A Long Look in the Mirror

The world is a crazy place.

It’s been a little less than a month since recordings made by “V. Stiviano” broke and revealed Donald Sterling to be a racist. Well, most people who cared to listen knew already, but at least it made his bigotry known to the wider American populace. The following month has been a whirlwind of condemnation, outrage, and hopeless backtracking. This all lead to appropriate, unforgiving justice, even if it wasn’t necessarily what one would call swift, given Sterling’s established record. With all that being said, I have two words I want to say to him:

Thank you.

Get Out and Vote but Stop Calling Ken Cuccinelli Evil

Originally Published 11/3/2013

Updated 12/6/2021

Hey Virginians! Today, November 5th, is election day. Go out and cast your ballot, make your voice heard and take advantage of the privilege of democratic elections. By all means if you have time you should be getting others to do the same. I realize that most people have ‘real jobs’ to get to and very few people have the luxury of taking a day off to get out the vote, but if you’re out there on the ground more power to you.

Here’s the thing: I loathe election day Facebook posts. They are the yard signs of the digital age. I’m not saying you shouldn’t post “Hey Virginia, get out and vote for Terry!” I’m not opposed to yard signs, either. All I’m saying is they’re not entirely helpful. I realize that many people on my newsfeed have been present at numerous phone banks and between my friends on Facebook the number of doors knocked for the Democratic ticket is in the thousands (probably the tens of thousands), and to those people, even if you only made three hours of phone calls during the campaign, I applaud you.

End of the Shutdown or: Why I Hate a Shutdown and You Should Too

Much has been said about the shutdown already, by politicians and the media and the internet peanut gallery, but I’d like to lay out some of my thoughts on the last two weeks.

This shutdown was unfair to federal workers and contractors, who aren’t more likely than anyone else to want their jobs used as political props, and who don’t deserve to be punished, despite what some commentators may think. Of course, we now know that federal employees will receive back pay; when the House of Representatives voted unanimously over a week ago to pay furloughed workers, it kind of made me wonder how the shutdown was supposed to save us money.

Which it didn’t. The shutdown cost our government billions of dollars. I’m not sure how the ‘fiscal conservatives’ that engineered this mess justified that to themselves- though I’m guessing that they just didn’t give a shit. They seemed only to want to make the point that a government shutdown wouldn’t be the end of the world. And it wasn’t. A half percentage point off our quarterly growth isn’t nothing, but America proved that we could live without the government for a couple weeks.

12 Years

I’m writing this because I feel the need to say how I feel, yet I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling myself. It sits uncomfortably between sadness, nostalgia, and resolve. I am sad thinking about all the lives lost 12 years ago. My nostalgia comes from remembering a “simpler, safer” time that died with all those innocent people at around 7:30 AM September 11, 2001. But, if I’m honest with myself, I know that I don’t really remember what those times were like. I was almost 11 when the towers fell, I was just becoming truly aware of the world around me. I may have been born a decade before 9/11, but I don’t think I can truly say I grew up in a pre-9/11 world. Still, I believe people who tell me I would have felt more secure then. It’s a very strange feeling.

It’s even stranger for me that 11-year old kids now experience 9/11 as a moment in history. They probably know it happened, they may know what transpired, but they weren’t alive when it happened. To them, the “post-9/11 world” is just “The World.” It’s the way things have been since they were born. I don’t know how to describe my reaction to that, either.

Way More Than Miley: My Favorite Moments of The VMAs

Okay, so this is a bit of a change of pace from the usual political stuff that we put up on The Youth Caucus, but I noticed some interesting things about the MTV Video Music Awards — specifically the Internet’s reaction to them. So, bear with me as we become a pop culture blog for just a brief moment.

The Spirit of the Law

Zimmerman (left) and Martin (right)

George Zimmerman is not guilty.

George Zimmerman — who killed an unarmed, 17-year old boy — is not guilty. I know I’m not the only one who sees something horribly wrong with that sentence. Was he entirely to blame? No. I’m not willing to say that Zimmerman is a liar. I’m sure he felt like he was in danger of “death or great bodily harm.” I refuse to believe he got out of his car thinking: “Oh boy, I hope I get to shoot this kid.” I refuse to believe any humans are truly capable of those kinds of thoughts. Trayvon Martin should not have attacked George Zimmerman, but the reality is this: one man can tell his side of the story, the other can’t. You can hate George Zimmerman for what he did or the fact that he gets another chance while Martin doesn’t have that luxury, but you should hate the law.

Above all else, you should hate the law.

State of Play: DOMA, Prop 8, and the Failings of Federalism

I want to warn you in advance. For those of you who have read my work on this blog, you know I like to make my biases clear up front. I think it allows readers to take what I say with a grain of salt, to know that I don’t purport to come from a place of objective, impersonal judgement. I write on issues about which I feel very strongly. I write with as much factual support and logic as possible, but my bias always comes through in one way or another. This article is no different. I stand in firm, unwavering support for marriage equality. I also dislike the idea of states and, more importantly, the amount of power the states have in the current political system. Those two beliefs figure heavily into this post. Please discuss with me, tell me how my views conflict with yours. I don’t want to pretend that I am some sort of authority. I’m just a guy who cares a lot about politics. I don’t want to pontificate about how much righter my opinions are than yours, I want to say my piece and hear yours.

Well, with that bit of housekeeping out of the way….

My reaction to today’s landmark Supreme Court decisions — Hollingsworth v. Perry (Prop 8) and United States v. Windsor (DOMA) — were rather mixed. On one hand, the federal government  has now afforded same-sex marriage the same respect and benefits as “traditional” marriage. Plus, the roster of states (and DC) that observe and perform same-sex marriage has gone from 13 to 14. Those are both big wins; they are arguably bellwethers of more victories on the horizon. But, both came with a distressing double-edge: the Supreme Court has given all the power in the same-sex marriage debate to the states.

“The Most Depressing Election in America”

If you’re a normal person, the year after a Presidential election is one in which all political thoughts move to the back of your mind. In 2013, with Barack Obama re-elected and a Congress with much the same make-up as the previous two years, most people would think that everything will remain the same at least until next year’s mid-terms. That is precisely the problem the Terry McAuliffe campaign is facing this year in the Virginia gubernatorial contest. A problem the Cuccinelli campaign is hoping  to capitalize on. The hope seems to be that a Republican can sneak into the governor’s mansion under the radar against a weak Democratic candidate while in a state that voted twice for Obama.

Left: Terry McAuliffe, Right: Cuccinelli. How fitting.

I am not a normal person. I’m following this race very closely. As a person who prides myself on my political activism, it’s important to me that I make an informed decision whenever I go to the polls. Among political commentators who are actually widely read, it seems that the general feeling is that this election is a “race to the bottom.”

The Tide May Have Turned

If you don’t know what austerity is at this point, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the 2010 Merriam-Webster word of the year. I just linked you to a good definition of the word, but it’s also easy enough to provide one here. Austerity, in the context of economics, is a policy regimen involving cuts to government spending and tax increases designed to reduce government budget deficits and address long-term debt. This concept has been the dominant idea in western economic policy over the last 3-4 years. The problem? It absolutely does not work, especially in this, a demand-side crisis.

Again, I’d like to pull out my favorite Keynes quote. “The boom, not the bust, is the time for austerity.”

A Quick Word on the Boston Manhunt

I don’t know who out there thinks the lockdown of the Boston metro area the other day was uncalled for, but I know they exist. I really want to put this out there real quick – they’re wrong.

I might be 3,000 miles away, but I saw the images coming out of Boston just like everybody else and I don’t think the massive military presence was unjustified. In fact, I think it was exactly the right reaction. As Deval Patrick said today, I think it was fully understood by the community that the lockdown was in place for no other reason than to apprehend the suspects and keep Boston safe.

It may have looked like Kabul, Afghanistan but it was Boston, MA and there was a damn good reason to lock down the city. On top of that, it was a success. Anyone who thinks that Boston becoming a police state for one day is hilariously off-base. Those people should be thankful that they live in a place where when bombs go off it’s national news. For anyone who doesn’t know, while three people died and scores were injured in Boston, this happened in Afghanistan. Just a bit of perspective.