A lesson for progressive Democrats?

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Ted

James Dobson has a column in today’s New York Times where he states that, at a meeting of 50 pro-family groups, a decision was made: “If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate.” He further adds: “The other approach, which I find problematic, is to choose a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure. Polls don’t measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one’s principles.”

I don’t agree with Dobson’s position on abortion (or on much else for that matter). But I do admire his political drawing of the line here. It forced me to take another look at my own views on this matter.

Taking such a hard line entails two very huge risks. Let’s start by assuming that whatever third party candidate you endorse is going to lose. Either the Republican or Democratic candidate will win anyway. That said, there are two possible outcomes. On the surface, neither of the outcomes would be welcome.

The first is that the candidate of the party you would of otherwise endorsed (Republicans in the case of Dobson) wins anyway. If this happens, you run the risk of marginalizing yourself. The party sees that they can win without your support, indeed with your active opposition, The result is that your future influence is seriously eroded.

The other outcome is that, because of your shift to a third party, the party you would have otherwise endorsed loses. In Dobson’s case, this means the Democrats win. The risk for Dobson here is that he winds up putting someone in the White House who, on issues other than the key issue of abortion, disagrees with him far more than the Republican candidate does.

The Democrats faced this exact situation in 2000 when Ralph Nader, as the candidate of the Green Party, siphoned off enough votes from disgruntled Democrats, that Bush won. Although some dispute whether or not Nader’s candidacy altered the result, it remains a commonly held belief. The result was that, among mainline Democrats, Nader and his supporters were vilified. “If it wasn’t for you, there would have been no Bush and no invasion of Iraq…” And so on.

But perhaps mainline Democrats took the wrong spin here. Perhaps they should have said: “If we moved our positions closer to those of the Green Party on key issues, Nader would have not gotten so many votes. We would still have retained our votes and we would have won!”

What I like about this alternative spin is that it fosters change. If you get too frightened by the dual risks of going with a third party, and abandon the option under any circumstances, the two major political parties lose the incentive to respond to any concerns outside their comfort zone. You wind up getting a candidate like John Kerry, whom many Democrats supported reluctantly because they thought he could win rather than because they were excited at the prospect of him winning. And he lost anyway.

Maybe progressive Democrats could take a lesson from Dobson here. What we may need, if and when we are not satisfied with the party’s candidate, is not less support for third parties but more support. Sometimes you really do need to draw a line.

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Clarence Thomas on Nightline

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Ted

I watched Nightline’s interview with Clarence Thomas the other night. Mr. Thomas should be embarrassed to have given that interview. If he had any wisdom, he would request that all copies of it be destroyed. I know that Mr. Thomas sees it differently. He’s written a book describing how differently he sees it. That’s the problem.

Never mind that he once again asserts that Anita Hill was lying in her testimony, even though he offered no evidence to back this up. Indeed, at the time of his hearings and even now, it makes no sense to me why Anita Hill would subject herself to the public wringer that she went through if there was no truth in what she was saying. Maybe I am naive, but I believe her testimony more than I believe Thomas’s protestations. [By the way, you can read Ms. Hills’ reply to Thomas here.]

The real problem however is not Anita Hill. It is that, in the interview, Thomas revealed himself to be so bogged down in his own prejudices that it is hard to imagine how he can ever deliver a fair and reasoned ruling.

First, he blames everything bad that ever happened to him, and most especially the problems he had getting confirmed, on racism. Thomas sees every slight as a racial insult. If he gets the wrong change at a restaurant, it must be because the waitress is a racist.

Now, I am white and I readily admit that I can never fully understand the currents of racism that are felt by those of color. But come on! Assuming you go with the conservative interpretation of history (which I assume Thomas does), the same thing that happened to him happened to Judge Robert Bork. In fact, it was worse; Bork did not even wind up with an appointment to the court. Bork’s very name has become a verb to describe the sort of political manuveuring that can shoot down a nomination. And, guess what? Bork isn’t black. Racism did not figure into the Bork process any more than it was a significant factor in the opposition to Thomas. Thomas sees his opposition as a coordinated racist conspiracy (even when some of his opposition came from African American groups) rather than groups of people that opposed him on ideological grounds that had nothing to do with race.

Second, he describes “liberals” (which, according to Thomas, includes pretty much anyone and everyone who opposed his nomination) as worse racists than “Southerners.” This is a pretty broad stroke to paint. Especially so when you consider than the political left wing has been at the forefront of the civil rights movement from its very beginnings. The venom with which he speaks leads me to believe that there is a likely revenge motive in his rulings. “Take that, you liberals…” I imagine he says to himself when voting on a decision. “You may have conspired to prevent my appointment. But I made it to the court anyway. And I have the rest of my life to do my best to make sure that no Supreme Court ruling ever goes your way.”

Not exactly the sort of attitude you hope to see in a Supreme Court justice. To me, his interview does nothing to repair his reputation. It only serves to confirm why he never should have been appointed to the court in the first place.

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Wyoming: A dangerous threat to our democracy

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Ted

Reading David Sirota’s column today, I was again reminded of how distorted so-called democracy has become in our country. David asks the question: How is it that, even when a clear majority of the public support a certain legislation, Congress does not pass it? If this happened only rarely, we could perhaps attribute it to the wisdom and/or courage of our leaders, standing up to do what they believe is right even in the face of a demanding public that prefers the opposite. But when it happens almost all the time, you have to wonder what is going on.

David posits that the answer can be found in the Senate, where each state gets two votes, regardless of its population. Given that you only need 41 votes to block a bill with a fillibuster, this means that the senators from states representing only 11% of the population would be sufficient to block a bill. Even worse, if you assume that these senators are only worried about getting enough votes to get re-elected, this means that the will of as little as 3% of the voting population are determining what the Senate does!

The same essential problem lies at the heart of presidential elections, which rely on the Electoral College for deciding the outcome. For similar reasons as for the Senate, the College gives disproportionate influence to states with small populations. That’s why it is possible for a presidential candidate to win without getting the most votes (as Bush did in 2000).

All of this gets back to how the framers of the Constitution set things up years ago. I believe, however, they did not foresee the gross differences in populations between states that now exist. Even if they did, it probably would not have mattered. To get all the states to sign on to the Constitution, they needed a compromise that would offer protection to those states with less population. Our current system is what needed to be done to get the union started.

This is not the situation today. Today we live in a country where state boundaries mean much less than they did back then, especially for issues of national policy and office. Indeed, even national boundaries are beginning to fade in significance, as we seek global solutions for many problems.

Given this, it would be easy to say that now is the time to finally overhaul this antiquated system and update it for modern times. The problem is, no matter how strongly I or anyone else advocates for it, it’s not gonna happen. This is because the very people whose support would be almost required to get it done (i.e., those people sitting in the Senate) are the ones with the most vested interest in blocking it. It’s a sad Catch-22 and I have no solution to offer.

David suggests focusing our attention more on state government, where we can affect change more easily. That’s fine for those matters where the states can actually accomplish something. But it does not get at the fundamental problem. Unfortunately, I fear we will be stuck with this fundamental problem for many many years to come.

Note: The title of this entry is based on the fact that Wyoming is the least populous state in the country.

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iPhone ringtones: To pay or not to pay

Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ted

I have sat by quiet as long as I can. Admittedly, that often isn’t very long. In this case, I have sat by while absorbing all the arguments in all of the recent columns on the subject of Apple’s new ringtone policy for its iPhone. And I have tried to digest it all and decide my personal viewpoint. I am done. My viewpoint is that the policy stinks and has no rational justification.

Before I offer the justification for my conclusion, let’s backtrack a bit. Let’s start by reviewing exactly what Apple’s policy is: If you want to add a ringtone to your iPhone, you must first purchase the song from the iTune’s Store for 99 cents. You must then pay an additional 99 cents to convert the song to a ringtone. Further, at the moment, only a small subset of the songs available from iTunes qualify for conversion to a ringtone. Incredibly, most songs you own or can purchase cannot yet be turned into ringtones even if you are willing to pay!

As ridiculous as I believe this policy is, I don’t want to sound too critical of Apple here. I believe they don’t much like the policy either. Rather, the policy is being imposed on them by the recording industry (RIAA). As pointed out by David Pogue (among others), it is actually a better policy than you are likely to find elsewhere. Sprint, for example, charges $2.50 to rent a ringtone for 3 months! You have to keep paying to keep using it. With Apple, you get the entire song plus the ringtone for $1.98, and you get to keep it forever.

Still, there is something fundamentally ludicrous about having to pay as much (or more) for a 30 second snippet of a song than you would have to pay for the entire song. The only thing more ludicrous is that enough people are willing to tolerate this, that the recording industry has turned ringtones into a multi-billion dollar profit-making machine.

The crux of the matter, for those who want to be ethical and not break the law, is whether the recording industry has any legal right to enforce such a policy. Is it in fact illegal to create your own custom ringtones for free, in violation of Apple’s policy (something which can be easily done with software such as iToner and MakeiPhoneRingtone)?

The answer to this question is sufficiently unclear that pundits (and lawyers quoted in columns written by these pundits) have come down on both sides of this fence. Some (such as Endgadget and Daring Fireball ) clearly believe that the policy has no legal foundation and you should feel free to create your own ringtones. Others (such as the MDJ) argue that there is a legal defense for the RIAA’s position, although it hangs by the thread of the nitpicking and cherry-picking parsing of legal language on which the RIAA thrives. The MDJ correctly notes that Fair Use (which is one basis for allowing repurposing of copyrighted materials by individuals) is not actually a law, but a doctrine open to various interpretations. The MDJ further points out that a ringtone is a “separate delivery of a recorded song” and as such is subject to a separate fee from the user. The MDJ doesn’t like this any more than anyone else (outside of the RIAA of course), concluding, “Yes, this sucks, but it’s the law.”

After considering all of this, I simply don’t buy the RIAA position, literally or figuratively.

Even if I accept all of the arguments presented in the MDJ article, it still doesn’t explain why I should not be able to take a song I already legally own (from a CD purchase) and use iTunes to turn it into a ringtone for 99 cents. Nor does it explain why I can’t just purchase a ringtone version of a song for 99 cents, without having to also buy the entire song. Why should I have to make a double or even triple purchase of the same song just to get a ringtone? There may be technological and practical reasons that make this difficult for Apple to implement, but not legal restrictions.

Finally, I don’t even accept the core of the pro-RIAA-viewpoint argument. And neither does Apple or the RIAA itself. That’s right. Apple and the RIAA already allow the equivalent of ringtone creation for free.

How so? For starters, they do it in the entire iLife suite of software. To see what I mean, open iMovie and insert a song from your iTunes Library to serve as a background for a 30 second movie you are creating. Bingo! You have just used a 30 second snippet of a song from iTunes for a different purpose than simply listening to the song. You can even create a DVD from your movie and play the DVD at the same time that someone else is listening to the same song directly from iTunes. How is that any different from what is done with ringtones? It isn’t. Yet Apple allows this, apparently without objection from the RIAA.

Heck, if you use iWeb, you can create a Web page containing iTunes music that could potentially be listened to by thousands of people a day, all at no charge. But a ringtone for your own personal listening benefit? Nope, that you have to pay extra for.

It’s also okay to copy an entire iTunes Library from a computer to an Apple TV, thereby allowing the user to play the music on both machines at the same time—with no charge for doing this. Yet, you cannot copy a single 30 second excerpt from one song to your iPhone without having to pay for the privilege. Absurd.

There is only one explanation to account for all of this absurdity. The ringtone business began when phone companies could easily restrict what could transfer to your phone. They, and the recording industry, made a ton of money taking advantage of this. Technology has now evolved; the transfer limitation no longer exists. But the greedy folks behind ringtones have not changed. They continue to cling to a model that no longer works and no longer makes any sense—legally, ethically or any other way except in terms of their profit. Happily, at least for the moment, you don’t have to play along.

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