Joel Grus

Yesterday the Facebook News Feed was moderately functional for a change, which is how I discovered the existence of the Coffee Party, which had been Facebook-fanned by several of my Facebook friends and/or stalkers and/or stalkees.

Given that I drink approximately 10 cups of coffee a day, you’d expect that I’d be favorably inclined toward a Coffee Party. And indeed I was, until I read their Mission Statement:

MISSION: The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

1. Americans who want to see cooperation in government.

Indeed we see little cooperation in government these days. Perhaps the Coffeefilters are nostalgic for bipartisan collaborations like the Wall Street Bailouts and the Iraq Resolution, and the Compromise of 1850.

But if you think about it, “cooperation” is not exactly an obvious desideratum. After all, for every Warren G & Nate Dogg there’s a Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis. For every David Bowie and Bing Crosby there’s a David Bowie and Mick Jagger. For every “The Girl is Mine” there’s a “Say Say Say.” For every “We Are the World” there’s a “We Are the World 25.”

I know they probably taught you otherwise in kindergarten, but there’s nothing intrinsically good about cooperation. Sometimes people *cough* Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney *cough* are cooperating to screw you.

2. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will

Now, as anyone who’s done graduate work in political science knows, it’s surprisingly tricky to define “collective will” in a coherent way. Nonetheless, the point here seems to be that most things the government does are things that we all agree upon, like overfunding remote airports named after politicians and holding secret negotiations to strengthen copyright laws and reauthorizing the Patriot Act and keeping marijuana illegal.

See, when the government locked up Japanese citizens during World War II, it wasn’t their enemy. When the government let people die of syphilis as part of an experiment, it wasn’t their enemy. When the government poisoned alcohol to scare people out of drinking, it wasn’t their enemy. It was expressing their collective will. Duh!

3. and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans.

Really? I’m only one American, but here’s a partial list of the challenges I face:

• not enough people are buying my book
• not enough people are writing 5-star reviews of my book
• love iPhone; hate forced use of iTunes and AT&T
• cannot fit CrossFit into my current schedule
• think eggs seem like the ultimate food but hate the taste of them

Now, I’ve done as much graduate work in political science as the next guy, and I’m pretty unclear as to how participating in the Democratic process is going to help any of these things. (In fact, it’s gotten to the point where the people answering the phones at both my Senators’ offices recognize me as the “make eggs taste better guy” and refuse to pass on my messages.)

In fact, I’m more inclined toward Reihan Salam’s position:

I take solace in the possibility that despite–or perhaps because of–our inability to pass sweeping reform legislation without crafting ugly compromises that buy off those ever-present large and powerful private interests, we’re getting better, and faster, at solving the countless small problems that add up to big problems.

Or I guess we could count on our “collective will” and “cooperation” fixing everything, because there ain’t no nothing we can’t love each other through… Sha la la la.

4. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

And here, at last, is where the Coffeefilters demonstrate that they stand for nothing. Every idea is a “positive solution” to those who support it. Some people think the DMCA was a positive solution. Some people think the Patriot Act was a positive solution.

Politics is full of tradeoffs, and except in the rarest cases every “solution” is a negative for somebody. This is why whenever you look up a law in Wikipedia, you’ll usually find a section called “Criticisms,” and if you read that section you’ll often find descriptions of people who somehow managed to find faults in the “positive” solution.

You may not like the status quo, but you’d have to be pretty naive to think that every departure from it is an improvement and that those who obstruct such departures are necessarily the bad guys.

This is a kindergarten view of the world. This is a kindergarten view of politics. Don’t we get enough of that from the parties we have already?

Seattle, in case you don’t follow our local politics, has got a mayoral election going on. (Technically it was last Tuesday, but they’re still counting the ballots.)

It’s a fairly interesting election, as elections go, if only because we junked the good-for-nothing incumbent in the primary, mostly on account of his failure (“think of the salmon!”) to remove snow from our roads last winter, which forced me to work from home for a week.

It’s also fairly uninteresting, in that the two primary-survivors, the Corporate Shill and the Ideologue, are both political neophytes. I actually met both of them, the former during an impromptu pre-primary baby-kissing session at Green Lake, the latter during a town hall at the local community center. They both seemed like, well, aspiring politicians.

And to be honest, neither is particularly appealing as a candidate. After losing their beloved incumbent, the city’s political and business “establishment” seems to have lined up behind the Corporate Shill. So I can’t support him. On the other hand, our douchebag alterna-weekly The Stranger hasn’t stopped tongue-bathing the Ideologue for months. So I can’t support him either.

(My preferred candidate was the former NBA player whose campaign platform seemed sensible. He came in 5th in the primary, I think.)

At last count the Ideologue is ahead by a few thousand votes, although there are still many left to count, so anything could happen.

Nonetheless, the aforementioned douchebag alterna-weekly makes the point that under either administration, the city council (and in particular its president) is poised to control an outsized share of the power in the city. This is probably the case, and I’m sure that any one of the three would continue the current policies of running the city into the ground.

There is one part of the article that leapt out at me as being, well, weird:

[City council president] Conlin sees the city pulling itself out of the gutter by embracing the most progressive elements of his environmental agenda. For example, a company called General Biodiesel—which uses primarily waste fats like cooking grease and tallow—was having a hard time getting permits, Conlin said, and by removing red tape Seattle was able to help that company (and, hopefully, laid down a marker that will help attract other green-job companies). “We should be targeting companies like that and asking, ‘What can we do to help you?’” he said.

I had to read this paragraph several times, because I wasn’t sure what part of was “progressive.” Nominally, it’s a story about making it easier to do business and in particular relaxing a permitting process. These are both pretty anti-progressive positions, so I can’t imagine that’s what he was referring to.

Instead, I figure, what he really meant was something along the lines of “let companies whose names contain green-sounding terms like ‘Biodiesel’ and ‘Renewable’ and ‘Sustainable’ ignore laws and regulations that apply to other, less-SWPL-friendly companies.” And indeed, this is the sort of Seattle “progressivism” I’ve gotten used to.

In anticipation of this new agenda, I’m thinking about renaming my publishing company to something more progressive, like “Compostable House,” “Biodegraded Books,” or “Post-Industrial Press.”

Great news, Senior Citizens! President Obama wants to give you $250!

Why? Probably so you’ll vote for him again come 2012.

There’s some sort of nominally non-tawdry reason, too.

You see, by law, Social Security payments increase each year in a manner pegged to inflation. When Rascal Scooters and Life Alerts and diabeetus testing supplies and Centrum Silver get more expensive, Social Security checks get bigger to compensate.

This year, however, prices haven’t gone up! (According to government bean-counters, anyway.) How will seniors get by if we don’t cut them extra checks?

Listen to the heartless fat-cats in Congress:

“I think it would be inappropriate,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. “The reason we set up this process was to have the Social Security reimbursement reflect the cost of living.”

Now, at least a few of our elected betters understand that not granting a cost of living increase just because the cost of living didn’t increase amounts to “turning our backs” on Senior Citizens:

“I think that the Obama administration and many members of Congress understand that we simply can’t turn our backs on senior citizens,” Sanders said.

I’m convinced!

My only concern is where the President will get the $13 billion to dole out. Last I checked government revenues were falling short of government expenditures by a trillion dollars, give or take.

But according to a “senior administration official,” Obama’s got this figured out too. We’ll simply borrow the money!

Who wouldn’t want to risk their capital for a sure investment like “give free money to old people”? Obviously it can’t compare with “pay people to destroy functional cars” or “give free money to everybody” or “give more free money to old people,” but in today’s investment climate, I dare you to find something better!