Fun with maps

Illustration courtesy of The Daily Kos.

It seems likely that Massachusetts will lose yet another Congressional district based on the numbers from this year's census. The state's population is somewhere around 6.5 million, which is a jump of about 4% from the 2000 census; however, the nation grew at around 9%. The trend of people moving from the population centers of the Northeast and Midwest to the South and Far West, though slowed a little, continues. (The housing crisis has been worst in Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California, which has lessened growth there recently.)

The latest official census figures will be released Tuesday and those numbers will determine if the Bay State keeps 10 seats in the House of Representatives or slides down to nine. From 1913 to 1933 Massachusetts had 16 members in the House and since then we've lost one every one or two decades. Whenever such adjustments happen it usually leaves two sitting House members running against each other.

One web site surmises that this time the 1st and 2nd Congressional districts will be combined, pitting John Olver against Richard Neal, and it'd be likely that Olver, who will be 76 at the time of the 2012 election, would just retire. Whatever the revised map looks like, we can be sure it will be a contorted mess of districts, drawn to protect constituencies. The US should depoliticize redistricting by removing it from state legislatures (as a few states have done) and turning it over to independent boards that use software to draw cohesive districts.

More alike than you think

There's been much discussion about comments that President Obama's spokesman made about criticism that the administration has been getting from liberals. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, spoke dismissively of the "professional left," saying, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality." Gibbs (photo from NY Times) also said that, “I hear these people saying [Obama is] like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested.”

I am only part of the amateur left. I have been critical of Barack Obama, who I voted for in both the primary and the general, on a wide range of issues. Gibbs comments are off the mark for a couple of reasons. First, they call to mind the story, possibly apocryphal, about FDR, who told liberal reformers at one point, "I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it." As a citizen, it's my duty, I believe, to say what I think; it's not my job to worry about how my criticism plays out politically.

More deeply, however, what Gibbs' little rant ignores is that those of us on the left understand the political realities and the national climate; we are not unaware of how these factors can limit a president's legislative agenda. I wanted the stimulus package to be more sweeping; I wanted health-care reform to be more bold; I wanted financial regulation to be tougher. Each of these bills was watered down in Congress. I wish the president had been more forceful and had pushed harder, but I understand the obstacles. I wanted to see immigration reform and an energy bill, but I understand that there was no appetite for either. With majorities in both houses and control of the White House, I hoped the Democrats would be more aggressive, but there were some victories.

Much more troubling than these issues, however, is this administration's failings on foreign policy, civil rights, government transparency and national security. Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald does a commendable job keeping up with these issues, and to be honest my level of disappointment with Obama in these areas is through the roof. The US military is still in Iraq and Afghanistan, people are still being held in American military prisons without being charged and tried, way too much information is still kept secret and Americans are still being spied on by their government. On these and other similar issues Obama is indeed "like George Bush." And implying that those of us who are willing to speak the truth are chemically impaired is an insult and a disgrace.

The revolution will be Eastie-vized

The Globe has a piece today on Gene Sharp, the writer and director of the Albert Einstein Institution -- the small clearinghouse of non-violent revolutionary ideas and publications that is located in Sharp's house here in East Boston.

The story focuses on the role that Sharp's ideas, and those of other American scholars, have played in the popular uprisings that have taken place in Iran in the wake of that country's stolen presidential election. Sharp, 81, has a PhD from Oxford and is a professor emeritus at UMass/Dartmouth. He also played a key role in some of the Eastern European revolutions in the early 2000s.

I've made reference to Sharp on this blog a couple of times, most notably with a small entry back in 2007.

Time to go

Intelligent conservatives like former Sen. Chuck Hagel and Washington Post columnist George F. Will have publicly called at least for a reevaluation of America's goals in Afghanistan (the former) and in some cases for an end to the mission there (the latter). Liberals have been uncomfortable, if not adamantly opposed, with Obama's apparent willingness to extend the mission and to send in more troops.

It's understandable that, politically and intellectually, this is a tough nut to crack -- the hawkish right will call the president a coward and a quitter; the military will grumble that the mission isn't complete and that the US lives already lost cannot have been in vain; the insurgents will boast that America has shown a lack of fortitude as in Vietnam; future troubles in Afghanistan, as there are bound to be, will be laid at the feet of the Administration; and if there should be a large terror attack against the US, whether launched from Afghanistan or not, Obama will be tagged as an enabler -- but there are real lives at stake here, and whether American military personnel complain about the decision, their lives and sanity are in the president's hands and must be safeguarded whether they approve or not.

Further, all sides recognize the paramount importance of Pakistan in the whole terrorism house of cards. American foreign policy has to focus on how to best stabilize that country, which possesses nuclear weapons that cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. (I would start by intensively brokering a relaxation of tensions between Pakistan and India, which is domestically Pakistan's biggest security concern. We have pull with India. Show some American good will while freeing up Pakistani resources to secure the northwestern tribal areas.)

But the reality here is that eight years into the US mission in Afghanistan, it looks more and more like the oft-repeated historical lesson about invading the central Asian nation (the British failed; the Soviets failed; no one can do it) is more true than not. I'm not saying that all the answers are clear here, but I am saying that diverting more blood and treasure to Afghanistan at this time now seems pointless, and it is time to get out.

Good grief

We often hear that the drug trade in Afghanistan is being used to finance the insurgency and that Muslim mosques and non-profits funnel money to terror groups. Brace yourselves for this: Our own tax dollars, spent on recovery programs in Afghanistan, may be paying for fighters and weapons that kill American soldiers and the locals who work with them.

This is extremely disturbing and further evidence of the futility of the so-called war on terror. In another way, however, it makes sense. It was American policies and money that created al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I've met the enemy and he is staring into my monitor.