From the “Always good to know who we’re dealing with” department comes this news about a recent rule change proposed by the U.S. Senate Rules Committee. Seems someone has finally decided that the long-standing tradition of stealing historical objects, furniture, and artwork from the Capitol Building is, you know, like wrong and stuff. And it only took them 150 years to realize it.
Apparently, Senators have a tradition of taking along Congressional property when they leave office, a sort of memento of their years stealing and pillaging in the public interest. While some try to make things at least look legit, by getting their buddies to declare the objects “surplus” and then bidding for them through a process that I’m sure nobody outside the halls of Congress has ever heard of, others just pack the objects up with the stationary they stole from the Secretary’s cupboard and walk out with them.
The new rules are expected to be passed without any real dissent. Not so much because of any newfound moral fiber among the members of our Senate but because, as Trent Lott notes, all the good stuff has already been taken. That’s not true, Sen. Lott–all the typewriters still have “W” keys!
Democracy Now! is running aninterview with Terry McAuliffe, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, about the Republican Party’s efforts to suppress an ad attacking George W. Bush for his successful attempt to mislead the American public about the threat of Iraqi nuclear efforts. The ad includes an excerpt from the State of the Union Address, “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The Republicans, of course, are upset because the ad points out that this intelligence was known to be unreliable before the SotU without also pointing out that it was British intelligence that was known to be unreliable before the SotU. As if that matters.
The letter the GOP lawyers sent to TV stations reads in part ?The Democratic National Committee certainly has a legitimate First Amendment right to participate in political debate, but it has no right to willfully spread false information in a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people?”. As a matter of fact, the DNC does have a First Amendment right to “willfully spread false information”, a right that Fox News (ironically, the only station that has decided not to run the ad) has had recognized by Federal court. But that’s neither here nor there; as McAuliffe points out, they used Bush’s voice speaking Bush’s words, and while the GOP would like us to believe that their efforts to deceive their constituents were rather a matter of careful scanning of textual context, we the people know better. And I’m willing to bet that, if this issue ever makes it to court, the courts–even Bush’s courts–will find the same thing.
Just a quick reminder that, as far as I can tell, sponsorship for Blogathon 2003 is open all day, so you can still support my efforts and help Doctors Without Borders. If you like what you’ve seen so far, be a dear and sponsor me. Thanks!
Yesterday I had an unusual experience. I picked up a paycheck for some convention work I had done last week, meeting people at the airport and directing them to a shuttle to their hotel. The check was for $150 and was drawn on Bank of America. As I don’t have a bank account at present (like some 10 million American families) I took the check to a Bof A branch to cash.
The transaction wnet pretty well as expected–sign the back, show my driver’s license, produce a second piece of ID, watch the teller write all my personal information on the back of the check, fingerprint the check…. In other words, I was treated as the criminal we’ve all learned to expect to be treated as. But then, something happened that I was totally unprepared for. The teller informed me that, as my employer did not have an “agreement” with BofA, I would be charged $5.00 for the privilege of having them honor a check drawn on one of their own accounts! “Excuse me?” I said, baffled. “Would you like to take the check somewhere else?” she asked. As if there was anywhere else–no other bank would chash a check drawn on a BofA account unless I had an account with them, plus the check was already endorsed and marked up with all my personal information. “I don’t have much of a choice”, I told her, “although $5.00, that’s almost 4%, I could go to a check-cashing place for less.” “That’s our policy, I’m sorry”, she told me, continuing “If your employer had an agreement with us…”.
“They shouldn’t need ‘an agreement’,” I replied, a little angry at this point. Calming down, I continued, “Look, I understand that it’s not your choice, but your policy sucks. And I’d appreciate it if you’d tell your boss someone said that, when you get a chance.”
Essentially, BofA–one of the biggest banks in the US, stole $5.00 from me. Had I deposited the check in my bank account, or signed the check over to a friend or relative and had them cash it at their bank, or (this occured to me later) taken the check to a casino and cashed it, they wouldn’t have charged my bank, or my friend’s bank, or the casino $5.00 for the basic act of meeting their obligation to fulfill the check. The fee was one thing and one thing only, a penalty for being a) too poor to have a bank account, and b) only one person against the arbitrary and immense power of the BofA establishment.
Security expert Bruce Schneier has written about this trend in American business practice in a recent article entitled How to Fight. Schneier describes the increasingly invasive and often useless, even counter-productive, practices that corporations are adopting in the name of “security”: requiring a photocopy of your driver’s license to check into a hotel (a security risk for the hotel’s guest), creating patient profiles with all sorts of non-medical information before a pharmacy will fill a prescription, and so on. “In the end,” he writes,
all security is a negotiation among affected players: governments, industries, companies, organizations, individuals, etc. The players get to decide what security they want, and what they’re willing to trade off in order to get it. But it sometimes seems that we as individuals are not part of that negotiation. Security is more something that is done to us….
[But t]here’s no parity, because those who implement the security have no interest in changing it and no power to do so. They’re not the ones who control the security system; it’s best to think of them as nearly mindless robots. (The security system relies on them behaving this way, replacing the flexibility and adaptability of human judgment with a three-ring binder of “best practices” and procedures.)
I’m certain BofA stole that money from me under the guise of “security”, thinking that it somehow protects them against counterfeit payroll checks or whatever. Essentially they did it because they can, because they are bigger than me and there is little I can do about it.
Of course, I’ll write a letter to someone at BofA complaining, and I won’t be banking with BofA when I finally do open a bank account. (“If you would like to open an account with us,” she said, “there would be no fee.” To which I replied, simply, “That’s not going to happen.”) And I’ll talk to my employer–maybe they’ll decide to move their payroll (it’s a pretty big company, business I assume BofA would prefer not to lose), but I doubt it. Too much hassle, and how many of their employees don’t have bank accounts? Bottom line is, as much as I protest, I’ll lose this fight.
But maybe, just maybe, I’ll kick up some noise, joining the chorus of other folks making noise, adding a tiny little bit to the dissonant orchestra of dissent out there. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll gum up the works a little.
I have chosen to blog, this lovely Blogathon Day in 2003, in support of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières). Although there are lots of good reasons to support DWB, my particular reason is personal. A couple of years ago, I worked at an international affairs organization in New York which regularly hosted members of the human rights community, as well as journalists, statesmen, authors, and other experts. As an anthropologist, I often found myself shocked by the lack of even a basic understanding of the ramifications of cultural differences and of colonial power among people who spent their workaday lives directly engaging with both.
And then came Rony Brauman, one-time president of DWB and a doctor himself. Brauman gave an address that showed an incredible sensitivity to both the different ways in which medical understandings are constructed across various cultural contexts, and to the ambiguous and even contradictory ways state, colonial, and other forms of power shaped medical practice “on the ground”. For instance:
It is commonly accepted that representations of the human body — also of disease and sickness — are social and cultural constructs, which means that they vary from one time to another, from one place to another. But it is also commonly accepted that modern medicine is based upon scientific descriptions of the human body. This implies that there is a universal or universalist knowledge of health — that there is an accepted approach that applies to health problems the world over — because science cannot vary from one country to another, at least during a given time period.
It is this sensitivity to the difficulties not just of being a doctor in the field, but of being a patient in the field, that I wish to support and encourage with my participation in Blogathon 2003.
Good morning and welcome to Blogathon 2003. First of all, I want to thank my sponsors for giving me a reason to be up at the perfectly reasonable time of 6 am on a Saturday morning… Fortunately, I was up all night being sick, so I’m really in top form. Don’t know if it was something I ate or if I’m catching (well, pretty much “caught”) flu or what. I feel OK right now (aside from the whole “being up” thing) but I imagine without any sleep last night I’ll fade out earlier than I had hoped–I just hope that my sponsors will understand.
Now, I just have to think of lots of stuff to write…
The other day, I claimed to be the 1300th most linked-to writer in the blogosphere, but wasn’t able to double-check due to some changes with the Truth Laid Bear blogging ecosystem’s layout. Thanks to some more TLB-savvy visitor, the link to the page with my correct standing appeared in my referral logs, so I was able to discover my real standing. Alas, I am only the 1450th most linked-to person extant, with 13 links.
As I see it, I have two options. One, I can accept my reduced standing in the world (and the appelation “flippery fish”, which is at least kosher), or two, if only two more sites link to mine, I’ll move up to 1300th place (or thereabouts) and become a “crawly amphibian” (which, although a step up, is not kosher. However, as I don’t keep kosher, I can’t imagine that having any relevance to what I’m saying…).
I’m pretty inclined to go with “one”. But I thought, as long as I’m going to accept my loserosity, I could at least be honest about it.
And at least I’ve learned something new about the way that interface changes can throw off a website user–the new TLB layout makes better sense (by breaking the list up into a number of smaller, and thus faster-loading, pages) but having grown used to having all the sites listed on one page, I didn’t even bother looking for a way to navigate deeper into the list. So, like Doogie Howser or the South Park gang, I’ve learned a valuable lesson. Or something.
Don’t forget that Blogathon 2003 is this Saturday (and into Sunday). At the moment I have no sponsors, which can’t be good. I’ll be blogging (assuming I get some sponsors) in support of Doctors Without Borders, which provides medical relief around the world (hence the “without borders” part), so here’s a chance to be part of the fun of a massive, coordinated, 24-hour-long blog-o-rama, to watch me struggle to stay interesting (or at least awake) for 2 posts an hour all day, and to support a great cause all at the same time. What more could you ask for? After all, I am somewhere around the 1300th most linked-to blogger in all the world (as ranked by Truth Laid Bear’s blog ecosystem; imagine my surprise, however, when I went there to find out my exact, up-to-the-minute ranking, and found that only the top 100 sites are listed now… Oh well, you’ll just have to take my word for it–I’m in at least the 5th or even 6th percentile!).
how Ms. Lauren at feministe manages to pull off complete site redesigns, each one cooler than the last, every couple weeks or so?! I mean, I’ve been struggling for weeks just to find the time to clean up my CSS layout (which I think I finally managed to nail, albeit at the cost of moving the navigation from the left side of the page to the right), in which time she’s had three or four completely different, completely kickin’, just plain awesome site layouts and graphic sets. I don’t even have children!
It’s a mystery, I tell you. A MYSTERY!
Speaking of hiding behind language, check out this excellent example of fleischering (courtesy of Josh Marshall) from the Dark Master’s padawan apprentice, Scott McClellan. You can take Fleischer out of the White House, but apparently you can’t take the fleischering, not from this White House. Listen:
QUESTION: Regardless of whether or not there was pressure from the White House for that line, I’m wondering where does the buck stop in this White House? Does it stop at the CIA, or does it stop in the Oval Office?
Scott McClellan: Again, this issue has been discussed. You’re talking about some of the comments that — some that are —
QUESTION: I’m not talking about anybody else’s comments. I’m asking the question, is responsibility for what was in the President’s own State of the Union ultimately with the President, or with somebody else?
Scott McClellan: This has been discussed.
QUESTION: So you won’t say that the President is responsible for his own State of the Union speech?
Scott McClellan: It’s been addressed.
QUESTION: Well, that’s an excellent question. That is an excellent question. (Laughter.) Isn’t the President responsible for the words that come out of his own mouth?
Scott McClellan: We’ve already acknowledged, Terry, that it should not have been included in there. I think that the American people appreciate that recognition.
It goes on and on like that–this is only about a third of the whole exchange. Read the rest at Marshall’s site.
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