Arrest 'Em

No really, arrest 'em. And maybe the Vatican can start defrocking some of these evil, evil people for once instead of sitting idly by while its Church burns. You want to know why I don't go to Church regularly anymore? Stories like this.

Play The Cards Your Dealt

I'm getting a little tired of Conservative fear mongering about the Arab Spring. Yes, it's messy, it's disturbing, it's violent and it's deadly. All of which I would prefer not to happen. In a perfect world, this would have been done peacefully and through democratic means, but as we all know, the Middle East is far from a perfect world.

I hate to risk the wrath of being labelled part of the 'Blame America' coalition, but a lot of this mess can be laid at the feet of Cold War foreign policy. As I've noted before in the past, we're paying the price for a morally questionable foreign policy that lasted decades. While the Soviet Union stood for communism and tyranny everywhere, we stood for democracy and freedom in the United States and Western Europe and backed some very dubious characters everywhere else.

Whether that was the price we paid for making the world safe for communism is a whole other debate, but the fact is that we got locked into support for a lot of these regimes and have been far from willing to seriously pressure them to reform themselves- especially Egypt. While the Obama Administration's response to a lot of these uprisings seemed to be hesitant a lot of the time, this is the hand we dealt ourselves by not pressuring Mubarak for real, serious reform.

You play the cards you're dealt, no matter how you slice it. And while I think the entire region will probably be messy for some time to come, there are reasons to hope in Tunisia and Libya and the military is enough of an entrenched institution in Egypt, it's hoped that pro-democracy people get this under control quickly, because if free elections turn into violence I have no doubt that the military will just not leave power.

Whether we want to wish this on ourselves (with an 'American Fall' as Van Jones is preaching) is another question entirely-- more on that next.

Perspective

After a nice workout and some deep thought, I'm a little more at peace with the world. Kids, I want you to follow me through this line of thinking.

Until the Elites (whether of the Left, Right, Republican, Democrat, Media, Business, Cultural, Political- all of them) are neutered and put back into their proper place, gridlock and malaise will continue. Therefore, any attack on the elites in my book, is a good thing.

The Internet (and Steve Jobs played a vital role in this) is pushing power outwards and downwards and into the hands of individuals like you and I at an ever expanding rate. Centralization of power impedes progress, therefore any centralization of power, in my book is a bad thing.

The Tea Party (such as it is) has made it's name attacking the sacred cows of the Elite Left. (Bloated public pensions, ineffective public education systems, unsustainable entitlement commitments teacher's unions and their effect on education, neo-Socialists attempts to turn us into Europe.)

OccupyWallStreet seems (after a rough start, they seem to be focusing down a bit) to be going after the sacred cows of the Elite Right- (corporate welfare, crony capitalism, legalized corruption in Congress that waters down effective regulation of corrupt corporations.)

So in other words, Elites of all varieties are being attacked from both sides. I can get behind this and give it a big old two thumbs up.

I still think there's more work to be done. We're in a fundamental moment of transformation and we need a new politics and a new ideology (or ideologies) for the 20th Century. I have little patience for decades old socialist talking points being constantly repackaged and passed off as something 'radical'. I have even less patience for a party that says that government is depraved and must be destroyed yet curiously insists that government stick around to enforce a moral obligation to dictate what a woman can do to her own body, whom a person can marry and whether they can engage in moral, ethical family planning by easy access to whatever means of contraception they choose to employ. Such hypocrisy makes me sick.

The true transformation of this country can only begin when we break down the barriers that the Elites impose on us and those that we impose on ourselves. When we truly realize that America deserves better than what our elites have to offer us, then we will be truly free.

I say all this as a registered, proud, fiercely Independent voter. You better believe I'm going to remain that way.

A Tiff over TIFs

In the wake of Coralville's brazen attempt at bribery to peel Von Maur away from Sycamore Mall and out to the Iowa River Landing, there's been a flurry of coverage on the issue of TIF (tax incremented financing) districts and their drawbacks and potential- with some lawmakers calling for a review of Iowa's TIF statute over concerns that Coralville might be stretching it a little too far.

All of this raises a potentially interesting question: does Coralville have an edge or is it just selling its soul to a ginormous TIF district that'll come back to bite it in the ass someday? A couple of nice articles in the Press-Citizen explore this a little bit, ranging from the overall use of TIF in the county to the impact it has on other services- especially given the loss of tax revenue involved in promoting a TIF district.

Over at FromDC2Iowa, Nick Johnson weighs in as well with some more reasons why TIF's should be used a lot more judiciously than they are now- all 3 are well worth a read.

As a local development group eyes a Hampton Inn for Iowa City and the controversy still rages in University Heights about a proposed development (where the developer was asking for a TIF, of course, the questions will probably continue. I think there are a couple of things worth touching on here: first, Iowa City is not Coralville- we shouldn't get tagged with their brush, especially given that I don't think financing for the proposed Riverfront Crossing District has been locked in stone yet.

I'm not against TIF's where they're appropriate- turning your whole town into a giant TIF, like Coralville seems to secretly want to do, is a little bit of overkill for me though.

Will this Riverfront Crossing thing work without TIF financing? I don't know- I don't even know if it's that good of an idea, given all the flooding we've had- even with the gigantic greenspace the plans call for. That area of town could do with a facelift though- a Hampton Inn also wouldn't be that out of place, but beyond that, we've gotta have a sensible conversation about what Iowa City should look like in the future. All this insistence on a local identity and blah blah blah doesn't really impress me much. We've haven't had that since elementary school- and we need to do something. I'm just not sure what. I do know that I'm getting sick and tired of spending my money in Coralville. Or at Wal-Mart... and we can do something about that- but only if we want too.