What if this is as good as an Obama Administration Gets?

Posted: December 26, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Populism, POTUS, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , | 78 Comments

Frank Rich, in today’s Gray Lady, asks:

Who Killed the Disneyland Dream?

From the link:

This month our own neo-Kennedy president — handed the torch by J.F.K.’s last brotherand soon to face the first Congress without a Kennedy since 1947 — identified a new “Sputnik moment” for America. This time the jolt was provided by the mediocre performance of American high school students, who underperformed not just the Chinese but dozens of other countries in standardized tests of science, math and reading. In his speech on the subject, President Obama called for more spending on research and infrastructure, more educational reform and more clean energy technology. (All while reducing the deficit, mind you.) Worthy goals, but if you watch “Disneyland Dream,” you realize something more fundamental is missing from America now: the bedrock faith in the American way that J.F.K. could tap into during his era’s Sputnik moment.

How many middle-class Americans now believe that the sky is the limit if they work hard enough? How many trust capitalism to give them a fair shake? Middle-class income started to flatten in the 1970s and has stagnated ever since. While 3M has continued to prosper, many other companies that actually make things (and at times innovative things) have been devalued, looted or destroyed by a financial industry whose biggest innovation in 20 years, in the verdict of the former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, has been the cash machine.

I believe there was a poll conducted not too long ago that gives a fairly good baseline from which to guestimate just how many middle class Americans still “believe” — I’m talking about that WaPo poll back at the end of October, which found that 53% of Americans are concerned about their ability to pay their rent or mortgage.

Getting back to Frank Rich’s piece, Rich concludes the following:

It’s a measure of how rapidly our economic order has shifted that nearly a quarter of the 400 wealthiest people in America on this year’s Forbes list make their fortunes from financial services, more than three times as many as in the first Forbes 400 in 1982. Many of America’s best young minds now invent derivatives, not Disneylands, because that’s where the action has been, and still is, two years after the crash. In 2010, our system incentivizes high-stakes gambling — “this business of securitizing things that didn’t even exist in the first place,” as Calvin Trillin memorably wrote last year — rather than the rebooting and rebuilding of America.

In last week’s exultant preholiday press conference, Obama called for a “thriving, booming middle class, where everybody’s got a shot at the American dream.” But it will take much more than rhetorical Scotch tape to bring that back. The Barstows of 1956 could not have fathomed the outrageous gap between this country’s upper class and the rest of us. America can’t move forward until we once again believe, as they did, that everyone can enter Frontierland if they try hard enough, and that no one will be denied a dream because a private party has rented out Tomorrowland.

…which brings me back to what I wrote yesterday in my Saturday roundup, about America being locked in reflexive doubt, and that being as corrosive as blind faith.

A huge part of the problem is that we have an empty suit in the White House from whom the best we can hope for is that he simply lets other people lead for him and make something good happen once in awhile, if we are even that lucky. It’s a victory if he lets other people throw us a bone and fight the fights of ordinary Americans for him. Woo hoo.

Three years ago or so the Obama campaign started churning out posters with the word “believe.” The Obama machine wanted us to believe in an image, a brand. Whenever it has come time for Obama to get us to believe in ourselves, he quietly folds up his teleprompter and goes golfing.

For months on end we had the MSM trying to explain away Obama’s inability to communicate that he even cares. Oil gushed out into the Gulf, and all Obama could muster up was “I can’t suck it up with a straw.”

Sure he cares. Now watch this drive.

Whether it was letting Bill Clinton bring Euna Lee and Laura Ling home or letting Joe Lieberman lead the way to repeal of DADT, it seems this is the zenith of the Obama presidency. Letting other people do the actual president-for-the-people stuff while he enjoys the perks of Being President.

With this president, the sky is not the limit, it is merely aspirational..

Ordinary Americans are just trying to survive in today’s economy, at a time when their own president does not think the sky is the limit in terms of the lengths to which he will go to fight for the American people but rather insists that the best he can do is talking point reforms with all the corporate benefits and backdoor privatization buried in the fine print, not to even speak of all the obligatory pork.

Asking or expecting people in such a hostile working/living environment to believe “the sky is the limit if they work hard enough” is essentially asking them to bury their heads in the sand. What is still left of Obama’s ostriches (think Dubya’s 23 percenters) can ignore reality all they want, but that will not change the fact that most Americans are invisible to this president and they know it.

We are stuck in reflexive doubt at this point, but how is having a president who reinforces all of those doubts supposed to help? At this point, I have no idea why anyone on the left still persists in the delusion that there’s any 2% less evil difference between Obama and the GOP.

From a recent Democracy Now interview with Chris Hedges (h/t Dakinikat), where he talks about his latest book, Death of the Liberal Class:

AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of President Obama?

CHRIS HEDGES: A disaster. A poster child for the bankruptcy of the liberal class. Somebody who, like Clinton, is a self-identified liberal, who speaks in the traditional language of liberalism but has made war against the core values of liberalism, which is a concern for those people outside the narrow power elite. And the tragedy, if tragedy is the right word, is that Obama, who made this Faustian bargain with corporate interests in order to gain power, has now been crumpled up and thrown away by these interests. They don’t need him anymore. He functioned as a brand after the disastrous eight years of George Bush.

And what we are watching is an even more craven attempt on the part of the White House to cater to the forces that are literally destroying the United States, have reconfigured, are reconfiguring this country into a form of neofeudalism. And all of the traditional—the pillars of the liberal establishment, that once provided some kind of protection and, more importantly, a kind of safety valve, a mechanism by which legitimate grievances and injustices in this country could be addressed, have shut tight. They no longer work. And so, we are getting these terrifying, proto-fascist movements that are leaping up around the fringes of American society and have as their anger not only a rage against government, but a rage against liberals, as well. And I would say that rage is not misplaced.

And, there you have it. This is the difference between having Obama and having a GOP president.

So he lets Lieberman or Clinton or someone do something right once in awhile. So what?

I personally won’t waste time denying Obama the “credit.” While the soldiers and the activists who fought for repeal of DADT at the grassroots level are the ones who made this historic step in that direction possible and are the real heroes and sheroes of this story, the fact of the matter is that had Obama succeeded in blocking the DADT repeal, then the blame would have been piled on high at his doorstep.

So he can have the credit, but he also needs to take responsibility for the fact that simply standing back and allowing others to do the heavy lifting once in awhile is neither enough nor the vision of someone who thinks big or sets the sky as his limit for what he can do AS president for the people who elected him.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama set the limit to just being president.

No one would be happier than I would be if Obama would just prove this theory wrong. I have no Disneyland dreams or illusions that he will do so, though.

Monday Reads

Posted: December 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, DADT, Democratic Politics, GLBT Rights, income inequality, morning reads, Populism, SCOTUS, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , | 79 Comments

Good Morning!!

There was a terrible oil pipeline explosion in San Martin Texmelucan, Mexico.

A massive oil pipeline explosion lay waste to parts of a central Mexican city Sunday, incinerating people, cars, houses and trees as gushing crude turned streets into flaming rivers. At least 28 people were killed, 13 of them children, in a disaster authorities blamed on oil thieves.

The blast in San Martin Texmelucan, initally estimated to have affected 5,000 residents in a three-mile (five-kilometer) radius, scorched homes and cars and left metal and pavement twisted and in some cases burned to ash in the intense heat.

Relatives sobbed as firefighters pulled charred bodies from the incinerated homes, some of the remains barely more than piles of ashes and bones.

The disastrous accident is being blamed on thieves who were attempting to steal crude oil.

Investigators found a hole in the pipeline and equipment for extracting crude, said Laura Gurza, chief of the federal Civil Protection emergency response agency.

“They lost control because of the high pressure with which the fuel exits the pipeline,” he said.

The oil flowed more than half a mile (one kilometer) down a city street before diverting into a river. At some point a spark of unknown origin caused both to erupt in flames.

I found that story on Fox News. I’m not sure how much attention it will get in the U.S. Cudos to Fox for covering it.

The National Journal has a preview of what we’re in store for in 2012 if we can’t dump Obama and find a qualified, electable liberal to replace him. According to the author, Ronald Brownstein, there are two types of Republicans who might run for president: “managers” like Mitt Romney and “populists” like Sarah Palin.

The most prominent populists are former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The leading manager is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, although he could face competition from such current governors as Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, and, conceivably, New Jersey’s Chris Christie. Onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich straddles both camps but leans toward the populist side. Outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a self-described “Sam’s Club” Republican with an equable manner, also straddles the line but probably tilts toward the manager camp, as would Sen. John Thune of South Dakota if he ran. Conversely, if Texas Gov. Rick Perry reverses his decision and joins the race, he would enter as a full-throated populist.

No matter which type we get stuck with, it’s going to be a nightmare.

The two groups disagree on some issues (trade, aid to banks), but the most important differences between them are cultural and stylistic, not ideological. The populists thunder; the managers reassure. The populists stress their social values; the managers tout their economic competence. The populists rage at the elite; the managers mingle easily with them.

To their supporters, the populists represent a cultural statement: Who they are is more important than what they will do. For the managers, that equation is reversed: Their biggest selling point is their agenda, not their identity.

Of course, Obama might be able to get some of his base back now that Congress has suddenly handed him DADT repeal. IMHO, Obama didn’t really want it, but he’ll take the resulting bump it will probably give him. It’s not clear yet what results the tax cuts will have on Obama’s popularity. I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that.

Also at the National Journal, there’s an interesting piece by Michael Hirsch: Obama Tried to Placate Liberal Economists

At a White House news conference on December 7 in which he announced a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, Barack Obama chastised his liberal base for sticking unrealistically to their “purist” positions.

What the president didn’t say was that a few hours earlier he had met with and tried to assauge some his most vociferous liberal critics — economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder, and Robert Reich, the former Labor secretary.

Excuse me? Why the hell did it take so long for this story to get out?

“He didn’t really respond,” said one of the participants. “He said it was hard to change the narrative after 30 years” of small-government rhetoric and policies dating back to Ronald Reagan. “He seemed to be looking for a way to reassure the base. Or maybe it was just to reassure himself.”

Um…presidentin’ is hard. Part of the job is influencing “the narrative.” Maybe if Obama had actually tried, he could have accomplished something. But why try? Might as well just relax, play basketball, and vacation in Martha’s Vineyard wine tours, enjoying Hawaii, and let the other Reaganites control “the narrative.” The article even harks back to Obama’s praise of Reagan during the primaries.

We just have to dump this loser!

There’s a great post on Washington’s Blog arguing for a causal connection between income inequality and the crashes of 1929 and 2008.

…recent studies by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty are waking up more and more economists to the possibility that there may be a connection.

Specifically, economics professors Saez (UC Berkeley) and Piketty (Paris School of Economics) show that the percentage of wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans peaked in 1928 and 2007 – right before each crash…

Please go read the whole thing.

Raw Story reports that a new study supports the hypothesis that the “Supreme Court is becoming a tool of corporate interests.”

A study has found that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has undergone a fundamental shift in its outlook, ruling in favor of businesses much more often than previous courts.

According to the Northwestern University study, commissioned for the New York Times, the Roberts court has sided with business interests in 61 percent of relevant cases, compared to 46 percent in the last five years of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who passed away in 2005….

Meanwhile, a second study, from the Constitutional Accountability Center, has charted the growing influence of the US Chamber of Commerce on the courts. The chamber started filing amicus briefs with the top court three decades ago in an effort to prompt more business-friendly rulings.

According to the study, the Roberts Supreme Court has sided with the Chamber 68 percent of the time, up from 56 percent under the Rehnquist court, and noticeably higher than the 43 percent during the relevant part of Chief Justice Warren Burger’s court, which ended in 1986.

Fox News reports the results of another study, one that finds that “Prime Time TV ‘Objectifies and Fetishizes’ Underage Girls”

According to a new study conducted by the Parents Television Council (PTC), Hollywood is shockingly obsessed with sexualizing teen girls, to the point where underage female characters are shown participating in an even higher percentage of sexual situations than their adult counterparts: 47 percent to 29 percent respectively.

PTC’s report, entitled “New Target: A Study of Teen Female Sexualization on Primetime TV” is based on a content analysis drawn from the 25 most popular shows in the 12-17 demographic throughout the 2009-2010 television season.

“The results from this report show Tinseltown’s eagerness to not only objectify and fetishize young girls, but to sexualize them in such a way that real teens are led to believe their sole value comes from their sexuality,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “This report is less about the shocking numbers that detail the sickness of early sexualization in our entertainment culture and more about the generation of young girls who are being told how society expects them to behave.”

“Storylines on the most popular shows among teens are sending the message to our daughters that being sexualized isn’t just acceptable, it should be sought after,” Winter said.

I have to say, this study reflect what I’ve noticed in the small sample of TV I expose myself to. Prime time is sure different than when I was a teenager.

At the Washington Post, there’s a story about (surprise!) hypocrisy in the Senate.

The Senate Armed Services Committee prohibits its staff and presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation from owning stocks or bonds in 48,096 companies that have Defense Department contracts. But the senators who sit on the influential panel are allowed to own any assets they want.

And they have owned millions in interests in these firms.

The committee’s prohibition is designed to prevent high-ranking Pentagon officials from using inside information to enrich themselves or members of their immediate family.

But panel members have access to much of the same inside information, because they receive classified briefings from high-ranking defense officials about policy, contracts and plans for combat strategies and weapons systems.

Of course it’s not just hypocrisy. It’s a wide open invitation to corruption.

Since I’m a psychologist, I’m going to throw in a story about psychological research. The author, Tyler Burge, is a professor of philosophy at UCLA. He discusses one of my pet peeves–the way brain imaging research is glorified in the media, even though it’s really just based on correlations between brain activity and specific behaviors. While the results of these studies can be interesting, they aren’t sufficient to actually explain human behavior.

Burge writes:

Imagine that reports of the mid-20th-century breakthroughs in biology had focused entirely on quantum mechanical interactions among elementary particles. Imagine that the reports neglected to discuss the structure or functions of DNA. Inheritance would not have been understood. The level of explanation would have been wrong. Quantum mechanics lacks a notion of function, and its relation to biology is too complex to replace biological understanding. To understand biology, one must think in biological terms.

Discussing psychology in neural terms makes a similar mistake. Explanations of neural phenomena are not themselves explanations of psychological phenomena. Some expect the neural level to replace the psychological level. This expectation is as naive as expecting a single cure for cancer. Science is almost never so simple.

Correlations between localized neural activity and specific psychological phenomena are important facts. But they merely set the stage for explanation. Being purely descriptive, they explain nothing. Some correlations do aid psychological explanation. For example, identifying neural events underlying vision constrains explanations of timing in psychological processes and has helped predict psychological effects. We will understand both the correlations and the psychology, however, only through psychological explanation.

Unfortunately, Burge wants to replace the evidence from brain imaging research with perceptual research. Okay, but perception doesn’t fully explain human behavior either.

I could make the same argument for other psychological fields. For example, what about child development? One problem with research on brain structures is that every child’s brain develops differently, depending on the experiences the child has with his or her environment. The brain is so flexible that each human brain is truly unique–even though there are obviously many similarities across individuals.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article. Check it out if you’re interested in psychology.

Soooooo… what are you reading this morning? Please share!

Bernie Sanders Love Fest Open Thread

Posted: December 10, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: open thread, Populism | Tags: | 41 Comments

If you didn’t catch the ‘Filabernie’ today, here’s some more!  Enjoy!!  Billionaires on the Warpath with greed that has no end!!!

From the LATIMES:

BerniesandersSen. Bernie Sanders became a sensation on cable television and new media outposts like Twitter with his filibuster Friday of a proposal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to all Americans.

Twitter lit up with highlights from Sanders’ (an Independent from Vermont) prolonged and sometimes angry speech, decrying an agreement between President Obama and Republicans to allow the breaks even for millionaires, while he said many of his constituents are going hungry.

The filibuster, from a Dutch word meaning “pirate,” has a long and not so proud history in the U.S. Senate. Those in the majority have tried for more than two centuries to make it go away. They have failed.

Vice President Aaron Burr paved the way for the filibuster with a seemingly innocuous move in 1805 to simplify the Senate’s rules. He argued that the Senate debate guidelines were too complex and that one rule, allowing “previous question” motions, should be stricken.

The previous question rule had allowed lawmakers to end debate and call for a vote. But the Senate went along with Burr and dumped the rule. It wasn’t until more than three decades later, in 1837, that a filibuster stalled Senate action for the first time.

Bernie on Tavis Smiley: The President “is not going to sell this to me’. The costs of caving-in to Republicans will become higher in the future. They’ll come back and ask for more.

From Politico:  Bernie Sanders Last Stand

The left’s been looking for a new hero. Tonight they latched onto one: Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont independent took progressive fury over President Obama’s tax-cut deal with Republicans to the floor of the Senate Friday, bringing the chamber to a standstill for eight hours with a filibuster-style speech that set the liberal Twitterverse ablaze.

“Let me conclude,” said Sanders. “It has been a long day. Let me simply say that I believe a proposal that was developed by the president and the Republicans are nowhere as good as we can achieve.”

Open Thread and Open Celebration for Truth Spoken to Power!!!

Liveblog II: Okay, so it’s not really a filibuster…

Posted: December 10, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Populism, the blogosphere | Tags: , , , | 63 Comments

Bernie Sanders isn’t really preventing the Obama-McConnell tax cuts from being voted on. That is supposed to happen on Monday. But who cares? Just killjoys and whiners. The man is still standing after 7+ hours on the Senate floor. His voice sounded a little hoarse for awhile, but right now he’s going strong again.

Why can’t we get Sanders to run for President? He’s a lot more charming than Ralph Nader and he actually cares about the middle class and the poor, unlike the arrogant, cynical, corrupt egomaniac who occupies the White House right now. The fact that only two other Democratic Senators have joined Sanders in his “filibuster” demonstrates to the American people how disgustingly corrupt and immoral our political class is today.

Sanders is talking about real issues that don’t get covered by our corporate media. He has discussed the growth of income equality in America, the lack of attention that has been paid to our infrastructure, the causes of the recent economic emergency, and why Obama’s tax cut bill is wrong and will harm ordinary Americans.

Sanders is talking about usury and how credit card companies are robbing people blind. He says they are “no different that the gangsters who used to beat up people on street corners” for not paying off the loan sharks.

I wonder what Obama and his pals in the White House are thinking about all of this?

Here are some reactions to the “filibuster” that I have found around the blogosphere.

At FDL, David Dayen wrote that

Sanders is calling attention to the massive inequality in America, which will only be stratified further by a tax cut bill that raises taxes from current law for 25 million low-income workers and gives millionaires a tax cut of about $139,000 a person. He’s explaining America’s insane trade policies, which have cut out the American manufacturing base and hollowed out the middle class. He’s taking on corporate CEO pay, and the two-income trap, and basically making the progressive critique of an economy bought and paid for by the very rich….

…you’re seeing issues discussed on the Senate floor that almost never come up in any other context. Political theater is sadly one of the few ways to cut through the clutter in America, and that’s what Sanders is up to, I suspect.

At his Guardian blog, Michael Tomasky wrote:

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard liberals say, “Reid should just make them filibuster! Make them hold the floor for 24 straight hours, as Strom Thurmond once did. They will look ridiculous to the American people, especially as said people figure out they’re trying to block a relatively inexpensive unemployment benefits extension, and the opposition will crash down like a house of cards.”

In a session with a record number of filibusters threatened and cloture motions filed, it never happened. Almost, once or twice; but it didn’t. So, it’s kind of sad that the only actual filibuster of the whole dysfunctional session is the one happening right now, but it doesn’t involve Republicans at all.

Tomasky likes the tax cut deal, but still…

I admire Sanders, and although I think the deal is pretty good, under the circumstances, and should pass, I do take my hat off to the guy. It’s just nice to see someone taking a stand for the view that upper-income households don’t need a tax cut, and the view that we’re going to have an estate tax that will impact – get this – just 3,500 families in the entire country (see that chart, and look at “taxable returns” for 2011 under the Lincoln-Kyl proposal).

Sanders is not expected to pull a Thurmond. The Senate put together a package last night and this morning that added a few meagre sweeteners for the Democrats (extending subsidies for alternative energy and ethanol that were slated to expire). It will almost surely pass, with most Republicans and enough Democrats. Then, the action moves to the House, where things are a bit iffier but, most suspect, only a bit.

There goes another cynical killjoy. Sanders is doing something truly admirable and he deserves support, if not from other politicians, from us ordinary Americans. Just seeing him do this gives me hope–and not the kind of fake “hope” that Obama sold to the progs. It’s the kind of hope that makes you want to get up and fight for what is right.

At The Nation, John Nichols writes:

After Sanders took the rostrum at 10:24 a.m. Friday, the Vermont Independent posted a message on his his twitter account that read: “You can call what I am doing today whatever you want, you [can] call it a filibuster, you can call it a very long speech…”

Six hours later, Sanders was still speaking. His bold gesture grabbed the attention of the nation, as Senate video servers were overwhelmed when more than 12,000 people tried to watch the speech online.

For all the excitement, Sanders was not actually blocking a vote on the tax deal. The Senate will not take the issue up until Monday, at the earliest.

Sanders was, however, sending a powerful signal about the fight to come.

Nichols also calls attention to

…a letter circulated by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, the senators said: “We have grave misgivings about the recent tax agreement. We hope that the Senate can improve on it. We look forward to working with you to ensure a vote on our amendment to strengthen Social Security in lieu of bonus tax cuts for people who are doing quite well.”

The following Senators have signed the letter:

Merkley, Landrieu. Alaska’s Mark Begich, Hawaii’s Daniel Akaka, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Minnesota’s Al Franken, Colorado’s Mark Udall and California’s Barbara Boxer

Nichols suggests that several other Senators might support the sentiments in the letter. The text of the letter is included at the end of the article.

Politifact investigated Sanders’ claims about income inequality and learned that he has been telling the truth. Are you listening corporate media?

Right now, Bernie Sanders is reading from heartrending letters from his constituents. Someone needs to force President Obama to sit down in front of his TV and watch this. He might learn what a real Democrat should look and sound like. Yes, I know Bernie is an independent, but back in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, Democrats he would have fit in in the Democratic Party.

Today, corrupt corporate tools like Barack Obama have the gall to call themselves Democrats. It’s a crying shame what has happened to my former party and my country. Thank you Bernie Sanders for what you are doing today.

Watch Bernie Sanders long, long speech at C-Span 2.

Behind the Screen Name

Posted: November 30, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Populism, the internet | Tags: , , , | 64 Comments

I can remember the first time I got on AOL and had to think up a ‘screen name’ after being told it wasn’t cool to use my real name.  Dakinikat is actually my second screen name from there and it’s about 12 or so years old.  I used to go by Anais for a long time.  The Dkat moniker came after I started practicing Tibetan Buddhism and a relationship had ended.  It was my fresh start in middle age.  I used it to search out follow Buddhists on line since there wasn’t a huge community of them around me.  You’ll see many of them pop in here ever so often because we’ve all gotten so close from the first years in the AOL Buddhist Chat room.

I actually was outed about a 1 and 1/2 years ago in a blog that hated Obama detractors and Hillary Supporters.  It really bothered me then because the 2008 primary was so ugly and I had just started blogging.  I really didn’t want my political views known to  my students before they got to know me. I always like to taunt their opinions from all sides of the political spectrum and most of the time they have no clue about my political affiliation or they get it wrong.  I was actually warned when I started Sky Dancing not to put too much personal information here because there were people that would abuse it.   Now, you can find out who I am pretty easily through my twitters and my FaceBook if you’re really that interested. I still like the penname/screename and it tickles me when I talk to folks who know me as ‘kini’ or “daki’ or my IRL nickname ‘kat’.  I personally respect people that don’t want to be outed because of that adventure and a later one involving some of the same folks and Hillbuzz. There was an incident a few months ago and I used the opportunity to prod a troll by releasing information I had gleaned from the net off of his email which was hidden to any one but an administrator.  I didn’t totally out him, but he knew that I knew who he was and and he suddenly freaked.

So, what got me waxing philosophical about my screen id is this article in the NYT by Julie Zhuo, the product design manager at Facebook.  She has a piece today–‘Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt’–that talks about blogstalking and trolls.  It also talks about site managers and their attempts to control the troll populace.  There are the classic stories out there that just make you cringe over the behavior of your fellow human beings. (They’re ugly so I’m not putting them up here, you can read them there yourself.)  She even tells an old Greek Classic story about a man who could hide behind invisibility and took advantage of his status to do horrid things.  Anonymity on the web does provide a shield for rude behavior.  It also has led to illegal activity, so should it be actively discouraged?

Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways. There’s even a term for it: the online disinhibition effect.

Many forums and online communities are looking for ways to strike back. Back in February, Engadget, a popular technology review blog, shut down its commenting system for a few days after it received a barrage of trollish comments on its iPad coverage.

Many victims are turning to legislation. All 50 states now have stalking, bullying or harassment laws that explicitly include electronic forms of communication. Last year, Liskula Cohen, a former model, persuaded a New York judge to require Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger who she felt had defamed her, and she has now filed a suit against the blogger. Last month, another former model, Carla Franklin, persuaded a judge to force YouTube to reveal the identity of a troll who made a disparaging comment about her on the video-sharing site.

But the law by itself cannot do enough to disarm the Internet’s trolls. Content providers, social networking platforms and community sites must also do their part by rethinking the systems they have in place for user commentary so as to discourage — or disallow — anonymity. Reuters, for example, announced that it would start to block anonymous comments and require users to register with their names and e-mail addresses in an effort to curb “uncivil behavior.”

So, the anonymity cuts both ways on the web.  Like I said, I’d prefer my students get to know me before they read any of my strong opining over here.  This is especially true when criticizing this president since it has frequently been framed as ‘racism’ and I live and teach in a community where I am the minority.

You can see throughout our commenters here that there’s a mix between screen names users and people who riff on some version of their real names.  We do screen all first time commenters for signs of spam and nastiness, but I’ve gotten so used to screen names I don’t give them a second thought.  What I want to know is does it make any difference to see the name vs. the screen name?  Is there a difference between reading Digby’s opinions and Jane Hamsher’s when you can put a face and a name to the latter?  I’m still bemused by the  stories of shock when Digby was revealed to be Heather, a woman.  My other question is wondering if there’s a different standard for front pagers and down pagers?  Still, I agree that some of the most virulent stuff comes from the folks that can successfully maintain anonymity.

Will lifting the veil of anonymity promote civil behavior or stalking?  I’m curious about what you think..

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