Author: Julia

libertarianism? not so much.

In their June 9th issue, Newsweek has an article entitled “Is Wal-Mart Too Liberal?“, examining conservative shareholders’ criticisms of Wal-Mart and ilk.

Here’s an excerpt: “…the right-leaning Free Enterprise Action Fund (FEAF), a tiny libertarian mutual fund, filed resolutions with 20 companies this spring, including Wal-Mart. Most of the FEAF resolutions argue that companies should be more skeptical and resistant as environmentalists push them to reduce their carbon footprint.”

It’s been about ten years since then-friend-now-ex-boyfriend Kevin Gaughen first got me thinking critically about politics, and, in doing so, inculcated in me some pretty strong libertarian leanings. I’m no longer a Libertarian (with a big L) in any sense, although I still have some attachment — perhaps mostly sentimental — to the libertarian (little l) ideals. I think actions like what’s reported above are a big part of why I’ve abandoned the big L.

In my mind, one of the foundations of the libertarian philosophy is the belief that individuals and companies can be more effective and efficient than government in addressing a wide range of issues. For me, Libertarianism was appealing because it included room to be voluntarily compassionate and responsible, without, as Rand would put it, the threat of a gun. But organizations like the FEAF, at least as Newsweek casts them, aren’t arguing against government forcing companies to be greener, they’re apparently against the greening itself, and maybe even against Wal-Mart offering better benefits to low-wage workers.

I thought libertarianism was about opposing government mandates, not opposing voluntary social responsibility.

graceful exit

CNN, The New York Times, and others are reporting that Hillary will announce the suspension of her campaign on Saturday.

CNN has a pdf of the letter she sent to her supporters announcing the, erm, announcement.

I’m so glad that she has decided to do this graciously. Watching her speech on Tuesday night, I thought she was about to endorse Obama; I was pretty stunned when she said she wouldn’t make any decisions that night. Now I feel like maybe I’m giving her credit for more grace than she’s actually shown because the threats for continuing the fight were so awful. I suspect just a few days from now, though, I’ll be happy to hear that she’ll be Obama’s running mate.

rules & bylaws

So here’s the thing — it sucks that Florida and Michigan decided to ignore the DNC’s rules and move their primaries up. My understanding is that they knew it would cost them seats at the convention.

I should probably preface this little rant with the disclaimer that I hope to vote for Obama (again) in the fall.

If the DNC had said, “Oh, we’ll seat everyone, regardless of when their primaries were held,” and were now considering taking away states’ delegates, I’d be pretty outraged. On the other hand, since the DNC said, “These primaries are invalid,” and the “playing by the rules” thing to do was to boycott the elections, it now seems…unfair…to then seat the delegates from those states. The counterpoint, of course, is that no one should be denied a vote simply because their state party ignored a fairly arbitrary rule.

But. An election in which one candidate doesn’t even appear on the ballot — not because he didn’t have the support, but because he wasn’t supposed to campaign in the state — doesn’t sound to me like a valid election.

In my mind, the ideal solution would have been for Michigan and Florida to hold do-over primaries later in the season. Oh well.

inspiration

I received today a very inspiring email. “I really miss your blog,” it said, and that was it. I thought about hitting reply and saying, “Me too,” but thought instead that I would just bite the bullet and write something (very) slightly more substantial, and post it — wait for it — to my blog.

So here it is.

I used to spend hours surfing the web and reading news stories looking for things to blog. Now I stumble upon something cool, or hear an interesting story on NPR, and think, “I should blog that.” Of course, I never do.

I used to think this blog was mostly an exercise in narcissism, but I think one of the biggest differences between my life in the blogging-days and my life in these non-blogging-days is to do with the extent to which my attention is focused inward, rather than outward. Those days, I had very little in my own life that was fulfilling or interesting to me, and I was passionate about widening my view, about seeing and understanding (or trying, at least) the things that mattered in the larger world. These days, I have a pretty full home and work life, scads of entertainment options (more on this later), and I have this sense that it’s time to work on understanding what happens next for me. Also, I have more disposable income, so surfing Amazon.com is now less frustrating than surfing NYTimes.com, which is largely just depressing.

The past few weeks, my Amazon time has dwindled as my Monster and Craigslist time has grown. Yes, I’m on the prowl for a job. I’m hoping for something with a title like “Business Analyst,” but I’ve sent resumes off for some totally unrelated things, too. I want something that stretches my brain, requires creative problem-solving, and has room for growth. Know of anything?

Entertainment. In the past few months I’ve acquired a Wii, an Amazon Kindle, and now a Wii Fit. I’ve got fun stuff to do out the wazoo. Next month, I get a new house, in midtown Harrisburg, in which to put it all. (We’re just renting, so I don’t really get the house, just use of its walls for a year.) Today I got an entertainment hybrid, in the form of the first round of the summer’s CSA share. Maybe doesn’t sound like entertainment to you, but I had a blast this evening looking up recipes containing mesclun mix, radishes, spring onions, and more. I was going to include a link, but apparently WordPress is broken, and when I link to things, it doesn’t display anything I’ve written after the tag. Anyway, making food utilizes those creative problem-solving skills, and they’re quite yummy.

Food and video games aside, I’m really enjoying the Kindle. It’s exactly what it’s intended to be, and it’s enhancing my experience of the world. I’m reading way more since I got it, because I never have to decide which book to take with me, and I have Newsweek wirelessly delivered every week, so I’m getting print news in a way I haven’t done in years. If I could blog from it (I suppose I could, just not easily), maybe you’d be reading more updates.

The Wii Fit is fun, too, in very different but still wholesome kind of way. Today’s only day two with it, so who knows if it’ll last, but I’ve never enjoyed fake hoola-hooping in my living room so much. The gluteus maximus is a little sore, though.

This is probably a very different sort of blog entry than the kind today’s emailer was envisioning that he missed. Maybe there’ll be something more relevant to other people’s lives later. Maybe not.

on bitterness

A piece of business first: I just deleted 5,500 comments that were being held in moderation. The vast majority were clearly offers of hardcore pics of various celebrities, but I didn’t read all of them, so if you left a comment that never appeared, I probably just deleted it. But that’s not the point of this post.

I’m excited that Pennsylvania’s primary is actually going to matter this year, but I haven’t yet made up my mind. In the early days of primary season, I was leaning strongly toward Hillary; now, though, I’m leaning more toward Barack. But that’s not the point of this post.

Obama’s getting a lot of flack for his comments about Pennsylvanians. To recap:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Clinton, as everyone knows, responded by saying that Obama is “out of touch”.

I disagree. I know that Obama’s comments don’t paint the most flattering view of Pennsylvanians, and it’s not representative of all Pennsylvanians, but I think they do display a pretty good understanding of the mentality around here. I also think it’s important to note that he made these comments in San Francisco, where people are pretty unlikely to have any understanding of Pennsylvania attitudes and politics. In that context, those comments sound like a defense of the pessimism, bigotry, small-mindedness, and, yes, bitterness, so pervasive in our small towns and even big cities, rather than a condemnation.

Most of Pennsylvania is alienated from what’s happening in California and New York and even D.C., and the issues that are relevant in those places are not always the issues that are relevant here. And it’s awfully hard to untangle and understand the web of reasons that life here is so different than it is in the places time hasn’t forgotten, so it becomes awfully easy to blame the lack of good jobs on globalization and immigrants. And when people in Washington start talking about “taking away my guns” or ensuring that I have healthcare when all I really want is a job, well, one can see how it might be baffling.

There is a divide in America — there are many divides in America — and denying the differences in perspectives is not likely to help bridge those divides. Pennsylvanians are, as Clinton said, resilient, but we do, for the most part, have a very different worldview than New Yorkers or — especially — San Franciscans. Neither perspective is more “right” than the other(s), but if the people in power occupy one world and the people in rural Pennsylvania occupy another, recognizing those differences can look like elitism. It’s not, at least not necessarily. It’s realism.

my so-called life

Were you a My So-Called Life fan?

I wasn’t a fan, I thought I was Angela Chase. I spent two years trying to dye my hair that exact shade of red. I was pretty sure I had a Rayanne, and a Brian, and a Sharon. Red Land didn’t offer much room for Rickys (Rickies?). In retrospect, of course, I see that my Rayanne was another middle-class child, and her mother was always home. I had many Jordan Catalanos, but none of them were ever, you know, mine.

Perhaps my Jordan Catalano came later, after the show had been cancelled, and I no longer sought MSCL analogues in every corner of my own so-called life. I wonder now why I didn’t view the cancellation as some great cosmic statement, some justification of my angst, that I really was so alienated from the world that it would see fit to cancel the one show that accurately portrayed what I at least imagined my interior life was like. Instead of thinking about that, I downloaded every picture of Claire Danes I could find on the then-fledgling internet, and papered the window in my bedroom with her face. Well, her and Adam Duritz.

ABC has finally released My So-Called Life on DVD. In perhaps the most brilliant marketing move ever, they also made the pilot available on their website.

Studies must show that we who lived through our teenage angst in the mid-nineties now have some sort of significant buying power, because the Counting Crows have also re-released August and Everything After. But that one didn’t make my Christmas list. I’ve been listening to it all along.

boring

“H” is right, this blog has been boring lately. Sorry about that.

Sometimes I set my alarm for 5am in the hopes that when it goes off I will be willing to get out of bed, maybe do some yoga, and then take my coffee and my freshly renewed brain to a desk and write for a while before it’s time to rush out the door. Normally when my alarm goes off at 5am, though, I set it to 6:15 and go back to sleep. But last night I went to bed an hour earlier than usual, and when it woke me up at 5am I was in the middle of a slightly disturbing dream (don’t remember, sorry), and I woke up gratefully and easily. So now it’s 5:55am, and I am sitting on the couch in my yoga attire, a glass of iced espresso beside me, and I thought I’d try to do something about the boringness of this blog.

No promises on that, though, as I’m not sure I have anything particularly interesting to write about. My life has been very narrowly focused lately, on myself, my home, and my job. Also on The Sims. When I have been writing recently, it’s been for work, writing the letter for our Annual Campaign. That’s been finished, returned miraculously quickly by the printer, and now all that remains is 1,600 envelopes to be stuffed, addressed, stamped, and sealed. That’ll take up most of today and tomorrow. Please make your gift (to The Circle School) by December 31st. Remember, it’s 100% tax-deductible!

I should probably weigh in on this whole presidential campaign thing at some point. So far, though, I’m mostly sans opinion. Like every other liberal-leaning person in the world I think Clinton, Obama, and Edwards are all decent options, but none of them have me really excited. In fairness to them, I haven’t been active enough about seeking out information to have anything to base excitement on, so that may not be their fault. I’m also thinking I should look into the Republican candidates, especially in light of the Romney revelation that they’re all pro-choice. At this point all I’m really sure of is that I won’t be voting for Chris Dodd, or anyone else who’s willing to say out loud that national security is more important than human rights. I’m pretty sure Ben Franklin predicted that moment.

At this moment, 6:15 is rapidly approaching, and that means it’s time for me to go upstairs and begin the rush to get out the door.

for the birds

I’m a pretty big fan of buying organic. I do it whenever practicable, not out of any real commitment to keeping impurities and chemicals out of my body, but because I figure it’s a painless way to at least reduce the contaminants in my blood stream, and, you know, feel like a good person.

Lately, however, I’m starting to think that pesticides are the way to go. First it was the worms in the corn, then the spiders (and their eggs!) on the kale, and tonight, well…let’s just say I don’t eat butterfly.

Chrysalis in the Rabe

wanna bump feet?

I like nothing more than weighing in on issues where there is no absolute “right” or “wrong”, and even more when no one will ever really know “what happened”. So I have to weigh in on this Larry Craig thing. My points are as follows:

A) Worst case scenario, this guy tapped his foot against another guy’s foot in an airport restroom stall. Is it a crime every time a guy propositions me for sex? Or is this worse because he allegedly propositioned another man?

B) That transcript they released today sounds to me more like a scared guy wanting to catch a flight than it does like someone who knowingly did something wrong. The officer is, in Law & Order speak, “leading the witness”, and is obviously trying to convince the guy that the easiest way to make this go away is to plead guilty.

I think Larry Craig could be convicted for stupidity in pleading guilty (although given his high-profile position, who’s to say avoiding the spotlight isn’t a better way to go?), but soliciting gay sex? Not enough here to demand his resignation.

Unless, of course, the officer was underage.