Health Care Bill....Not Really About Its Content but Its Passage.

After taking political science classes for 3 years of my life, I've come to the conclusion that contemporary politics is precisely that....a science. Its not about deliberation anymore but rather gathering the votes for the passage of a bill. Actually no... It's more like getting it passed by all means possible.

According to Cass Sunstien's Partial Constitution the institutions of the constitution are meant for one thing...deliberation. That is specifically why 2 houses are needed for the passage of a bill. That is what is made to counter the changing passions of the active polity. That is the reason to why conservatives/libertarians would put more active governance to the states as to screw a small population than screw everyone. (JK). However, due to the rise of attention for the federal government, it seems as if the federal government needs to be active ( while I personally believe it shouldn't be as domestically active as it is right now) at the expense of deliberation.

The current mode of passage that the current health care plan is about to enter is a slap to our democratic republic.This is it in a nutshell...

http://rocnow.com/article/editorials/20103190308

Media Matters went on a lengthy post to counter the claims of hypocrisy that the Right Wing has made against congress and yes I'll agree with them that the GOP has used it back in 2006 35 times.

http://blog.american.com/?p=11467

But this is something decided upon by congress's Ways and Means committee, not by the constitution. So doesn't that bring up a question of constitutionality against the actions of both parties historically? The constitution already has by laws on how legislation is passed. Isn't the proposed method for the current health care bill legally wrong?

Look...Regardless of what you think of the bill and who is passing it, this is not the way to pass federal legislation. It undermine's rules set out by the constitution without changing it via amendments and also removes that idea of deliberation that Sunstein believes is inherent and needed in American politics. Rather...its a power grab, using science to get results as opposed to the representative democracy that our republic mandates.

Bioshock 2: TheState and the Family

So I've finished Bioshock 2 yesterday and being the goody-paragon-hero of the Mass Effect series, I came to the "good" ending. The game overall was great and I found it an improvement from the first one. However this isn't a review of how good the game is. Rather, I'm gonna put my two cents into the game's underlying message.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!

Bioshock 2 really is the story of how family interacts with the state and vice versa. The father daughter bond is explored as it is tested by the interests of a community ( represented by Sophia Lamb). It tries to answer the question "Does the state have a role in the family?". I personally think that the game tries to remove the state from that question and replaces it with the notion of love. This can be deduced by exploring the relationship between Subject Delta and Eleanor throughout the game.

All In the Family

The connection of the big daddy to his little sister forges a bond that is both physica, emotional and in a sense spiritual. Once the big daddy dies, the little sister cries in mourning of the loss of her guardian. If the little sister dies the big daddy assigned to it dies as well.

Subject Delta was a special case as he was the first big daddy created for the first little sister being Eleanor. Lamb, Eleanor's biological mother, takes her child away from Delta and orders him to kill himself, thus temporarily ruining the bond between the big daddy and the little sister. The nature of this bond was stronger that previously described due to their specification as the first daddy-sister pairing. The connection opened the possibility that Delta would go crazy or fall into a coma once seperated from his little sister as opposed to simply dying.

Once revived, Delta's connection with Eleanor was reestablished. Random telepathic sequences show how Eleanor assists Delta is rescuing her. By the end of the game, her personality becomes similar to the personality the played imposed on the game (dependant on whether you saved the little sisters and the NPCs you could've killed).

Bioshock 2 really touts the idea that the way you treat others can really reflect on those connected to you. In the context of father and daughter, the daughter learns how to be human through her father which brings up the ideas of parenthood and counters it to the utilitarian ideas adopted by Sophia Lamb.

Brainwashed for the Common Good

"To serve the world, we must grow deaf to the self. Are you ready?"- Sophia Lamb

Sophia Lamb is the quinessential utilitarian willing to sacrifice free will and self-interest for the welfare of the world. She is Andrew Ryan's foil as she disregards self-interest for societal interests and therefore praises subjects who perform martyrdom without questioning the interest of the community. She decides to experiment on Eleanor to make her into the model servant, knowledgable of the sufferings of a whole city while having the ability to solve its problems at the expense of Eleanor's free will.

Lamb proposes that free-will is a non-issue in determining what should be done for common good. A really dismal point of view of the human condition. In doing so Lamb does not improve Rapture but rather turns it from an objectivist dystopia to a utilitarian one. The removal of free will doesn't lead to the common good but rather the worst in commonality. Agustus Sinclair is the parody of her philosophy...willing to die for Rapture's welfare yet a representative of the state of Rapture....out of control. The game however does not leave the player without giving an explaination on how to ameliorate the conflict between societal interests.

What's Love Got to Do With It

Returning to the connection between the Delta and Eleanor, Bioshock proposes that the common good cannot be achieved by the removal of free will but through the free will. As mentioned before, the player is given the choice to kill or save the little sisters he finds as well as Grace Holloway, Stanley Poole and Gil Alexander. Since Eleanor has that bond with Delta, she was able to experience the trials and decisions that he faced; learning from them and adopting them as part of her persona. After Lamb seperates the bond sufficating Eleanor, Delta's death becomes certain by the end of the game.

The Eleanor that the game ends with reflects the Delta that the player created. If he/she killed everyone Eleanor sucks out the ADAM from Delta before he dies in for the sake of her "survival" and self interest. This implies that the world she enters into after escaping Rapture is damned due to her genetic advantages given to her by Lamb's gene splicing and overall nasty personality. However, if Delta showed forgiveness to Holloway, Poole and Alexander and saved the little sister, Eleanor sucks out the ADAM from Delta ending his life yet thanks him for teaching her how to be a good person and is reassured that Delta would be there every step of her life. The game ends in a hopeful note. Delta's compassion is imprinted on Eleanor who has the ability to make the world a better place.

And The Moral of the Story?

This game shows the importance of family as the basic unit of civilization and puts government at a distant place from determining the welfare of society. Sophia Lamb, representing the state aimed to make Eleanor the ultimate tool for the common good at the price of her freedom. However Delta gave her that freedom and well as one thing that can ameliorate the tentions of state and family.

That thing is love. Unless Eleanor can understand how to love (via the player making moral decisions), she runs the risk of either losing her humanity for communal welfare or risking communal welfare for her own self interest. Love allows for the individual to decide what actions to take that respect both the interests of society and his/her self-interest. The recognition of both is the center of free will and determining what to act upon is the free will in action.

This poses the game's general thesis on family and state welfare. Kids need to be raised by good parents. Without them, they would be generally deficient in acting on their own for the common good risking the welfare of themselves or society. The state cannot parent children as its interests desires uniformity of individual interests hence a loss in humanity as free will is replaced with mandated communal sympathy (something like taxes for example). Nor can the individual act solely on self interests willing to sacrifice the interests of others for the ego. The individual has to learn how to love and the best way of that happening is through the relationships of parents and children. Just as Delta who made good decisions taught Eleanor how to love, parents need to teach their kids just the same. Love acts in the common good for the sake of one's self interest therefore preserving free will when confronted with the welfare of society.

I know my interpretation is preachy on love....but that's how I see it. If you have a countering claim bring it up in the comment box.

Culture Dictates That Men Can't Be Affectionate to Kids

You know it seems as if this world has become way too overprotective of...well everything. Best example of this: Warning labels on frozen food say: Do not eat frozen.

It was just an interesting thought that got in to my head when came across The Death of Common Sense:How Law is Suffocating America by Phillip K Howard. I didn't get to read the book but the back cover was enough to get the thought in my head.

Sure there are cases of absurdity in American law telling us not to do the obvious but I find that this "big brother" approach to common sense is just absurd in itself. 2 examples:

I bet you can remember games like dodgeball and tag from you school years however many schools have banned them from being played during PE and recess.

In New Jersey, cupcakes and candy are banned from being served in schools even on birthdays.

The paranoia of this does spread though when it comes to summer camps. A friend of mine and I got into a conversation while signing our names on a " worker's behavior handout" that we were required to read. Well obviously being the stupid college kid I am glazed over the thing but what got my attention (albeit not that much) was the case of pedophilia.

My friend worked in a summer camp back near his home and went through a literally sexist experience. According to him, the male mentors of the summer camp ( who where in their late teens and early 20s) had to avoid as much physical contact with their kids to dodge allegations of pedophilia by their parents. Women on the other had were given more freedom on this issue. His experience concluded that assuring pats on the back, messing up a kid's hair or even giving the kid a hug when he/she was down conjured fears of pedophilia among the camp's staff.

I really think that something like that is absurd beyond belief. I grew up around mentors who gave my pats on the back during my tennis days and hugs when I got picked on as a kid but now its just seems that in light of the fairly huge awareness of sexual child abuse, such acts are now taboo among men when they are taking care of their mentees. That pat on the back when I gave a good forehand shot and that hug I got showed that people are out there for me even when my parents weren't around.

Being a mentor needs a connection and the fact that men can't give that physical affection, I really think that we need to reassess how to raise kids.

Sticking It To the Man

Paul Ryan

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/02/25/Health/R/30059/WH+Health+Care+Summit+Members+React+To+Meeting.asp

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Start at 48 mins

Ryan has done a good job going through the spending provision of the bill putting out bullet point after bullet point of complaints and explains them with clarity GOP needs to do this more. Obama's response was scatterbrained and wayward in trying to explain how the program would save money.....theoretical at best.

Identity Crisis

Citizen's United v. The Federal Elections Committee

Looking at the ruling, I have to disagree with the opinion of Justice Stevens who states, "The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case". If that be the case, so should unions, and PACs knowing how they too have lobbyists and in many cases deep pockets (Look for Obama's Campaign finance records). Politically there is no difference between a PAC, a union and a Corp. Both will stop it nothing to get their candidate of choice into office with the plethora of resources that they have. This especially goes with CNN,MSNBC and FOX News who spend money on facilitating political speech . All of those are news corporations, who spend X amount of money, on Y amount of pundits to bring forth their appraisal on Senator A and disgust for President B.

In a sense this ruling will be more or resurgence of the rights of CEOs and corporate leaders as voting citizens who are free to support their candidate. I don't think the notion that you own a successful business disqualifies you from using your resources to support your candidate. Its not the government's decision to decide how you do your politics as long as you respect the life, liberty and property of others.

Its the same with me using my blog to support candidates I agree with. I have an advantage over people who don't know how to make a blog. Should I be barred from making blogs and reduce myself to posting Facebook statuses?

Fact of the matter is, removing the restrictions of campaign donations by corporations is nothing more than increasing the number of entities in civil society. More opinions, more interests, more of a fight of ideas, and in the end more democracy.

So what does this mean to the voter. Well nothing actually. Sure Governor K might get more ads than ex-mayor G, but that does not mean that the former automatically wins the election. Voters need to think for themselves not what some ad says to them. This ruling should really be an incentive for the democracy of the democratic republican system rather than a fear that corporations are running the government. If voters decide to not read up on candidates and vote because someone looked good on camera then the interests of corporations, unions, and PACs have prevailed.

So How is This Government Supposed to Work?

Lee Doren , a conservative blogger, gave a helpful tip for the Democrats amidst their defeat in holding Ted Kennedy's seat. Take a look see!

http://leedoren.com/2010/01/21/federalism-save-the-democrat/

In addition to the Doren's comments I have to expound on his point that the federal government really was not designed to send out 2,000 page bills into federal law in less than a year. This system of the approval of both the House and Senate signifies that governance in the U.S. was intended to be conducted more on the state level. The fact that the current health care effort has not been passed yet by a Democratic congress shows that legislation on the federal level is slow and rightfully designed so.

Alexis De Toqueville states in his book Democracy in America, "The Federal government is far removed from its subjects, while the state governments are within the reach of them all and are ready to attend to the smallest appeal" (385). And this is even true today with the different rules and regulations that each states holds in their respective bodies of law all of which have been shaped by the citizens and situations of each state.

One of my biggest qualms with the health care legislation was the implied, one size fits all approach that federal law has upon the states. Such can be seen by examining tax codes. On the state level, the lawmaking body only has to adapt their legislation to the state's tax code and the tax codes of local governments. However passage of a health care bill on the federal level adds another degree of separation from the governed where one decision affects everyone regardless of the situation they are in.

Would the plan care if Texans can pay for it but New Yorkers can't because of a difference in tax codes?

If a law is passed in Congress, it needs to be thought out, debated upon and down right comprehensive...(as in my senator can read it). It won't just affect the nation, it will also affect the states.

First Post: Intent and Goals

January 23, 2010 begins my life as a political blogger ( or at least a wannabe political commentator).

The purpose of the blog is to bring out the following...

1) My opinion.

2) News that does not get mentioned much on Mainstream Media ( MSM).

3) To get your opinion on my opinion and the opinions of others.

I'm hoping for the best with this. While reading this blog you will know my biases on the issues. However your opinions do matter in this forum and I will do my best to reply with respectful comment as long as you give a respectful one to me or the people who take part in it as well.

Unless you want us to return to the early 19th century where political rivalries were negotiated over duels...I warn you now...I will win.

Well that's the intro. Hoping to see you on the next post.