Friday Funday: Secession Silliness

If you haven't been completely driven away from politics in the last week and a half since the election, it's likely that you've heard about the ridiculous secession petitions being filed by disgruntled right-wingers in many U.S. states.

When we first heard about this idiotic trend we were neither surprised or concerned. In fact, our initial response was quite simple: the rest of America survived eight years of Bush (barely), you fools will survive eight years of Obama. Of course, we also thought, "If you want to leave, go ahead! Get to steppin'!"

In truth, we couldn't really take the idea of secession seriously at first because the petitions were being filed using the "We The People" online petition tool − which is hosted on the White House's own website. Nothing says "We don't need you" like using the tools of the people you claim not to need.

Still, out of curiosity more than anything, we began to look into the issue a bit more closely, especially after reading an opinion piece by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post earlier this week.

After further review of the facts and numbers, we tend to agree with Mr. Milbank - AND the secessionists. If people like that want to leave, there are a whole host of reasons why we're more than willing to let them go.

There are just a few problems though.

For one thing, secession in the United States is illegal. It's an act of treason. For another, it's unconstitutional. We know - the Supreme Court already covered that back in 1869, in the Texas v. White case, the case that proved Texas may not secede from the union.

There's also the problem of money.

Most of the states leading the secession charge are "taker states", as Mr. Milbank pointed out in his piece. That means that for every dollar in taxes they pay to the U.S. federal government, they get back far more than a buck. Louisiana takes about $1.45 for every dollar they send to Washington, DC. Missouri takes $1.29 for each dollar. Nebraska doesn't mooch too badly, only taking $1.07 for every dollar we give.

Of course, all the people in those states that were leaving would have to give up their Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, and VA Benefits too.

The biggest problem with the idea of secession though isn't all the stuff.

It's the people.

We like Austin, Texas, home of The Derailers, among other things. We also like Corpus Christi. We have family and friends in Arizona and Indiana, in Nashville, Tennessee and rural Nebraska too. The feeling goes the other direction too, as we know many "red staters" that have family and friends in New York, Chicago, L.A. - and of course, Washington, DC.

There's no reason to unfriend all those people who disagree with you on Facebook, or stop shopping at retailers who don't share your political views. We are one country - with millions of different viewpoints.

As President Obama first noted in his 2004 speech, and as he echoed again in his victory speech last week, we are not just a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States.

If you want to leave, that's up to you. But we'd rather you actually stayed. After all, that's how the melting pot concept is supposed to work.

Ill Communications

If there's one thing that's become blindingly obvious over the last week or so, it's how utterly bereft of purpose much of our national media machine is.

Sure, we've been following the embarrassing, tawdry, and effectively pointless "scandal" of the now-former head of the CIA, David Petraeus. What we know about the Petraeus incident so far is sad, and personally embarrassing to most of the primary actors in this real-life tragedy. Still, after the FBI spent months investigating parts of this case, and apparently gathered piles and piles of data what they found was salacious and sad - but not illegal.

What most of those in the major media outlets - who still have their hype generators on full-blast, after months of doing so during campaign season - haven't yet acknowledged is that there just doesn't appear to be any "there" there in this nontroversy. At least there's nothing important where most in the media are pointing.

The fact that over 20,000 pages of e-mails were exchanged by parties involved in the Petraeus scandal, and that the whole Petraeus affair was discovered by the FBI using surveillance powers in an ethically questionable, if not questionably legal manner? That's where the real story is.

It's well known that more and more companies are tracking what each of us do online, in an attempt to sell that information to advertisers who'd like a more accurate target for their ad dollars. Even games on your smartphone are collecting GPS data about where you are, and at what time of day.

That's because there are few if any serious and significant laws protecting the privacy of Americans online. We've known that fact for many years. The ECPA - the Electronic Communications Privacy Act  — was passed in 1986, long before the modern internet came into being, and has yet to be updated.

Like so many of our nation's infrastructure problems over the last 30 years, the legal infrastructure problem of protecting the privacy of Americans has been left to rot.

Until now.

While we're fairly certain the ECPA 2.0 and Global Free Internet Act won't be passed in this lame duck session of Congress, Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California has made it a key goal of hers to get both bills passed in the 113th Congress.

As Lofgren explained in a recent TechCrunch article, the ECPA 2.0 bill modernizes our current U.S. electronic privacy laws to protect Americans from government intrusion. The new law would apply Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure to our online digital property much as it does our physical property now.

The second bill would protect Americans from corporate intrusion and international collusion that might suddenly put the internet out of the reach of everyday people. In other words, it would help keep the Internet free and accessible for everyone.

We know - these kinds of legislative battles aren't nearly as sexy as twins from Tampa sending sexy e-mails to top government and military officials while being involved in love triangles. The legislative battles, however, are exactly what the real responsibilities of our government should be - and where our focus should be too.

The long arm of the law can indeed get too long for its own good. It's up to "We the people" to keep those law enforcement officials at a proper arms' length.

The Biggest Problem Isn't The Fiscal Cliff

Whether you call it a cliff, curb, staircase, or even an austerity crisis, the fact is, time is running short for the President and Congress to deal with the tax and budget issues most in the media are calling the "fiscal cliff."

As Ezra Klein, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, and many others have noted, the metaphor of a "fiscal cliff" that Ben Bernanke coined back in February is less of an accurate description than a dramatic phrase. It's obvious that Bernanke chose the word to scare some of our less than brilliant members of Congress into actually working together to get something very serious accomplished.

To be clear, we are absolutely not in denial of the "fiscal cliff", like some kind of weird climate change denial nuts who've suddenly changed our focus to taxes and budgets. The need for a detailed plan and quick actions to avert a potential hit to our fragile American economic recovery is no hoax.

The solution behind preventing the crisis though, is much more simple when you understand what we're facing.

As our friend and colleague Rick Ungar explained for Forbes this past weekend, there are really three large pieces to the tax and budget problem facing Congress and the President.

The first big piece is the Bush Tax Cuts, that were initially scheduled to end in 2010. In case you've forgotten, those tax cuts were never meant to be permanent - and one look at the causes of our debt and deficit show the Bush Tax Cuts are a huge government giveaway we simply can't afford to continue in their entireity.

The second piece of the problem is an assorted group of expiring tax cuts, like the payroll tax cut President Obama pushed through in 2010 to help working families get through the Bush Recession. This piece of the problem also includes the return of the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is yet another tax problem Congress has kept putting off fixing until the third Tuesday of never.

The final piece of this tax and budget fiscal disaster that is due to begin January 1, 2013 is the sequester, the massive across-the-board spending cuts that came from the Republicans' hostage taking negotiations on the debt ceiling in August of 2011. It should also be noted no one in Congress ever seriously intended the sequester to go into effect.

While there are many of our colleagues in the media who continue to be worked up about the danger of this tax and budget problem, there are many more - including Mr. Klein, Mr. Hayes, and even Paul Krugman - who have correctly pointed out; the fiscal cliff is not really a sharp disaster.

As Kevin Drum points out in his comprehensive Q&A on the subject, the reason this fiscal crisis is more like a fiscal staircase is simple.

If Congress does nothing, all the taxes we've talked about will go up on January 1, 2013. But not all of the $600 billion in new taxes will be due right away. That would be a cliff. Instead, only about $1.6 billion will be due every day - a hefty sum, yes, but an amount that's small, relative to our economy. Think of it as a $1.6 billion cattle prod that gets bigger everyday, in order to move obstructionists in Congress towards a compromise that matches up with the candidates and ideas that voters just put into office.

One of those ideas, in fact, is that more tax revenue needs to be collected from the rich and corporations, while the working and lower classes get to keep their tax holiday a little bit longer - at least until the economic recovery has reached poorer Americans too. In meetings on Tuesday with labor and progressive leaders, President Obama seemed to be highly aware of what the majority of American voters said they wanted, making it clear that while he's looking for compromise with Congressional Republicans, he's not going to back down on tax hikes for the rich.

You might think that would make a final deal tougher to reach, but as we already noted, the solution to this tax and budget problem pileup isn't the tough part.

The tough part is getting the obstructionists - who are still standing out on their ledge insisting taxes never be allowed to go up on anyone - to understand that they don't have the leverage of the American people behind them. In fact, they never did.