Category Archives: Politics

A great explanation of why (most) Minnesotans don’t complain about our relatively high taxes

First, rid your mind of the idea that government = evil.

Government is neither good nor evil; it depends on what government does. The same goes for corporations. Both have done a fair amount of what might be called “evil” over the past couple of decades.

There’s a great article on The Daily Beast today that reinforces an idea that’s pretty common around here in Minnesota: good government is worth paying for. In other words, if you get something of value from your taxes (or you know that other people do, and you’re not a self-centered bastard), it doesn’t feel so painful to pay them.

Now, in some parts of the country it’s pretty hard to come by the kind of generally honest, public-serving government that we Minnesotans tend to take for granted. But President Obama (who seems more Minnesotan than Illinoisan when it comes to the integrity and vision of his politics) is on the cusp of delivering this vision to the nation.

Let’s hope it takes hold. Reaganomics has just about driven us into the ground but I think it may not be too late.

So this is what it’s like when a president actually cares

I am in utter disbelief at the audacious lies of Sen. Lindsay Graham, who dared the other day to claim President Obama has been “AWOL” on the matter of the economic stimulus plan. He’s been all over trying to make this thing happen, and now he’s using the Internet (finally, a president who gets it) to help make his case:

Yes, our new president is using YouTube to get his message out. Power to the people!

The fine line between magnanimous and pusillanimous

George W. BushI’m not sure which side of the line this very generous biography of George W. Bush from President Obama’s version of the official White House site is on, but I do know it’s close to the line.

To be fair, a collection of brief biographical essays on our 44 presidents, published on the official White House website, is not the place for political attacks. But at times this essay goes beyond generous, and in fact beyond belief. Forget the audacity of hope; I want an explanation for the audacity of the claim that Bush worked to “conserve our environment.” And, sorry, but I have to read between the lines of sentences like this one: “Because President Bush believed the strength of America lies in the hearts and souls of our citizens, he supported programs that encourage individuals to help their neighbors in need.” Translation: Bush mercilessly cut funding to government programs that help those who need it most.

But the Bush years are over. It’s time to look forward. I’m willing to keep looking forward, as long as someone else remembers to look backward, specifically into such things as who was responsible for the United States engaging in torture, and whether or not war crimes were committed.

Like I said, I’ll leave that to someone else (say, a special prosecutor appointed by the Obama Administration). Meanwhile, I’ll focus on more important things, like Martin Van Buren’s bitchin’ muttonchops. Why the hell haven’t those made a comeback?

Muttonchops Van Buren

Unless you’re a web geek, you probably don’t know what this means…

whitehouse.gov…but it’s a good thing.

From kottke.org: The country’s new robots.txt file.

Well, it’s probably easy to read too much into this. But the short story of it is that President Obama’s new whitehouse.gov website is blocking a lot less content from search engine “spiders” than that of Ex-President Bush (oh, that has a sweet ring to it).

Now there are plenty of reasons for putting things into your robots.txt file, and most of them have nothing to do with trying to withhold information from the public.

It’s rather odd, though, the set of directories Bush’s site was blocking from the spiders. I find expectmore and help especially amusing. The others aren’t quite so funny. What exactly about omb (Office of Management and Budget) did they need to hide? And… uh… well… 911 kind of goes without saying.

Why block these pages from being indexed by search engines? Good question. And here, I think, is the answer: to make it harder for the average citizen to keep track of changes that have been made to those pages by accessing Google’s cached versions (or, perhaps even more damning, the indefinitely-archived snapshots on the Wayback Machine).

But, it’s a new day. President Obama has promised a much more open and transparent White House, and if the visible underbelly of its website is any indication, he intends to keep his promise.

Also of interest: Here’s a comparison of the old and new whitehouse.gov sites.