Month: January 2005

The Politics of Branding

Today’s must-read link is Ezra Klein on the politics of branding.

Although Democrats have often been called the party of identity politics (in the sense that a significant part of Democratic party politics has been built around a coalition of ‘identity blocs’ such as women, gays, Latinos, etc), Ezra contends that actually it’s the Republicans who have done a much more complete and successful job of it:

Over the past 30 years, Republicans have successfully merged identity with politics, the importance of which is almost impossible to overstate. When your party affiliation becomes enmeshed with your sense of self, attacks on your candidate become attacks on your person, and thus ends any hope of being convinced out of your position. No longer are you dealing with policy or evaluating arguments, now your personal defenses are up, your worth is being called into question, and the rightness of your original position is transcendentally important.

And he’s got a really good point. One big problem with identity politics as practiced by Democrats has been that it has not yet managed to promote a sense of overall party unity.

In some ways the Republicans have had it easier. Their membership is not very diverse, so it’s easier for them to create that feeling of commonality that has allowed so many republicans to feel their political identity is a part of their core self. Democrats have not done a very good job of convincing people that, say, a working-class Latino union member and a tenured gay university professor have a true common cause despite all the surface differences. It’s certainly not an easy job, but it’s more and more obvious that it is a vital one.

The Circle Turns

So SBC is trying once again to acquire AT&T (or what’s left of it). I suspect the deal has a much better chance of being approved today than it did the last time SBC tried this, and if it does go through, I’ll be sad. It’s extremely rare that a corporation lasts as long and becomes as well known as AT&T, and seeing it finally join the scrapheap of dead brands would be noteworthy. And the final irony, of course, is that the acquirer is a corporation that was spun off from the old AT&T in the first place. In a way I suppose that is appropriate.

As a shareholder, I should be happy. My AT&T stock has gone from being a significant piece of my portfolio to a pile of more or less worthless spinoff stocks. I never sold it off more our of nostaliga than anything else — a bad reason to make an investment move, I know.

Back To School

Yesterday was my first day of classes at USF. I’ve spent part of this morning sorting through all the handouts I got yesterday and trying to get a handle on exactly how much time getting all my homework done is going to take.

I’m taking four courses this semester; two “quant” courses (Decision Modeling/Data Analysis and Accounting) and two “soft” courses (Leadership Dynamics and Management Communications). The ‘soft’ courses will be slightly easier in that I am a little more comfortable writing papers than I am crunching numbers, but either way it’s going to be a lot of work.

I’ve already got a paper due Tuesday and about 8 chapters of preliminary material to read through, and two classes have yet to meet this week. I’ve committed to working 3 days a week, which leaves me the other 4 to go to my classes and get all my work done. I should be able to manage, but it’s going to be pretty exhausting.

One of the things USF pushes hard is diversity and the study group I’m in for my Leadership class is pretty darn diverse. Of the five members, one is fresh off the airplane from India, another is from Thailand, and a third is from the heartland of Indiana. Then there’s me, the Jewish gal from NYC, and another girl who has lived in a number of different parts of the US. It should be interesting to see how we all work together.

On the not so bright side, I noticed that one of my professors takes what seemed to me to be gratuitous swipes at evolution/Darwin in his course notes. As much as I like to ignore the fact, I am indeed attending a Jesuit school, and I need to remember that at least some religiosity is to be expected. Hopefully I’ll be able to go on ignoring it most of the time.

No On Gonzales

Markos and the gang over at Daily Kos are taking a stand on Alberto Gonzales’ nomination for the post of Attorney General. In light of my post earlier today about making a difference, sign me up, too.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. In this case, we, the undersigned bloggers, have decided to speak as one and collectively author a document of opposition. We oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the position of Attorney General of the United States, and we urge every United States Senator to vote against him.

As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales’s advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Convention, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales’s legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law’s undoing.

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales’s endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions “quaint.”

Legal opinions at the highest level have grave consequences. What were the consequences of Gonzales’s actions? The policies for which Gonzales provided a cover of legality – views which he expressly reasserted in his Senate confirmation hearings – inexorably led to abuses that have undermined military discipline and the moral authority our nation once carried. His actions led directly to documented violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and widespread abusive conduct in locales around the world.

Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: “After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should ‘judge us by our actions [and] watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes.'” We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate to reject Alberto Gonzales’s nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, “[t]he world is indeed watching.” Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?

With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

Signed,

Fiat Lux

The Power to Change Things

If you ever doubt that one person can’t do anything to change things, here’s an example to the contrary, albeit not necessarily a very positive one:

A fire that began with a homeless person trying to keep warm by igniting wood and refuse in a shopping cart has crippled two of the city’s subway lines, which might not be restored to normal capacity for three to five years, officials said today.

The Sunday afternoon blaze in Lower Manhattan was described as the worst damage to subway infrastructure since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It gutted a locked room that is no larger than a kitchen but contains some 600 relays, switches and circuits that transmit vital information about train locations.

“This is a very significant problem, and it’s going to go on for quite a while,” said the president of New York City Transit, Lawrence G. Reuter. He estimated that it would take “several millions of dollars and several years” to reassemble and test the intricate network of custom-built switch relays on which the two lines rely.

In the meantime, long waits and erratic service are likely to be the norm on the A and C lines.

[snip]

In a statement, the transit agency said there were “no plans for the restoration of C service in the near future.”

If I were still living in my old apartment in NYC this would have directly affected me; the Spring Street C/E station was half a block from me and I took the C several times a week.