finally found the Kucinich thing

As some few of you have heard, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against GWB last night. It's not in any of the mainstream media, of course, and there are only a few minutes of it in the "obvious" blogs, but after some digging I found Kucinich's complete speech here; start the video and fast-forward about 45 minutes to the start of Kucinich's four... hours... and... forty... minutes... speech.

I don't know how I feel about this. There's no doubt in my mind that GWB is guilty of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors. There is likewise no doubt in my mind that it won't happen in the remaining six months of GWB's office. If it had been done a year and a half ago, there would be have been enough time, but it would have been very divisive, and it would have put Cheney in office unless he was impeached at the same time. The only thing to be gained is making a statement to the world that the U.S. recognizes and regrets its mistake.

I suspect it will have little or no effect on the Presidential campaign. Obama and his VP-to-be-named won't bring it up. McCain won't bring it up except perhaps to pick out the most preposterous few words Kucinich says (I assume he said something preposterous in nearly five hours of speech, although I haven't heard it yet).

Let's see. What exactly did Kucinich say?
( the actual articles of impeachment, as far as I've listened so far )

Oh, I thought of one other use for this action: if Bush were to attack Iran in the next six months, there would be enough outrage in Congress to actually take action on these articles, and this way they're already filed and ready.

who's responsible?

Inspired by this post, to which I was going to reply but realized I didn't actually have an answer to her question but rather wanted to ask a different one.

When a problem needs to be fixed, who is "responsible" for fixing it?
(a) the person who caused the problem?
(b) the person most capable of fixing the problem (quickly, efficiently, correctly)?
(c) the person with the most (or at least something) to gain from the problem being fixed?

Ideally, all three of these would be the same person, and the problem would be fixed promptly. In practice, the three are frequently not the same person, and things get tricky.

An obvious moral argument says (a), on the grounds that "if you have to clean up your own mess, maybe you'll learn a lesson and not make a mess next time." Unfortunately, if person (a) doesn't also meet criteria (b) and (c), all the blame in the world won't get the problem fixed.

If (b) = (c), the problem is likely to be fixed promptly, albeit with some grumbling: "why do I have to clean up everybody else's mistakes?"

If (b) != (c), you can finesse the issue by having person (c) pay person (b) to do the job, shifting the "gain" from one person to another so the interests are better aligned. Person (c) will probably grumble a bit, especially if (a) = (b) so (s)he arguably "should" have done it anyway without having to be paid.

If (a) != (b), you can use some kind of governmental or community power to penalize person (a) if the problem isn't fixed, thus converting person (a) into person (c); see previous paragraph. Person (a) will presumably complain of government repression, but this kind of governmental power is arguably justifiable on grounds that "teaching people a lesson" reduces the total number of problems that need to be fixed in the future, and thereby makes society as a whole run more smoothly.

An especially tricky problem arises if there is no obvious person (c), i.e. if the "gain" from the problem being fixed is widely and evenly distributed (take air pollution or traffic, for example, where no one person stands to gain enough to pay for the cost of fixing the problem). You still need person (c) (i.e. "the public") to somehow persuade or pay person (b) to do the job. "The public", in many cases, will try to put most of the costs onto person (a); see previous paragraph.


Case studies to think about:
(1) the woman who ran a red light last year and totaled my mother's car (nobody seriously injured, although we spent an hour and a half on the side of the road, inside city limits and across the street from a major shopping mall, waiting for the police to show up)
(2) a small child who knocks over and breaks something expensive
(3) a pet who knocks over and breaks something expensive
(4) an Enron executive
(5) a President who decides to invade a foreign country on false pretenses and with only the vaguest plan for what to do after the inevitable quick victory
(6) a college student who accidentally uncovers a security hole and crashes the servers on which the rest of the University relies
(7) etc. etc. fill in your own.