Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 356

What’s The Best Way To Get Clean? Ctd

In response to the reader who wrote that “AA works 100 percent of the time for people who are 100-percent committed to the program,” another writes, “Like much of AA’s homespun wisdom, that statement is completely untrue, yet very helpful at the same time”:

Most meetings begin with a reading that states: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has rigorously followed our path.” Who knows how true that really is, but when you’re desperate to stop drinking, hearing that can give you hope. I have no idea if I could have gotten sober on my own. I have no idea if AA is the best approach. Clearly it isn’t the only way, and Bill Wilson himself never suggested that it was. What I do know is that when I was desperate and had no idea how I could stop drinking, AA members gave me hope. They had been where I was and were in a better place now. I’ll always be grateful to AA for that.

Another reader:

People in recovery understand that the statement that AA “works 100 percent of the time for people who are 100-percent committed to the program” is like saying that if you enter a room, you are going to stay in that room, unless you leave it. It’s not meant as a claim of a perfect record of keeping sober everyone who has ever gone to a meeting. It’s meant as a short, easy to remember slogan that just might keep someone from leaving the room when they are having a really bad day.

Anyone who has been in recovery for a while will tell you honestly that they know they are always about to leave the room, and possibly lose their sobriety. This isn’t a damning indictment of the ineffectiveness of the program; it’s a real-time understanding that there are no guarantees in life and no short-cuts to true self-awareness, and being in denial about that is what fucked up your life in the first place.

You will never, ever, hear anyone put themselves forward as an official spokesperson for AA, whether to promote the program, make claims about its effectiveness, or make any statements of what AA endorses or refutes. The whole point of the “anonymous” part of AA is to keep AA out of any public or political controversy. To argue against what AA “says,” or what the 12 steps unfairly mandate, is to misunderstand what AA actually is – a loose network of groups of people who get together, regularly, anonymously, to talk to each other. That’s it. That’s all AA is. The 12 steps are a framework that gives the conversation some structure, but it’s not a creed or contract. Everyone is free to interpret them in their own way, and use them however they see fit – as long as their way worksfor them.

Another refocuses the discussion:

The reader who wrote about his roommate becoming a smoker and sugar junkie illustrates a point that I haven’t seen discussed in this thread: Addiction is both a mental and physical process. This is why so many people who come into the rooms struggle to find serenity: They switch one addiction for another. The process of getting high – whatever the drug or activity – activates all sorts of biochemical triggers all by itself independent of the substance or activity’s effects. It’s Pavlovian.

George Carlin gave an interview to Playboy years ago where he talked quite brilliantly about this: how the ritual of cleaning his dope before he rolled a joint was just as comforting to him as the “high” itself and an integral part of the process. This is why people associated with 12-step recovery often say that “We’re a nation of addicts.” All one has to do is spend 30 minutes watching TV to see how advertising pinpoints and perpetuates this “mental craving” that is also a part of the addiction cycle. We’re taught from birth that some “thing” can assuage whatever bad or uncomfortable feelings we have. The addict is wired to want, and then need, more and more regardless of the consequences.

Your Moment Of Pun

A reader passes along the above image:

Your previous reader wrote with regard to Cheney:

I’m no theologian, but an assumption that one is evil – because we are all inherently fallen – makes it one’s job as a human being to meditate on the evil (or, if you prefer the term, “error”) permanently inherent in oneself.

So basically the premise is that torturing prisoners is bad policy for fighting against errorists?

(Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)

Taking Bud All The Way The Bank

Jordan Weissmann parses the government memo released Friday:

The new guidelines, released by the Justice and Treasury Departments, essentially give banks an assurance that, as long as they play by the right rules and file the right paperwork, they probably won’t be prosecuted for letting your local pot shop open a checking account. Emphasis on probably.  … Without question, this does mark a huge step forward for the industry. But one has to wonder how many banks will be interested in creating a paper trail registering all of their marijuana-related dealings. The Justice Department’s memo doesn’t provide immunity from prosecution. That might be fine so long as marijuana-tolerant Democrats control federal law enforcement. But what happens the next time a Republican wins office?

Altman is unsure much will change:

Despite the government’s attempt to help the market operate, it is not clear that the memos are a long-term solution to the cash dilemma. The banking lobby has said repeatedly that financial institutions will require greater certainty than the yellow light the government gave Friday to transact freely with cannabis companies. Robert Rowe, a lawyer for the American Bankers Association, told TIME last month that “it would take an act of Congress” for banks to assume the risk.

J.D. Tuccille’s two cents:

Jacob Sullum already predicted that this memo won’t be very reassuring to banks. This is, after all, the same administration that suggested it would “de-prioritize” marijuana prosecutions and then did nothing of the sort. Trusting their business, and freedom, to non-binding guidance from an administration has only grudgingly ceded any ground on the drug war may just be a step too far for bankers.

Comwarnercablecast, Ctd

Looking at Comcast’s move to take over Time Warner Cable, Felix Salmon worries more about monopolizing broadband than cable:

[T]he US has something approaching a national broadband crisis on its hands. In comparison with the rest of the developed world, the US has slower broadband speeds and higher broadband prices than just about anybody. When you do find exceptions, they always turn out to be cases of a very clear monopoly: Carlos Slim more or less owns broadband in Mexico, for instance, while a company called Southern Cross controls all of the bandwidth into New Zealand.

Drum agrees that broadband is the real story:

What’s more, as Michael Hiltzik points out, broadband is a direct competitor to cable in the streaming video market, and having a single company with a monopoly position in both is just begging for trouble. Comcast will almost certainly be willing to make promises of net neutrality in order to win approval for its merger with Time-Warner, but those promises will be short-lived. The truth is that if this deal were allowed to go through under any circumstances, it would probably deal a serious blow to our ability to use the internet the way we want, not the way Comcast wants us to.

Meanwhile, John Cassidy asks, “Does Comcast own Washington?”:

In the past fifteen years, since it became the biggest cable company in the country, Comcast has invested a lot of time and effort in currying influence with the right people. Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive, is a member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which was set up in 2011, and, according to the New York Times, he played golf with the President on Martha’s Vineyard. In 2000, Roberts served on the host committee for the Republican National Convention, in Philadelphia, but he and Comcast have been big givers to the Democrats since Obama took office. Roberts was even one of the donors to President Obama’s 2013 inauguration.

Meghan Neal has more on the cable giant’s lobbying operation:

Last year, the company spent more than $18 million to lobby Congress on issues like cable laws and net neutrality, and donated $1.7 million to the reelection campaigns of key lawmakers, according to data from Open Secrets. That includes Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the subcommittee on communications and technology, which has jurisdiction over the FCC.

In 2012 Comcast gave $854,000 to members of that subcommittee alone, according to figures dug up by Maplight.

(Chart from the BBC)

A Union Vote With The Company’s Blessing … Fails

Over the weekend, workers at the Chattanooga VW plant decided against joining the UAW, in a narrow 53/47 vote. (The Dish rounded up pre-vote analysis here.) Rich Yeselson, who predicted the split perfectly, explains why the vote failed:

Because most workers weren’t particularly looking for a union to address problems they didn’t believe they had with the company in the first place — because VW was drafted into a cooperative relationship by the UAW, rather than seen as an galvanizing adversary — they didn’t think that the (literally) foreign concept of works council presented much of value proposition for them that would be worth one to two percent of their income in dues payments. As the very shrewd labor historian Erik Loomis wrote, in a sharp campaign post-mortem, “the usual union victory results from dissatisfied workers organizing with demands. That really wasn’t the case here.”

Rich Lowry blames the UAW’s political machinations:

After the UAW did so much to chase automaking out of Detroit with unsustainable labor costs and ridiculous work rules, it is no wonder that workforces haven’t welcomed it into the South, where right-to-work states have become alluring destinations for foreign car companies.

For the longest time, the business model of the UAW has been to take its members’ dues and funnel them to friendly Democratic politicians. Unless it breaks into the South, the union knows it’s all but doomed. It may feel this institutional imperative keenly, but workers in good manufacturing jobs who owe nothing to this self-serving dinosaur from the 20th century don’t. They can be forgiven for wondering which side the union is on.

DePillis disputes some of the anti-UAW campaigners’ claims about unions:

Are unionized companies now less productive than their non-union competitors? Well, that might have been the case through the mid-2000s, as the Detroit Three’s workforces aged and the cost of generous pensions mounted (and the companies weren’t doing themselves any favors, having misjudged the market for lighter and more fuel efficient vehicles). But according to data gathered by Oliver Wyman analyst Ron Harbour, the American automakers had nearly caught up to Toyota and the rest by 2008 through lean production processes and buyouts of older workers. Restructuring, a new product mix, and revived demand got them the rest of the way there; Michigan plants are now by and large running at peak capacity.

Kilgore calls the interference of GOP politicians a “travesty”:

I’m a little rusty on my labor law, but I’m reasonably sure that any employer who issued the sorts of threats made by Republican politicians in Tennessee (including Sen. Bob Corker, Gov. Bill Haslam, and a variety of state legislators, backed by national conservative figures like Grove Norquist) against a unionization effort would have been in blatant violation of the NLRA. … So addicted are Tennessee Republicans to the “race to the bottom” approach to economic development that they are willing to risk the good will of an existing employer in their zeal to make sure their own people are kept in as submissive a position as possible.

But Edward Niedermeyer pushes back against the liberal narrative that the vote was the result of “a right-wing movement to destroy worker representation”:

The Chattanooga rejection of the UAW was exactly that: the rejection of a single union that failed to make a persuasive case to the Tennessee workers and, despite profiting immensely from the Federal bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, is in dire straits after deciding to reward long-time members at the expense of new backers. In fact, the 712-626 vote can be seen as showing solid support for worker representation and for a German-style “works council” that VW management, too, backs. Rather, what what shot down was mandatory unionization as a prerequisite for those works councils — something the UAW insists is required under the federal labor law.

Beard Of The Week

Now check out the ones with shaving cream and razors. It’s like he’s taunting them …

Things Get Much Worse In Uganda

President Yoweri Museveni will sign Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill:

This is a reversal for Museveni, who had written to members of parliament after the legislation passed in December that he had come to believe that homosexuality was a biological “abnormality” and not something that should be criminalized. He had also told Western human rights activists that he would reject the bill during a meeting last month. … The deciding factor may have been that a panel of party members with medical backgrounds Museveni convened to study the cause of homosexuality presented a report concluding homosexuality is not an inborn trait. Museveni had told lawmakers he would sign the bill if “I have got confirmation from scientists that this condition is not genetic.”

The “good news” is that it looks like gays won’t face the death penalty: just life imprisonment. Burroway suspects that politics are behind the decision:

Speaker Kadaga, who is among the bill’s earliest supporters, reportedly has presidential aspirations and sees pushing Anti-Homosexuality Bill as a convenient populist move.

Her pushing the bill through Parliament set up an interesting dynamic ahead of the annual NRM Caucus in January where Museveni had planned to line up support for his bid for re-election in 2016 to add another 5-year term to what will be thirty years in office. At least one of his ministers had threatened to resign if Museveni were to return the bill to Parliament, a development that would complicate his party’s coronation.

The editor of the Observer, a Ugandan publication, agrees that the vote was political. But he thinks the law could be overturned in court:

The Observer Editor Richard M Kavuma believes the president may have been guided by political calculations. Because he was keen to win over MPs on key issues such as denying suspects bail on certain offences, Kavuma said, the president may have decided to sign the popular bill as a concession. “But it is also true that some of the president’s people may challenge the legislation in court and given Uganda’s largely progressive Constitution, they may get the bill declared unconstitutional,” Kavuma said. “That way the president comes out looking good to his anti-gay electorate, while the judges will take the flak from Uganda’s generally Christian conservative population.”

Sponsored Content Watch

Sponsored tweet: More than a spellchecker: @Lingofy is the essential tool for online writers, editors. http://t.co/BBD7CRZSod

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 18, 2014

From the reader who flagged the tweet:

I can’t tell whether it’s serious, but I can tell that people are seriously pissed:

But the beat will go on … and the press won’t write about it.

Sorry, Clapper, You Lied To Us

I’ve long been ambivalent about the NSA’s massive spying program. In many ways, I think it is one of the least objectionable of various counter-terrorism measures. It doesn’t require us to invade and occupy other countries, capture or kill innocent civilians, torture prisoners, or engage in endless melodramas with men like Karzai. The trouble is: such a program relies to a great extent on trust and consent in a democracy, and our government has made both close to impossible.

They lied to us, to put it bluntly. James Clapper lied directly to the Congress. And he keeps lying. Does anyone believe for a second his new excuse for brazenly deceiving the public he is supposed to serve? He’s all contrite now and claiming that the massive NSA program should have been disclosed early on after 9/11. Fine. But his credibility is effectively over. If an official has lied directly to the public before, he can do so again. And, as Ed Morrissey notes,

Clapper still defends the 215 program as both constitutional and effective, even though the administration’s own select panel concluded the opposite on both points after its investigation. Another group reached the same conclusion about the effectiveness of the 215 program last month.

The only reason Clapper is still in his job is because the president wants him there. No other conceivable defense is possible.

And the obloquy directed at Snowden and, to a lesser extent, the journalists who aided him, is thereby rendered moot. No one can deny that Snowden exposed something our democracy needs to know about, as Clapper now acknowledges. That makes it a text-book case of whistle-blowing, however unwisely Snowden has acted since. And that’s why the journalistic community, despite misgivings, has rightly rallied behind Greenwald, Poitras, MacAskill and Gellman who helped break the stories. The Polk Award is a big deal – and Pulitzers may follow.

I guess what I’m saying is that whatever the ethical questions about the leak of highly classified material, the US government has behaved so mendaciously, secretly and covertly that the question about Snowden is basically over. You can try to smear him and others. But you can no longer deny that they exposed government lies about matters of serious constitutional import.

Mental Health Break

At least one New Yorker is enjoying this incessant snowfall: