Government | Bob Schwartz

October 1, 2013

Patents: Just One More Shutdown Victim

Election Game

You have heard stories, but you may not be directly affected by the shutdown at the moment, or know anyone who is. The shutdown may end tomorrow, but it may go on for weeks, as the last one did in 1996.

You understand the human misery that begins today. But maybe you don’t realize the legitimate, non-controversial things that the federal government does—things that are actually required by the U.S. Constitution, which even the most radical and extreme government haters say they respect.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is one of those functions. It is an engine of innovation, which is one of those buzzwords that everyone across the political specturms like to throw around. How busy and important is the USPTO? Right now, there is a backlog of 1,000,000 patent applications in the pipeline

The USPTO site features this:

USPTO Operation Status

During the general government shutdown that began October 1, 2013, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will remain open, using prior year reserve fee collections to operate as usual for approximately four weeks. We continue to assess our fee collections compared to our operating requirements to determine how long we will be able to operate in this capacity during a general government shutdown. We will provide an update as more definitive information becomes available.

Should we exhaust these reserve funds before the general government shutdown comes to an end, USPTO would shut down at that time, although a very small staff would continue to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure, among other functions. (Should it become necessary for USPTO to shut down, details of the agency’s plan for an orderly shutdown are available on page 78 of the United States Department of Commerce’s shutdown plan, available here.)

Any new or updated public information related to USPTO operations during the government shutdown will be placed on this page.

The mentioned shutdown plan includes 87 pages and obviously took many hours to create and will take many more to execute.

While there, a search of the patent database found numerous political games (above). Unfortunately, there did not seem to be any patents for helping political extremists understand that government is not a game, and that the extraordinary founders of the nation who they claim to love never meant it to be one. Those founders believed in government, and could never imagine any representatives irresponsible enough to believe otherwise.

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October 1, 2013

The Most Significant Shutdown Front Pages

El Diario

Republicans should pay close attention to the front pages of America’s newspapers this morning, the first day of the government shutdown prompted by their obsessive opposition to Obamacare.

Most papers carry some version of “shutdown” or “gridlock,” with photos of John Boehner and Harry Reid, or John Boehner and Barack Obama (it’s all about John Boehner).

But the big story on two front pages is the opening of the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges. These two papers just happen to be two of the largest Spanish-language dailies—El Diario in New York (above) and La Opinion in Los Angeles (below).

La Opinion

Why is this significant for Republicans? Because they claim (but in their heart of hearts still may not believe) that here in the second decade of the 21st century, they can’t become an American national party without broad Latino support. That is true, but the fact is that a large part of that constituency is uninsured and is deeply interested in the benefits of Obamacare. This is reflected in those front pages. But the Republicans are sworn enemies of Obamacare, so committed that they are willing to put people out of work to do it. How can the Republicans be a party attractive to Latinos under that circumstance?

The answer is that they can’t. It is a circle Republicans cannot square. And no matter how much lip service they pay to underserved populations, everything they do says something else. Actions, like front pages, speak louder than words.

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September 30, 2013

The Government Shutdown and Masturbating Fetuses

In the contentious Saturday night House debate on the Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government—a resolution that guts Obamacare and will almost certainly lead to a partial government shutdown—Republican Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas revealed a little known fact about the Affordable Care Act: it was “never intended to be law,” even though it obviously is. How so?

And here’s the real crux, Mr. Speaker. Here’s what’s really wrong and why Washington is in such a lather right now: The Affordable Care Act was never intended to become law. It was a vehicle to get the Senators home on Christmas Eve before the snowstorm. It was never intended to be law. The law that was passed by the Senate was a rough draft. It’s equivalent to saying the dog ate my homework so I turned in the rough draft; and, unfortunately, the rough draft got signed into law the following March, and that’s why there’s so much difficulty with this.
Congressional Record, September 28, 2013

Who is Rep. Burgess and why is he saying these things? He is a medical doctor, an ob/gyn, and has become one of the Republican Congressional experts on health care. Research shows that he has some other interesting views. This from U.S. News on June 18 of this year:

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said Monday he is opposed to abortion because fetuses masturbate in the womb, and so can feel both pleasure and pain.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, citing his experience as an OB/GYN, during a House Rules Committee hearing on a GOP bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?”

His comments were first reported by women’s health site RH Reality Check.

But Burgess’s argument isn’t based in science, doctors say. “We certainly can see a movement of a fetus during that time, but in terms of any knowledge about pleasure or pain – there are no data to assess,” says Jeanne Conry, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a professional association for OB/GYNs. “We don’t know enough about the biology and the science.”

One more medical opinion from Rep./Dr. Burgess on the country’s sickness: President Obama must be impeached. Burgess said to a Tea Party questioner in 2011: “It needs to happen, and I agree with you it would tie things up. No question about that.”

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September 29, 2013

Barbara Jordan v. Ted Cruz

Barbara Jordan - Ted Cruz
Regular readers of this blog know about the late Representative Barbara Jordan, one of the great speakers in modern American history, and one of the most distinguished members of Congress in her generation. We have seen few like her in recent years—because there have been few like her at all.

She shares one thing and one thing only with Ted Cruz: both represented Texas citizens in Congress. Besides that, they might as well be from different planets—politically, morally, intellectually, rhetorically, in just about any category you can name.

Barbara Jordan was born and raised in a black district of Houston. To say that she transcended any challenges she faced is saying nothing: her talents and compassion took her to the height of American political respect and significance. Ted Cruz was born in Canada, an apparent embarrassment for him, given that he has renounced his Canadian citizenship. He was raised somewhere, though there is no way to tell that he is “from” Texas other than the designation on his office. He has probably visited Houston, though it doesn’t seem his kind of place.

While at Harvard Law School, Ted Cruz reportedly refused to study with students who did not have undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Princeton or Yale. Even the “minor” Ivy League schools like Penn or Columbia weren’t good enough. Barbara Jordan attended Texas Southern University and then Boston University Law School. Well below minor status. However, she was a national champion debater at Texas Southern, where she beat Yale and Brown, and tied Harvard. And, presumably, would beat Ted Cruz in debate too.

Barbara Jordan was a model of intelligent political pragmatism, toughness tempered by compassion. She believed that character was paramount. Her rhetoric, rated in the range of FDR, JFK and MLK, could be uplifting or withering. She never spoke for twenty-one hours straight because she never had to. But if she had, it might be mesmerizing, start to finish. Ted Cruz is the model of something.

A Senate filled with one hundred Barbara Jordans would not be to everyone’s ideological taste, but no one would worry that they were being hoodwinked or being used as part of someone’s ambitious scheme, or that the country was in existential peril. The nation would be better for it. A Senate filled with one hundred Ted Cruzes is something else—perhaps a sign that beyond just shutting down the government, we should just close the doors on the American enterprise entirely.

We miss you Barbara. And we need you.

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September 29, 2013

Un-Americans in Congress

The first appearance of un-Americanism came during the American Revolution. Conservative colonists who remained loyal to the British crown were reviled by those who pledged their fortunes to a new and forward-looking vision. To the Patriots, the Loyalists were backward-looking un-Americans—even though “America” was not quite yet a reality.

The next appearance came during the Civil War. This time, a powerful portion of American citizens and leaders made philosophical and economic arguments that being a “real American” meant having the freedom to own people as property and, if that was taken away, the freedom to split the nation. Many other Americans disagreed, and in a war that took 620,000 lives, having a united nation and government was established as the bedrock of Americanism. Disagree and fight vigorously to change policy and direction, but when your initiatives threaten the integrity of that union, your Americanism is in question or even forfeited.

Right now, Republican members of Congress are on track to bring parts of the American government to a standstill, and probably damage a still-unstable American economy. This is un-American. Pointing fingers and trying to avoid accountability is childish; at least take credit or blame if the principles are so important. We need adult Americans. What we seem to be getting in some quarters are childish un-Americans. Nothing could be more sad or dangerous.

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September 27, 2013

Some Republicans Want to Kill the Dog

National Lampoon - Kill the Dog
It is as famous and funnily outrageous as any magazine cover ever: the January 1973 National Lampoon that threatened “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.”

That, in a nutshell, is the Republican threat in Congress: agree to every piece of legislation we’ve been unable to pass over the past few years, or we will kill the country—by not passing a budget resolution or not raising the debt ceiling or both.

National Lampoon wasn’t serious, which is what made it funny. If it was a real dog, a loaded gun and a crazy shooter, it would be a crime and a tragedy. Especially if we didn’t buy the magazine and the dog was actually killed.

Some Republicans aren’t exhibiting any sense of humor about this—or sense of perspective or history or citizenship. There is a loaded gun and there is a serious intention to pull the trigger, despite any likely harm. Which would be a crime and a tragedy and not very funny at all.

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September 27, 2013

Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy

Ted Cruz - Joe McCarthy
For a while now, virulent anti-Obamaism has looked a lot like the anti-Communist vendetta of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Barack Obama is in fact the scary culmination of the fear that swept the nation fifty years ago. Not only are there Communist infiltrators in government offices; the White House itself is in the hands of a godless liberty-taker—or so it seems to millions.

U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin did not invent this brand of hate and paranoia. He just perfected it through a combination of extreme showboating, angry rhetoric and, most of all, fear. Nothing could be worse than to be branded an enemy of the state (in McCarthyist terms), which might lead to a loss of a citizen’s reputation, job and career or, more to the point, to a politician’s losing office.

This week, Ted Cruz’s attempt to hog the American stage with his fauxbuster (media are still working on a term for a filibuster that isn’t one) has had a notable effect on some of his Republican Congressional colleagues. Since the 2010 elections, and certainly in the 2012 presidential campaign, there has been a reluctance to publicly break ranks and call an ambitious, self-absorbed blowhard that (e.g., Donald Trump) or a fool a fool (take your pick). In recent days, a few Republican Senators have stopped holding back, realizing that as much as they agree in their opposition to Obama policies, this is not a constructive way to proceed, governmentally or politically. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, a loyal Republican and unassailable conservative, said that it appears that to Cruz and others of that ilk, he is just not conservative enough.

This is the Ted Cruz/Joe McCarthy strategy: if you are not with me, you are against America. To torture a quote from King Louis XIV, “America c’est moi.” (I am America). And if you are not for my definition of America, you are an enemy of the state—even if you purport to be a Republican, even if you are a Senator with many more years than my nine months in the Senate. And if you are an enemy of the state, I and my millions of like-minded Americans will destroy you. That is my mission.

Joe McCarthy’s brief demagogic career ended in ignominy (and ill health from his alcoholism). He went from holding center stage to banishment when more and more of his colleagues and the media stood up to his bullying. It wasn’t that anti-Communism went away; it remained a force for years to come and, as pointed out, lives still even in the post-Cold War era. It was that serious people put up with over-ambitious clowns as long as a common agenda is advanced, but at some point even the threat of losing office takes second place to what’s good for America.

In the end, McCarthyism lost to Americanism. Let’s hope that Cruzism suffers the same fate.

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September 20, 2013

What the GOP Can Learn from Pope Francis

Pope Francis has turned out to be everything his most idealistic supporters hoped for, and then some. For a bonus trick, he may be able to save the Republican Party—politically speaking.

If you’ve only seen the top-line coverage of his interview with the magazine America, or read some quotes, do read the whole thing. It is a multi-dimensional view of a simultaneously simple and complex leader of an enormous—and enormously controversial—enterprise. We are apparently just beginning to see his skills.

For one thing, he is trying to navigate a sea of reformist and conservative elements, a dynamic that has left the Church in turmoil. He is doing this by something outrageously unlike most of what we see in the “sophisticated” twenty-first century. He is leading by staying true to a bedrock of belief, in word and action, but doing it in a way that is learned, thoughtful, humble and realistic. He is stripping away an accretion of institutional and self-interest extras, genuinely trying to get back to the core that made him a priest and a Pope, that brought so many to the Church, and that so many now see forgotten and hypocritized away.

This is a near miracle, and he may be on his way to doing just that. As a bonus, if the Republican Party is paying attention, it can learn something too. It turns out that unalloyed, unconditioned ideals can be both appealing and moral, including love, compassion, humility, tolerance (see the Beatitudes for a complete list). It isn’t easy to make this work in the real world, and it will be controversial and unpleasing to some, particularly those with extreme views.

The Republican Party is in the same position as the Church. There are some core beliefs that are eminently worthy but are being lost and forgotten in layers of maneuvering, narrow-mindedness, arrogance and hypocrisy. Catholics didn’t like that in the Church, and citizens, including some Republicans, don’t like it in the party.

Right at this moment, there is no Pope Francis on the horizon for the Republicans. This may become more apparent in the next few weeks, as some Republicans continue to exhibit a thoughtless, heartless and unproductive stubbornness that flies in the face of everything the party once stood for. Then again, nobody saw Pope Francis coming either. Let’s hope, for the sake of the nation as an economic, political and moral enterprise, that the Republican Pope Francis comes along very soon.

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September 18, 2013

Some Little Truths About Obamacare

You may not want to think or talk about the Affordable Care Act. Who can blame you? Politicos and talking heads are doing enough for all of us.

And yet, October 1 marks the start of people reading the menu of health insurance options and deciding which way to go. Which is why the volume of debate is once again up to 11 and why it is harder than ever, even after all this time, to make sense of any of it.

Previous posts have covered the process: how ACA is based on a Republican proposal, how Republicans ran screaming away from their own proposal, how the Supreme Court narrowly allowed it to proceed, etc. Now is the time to consider the substance and the merits, reluctantly. Reluctant because some kind of truly broad and truly affordable health coverage really is necessary for a civilized, modern and (in some segments) wealthy society, so a critique should not appear to deny that. Reluctant because, under the circumstances, ACA may really be the best we can do, even if that is not saying much.

But here are a few truths.

1. This is the most complicated, Rube Goldberg-like social program in American history. Comparisons to Social Security and Medicare—as in “people were skeptical or opposed to Social Security and now these programs are an integral part of American life”—are inapposite. Think: one concept, one law. That may be oversimplifying, but not much. Social Security was and is a way to create a fund to help older and disabled Americans who can’t help themselves. The way it’s evolved may be complicated and not to all tastes, but the basic concept remains. The same can be said about Medicare.

The single concept of ACA is more elusive, despite the name making clear it is about affordability. Separate from the execution and success in that regard, ACA is also about the reach and availability of coverage. More properly, it might be called the Market-Based Universally Available Affordable Care Act, a name that would hint at its complexity.

2. It may be too complicated to manage. To get to the truth of this, we have to look bigger. Bigger, as in the manageability or not of the American government. The loud complaint from some corners is that the government is “too big.” This is a misplaced critique. The problem is that very big enterprises are very hard to manage effectively. Just shrinking an unoptimally managed enterprise lessens the damage and the cost, but it doesn’t change the fact of ill management. Scientific management tells us that in theory any enterprise of any size can be managed, by discovering or devising the appropriate principles and executing soundly. But there is a cousin to “too big to fail” that is “too big to run.” Maybe the government is that.

Maybe the ACA is that also, too big and too complicated. Which touches back to the idea of its not having one single concept. It seems clear, as it did to the ACA proponents, that so-called universal, single-payer health care would never be accepted in “free market” America. If that wasn’t always clear, the debacle of the Clintoncare proposal, engineered by Hillary during the Clinton administration, put it out of reach for a generation. The only way to get anything, rather than nothing, was to patch together components that were variously consistent with popular ideas, market mechanisms, federalism, healthy business and industry interests, along with political and legal constraints. The wonder isn’t that a combination car/boat/plane gets designed and built. The wonder is that it can drive or float or fly.

3. The American political environment is distrustful, skeptical and toxic. Social Security was born during the worst economic crisis ever. So the building of an historic safety net was fitting. But on top of that, even with virulent opposition, there was a widespread understanding that we were all Americans, and part of that was caring for others, and part of that care was trusting that the government would, within the limits of human fallibility and self-interest, do the right thing.

We can pray for the return of that context, but it isn’t today. Today we have an unprecedented spectacle of a small but powerful segment of the country working desperately, and maybe effectively, to make sure that ACA is repealed or at least fails miserably. The reasons are as complex as the act itself, a bit about the shortcomings of the law, but, not surprisingly, mostly about politics. Proponents find themselves in the position of defending the act, promising to improve it, and trying to make it work—all the while perhaps harboring doubts in the places they can’t talk about that it won’t, not entirely.

Let’s hope it does work, a little. Because American health care is so broken, and for the moment, this is what we’ve got.

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August 20, 2013

Analogies to Egypt

Rosetta Stone

Who doesn’t love analytical analogies—situations past that bear a resemblance to current circumstances and might offer at least a little usable insight.

The current state of Egypt, like many situations in the new global age, is a bit sui generis—a unique thing of its own that we neither know how to classify or handle. For some, it is like going to watch a sports competition where you don’t exactly understand the game, don’t know nearly enough about the teams, and yet are being expected to choose sides—to root for somebody.

Here are a few of what we might call impressionistic analogies: examples from recent history that won’t withstand close scrutiny as directly related scenarios, but do have a certain similarity that at least gives us food for thought.

Iran – The impending release of Mubarek by the military government—ostensibly because the fraud case leading to his arrest would not hold up—brings to mind Iran and the last Shah. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 deposed the Shah and ended the West-friendly dynasty that the U.S. had long supported. One of the small but historically high-profile early incidents was President Jimmy Carter allowing the very ill Shah to seek medical help here in 1980—a factor in the subsequent hostage-taking, that in turn was (just one) of the reasons that Carter was not re-elected.

The U.S. is not alone in having to bet on somebody in turbulent times. Leaders are both real and symbolic in these contests. In Iran, our betting on the Shah—who was like us, who we understood, and who wss not like “them”—has proven disastrous. In the case of Mubarek in Egypt, what we wanted with him all those years was stability and moderation, but when it became apparent during the Arab Spring that we were looking decidedly anti-democratic, we opted to cut him loose and hope for democracy to follow. When that democracy started looking theocratic, possibly militantly so (Muslim Brotherhood), we were very confused and concerned—and so were the remnants of Mubarekism still in or near power. Military and stability or democracy and “adventure”. The Egyptian military made their decision, but we seem unable to decide. Will the military try to re-install Mubarek, or just leave him as a symbol of better days. Do we wish that we had handled Iran better, maybe helping to ease out the Shah and autocratic rule? It probably would not have prevented theocracy, but we didn’t try.

Iraq – Iraq, like Egypt, is another example of wanting to act strategically, while looking like the “good guy” and trying to figure out what a good guy looks like or acts like in these times. We supported Saddam Hussein, we refused to topple him, we toppled him, we executed him. All hell broke loose, and that fire may burn for generations. Whatever our skill at playing a real-world version of Risk globally, our track record in the Middle East is atrocious. At this point, we may want to consider where we stand relative to the historic record of the British and the French. (Note: We seem to have a bizarre predilection for following in their footsteps with little more, or even less, success than they had. See, e.g, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.)

Latin America – Our experiences in Latin America may serve as the most interesting of these tenuous analogies. The policy and history is easy to understand. We feared (still do) the incursion of Communism into the continent. We would support just about anybody who promised to keep the threat of socialism/Communism down. This put us in bed with a very bad lot, alliances that have had two lasting impacts. American fingerprints are all over the legacy of some despicable regimes. And now that many of those regimes are in the dustbin of history, residual anti-Americanism lingers on.

None of these alone, or even taken together, may offer much guidance in figuring out what to do in Egypt. Maybe a general lesson is that being powerful is not the same as being smart or being right. Maybe it’s that America is not as powerful as it thinks—back then, or even more so now—in a world it does not fully understand (again, ask the British and the French).

Egypt today is not that different from Egypt two years ago, or Syria now, or Iran or Iraq or Latin America. America has to expressly define and transparently decide how to stack our values and principles. Do we want American-style democracy or are we willing to settle for one of its other versions? Do we want democracy no matter what the results, or are we willing to trade democracy for authoritarian rule? Is authoritarian rule better than democratic or quasi-democratic Islamism, socialism or Communism? What is regional or global stability worth? What is peace worth? What is a Syrian or Egyptian or American life worth? Could billions in Egyptian aid, aside from whether or not we continue or suspend it, be better used to help Americans in an age of sequestration and austerity?

Grown up questions for grownups at the table.

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Category: Government