’s phrasing, speaking “in a manner racially coded as black,” kinda hits the mark. It’s not like what’s being described is only spoken by black people. Whites, Asians and Native Americans all can use it. Furthermore, obviously enough, not all black people use it. Instead, what is the object of discussion is a way of speaking that is coded racially and used by people of a variety of races.

Second, fuck all Republicans who compare Reid’s comments with Trent Lott’s. This is not to say that Reid’s comments should (or shouldn’t) be excused, that’s a different debate. What I am saying is consider the meaning of what each uttered, regardless of poor word choice. Reid said that Obama’s electoral chances improved due to how he looked and how he spoke. Reid’s political assertions may say something about us and his poor word choice may say something about him. But, on the face of it he was making an accurate statement about our political climate. Lott’s statement asserted that things would have been much better had Strom Thurmond been president. Unless Thurmond had some surprise policy positions (getting a head start in the fight against global climate change), what Lott meant is that under Thurmond, racial segregation would have been expanded and extended and that is a good thing. On the face of it, Lott was making a statement that a racist society would have been a better society.

I think, on the whole, the reasonable next step for all of American society would be to avoid this latest bit of backstabbing and rumor-mongering and to further ignore all future writings of Halperin. Digby pretty well evokes how I feel about this whole mess.

Love,
Drizzle

Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived TWO atomic bombs.

This is pretty hard to do for a number of reasons.

First, they didn’t exactly hand these things out like candy, you had a pretty narrow space/time window to get an atomic bomb dropped on you (though the fact that we did drop two on the same country at least makes it slightly easier, if we bombed Hiroshima and then say dropped the next one on Calgary, it would have made Tsutomu’s story less likely and surprised some Canadians but good)

Second, it’s an atomic bomb!

Nuff said, this guy is tough.

Love,
Drizzle

However, this article in the New York Times suggests I may have been too hasty with my words. Mainly they posit that the AT&T network is actually great and actually the IPhone itself is poorly made, but because people <3 the Macs, everyone blames AT&T anyhow. Of course network service, like politics, is all local and maybe AT&T has a terrible DC network. But I will take this opportunity to apologize to AT&T for my rash judgments and hurtful statements. This incident also shows how hard it is to make good consumer decisions – it isn't just that it is hard for me to personally find out which phone and which network is better, it is that it is seemingly hard for anyone to get the necessary information.

Which is why I will keep you posted on my IPhone adventures, in an endeavor to make my loyal readers the best informed readers possible.

Love,
Drizzle

I love meat and to ask me to give up a steak is like asking the bird not to fly or the piranha not to swim to a cow and eat it. So I’m quite happy that we’ve taken some initial steps into developing meat that is cruelty-free and less harmful to the environment.

Huzzah science, you’ve done it again.

Love,
Drizzle

So I’m going to talk about meat. Meat is delicious as evidenced here and here. However, I eat too much of it. Mainly, I’m aware that meat is sooooo bad for the environment, the carbon emissions per calorie basically means a nice steak is a kick to the face for the planet (by the way, I can’t really find good and consistent numbers on carbon emissions per calorie, if a loyal reader can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it).

The problem with my meat eating ways and the environment is that I’m lazy. It is hard to change one’s ways, especially when that change involves fewer burgers in my life. What would make it easier would be if someone could somehow build in the environmental impact into something I already consider when making life decisions, something like price perhaps. And bam!, we could have a carbon tax and I would reapportion my consumption to reflect the new pricing structure and then I could be green and smug about it and get to eat a substantial but not unreasonable amount of meat.

Now, we won’t see a carbon tax in our political future. When the dude or dudette who invented it decided the second word should be tax, he or she basically guaranteed that it is politically dead. That’s sad, not only for me but even for conservative economists like Greg Mankiw, who see a carbon tax as a great way to raise needed revenue in a way that reduces economic distortion (the bane of economists). But we do have Waxman-Markey, (Kerry-Boxer in the Senate), a delicious little cap and trade bill that will hopefully also get me to eating my greens.

The downside of cap and trade is that it is complex to run, what with all the capping and the trading. Carbon tax would ideally be simple, like the sales tax. However, a cap and trade approach actually lets you ensure you get the amount of emissions you want. If you have a carbon tax and set it too low, you’ll discover that a bunch of people really really like driving their hummers to the grocery store to buy delicious meat to burn on their charcoal grill while having a million lights on. That means too much carbon in the atmosphere and we’ll all get to experience what a post-apocalyptic setting looks like (I predict biker leather). Of course, cap and trade is basically great stimulus for lobbyists, they are going to have a great time meeting over steaks to figure out whose caps are set where. Still, the eventual winners will still be those who don’t want Ohio to be beach front property (I could do more research to give a more realistic outcome of what would happen in a catastrophic global warming scenario but every time I read climate change research I end up scared and depressed). And, while I may have to buy less meat, I still won’t actually have to think about the environmental consequences of my actions. Everybody wins. Hope that clarifies a bit why I’m excited about the prospects of climate change legislation. I’m sure some jackass centrist will muck it up (I’m looking at you Ben Nelson, this is your time to shine) but in the meantime we can let some glimmer of hope shine down, like a ray of Earth heating sunlight through our carbon filled skies.

But the point is that Corzine has sought solutions. And I’ve seen no evidence that Christie has at all. Yes, he proposes tax cuts and eliminating waste but the revenue that would be lost if the Christie tax cuts were enacted are more than the combined payroll of all state workers. If you really can’t vote for Corzine, at least consider Dagget, that man is at least willing to put forward a semi-coherent platform, unlike Christie. But I think you should go for the man who has been honest with New Jersey and been willing to make the tough choices, even if they weren’t the most politically expedient. A vote against Corzine is a vote for budgetary tricks, short-term thinking and letting New Jersey’s problems fester in the hope that magically they will get better. If you want New Jersey to be a Dirty Jerz you can be proud of, get your ass out and vote Corzine tomorrow.

Love,
Drizzle

Recommended reading for those still not convinced: State of Distress by Matt Bai

P.S. Full disclosure, I worked for the Corzine campaign in a quite small and poorly paid role in 2005. I thought he was right for New Jersey then and I still do.

I’m going to say it now: the iPhone will fail you.

I’m not going to say it doesn’t work. It usually does. And when it does, it is awesome. So much of it is well designed and well conceived. I wish the screen was a little less prone to getting covered in dirt but other than that I only have one complaint. Unfortunately that complaint is a doozy.

The iPhone will fail you. It will not work when you really need it to work because it is fundamentally unreliable. The most recent episode that sparked this griping was when I went shopping. The plan was to buy groceries and then rent a ZipCar using the fancy new ZipCar iPhone app. That’s awesome, you can rent a ZipCar through your iPhone? Can if the damn thing works. It didn’t. Unreliable signal prevented me from getting what I needed. Much frustration later I had to take a cab back due to an inability to rent a ZipCar and far too many groceries to try to walk or use Metro.

I’ll bet that 4 out of 5 times I try to use the iPhone ZipCar app it will work. The iPhone usually works and when it does, things are sweet. However, it often doesn’t, not just in this case but in a number of contexts where it was really important for me to have reliable phone or data service. Moreover, as the iPhone becomes more popular, I bet it will continue to lose reliability. That’s because, as Slate’s Farhad Manjoo points out, all these iPhone users (myself included) are swamping the network. So, my dear readers, if you haven’t already, please don’t get an iPhone. Not just because I, your gentle author, care so much about you. Also because I don’t want you crowding my network. Thanks in advance.

Love,
Drizzle

Things are looking pretty good for health care reform with a public option. Not the kind of public option that would really get progressives in a full-on hard-on joyfest but a public option of sorts. But which kind? Well, there is the level playing field public option, which would great a relatively weak public option that might be able to compete with insurance companies’ current prices but probably wouldn’t be strong enough to really drive down costs among the existing insurance companies. The level playing field would be offer some of the benefits of a robust public option and it wouldn’t threaten existing health care relations (i.e. insurance company profits) to the same degree as a robust public option. In other words, it is a compromise.

Another compromise being tossed around and floated in a trial balloon fashion is the Federalist public option. This would offer a robust public option but only to states that want it. I think this has a lot of promise. It seems to have votes in the Senate according to the vote counters, it has some intuitive appeal and if Big Tent Democrat and Ezra Klein agree on an approach to health care reform, there has gotta be something to it. To see Big Tent Democrat call Ezra Klein an accomodationist, go here.

So why do people like the Federalist public option? Couple of good reasons that I’ll discuss but part of it is, unfortunately, spite. Let me explain. If you are a progressive in this country, you’ve been stuck with politicians from more conservative areas telling you that you can’t have what you want and instead you have to accept what they want. This is true even when the Democrats have substantial majorities in the House and Senate and have the presidency, it is even true despite the fact that due to the vagaries of the Senate, politicians representing a small fraction of this country’s population are able to stymie progressive policy. So along comes a proposal that may give the good guys what they want and will give the bad guys what they want, and since what they want is bad for them, we get the extra joy of seeing the bad guys get crappy health care. A bunch of people are now thinking to themselves “No, I only support the Federalist public option because it is the best we can get, I’d take the whole hog if I only I could get said entire porcine beast. I don’t find extra favor with letting those jerk states opt-out, knowing that it will hurt them.” I call shenanigans on you, I see it in your eyes, that soft glimmer of anticipatory glee as you imagine the hordes of unruly voters calling on Kent Conrad to give them the public option that you, a loyal Blue Stater, are enjoying. The fact is, its easy to look forward to feeling smug about how you were enlightened and thus have good health care while the jerkfaces who tried to stop us got jack. Shoot, regular readers can probably detect a hint, or maybe even a dollop, of such emotions in my writing. However, seeing its rising prevalence I want to nip it in the bud in the progressive discourse for several reasons. 1) It makes us seem like jerks: how can we say we want to help people if we are laughing at the misfortune of those who disagreed with us, 2) It makes us look smug, like somehow we know better than everyone else and 3) as this writer so effectively puts it, it is a bad thing that vulnerable populations in conservative states will be left out of this. So, o voices of the left, in order to demonstrate the virtues of kindness, humility and charity, when we praise the public option we should do it without spite in our voices or our hearts lest we revel overmuch in the politics of spite.

But, despite my caution, we should still view the Federalist public option as the best compromise if compromise proves necessary. Why do I feel this way if it would leave out people who deserve access to affordable health care? I call it my “half-a-bridge” principal. As mentioned, the alternative to the Federalist public option is the level playing field public option. The level playing field public option threatens to leave a weak public option that would be like building half a bridge – it wouldn’t serve its purpose. Rather than build half a bridge in all fifty states, I think building a whole bridge in half the states would be the wiser compromise not only because it would better serve the people in those states but a public option that worked would be more likely to be replicated and offered to people in states that had initially opted out. Rather than the politics of spite, or even the politics of hope, this is the politics of pragmatism. Good policies will be replicated once you convince people that they work. Give people a few examples of working policy and they will want more, give people many examples of policy half-measures and they will remain unconvinced by government intervention. People have no need for half a bridge.

Hope that was enlightening. Talk to you soon.

Love,
Drizzle

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/10/david_kessler_corzines_campaig.php
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/10/corzine-attempting-juvenile-schoolyard-taunts-strategy.php
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/corzine-bigot

Did you notice which one was different than the others and why?

First off, the different response was Matt Yglesias’. The reason I note it as different is that he is the only one who seemingly WATCHED THE DAMN VIDEO HE IS DISCUSSING! Look at this quote from Jason Zengerle: “Is Corzine a bigot? After reading this NYT article on the Corzine campaign’s attempts to make an issue out of Chris Christie’s weight, I think I’d have to answer yes.” Note he says after reading the NYT article, not after watching the actual ad. I’ll grant you it is a whole thirty seconds long, so maybe he doesn’t have time. Also, it is on Youtube, so that is a pretty difficult place to locate videos.

So, for all you readers out there, here is the actual video. Watch it and judge for yourselves. Like Matt Yglesias, I feel the video focuses on whether Chris Christie got special treatment and not whether he has thunder thighs but your response may differ. The important thing is that your response is based on the actual source material and not a hack news piece by a hack reporter. If we actually take the time to critique the evidence when it is available, we will have a better national debate than the nonsense we’re stuck with now.

And, while we’re on the subject, I might as well also add that I agree with Big Tent Democrat. Politics are a contact sport and when your team tosses around the phrase death panels and imply that Obamarama is planning to kill old people for their meat, maybe you shouldn’t whine even if your political opponents make you look yucky in a campaign ad.

Anyhow, watch the ad and decide for yourself. Thanks for reading and avoid any death panels.

Love,
Drizzle