ladyjayne's blog

"The Party People of Wall Street"

2012-01-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

A week or so ago, we read in The New York Times about what in the Gilded Age of the Roman Empire was known as a bacchanal – a big blowout at which the imperial swells got together and whooped it up.

This one occurred here in Manhattan at the annual black-tie dinner and induction ceremony for Kappa Beta Phi. That’s the very exclusive Wall Street fraternity of billionaire bankers, and private equity and hedge fund predators. People like Wilbur Ross, the vulture capitalist; Robert Benmosche, the CEO of AIG, the insurance giant that received tens of billions in bailout money; and Alan “Ace” Greenberg, former chairman of Bear Stearns, the failed investment bank bought by JPMorgan Chase.

They got together at the St. Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue to eat rack of lamb, drink and haze their newest members, who are made to dress in drag, sing and perform skits while braving the insults, wine-soaked napkins and petit fours – those fancy little frosted cakes -- hurled at them by the old guard. In other words, a gilt-edged Animal House, food fight and all.

This year, the butt of many a joke were the protesters of Occupy Wall Street. In one of the sketches, the bond specialist James Lebenthal scolded a demonstrator with a face tattoo, “Go home, wash that off your face and get back to work.” And in another, a member -- dressed like a protester – was told, “You’re pathetic, you liberal. You need a bath!”

Pretty hilarious stuff. The whole affair’s reminiscent of the wingdings the robber barons used to throw during America’s own Gilded Age a century and a half ago, when great wealth amassed at the top, far from the squalor and misery of working stiffs. Guests would arrive in the glittering mansions for costume balls that rivaled Versailles, reinforcing the sense of superiority and the virtue of a ruling class that depended on the toil and sweat of working people.

That’s consistent with the attitude expressed by several of these types after Occupy Wall Street sprung up; bankers told the Times on the record that they could understand the anger of the protesters camped on their doorstep; but privately, a hedge manager said, “Most… view [it] as ragtag group looking for sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.”

So sayeth the winners in our winner-take all economy. The very guys who were celebrating at the St. Regis because they were too big to fail. Even when they fell flat on their faces, the government was there to dust them off, bail them out and send them back to fight the class war with nary a harsh word or punishment. Talk about a nanny welfare state.

None of this was by accident. The last three decades have witnessed a carefully calculated heist worthy of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in “The Sting” -- but on a massive scale. It was an inside job, politically engineered by Wall Street and Washington working hand-in-hand, sticky fingers with sticky fingers, to turn the legend of Robin Hood on its head – giving to the rich and taking from everybody else. Don’t take our word for it – it’s all on the record.

The biggest of the big boys was Citigroup, at one time the world’s largest financial institution. When the meltdown hit in 2008, the bank cut more than 50,000 jobs and you and other taxpayers shelled out more than $45 billion to save it. And how are Citigroup executives doing? Nicely, thank you. Last year, its CEO, Vikram Pandit, took home $1.75 million in base salary, and was awarded $3.7 million in deferred stock.

According to the Times, “Citigroup is expected to disclose the rest of his pay, cash, be it upfront or deferred, in March. In addition, while not necessarily for work performed in 2011, Mr. Pandit last year was awarded a $16.7 million retention bonus, plus stock options that could add $6.5 million to the package’s overall value.” Makes you want to cry out, “Retain me! Retain me!”

To be fair, Vikram Pandit was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, where he told Bloomberg News, “It’s important for the financial system to acknowledge that there’s a great deal of anger directed at it… Trust has been broken. Banks have to serve clients, not serve themselves.” What’s more, he has said that the “sentiments” expressed by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were “completely understandable.”

This, in contrast to the financial industry official who told a reporter that the protesters’ issues were “a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Or, as they used to say while partying down at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, let them eat petits fours.

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Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the new weekly public affairs program, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. Check local airtimes or comment at www.BillMoyers.com.

Knee-jerk Reaction, or Cold Blooded Murder?

2012-01-30T12:05:00.000-08:00

Last week, prosecutors in a Camp Pendleton courtroom called for the maximum sentence for Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, the Marine who gave the command back in 2005 to slaughter 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq. That maximum sentence was 90 days.

Yes, that's right, thanks to a plea bargain, the maximum sentence for giving a command that resulted in the execution-style murder of two dozen innocent Iraqis was three months. The judge commuted that sentence, so Staff Sergeant Wuterich will serve no time in a military brig for his actions.

In the months immediately following the 2005 massacre in a small farming village in Iraq, I'd heard about the story, and wrote a piece, "The Road to Haditha," that appeared in The Huffington Post. The follow-up piece, "Haditha Revisited," notes that four of the Marines who participated in the killing spree were charged with murder, and was published a few months later. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayne-lyn-stahl/haditha-revisited_b_36933.html

Regrettably, not one Marine involved with this incident has served any time for the murder of unarmed men, women, and children in Haditha.

As my 2006 piece says, "One woman was described, in a New York Times article, as bending down, and begging for mercy as she was shot "in cold blood," and at close range, by a marine."

Wuterich reportedly ordered his men to "shoot first and ask questions later," sending them into nearby homes was, as U.S. News, MSNBC reports, a knee-jerk reaction when confronted with the unknown. As was later disclosed, this massacre was the way these Marines chose to avenge the loss of one of their own to a roadside bomb earlier that week. http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/24/10226885-marine-to-serve-no-time-in-iraqi-killings-case

Whatever the cause, what kind of message does it send about our men and women in uniform that their default position is to rifle through a village, and essentially fire at anyone that moves? What does it say about the military justice system that not one of these men, including their commanding officer, was held accountable for what he did?

In a statement to the court after his sentencing, Staff Sergeant Wuterich said, "The truth is: I never fired any weapon at any women or children that day." Did Charles Manson himself murder any of his victims, and where is Manson today? This argument alone is an outrage.

As an officer, Wuterich is responsible for the actions of his subordinates, and he knows that. But, is it enough to allow him to plead to the charge dereliction of duty, and not murder?

Just ask relatives and residents of Haditha about the Wuterich's sentencing. They are reportedly shocked, as well as outraged, and plan to continue pursuing this case. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/9037595/Haditha-residents-outraged-as-Marine-avoids-jail.html

Oh, and there it is again that insidious word "derelict." Wuterich's military prosecutors insist that the killing spree was the "horrific result from that derelict order of shooting first, ask questions later." The word derelict suggests that if Wuterich had first asked questions, and then shot the actions would be any less criminal, which is a ridiculous assertion. That's kind of like saying, if the car was in neutral, it wouldn't have gone off the cliff.

Was Staff Sergeant Wuterich "derelict" when he allegedly falsified an offical document, and attempted to get another Marine to participate in a cover-up? Is that what we call it now, derelict?

And how did the presiding judge respond to being faced with a soldier who would order his squad to rifle through a village killing men, women, and children randomly? The judge affirmed Wuterich's sentence from the plea deal, hence Frank Wuterich won't spend one minute behind bars. His only punishment--he will lose rank. That pales in comparison with what the families of those 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians lost.

But, even if Wuterich were to be sent to the brig, it was not he and he alone who is liable for what happened in Haditha six years ago. It was not just the Marine's cowboy mantra to "shoot first, ask questions later;" the same cowboy ethos resonated in George W. Bush, and was reinforced by Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, a mindset that makes it possible to label anyone, especially those not wearing a uniform, an "unlawful enemy combatant," thereby justifying a wanton act of cold blooded murder.

Yes, cold blooded murder it is, plain and simple. Allowing Staff Sergeant to walk out of that Camp Pendleton courtroom and not be remanded to a military prison just goes to show that the George W. Bush, Dick Cheney mindset lives on.

Many, including myself, waited for the day that Frank Wuterich heard his sentence. Many, including those who prosecuted him, wanted to see him "in the brig," but he escaped the fate that he and all those who participated in the horror of Haditha that day richly deserved.

The buck doesn't stop there. The world is watching, and waiting for the American courts to hold those responsible for giving the command to invade, plunder, and occupy Baghdad on the false claims of weapons of mass destruction. Courts in Spain, Italy, and the U.K. are trying to compensate for the Obama administration's failure to investigate, and pursue war crimes charges.

But, of course, this will never happen because the Obama administration has the Bush administration's back. Is it any wonder then that, according to The New York Times, Iraqis "remain deeply skeptical of the United States, feelings that were reinforced last week when the Marine who was the so-called ringleader of the 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqis in the village of Haditha avoided prison time and was sentenced to a reduction in rank." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.htmpagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

And who can blame them? Frank Wuterich isn't the only one who walked scot-free.

Happy Birthday, Paul Newman!

2012-01-26T10:57:00.000-08:00

Legendary actor, and philanthropist, fighter for the First Amendment, and progressive causes, Paul Newman, would have turned 87 today.

He will be always remembered for having Robert Redford as a sidekick,
for being Cool Hand Luke, but more importantly he will be remembered for his generosity of spirit, basic human decency and for leaving this world a better place than when he found it.

Bless both of these gorgeous men, Mr. Newman and Mr. Redford, for their gifts to mankind both as actors, and humanitarians.

From Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

2012-01-24T10:44:00.000-08:00

The Washington-Wall Street Revolving Door Just Keeps Spinning Along

We’ve already made our choice for the best headline of the year, so far:

"Citigroup Replaces JPMorgan as White House Chief of Staff."

When we saw it on the website Gawker.com we had to smile -- but the smile didn’t last long. There’s simply too much truth in that headline; it says a lot about how Wall Street and Washington have colluded to create the winner-take-all economy that rewards the very few at the expense of everyone else. .

The story behind it is that Jack Lew is President Obama’s new chief of staff -- arguably the most powerful office in the White House that isn’t shaped like an oval. He used to work for the giant banking conglomerate Citigroup. His predecessor as chief of staff is Bill Daley, who used to work at the giant banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, where he was maestro of the bank’s global lobbying and chief liaison to the White House.

Daley replaced Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who once worked as a rainmaker for the investment bank now known as Wasserstein & Company, where in less than three years he was paid a reported eighteen and a half million dollars.

The new guy, Jack Lew – said by those who know to be a skilled and principled public servant – ran hedge funds and private equity at Citigroup, which means he’s a member of the Wall Street gang, too. His last job was as head of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget, where he replaced Peter Orzag, who now works as vice chairman for global banking at – hold onto your deposit slip -- Citigroup.

Still with us? It’s startling the number of high-ranking Obama officials who have spun through the revolving door between the White House and the sacred halls of investment banking. Sure, you can argue that it makes sense that the chief executive of the nation would look to other executives for the expertise you need to build back from the disastrous collapse of the banks in the final year of the Bush Administration.

Remember -- it was Bush and Cheney with their cronies in big business who helped walk us right into the blast furnace of financial meltdown, then rushed to save the banks with taxpayer money. That little fact seems to have been overlooked in the current primaries.

All this brings back memories of Hank Paulson, doesn’t it? Hank Paulson, the $700-million man who became secretary of the treasury for President Bush. Paulson had been head of Goldman Sachs, the rich investment bank. As his successor at Goldman Sachs, Paulson chose Lloyd Blankfein. Several times, according to Bloomberg News, Rolling Stone, and Paulson’s own memoir, the treasury secretary made sure Blankfein and Goldman got privileged inside information.

But Bush and Cheney aren’t the only ones to have a soft spot for financiers. President Obama may call bankers “fat cats” and stir the rabble against them with populist rhetoric when it serves his interest, but after the fiscal fiasco, he allowed the culprits to escape virtually scot-free. When he’s in New York he dines with them frequently and eagerly accepts their big contributions. Like his predecessors, his administration also has provided them with billions of taxpayer dollars – low-cost money that they used for high-yielding investments to make big profits. The largest banks are bigger than they were when he took office and earned more in the first two-and-a-half years of his term than they did during the entire eight years of the Bush administration. That’s confirmed by industry data.

And get this. It turns out, according to The New York Times, that as President Obama’s inner circle has been shrinking, his “rare new best friend” is Robert Wolf. They play basketball, golf, and talk economics when Wolf is not raising money for the president’s campaign.

Robert Wolf runs the US branch of the giant Swiss bank UBS, which participated in schemes to help rich Americans evade their taxes. During hearings in 2009, Michigan’s Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations, described some of the tricks used by UBS: “Swiss bankers aided and abetted violations of U.S. tax law by traveling to this country with client code names, encrypted computers, counter- surveillance training, and all the rest of it, to enable U.S. residents to hide assets and money in Swiss accounts.

“The bankers then returned to Switzerland and treated their conduct as blameless since Swiss law says tax evasion is no crime. The Swiss bank before us deliberately entered United States, actively sought U.S. clients and secretly helped those U.S. clients defraud the United States of America.”

And so it goes, the revolving door between government service and big money in the private sector spinning so fast it becomes an irresistible force hurling politics and high finance together so completely it’s impossible to tell one from the other.

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By: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the new weekly public affairs program, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. Check local airtimes or comment at www.BillMoyers.com.

Will the Real "Food Stamp President" Please Stand Up?

2012-01-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

During a late afternoon walk this weekend, I saw a young mother walking brusquely with her two children, one of whom was wearing a winter jacket and hood.

Well, I thought, I'm glad I'm not the only one cold enough to wear a hood. They were not a particularly distinctive trio, this mother and her two children. They were dressed well-enough, but I noticed the children hungrily working away at hero sandwiches.

As I passed her, the young woman, who was in her early 20's, politely asked if I knew of any churches nearby. She said she'd been walking with her children for seven miles looking for a church, or shelter, and that she'd even stopped and asked a police officer who wasn't helpful at all.

I told her the closest church was in downtown Walnut Creek. She asked how far that was, and I said about two miles. "Well," she said, "I've already walked seven miles, so why not." I told her she could take BART, and asked if she had train fare, but she wasn't interested in train fare. She was interested in finding a roof for herself, and her two small children.

Trust me, there was no way you would have known that this woman was homeless. She looked like she could be a bank teller, or a teacher, a librarian, a technican, or a nurse.

I mentioned that there was a church not far away that serves food, and gives showers to the needy, but their hours were vastly reduced. But, she wanted more than some hot food and a bath. She wanted to come in out of the rain, and that there are so few shelters that people must turn to churches sounds like something from a Charles Dickens novel not something one would expect to encounter in the age of the I-Pod and the Blackberry.

In another city that faces unprecedented homelessness, Orlando, Florida, Republicans are preparing to vote for the man who will best represent them in the 2012 presidential race. How many of these folks know that the fellow who calls President Obama the "food stamp president" also distracted another president, Bill Clinton, from realizing his plan for universal health coverage by peddling his "welfare reform," and a measure which drastically cut Aid to Dependent Families, thereby putting many young mothers out on the street, walking miles to locate the nearest church?

Yes, Mr. Gingrich balanced the federal budget by lowering the capital gains tax, and cutting welfare benefits, as well as school lunches. He balanced the federal budget on the backs of working families, and the poor. He did it in 1994, and he will do it again.

So, the candidate who now promotes jobs and not food stamps extolls the virtues of "smaller government," but what do he and his homeboys really mean by "smaller government?" Eradicating whatever is left of a safety net for working poor, and the homeless while at the same time increasing the comfort level for large corporations by reducing their tax obligation.

Ron Paul would also like to see this young mother turn to the church, or find themselves at the mercy of the kindness of strangers. Ron Paul and friends think the government shouldn't be there to provide relief, or shelter from the storm. They want to go back to the days before Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the New Deal.

And, anyone who questions where Mitt Romney stands on the issue of poverty, and workers in this country has only to examine his record as governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007.

Back in the summer of 2006, the Massachusetts legislature passed a measure that raised the minimum wage from nearly $7 an hour to $8 an hour which then-Governor Romney vetoed. The governor simply said he had "spent hours reading a wide array of reviews on the minimum wage and its impact on the economy, and there's no question raising the minimum wage excessively causes a loss of jobs." http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/01/minimum_wage_hike_veto_rejected/

Sound familiar? That's right, Romney isn't the only one who thinks the minimum wage hurts business. Ron Paul wants to do away with the minimum wage altogether.

Moreover, it wasn't just the immigrant community, legal and otherwise, that Romney antagonized when he proposed that state troopers arrest and detain anyone who didn't have documentation proving citizenship, way ahead of Arizona by the way, Romney's approval rating went south for a host of reasons including, of course, that he left the state near the bottom of the list in terms of job creation. In fact, Romney's approval rating during his tenure as Massachusetts' governor was cut in half from 66% to about 34%. As his brethren on the campaign stump are quick to point out, Romney has lost every other bid for public office he's made since. http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollTrack.aspx?g=454ada23-20dc-41f0-9c0c-a8a2a45d653c

But, of course, this is not about Mitt Romney any more than it's about Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, or Ron Paul, but instead which party will direct a young African-American mother to a local church for shelter, and which party will be more concerned with giving subsidies to provide affordable housing than giving government subsidies, and tax right-offs to behemoth corporations like Wal-Mart, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This is about who fought to cut school lunches, and who will continue to take from education to feed the war coffers, as well as who will turn back the clock back to those infamous days when owners of restaurants could legally seat whomever they pleased at lunch counters.

This is not about whose vision is more in keeping with that of the founding fathers, no one running for office, Republican or Democrat would pass that test. This is about priorities. Both Gingrich and Romney need a beginner's course in Priorities 101.

For every predator drone purchased, one federally subsidized low income housing complex can be built, or state universities and colleges facing massive layoffs and cut-backs can be subsidized instead of chief executive officers of big banks.

Republican candidates all support the right to life before birth, after birth you're on your own. Don't ask for the government to help you in any way except when it comes to overturning a constitutional amendment that protects the right to choose.

Alas, and those who depend on the kindness of strangers often find themselves out in the cold.

The Democrats aren't doing much better at addressing the needs of workers and the poor than the Republicans have done. But, the fact that food stamp use has increased by nearly 50% the month before Obama took office, as reported by Bloomberg, suggests that it was under a Republican administration, when this country first started hemorrhaging jobs, that the need for food stamps rose. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-23/gingrich-calling-obama-food-stamp-president-draws-critics.html So, if anyone deserves to be called the "food stamp president," George W. Bush does. He set the stage for hunger, homelessness, and poverty in this country not seen the 1930's.

True, total spending on food subsidies is more than double what it was since 2000, and has now reached arecord high of $75.3 billion, but the number of American families living below the poverty level is also at a record high.

And, if you're looking to blame somebody for the major rise in government spending on subsidizing the dietary needs of poor Americans by calling him the "Food Stamp President," why not blame the one whose economic policies increased the number of those who qualify as indigent exponentially.

And, contrary to what the former House speaker would have you think, a fact Gingrich insists on hiding under a huge pile of verbiage he calls a campaign, in a south still intent on maintaining its confederacy, according to Bloomberg,, too, more food stamp recipients, fully 34% are white; 22% are African-American, and another 16% are Hispanic. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-23/gingrich-calling-obama-food-stamp-president-draws-critics.html What we have here, Mr. Gingrich, is multicultural hunger.

Keep in mind, too, that every Republican running for the White House this year is also running from how to deal with the growing problem of poverty, hunger, and homelessness in America.

Supreme Court

2012-01-21T17:06:00.001-08:00

Looks like the Supreme Court might have to decide who the Republican presidential candidate is, too.

Rumor

2012-01-21T17:04:00.001-08:00

Rumor has it Mitt Romney said if not for offshore drilling he wouldn't be here.

Spiro T. Gingrich

2012-01-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich's attack on what he calls "the elite media" during tonight's South Carolina debate reminds me of another high profile Republican's invective against the major media, Spiro T. Agnew.

Spiro T. Agnew, you'll recall, was Richard Nixon's vice president, and it was one of Agnew's favorite pastimes to turn television networks into hunting expeditions for his imagined enemies. But, it wasn't just television news Agnew was taking aim at when he said, "Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages."

Gingrich tore into CNN moderator John King because King, the former House speaker contends, chose to open the South Carolina debate with a news story broadcast widely that day, allegations by Gingrich's ex-wife that he wanted an "open marriage."

The debate's moderator deemed the subject newsworthy because it was allowed to dominate news coverage all day, but it wasn't tabloid journalism Gingrich was inveighing against. It was about being targeted for the irrelevancy that is his personal life. In this, he is absolutely right.

Mr. Gingrich has been given a free pass during all these debates, and on every network, by the conspicuous absence of questions dealing with his tenure as speaker, and his removal from the House. Yes, what Newt did or did not propose to his former spouse is not pertinent to his role as a serious contender for president, but his ethics violations are.

Whether Mr. King chose to open or close the debate with aspersions cast by Speaker Gingrich's former spouse is irrelevant. Gingrich went so far as to sound off not just about this one incident, but instead to take the opportunity to inveigh against the entire "left" media that, in his opinion, is biased against Republicans, and will eventually get around to attacking not just him, but Romney, Paul, and Santorum, too.

Aside from their contempt for broadcast journalism, and the press in general, Gingrich and Agnew have something else in common. Agnew was the first vice president in U.S. history who was forced to step down for accepting bribes, and Gingrich was to step down as speaker of the House for ethics violations. It was the first time in history that a speaker was disciplined by Congress for breach of ethics.

Gingrich, who passed a capital gains tax cut in 1997, was charged with having violated federal tax law. Altogether, as the Washington Post reported back in 1998, then Speaker Gingrich faced 84 ethics violations charges which included misusing tax-exempt donations, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/govt/leadership/stories/101198.htmand $300,000 in fines before he resigned.

Oh, but, let's not forget George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They raised Cain when revelations about their clandestine programs that sidestep the rule of law were reported in major newspapers.

As you recall, too, Agnew lived during an immensely troubled time in our history, the Watergate era, and served under a president who effectively said, it's not illegal when the president does it. It would be reasonable to hazard the guess that the same line of thinking drove Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to pursue their "enhanced alternative" interrogation methods in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, as well as their not-very-covert program of extraordinary rendition.

Interestingly, it wasn't until the Bush administration that the media came under attack again. As The Baltimore Sun reports, Bush and Cheney "fired broadsides at The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and to a lesser degree The Wall Street Journal."

The Sun continues, "On November 13, 1969, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew became a household word when he vehemently denounced television news broadcasters as a biased `unelected' elite who subjected President Richard M. Nixon's speeches to instant analysis." `http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2006-07-09/news/0607070275_1_spiro-t-agnew-speech

So, thanks to Newt Gingrich, we've gone from a "biased 'unelected' elite" to "the elite media" in one fell swoop. Is it really the intention of the Republican Party to remind us of the Watergate days by evoking the memory of Agnew who had such disdain for the media as being inimical to executive power that he even contemplated regulating it?

Does the Republican Party want to remind us, as the Baltimore Sun suggests, of the not-too-distant past when the Bush administration leveled "the mightiest political salvo at the press since Maryland's Spiro T. Agnew threatened the big three television networks and newspaper-dominated mixed media corporations?"

Spiro T. Agnew would have been proud of the attack Newt Gingrich leveled at a broadcast journalist tonight in South Carolina. Gingrich's tirade had one intended target, television news, but if Gingrich's mindset is allowed to prevail in its bid for the Oval Office, the real target will be the First Amendment.

Instead of his tongue-lashing of broadcast journalists at the South Carolina debate, Mr. Gingrich should have invited moderators out for drinks for letting him off the hook about the ethics violations that forced him out as House speaker.

Condoms for Corporations?

2012-01-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a thought, now that the Citizens United ruling affirms corporate personhood, and leading Republican of the litter declares that "corporations are people, too," why hasn't some enterprising free marketeer come up with condoms for corporations.

Sounds like a joke, right? Look at this headline from the Associated Press, "Porn industry mulls leaving L.A. if condoms required." http://news.yahoo.com/porn-industry-mulls-leaving-la-condoms-required-095300909.html

Yes, you read right. An entire industry would rather pull themselves up by their roots, so to speak, than have to endure birth control.

Try to wrap you head around the idea of a Trojan big enough for AIG, or Enron, or Citibank, or the Dow Jones Industrial.

Of course, the evangelical fringe which now dominates the Republican Party would never hear of birth control for major industries. Instead, they would like to lament the proliferation of public service jobs while applying the Old Testament maxim, "Be fruitful and multiply" to Madison Avenue. It doesn't work that way, fellas. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

At the next Republican debate which, if memory serves, will be tomorrow in South Carolina, one of the hosts ought to ask candidate Romney how he feels about contraception for corporations. After all, if "corporations are people, too" they should be entitled to family planning options. And, more importantly, they should be criminally liable for fraud.

Think about this, requiring companies to use contraception will give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Occupy Wall Street."

Phil Ochs

2012-01-17T17:52:00.000-08:00

On Monday, January 23rd, PBS will be airing the documentary, "There But For Fortune," about legendary folk singer Phil Ochs.

The program will begin at 10 p.m. (EST), 7 p.m. (PST). Please check local listings, and please spread the word!

America Wakes Up to the Reality: Inequality Matters

2012-01-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

If you’re part of the one percent, even getting fired comes with a cushion made of eiderdown. GMI, a research company that gets paid to keep an eye on such things, just issued a study headlined, “Twenty-One U.S. CEOs with Golden Parachutes of More than $100 Million.” That’s each.

The report’s authors, Paul Hodgson and Greg Ruel, write, “These 21 CEOs walked away with almost $4 billion in combined compensation. In total, $1.7 billion in equity profits was realized by these CEOs, primarily on the exercise of time-vesting stock options and restricted stock.”

This news came the same day as another report, this one from Indiana University, titled, “At Risk: America’s Poor during and after the Great Recession.” Its researchers conclude, “The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery. The proportion of people living in poverty has increased by 27% between the year before the onset of the Great Recession (2006) and 2010… Poverty is expected to increase again in 2011 due to the slow pace of the economic recovery, the persistently high rate of unemployment, and the long duration of spells of unemployment.”

In fact, the white paper finds that we now have the largest number of long-term unemployed people in the United States since records were first kept in 1948 – four million report they’ve been unemployed for more than a year. Not necessarily counting the former CEO’s gently floating to earth from those golden parachutes.

So no, Mitt Romney, when we say that Americans are waking up to the reality that inequality matters, we’re not guilty of “envy” or “class warfare,” as you claimed to Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today. Nor are we talking about everybody earning the same amount of money – that’s the straw man apologists for inequality raise whenever anyone tries to get serious.

We’re talking what it takes to live a decent life. If you get sick without health coverage, inequality matters. If you’re the only breadwinner and out of work, inequality matters. If your local public library closes down and you can’t afford books on your own, inequality matters. If budget cuts mean your child has to pay to play on the school basketball team, sing in the chorus or march in the band, inequality matters. If you lose your job as you’re about to retire, inequality matters. If the financial system collapses and knocks the props from beneath your pension, inequality matters.

Neither one of us grew up wealthy, but we went to good public schools, played sandlot ball at a good public park, lived near a good public library, and drove down good public highways – all made possible by people we never met and would never know. There was an unwritten bargain among generations: we didn’t all get the same deal, but we did get civilization.

Now the bargain’s being shredded. The people we met from Occupy Wall Street get it—you could tell from their slogans. One of the younger protesters wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words: “The system’s not broken. It’s fixed.” That’s right – rigged. And that’s why so many are so angry. Not at wealth itself. But at the powerful players who win by fixing the game instead of by honest competition; at the crony capitalists who resort to tricks, loopholes, and cold cash to make sure insiders prosper – and then pull up the ladder behind them.

Americans are waking up to how they’re being made to pay with for Wall Street’s malfeasance and Washington’s complicity – paying with stagnant wages and lost jobs, with slashing cuts to their benefits and social services. To how our financial system profits by moving money around in exotic ways instead of supporting real economic growth.

Waking up to the ludicrous Supreme Court decision defining corporation as a person, although it doesn’t eat, breath, make love or sing – or take care of children and aging parents. Waking up to how unlimited and often anonymous campaign contributions corrupt our elections; to the fact that if money is speech, no money means no speech. As one demonstrator’s sign read: “I couldn’t afford a politician, so I bought this sign.”

So while police have cleared many Occupy encampments, a collective cry, loud and clear, has gone up from countless voices across the country: Enough’s enough.

We won’t know for a while if what we’re hearing is a momentary cry of pain, or whether it’s a movement – like the abolitionists and suffragettes, the populists and workers of another era, or the civil rights movement – that gathers forces until the powers-that-be can no longer sustain the inequality, injustice, and yes, immorality of winner-take-all politics and a winner-take-all economy.

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Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the new weekly public affairs program, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. Check local airtimes or comment at www.BillMoyers.com.

"Is This Land Made for You and Me?"

2012-01-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina.

Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year.

Woody saw the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression firsthand; his own family came unraveled in the worst hard times. And he wrote tough yet lyrical stories about the men and women who struggled to survive, enduring the indignity of living life at the bone, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep. He traveled from town to town, hitchhiking and stealing rides in railroad boxcars, singing his songs for spare change or a ham sandwich. What professional success he had during his own lifetime, singing in concerts and on the radio, was often undone by politics and the restless urge to keep moving on. "So long, it’s been good to know you," he sang, and off he would go.

What he wrote and sang about caused the oil potentates and preachers who ran Oklahoma to consider him radical and disreputable. For many years he was the state’s prodigal son, but times change, and that’s the big news. Woody Guthrie has been rediscovered, even though Oklahoma’s more conservative than ever -- one of the reddest of our red states with a governor who’s a favorite of the Tea Party.

The George Kaiser Family Foundation has bought Guthrie’s archives -- his manuscripts, letters and journals. A center is being built in Tulsa that will make them available to scholars and visitors from all over the world.

Among its treasures is the original, handwritten copy of this song, Woody Guthrie’s most famous -- "This Land Is Your Land." The song extols the beauty of the country Guthrie traveled across again and again; its endless skyways and golden valleys, the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts. Yet his eye was clear, unclouded, and unobstructed by sentimentality, for he also wrote in its lyrics:

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

"Is this land made for you and me?" A mighty good question. The biggest domestic story of our time is the collapse of the middle class, a sharp increase in the poor, and the huge transfer of wealth to the already rich.

In an era of gross inequality there’s both irony and relevance in Woody Guthrie’s song. That “ribbon of highway” he made famous? It’s faded and fraying in disrepair, the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles because fixing them would require spending money, raising taxes, and pulling together.

This land is mostly owned not by you and me but by the winner-take-all super rich who have bought up open spaces, built mega-mansions, turned vast acres into private vistas, and distanced themselves as far as they can from the common lot of working people – the people Woody wrote and sang about

True, Barack Obama asked Bruce Springsteen and Woody Guthrie’s longtime friend Pete Seeger to sing This Land is Your Land at that big, pre-inaugural concert the Sunday before he was sworn in. And sing they did, in the spirit of hope and change that President Obama had spun as the heart of his campaign rhetoric.

Today, whatever was real about that spirit has been bludgeoned by severe economic hardship for everyday Americans and by the cynical expedience of politicians who wear the red-white-and-blue in their lapels and sing "America the Beautiful" while serving the interests of crony capitalists stuffing SuperPACs with millions of dollars harvested from the gross inequality destroying us from within.

But maybe -- just maybe -- the news that Woody Guthrie, once a pariah in his home state, has become a local hero is the harbinger of things to come, and that all the people who still believe this land is our land will begin to take it back.

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Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the new weekly public affairs program, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. Check local airtimes or comment at www.BillMoyers.com.

Newt Hampshire

2012-01-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

You've got to give him credit. Newt Gingrich doesn't just read Gideon's bible when he stays at the Marriott, he also reads poetry.

Like the line in a poem by legendary Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, the former House speaker heeds the admonition not to "go gently into that night, but rage against the dying of the light," and raging he is. Newt Gingrich is raging so much that by the time this whole affair is over, the state will instead be named: Newt Hampshire.

While the latest polls out of New Hampshire show frontrunner Romney down by four percentage points, Newt is nowhere near second place. He's in a tie with Rick Perry for fourth place. Ron Paul is polling second to Mitt Romney with Romney is holding on to a double digit lead. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/poll-watcher-romney-slips-in-nh-paul-and-huntsman-battle-for-second-place/2012/01/03/gIQAn5s4lP_blog.html

Predictably, Huntsman is doing much better, and has managed to move from 1% to as high as 17%, which is about half where Romney is at.

Rick Perry will be the first casualty of New Hampshire followed, after Florida, by Huntsman unless the former Utah governor decides to take some of his dad's money, after all.

Apart from garnering him more campaign contributions, Newt Gingrich is helping Democrats more than hurting Romney. Romney is like a London Fog raincoat. He can endure the heaviest storm without any visible stains.

By invoking Bain Capital repeatedly as if it were a shibboleth, Gingrich has morphed into a character out of King Lear, the Fool, the one who can most be counted on to tell the truth, and the one who is taken the least seriously.

Ah, but think of how much money the Democrats are saving on advertising revenue by letting Gingrich do their hatchet job, and he isn't even charging any consultant fees.

The mouth isn't the only thing that's running, the meter is, too. Newt Hampshire may very well be Gingrich's last stand.

"An Incredibly Close Screening'

2012-01-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

A preview of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” turns into group therapy for post-9/11 New Yorkers.

By Michael Winship

I knew all those years of sitting in darkened theaters on sunny afternoons, awash in movies new and old, stale popcorn and gallons of diet soda, would pay off some day. For one, there was the woman I met in 1975 at the late, lamented Carnegie Hall Cinema during a Mel Brooks double feature. She came and sat next to me when a guy kept bothering her during Blazing Saddles and we wound up dating --until she lit out for a career in the hinterlands, acting in summer stock.

But as lovely as she was, that’s not the payoff I mean. All that time reading about and watching movies didn’t just prepare me for romance, or Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit, if it comes to that. (Quick—the address of Charles Foster Kane’s love nest with Susan Alexander? 185 West 74th Street.)

What it did ready me for is one of my favorite things, interviewing screenwriters about their work. In my various capacities at the Writers Guild of America, East, I’ve had the opportunity over the last decade and a half to talk with many of them, in private for articles or video archives, and in public, in front of an audience, at screenings of their films. Sometimes the director and one or two of the actors come, too.

This has led to some odd experiences: like dealing with the emotionally fragile starlet who recently had gone through a very public break-up. I had to gently coax her out of her limo and into the screening because she was afraid of the paparazzi, who were covering a premiere at the theater next door. They didn’t notice.

Or the time the writer knelt next to me during his film and frantically whispered that an entire reel had been skipped, the next to last one. We let everyone see it when the movie was over but discovered that the hapless projectionist had been showing it that way -- to critics -- for weeks. The film opened and closed very quickly.

There was the incomprehensible interview with Jean-Luc Godard, which was not because my French was worse than his English, or vice versa, but simply because he’s Jean-Luc Godard; and the Q & A with British writer and director Mike Leigh -- my first question triggered a rapid-fire, twenty-minute monologue that was impossible to interrupt. Because he covered virtually every one of my prepared questions, it wasn’t so bad. By the time he had worn himself out, we were ready for questions from the audience.

But one of the most unusual interviews took place just last month, a week or so before Christmas. I was scheduled to introduce a screening of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and talk afterwards with the author of its screenplay, Eric Roth, whose other credits include Forrest Gump and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

When I arrived at the theater, a representative from Warner Brothers let me know that the film’s director, Stephen Daldry, would be joining us as well. I had to pretty much toss the interview I’d prepared -- most of my questions were about Eric’s work and screenwriting in general -- but it would be okay. Stephen and I had met several years ago when he was promoting his movie The Hours and I was interviewing its screenwriter, David Hare.

If you haven’t heard by now, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, adapted from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, is a tough movie to watch, especially if you’re a New Yorker who was here on 9/11. But in my opinion, it’s well worth it; the engaging, entertaining and powerful story of an emotionally troubled Asperger’s kid who seeks to reconnect with the father he lost at the World Trade Center. The boy travels across the city trying to solve the riddle of a mysterious key he finds in his father’s closet a year after the attacks.

The film ended and there was applause, which doesn’t always happen at these things; we are, after all, jaded, Manhattan media sophisticates. The lights came up, I introduced Eric and Stephen and started to ask my first question.

Stephen interrupted (he’s a director). "I’d like to know what people think about the film. We’ve only just finished it and only shown it to a handful of audiences, so I’d like to know what you think."

Silence.

I think we’re all experiencing a bit of shellshock, I said. Most of us were here on 9/11. Ten years later, it’s still kind of raw. Stephen repeated his question – what did you think?

Slowly, people began to respond, positively for the most part but in each of us the film triggered memories. People had friends in the buildings. A man who worked as an extra in the film -- you see a split-second shot of him in a Batman costume -- had a job in wire transfers at Bank of America. He worked the night shift at the Trade Center and left just minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. He’s still suffering from survivor guilt.

For me, it was a moment toward the end of the film when the boy, Oskar (an incredible performance by young, first-time actor Thomas Horn), visits an office downtown in the middle of the night. Security takes his photo and prints out a building ID. That would seem innocuous to most, but I remembered an evening about a week and a half after what Oskar calls "the worst day." George Bush was addressing a joint session of Congress.

My then wife and I were burning candles to cover the smell from Ground Zero, which had shifted that rainy night from an odor of burning electrical cables and melted metal to something more feral and decaying. As we listened to Bush and I made dinner, she sat and sorted through a basket of odds and ends, then handed me something: a security ID with my picture -- like Oskar’s -- but taken the last time I had gone to the World Trade Center for a meeting.

The rest of my interview with Stephen and Eric went like that. I got a couple of my original questions in, but the evening had turned into a group therapy session, and that was fine. As Daldry recently said in the Los Angeles Times, "It’s a loss that’s very public and one that everyone has very rich stories about. One has to be responsible to the original author's book... and you have to be aware of the truth of the reality of what happened to thousands of people who lost loved ones."

I heard a new ad for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close on the radio this morning, its pitch apparently readjusted, aimed at those averse to a movie about the Trade Center calamity. It’s "not about 9/11," the spot’s announcer declared, "but every day after."

Nice try. The question is, as Stephen told the Times, "Is it time? Can we start to tell these stories yet or is it too early?" The film opens nationally on January 20. Spend a couple of hours in a darkened movie theater and find out what you think.

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Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild, East, is senior writer on the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering this month. Go to www.BillMoyers.com.

Miss Congeniality

2012-01-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

President? Bah! After his performance in last night's debate, Mitt Romney should enter a beauty contest as "Miss Congeniality" instead of trying to obtain his party's nomination.

Not only is his smile imperious, it is downright impervious. Romney gives a whole new meaning to the term self-possessed. The man is downright possessed by himself.

By his performance at Saturday night's Republican debate in New Hampshire, he's earned the heavyweight title held by Ronald Reagan. Romney is, without doubt, the teflon candidate.

When this circus is over, Democratic Party chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, should send former Speaker Gingrich a thank you note for doing the heavy lifting, and confronting the Mitt face to face with Bain Capital's practice of leveraged buyouts.

Of course, Gingrich wasn't the first to call out the former Massachusetts governor on his practice of buying companies on the edge, and making them viable by massive layouts. That honor goes to another prominent figure from back in 1994, Senator Ted Kennedy in his senatorial campaign against Romney.

For anyone who was watching, Romney didn't flip flop on the issue of a woman's rights to choose, but said he would like to see a reversal of Roe v. Wade as it was "decided badly," and the legal right to terminate a pregnancy turned over to the states. If Romney gets his party's nomination, expect him to pander to the far right wing of his party in much the same way another first term president, George H.W. Bush, did. That means, don't be surprised if you hear nominee Romney channeling Rick Santorum stands on key issues.

Any uncertainty about whether or not these debates constitute theatre of the absurd can be easily put to rest by thinking about Ron Paul's response to questions about his newsletter. How many times has Dr. Paul lamented that these newsletters were written twenty years ago as if that somehow excuses their contents. Well, has anything changed from what Newt Gingrich said twenty years ago? And, for the record, this makes how many times, over the past two decades, Mr. Romney will have tried for an elected office and lost?

But, nobody's thinking about that. Instead, the wing nuts who now control the Republican platform are focusing on a young president who, unlike his Republican nemesis, has won every race he has ever entered.

Watching this final debate before Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire, I kept waiting for Diane Sawyer to step forward and ask Rick Santorum the same question that George Stephanopoulos grilled Romney about, a ban on contraception. How it is that the Mitt was able to monopolize that question, and Santorum, the only one to condemn contraception, was allowed to escape unscathed defies reason.

Stephanopoulos, by the way, came closest to calling Romney out when he tried to worm his way out of a question by pretending not to be an expert in the area. Stephanopoulos said, "Come on, you have a law degree from Harvard." Quite right. Wonder how much it cost Romney's father to buy that one for him, too.

Yes, former advisor to Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, did a terrific job hammering away at frontrunner Romney on banning contraception. Trouble is, he picked the wrong candidate. He should have been badgering Santorum instead.

What is it that was so intimidating about any of these candidates that they managed to make it out of New Hampshire with their hair and lipstick perfectly in place?

If you've got something planned for Tuesday night, don't worry about missing the New Hampshire primary. Romney will win, and by a wide margin, too. Romney will win South Carolina, by a smaller margin than New Hampshire, but he'll win there, too, and of course Romney will become his party's 2012 presidential nominee. The Supreme Court, and Citizens United, wouldn't have it any other way.

The only thing left for the Democrats to do is to show that what took place during these debates wasn't really about politics after all, but was instead a beauty pageant. If Miss Congeniality wins the White House in 2012, the American people will be the ones who will lose. The teflon days are over.

Is it the Mandate or the Medical Loss Ratio?

2012-01-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

What's really behind Republican contempt for what everyone from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney like to call "Obamacare?"

Is is that the Affordable Care Act, passed and signed into law in 2010, contains a mandate for individuals who have the wherewithal to carry health insurance or face a penalty as many opponents claim?

Or, is it something else, a factor that has yet to be mentioned during any of the Republican debates, and something that will be conspicuously absent from any discussion of the results of Tuesday night's Iowa caucus: the medical loss ratio.

As a December article in Forbes explains, thanks to Obama's health insurance reform legislation, insurance companies must spend roughly 80% of a patient's premiums on the patient instead of pocketing the profits. http://http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/12/02/the-bomb-buried-in-obamacare-explodes-today-halleluja/

So, are candidates for the Republican presidential nomination really worried about the government mandating health coverage, or is their real concern that a provision in the fine print of the Affordable Care Act will cut into for-profit health insurance by Health and Human Services oversight into how the premiums are spent.

Any Republican presidential wannabe, like Newt Gingrich, who has tried to establish his own for-profit health insurance wouldn't like so-called Obamacare because it means, as the Forbes article asserts, "that the insurance companies spend what they should taking care of their customers" instead of looking for ways to siphon off premiums to cover their overhead, and/or to put a new BMW in a sales executive's garage.

Last month, too, the Department of Health & Human Services ruled on what qualifies as legitimate medical expenses and effective immediately, for profit, private insurance companies have officially joined the endangered species list.

The Affordable Care Act has been roundly condemned by both the right and the left. Many progressives lament this administration's capitulation on the public option.

Others would like to see a single payer system. But, those who read the fine print will see that, over time, the medical loss ration will erode and eat away at private insurance companies' bottom line such that private insurance companies will eventually exist only to cater to the upper 1% of the population while the other 99% of us will have access to affordable health care and the assurance that 80% of the premiums we pay will go exclusively into our care, and not into a health care executive's sales bonus.

So, from now until November, 2012, whenever you hear any Republican candidate, esp. Mitt Romney, talk about Obamacare, instead of thinking about the individual mandate think about the medical loss ratio. This is what those Republicans wrestling each other for to be the next president are really concerned about.

As you know, the universal health care plan Gov. Romney got passed in Massachusetts, upon which the president's health reform legislation was based, which won enthusiastic approval from Newt Gingrich, contained a mandate requiring individuals who can who can afford to acquire health insurance to do so.

And, you can bet that no plan would be approved by Corporate Mitt that would require 80% or more of premiums to be spent only on patients. After all, Romneycare was intended to be a booster shot for the private insurance industry, and not a way to deal with the working poor.

How Romney dealt with the poor and working poor in his state was to veto provisions of his health care law that would have given dental benefits to those who were on Medicaid.

And, for those who believe Romney, during the Republican debates, when he says this country was founded by immigrants, how much he respects immigrants who are here legally, keep in mind that he also opposed providing any health coverage at all to legal immigrants who were not eligible for federal Medicaid, even those who were seniors, and/or disabled. http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2006/Chapter58

What a statement about where we are as a country when someone like Mitt Romney can be considered a moderate in any party?

Romneycare was essentially the Massachusetts legislature's gift to private insurance companies in that state. Make no mistake. Romney has read the fine print. When he talks about wanting to make his first official act as president the elimination of so-called Obamacare, Romney isn't interested in getting rid of a government mandate that forces you to buy health insurance, but instead he wants to overturn a provision that stops private insurers from pocketing your a larger percentage of your premiums for their own personal use.

Resolutions...

2012-01-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

The new year is here, and I'm already breaking this year's New Year's resolution which was not to make any more New Year's resolutions. Instead, this year I resolve to:

Eliminate any and all toxic relationships from my life, especially those who make themselves feel better by making me feel worse.

Stop feeling guilty for refusing to enable narcissists.

Surround myself only with life-affirming people who look at the cup as half-full and not half-empty.

Stop settling for sex when what I really want is intimacy.

Make peace with myself and recognize that, like everybody else, I have flaws and imperfections.

Try and change the things about myself that I don't like with the understanding that I can only change things about myself not others.

Come to terms with the fact that there are people in this world you can't please, no matter what, and those whose only satisfaction comes from knowing they've made you suffer almost as much as they have.

Stop mistaking the dream for the dreamer. No one person contains the truth. We are all vehicles.

Life is a gift. There are no exchanges and no returns. One who truly knows this understands that the only way to reciprocate is to serve others.

Acknowledge that, as poet William Blake said, "there is such a thing as evil" in this world as there is meanness, and there's no negotiating with either.

Affirm that which works to sustain others in healthy ways, and abstain from conversing with that which seeks its own destruction, and the destruction of others.

Never expect from others what I am not prepared to give myself.

Know that there are limits even to limits.

Embrace solitude as it is not a shadow of the soul, but the soul itself.

Understand that attachment to artificial, and largely arbitrary notions of identity ultimately means attachment to one's own mortality. Identity and mortality are inextricably linked.

Avoid stasis, and people who wallow in their own paralysis.

Feed the inner child, and absolve the free spirit.

Realize that spirit must learn to coexist with matter. Detaching the mind from the body can only lead to the decimation of both.

Get light from the flame, and not just heat.

Most of all, I resolve to become the good news I've been waiting for.

"on the roof..."

2011-12-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

"Truly we are here on the roof of the world."

J.M. Coetzee

Gabriel Conroy

2011-12-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

Thinking about James Joyce this Christmas, less than a month before his "Ulysses" enters the public domain.

Thinking, too, about Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist of Joyce's story, "The Dead," widely considered the best short story in the English language.

Conroy is modeled on JJ, and something many don't know about Joyce, was that he was a tenor, and an accomplished pianist who often liked to entertain his guests by playing piano on Christmas day.

Here's hoping this will be the year that I'm finally able to bring the story of Sylvia Beach's struggle to publish "Ulysses," and her turbulent relationship with the Irish writer to the big screen.

Newt Gingrich's Three Laws of Motion

2011-12-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

Following in the footsteps of Newton's Three Laws of Motion, former House speaker and 2012 Republican presidential contender, Newt Gingrich, has developed his own set, and he's calling it "Newt Gingrich's Laws of
Upward Mobility:"

Newt's First Law:

Every object in stasis tends to remain in stasis unless an external force is applied to it, preferably a force in a size 6 gown, Chanel lip gloss, and diamond earrings from Tiffany's.

Newt's Second Law:

Acceleration and force work only when the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector, meaning don't set goals that ultimately take you from the public vector into the private vector because getting back into the public vector may be like trying to zip your fly with both hands tied behind your back.

and last but not least,

Newt's Third Law:

Some things never change. Newton's Third Law of Motion remains unchanged from Newton's: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction which means those who remember what happened the last time Gingrich and clan came to town to occupy the House need only multiply that by about a hundred to see what is bound to happen in 2012. Bill Clinton easily took the White House. In a thumbnail, Speaker Boehner, Eric Cantor, Romney, Gingrich et. al have just handed the 2012 election over to President Obama.

And, not just Obama, but just as they did back in '94, Gingrich and friends have all but ensured an election landslide for the Democrats in the House thereby leading one to deduce that, when used properly, every upward movement Gingrich makes in the polls can only result in a major backstroke and this time, as was the case eighteen years ago, Mr. Gingrich is taking his whole party along for the ride.

"Happy Holidays, Corporate America - I'd like to File a Complaint"

2011-12-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

By Michael Winship

In the spirit of the season, I’d like to file a complaint – about complaints. Corporate America just doesn’t handle them the way they used to. As in, at all.

I grew up in retail. My father owned a drugstore in upstate New York and was as old fashioned as the next guy when it came to the rules of doing business. As in, Rule #1: the customer is always right. Rule #2: see Rule #1.

Unless, of course, he caught a customer shoplifting, in which case all rules and rights were suspended, including habeas corpus. Make an attempt to sneak out of his establishment with a bottle of moisturizer or a pair of sunglasses and prepare for the thunder of God’s own drums. I never heard him yell at his own kids the way he yelled at any young, incipient Artful Dodger who tried to skip the joint with a purloined Snickers bar tucked under his shirt.

As I got older, some of my classmates who sought the five-finger discount came to me directly, hoping I’d grab for them what they feared to take themselves. I trace the evolution of the sixties counterculture through their requests. When we were high school freshman, they wanted prophylactics and cough syrup. By the time we reached senior year, it was blank prescription pads and several hundred empty gelatin capsules, to be filled with who knows what homemade hallucinogen.

In those days, before the notion of Black Friday spread across the land and early rising consumers clamored for the privilege of getting stomped upon and pepper sprayed, my father’s busiest time at the store wasn’t the day after Thanksgiving but the day after Christmas, when holiday items were steeply discounted and customers arrived to exchange gifts received or complain about faulty products. Each complaint was handled with aplomb, cash returned or merchandise traded, no questions asked.

So having been raised to honor the sanctity of the complaint, when I reached my majority, I took my own complaining very seriously, drafting letters of such savage wit, spellbinding rhetoric and logic that any commercial enterprise in receipt thereof was compelled to immediately see the error of its ways and yield. Or so I imagined.

I always copied my missives to the Better Business Bureau and once – in the matter of a defective watch battery from Macy’s – received from a woman who worked at the bureau the epistolary equivalent of a standing ovation. Several years later, when my then-wife was having problems with a furniture store coming through with the proper door for a new credenza, I drafted a complaint letter in her name and copied the BBB. A note came back from the same woman, announcing – and I am not making this up – that it was the best one she’d read since that guy with the bad watch battery. Okay, maybe she simply noticed that the return address was the same, but in that moment it felt like I had won the Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Whining, Original or Adapted.

Now, however, complaints go largely unanswered. I blame this, at least in part, on the Internet. Websites for stores or other businesses more often than not have a place where you can register a grievance but they disappear into cyberspace like those microwave transmissions of “Leave It to Beaver” now racing past Alpha Centauri, never to be heard from again unless alien civilizations have a twisted sense of humor and a desire for revenge.

In the last few months, I’ve dutifully typed onto my screen various grievances to various companies, including a hotel where, if the sheets were indeed changed daily it was from bed to bed, and a drugstore chain, the branch of which in my neighborhood more and more resembles a Matthew Brady photo of the day after Gettysburg – if you replaced the bodies strewn on the ground with toothpaste cartons, containers of painkiller and shredded circulars.

Not one has been answered, which makes it all the more frustrating that when a store – the hardware behemoth Lowe’s Home Improvement – proves the exception and finally does respond to a complaint, it’s not for anything legitimate but in reaction to a right wing fringe organization’s hysteria over a cable reality show that depicts Muslims as normal people instead of terrorists. Lowe’s pulled its commercials from the TLC series All American Muslim (as did some other companies), reportedly caving to pressure from the Florida Family Association (FFA), a group which apparently consists of a single paid employee – its president -- and a mailing list of an alleged 35,000 members. (Lowe’s now says the FFA did not force its decision; it was “negative chatter about the show… appearing on social networks.”)

What’s more, I noticed the other day that Mark Ryan, who retired last year from his job as chief executive of the drugstore chain to which I complained – CVS Caremark – was one of the ten most highly paid bosses in America. That’s according to the corporate governance group GMI Ratings. The New York Times reports, “In his last year at CVS he received total compensation of $29.2 million and an additional $50.4 million from stock awards and options.” He’s now an operating partner with Advent International, a private equity firm specializing in corporate buyouts. Which is interesting because during the time he was CEO at CVS, its stock price dropped by more than half.

Therefore, as my Christmas gift to the One Percent, here’s a suggestion to Ryan and all you other “job creators.” Take back some of those millions in executive compensation and invest them in real customer service. Generate work -- hire people to take care of the people who buy your products and sincerely, productively respond to their concerns and problems, just like the good old days.

Admittedly, I did find one other exception, which is why I have to get over to Starbuck’s. The other evening, I was griping because they ran out of the stuff they put in their holiday eggnog lattes. They gave me a coupon for a free drink. Say what you will about the caffeine empire – they know how to handle a complaint.

So in the words of The Simpsons’ Krusty the Klown, “"Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan." And speaking of complaints, I just know I’ll be hearing about this.

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Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos, is senior writer for the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January. Go to www.billmoyers.com

Recess?

2011-12-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

Did somebody say something about a recess?

A CNN post earlier today suggests that now that the House has made a decision on extending the payroll tax for another two months its members are preparing to go on holiday. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/20/house-expected-to-recess-after-payroll-tax-vote/ Well, not so fast, fellas.

At a time when Congressional approval rates are circling single digits, it's nothing shy of audacious for any elected member of the House or the Senate to even wink at, let alone entertain, the prospect of decking the halls with bells of folly, or was that holly.

When a majority of Senate Republicans voted yea to extend the payroll tax cut, the bill met an untimely demise courtesy of those 140 odd rookie "tea party" Republicans who strong armed both Speaker Boehner, and House Leader Eric Canter.

Now, think about this: the House rejected a tax hike that amounts to less than 2%, and would impact a fewer than half a million millionaires, and instead voted to increase taxes on more than 150 million working and middle-class Americans, as well as cut unemployment extensions.

So, if you're looking for the grinch who stole Christmas, look no further than the House of Representatives which now represents 1% of the population, and not the remaining 99%.

Recess? Last time I looked 99% of us are paying their salaries. When was the last time your boss let you go on vacation, and leave him with a big mess?

Forget about Wall Street. Maybe it's time to Occupy Congress instead.

Hunters and Christmas

2011-12-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

After a late start, I decided to venture out into the wilds of pre-Christmas traffic. Admittedly, doing just about anything, including washing the kitchen floor, holds more allure for me at this time of the year than shopping, but as a fortune cookie once wisely proclaimed, "You gotta do what you gotta do," so off I went.

In what seemed at first a garden of entropy and not a major suburban thoroughfare, as I locked bumpers with the Volvo in front of me, being one to always look on the bright side, I relished the opportunity to think,

Christmas is a time that brings back memories of childhood. As a child, one of my favorite pastimes was to observe human behavior, preferably when I wasn't observable myself. When my mother used to take my little sister to the library, as a teenager, I would wait in the car, slink down in the rear seat, so nobody could see me and watch people walk down the street. People are funny creatures when they think nobody is watching them.

This afternoon's traffic afforded me yet another of those golden opportunities as I got to watch what can only be called the hunters and the hunted.

There's a lot to be learned about a person by the way he or she drives. People who cut you off in conversation are exponentially more likely to cut you off on the road. Those who won't let you in when you realize you missed your exit will, most likely, not give you the time of day on the street. While it may be relative, rudeness seems to survive all boundaries.

More often than not, too, hunters are those drivers who exploit blind spots, vacillate between lanes, or lunge at other cars from side streets.

They are the ones most likely to make a passive-aggressive lane change, or to look only in one direction when they pull out of a parking spot. They distinguish themselves most by taking the left on green, thus forcing other less aggressive drivers to yield and get stuck behind a red light.

Hunters also don't wait for you to completely pull out of a parking spot, but instead insist on making you wait, so they can go on through. Hunters invariably think that they are in possession of the divine right of way.

These are the same folks who spend Sunday mornings combing their local newspaper's obituary section to find available rentals, or looking for a deal when they see the foreclosure sign on their neighbor's property.

The hunted includes anyone who doesn't actively resist aggressive behavior, or those who quickly capitulate in the interest of driving safely. Yes, it's better to yield the right of way than to meet your maker on Judgment Day and say, "but I had the right of way," but yielding inevitably lands one squarely under the heading of prey.

Hunters are often seen behind the windshields of behemoth pick-up trucks, sports utility vehicles, and are not bashful.

People who drive compact cars are often mistaken for passive or, lord forbid, courteous drivers, but they can be hunters, too. It's not the size of the vehicle, or even the hormones that determines the kind of behavior on the road that might inevitably lead to fist fights at a cocktail party.

The urge to merge is ever present on America's roadways, and not just in self-proclaimed merging lanes either.

I'm still not entirely sure what it is about hunters that scares me. One would think I'd be used to them, given that they propogate faster and more efficient than your average cockroach. It isn't the guns. Maybe, it's their attitude. I'm not a big fan of tailgaters either, but it isn't the vehicle or the driver, it's the hunter ethos, a kind of Ayn Rand on wheels, a survival of the fittest, I'm going to get mine and who cares if you get yours, that's taken over this country, and colonized it.

We're not so much a country of 1% versus 99% as 99% wanting to act like 1%. Frankly, the current bumper crop of neo-conservative Republican candidates isn't helping the predatory atmosphere either.

While hunters might appear in different venues, they're readily recognizable. You might have seen them in the workplace, on the streets near your house, in the schoolyard, in the lobbies of five star hotels, and of course there are those pesky bargain hunters in the malls. The urge to intimidate, overpower, and bully, as well as exploit the frailty of others is unmistakable. The only vehicle that is required is a body.

Poet William Blake wrote that there are two kinds of people: devourers and prolifics, and there is indeed something parasitic about hunting. In order to hunt, there must be prey, and the increasing randomness of what constitutes prey is especially scary.

If you haven't yet, you might want to read a story by George Orwell called "Shooting an Elephant." In it, Orwell describes the experience of a British officer sent to patrol occupied Burma. Circumstances transformed the protagonist from a thinker into a hunter: "But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against the knees, with the preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age, I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to."

Whether he wanted to be a hunter or not, and whether or not he wanted to be a killer, the character in the George Orwell story was pressured by the locals of Burma to shoot an animal that posed no threat whatsoever, an action that was mostly approved by his European counterparts. Orwell ends by saying he wondered whether anyone understood that the only reason he shot the elephant was "to avoid looking a fool."

By extension then, if one were to look inside the heart of a hunter, what one might find there is not darkness, or a perverse predisposition for cruelty, but rather a preoccupation with being socially acceptable. Even if one has to commit the most heinous, and eggregious acts, one is prepared to do that rather than face ostracism.

A culture that rewards those qualities that conduce to the slaughter of other living things is one that breeds the kinds of hunters encountered on metropolitan roadways, the bullies who leave their imprint on everything from talk shows to politics. Those who now want to become occupiers have themselves been occupied by an insatiable need for approval, the kind of approval any moral being would shun.

Why is it, I wondered on the drive back home, hunters seem to outnumber their prey by a ratio of somewhere around 2 to 1. Maybe it only looks that way because it's close to Christmas, and the irony wouldn't be lost on the fellow who said "The meek shall inherit the earth."

"How No, Brown Cloud: What Smog Hath Wrought"

2011-12-16T16:32:00.000-08:00

By Michael Winship

Have you heard about the great brown cloud? No, it’s not a new nickname for Donald Trump (his cloud is more an intergalactic nimbus of Aqua Velva and Tang), or the ominous menace in a new Stephen King novel. It’s almost as nasty, though.

The Atmospheric Brown Cloud, formerly known as the Asian Brown Cloud, is a mass of air pollution hovering over northern India along the southern Himalayas and down across Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal. The cloud began growing shortly after World War II, a smoggy mass of soot and sulfates from diesel emissions, wood fires and other burning stuff that’s almost two miles thick.

A new study by scientists from a number of research organizations – including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – finds that the cloud’s pollutants are making cyclones in the Arabian Sea more intense.

This is a very big deal, because, as Dean Kuipers writes in The Los Angeles Times, “After the apparent recent increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, including the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, climate watchers everywhere have speculated whether these storms were made stronger by industrial or man-made emissions. This is reportedly the first study to indicate that human activity may, in fact, affect large storms.”

Wind shear turbulence can help break up cyclones and keep them from becoming bigger storm systems. But shade created by the great brown cloud lowers water temperature, which in turn cuts down wind shear, allowing more powerful storms to form. Since 1998, according to NOAA, there have been five storms in the region with winds greater than 120 miles per hour – killing more than 3500 people and generating $6.5 billion worth of damage.

Anjuli Bamzai, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, said, "This study is a striking example of how human actions, on a large enough scale, in this case massive regional air pollution caused by inefficient fuel combustion, can result in unintended consequences. These consequences include highly destructive summer cyclones that were rare or non-existent in this monsoon region 30 or so years ago."

The good news, Amato Evan, lead author of the study and University of Virginia professor of environmental sciences, told the LA Times is that, “If emissions are reduced, we expect that this kind of trend would reverse on time scales of a few months. It’s not like greenhouse gases, where we think we’re already in trouble. With these kinds of aerosols, if you just stopped all the emissions right now, the atmosphere would become much cleaner in a matter of weeks. And then the whole climate system, the ocean and the atmosphere, would essentially lose memory of those aerosols. It’s pretty dramatic.”

But that’s about the only good news. The unsettling, worldwide evidence of climate change keeps pouring in. As the UN’s climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, began a couple of weeks ago (and ultimately made some small progress on carbon emissions), its World Meteorological Organization (WMO), presented data indicating that the last fifteen years have been the warmest on record, with levels of greenhouse gases continuing to climb and potentially a global average temperature rise of two to 2.4 degrees Celsius on its way – anything above two degrees can lead to mass extinctions and other calamities. Michel Jarraud, the WMO’s secretary general pronounced, “Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities.”

A few days later, NOAA reported that, “To date, the United States set a record with 12 separate billion dollar weather/climate disasters in 2011, with an aggregate damage total of approximately $52 billion. This record year breaks the previous record of nine billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in one year, which occurred in 2008. These twelve disasters alone resulted in the tragic loss of 646 lives, with the National Weather Service reporting over 1,000 deaths across all weather categories for the year.”

In a recent speech at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco cited statistics from Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, which recently declared, “The only possible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.” Lubchenco added, “What we’re seeing this year is not just an anomalous year, but a harbinger of things to come for at least a subset of those extreme events that we are tallying.” (At that same American Geophysical Union conference a biologist and photojournalist reported that with the reduction of arctic sea ice habitat, polar bears are resorting – no joke -- to cannibalism.)

Then the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) weighed in with an “Extreme Weather Map” (see it here: www.nrdc.org/health/extremeweather/). “In 2011, there were at least 2,941 monthly weather records broken by extreme events that struck communities in the US,” the advocacy group announced. Each of the fifty states was affected. “The frequency and intensity of some extreme events is likely to worsen with climate change… [inflicting] tremendous costs on our health and families.”

What’s appalling is that the American public knows this, gets it, and realizes that something must be done, but politicians and corporate greed stand in the way. A recent survey by Yale University’s Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that 65 percent of Americans polled “said that global warming is affecting weather in the United States;” half believe it is caused “mostly by human activities,” up three points since May. A similar survey by the non-profit environmental group ecoAmerica found that 57% of Americans realize, “If we don’t do something about climate change now, we can end up having our farmland turned to desert.” (Thanks for these stats to American Progress Fellow Joe Romm, editor of the “Climate Progress” blog at www.ThinkProgress.org.)

During the 2008 presidential campaign Republican standard bearers John McCain and Sarah Palin – and Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and John Boehner -- acknowledged the reality of climate change (although Palin didn’t believe it was due to human activity). But these days, the issue is as anathematic to the GOP presidential field as abortion or gun control, the skunk at the Grand Old (Garden) Party. (Even the one exception, Jon Huntsman, started flip-flopping last week, creating his own great brown cloud by stating one day, “There are questions about the validity of the science,” and on the next, “I put my faith and trust in science.”)

In a National Journal cover story, aptly headlined “Heads in the Sand,” Coral Davenport writes, “Here’s what has changed for Republican politicians: The rise of the tea party, its influence in the Republican Party, its crusade against government regulations, and the influx into electoral politics of vast sums of money from energy companies and sympathetic interest groups.

“Republicans have long had close financial ties to the fossil-fuel industry, of course. Between 1998 and 2010, the oil-and-gas industry gave 75 percent of its $284 million in political contributions to Republicans. But the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed unlimited corporate spending on campaign advertisements, opened up a whole new avenue for interest groups to influence campaigns by flooding the airwaves with ads that support a political candidate or position. In the 2010 elections alone, the top five conservative and pro-industry outside groups and political action committees -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Karl Rove-backed PAC American Crossroads, which have close ties to fossil-fuel interests -- spent a combined $105 million to support GOP candidates (compared with a combined $8 million that the top five environmental groups spent to back Democrats). Both sides could double those numbers in 2012.”

Money trumps truth. Davenport especially points a finger at the tea party superPAC Americans for Prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers, principal owners of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries. She writes, “As Koch Industries has lobbied aggressively against climate-change policy, Americans for Prosperity has spearheaded an all-fronts campaign using advertising, social media, and cross-country events aimed at electing lawmakers who will ensure that the oil industry won’t have to worry about any new regulations.”

She quotes Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips: “If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you… buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. The vast majority of people who are involved in the [Republican] nominating process -- the conventions and the primaries --are suspect of the science. And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.”

The smear tactics – like the Climategate e-mails, which have reared their misshapen head again -- and vast amounts of cash being thrown around by Americans for Prosperity, American Crossroads and the US Chamber of Commerce make it even more risible that Rick Perry and others claim climate change is – in Perry’s words -- “a contrived phony mess,” a conspiracy by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” Yeah, those nerdy science types are swimming in dough. That’s why they get all the cool dates. A momentary pause here as I pound my head against the wall.

Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina was defeated for reelection in his party primary last year – partly because he said climate change is real. “Being branded as anti-science is not a good future for us,” Inglis told National Journal. “How can we say to young people, we’re dismissing science? That’s not a good place for our party to be, and it’s not historically where we’ve been. There are conservative voices that will hopefully show the way back to conservatism and away from a populist rejection of science.”

William Reilly, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under George H.W. Bush, said, “Somehow, we’re operating on two levels of reality. One is ideological reality, which seems to work for some ideologues. But there is also the scientific reality. It was Republicans who traditionally have pushed for more science to underpin regulations. Science has suffered most severely in the current Republican Party. The ideologues will deny it right up to a point where there’s… a crisis -- and then they won’t anymore.”

But by then, of course, a great brown cloud may be the least of our ecological worries.

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Update: A new minority report from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce notes that in the first session of the 112th Congress, House Republicans “voted 191 times to weaken environmental protections,” making this “the most anti-environment House in the history of Congress.”

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Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos, is senior writer on the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January. Go to www.billmoyers.com.

Hitch

2011-12-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

To his friends, Christopher Hitchens was known simply as "Hitch."

To the rest of us, he will be remembered not merely as a contrarian par excellence, but as a superb wordsmith with state of the art wit.

A master of paradox and, in this sense, the rightful heir to Walt Whitman, Hitchens personified the maxim, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I am large. I contain multitudes."

In this age of pre-fab obituaries, and self-congratulatory, often perfunctory, eulogies, it strikes me that he would like us to remember only that death is inevitable; life isn't.

And live he did, fully, irreverently, and with a flair for the audacity of being.

While he may have questioned who, or what to thank for his brief time on earth, Hitch lived as one who never questioned life itself. His renegade spirit will long survive us as a reminder that, first and foremost, we must occupy our lives.

Ten years and another $660 billion for...

2011-12-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

Gitmos in training:

The Republican-controlled House today passed a defense bill that authorizes awarding more than half a trillion dollars to military contractors, drone-makers, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while, at the same time, as USA Today reports, enhancing the ability to prosecute terrorists in civilian courts. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-12-14/house-defense-bill-passes/51931160/1?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150393270407504_19909606_10150393400637504#f3d765375cb6c88

In the decade since the U.S. has remanded what Donald Rumsfeld dubbed "unlawful enemy combatants" to the naval base in Cuba, this measure which is nearly certain to be approved by the Senate on Thursday, virtually guarantees the continuance of unlimited detention, providing the military with the capacity to arrest and hold anyone inside the U.S., whether they're a U.S. citizen or not, who it deems is engaged in any subversive plot or activity.

As USA Today also notes, this new defense bill "will also give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented," thereby continuing that unitary executive thingy from the George W. Bush years.

Importantly, if this measure passes the Senate as expected, "suspected terrorists," domestic insurrectionists?, "even U.S. citizens seized within this nation's borders" will be denied the right to trial and held indefinitely.

So, not only has the President rescinded his promise to close Guantanamo, he also reneged on his promise to veto a measure that continues indefinite detention. Not only has the Military Commissions Act not been overturned, but this bill essentially expands its power to include domestic capture, and detention.

As executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, observes: “By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law." http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/14/us-refusal-veto-detainee-bill-historic-tragedy-rights

Moreover, the president has violated his own executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, an order he issued shortly after he was inaugurated.

Thanks to this bill, too, as HRW asserts, the military will now assume domestic functions previously relegated to local law enforcement, and the FBI, and able to incarcerate anyone deemed a so-called high value terrorism suspect.

At a time of draconian cuts and austerity measures, the Pentagon now wants to give another $1 trillion to cover the cost of nearly 2500 new military aircraft. This is not only egregious, it flies in the face of common sense.

Now is the time to draw a line in the sand, and not build another sand castle. Defense appropriation is not just about money, but about basic values. This defense bill is an insult to all the ideals every service member in this country has fought for. If it manages to get past the Senate, President Obama must veto it.

"I'm from California..."

2011-12-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

After going to a PEN event in Oakland this afternoon, I was crossing College Avenue when I saw a car at a distance driving so fast, it looked like the driver was going to try and beat the light.

The fact that the light was about to turn stark raving red didn't seem to compel the driver to reach for his brakes, so I stood in the street waiting for the car to come to a complete stop before crossing. Call me old fashioned, but I don't only look at signs that say "walk," or even red lights, I wait for the cars to stop.

Behind the wheel was a 20th something fellow with what appeared to be his girlfriend beside him. Seeing the light was red, yes, he did stop. By that time the "Do Not Walk" sign was flashing, so I hurried across College Avenue at which point I heard something from that driver the likes of which I've never heard from a driver before in my entire life. He rolled down the window of his car, and yelled, "I'm from California, I can suck my own dick."

As if for confirmation, I glanced quickly at the passenger in his car. She looked horrified.

All I could say was, "You took the words right out of my mouth, pal."

Newt Worthy

2011-12-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

Since Gingrich has essentially been the template for Republican politics since the days of Ronald Reagan, there are a few things you might want to consider, if you haven't already, about a fellow who's been as close to Mount Rushmore for nearly as long as any president whose face is already carved there:

First, while he's most often thought of as a southerner, Newt Gingrich was born in Harrisburg, Pennsyvania and, in his mid-teens, the family moved to Georgia. Remember, too, that Pennsylvania is a pivotal state that Obama needs to win in order to be reelected.

2) As House Minority Leader from 1989 to 1995, Newt Gingrich was preceded by Dick Cheney. Now that's a hard act to follow.

3) Gingrich was the 58th Speaker of the House from 1995 through 1999. Many recall that he stepped down due to ethics violations, but the full Ethics Committee didn't agree on what to do about charges against him including claims of fraudulent tax-exempt status, but instead left it up to the Internal Revenue Service to pursue. The IRS cleared his organization of charges in 1999.

4) In 2003, Gingrich founded the Center for Health Transformation which focused on individual preventive care. Consider this if he actually gets his party's nomination. Let's see how much focus the media gives to CHT, and Gingrich's ideas for so-called health vouchers.

5) Notably, in the past decade alone, as The Washington Post reports, companies with which Gingrich and his wife have been involved have made close to $100 million. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newt-gingrich-and-how-he-got-rich/2011/11/21/gIQAftOglN_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop

And, according to the Los Angeles Times, in the past four years Gingrich's net worth has tripled from $2.4 million to $6.7 million. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gingrich-worth-20110725,0,2982591.story

6) Callista Gingrich, Newt's third wife, heads a company called Gingrich Productions which was founded in 2007. It is a self-described media production company from which Newt Gingrich reportedly earned more than $2 million in 2010.

7) In that same year, former speaker Gingrich wrote "Rediscovering God in America," a book in which he contends that the framers of the Constitution wanted religion to play a key role in the republic.

8) And, one day after Newt called Obama the "food stamp president," deep in the heart of Texas, a young mother of two killed herself, and shot both of her children in a welfare office after having been denied food stamps. http://abcnews.go.com/US/girl-posted-facebook-hostage-standoff/story?id=15107440

Keep this in mind and remember that, as House speaker, Gingrich worked his butt off to pass "welfare reform" legislation, which then President Clinton vetoed twice. Gingrich did manage to pass legislation tightening food stamp eligibility, cutting Aid to Dependent Families, reducing welfare assistance to immigrants while urging that states be responsible for making these allocations like any good federalist. At the same time, Gingrich was a virulent advocate for lowering the capital gains taxes, and corporate income taxes.

Rick Perry isn't the only one who balanced his state budget on the backs of the working poor. Newt Gingrich et. al would do the same with the federal budget. Oh, and when you hear all this GOP talk of "spending cuts," remember who Gingrich wanted to cut when he was Speaker of the House.

What a statement about the values of a country when everyone talks about the hypocrisy of a candidate whose calling card was family values in terms of how he treated his ex-wives, and few are talking about what Newt Gingrich did to poor and working families in America.

Make no mistake, there are Republicans out there who like to think of Gingrich as the Comeback Kid. Newt Gingrich should be welcomed back as much as Al Capone would be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for smaller government, especially when government, for the past 30 plus years, has been fighting to distinguish itself from organized crime.

But, the Gingrich Republicans have made a career out of recycling, and they've also made a career out of deep pockets; theirs not ours.

Newt Gingrich is Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan rolled up into one. That said, even Barry Goldwater would have run off to an ashram by now.

In the end, maybe all politics is about recycling. If so, we need to start with better stock.

Michael Winship reports...

2011-12-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas: No More Insider Trading on Capitol Hill?

By Michael Winship

The other day, a couple of kids up in Kingston, NY, called 911 looking for Santa Claus. Law enforcement arrived to tell them that what they had done was naughty, not nice, but in deference to the holiday, no pepper spray was involved.

Meanwhile, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a guy dressed up like Frosty the Snowman -- that jolly, happy soul -- tried to thumpety-thump-thump a cop with the head of his costume. He’s also accused of kicking a police dog -- bad, Frosty, bad!

Then, of course, there are those cheery photos from Scottsdale, Arizona, of people -- including kids -- posing with Santa at a local gun club, hoisting their choice of machine guns, pistols, semi-automatic AR-15s, and grenade launchers. It’s okay, the club says, they’re not loaded, but you better not pout or cry... punk.

Welcome to Christmas in these United States, Anno Domini 2011.

Just in case you thought those three incidents were lacking in the true spirit of the season, last week the investment company PNC Wealth Management issued their annual "True Cost of Christmas" index which reported that purchasing all the items mentioned in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" costs more than ever -- $101,119.84, to be precise, up 4.4 percent from last year. The high price of gold sent retail demand plummeting so the cost of the five golden rings actually went down, but seven-swans-a-swimming rose by 12.5 percent. Pipers piping and drummers drumming "saw modest increases, both up 3.0 percent," but the cost of eight-maids-a-milking, representing the only unskilled labor, remained unchanged -- there was no increase this year in the minimum wage.

Coincidentally, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, Democratic chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, held a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce, "There will be no Christmas for Congress unless there is an extension of unemployment insurance benefits." He and some of his colleagues declared that they’ll keep the House and Senate from adjourning for the holidays if action isn’t taken.

"I hate to inform my Republican colleagues," Harkin said, "but Wall Street did not build America. But when it comes to handing out hundreds of millions of dollars, Wall Street is up front. It’s time for middle-class America to be up front."

Fair enough. But it seems that during all that time it’s been up front, Wall Street also has done all right for our do-nothing Congress (and if you want to know just how do-nothing, a couple of weeks ago, congressional lobbyist Billy Moore told NBC News’ First Read that this Congress "has enacted just 55 public laws so far this year -- and 34 of them merely extended existing laws -- compared with the average over the last 20 years of 148 public laws for a first full session").

Such idleness comes with its rewards -- apparently, many of our members of Congress could afford all of that Twelve Days of Christmas loot without lifting a manicured finger. Last month, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that about 47 percent of Congress -- 250 current members -- are millionaires, a "lofty financial status enjoyed by only about one percent of Americans."

According to the Center, "the median estimated net worth among Senate Republicans was $2.43 million, and the median net worth among members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate was $2.69 million." In the House, "the median estimated net worth of a GOP House member was $834,250 in 2010... compared to a median net worth of $635,500 among House Democrats." (Richest was California House Republican Darrell Issa, with an estimated average net worth of $448 million. Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul was second with an average net worth of $380 million, Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry came in third at $232 million, much of it the assets of his wife Theresa Heinz Kerry.)

What’s more, the Center reports, "members of Congress might be more financially well off than we can see" because their personal financial disclosure forms don’t include government retirement accounts or any non-income generating personal property, including residences, cars and artwork. But we do know about their Wall Street investments.

"The most popular company in which members of Congress were invested in 2010 was General Electric, a company that spent more than $39 million on federal lobbying that year and ranked as the No. 3 top spender on lobbying. Seventy-five different current members of Congress held stock in GE in 2010, according to the Center's research. Collectively, these holdings were worth at least $3.6 million."

Coming in second and third were Procter & Gamble (62 lawmakers hold at least $8.7 million worth) and Bank of America (57 members, $2.8 million). Microsoft ($3.2 million) and Cisco (($1.3 million) were tied for fourth place; stock of each was held by 56 legislators. Fifth place goes to drug giant Pfizer -- 51 members held stock worth at least $2 million.

None of this, of course, includes corporate campaign contributions to members, which by all indications will hit dismayingly record heights next year.

"It's no surprise that so many people grumble about lawmakers being out-of-touch," Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics’ executive director, said. "Few Americans enjoy the same financial cushion maintained by most members of Congress -- or the same access to market-altering information that could yield personal financial gains."

But one of the few pieces of good holiday season news coming out of this forsaken Congress is that they may finally be doing something about "access to market-altering information," the knowledge members pick up via their privileged status and access to congressional testimony, reports, briefings and daily contacts with lobbyists, special interests and government agencies.

Five years ago, the intrepid congresswoman from western New York State, Louise Slaughter, ranking member of the House Rules Committee, introduced legislation to prevent insider stock trading by her fellow legislators. According to The Washington Post, "Most lawmakers bristled, offended by the mere suggestion that they would ever engage in such behavior." She could find but nine sponsors, only one of whom was a Republican – Walter Jones from North Carolina. It was, as the congressional newspaper The Hill reported, "a non-issue."

And yet, as that paper noted in its December 1 edition, there has been ample evidence that "consciously or not, federal lawmakers use their positions to reap better Wall Street returns than other investors.

"A 2004 study conducted by researchers at Georgia State University, for instance, found that trades made by selected senators between 1993 and 1998 produced returns more than 12 percent higher than the rest of the market. 'These results,' the researchers concluded, 'suggest that senators knew appropriate times to both buy and sell their common stocks.'

"More recently, researchers from four universities found that 300 House lawmakers trading 16,000 times between 1985 and 2001 outperformed the market by roughly 6 percent each year -- something the researchers deemed 'significant positive abnormal returns.'"

But what a difference a visit from "60 Minutes" makes. Last month, the news magazine broadcast a story based on the book, Throw Them All Out, by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank at Stanford University. Their report stated, "Congressional lawmakers have no corporate responsibilities and have long been considered exempt from insider trading laws, even though they have daily access to non-public information and plenty of opportunities to trade on it."

CBS was critical of both House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (they have denied any wrongdoing), as well as others, but perhaps the most damning evidence was against House Financial Services Committee Chair Spencer Bachus, Republican from Alabama, who just before the 2008 financial meltdown attended closed door briefings with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke.

"While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering," "60 Minutes" reported, "he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts." According to the broadcast, Bachus made about 200 trades and netted around $28,000. As Peter Schweizer said, "I mean, talk about a stock tip." (Bachus has said the "60 Minutes" piece had 'a disturbing number of errors" and that Schweizer’s allegations are "a total lie."

Overnight, in the face of public outrage -- not to mention a Congressional approval rating seeming to fall more precipitously every day -- Rep. Slaughter’s legislation, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, came off life support and began acquiring sponsors faster than Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. She now has at least 133, including 37 GOP members.

Last Thursday, Senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine held the first hearings on Senate versions of the legislation. Lieberman hopes to have a bill out of committee by mid-December. House hearings are scheduled to begin this week and the House Ethics Committee has sent a memo to members on the proper use of non-public information.

And all of this isn’t the only holiday cheer spreading across the Potomac. Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota announced that he and more than half of his fellow senators -- 21 Republicans and 37 Democrats -- are planning a Secret Santa gift exchange. Franken told The New York Times he thought it "would be a good way to cut through the partisan divide here in the Senate. And who knows, maybe it will create some unlikely friendships."

The price limit is ten dollars, so no golden rings or partridges in pear trees this year. But the American public will be happy to throw in lumps of coal for free.

########

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos and senior writer for the upcoming public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January 2012. For more information, go to www.billmoyers.com.

Mitt Reagan

2011-12-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

Now that Herman Cain has officially "suspended" his campaign, and Newt Gingrich has more baggage than Louis Vuitton, it's pretty obvious that dupe du jour will be Mitt Romney.

Pundits point to Romney's past life as a liberal, and his pro-choice stance. Some even remember the Massachusetts Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy when Mitt Romney tried to pass himself off as more progressive, on some issues, than the fellow who came to be known as the lion of the Senate.

Make no mistake, once his campaign is in full swing, and that Citizens United ruling really kicks in, Romney will soon magically morph into that other famous one-time Democrat, union leader, and governor, Ronald Reagan. As presidential nominee, Romney's religion will play no greater role than Ronald Reagan's did.

Just as Reagan had to out-Herod Herod to win his party's favor, and move so far right that Goldwater looked moderate by comparison, so will Romney.

Caveat emptor. Whomever you vote for in 2012 cannot be exchanged or returned until 2016. Whoever Romney was in a previous life, pro-choice or not, if elected he will pander to those forces that made him president in the first place, those "special interests" that all presidents since FDR have promised to combat, yet none has.

Only, there's a big difference. Were he to become president, Romney would tilt the Supreme Court so far to the right that Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann will look like the Little League they are, and the corporate takeover of America will be complete.

More Workers than Women Exploited by Cain

2011-12-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

Arguably, Herman Cain has exploited more workers than he has women, yet the media feeding frenzy these past few weeks has centered exclusively on the Godfather Pizza CEO's sexual exploits.

Not even Mr. Cain's not-so-subtle hint to take a closer look at his 9-9-9 plan instead of his sexcapades has done any good.

Instead, all the cable networks, and much of the mainstream press, have been busy interviewing lawyers for three women who were allegedly sexually harassed by the candidate, and a fourth who claims to have had a consensual extramarital affair with Cain.

Apparently, watching one of his alleged victims, and a former restaurant worker, step forward and describe how, after they went out to dinner, Cain stuck his hand up her skirt gets higher ratings for the networks than detailing how Godfather Cain became godfather in the first place. Now Godfather Cain wants to become Citizen Cain, but don't believe it. Once a godfather, always a godfather.

To the Occupy movement, the pizza magnate says only, "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the banks if you don't have a job, and you're not rich. Blame yourself." This coming from a man whose annual income places him firmly in the top 0.12% http://inlandz.com/?p=3239

All the while, barely a peep has been heard about the fact that Mr. Cain became immensely rich off the labor of low-wage, part-time workers. http://inlandz.com/?p=3239 If that sounds familiar it is. So-called "job creator," Texas Governor Rick Perry, contends that he is best suited to put America back to work while boasting of all the jobs Texas has created over the past several years. What both Mr. Cain and Mr. Perry don't tell you is that these have come at the expense of workers.

The latest details of Mr. Cain's 9-9-9 plan have been all but drowned out by the media ecstasy over his love life. A closer look at his plan reveals that, as president, as Fox News reports, Cain would work to eliminate minimum wage laws, roll back union rights, building codes, and even vouchers for school lunches. He is about as antithetical to organized labor as it gets. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/20/cain-adds-to-plan-angering-unions/

Earlier this fall, according to Fox, Teamster president Jim Hoffa attacked Cain's 9-9-9 as offering even more of "an opportunity for corporate America to exploit workers and turn the U.S. into a third world country." And, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the Cain plan to repeal minimum wage laws "almost laughable" in light of the current economic climate.

At a time when income disparity has never been greater, surely the GOP party leaders are delighted by the distraction of Cain's much-publicized sexual transgressions as there can be no better way to deflect attention away from the reality that not one candidate running for president on the Republican ticket has supported unions, the minimum wage, building codes, and school lunches for children.

And, if you think Mr. Cain's views on Occupy Wall Street are his and his alone, listen to Newt Gingrich who sounds even more like Archie Bunker than Herman Cain. Not one would-be Republican contender for the presidential nomination in 2012 has defended the minimum wage, unions, and worker's rights. To the contrary, even those who come across as liberal on the foreign policy front, like Ron Paul, have said they would do away with the minimum wage.

Way to go, mainstream media. Make a spectacle of the Godfather of management so that those who don't read the fine print will overlook the indisputable attack by Republican corporateers, including Mr. Romney, on the average working man and woman in this country.

Even if Cain does drop out of the race, the Cain mindset will remain in place.

The Rapture

2011-11-28T18:14:00.000-08:00

(after Frank O'Hara)

Dreamt I was in a crowded movie theatre

waiting for the coming

attractions.

Everyone was sitting quietly

munchng on

their popcorn

when I looked down,

I discovered I was

sitting on

a cloud---

only sky below me. I thought

"Oh, God,

I hope I don't

have to go to

the bathroom."

(wrote this poem back in October, 2007)

From Molly Ivins:' "The Uncompassionate Conservative"

2011-11-27T13:15:00.000-08:00

The buffet currently being served by the bevy of Republican wannabes hasn't changed all that much over the past decade.

Since Molly Ivins is no longer here to serve up the truth herself, she passed five years ago in January, here's a timely excerpt from a 2003 piece, "The Uncompassionate Conservative," by inimitable, and legendary Texas columnist which first appeared in Mother Jones:

"What is the disconnect? One can see it from the other side -- people's lives are being horribly affected by the Bush administration's policies, but they make no connection between what happens to them and the decisions made in Washington. I think I understand why so many people who are getting screwed do not know who is screwing them. What I don't get is the disconnect at the top. Is it that Bush doesn't want to see? No one brought it to his attention? He doesn't care?

Okay, we cut taxes for the rich and so we have to cut services for the poor. Presumably there is some right-wing justification along the lines that helping poor people just makes them more dependent or something. If there were a rationale Bush could express, it would be one thing, but to watch him not see, not make the connection, is another thing entirely. Welfare, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps -- horrors, they breed dependency. Whereas inheriting millions of dollars and having your whole life handed to you on a platter is good for the grit in your immortal soul? What we're dealing with here is a man in such serious denial it would be pathetic if it weren't damaging so many lives."

http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/11/uncompassionate-conservative

Mitt Romney: The Ziploc Candidacy

2011-11-25T16:56:00.000-08:00

The Republican Party has been looking to clone Ronald Reagan for a long time now. Reagan, as you recall, was often depicted as the Teflon president because no scandal could tarnish him.

Ronald Reagan wasn't the only president to earn that moniker, Bill Clinton did, too, except Clinton was quickly shown to be made not of teflon, but flesh and blood.

Those who are looking for teflon can celebrate. They may have found their man, only this time in a ziploc bag. Mitt Romney manages to keep his lips sealed on important subjects, and in such an imperial way, delivering a smile as if it were a swagger, and all the time escaping scrutiny.

Pundits on both the left and the right have long inveighed against his flip flopping on choice, and other issues, but the media focus has consistently been on what Romney has said, and not what he hasn't which is where the spotlight rightly belongs.

For one thing, the former Massachusetts governor hasn't said what role religion plays in his life. He hasn't divulged how much he earned in 2010, or any year in which he ran for elected office, and has been equally taciturn about his campaign contributors.

Another politician from Massachusetts, then-Senator Jack Kennedy, when he ran for president in 1960, emphasized the constitutional proscription against a religious test for elected office. A candidate's belief system, whether it's Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim assuredly has no place when considering how qualified he or she may be to be in the White House. But, it's not religion that's at issue here, it's transparency, and the degree to which religion is a force, and/or a factor, in a prospective president's life.

Importantly, too, when he ran for president as senator from Massachusetts, JFK also said that if, at any point as president, his religious beliefs impacted his actions as commander-in-chief, he would immediately step down. A laudable comment, and one conspicuously missing from the mouth of candidate Romney.

When it comes to both his religion and his finances, Mr. Romney has kept his counsel in a ziploc bag, and sealed it tight.

Romney has also, quite remarkably, managed to keep his tax returns quiet, too.

While the press has given the ziploc candidate a pass when it comes to his tax returns, and campaign contributions, one wonders whether, if pressed, Romney would be able to say as Jack Kennedy did that his religious worldview would not influence how he governs and if it did, he'd be prepared to step down.

Keep in mind that the former governor of Massachusetts is not just an elder in his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he is a Temple Mormon, and he is also a high priest. Thus, any oath of office Romney takes is secondary to his oath of obedience to his church. http://rr-bb.com/showthread.php?12999-Romney-Mormon-high-priest

In order to become a member of the temple in the first place, he had to swear his allegiance to the Prophet, or church leader, who is currently Thomas S. Monson. Were he to become the commander-in-chief, Mr. Romney would essentially be consulting the same God George W. Bush did, but instead a real live human being, so the U.S. would effectively become the kind of theocracy that we condemn in Iran.

Of course, there is an important difference. We have a Constitution. Notably, though the Mormon church has vigorously disputed the notion of the White Horse Prophecy as church doctrine, as has Mr. Romney, many believe the prophecy is still very much in play.

It might be instructive then to take a quick look at Latter Day Saints founder, Joseph Smith, Jr.'s teaching that when the time comes that the U.S. Constitution is "hanging by a thread," latter day saints will come along to save the Constitution, thereby converting this country not just into a theocracy, but a theocracy under the thumb of LDS. This view of the Constitution as a damsel in distress has also been espoused by Brigham Young, as well as Sen. Orrin Hatch, and right wing talk show host, Glenn Beck. The savior, of course, is a bunch of saints on white chargers.

While it's no longer permissible for Mormons to practice polygamy, the concept is still alive and well in the "celestial kingdoms" where men become gods of their own planets. The Mormon god is named Elohim, and he is said to reside on a planet near a star called Kolob. There are many gods in Mormonism, but Elohim is the only one worthy of worship; Jesus and Lucifer are seen as brothers. The Mormon church also teaches that "black-skinned people are of inferior origins." http://www.christian-faith.com/forjesus/mormon-religion

Then, of course, there's the Oath of Vengeance in which blood that is spilled is avenged by the shedding of one's own blood, a form of ecclesiastical asymmetric warfare.

One of the key advantages of keeping his lips sealed is that, as Raw Story reports, Romney's faith is proving not to be a costly matter for his candidacy. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/23/romneys-mormonism-no-barrier-against-obama-poll/ While many polled, especially evangelical Christians, claim to be concerned about Romney's Mormonism, ironically those who have expressed the greatest agitation are Romney's staunchest supporters.

Importantly, too, Mitt Romney isn't the only Mormon running for president. Utah's former governor, Jon Huntsman, is a practicing Mormon, too. Aside from being Mormon, both Romney and Huntsman are blue bloods, and would be about as concerned with workers' rights as J.R. Ewing.

As a candidate, Romney has been poker-faced, hiding whatever corporate, or corporal transgressions he may have behind that million dollar smile, and deep inside a ziploc bag. But, a ziploc bag is transparent, Romney isn't, and religion isn't the only thing he isn't transparent about.

Romney is just as secretive about his business practices. He touts his experience in the private sector, but doesn't say that, as head of Bain Capital, his policy of leveraged buyouts resulted in thousands of pink slips. Another senator from Massachusetts, Teddy Kennedy, successfully exposed Romney's dubious business practices back in 1994 during the Massachusetts Senate race. At that time, too, Romney used his personal wealth as a way to buy his way into office. Only it didn't work because of Sen. Kennedy's diligence in exposing what was really behind the Romney campaign. The capital gains of big business at the expense of unions and labor.

If he were here now, Sen. Ted Kennedy might want to remind us again of the Latter Day Saints former policy of not admitting blacks into the priesthood, as well as the fact, as Boston.com reports, that Bain Capital got a $10 million bailout from the FDIC back in 1993; so much for Mr. Romney's business acumen. http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-15/news/29778328_1_mitt-romney-loan-forgiveness-federal-bailout

Here's hoping Romney's prodigious loss to Ted Kennedy in the Massachusetts Senate race may be a harbinger for Romney's defeat to Obama in the 2012 presidential race.

For, as Sen. Kennedy said, elected officials are public servants, and Mitt Romney is no public servant. He serves big business. The only time Romney is transparent is when he argues that "corporations are people,too." He thinks that when corporations are happy, you and I are happy. Sound familiar? The Republican Party has found their Reagan clone who can only be defeated by the truth, the truth that big business, and big money don't trickle down.

Mitt Romney will, in the end, prevail and be his party's nominee. And, if the press does its job, he will be defeated in 2012, just like he was in 1994, not because he's a high priest of the Mormon church, but because he's the high priest of profit and profiteering. If we learn nothing else from the 99 movement it's that that kind of thinking doesn't work anymore.

Don't be deceived. Danger lurks beneath that ziplock smile.

From Michael Winship

2011-11-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

DC as ATM: Newt, the Ultimate Beltway Swindler
By Michael Winship

You maybe should think twice when even Jack Abramoff thinks you’re beneath contempt. Not that Newt Gingrich cares.

Abramoff, America’s favorite convicted influence peddler, told NBC’s David Gregory that presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Gingrich is one of those "people who came to Washington, who had public service, and they cash in on it. They use their public service and access to make money."

Newt, he continued, is "engaged in the exact kind of corruption that America disdains. The very things that anger the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement and everybody who is not in a movement and watches Washington and says why are these guys getting all this money, why do they go become so rich, why do they have these advantages?"

Why indeed? Granted, Abramoff’s in the middle of his promotion tour of confession and attempted redemption, a pot obscenely eager to call his kettle and former mentor black -- especially if it sells books. But Casino Jack does have a point.

Gingrich personifies everything rotten about the ATM machine we call Washington: the merchandising of favors and votes; the conversion of past incumbency into insider information, making your contacts and the ability to play the system available to the highest bidder; the archetypal revolving door between government service and shilling for corporate America.

Yet there he is, suddenly riding at the top of the polls, his debate skills lauded, his churlish dismissal of the media praised, and infused with sufficient cheek to portray himself to gullible elements of the electorate as an outsider. It’s as if Kim Kardashian proclaimed herself American Housewife of the Year.

(Gingrich now is trying to play the inside-outside game both ways, proclaiming last week, "We just tried four years of amateur ignorance and it didn’t work very well. So having someone who actually knows Washington might be a really good thing.")

In fact, a quick look at just a few of Newt’s activities since his GOP colleagues tossed him out of the speakership in 1998 is sufficient to expose him as the ultimate poster boy for inside-the-Beltway game playing --adherence to ideology often shoved aside in favor of expedience and the chance to make a buck.

You’ll remember hearing just this past spring about Mr. and Mrs. Gingrich’s revolving, no-interest credit line at Tiffany’s, a luxury store they treated like a diamond encrusted version of the Home Shopping Network, and Tim Carney’s report in The Washington Examiner that, "Christy Evans, formerly a top staffer to... Gingrich, is a registered lobbyist for Tiffany's."

Now Carney writes, "We know that Gingrich has been paid by drug companies and by the drug lobby, notably during the Medicare drug debate. A former employee of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (the main industry lobby), told me Gingrich was being paid by someone in the industry at the time. A spokeswoman for Gingrich's health care consulting firm, Center for Health Transformation, told me that drug companies have been CHT clients. PhRMA confirmed in a statement that they had paid Gingrich. Bloomberg News cited sources from leading drug companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer saying that those companies had also hired Gingrich...

"Three former Republican congressional staffers told me that Gingrich was calling around Capitol Hill and visiting Republican congressmen in 2003 in an effort to convince conservatives to support a bill expanding Medicare to include prescription-drug subsidies. Conservatives were understandably wary about expanding a Lyndon Johnson-created entitlement that had historically blown way past official budget estimates. Drug makers, on the other hand, were positively giddy about securing a new pipeline of government cash to pad their already breathtaking profit margins."

On Monday, the chair of Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation estimated its revenues over the past decade at $55 million. Fees are flexible, she said, with "charter memberships" going for an annual fee of $200,000. According to the November 21 Wall Street Journal, "The health think tank also charges for consulting sessions with the former speaker and Mr. Gingrich’s speeches, according to two health care trade groups."

More dynamically, the center’s PR materials promised "direct Newt interaction"(!) and as per The Washington Post, "The biggest funders, including such firms as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were also eligible to receive discounts on ‘products and workshops’ from other Gingrich groups." Sounds like the Potomac edition of "The Price Is Right."

Another Center for Health Transformation charter member was Gundersen Lutheran Health System of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The November 17 New York Times reported that in July 2009, without reporting his connection, Gingrich praised the company in The Washington Post "for its successful efforts to persuade most patients to have 'advance directives,' saying that if Medicare had followed Gundersen’s lead on end-of-life care and other practices, it would 'save more than $33 billion a year.'"

Advance directives means helping families determine future care for the terminally ill, but when Tea Partiers and others started yelling about "death panels" during the healthcare reform fight, Gingrich made a quick flip-flop to the right and changed sides.

Listening to Newt attack child labor laws this week, I thought one of his clients might be Miss Hannigan’s Orphanage. In reality, others who have anted up for his advice include GE, IBM, Microsoft, Growth Energy (a pro-ethanol lobby group that between 2009 and 2011 paid him $575,000) and the US Chamber of Commerce. The Wall Street Journal notes that, "The Chamber, the largest lobbying organization in Washington, paid Mr. Gingrich about $840,000, according to people familiar with the arrangement, or about $120,000 a year for seven years, beginning in 2001, to serve on an informal board of advisers to its president and senior staff."

And then, of course, there’s Freddie Mac, which triggered this recent tsunami of scrutiny when Gingrich claimed at the November 9 candidates’ debate that it was for his expertise as an historian that the home mortgage giant had paid him $300,000.

Bloomberg News then reported that the number was actually as much as $1.8 million, paid as consulting fees right up until 2008, when the failing agency was taken over by the government and such outside contracts were suspended. Gingrich claims he warned Freddie about "insane" loans and then told USA Today, "I was advising them over a period when they weren’t in crisis. I’m pretty happy to say, I gave these guys advice... on how do you build opportunity for the poor to learn to be non-poor?" Until caught, he hadn’t bothered to mention his own involvement, even as he attacked Barney Frank and others for taking Freddie Mac’s campaign contributions.

Through it all, Gingrich has denied being a lobbyist, apparently adhering to a very narrow definition – he’s not officially registered with Congress under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, as amended by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

But you do the math: according to Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Kristin Jensen at Bloomberg News, "The former Georgia congressman reported assets in 1997 of between $197,000 and $606,000, according to his last House personal financial disclosure report, which permits lawmakers to record their wealth in broad ranges. According to his 2011 presidential disclosure report, the Republican primary candidate today is worth between $7.3 million and $31 million."

Not bad for government work.

########

Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos, is senior writer of the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January 2012. Go to www.billmoyers.com.

48 years ago today: what JFK might say

2011-11-22T12:34:00.000-08:00

How appropriate that on this day the Republicans plan to hold another debate, and move one step closer to deciding upon who will run against President Obama in November, 2012.

The subject of tonight's debate is national security. What irony in that today marks 48 years since the assassination, in Dallas, of President John F. Kennedy.

When juxtaposing the image of a candidate from the Republican Party leaving it up to a general in Pakistan to decide whether or not to bolster our military presence in Pakistan, or Iran, one can't help but recall the image of Jack Kennedy with then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. As you recall, Kennedy was an avid reader, often reading as many as three newspapers a day, so his response to Mr. Cain might be only that he was a reader and a leader.

Godfather's Pizza mogul Herman Cain has been deposed in the polls by Newt Gingrich, remember him, from the 1990's, who now compares himself to the Mel Gibson character in the movie, "Braveheart." For those, like myself, who missed the Gibson movie, don't worry, if you've seen "Breakfast at Tiffany's" that's all you need to know about Mr. Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, family values, Contract with America fellow who recently eclipsed the absurdity of Cain's statement by calling child labor laws "stupid."

If you want to know what poses the gravest threat to national security, just try and wrap your head around why so many people, young and old, are showing up for the Occupy movement. Just ask yourself why so many youngsters are pitching tents on college campuses, and subjecting themselves to the kind of brutality we haven't seen since the shootings at Kent State.

To borrow a phrase from Paddy Chayefsky, people are "mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore." We don't believe that national security can be separated from economic justice. We don't believe that amassing behemoth fortunes will lead to job creation. We didn't believe it when Ronald Reagan said it, and we don't believe it now.

Or, as JFK, a visionary president, said half a century ago, "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." His vision lives on in the hearts and minds of all who support those who speak up for the economic justice for which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King strove, and without which there can be no national security.

For there can be no graver threat to national, or international, security than a weak economy, and there can be no recovery when the few feast off the sacrifices of the many.

Artie

2011-11-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

It'll be seven years next month since legendary clarinetist, bandleader, and writer Artie Shaw passed on.

Artie was my second cousin, and he often said he got his musical talent from my mother's father, Moishe Strauss, who was a cantor, as well as a house painter during the lean years of the Great Depression.

From early childhood, Artie was mythologized, and became almost a cult figure to my family. He was the enfant terrible, the rebel, the one who lived life on his own terms, who gave up an immensely well-paying gig to pursue his one and only love, writing.

When I was about fourteen, I wrote a letter to be forwarded to Artie through his publisher, or his agent, (I can't remember which), that I ended simply, "We writers must stick together." I never heard back.

A few decades later, over a drink, I persuaded a music critic to give me Artie's phone number, which he did reluctantly while warning me that Artie could be surly, and he might not be doing me a favor by enabling me to contact him.

Months later, when poet Allen Ginsberg died, there was a memorial for Allen in Westwood. I heard that Artie was going to attend, so I called him up out of the blue, and on impulse, fully prepared to have him hang up on me. "I'm your second cousin," I said, "but that doesn't mean any more to me than it does to you, so let me say instead that I knew Allen, and am going to the memorial." "So, you're a poet?" he said, and we spent 45 warm and lively minutes on the phone.

I met Artie for the first time, a few weeks later, at the Allen Ginsberg memorial right before the event started. When I introduced myself, his eyes suddenly welled up with tears as if he had been slicing an onion. When he saw me, he had to see himself in me.

Even in his mid-80's, Artie Shaw was built like a brick shithous. There was not an ounce of fat on him.

He mumbled something about having to go onstage, and invited me then to visit him in Newbury Park which I was lucky enough to do a few times before he passed on December 30, 2004. The last time I saw him, Artie said he wanted to live to be 100. He didn't quite make it, but I suspect my childhood dream wasn't the only one that came true; his did, too.

From Michael Winship

2011-11-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

The Long Shadows of Nixon and Hoover

By Michael Winship

J.Edgar Hoover passed away on May 2, 1972. The legendary FBI director lay in state at the Capitol rotunda, the doors kept open all day and night for the convenience of mourners.

I remember because I was still at college in Washington then, and around 3 o’clock in the morning a bunch of us drove up there, not to pay our respects, but to make sure he was really dead.

In those pre-9/11 days, you could still do that sort of thing.

The memory of our pre dawn visit came rushing back last week as I introduced ascreening of J. Edgar, the new film directed by Clint Eastwood, and interviewed its screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who won the Oscar a couple of years ago for the movie "Milk."

There’s a sequence toward the end of J. Edgar right after Hoover dies: President Richard Nixon appears before the cameras to solemnly announce the news. Cut to Nixon in the Oval Office ordering chief of staff Bob Haldeman and other members of his Praetorian Guard to seal off Hoover’s offices and seize his fabled stash of secret files on every prominent politician, past and present. Meanwhile, Hoover’s faithful secretary, Helen Gandy, has locked herself away with a shredder and dutifully eliminates the evidence.

The movie loops chronologically back and forth across Hoover’s law enforcement career of more than half a century. Eastwood and Lance Black maneuver an intriguing tightrope walk between the Hoover who sees himself as a crime-busting patriot protecting his country and pioneering forensic
investigative techniques, and the paranoid, power mad, status obsessed Washington insider who would go to any lengths to pursue anyone he thought subversive or simply critical of him and his methods.

All of this is crammed into a repressed,mother-ridden, anguished individual whose decades-long relationship with his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson, was the closest he ever got to reallove -- at a time in America when you could walk into the Capitol building unchallenged by security but homosexuality truly was, as the old cliché goes,the love that dared not speak its name.

As Lance Black told the San Francisco Gate in a recent interview, "If you are robbed of the ability to love who you love,you will fill that hole with something else. For him, it was power and anation’s admiration... he started to do things that were heinous to hold onto it."

David Denby adds in his review of the movie in The New Yorker, "Again and again, he goes too far,treating Communist rhetorical bluster as the first stages of revolution, assembling lists of people whose opinions he considers suspect, fabricating documents, planting stories in the newspapers, bludgeoning potential enemies with his file drawers of sexual gossip" -- files that notoriously included John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., not to mention Louis Brandeis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Mary Pickford.

According to attorney Kenneth D.Ackerman, author of Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, by 1960, "the FBI hadopen ‘subversive’ files on some 432,000 Americans."

Last week, as if cued by the release of J. Edgar, there were new developments in the life stories of both Hoover and Nixon. By way of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, The Los Angeles Times received old FBIfiles on Jack Nelson, the journalist who eventually became that paper’s Washington bureau chief.

"Hoover was convinced -- mistakenly -- that Nelson planned to write that the FBI director was homosexual," the Times reported. "As he had done with other perceived enemies, Hoover began compiling a dossier on the reporter... John Fox, the FBI'sin-house historian, said Nelson arrived on the scene at a time when Hoover wasfeeling vulnerable. A published report that the director was gay could wellhave ended his career, and that possibility -- unfounded or not -- had Hooveron edge."

In memos, Hoover, who had a penchant for smearing his real and imagined nemeses with names from the animal kingdom, variously called Nelson a jackal, rat and -- most charmingly -- a "lice-covered ferret." He tried to have the reporter fired andmet with the paper’s head man in Washington, Dave Kraslow. "The spittle was running out of his lips and the corners of his mouth," the now85-year-old Kraslow recalled. "He was out of control."

Kraslow refused to fire Nelson but did ask him to send Hoover a response which read, in part" "I emphatically deny that I have at any time under any circumstances ever said or remotely suggested that Mr.Hoover was a homosexual."

Meanwhile, the National Archives released the latest batch of tape recordings and transcripts from the Nixon Presidential Library, also known as the House of Mirth.

Among the treasures untroved was the 278-page transcript of Nixon’s grand jury testimony in June 1975, part of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force’s investigation into what litigator and author Glenn Greenwald calls in his new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, "one of the clearest cases of widespread, deliberate criminality at the highest level of the U.S. government."

There are no smoking guns in the new materials but at a time when -- in comparison to the current crop of GOP candidates -- Nixon’s reputation is undergoing a bit of a positive facelift, it’s always good to be reminded of the whiny, self-pitying, defensive, dissembling reprobate we knew and loathed back in the bad old days.

He brushes off the whole sordid scandal as "this silly, incredible Watergate break-in" and says, "I want the jury and the special prosecutors to kick the hell out of us for wire-tapping and for the plumbers and the rest because obviously you may have concluded it was wrong." So sayeth the man made safe from prosecution by a presidential pardon.

He tells the grand jurors and investigators that he was upset about the White House tape with the infamous 18 and a half-minute gap (it was of a conversation between Haldeman and Nixon three days after the burglary attempt) -- not because of the erasure but because he mistakenly thought it wasn’t going to be turned over to the authorities. "I practically blew my stack," he blusters, claims the gap was an accident and that he had no idea what was discussed in those missing minutes, then blames the whole thing on his own faithful secretary Rose Mary Woods. What a guy!

Certainly, nothing in the freshly released Dictabelt tapes and transcripts changes what we always figured -- Nixon was not contrite over any of it but simply angry that he’d been caught. "It’s time for us to recognize that politics in America... some pretty rough tactics are used," he says. "Not that our campaign was pure... but what I am saying is that having been in politics for the last 25 years, that politics is a rough game."

He speaks about using the IRS to investigate Democratic campaign donors and the ease with which he could raise massive cash contributions from big business. He denies swapping ambassadorships for political donations but notes, "Some of the finest ambassadors... have been non-career ambassadors who have made substantial contributions." In that simultaneously priggish but smarmy way of his, Nixon recalls that President Truman made Washington social maven Perle Mesta ambassador to Luxembourg not "because she had big bosoms. Perle Mesta went to Luxembourg because she made agood contribution." (Her appointment was immortalized in the Irving Berlin musical Call Me Madam.)

Perhaps the strangest artifact in the latest document dump isn’t the grand jury testimony but Nixon’s recollections of the famous incident at the Lincoln Memorial in 1970 early on the morning of a massiveantiwar demonstration just days after the killings at Kent State. He paid an un announced visit to the monument and talked with a group of the student protesterscamped out nearby.

"I know you, probably most of you think I’m an SOB but, ah, I want you to know that I understand just how you feel," he says he told the demonstrators. "What we all must think about is why we are here... What are those elements of spirit which really matters

"... I just wanted to be sure that all of them realized that ending the war and cleaning up the city streets and the air and the water was not going tosolve the spiritual hunger which all of us have, and which of course has been the great mystery of life from the beginning of time."

As he leaves, he tells one of the students, "I just hope your opposition doesn't turn into blind hatred of the country. Remember, this is agreat country for all of its faults."

Of course, as Nixon got down with the kids, J. Edgar Hoover’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, was getting down and dirty, not only spying on and infiltrating the antiwar movement but also deliberately trying to subvert and disrupt it -- with Nixon’s approval.

Such violations of civil liberties echo through to the present day: obstructions of justice, abuses of power, the tapping of e-mails and phone calls, black site detentions and "enhanced interrogations," to name just a few. In his new book Glenn Greenwald recalls the words Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John: "Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could."

J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon remind us of that essential truth. They’re not so dead after all.

########

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America East and senior writer of the upcoming public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January.

A Republican Game of Musical Chairs

2011-11-14T11:43:00.001-08:00

The Republicans who are running to replace President Obama in January, 2013 are now playing musical chairs.

Over the past few days, and since the latest debate in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich is now in first place, and neck to neck with longtime frontrunner Mitt Romney. According to the latest CNN/ORC International Poll, Gingrich has now replaced Herman Cain as being statistically tied with the former Massachusetts governor. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/

Frankly, I never thought the day would come when I'd have to do this, but given the youngest crop of voters, those who accounted for the large turnout in 2008, know little or nothing about Mr. Gingrich, why not bring them up to date.

For openers, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, replaced Dick Cheney as House Minority Whip. Gingrich was among the co-authors of the Contract with America a conservative document published in 1994 which, among other things, became the bible of House Republicans at the time who also endorsed welfare and social security reform.

Notably, others who signed the Contract with America, often associated with Gingrich, are Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, both of whom are no longer in office. Dick Armey, by the way, joins the Koch brothers in backing the current Tea Party. And, apart from being a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, you may recall, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was convicted in 2010 of illegally funneling corporate money into coffers of Texas campaigns back in 2002. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/24/jury-convicts-delay-money-laundering-trial/

Interestingly, another co-signer of the Contract with America is Speaker of the House John Boehner.

Some of the major tenets of what was a conservative's handbook were shrinking the size of government, welfare reform, social security reform, advocacy for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and tort reform, but their underlying federalist.

Gingrich will be remembered as one of the key players in what has come to be known as the Republican Revolution in the House back in 1994 that was also responsible for cutting the capital gains tax, and pushing through welfare reform despite the fact that then-President Bill Clinton twice vetoed that legislation.

Just as he was Bill Clinton's nemesis in the mid-1990's, Gingrich is primed and ready to be Barack Obama's nemesis now.

Thanks to Gingrich's muscle, Clinton is now erroneously credited with a measure that turns welfare appropriations over to the states, a disasterous notion in these dire times when many states are in deep water. It is also the Contract for America mindset that now calls for repeal of so-called Obamacare, and turning Medicare over to the states to administer.

President Clinton, you'll recall, and First Lady Hillary Clinton, weren't focusing on welfare reform at all, but instead on universal health care. It was House Republicans then, just as it is House Republicans now, who obstructed health care reform in the mid-1990's.

Once the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats again shifted, Gingrich stepped down as Speaker of the House back in 1998.

Now, fast forward. Are many of the ideas Gingrich, Armey, DeLay, and Boehner (yes, John Boehner)thirteen years ago all that different from what we hear from Romney, Perry, Cain, Bachmann and friends now?

If you like what Contract with America represents, ensuring the primacy of 1% of the population at the expense of the other 99% even if one has to do so by laundering campaign money, then vote Republican in 2012. If not, then pass this information on to anyone under 30, or who has conveniently allowed themselves to forget the transgressions of men like DeLay and Jack Abramoff, both outgrowths of the Republican Revolution, too.

Team Toon

2011-11-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea for CBS to broadcast Saturday's South Carolina Republican presidential debate after "Horseland," an animated TV show for children, especially a debate that purported to focus on the president as commander-in-chief.

Watching the last few minutes of "Team Toon" made it exceedingly difficult for me to see this bevy of wanna be presidential nominees as anything more than cartoon characters meant to appeal to developing minds. For me, Team Toon quickly became Team Looney Tunes.

But, where on the evolutionary scale are we when one candidate, Herman Cain, deliberately engages in euphemistic jargon to hide the obvious, his egregious lack of knowledge about what's going on in Afghanistan. When asked how he would approach the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Cain said only, "There is a lot of clarity missing."

Is it a mistake for a future president to confuse clarity with information? I think so. Oh, and by the way, how much clarity is there in the way Cain is handling allegations of sexual misconduct made against him?

Cain is right. There is a lot of clarity missing. Voters, no doubt, would also like to know what he means when, according to the Associated Press, he says that God was behind his decision to enter the presidential race. We also need more clarity about why he would say, "You've got the wrong man, Lord?"

Oh, and don't think God is the only one. The day before this latest debate, when told by one of his supporters that Anita Hill would be coming to see him, as The Ticket reports, Cain quipped "Is she coming to endorse me?" Yes, this is funny, but is it appropriate?

Cain quickly morphs into a cartoon character when he uses awkward humor as a shield against serious allegations. Only those under 20 would miss his allusion to Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, and for him to make light of Anita Hill's claims shows just how out of touch Herman Cain is not only with reality, but with the realities everyday Americans face.

Of course, he was joking, just as he was joking about talking to God, right? Surely, a sense of humor is an asset, but would we find a joke like that funny coming from the president? Why should we find it funny coming from someone running for president?

Cain isn't joking when he says he will "trust the judgment of our commanders on what is, or is not, torture." Has he heard of a little thing called the Army Manual, international and domestic law that call waterboarding torture, and prohibit its use?

Cain and Bachmann both strongly support "enhanced interrogation techniques." Every prospective Republican nominee at the debate on Saturday night in South Carolina affirmed the use of waterboarding. The only ones to express disagreement or contempt for torture were Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, neither of whom has a snowball's shot in hell of being their Party's nominee.

And, what planet is Michele Bachmann on when she says the U.S. should be more like China. Is she not aware that, while healthy, China's economy has also been affected by the global downturn, and that, as the Guardian reports, China's growth was down in the last quarter? Or, will she demonstrate, as she has in the past, that she's not going to let a little thing like fact stand in her way. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/18/china-economic-growth-slows

Clearly, Rep. Bachmann has never heard about the massacre at Tiananmen Square, and is so out of touch with Occupy Wall Street, as well as the cries of the 99% movement that she belongs on Sesame Street not the ballot. At least Rick Perry couldn't remember the three government programs he'd like to cut. Bachmann can, and they include Medicaid, Department of Education, National Endowment for the Arts, Environmental Protection Agency, various consumer agencies. If given her way, she'd abolish not just Roe v. Wade, but the Civil Rights Act and, like Perry, her motto would be "let's back up."

Bachmann also said that the American Civil Liberties Union is running the Central Intelligence Agency. Guess she hasn't heard that General Petraeus, also known as general surge, is running the CIA.

Scared yet? Consider this, too. Perry, Cain, and Gingrich called for stepping up covert operations in Iran to take down the current leadership. What do they think has been going on there? Don't any of them read Seymour Hersh?

Well, Cain and Bachmann may have missed the mark, Rick Perry did a superb job with his answers this time. Trouble is, they were to the wrong questions. Gov. Perry's repeated requests to "back up" to the previous question work well as a metaphor for the Republican Party which is itself most adept when going in reverse.
Rick Perry's artful dodging may be a smart strategy for the governor of a state that has a budget deficit, and nearly 20% of its population surviving on food stamps, a rise of 3% over previous years. Highlighting this fact certainly does nothing for Perry's claim to be a job creator. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/02/02/some-43-million-americans-use-food-stamps/

Republicans have their fingers firmly planted on the "fast rewind" button, that's for sure. Just think back to every time Romney went up against a Democrat and lost. Yes, of course, Romney went up against Democrats and won, but why did he fail to secure the presidential nomination back in 2008? Why would it be any different this time? Is his money any greener in D.C. now, a city with nearly 23% of its inhabitants on food stamps? How can Romney use the phrase "Obamacare" with a straight face. I'm sure it took a lot of practice in front of the mirror for that one. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/02/02/some-43-million-americans-use-food-stamps/

Yes, you read right, at a time when 14% of the population is collecting food stamps, 44 million Americans, Romney says he'd turn over programs like Medicaid and food stamps to the states which means that states like Nevada, California, Florida, and Wisconsin would be hardest hit. Romney isn't that far off from Bachmann only instead of eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, the former Massachusetts governor would instead reduce federal funding to NEA, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. What he would eliminate are programs that he claims benefit "abortion groups," thus implicitly seeking to gut Planned Parenthood. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/mitt-romney-offers-specific-steps-to-cut-spending-by-500-billion/

Those who claim Romney's business acumen is just what this country needs right now don't understand the notion of leveraged buyouts. They don't understand that the last thing we need is a mindset that promotes downsizing in the name of boosting profits.

Italy and Greece have just handed over the reins of their governments to bankers. Are we prepared to do the same? And, if we do, who will pay for it? Not business, but workers and bankers. Make no mistake. Italy and Greece have a debt crisis. We have a jobs crisis. There is a big difference. Anyone who thinks that by keeping wealth in the hands of 1%, we will see job creation should be watching animated TV cartoons on Saturdays, and not running for political office.

A Postscript on the Conrad Murray Verdict

2011-11-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have to admit that this case is a bit more nuanced than my previous post would suggest

After having to listened to what the judge who presided over Conrad Murray's trial had to say, I'm going to have to say that I agree. What happened at Michael Jackson's estate wasn't merely about "a mistake in judgment" as the judge suggests,
but a gross, and criminal negligence. It isn't simply that Dr. Murray left Jackson's side to relieve himself, as Murray suggests, but that he brought propofol
for use outside of a hospital setting, then proceeded to text, and distract himself when he was mindful that there was a potentially hazardous drug within reach.

Moreover, Dr. Murray's failure to call 911 for 22 minutes, as well as not tell the paramedics when they arrived on the scene show that he was aware that he screwed up, and was more concerned about saving his own skin than any effort that may have resulted in saving Mr. Jackson's life.

This shows that Dr. Murray wasn't a god, but a man, and a man who made a mistake, a very big mistake, but he is also a physician, a man who has devoted much of his
life to building a career which was devoted to helping others. All of the witnesses for the defense movingly portrayed Dr. Murray as a good man, and a solid citizen.

The question is of whether Dr. Murray himself administered the lethal dose himself, and that it was that dose itself, not in combination with all the other substances Jackson had in his body, was never answered beyond a reasonable doubt, and Murray's defense team has said, the propofol drip was never set up, so any propofol administered to Jackson would have been by injection. The prosecution failed to
produce evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Dr. Murray administered that injection, and the defense's propofol expert testified that it was quite plausible that Mr. Jackson injected himself.

So, while the verdict of second degree manslaughter with a maximum sentence of four years may seem, in the end, be fair, an appeal is also fair. Having to watch Dr. Murray being handcuffed while still sitting next to his counsel, and only seconds after the verdict was read, made my blood boil. This was reprehensible on the part of the sheriff's department, or whichever law enforcement agents manacled this physician as if he were a common criminal. Even the judge, Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor called out "give him a few minutes to catch his breath."

That Dr. Murray may indeed serve any time at all in a county jail is reprehensible, given the egregious conditions in county jails when compared with federal prisons
like the ones in which both Bernie Madoff and Jack Abramoff have been housed.

Dr. Murray isn't a flight risk, and bail should not have been denied. Denial of bail will weaken Murray's chances on appeal. That he will have to spend time in
jail for as long as it takes for an appeal to be processed, and for him to be vindicated is egregious.

Clearly, this case isn't black or white. Well, maybe it is. Maybe, just maybe, those handcuffs wouldn't have been applied with quite as much zeal if Dr. Murray looked more like the judge than Herman Cain.

Conrad Murray Verdict

2011-11-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, this was not the Michael Jackson case, or the Michael Jackson verdict as it has been variously described by the mainstream media. This was the Conrad Murray case, and a verdict which represents just how far we, as a society, have come from accepting responsibility for our own actions.

Evidence was very clear that Michael Jackson was doctor-shopping, had spoken with several physicians, including his plastic surgeon, and had urgently requested propofol to be administered even after being told, repeatedly, that the use
of this drug might result in his death.

Propofol is considered a short-acting, intravenous hypnotic agent and it's use in hospitals is never questioned. Clearly, there are questions about its use outside of a hospital setting, but the last defense witness, a medical expert on propofol, said it was entirely possible that Jackson could have injected himself with the lethal dose. Does that not constitute "reasonable doubt?"

Moreover, Michael Jackson was relentless in his pursuit of a drug that he knew might jeopardize his life, reportedly seeing many doctors until he managed to prevail upon his personal physician, Dr. Murray, a man who was also a personal friend, to give him a drug that was used only in a hospital setting.

Bottom line: whether Michael Jackson directly injected a lethal dose into his vein or not, Michael Jackson was responsible for his own death. He was aware of the risk factor and, being fully apprised of the risk factor, continued along a path that could only lead to his demise.

It seems to me that Dr. Murray was guilty of blurring the lines between personal physician and personal friend. He crossed a boundary, and compromised a requisite professional distance that was needed in order to do what was best for Jackson the patient, and not Jackson the friend.

Moreover, why this case went directly to criminal charges instead of the usual medical malpractice suit which appears to have more to do with Jackson's fame than with any misconduct on the part of his personal physician.

What happened today in that courtroom is, plain and simple, a tragedy compounded upon a tragedy. Not only was Michael Jackson's life needlessly cut short, but the life of a much-respected and, judging by witness testimony, much-loved physician who will doubtless be spared a four year sentence, but who will lose his license to practice medicine. Today's verdict renders Dr. Murray every bit as much a victim as Mr. Jackson

From Michael Winship

2011-11-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

Some Disturbing Truths about Rick Perry's Texas
Local reports reveal how the governor turned a blind eye to civil rights violations and a crumbling infrastructure

By Michael Winship

I’m at sea this week -- literally, for once -- and learning helpful nautical stuff. For example, the old, three-mile limit for territorial waters was established in 1702 as the maximum distance a cannon ball could reach when fired from shore.

It’s even more useful to gain some distance from political events back on the mainland. Much of the week before this was spent chairing an international meeting of writers from a dozen or so countries. Combined, seeing ourselves as others see us, both experiences are revelatory.

One theme that prevails is a general mystification over many Americans’ propensity for the outright rejection of anything that’s not instantly comprehended. Just yesterday, talking with a couple from Calgary, the Canadians expressed their incredulity that relatives in the States were so vehemently opposed to President Obama’s health care and jobs programs "when they haven’t even bothered to read anything about them."

For another, you realize yet again how bizarre our system of campaigns and elections seems when viewed by those from abroad -- even though these days the rest of the world isn’t exactly the picture of mental health either. Something like our media frenzy over the harassment charges swirling around Herman Cain -- mired as those accusations appear to be in years of hubris and egotism on his part and our consuming national neurosis when it comes to all things involving sex or race -- seems distinctly odd.

Whether or not the Rick Perry campaign is behind any of the leaks surrounding Herman Cain’s alleged improprieties, the distraction certainly made the Texas governor, as the website Talking Points Memo reported, the "luckiest presidential candidate in the universe this week." Up to now, the governor has been experiencing the most dramatic crash from electoral hero to goat since Tennessee’s Fred Thompson ran his presidential campaign’s pick up truck off the road four years ago.

The Cain scrutiny helped draw attention from Perry’s plummeting poll numbers and his wacky address last Friday night at that dinner held by New Hampshire’s Cornerstone Action, a group of social conservatives with a notoriously anti-gay agenda. The speech came off more like Open Mike Night at Chuckles Comedy Club than High Noon on Inauguration Day 2013.

(You can see the highlights here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7M4gz97Y9W8.)

In the words of Jon Stewart, "Best-case scenario, that dude's hammered. Worst-case scenario, that is Perry sober, and every time we've seen him previously, he's been hammered." I prefer to think that Perry decided, "What the hell, this campaign’s going nowhere, might as well let it all hang out." Or maybe he suffers from a case of premature election burn-out, like Robert Redford’s character in 1972 movie "The Candidate," reeling from one too many iterations of his stump speech, blathering: "Can't any longer play off black against old, young against poor. This country cannot house its houseless, feed its foodless," and so on.

Of course, these are idle distractions from what we really should be paying attention to: candidates’ positions on the issues and their prior track records as business leaders or officeholders. And blahblahblah, I can hear you tuning out now.

Luckily, though, when it comes to Rick Perry at least, in the tradition of such greats of journalism as Ronnie Dugger and Molly Ivins, we continue to have fine investigative reporting coming out of the state of Texas. Reporters there care -- even when you don’t. They’ve been covering Perry and his stewardship as governor with an intensity as white hot as Tiger Beat’s recording of the day-to-day tribulations of Justin Bieber. Certainly, ounce for ounce, Perry has greater entertainment value.

The non-profit, non-partisan Texas Tribune, for example, features on its webpage an exhaustive "Perrypedia," which offers the latest on all things Rick. The publication recently noted that "Perry’s presidential campaign hinges on one overarching message: that states perform best when left to their own devices and federal regulators should butt out. Yet during his decade-long tenure in the governor’s office, Perry and his staff repeatedly downplayed the severity of abuse and neglect allegations at Texas’ state-run institutions for the disabled -- until conditions became so dire that the U.S. attorney general was forced to intervene."

Two years after that Justice Department investigation found violations of civil rights and avoidable deaths, "a Texas Tribune review of facility monitoring reports and employee disciplinary records shows mistreatment is still relatively commonplace. And though there’s been some evidence of improvement, the state’s federally designated disability watchdog group Disability Rights says that halfway into the five-year settlement agreement, not even a quarter of its requirements have been met."

A couple of months ago, the Houston Chronicle ran a terrific, four part series, "Perry’s Texas," examining the deteriorating condition of the state’s infrastructure during the governor’s tenure. And the October 22 edition of the Austin American-Statesman took a closer look at Perry’s time as state agriculture commissioner during the 1990s. The paper’s Laylan Copelin reported, "Over his eight years as Texas' farmer-in-chief, Perry oversaw a loan guarantee program with so many defaults that the state had to stop guaranteeing bank loans to startups in agribusiness and eventually bailed out the program with taxpayer money.

"The state auditor panned Perry's claims of creating jobs and criticized Perry and his fellow board members at the Texas Agricultural Finance Authority for not following their own lending guidelines...

"Even as the first alarms were sounded, Perry defended the program, saying no taxpayer money was at risk, blaming others and claiming he had fixed it.

"It only got worse."

Guaranteeing risky business loans with public money is a familiar tune -- all together, let me hear you say Solyndra. But instead of solar energy schemes, during Perry’s watch, "Entrepreneurs lined up for money to spin cotton into yarn, process meats, develop cotton insulation, market canna bulbs to wholesale nurseries and sell pinto beans as a ready-to-eat frozen meal, to name a few."

Forewarned is forearmed. These and other reports from Texas journalists present Rick Perry as the poster boy for conservative humorist and essayist P.J. O’Rourke famous description of Republicans as "the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

Unsensational as it may be to all but the wonkiest, more attention to all candidates’ public records serves us far better than the latest private gossip and innuendo. Sorry, the salt air must be going to my head. Land ho.

********
Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America, East, is senior writer of the new public television series, Moyers & Company, premiering in January 2012.

What Romney and Madoff may have in common

2011-11-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

We now know everything we needed to know about Herman Cain, at least we think we do. We not only know about Godfather Pizza, but about alleged peccadillos he had while heading the Restaurant Association.

We even know the name of Cain's campaign manager, Mark Block, who we've seen defiantly blowing smoke into the lens of a camera. That the press has been largely mum on the subject of Cain's finances, and connection to the Koch Brothers is, of course, another matter.

But, why haven't we heard of Mitt Romney's campaign fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, who also coincidentally happens to be a managing partner of Solamere Capital? Does he need to light up a Marlboro, or take a swig of Jack Daniels before he gets into the media spotlight?

Why haven't we seen Mr. Romney's tax returns either? Not now, not ever, not during any of his campaigns for Senate, or previous presidential campaigns nor, according to ThinkProgress, during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts. http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/does-mitt-romney-have-something-to-hide/

What's more, while all the major newspapers have, at one time or another, ventured into Bain Capital, why have we heard barely a peep about Solamere Capital? And, what might Solamere Capital have to do with Romney's reluctance, even under pressure from his nemesis Rick Perry, to release his 2010 tax returns?

As the Texas Tribute reports, within days of releasing his own 2010 tax returns, Perry called upon Romney to do the same, but to no avail. http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/perry-presses-romneys-tax-returns/

President Obama, of course, has released his tax returns from last year, and voters now know not only what the president's net worth is, but the source of his income. But, even in the face of questions about whether or not a former executive of Bain Capital illegally contributed to his campaign, Mr. Romney has remained silent. Why?

The answer may be found in an article by ThinkProgress who interviewed Tagg Romney, Mitt Romney's son, and concluded that both father and son, and Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney's fundraiser "have extensive financial and political ties to three men who allegedly participated in an $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme."

In the interview, Tagg acknowledges that there is, in fact, a business relationship that includes himself, his father, and Mr. Zwick. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/01/316040/romney-solamere-ponzi/

Think about this, as reported, Mr. Romney's investment group partnered with Stanford Financial Group, a group alleged by the Securities and Exchange Commission of having defrauded investors out of $8.5 billion, a Ponzi scheme second only to that of Bernie Madoff.

Ponzi schemes get a bit complicated, but what it all boils down to is that Mitt Romney gave his son "seed money" to start his own company, Solamere Capital, along with Spencer Zwick back in 2008. Solamere Capital, not unlike Bain Capital, is an investment fund that invests in investors. For Romney's reported initial investment of $10 million in Solamere Capital, his son's venture, in 2008, he has received as much as a million back so far.

A year later, after Stanford was charged with fraud by the SEC, Tagg Romney then partnered with three former executives from Stanford Financial Group who have been sued by the SEC for having given incentives in the form of large bonuses to brokers to peddle bogus CD's. The victims of Stanford Financial Group's $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme, like those of Bernie Madoff's, are retirees and people on fixed incomes.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. As ThinkProgress also reports, the bonds between Romney's campaign and his family invesment company "are deeply entwined." Many top donors to the former Massachusetts governor's campaign have also invested in Tagg's firm. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/01/316040/romney-solamere-ponzi/ And, keeping it all in the family, Romney's brother is among the advisors of Solamere Capital.

Tagg Romney, the governor's son, told ThinkProgress that he's proud to have now helped another group, Solamere Advisors, get its start. Notably, Solamere Advisors is now run by the same three executives from the $8.5 billion Stanford Financial Ponzi scheme still under investigation by the SEC.

So, you might ask, why should we care about Tagg's business, or his business associates? He's not running for president. Well, using the same logic, why did the Trustees pursue Bernie Madoff's sons? They're not responsible for Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme? Can one directly link Mr. Romney's campaign to either Solamere Capital, formed with the help of his campaign finance manager, Spencer Zwick, or Solamere Advisors, formed with the help of Tagg Romney and run by three executives indicted by the SEC?

If Romney is pressed further to release his tax returns for 2010, voters may have the answer to this question. Connecting the dots between Romney's financial ventures and his campaign is a necessity for any election in this country to be taken seriously.

Romney is right when he says "Corporations are people, my friend." Clearly, the Supreme Court agrees, and by its Citizens United ruling, corporations now have more rights. But, like people, corporations can run, but they can't hide. They, too, are criminally liable for fraudulent activities, and the executives who run those organizations, as well as their associates, are not immune from prosecution, and/or allegations of impropriety.

In terms of allegations of impropriety, it is the Romney campaign, and not Herman Cain's, that needs the greatest scrutiny.

The Trumpometer is Broken

2011-10-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

Donald Trump appeared on CNN Thursday night, and said he represents "millions of people" in this country.

What irony that the CEO of The Trump Organization, a man who Forbes now estimates to have a net worth of $2.9 billion, should make that pronouncement from the building he owns overlooking the Occupy Wall Street protestors. http://www.forbes.com/profile/donald-trump/

Who are the millions he represents? The millions who, like him, graduated from the prestigious Wharton School of Business? The millions of Americans who, like Mr. Trump, were sons of New York City real-estate developers? Donald Trump had the privilege of cutting his teeth at his dad's, Fred Trump's, firm, and in the late 1960's, right after graduating college, he was officially hired by Elizabeth Trump and Son.

How many millions can claim to have their fate signed, sealed, and delivered at birth. We didn't need to see Mr. Trump's birth certificate to know he was born to privilege. http://www.biography.com/people/donald-trump-9511238

And, shortly after earning his degree in Business from the University of Pennsylvania, in 1971, the Trumpster was given control of the company now bearing only his name.

What's more, of the "millions" of Americans Mr. Trump claims to represent, how many can afford to live in Trump Towers?

So, who are these millions of people Mr. Trump claims he represents? As he acknowledged when interviewed by Piers Morgan on CNN, some of them are heads of banks, and some heads of Wall Street firms.

Given what is widely known about his background, then, how can this born again billionaire have any credibility when he says that the Occupy Movement is ultimately more dangerous for Obama. Is it logical that a group of protestors, of all ages, waving signs that show they're members of the 99% would vote for anyone endorsed by the new godfather of the right?

Just who does Trump think will be politically injured by his assertion that he would "vote for anyone over Obama?"

Why would anyone who is part of the 99%, and yes that includes 99% of the tea party, give any credence to a man who is actively trying to protect his riches from those who, like President Obama and most Americans, would like to see the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy go away?

And, in a nutshell,all puns intended, Donald Trump has aligned himself with the far right of the Republican Party pandering to them by saying he is anti-choice, pro-gun, against same-sex marriage, but one can only deduce that he must have grown up in a zip lock bag because his views are from a planet other than the one the majority of those who lived in Forest Hills in the 1960's, and 1970's. I know, I grew up there.

What it all comes down to then is that the thermometer Mr. Trump has been using to take the temperature of the voting public in preparation for the general election is broken. But then, it's not the voting public he's really concerned about, but his own turn up at bat.

Donald Trump must have told CNN host Piers Morgan that he's "very smart" close to a dozen times, but how smart is it to say that some of the people under his nose at Occupying Wall Street are "serious people," and "some of them are only there to find a date?"

How smart is it to argue that the biggest problem the banks now face are the regulators: "The regulators are literally ruining the banks," and that the "entire world is ripping off the U.S?"

And, how clever is it for the landlord of a Chinese bank to blast the Chinese as ripping us off and suggest a 25% tax on Chinese products? It's not just the Chinese Trump has it in for: "Japan for years has been ripping us like crazy."

What about the statement that "some very smart people" agree that Obama's birth certificate was forged? Who are these very smart people, and can we expect them to crawl out of the same cave to vote in 2012?

On second thought, Donald Trump is right. He is smart. He was smart enough to be born right.

Trump says, "The main thing you've got to do is to get Obama out of office?" Where have you heard this before? He took the words right out of Mitch McConnell's mouth. Moreover, he calls the president "a very negative force."
What do you call a force that condemns the Environmental Protection Agency, and says "We've got to get rid of these regulators. These regulators are killing us?" How about a very dangerous force?

While he insists he was no fan of George W. Bush either, Trump says Obama came in and made things worse. With that in mind, here's a twist on an old maxim: "If it ain't fixed, don't break it more." Mr. Obama is only beginning to clean up the mess that deregulators like Reagan, Bush, Trump and friends have made on Wall Street.

Putting two and two together, it's clear now that Donald Trump is little more than a parrot who repeats the frozen, frayed syllables of a desperate, and rapidly diminishing force in the Republican Party, one that has been trying to gain dominion, pun intended, since the mid-1990's, but a force that has proven itself completely incompetent at doing so. And why? Because the tea party, the group to whom both Cain and Trump are pandering, reflects the interests of 1% of the population at the expense of the other 99%.

Many in his party have gifted Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed entrepreneur-in-chief, with the task of endorsing the next Republican presidential candidate. He vacillates between Romney and Cain, and appears to think highly of Perry, but one thing is clear. Trump is keeping his dance card open.

Any candidate who gets a hearty thumbs-up from The Donald should run for cover and not office because, in the end, an endorsement from one who is irrevocably embedded in the financial sector, thus in the interests of the upper 1%, will be the kiss of death to anyone who wants to win in 2012.

The best thing Mr. Obama has done was to alienate Donald Trump and his Wall Street friends. If nothing else, that's what the Occupy Movement has shown us.

Michael Winship on Rush Limbaugh

2011-10-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

Motormouth Meets the Machine Gun Preacher

By Michael Winship

If you blinked, you might have missed a recent movie called "Machine Gun Preacher." The film hasn’t burned up the box office and the title may have kept you away from your local picture palace in the mistaken belief that it was some kind of exploitation flick or the latest Quentin Tarantino exercise in post-modernism and ironic bloodbaths. In which case, who could blame you?

In fact, "Machine Gun Preacher" is the improbable but true story of Sam Childers (played by the improbable but true Gerard Butler, the shiny, muscle-bound Spartan king of 300 fame). After a misbegotten life as a violent biker/drug dealer/ex-con, Childers had a come-to-Jesus epiphany and became a born-again Christian with his own congregation in rural Pennsylvania. But it was when he heard a missionary speak about church work in East Africa that he found his true calling, building an orphanage in the Sudan and protecting the kids there by becoming a vigilante fighting alongside the ill-equipped and undermanned local militia. That’s where the machine gun part comes in.

Apparently, Rush Limbaugh didn’t see "Machine Gun Preacher" either. If he had, he might have known a thing or two about the enemy Sam Childers was battling against: the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rabid rebel group that for some 25 years has made simple, day-to-day existence a living hell for civilians -- especially children -- in Uganda, Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Instead, as is his usual way -- in other words, not having any idea what he’s talking about -- Old Motormouth Limbaugh recently defended the Lord’s Resistance Army on his radio program because they "are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan."

His defense came solely because anything or anyone Barack Obama is against must ipso facto be okay. President Obama has sent 100 military advisers to Africa to try to help end the LRA’s atrocities once and for all. But in the Gospel According to Rush, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if said friend engages in murder and mutilation.

"That’s a new war," Limbaugh declared, "a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda." Yet just last Thursday the Lord’s Resistance Army was described by the evangelical Christian Post as "East Africa’s greatest evil... the region’s most malicious militia group." The paper quoted Jedidiah Jenkins of the non-profit group Invisible Children: "The LRA is an abuse of the Christian religion… a small, vicious cult."

The New York Times has called the LRA "a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity," and Reuters reports, "Over the years the LRA became known for chilling violence including what human rights groups say were the abductions of thousands for use as child soldiers or sex slaves, [and] brutal club and machete attacks on victims."

Just ask former Bush White House chief speechwriter Michael Gerson. "The LRA is a brutal rebel group headed by a messianic madman," he wrote in The Washington Post. "Its victims... have been the focus of activism by Christian organizations and human rights groups for decades."

Presented with the inconvenient facts, Rush harrumphed, "Well, we just found out about this today. We’re gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it." A couple of days later Limbaugh admitted that he had been "misinformed," then proceeded to laugh the whole thing off.

This lethal combination of ignorance and abject dismissal typifies the Republican right’s current approach to foreign policy, as evidenced by everything from Michele Bachmann’s suggestion that the Iraqi people reimburse the United States for the privilege of having had their country invaded to Herman Cain’s declaration that, "When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, 'You know, I don’t know. Do you know?' ... Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world I don’t think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going."

That jobs and the economy should be our first priority is a no-brainer, but in its zeal to simplistically reject all things governmental, the GOP is turning its back on decades of the experience, craft and skill essential to an effective, bipartisan foreign policy. Nowhere is that more evident than the dilemma currently confronted by five-term Republican Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, a venerated and respected, conservative expert on global affairs now facing a serious primary challenge from Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer. Mourdock’s making political hay over Lugar’s mentoring of Barack Obama in the world of international relations when Obama was a freshman senator, a partnership brayingly portrayed in a Mourdock campaign video titled, "Dick and Barry: The Unforgettable Bromance."

Jacob Heilbrunn, senior fellow at the public policy Center for the National Interest (formerly The Nixon Center) wrote on the website of Foreign Policy magazine, "It isn’t just the career of the Senate’s senior-most Republican that is at stake here; it is an entire tradition of Republican foreign policy that is being repudiated by the party faithful."
This, he continues, "should evoke apprehension in anyone who thinks that America's leading role in the world has, by and large, been a force for good."

Whether you agree with the decision or not, it is that perception of the American role as a force for good that partially informs Obama’s dispatch of military advisors to East Africa, a move that not only is consonant -- so far -- with Congress’ 2010 passage of the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, but also the Bush administration’s Operation Lightning Thunder in December 2008, when American military intelligence assisted African troops in an unsuccessful attempt to corner LRA leader Joseph Kony in eastern Congo. (According to Human Rights Watch, in retaliation after that failure, "the LRA attacked villages and towns in northern Congo and southern Sudan, killing more than 865 civilians during the Christmas 2008 holiday season and in the weeks thereafter.")

President Obama’s new move in Africa jibes with the National Security Strategy he presented last year: "The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone,” he wrote, but “democracy does not merely represent our better angels, it stands in opposition to aggression and injustice, and our support for human rights is both fundamental to American leadership and a source of our strength in the world."

Yet as Adam Serwer of Mother Jones points out, “The atrocities committed by the LRA aside, nations don't use military force out of altruism. Uganda provides a substantial number of troops for the African Union Force in Somalia, where the al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabaab has control over a significant part of that country. I have no doubt that Barack Obama believes that the world would be better off without Kony and the LRA. But although it hasn't been explicitly said, it's a good bet the Obama administration feels obligated to assist Uganda because Uganda is helping the US fight a proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate, a mission that hasn't been without cost for Uganda."

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and his right wing cohort emptily natter on, chattering, as my old man used to say, just to hear their heads rattle.

########

Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America, East, is senior writer of the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January 2012.

What are the odds?

2011-10-26T17:56:00.001-07:00

What are the odds of running into the same squirrel on the same street three days later? Nominal, I'd think, but that's what happened.

I could have sworn he gave me a wink today as I passed him on the street, then he climbed up a tree in search of the perfect nut. That squirrel ought to
run for president,I thought. He's sharper than any of the Republicans running.

Requiem for a Squirrel

2011-10-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

Taking my afternoon walk today when, out of the blue, a squirrel charges out of a tree, and heads for the road.

A large sports utility vehicle comes racing by. It must have been going 40 mph on a side street. I've never seen a squirrel fly back on the curb like that in my life. He was holding onto his nuts as if for dear life.

Yes, it's difficult to imagine, but all living things know when their survival is at risk. That was evident from the squirrel's instant reaction to the oncoming vehicle. The driver sped on ahead, turned the corner with uncanny arrogance, and never appeared to notice a thing. So, this is what Charles Darwin had in mind by evolution. Maybe the Creationists are right. Maybe we need a God to start from scratch all over again.

Thankfully, the little guy made it back onto the street, and up the tree as though nothing had happened, but that isn't true of his brethren who routinely get run down, and left for dead in the road.

How silly I must look to those folks like the driver of that behemoth SUV that I worry for the life of a little squirrel, and sillier still that I idenify more with that squirrel who ran for his life than with the burly brute who nearly ran him down.

History has shown that those who make the small run for cover will, sooner or later, be made to run for cover themselves.

Rick Perry and his "aviation assets"

2011-10-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

Rick Perry has already shown that he bends whichever way the wind is blowing, and nowhere is that clearer than when he starts talking about illegal immigration.

As governor of the state that has the most liberal immigration policies of any state with the exception of California, as well as a law that allows some children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition in Texas college, Mr. Perry now says he wants "boots on the ground" to secure federal borders.

But, in the Republican presidential debate in Vegas a week ago, Perry stood in his boots like a Pay Per View prize fighter and spoke of using predator drones on anyone who sneaks across the border. Not only did the Texas governor endorse the use of drones on federal borders, he referred to them as "aviation assets." Herman Cain agreed, and agreed. Herman Cain blindly echoed the phrase "boots on the ground."

Though you may expect that, in future debates, candidates will try to walk about Perry's "aviation assets" phrase, and Cain's remarks about an electrified fence, this stance on immigration will be the template for the Republican nominee, and for any future Republican president, esp. one who seeks more than one term.

Too much emphasis has been placed on Cain's "joke" about turning the border into a third rail, and there's been precious little focus on the long term domestic policy implications of turning predator drones on people who try to cross our borders and, ultimately, the possibility of turning drones against U.S. citizens who disobey the law.

That any contender for president of this country could devise a euphemism like "aviation asset" for a remote-controlled killing machine, and go so far as to suggest drones be used domestically as a way to deal with lawbreaking is downright terrifying.

So, the candidate whose state has had the greatest percentage of illegal immigration of any in recent years and, simultaneously, the one who boasts of being a job creator, is now the one who has introduced the notion of using drones domestically. After all, is the border not a part of the country?

And, Ron Paul who has long been touted as the anti-war, pro-Constitution Republican candidate went so far as to say, during the Vegas debate, that he would pull all the troops out of Afghanistan and deploy them to the borders to keep the "illegals" out.

Mitt Romney was characteristically dignified when he said how much he respects immigrants, and that we are a nation founded by immigrants. That sure sounds good until you get to the part of his speech when he says, "I don't like illegal immigrants." Quite right. Mr. Romney didn't say that at the Republican face-off in Las Vegas, but in his September 2nd speech to the Republican National Hispanic Assembly in Tampa, Florida.

Romney has also said that "Illegal immigration has got to end and any form of citizenship amnesty is especially troubling." http://2012.republican-candidates.org/Romney/Immigration.php

Notably, not one Republican candidate mentioned the fact that the recession has proven to be remarkably effective in curtailing the flow of immigrants, legal or otherwise, into this country. Instead, they've virtually made immigration the bogey man of the debate, and it now occupies the same position as the "war on terror" did in the 2008 debate. It's as if national security is all about the economy.

Importantly, too, the Pew Hispanic Center shows what a straw man the immigration debate in that the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico in the U.S., who account for 60% of those who have no citizenship papers, has declined, and that fewer than 100,000 "illegals" who come from Mexico were caught in 2010 compared to an estimated 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004. That degree of shrinkage in and of itself show demonstrate that undocumented immigrants pose about as much of a clear and present danger as the Taliban, and still we engage in an undeclared war against them.

As other empires have found in the past, cultural agoraphobia can be a costly enterprise. Perry took cultural agoraphobia one step further when he called for cutting off funding to the United Nations.

While another Texan, Ron Paul, insists that detainees at Guantanamo Bay are suspects and not terrorists until so proven in a court of law, one wonders if Mr. Paul would stand up for the rights of those who are currently being fingerprinted, pulled over in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Arizona, and who have to produce voter I.D. cards, simply because of the color of their skin?

Perry continues to contradict himself by pandering to the far right of a party to which he only recently joined which has he coming in second only to Mitt Romney, the Texas governor seems to have missed one simple fact, and one that wasn't lost on President Obama any more than it was on George W. Bush. Both Bush and Obama recognized that the prevailing crackdown on undocumented workers is, at its core, anti-Hispanic, and both acknowledged the growing importance of the Latino vote.

And, one of the things Mr. Obama addressed shortly after his inauguration was to push for a policy that would allow those who work in this country without the proper documents to get what they need in order to work here legally, thereby also ending the exploitation of undocumented workers who are paid far less than the minimum wage. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/us/politics/09immig.html

Regrettably, serious efforts at immigration reform have been thwarted by the same group that claims to be pro-life, but who have aborted any legislation that seeks to improve the living standards of working people, and the poor in this country. Since they won the midterm election of 2010, one thing is becoming clearer every day. To the born-again neo-Con, life doesn't begin at conception; it ends there.

Not one of the Republican candidates running for president this year has accepted the need for a rational approach to immigration reform, leaving all things reasonable to their Democratic nemesis, President Barack Obama. Doubtless, Mr. Romney will capitulate, too, to the wing nuts of his party who call for airstrikes, and electrified fences.

If nothing else, the debate in Las Vegas has shown that the border that needs protecting most is the one between sanity and insanity, reason and the irrational, a border that has been largely blurred, and defaced by the obstructionists.

By inveighing against "illegals," Rick Perry has now spent what little political capital he had in the first place, and by not distancing himself from Perry on the matter of immigration as vigorously as he did when it comes to Social Security, Romney will capsize along with him. They, along with Cain, Bachmann, and Gingrich will take what is left of the Republican Party along, too. And, wherever they are now, the founding fathers must be wearing an immense grin.

A Supermarket in Hell

2011-10-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

Had a strange dream last night that I went to the supermarket, and when I got my cart, I saw that I had to pass through a turnstile.

In my dream, the supermarket was charging for admission. The price was $20, and there was a machine that would take bills and convert them into tokens.

Luckily, I happened to have a twenty dollar bill on hand, so I put the money in the machine, and voila! there I was inside this mega-store with every conceivable product one could want.

The only problem was that the aisles were small, and appeared the more shopping I did. Every item was much more expensive even than in Manhattan or San Francisco.

And, though there was several cashiers on duty, the lines at the cash registers seemed to go on and on forever. I overheard a fellow on the line next to me complain that he couldn't get a signal.

Thinking I was going to be in line for awhile, I wanted to know what others shoppers thought, so I asked an older woman in line in front of me, and she lamented the days when milk was affordable. "It's not now," she said, "a quart of milk is $10."

As I was preoccupied conversing, a young woman who was standing behind me in line cut right in front of me and, sensing my confusion, adamantly remained there.

"Where am I?" I plaintively asked the fellow on the line next to me who was busy toying with his cell phone to get a signal. A supermarket in hell, he said. Oh my God, I thought, hell is even closer than we think!

Cain and Abel? Why not Cain and Koch?

2011-10-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, the first thing you thought of when you heard the name of one of the Republican contenders, Herman Cain, those fabulous Old Testament fellas, Cain and Abel, came to mind.

This is not to suggest that Cain, the older brother of two sons born to Adam, one who is portrayed as not only sinful but a murderer of his younger brother is anything like the pizza magnate, or that Mr. Cain bears any resemblance to his biblical counterpart. After all, what's in a name? What, indeed!

As the Associated Press now reports, several members of Cain's staff and even his campaign manager have also been employed by Americans for Prosperity, a Washington, D.C. group that advocates for less regulation, and in favor of business, and one that was founded with backing from the Koch brothers. http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-10-16-Cain's%20Rise-Koch%20Brothers/id-4c33736825114294b92238e95c99ef7d

But, there can be no accusations of fratricide with Charles and David Koch who are alive and well, and reportedly helping ghostwrite Herman Kain's 9-9-9 plan. As the AP also suggests, the Koch brothers's advocacy group, AFP, handpicked Mr. Cain to travel the country several years ago delivering what is now standard tea party pablum, and Cain's former spokeswoman, was an AFP coordinator.

While Cain doesn't publicize his affiliation with Americans for Prosperity, according to the AP, he's still a proverbial card-carrying member of the group.

Whatever momentary movement there has been for Mitt Romney in the polls is mainly attributable to the stand-up job the press has been doing in getting the word out about who most benefits, and who's most hurt, by candidate Cain's 9-9-9 plan. One can only hope that the latest ludicrous, and allegedly humorous attempts by Cain to show he's tough on immigration will backfire as effectively as his economic jests, (read "plan.")

After his brief tour of the Sunday morning talk show circuit, the current leading Republican candidate, Herman Cain, conceded that "some people" will pay more under his tax plan, but while he doesn't say it, there is no way he can camouflage his intention. That he chooses to hide under Ronald Reagan's proverbial skirt while he does it is quite another matter. Reagan would have balked at taxing corporations, and millionaires at a rate of 9%.

What Cain also doesn't say, of course, is that big business which is a core interest of Americans for Prosperity, will actually be the greatest beneficiary of his plan. His plan would lower corporate tax to 9% and, at the same time, create a new federal sales tax of 9% which will hurt working, middle class, and poor families. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44921197/ns/politics-decision_2012/

Even Ronald Reagan would abjure Cain's tax plan. What no Republican running for president will tell you is that Ronald Reagan actually raised taxes on corporations, and insisted that they pay what he called "their fair share." http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/18/159301/ronald-reagan-corporate-tax/

And, those other brothers, Charles and David Koch, may think they've done a magnificent job of attempting political fratricide by setting up Herman Cain to run against Barack Obama when all they've essentially exposed is how incompetent they really are.

Despite their best efforts, this is one nomination even Koch money can't buy. Notice that I didn't say "one election." The Koch brothers' relationship to the Republican Party may someday be seen in much the same way we view organized crime's relationship to Vegas.

One can only hope that Herman Cain prevails in his bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination which he's rendered all but impossible now that he's effectively alienated one-third of the U.S. population with his so-called immigration joke. If by some miracle he should prevail, the president will quickly show him who that able fellow is.

Oscar

2011-10-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

"I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his
ability," Oscar Wilde

Happy Birthday, Oscar Wilde
(b) Oct. 16, 1854

There was no overestimating when it came to creating you.

From Michael Winship

2011-10-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street Wins Labor’s Love

By Michael Winship

Early last Friday morning, as the Occupy Wall Street protesters were just uncurling from their sleeping bags, I went downtown for a walkthrough of their campsite at Zuccotti Park, now also known as Liberty Plaza. I met up there with AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and New York City Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez. (I’m president of an AFL-CIO affiliated union.)

There were just a few of us in our group, and as the sun burned through the dawn’s chill not much attention was paid as we took the tour. We kept our voices low and walked carefully, doing our best to keep from tripping over and waking those who were still asleep

One or two reporters hooked up with us, not including the kid you may have seen with the fake cardboard Fox News camera and microphone, who tossed out questions as he walked along behind us. That was the extent of the media coverage.

Every once in a while someone would ask who Trumka was and he would stop and chat. At the end of our visit, he sat with a group at the west end of the park, across from Ground Zero, and quietly offered encouragement, discussing strategy, goals and on a practical level, the essentials needed to keep the protest going.

As many have noted, this so-called ragtag army of students and activists has ably taken democracy at its rawest and organized it well: the whiteboards filled with information, the computers mobilizing social media, the makeshift library of plastic bins filled with books and magazines, the committees that handle everything from "direct action" and training to hygiene and childcare. As for their general assemblies, at which speeches and group decisions are made, many have made fun of the call-and-response "people’s mike" that sometimes makes them sound a bit like the chanting members of a cult.

But ask yourself if it’s no more peculiar than many of the words and deeds of those who currently constitute the United States Congress. Unlike the Bible’s lilies of the field, those honorable gentlemen and women toil not but spin like hell. Consider the difference between an earnest and sincere gathering of committed men and women who for the most part only want to see our country pulled back from the abyss, and a Capitol Hill where legislators view the needs of a despairing nation as little more than moves in a punch drunk game of fantasy league football.

Oh, and I didn’t think the park "smelled like an open sewer," as Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post reported this week (the city reports that not a single complaint has been made to its 311 helpline). In fact, while I was there, the predominant aroma was that of hunger-inducing spices floating from the trucks of food vendors parked at the curbside. Neither was there any evidence of the blatant sex, drugs and public defecation the paper reported, but admittedly it was early and in any case I tend to usually miss out on that kind of thing.

In fact, there’s a lot of creativity and intelligence at work down there. Just read the movement’s snappily edited and written newspaper -- The Occupied Wall Street Journal, of course – and take a look at some of their placards: "If only the war on poverty was a real war. Then we would actually be putting money into it" (Cornel West was holding that one), "The police are one layoff away from joining us," "You know things are messed up when librarians start marching."

Are there miscreants among the crowd, hangers-on and even provocateurs? Sure. Speaking as an experienced veteran of demonstrations and picket lines, that’s been true since humankind first gathered together to express dissent. Lowlifes always try to latch on. Just the other day right wing darling James O’Keefe, the puny scourge of ACORN and public radio, showed up in a business suit, tie and glasses, apparently hoping to provoke a protester into mistaking him for someone important and pummeling him with an empty pizza box. Most hands extend in solidarity but there are always some who will close theirs to make a fist or an obscene gesture.

At the end of our visit, as Rich Trumka was leaving, a group of men from the United Steelworkers arrived from Jersey to take a look for themselves and offer support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some wore hardhats and I remembered how, on May 8, 1970, after Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University, members of the building and trade unions, not very far from where we stood, beat up protesters much like the ones now camped out at Zuccotti Park.

As The New York Times legendary Homer Bigart reported back then, "Helmeted construction workers broke up a student anti-war demonstration in Wall Street yesterday, chasing youths through the canyons of the financial district in a wild noontime melee that left about 70 persons injured." Kids were savagely kicked and pounded with tools, crowbars and yes, hardhats.

More than four decades later, all that has changed. The fate of our economy and our collective futures are so dire, unions have joined with the Occupy Wall Street activists. They have energized organized labor and the entire progressive movement, because these groups know that only with the strength of a unified voice putting truth to power can the plutocracy of government, industry and financial institutions be forced to budge even an inch from the avarice that values profit above people and domination over freedom.

I remembered, too, something I wrote a year and a half ago, recalling how much of the momentum of those 1970 antiwar protests and a national student strike vanished with the pleasures of summertime and dwindled -- for a while at least -- into something an editor friend dubbed "the Frisbee revolution."

I wrote, "Despite all the anger and worry today -- an economy in shambles, the loss of jobs and security, wars continuing in Afghanistan and Iraq, a dysfunctional government hobbled by the stranglehold of campaign cash and political hackery -- there's a similar lack of interest afflicting many of those who rallied to the cause of Barack Obama in 2008, knocking on doors, contributing money – voting."

Occupy Wall Street – prove me wrong. Please.

########

Good news!! In January, 2012, Michael Winship and Bill Moyers will team up once again for Bill Moyers' new TV show, "Moyers and Company."

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and senior writer of the new series, Moyers & Company, premiering on public television in January 2012.

Photo: Pat Ivers

Forget Wall Street, Let's Occupy the World

2011-10-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

It sure looks like Joe Biden finally got his mojo back. Whatever mojo he had in the first place, that is. Don't get me wrong. I like Joe Biden, and always have. He's a straight shooter which is why he's totally miscast in his current role of Defense Department surrogate.

In an appearance on CBS News earlier today, the vice president emphasized how crucial he thinks it is to "unite the world" against Iran. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/12/national/main20119095.shtml

After allegations surfaced Tuesday of a foiled terrorist plot by Iranian government officials that aimed to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., the Department of Justice and now the executive branch of the Obama administration have gone to great lengths to show that there will be hell to pay for an plan to take the life of a Saudi diplomat on American soil.

Mr. Biden was even asked if it were not "an act of war" to stage an assassination on U.S. soil. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/12/national/main20119095.shtml?tag=breakingnews

Indeed, one can't help but be reminded of the Navy Seals' covert operation that led to the taking down of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, an act that Pakistani officials widely regarded as violation of their autonomy. But, when asked whether he thought the actions of the U.S.in killing bin Laden on Pakistani was an act of war, Pakistani president Al Zardari stopped short of saying that it was.

How ironic is Biden's statement on "The Early Show" that Iranians "have not only decided to assassinate someone, they have taken on the basis in which ... nations deal with one another" in light of U.S. special forces actions in Pakistan and, most recently, in what many consider the extrajudicial execution of al-Awlaki in Yemen. That the Muslim cleric is a U.S. citizen counts, of course, but the bypassing of trials, and due process are what is in question here, not merely the matter of citizenship.

Moreover, what, specifically, does Secretary of State Clinton mean when she tells the Associated Press that "this really, in the minds of many diplomats and government officials, crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for?" What kind of example does our government set when we "plot" for two years to take out al-Awlaki, an American citizen, in Yemen who has been proven to have done nothing more than allegedly conspire with others to attack the United States? And, what line have we crossed?

Is it not considered an act of war when a citizen of a country is killed on foreign soil? If so, then by killing al-Awlaki, we have declared war on ourselves.

Always

2011-10-09T20:22:00.001-07:00

On the boulevard
broken glass
screams your
name
it is a
dream that
keeps you here.
tell me why
we are only
invisible in
the night
tell me why,
like urgent
children, we thirst for
fountains
On the boulevard
I want to die
next to
you with my
feet on
a cloud.

by jayne lyn stahl
all rights reserved

(en francais)

Pour toujours

Sur le boulevard desert,
des vitres brisees me rappellent , sous mes pieds ,
le son de votre nom.
comme un reve nocturne qui me tient eveillee
Dites-moi pourquoi
sommes nous
seulement invisibles
dans la nuit ?
Dites moi pourquoi
comme des enfants impatients,
avons nous seulement soif de
l’eau de ces fontaines ?
Sur ce boulevard desert,
, ce soir, a cote de vous,
je veux mourir
mes pieds dans les nuages
.
traduire en francais par Jean-Luc Lasseur

Cathartic

2011-10-09T18:29:00.001-07:00

It is
so cathartic
to rip
the heart
out of
a head of
lettuce,
and tell myself
that it is
yours.

by jayne lyn stahl

all rights reserved

Lennon

2011-10-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, John Lennon!
Born Oct. 9, 1940

Rock on!

Stranger

2011-10-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

There is
nothing
stranger than
us
you and I
except boarding
a train
that has
no end and
no beginning.

jayne lyn stahl
all rights reserved

Stanford, 2005

2011-10-05T19:52:00.001-07:00

This is an excerpt from Steve Jobs' amazing commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary," Steve Jobs

RIP Steve Jobs whose vision remains his greatest legacy

Deja Yoo

2011-10-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky, and others on the left, have inveighed against the recent targeted killing of al-Awlaki claiming that the U.S. no longer bothers to detain, and interrogate alleged terrorists, but simply kills them.

To give credit where credit is due, the mastermind behind covert kill squad perations targeting terror suspects was not President Barack Obama, but former vice president Dick Cheney. And, as the New York Times has reported, this practice dates back over over a period of years, and long before the al-Awlaki execution. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/world/asia/10terror.html?hp

Back in 2009, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh spoke of a secret assassination squad that answered directly to Dick Cheney. In the Bush years, this taking down of alleged enemy combatant was a function of the CIA. And, as Hersh reports, under Obama there is what's called a Joint Special Operations Command of which "Congress has no oversight... It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on." http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/7929

On George W. Bush's watch, too, according to Hersh, special operation forces have been "going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/7929

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid, and remarkable deterioration of the constitutional separation of powers such that the CIA is now essentially in a parasitic relationship with the Department of Defense as is the State Department.

The boundaries between the different branches have been carefully deconstructed, brick by brick, and there are no longer independent branches of government. Some might argue this has been done in the name of national security, but one would be hard-pressed to convince Thomas Jefferson of that.

What may one day be seen as a signature misstep of the Obama administration was to leave Robert Gates at the wheel of Defense as long as it did. While he looks liberal compared to Rumsfeld, Gates ensured that the global war on terror would not only be kept in place, but accelerated, without contest, for as long as possible.

The press, which was virtually shackled and silenced during the Bush years, last week selectively leaked another "secret U.S. memo," only unlike the Bybee Memos of August, 2002 that justified the use of interrogation methods that have always been considered torture under the rubric of presidential authority in wartime, the secret memo of the Obama administration now justifies the targeting, and extrajudicial murder of "high level leaders," whether they are U.S. citizens or not, who are "plotting to kill Americans...in the armed conflict with al Qaeda, and the Taliban."

The Obama administration memo contends international law approves of extrajudicial killing of alleged high value leaders of al Qaeda and Taliban as "self-defense," but is the "driving force" behind "Inspire," an al Qaeda Internet magazine considered a leader, high value or not? http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/aulaqi-killing-reignites-debate-on-limits-of-executive-power/2011/09/30/gIQAx1bUAL_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

What about those civilians who were collateral damage, so to speak, when drones wiped out dozens in Pakistan and elsewhere? The legal, and moral, implications are far-reaching.

Is there a difference between "plotting" and planning? Is ideation considered plotting, or planning?

From another perspective, the efforts made by the Bush administration to fly under the radar in terms of Geneva and the Constitution may also be seen as plotting and planning a subversive act, an act that subverts both due process and human rights.

Remember that it was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Yoo, who drafted which has since come to be known as the "torture memo" of 2002. This was the memo that sanctioned interrogation techniques like sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, and that said essentially that anything that falls short of loss of limb, or life is acceptable. The memo was later approved, and signed by Bush's legal counsel, Jay Bybee. It was this memo that got the proverbial ball rolling, and that took us down the road we're on now.

But, in stark contrast with the Bush administration, there are no John Yoo's stepping forward now to take responsibility for personally drafting a memo defending the death by drone of U.S. citizen, Muslim cleric, and alleged al Qaeda kingpin, al-Awlaki from those who are outraged by this affront to due process. The Obama administration memo says simply that "what constitutes due process in this case is due process in war."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/aulaqi-killing-reignites-debate-on-limits-of-executive-power/2011/09/30/gIQAx1bUAL_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

Even the phrase "due process in war" is not only an oxymoron, it stings. The only thing that stings more is a White House that, when taking office, denounced the "torture memos," proclaiming then like it's predecessor before it that the U.S. This White House has now acquiesced, "in broad terms," as the Washington Post suggests, to the use of deadly force not solely in the battlefield, but anywhere, and on anyone it deems to be not merely a member of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but so-called "associated forces."

While the focus of the White House, Congress, and the American people has squarely, and almost exclusively been on fixing the economy, Mr. Obama must distance himself not just from the failed economic policies of his predecessor, but from its failed military, and moral practices, too.

From Michael Winship

2011-10-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Why Are the Governors of America Saying Such Dumb Things

An epidemic of foot-in-mouth disease strikes state leaders -- but deep within, some hope for reform

By Michael Winship

Miriam "Ma" Ferguson was the first woman governor of Texas. Like my own dear ma, she both hailed from Bell County, deep in the heart of the state, and graduated from Mary Hardin-Baylor College (now the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in the fine town of Belton, Texas, long may they wave.

"Ma" Ferguson first was elected in 1924, just a few years after the impeachment and conviction of her husband, Governor James Edward "Pa" Ferguson, who was charged with the "misapplication" of public funds and banned from holding further office. During her campaign, "Ma" promised, "You’ll have two governors for the price of one," a pledge that may have seemed more like a threat to those Texans inclined toward a greater civic-mindedness.

Contrary to current Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry, who relishes his role as capital punishment’s Lord High Executioner, "Ma" was famous for passing out pardons. In her administration they were as common as cow chips, with some 4000 issued during her two non-consecutive terms. "Ma" claimed they were to relieve overcrowding in the prisons; others believed that many of those in custody were freed only after making pay-offs to "Pa." Those allegations helped lead to the creation of the independent Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

But I digress. Another reason that "Ma" Ferguson will go down in the history books -- the funnier ones, at least -- is the apocryphal tale that when an early attempt was made to legislate the teaching of Spanish in Texas public schools, "Ma" refused, saying that if English was good enough for the Sweet Baby Jesus, it was good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas.

Obviously, this was neither the first or last ludicrous thing that ever has been said by a state governor: a mere glance at the foolishness uttered by the several seeking – or contemplating seeking -- the GOP presidential nod reveal a race as much to the bottom of the rhetorical barrel as it is to the White House. But this week, several governors not seeking the Oval Office also revealed an uncanny gift for the goofy.

According to the Associated Press, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley announced at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that forthwith, state employees are to answer official phones with a cheery, "It’s a great day in South Carolina!"

Gee whiz, that should solve everything! As AP noted,"“Never mind the state’s 11.1 percent jobless rate and the fact that one in five residents are on Medicaid." Great day indeed. Presumably, Governor Sunshine plans to accompany the next set of her state’s unemployment figures with a chorus of "We’re in the Money."

Then there’s Maine Governor Paul LePage. You may remember that in March, just a couple of months after this Tea Party favorite took office, he ordered an 11-panel mural depicting the history of unions in the state removed from the walls of Maine’s Department of Labor, claiming that it was "not in keeping with the state’s pro-business goals." While Maine’s arts community – a lively, activist group if ever there was – and others rose in protest, the governor’s story kept changing.

As described by Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, "At first it was an anonymous letter citing a business person's concerns about feeling like they're in a North Korean dictatorship; then it was too anti-business, too one-sided; and now seven months later the governor has a new explanation for this. And he just keeps embarrassing us and himself in the process."

That new explanation popped up this week when NBC News’ Brian Williams asked LePage, "What do you have against organized labor?" The governor replied, "I have absolutely nothing against organized labor... My objection to the mural is simply where the money came from. The money was taken out of the unemployment insurance fund, which is dedicated to provide benefits to unemployed workers. They robbed that account to build a mural. And until they pay for it, it stays hidden."

Funny how this has never come up before now. And according to the Portland Press Herald and Alan Pyke of the progressive website Media Matters, "LePage's new line accusing the department of 'robbing' the jobless to pay for a painting is smarter politically than his clearly stated original reasoning, but state officials say that 'nobody lost any benefits to which they were entitled' according to the Press Herald. Furthermore, the federal Department of Labor actually demanded that Maine return the money used to buy the mural if it is not going to be displayed any longer...

"The Press Herald also points out that LePage's new rationale doesn't square with the case his attorneys are making in fighting lawsuits over the mural. Those attorneys 'have said the governor's actions are protected because they represented his political views.'"

As Maine goes, so goes North Carolina. On Tuesday, that state’s governor, Bev Perdue, suggested -- "My point was one of sarcasm," she now says -- that next year’s congressional elections be put on hold so that members of the House of Representatives can stay focused on economic recovery rather than reelection.

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years," she told a Rotary Club meeting in Cary, NC, "and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help the country recover." This set off a firestorm of criticism, and not only from state Republicans, the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh.

As the Raleigh News & Observer reported, "When Perdue is off script, it is often an adventure;" in this case an adventure stunning in its unconstitutionality. And yet, in the manner of the proverbial stopped clock that’s right twice a day, there’s the kernel of an idea embedded in her unfortunate, off-the-cuff comments.

Perdue herself said at the beginning of her remarks, "You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on things." One way to do so, dimly related to her line of reasoning, indeed would require amending the Constitution.

Harold Meyerson writes in the current issue of The American Prospect magazine (published by Demos, where I’m a writing fellow), that a reform "that would create a more representative government would be to change the timing of elections and the terms of congressional office... If House members were given four-year terms coterminous with the president’s, they would be answerable to the same larger electorate. This, of course, would also be true of senators. These wouldn’t be parliamentary elections -- the candidates for president, senator, and representative would still be elected separately -- but at least our elected officials would all derive their power from the identical and most broadly representative electorate."

The same day as Governor Perdue’s oratory malfunction, USA Today had some other suggestions for reform: "Perhaps the most significant would change the way congressional lines are drawn, making more districts competitive and increasing the odds that centrist candidates could prevail. Revising the rules for Senate filibusters could prevent a few senators from routinely blocking action supported by a majority.

"And changing the congressional calendar could encourage legislators to build personal relationships with colleagues from the other party." Matt Bennett, of the centrist think tank Third Way, told the paper, "Much of the blame for the disconnect between the parties goes to the congressional calendar, where you have members scurrying home (to districts) on Wednesday nights or certainly by Thursday nights. They're not around on the weekends, and the demands of fundraising means they are separated from each other the minute the votes are over. They don't interact at all."

Luckily, no amount of reform will ever rid us of governors who, like kids, say the darndest things. And even if they miraculously did become error-free Solons of the republic, we’ll always have members of the House of Representatives to fill the gap. Why, just the other day, the website Talking Point Memo reported, "Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told an audience in Illinois that he was ashamed of his state for not allowing concealed handguns, warning that they were the 'last line of defense' if Americans need to revolt against their government.

Never mind the statehouse. There’s gold up there on Capitol Hill. Comedy gold.

########

Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America, East, is the former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

A Drone for a Bomb?

2011-09-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's just been reported that it was a drone that took down al Qaeda's number two operative, and U.S. citizen, Anwar al Awlaki in what smells like the old eye for an eye operation.

Apart from the obvious problem with this, the fact that more than three-quarters of Americans describe themselves as practicing Christians, there are a few others:

First, if one is not an agent, that is to say if one does not actually commit a crime but instead appears to have been involved in the planning of a crime, is that grounds for suspending his constitutional right to be arrested, read his Miranda rights, and be tried in a civilian court? After all, isn't the plotting of a terror attack considered first and foremost a crime, and not an act of war?

And, in times of peace, would not that offense be known as "conspiracy to commit an act of terror?" Does the state of war, particularly the state of undeclared, and indefinite war, give a government the license to circumvent, and subrogate established legal tradition?

Secondly, if those who bomb, make bombs, or publish instructions on how to make bombs are called "terrorists," what do you call someone who kills by remote control, and from unmanned aircraft hundreds, arguably thousands of miles away?

Does the remoteness of the trigger provide some kind of moral immunity? Clearly, there has been an attempt by the previous administration, and this one, too, to legitimize acts that have been traditionally viewed as illegal, and outside the parameters of international law.

Next, as McClatchy reports, international law mandates that "Targeted killing is banned except to protect against "concrete, specific and imminent" danger." Does the execution of Awlaki meet these criteria?

President Obama isn't the first occupant of the Oval Office to turn to his legal counsel for a green light to dispense the kind of justice he finds most expedient. Remember, it was thanks to the efforts of John Yoo, and other legal counsel to George W. Bush who redefined torture such that any technique that doesn't involve loss of life or limb is immune to that designation.

With the right legal advice, it might be possible, too, to rewrite the Old Testament so that "an eye for an eye" reads instead
"a drone for a bomb." But, I guess the larger question, especially for a nation that fancies itself Christian, is when is it not murder?

Surely, Italy wishes they had drones back in the days they were dealing with the Cosa Nostra family in Sicily, and the NYPD wouldn't bristle at the notion of a targeted kill when dealing with crime bosses back in the 1920's, but that would make the NYPD effectively hit men, would it not? What does it make the U.S. government when it signs off on a targeted assassination, especially when there is no clear evidence of imminent danger.

Moreover, acts that al Qaeda and the Taliban have engaged in that we call "terrorist acts" are, in fact, criminal acts, and acts of mayhem. The place to deal with criminal acts is in a courtroom not on a battlefield, that is unless one wants to make the whole world a battlefield which is what the U.S. has effectively been doing.

Clearly, it's cheaper merely to kill a cleric, and spiritual leader whose charisma, and worldview are seen as a threat to national security than it would be to hunt down, arrest, indict, and prosecute him, all of which adds up to beaucoup bucks. But, the paradigm for treating those who commit crimes against humanity, even the most egregious kinds as we've seen from the Nuremberg Trials, is to do precisely that, try the suspect. By overriding the rule of law, we ourselves become criminals.

No one is questioning if Mr. Awlaki posed a threat, but where do we draw the line? Does someone need to be directly tied to a specific terror attack before they be sent off to meet their maker, and does it matter if he is an American citizen or not? Should it matter? International law is clear about the need for a "concrete, specific, and imminent danger." Does it matter that targeting anyone for assassination is a violation of international law, and/or does it matter that it is also unconstitutional?

Not to mention that Awlaki was, after all, someone's son, a fact not lost on
his father. While the court threw out Awlaki's father's attempt to stop the U.S. government from killing his son, the act of targeting another human being for rapid fire execution, and in too many cases rapid fire random execution, is one that will be talked about for generations to come. You can bank on that.

Don't push your luck

2011-09-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

Talk about strange dreams. Last night, I dreamt I had a job interview in a five star hotel of all places, and there was no place to fill out the application but on the roof.

I had to go through the restaurant to get to the staircase that led to the roof. It seems to take no time at all to get there. The ledge was so thin, I didn't know how anyone could sit on it and not fall off, but they did because a couple next to me talked away while eating Sloppy Joe's, and a
young girl spoke heatedly on her cell phone.

The pen I was writing with ran out of ink, no one had another pen, so I couldn't complete the application unless I went back downstairs to find something to write with. Thought of taking the stairs, but I would have
been late for my interview, so I had to jump from the roof which I did.

I landed fine, brushed myself off, then I left my coat on the roof.
Thought I had time to go back up and get it. When I looked up from the courtyard, I realized that I had jumped something like 20 feet. Happily,
I couldn't find the stairs that led back up to the roof, so I didn't get another shot at jumping. Moral of the dream: don't push your luck.

Michael Winship on "The Terrible Post-9/11 Truth"

2011-09-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

Democracy has been commandeered by a self-interested gang

By Michael Winship

About a year after the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, I visited Oklahoma City and went to the bombsite with a friend who had covered the attack as a television news cameraman. No memorial or museum had yet been built; fencing covered with teddy bears, flags and scrawled messages surrounded an empty, grass-covered lot.

There was a simplicity to that empty lot that appealed, an understated eloquence that, to me at least, said all that needed to be said. Now, despite all the hubbub and handwringing surrounding its design and construction, in many ways, the new 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero in Manhattan captures some of that same, straightforward plainness -- the names of the dead punched into bronze, the waterfalls gracing two great voids where the towers used to be, muting the noise of visitors’ voices and quieting the surrounding city. No filigree or statues.

We went to the new memorial for the first time last week. It was a perfect, end-of-summer day. Sunlight sparkled in the two pools, and you could see in one of them the wavy reflection of an American flag hanging from across the street. When the breeze was just right, a light mist from the waterfalls caressed your face.

I was pleased, too, by the vast plaza, so reminiscent of the one that used to separate the original towers, the wind corkscrewing around their height and sending hats into orbit. In the next few years, when all the construction around the site has ceased and the landscaped trees and other greenery have more fully grown, this will be the place for contemplation that was intended. And perhaps those who come here will reflect not only on the events of 9/11 but their unexpected consequences and whether we as a nation are ever prepared for what comes next.

On the afternoon we visited the memorial, I was already downtown, attending a daylong conference on post 9/11 worker protection and community health, sponsored by the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), a coalition of labor, civil rights, medical, faith-based and environmental organizations.

"Are we ready for another 9/11?" Dr. Linda Rae Murray, president of the American Public Health Association, asked us. "Hell, no! Were we ready for Katrina? Or the tornadoes? Or the H1N1 flu? We don’t have the resources; we’ve let our infrastructure disappear. No, we’re not ready."

The World Trade Center collapse created the largest number of workplace fatalities in the history of the United States. Government bumbling and dissembling about air quality downtown and conditions at the site, the rush back to business as usual, may have irreparably killed and injured countless others. In the words of Bruce Lippy, formerly with the International Union of Engineers, who spent weeks working on the pile, "They didn’t want to turn Manhattan into a Superfund site." Chip Hughes of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (part of the NIH) added, "There should be an apology."

Many of the health consequences for those who survived and continued as rescue and recovery workers have been summed up in a recent study of 27,449 participants in the World Trade Center Screening, Monitoring, and Treatment Program. The stark statistics were published in the September 3 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet:

"Findings: 9-year cumulative incidence of asthma was 27.6% (number at risk: 7027), sinusitis 42.3% (5870), and gastro-esophageal reflux disease 39.3% (5650). In police officers, cumulative incidence of depression was 7.0% (number at risk: 3648), PTSD 9.3% (3761), and panic disorder 8.4% (3780). In other rescue and recovery workers, cumulative incidence of depression was 27.5% (number at risk: 4200), PTSD 31.9% (4342), and panic disorder 21.2% (4953). 9-year cumulative incidence for spirometric [lung capacity] abnormalities was 41.8% (number at risk: 5769); three-quarters of these abnormalities were low forced vital capacity."

This doesn’t include all the others who lived, worked or studied at or near Ground Zero, inhaling smoke, ash and dust -- air some have described as more caustic than Drano. Nor does it include the cases of neurological disorders, mesothelioma, and other cancers appearing more and more among 9/11 survivors -- illnesses that legislators and activists are now battling to add to the list of conditions covered by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

It was hard enough passing the Zadroga Act in the first place, beating back years of resistance and wrangling in Congress, a GOP filibuster and so-called "compassion fatigue" around the rest of the country (at the NYCOSH conference, Jon Stewart was applauded as a local hero for his role shaming opponents of Zadroga into approval). Seeking new coverage for 9/11 cancer patients is another uphill fight against indifference and overt hostility.

So for those who will come to Manhattan from everywhere else to pause and reflect at the new 9/11 Memorial, better perhaps to consider some other implications and side effects of the terrorist attacks that impact not just the greater New York area but the entire country and beyond. In fact, many of the issues being battled over in Washington and across the Dr. Seuss-like landscape of the 2012 election campaign have a direct bearing on future 9/11’s in America, no matter where and when they may happen. (And why do all the Republican presidential debates remind me of those cheesy paintings of dogs playing poker?)

Infrastructure? Think of all those decaying roads, bridges and tunnels, and the chaos if they fail during an evacuation. Deregulation? If anything, 9/11 demonstrates that certain OSHA and EPA rules on safety, clean air and water need expansion and better enforcement. Conservative attacks on public employees and organized labor? The first at the scene on 9/11 were the firemen, police, emergency medical technicians and union construction workers who stayed on the pile until the last scrap of steel was gone, not to mention the Communication Workers of America members who risked their lives restoring phones, microwave links and IT; the electricians, plumbers, and engineers.

Budget cuts adversely affect training and response times. Politics interfere with scientific research. State labs are underfunded or closing. Universal health care, if it existed, already would have taken care of many of the doctor’s appointments, tests, treatments and medications being funded, but still only in part, by Zadroga and other programs.

Another article in that September 3 issue of The Lancet chronicles "Adverse health consequences of US Government responses to the 2001 terrorist attacks." According to its authors, Dr. Barry S. Levy and Dr. Victor W. Sidel, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "caused many deaths of non-combatant civilians, further damaged the health-supporting infrastructure and the environment (already adversely affected by previous wars), forced many people to migrate, led to violations of human rights, and diverted resources away from important health needs."

In Iraq, "Oil spillages, contaminated ash, unexploded ordinance, and depleted uranium at and around US military bases have all caused environmental damage." The health status of Afghans is "lower than almost any other country," life expectancy at birth is 48 years, only 27 percent of the population has access to clean water

According to the report, "The initial $204 billion spent on the Iraq War could have reduced hunger throughout the world by 50% and provided enough funds to cover the needs for HIV/AIDS medicine, clean water and sanitation, and immunization for all children in developing countries for almost 3 years. Within the USA, the federal budget for the 2011 fiscal year for the war in Afghanistan -- $107 billion -- could have provided medical care for 14 million US military veterans for 1 year."

Domestically, "After 9/11 and the anthrax outbreak shortly afterwards, the USA and other countries have improved emergency preparedness and response capabilities, but these actions have often diverted attention and resources from more urgent health issues."

The coalitions and alliances that have formed in the decade since 9/11 -- the professionals and ordinary citizens who from day one have stepped up when official bureaucracy has not -- are the one bright light shining through tragedy. But it’s not enough. "Do we understand that we’ve been hijacked by a small group of people using government for their own benefit? This is our government," the Public Health Association’s Linda Rae Murray declared. "It doesn’t work well but it’s ours and we have to seize control of it and put in place what we need to keep ourselves and our neighbors healthy."

When you visit the 9/11 Memorial, think about that simple, fundamental truth as you remember the fallen, the heroes -- and everyone else struggling to survive.

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Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

The Execution of Troy Davis

2011-09-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

Last night, the state of Georgia put to death a 42 year old man, Troy Davis, who was sentenced to die for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. Troy Davis was 20 years old in 1989.

The forensic evidence directly linking Davis to the murder was conspicuously absent. Innocence Project attorney, Barry Sheck, has called into question the results of testing on the gun alleged to have been the murder weapon. Indeed, there was no more incontrovertible forensic evidence directly linking Mr. Davis to his alleged crime than there was linking Casey Anthony to the murder of her two year old daughter, but Ms. Anthony was exonerated.

Oh, of course, yes, Casey Anthony is white, and Troy Davis is a man of color who stood trial for first degree murder when he when he was younger than Anthony. Remember, too, that a man of color was accused of having killed a white officer, Mr. McPhail, in 1989 and in the south no less. And, yes, of course race must be considered a factor when considering the disproportionate number of minorities on death row.

Before insertion of the needle, and within minutes of his death, Davis not only continued to proclaim his innocence, and that he was not personally involved in the officer's death, but that he didn't even have a gun.

For months now, many prominent people have called upon the courts to stop Davis's execution in the face of exculpatory evidence. The governor of Davis's home state of Georgia was unable to grant clemency, so Mr. Davis's counsel called upon the Supreme Court to order a stay of execution so that new evidence could be introduced. The Supreme Court ruled against the stay; the lethal injection process began at 10:53 p.m., and at 11:08 p.m., Mr. Davis was declared dead.

In the months and years before the execution, and in hours since, there has been much speculation about whether or not Troy Davis killed the police officer. Many cite the recanting of testimony by seven of the nine witnesses who fingered Davis as the murderer. And, up until his final breath, Troy Davis continued to proclaim his innocence, calling upon friends to continue to search for the truth about who is really guilty of killing that officer back in 1989.

But, in the end, this is not about innocence or guilt. This is about right and wrong. Is it ever right to put a man to death in what a former Jackson warden, Allen Alt, called a premeditated, and scripted way? Does not the executioner also become a cold-blooded murderer? For those who advocate austerity, would it not be a good idea to downsize federal employees whose vocation is taking the life of another?

At a time when another Southern governor, and one who is running for president of the United States, brags about having executed 235 men on his watch, including one who may well be innocent, and then turns around and calls himself a "pro-life" candidate reminds us of just how much hypocrisy, and duplicity we saw during the Olly North, Dan Quayle, "family values" 1990's.

There is another constitutional amendment other than the Second Amendment that tea partiers like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin need to be remember---the Eighth Amendment, an amendment that forbids "cruel and unusual punishment."

What is it if not cruel and unusual punishment to bring a man to within hours of his execution on three separate occasions, and then send him back to death row? What is it if not cruel and unusual punishment to keep someone sedated in the death chamber on a gurney for four hours while waiting to hear back from the Supreme Court about whether there is a stay on his execution? Was Mr. Davis shackled, and gagged? Were his hands and feet bound? Did the sedation manage to arrest his thoughts, or was he still able to dream? Do we really want to know? How perverse is the after-execution account of eyewitness expressions? How devalued is
human life that it must suffer this fate?

What is it if not cruel and unusual punishment to administer a three drug cocktail that, while it may sedate and paralyze a man, may not render him
incapable of pain? What is this if not torture?

In a recent poll, 60% of the American people approve of the death penalty. Even the president is said to approve of the death penalty.

So, it must be asked, who are we now, and what have we become that we can kill from thousands of feet away, and by remote control? Who are we that we own the horror that is Abu Graib, and so-called enhanced alternative interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay?

What have we become as a nation that a former vice president, Dick Cheney, can admit publicly, and in his memoir, that he personally approved of the use of waterboarding, a practice long considered torture and abjured internationally, and do so with impunity? What manner of hubris is that? What kind of statement is it that the government awards liability insurance to interrogators to protect them from litigation that may result from their actions? Who are we, and how did we get this way?

In the end, it is not about innocence or guilt, but right and wrong. Have we become such full-throated sociopaths as to applaud the state-sanctioned murder of 235 Texans by its governor?

Nothing good will ever come of the scripted, court-sanctioned murder of a human being, but something must happen. The Supreme Court ruled against lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment, but it is now time for the Supreme Court to rule on whether capital punishment is itself a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The Supreme Court must also be asked to consider if holding someone on death row for 22 years, then granting him three stays, and forcing him to lay bound and infused with sedatives for four hours only to be put down with the same chemical used to put down a dog, is this how a government gets to treat one of its citizens? If the Supreme Court can permit this, then we need to create another court to oversee them.

There is not much left to say except to repeat along with Troy Davis "God have mercy on us all." We are all a little smaller in the eyes of the world today.

Why Solyndra and Not Boeing?

2011-09-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

President Obama faces increased scrutiny over a solar energy company, Solyndra, that received half a billion dollars from the administration, only to go belly up months later. As Democracy Now suggests, Solyndra might find itself "a household name" in the 2012 election cycle, as well as an excuse to scrap the notion of an economy fueled by green jobs.

But, where is the scrutiny of Boeing, one of whose subsidiaries
has long been linked to extraordinary rendition flights that received many billions of dollars since 2000? Where is the political fallout over the Pentagon's recent awarding of a $35 billion contract to the aerospace giant? The half a billion the Obama administration approved for Solyndra pales in comparison with the $35 billion Boeing received in 2010.

And, where are those who, with religious zeal, call for spending cuts when the Pentagon gifts more than $30 billion to one company? Moreover, is there no is congressional oversight into how that money is being spent by the Pentagon?

Since George W. Bush's first term in 2001 through 2010, according to Public Campaign.org, campaign contributions to Boeing came to $10 million; lobbying expenditures were $115 million. And, from 2000-2008, government contracts awarded to Boeing were a whopping $169 billion.

In one year alone, 2008, as a going away present, Mr. Bush gave Boeing $24 billion in government contracts. Not to be outdone, the Obama administration pitched in another $35 billion last year. http://www.publicampaign.org/reports/artfuldodgers/transportation

So, why all the fuss about Solyndra and not a peep about Boeing? Where is the public outrage over the complicity between the world's largest aerospace company and the Central Intelligence Agency's transportation of detainees to countries that allow for torture? Given the level of global warfare now, what better time to make Jeppesen a household name instead of Solyndra? What better time to call attention to taxpayer funds going to finance a company that ships detainees to black sites around the world where it is permissible to do things that have long been abjured, and criminalized both here in the United States and abroad?

Okay, but where does the idea that Boeing is involved in detainee rendition come from? It was Jane Mayer who first wrote in The New Yorker, back in 2006 about Jeppesen International Trip Planning. As Mayer reports, Jeppesen, a subsidiary of Boeing, lists the CIA as one of its clients. Keep in mind that, fully two years before Mr. Obama was took office, Ms. Mayer brought to light Boeing's involvement in planning for clandestine CIA renditions.

In her article, Mayer asserts that, while a tiny charter airline actually flies the planes, a division of Boeing handles "many of the logistical and navigational details" for the trips including "clearance to fly to other countries." http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/30/061030ta_talk_mayer
Jeppesen is, in her words, the "C.I.A.'s travel agent."

And, the following year, 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in which they formally charged Jeppessen Dataplan of "providing flight services" that enabled for the rendition, and ultimate torture of detainees. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5866

ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, noted then that "This is the first time we are accusing a blue chip American company of profiting from torture." According to the suit, four years ago, Jeppesen made 70 rendition flights. Oh, by the way, the suit was dismissed in February, 2008, and then dismissed again by an appeals court in 2010. The Supreme Court reportedly declined to review the case.

The Pentagon's awarding last year of $11 billion more than was awarded in 2008 should make the hair on the back of everyone's neck stand up at the thought of how many more rendition flights Jeppesen must be making now, not only with impunity, but with the full backing of the Pentagon, and government. This practice, and the fact that we're paying for it, should be a wake-up call for all concerned about overriding international proscriptions against torture by covertly rendering what amounts to high value suspects to countries that have no legal obligation to adhere to international law, which amounts to outsourcing enhanced alternative interrogation techniques.

Notably, Boeing purchased Jeppesen in 2000 and government contracts expanded by 170 billions in the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency. The war on terror for some became a war of terror. There was nothing controversial in the mainstream media about the Boeing contracts. Not like there has been over the past week or so with the Obama administration's connections to Solyndra.

Why no fuss about the $115 million spent in lobbying for Boeing during the Bush years? And, where is the Solyndra affair really going? Is it to be compared with where the vast majority of Pentagon funding to Boeing has gone?

Moreover, why the failure on the part of Republicans and Democrats both to mention that it was back in 2007, under the presidency of George W. Bush, that a conditional loan guarantee was issued to Solyndra by the Department of Energy?

There are some who might say that the controversy over Solyndra is not so much about the failure of solar energy, or green jobs, but failure in the marketplace, and that had Boeing met the same fate, they'd be in the news, too. But, those who profess that are making such a cynical statement about our values, and saying, in effect, it doesn't matter what you do as long as you make money at it. The silence on the subject of Boeing's connection to extraordinary rendition by the mainstream media is deafening.

There are some in the Obama administration, including many in Congress, according to the New York Times,who would like now to try all terror suspects in military courts, even those arrested on U.S. soil, but the president and his top counter-terrorism advisors are not about to allow that to happen, or so they say. Mr. Obama must also stand up to those congressional factions that want to cut Medicaid and not take a dime of taxpayer money away from military contractors like Boeing. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/us/john-o-brennan-on-use-of-military-force-against-al-qaeda.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

After all, there is nothing radical about civilian command of the military. Isn't that what the struggle has been from the McChrystal debacle going forward? Wasn't that Mr. Obama's core argument, and the reason Gen. McChrystal was asked to step down? The president can best assert himself now by taking the reins again, investigating, and defunding any military contract that is, even subliminally, inimical to international law. It's one thing to say the U.S. doesn't torture, but to allow for the awarding of billions of dollars by the Pentagon to a company that facilitates the outsourcing of torture is a cynical misuse of the public trust.

Make no mistake, this is by means intended to be a condemnation of Mr. Obama. There is a huge difference between the rendition program under Obama and that of George W. Bush. For openers, it was George W. Bush's administration that first stated the practice of illegally rendering suspects to countries that allow torture to circumvent international law. Remember, Boeing's connection to secret CIA flights began in 2000, and the actual flights began in 2001.

Today's White House was gifted with a whole lot of baggage from the Bush years. The president has tried to focus his energies on keeping the economy from total collapse which he's done, and history will be kinder to him than his contemporaries in that yes, Obama's stimulus did prevent an economic catastrophe the likes of which we've yet to see.

Having said that, the president has chosen to surround himself with hawks---deficit hawks and military hawks, and he turned the CIA over to a former high octane general, Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal's mentor, which means even more military political influence on government decisions.

Every president has to delegate. Mr. Obama must start to pay attention to what slips between the cracks on his watch, and cut off Boeing's $35 billion a year contract until, and unless, they demonstrate that they're no longer involved in secret terror flights.

The Myth of Identity

2011-09-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Over the past thirty years or so, western civilization, and especially the U.S., has evolved from what Guy Debord called the "society of the spectacle" to what may instead be called society of the sociopath.

These days, one often finds paraded around the network news celebrities and those who have attained instant celebrity solely by virtue of having committed acts that are so removed from societal norms, and truly antisocial, as to be considered sociopathic. The attention given not merely to the crime, victims of the crime, but to the criminal often renders the psychological carnage, and damage to the rest of society invisible.

From O.J. Simpson to Scott Peterson to Casey Anthony, the culture of narcissism is now deeply enmeshed in the collective psyche. Scott Peterson, husband of a lovely young woman in Northern California and father-to-be is heard on his cell phone lying to his girlfriend about his whereabouts during his wife's funeral. The complete irrationality of his behavior, and his aloofness stimulates curiosity as much as contempt as does the horrific shooting of Gabriel Giffords, and murder of her colleagues in Arizona, yet another example of sociopathic behavior.

Again, TV cameras capture a clearly crazed individual, Jared Loughner, the alleged shooter, whose paranoia is part and parcel of a major disconnect with reality. His delusional acting out is part of a cultural identity crisis, one suffered, though less egregiously, even by former presidents who profess to take marching orders from the Almighty, and who go so far as to claim to be "born again." Identity delusions are not restricted to criminals. There are many high functioning sociopaths, and more than a few to be found in boardrooms of all Fortune 500 companies.

But, whether it manifests in crime or not, most psychopathology stems from a twisted sense of identity that has as its foundation in the underlying notion that "I," the objectivized self, is a fixed entity, and not fluid, or something subject to change. Identity isn't the core issue; attachment to identity is.

Arguably, many of the world's problems today are caused by disputes that involve one identity clashing with another. For instance, in the Middle East, Arabs fight Jews, Christians fight Muslims; during the Civil War, the North fought the South. Each side must be invested in their individual identity in order to be an effective warrior. The recognition that underneath we are all human beings, thus we share humanity is antithetical to the state of mind necessary for effective combat. One must be invested in being a confederate to wave the confederate flag. Essentially, the universal sense of self is always at war with the public sense of self, or identity. But, while all conflict may be said to begin within the self, it seldom ends there.

In many instances, as Dr. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning has implied, suicidal ideation arises from hopelessness, and hopelessness from the idea that one is trapped in a situation, or a self from which one can never escape.

It is often the societal compulsion to see oneself as a named entity, "Joe," "Mary," "Mike," "Mary," and one with a fixed identity, "architect," "nurse," "attorney," "doctor" that obstructs self-development. A more fluid notion of oneself as a work in progress, something perpetually growing, might not coexist with an accomplishment, goal-directed, free market mentality. We see where the free market mentality has gotten us.

People who are driven to succeed are often identity-driven, and at war with death. For them, finding one's identity, thus, becomes like taking out an insurance policy for mortality, but the more one clings to "who" one is, the closer one is to one's mortality.

As soon as you say "I," you're talking about someone else. Poet Walt Whitman understood this. In his "Song of Myself," he was using the pronoun "I" as narrational, objective. Whitman was instead speaking of the universal self, the self that is, in fact, everyman.

Of course, the critics of his day didn't quite agree with Whitman, and accused him of being an egotist. To the contrary, Whitman was wisely acknowledging that when one uses the pronoun "I," one is objectivizing oneself.

Another nineteenth century poet, Arthur Rimbaud, wrote: "Je est un autre," ("I is another") which essentially means that "I" is a narrational device.

Why is this important? In modern, and post-modern times, we've become more obsessed with who we are, and the more we try to confine who we are, or the larger self, into a thing that can be named, the more antisocial this culture becomes.

Identity is a mask; Nietzsche saw that. When, in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argued that we're never really alone, not even when we're by ourselves, he meant that we wear masks even when there is no one else around. A deeper understanding of the self can be best hidden from the self by the mask of identity, or effectively becoming what one is in the eyes of others. As George Orwell observes in Shooting an Elephant, "He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it."

What happens to those whose face doesn't grow to fit their mask? Or, when the mask is somehow defaced by life choices? What happens when the truth of who one really is shows through?

This objectivization of the self under the facade of fixed identity doesn't allow for any options, but to play the same role over and over endlessly, or for as long as one possibly can. Sociopathology comes about when the agent is no longer identifiable by the mask, or assignation given him by society. O.J. Simpson is no longer identifiable as the star athlete, role model, but is instead some monster who is not only dissociated from the world around him, but his own actions. The same is true of the young mother in Florida, Casey Anthony, whose identity is shattered by the death of her child, and a bloodlessness, lack of emotion, manifests showing a deep disconnect, or dissociation, from her daughter's death.

A young violinist, in New England, videotaped by his roommate in a same sex act of intimacy, takes his own life. His identity as a young violinist is compromised by someone else's sick attempt to forcibly expose the young man him when, in fact, loving another man is not his identity any more than playing the violin is. They are both acts. The acts are not the agent. What one does, or with whom, is not who one is.

Until we encourage exploration of identity, and recognize that who we are, what we believe, what we do, where we live, and everything else that gets factored into what others see us, is something ultimately much larger than any category we could ever invent, we will undergo one global identity crisis after another. War is a global identity crisis. Nationalism is the logical extension of a pathological need to be identified with something that is, more often than not, an accident of birth.

Identity that is not subject to change is an illusion, and a dangerous one. It will destroy the planet much faster than climate change as there is nothing more corrosive than a shared illusion.

Squandered?

2011-09-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

A Decade of Memorials Squandered
By Michael Winship

A long time ago, I helped produce for public television an annual year's end interview with New York City Mayor Ed Koch. We always shot it in a private room at Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the north tower of the World Trade Center, with a spectacular view toward the Empire State Building. From that height, at the end of a sunny winter's day you could see the lengthened shadows of the two towers stretch diagonally all the way across lower Manhattan, up and east to Stuyvesant Town.

One time, we were taken up to the roof, where the big transmitting antenna was. Around the perimeter was a gutter, some two to three feet wide and three feet deep or so -- for the window cleaning apparatus that went up and down the sides of the building, I think. Some of our production crew got into that well, knelt down, held onto the inner lip of the gutter and had their pictures taken. From a still camera's perspective, you could make it appear as if you were hanging from the edge of the tower. It seemed funny at the time.

Two decades later, on that awful morning in 2001, I threw on a pair of shorts and a tee shirt and ran to the corner after my then-wife buzzed from downstairs that the World Trade Center was on fire. We stood on the corner looking down Greenwich Street. She left for her newsroom, I watched for a few more minutes, and as I turned to return home, the second plane hit.

The flames, the blizzard of paper, the sounds of sirens and church bells, the flyers taped to every wall looking for missing loved ones, and finally, of course, the overpowering smells that lingered in our air for weeks -- I have so many memories and stories, many of which I've recounted before, all of them so puny in comparison to the accounts of heroism, bravery and tragedy that over the last week or two once again have filled the media.

But I remember a week later, when television microwave trucks from around the world still stretched down the West Side Highway as far as you could see. At one corner was a French anchorman, who I gathered was something of a superstar back home. Excited French tourists were bunched around, thrusting their cameras, waiting their turns for a Kodak moment with him. Three and four at a time, he spread his arms around the visitors, grinning broadly and carefully posing everyone to make sure billows of smoke from the wreckage would be prominent in the background. With apologies to France, and thank you for the Statue of Liberty, but I really felt like giving him a punch.

For so long after 9/11, we gazed southward and the sky was empty where the original Trade Center once stood. I used to think there should be some vast chalk outline in the sky, showing where the twin towers had been, like the silhouette TV detectives draw of the spot where the murder victim fell.

These days, when I walk across my Manhattan intersection and look down Seventh Avenue, I can see One World Trade Center going up. As you've seen during the coverage of this week's tenth anniversary, they've reached 80 plus stories; its glass sheathing rises part of the way to the top, construction lights twinkle at night on the unfinished floors above.

Eventually, the structure will be 108 stories with an illuminated mast that will lift it to a height of, yes, 1776 feet, but along the way they've abandoned the title Freedom Tower for fear of scaring away renters and provoking terrorists. I think of the ten years that have passed, remember other 9/11 anniversaries and wonder what else has been abandoned as well.

On the first anniversary, I made the rounds: the tributes at Ground Zero, then a memorial service at the Episcopalian Church of St. Luke in the Fields on Hudson Street, where the weeping of victims' families and friends pierced the heart. I attended a ceremony in Washington Square for the flight crews; doves were released for each of their lost lives.

The second year I was working and didn't plan a visit, but as a friend from out of town and I sat on my roof that night, staring downtown at the twin shafts of light that shine each year in tribute, he asked if we could go. We strolled around the banks of searchlights that created the two bright columns pointing into the sky and as we walked, a woman ran by, smudging the site with burning sage, trying to cleanse it of the evil that had happened there.

The next three years, I went to Ground Zero or attended other memorials, but on the fifth anniversary, when I arrived downtown the scene seemed, sadly, more circus-like. The families of the victims were largely protected from it but those of us just outside were subjected to pitchmen and hangers-on, a man dressed in a bird suit urging passersby to "Have a Kind Day," and everywhere, the "truthers" in their black tee-shirts, thrusting in your face brochures and DVD's pitching every sinister conspiracy they believe caused the towers to fall, except, of course, the one that actually brought them down.

Last year, on a train home from Boston, where the two flights that hit the towers originated, I watched the Tribute in Light from a distance, its shafts of illumination piercing the dark above the faraway Manhattan skyline. And this year I stayed at home and watched on television as the official memorial was opened, songs were sung and the 2750 names were read aloud once again.

I did go down to Ground Zero on Wednesday, walking through the rain and mist to Church and Vesey Streets, the intersection at which One World Trade Center is rising. The majority of the sidewalk traffic seemed equally divided among groups of business people, construction workers and tourists. I stopped by St. Paul's Chapel, where ten years ago first responders and other emergency personnel slept, exhausted, in the church's pews between hours of recovery work on the smoldering mountain of death and debris. The wooden pews are gone now, stored -- just temporarily, I hope -- and replaced with folding chairs where visitors come to view mementos of 9/11 and listen to choirs and chamber music.

Instead of the tributes of flowers and stuffed animals that once crowded St. Paul's iron fence, now white ribbons were tied, each marked "Remember to Love." Anyone could add a message to them -- in black ink, slightly running from the damp, people had written "RIP to All," "Peace," "Keep on rocking in the free world," or just their names.

I had come downtown for a discussion at the New York County Lawyer's Association, sponsored with the New York Neighbors for American Values. Its subject was "9/11: Refuting Stereotypes and Challenging the Common Wisdom." Eight panelists and moderator Tom Robbins discussed whether the public had been sufficiently involved in the plans for rebuilding lower Manhattan post-9/11 (no), if officials had recklessly downplayed the health hazards around the site (yes), if the mainstream media adequately reported those dangers (no) and whether post-attack security concerns had escalated intolerance and violated civil liberties (oh yes, indeed).

In fact, a new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board originally called for by the 9/11 commission report in 2004, its powers even strengthened by Congress in 2007, has yet to meet.

We seem to have squandered the solidarity and goodwill amongst ourselves that briefly blossomed after the tragic events of 9/11 -- not to mention global support -- just as unthinkingly as we've spent $1.2 trillion dollars, according to the National Priorities Project (a nonpartisan, progressive think tank), on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- money that could have generated thousands of college scholarships; hired fire fighters, police officers and teachers; provided low cost health care for millions.

The renewed patriotism and commitment we felt a decade ago has decayed, sullied by jingoism, xenophobia and paranoid fantasies about race and religion. At the panel, Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York observed, "What stops another 9/11 is not profiling, but all New Yorkers becoming partners and friends." We actually had that for a while in those first days and weeks of smoke and ash, those days when the smell of vaporized metal and electrical cable and God knows what else filled our air; so pungent you could taste it.

We lived through those days, and in a decade of memorials we still see flashes of the unity, strength and dedication so necessary for democracy to survive. But how horrible if the ultimate memorial to 9/11 is not waterfalls and names engraved on bronze or marble but the financial, moral and societal bankruptcy Osama bin Laden and 19 followers armed with box cutters hoped would be our fate.

########

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

Tea Party -- Pall Bearers for the Economy

2011-09-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Something troubled me during last night's tea party debate, and every time I hear Republican presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, speak about what she plans to do after her summer vacation. She repeats the same refrain: "I'm running for the presidency of the United States."

The first few times I heard Bachmann say that, I didn't give it a second thought, but today after hearing her yet again say that she's running "for the presidency" and not "for president," I wondered what, if any, difference there is, between the two phrases. Well, for openers, the president is the person who occupies the office, but the presidency is the office itself.

Now think about Mrs. Bachmann's use of this phrase exclusively, especially given another term she's so adamant about repeating "Obamacare." Is there a correlation between the two? Of course, Obama happens to be the president.

There are many ways to refer to this administration's health reform legislation. One can refer to it just as I did above, i.e. as this administration's health reform measure. But, I don't recall ever hearing Bachmann refer respectfully to the health care plan passed by the president of the United States nor has any Republican contender for president. What is implicit behind any reference to this White House is an underlying attitude of contempt.

The mantra "Obamacare" has become like a shibboleth, and something that must be repeated as often as possible to gain entry to this not-very-secret society of president-haters. It's the password into the account of these time travelers who, if elected, will take us back to the days of Jim Crow, or earlier still, to the antebellum southern sensibility.

Yes, repetition of the phrase "running for presidency of the United States" as distinct from "running for president of the United States" may also be an effective way for Ms. Bachmann to distinguish herself from the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But, what is it, in particular, that would distinguish her from the current resident and, for that matter, distinguishes this president from all those who came before him. Is this, after all, what Ms. Bachmann has in mind?

And, something else to think about, Speaker of the House John Boehner's egregious declining of the president's request to speak before a joint session of Congress recently was Boehner's way of scoring points with the Bachmann wing of his own party. Not only were Mr. Boehner's actions precedent-setting, but they forever diminished the Speaker's role.

When the president of the United States requests to speak before a joint session of Congress that is equivalent to your boss coming out, and asking "Do you have a minute?" Would you respond "No, I'm filing my nails" which is, in effect, what Boehner did.

Oh, and you remember what was really behind why President Obama had to ask General Stanley McChrystal to step down. It was felt that the general was undermining civilian command of the military.

The actions of those Republicans in Congress, as well as those who are currently running, or who may run for the top seat in government who pander to the tea party base equally undermine not merely this president, but the presidency.

Not to mention, too, that for all their talk of job growth and supporting so-called job creators, both Governors Perry and Romney would make perfect pall bearers for the U.S. economy as should either gentleman or their deregulator counterparts find their way to the White House, we may expect to have a very long wake instead of inauguration as we watch the U.S. and global economies fail yet again.

My 9/11 Story

2011-09-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a story about where they were, what they were doing, and how they first learned about the collapse of the Twin Towers in Manhattan, and the subsequent attack on the Pentagon, but my story really began a few months before that horrific day.

In July, 2001, I had been working as director of new business for a prominent Beverly Hills staffing service. Business was good, but discernibly shaky starting in spring of that year, so there was no "new business" to be had.

My employer promised that we would "grow old and rich together" and, when it became quickly apparent that I was going to grow old, and he was going to grow rich, I promptly packed my bags, and headed for points north.

I ended up moving to a little country town that was nestled in the mountains, Ojai, where upon my arrival I finally got to do something I had wanted to do for about 20 years: find out more about a woman named Sylvia Beach, an American, daughter of a Presbyterian minister from Camden, New Jersey, who moved to Paris to fulfill her dream of opening a bookstore, Shakespeare & Company, and wound up becoming the first to publish the complete version of James Joyce's Ulysses.

The plan was to find out as much as I could about Beach and, of course, about James Joyce whose work I loved, and to write a stage play about it.

Before even unpacking, I decided to check out the town, and stopped into the local library to look for a book about Sylvia Beach.

On the wall of the library was a big poster of Shakespeare & Company, Sylvia Beach's bookstore, that was donated by a local artist. It was only supposed to be hanging there for a few weeks. How serendipitous, I thought, and asked the librarian if she had any books by Sylvia Beach, and she said, oh yes, there's one: Shakespeare & Company, her autobiography.

Well, I took a few deep breaths as this was the title I had intended for my play, and asked if she had a copy of the book. She told me there was only one copy, and it was over in Santa Barbara, about 30 miles away. I asked her to please call over there, ask them to hold it for me, and got into the car right away. It was my first time ever going to the library in Santa Barbara. I can't recall ever wanting to get my hands on a book that bad before, or since.

A few days later, walking down the street, I saw Malcolm McDowell sitting at a cafe having lunch with some friends. I felt like a character out of one of Cocteau's movies, "Le Testament d'Orphee," running into mythical figures on a busy boulevard in Paris.

When I gawked at him it produced such a memorable smirk that I immediately thought, I found my James Joyce! And, without his encouragement, it's likely the idea would never have seen the light of day. I needed an impetus to write the bloody thing, and there it was.

So, from late July through early September, I immersed myself completely in Beach's memoir, and read every biography of James Joyce I could get my hands on. What happened next was magical. Despite my own personal desire to write a stage play, Joyce came through for me as a character visually even more than verbally, and I felt compelled to commit the piece to the screen.

During the period we now know as 9/11, I was completely engrossed with writing the first draft of my screenplay that was intended to be as much an anti-war statement as a statement against censorship.

After all, Ulysses, a book widely considered the greatest novel in the English language, was banned throughout most of Europe when it was published on James Joyce's 40th birthday, February 2, 1922. The novel was banned under the U.S. Tariff Act, and copies confiscated by US Customs Officials, until December, 1933 when, thanks to Judge Woolsey's verdict, the book was allowed to enter the U.S. Notably, Ulysses was banned in Australia until 1953.

Ironically, the months leading up to 9/11 were spent working on a piece that reminded us of what it was like to live in a repressive climate, an intellectual environment that forced books like Lady Chatterley's lover from the shelves, and one that enabled an organization like PEN to form to defend freedom of expression. It was soon clear that, in the weeks, and months after 9/11, this country would regress to the state of faux patriotism, and egregious censorship that characterized the 1920's.

After those airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, something first witnessed on my computer screen, everything changed. The narcissistic, nationalistic, collective narcolepsy from which the planet suffered during the first and second world wars returned with a vengence.

In Ojai, American flags lined the main street. Ford Explorers brandished flag decals. We were back in the days of white picket fences, and apple pie. We had returned to the mindset that banned Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and one that found the Joyce's imagination execrable. Make no mistake, were it not for the Woolsey verdict precedent-setting ruling on pornography, Ginsberg's "Howl" would have been pulled from the shelves.

As a result of 9/11, America had suddenly returned to a worldview that would stop our better angels at the gate and demand to see a passport.

Curiously, much of what appears in my screenplay, the 1920's and 1930's following World War I, and the lead-up to World War II, the faux moralism, and faux patriotism, the wholehearted and full embrace of warfare. It's enough to convince anyone that Sylvia Beach would have found it as hard today as she did in the 1920's to have Mr. Joyce's novel distributed in the U.S.

What a sad statement, and what a sadder statement still that her story has yet to be told, and told as only I can.

Collective Responsibility and the President's Speech

2011-09-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

Many elements of the president's speech Thursday night were laudable, especially his support for collective bargaining.

Moreover, President Obama's proposals to extend unemployment benefits, and continue payroll tax cuts for workers, as well as provide tax incentives to employers to bolster hiring are certainly practical steps toward acknowledging the fiscal emergency this country is in. But, there were a few things the president left out.

First, Mr. Obama didn't say how much money he intended to target specifically for his Jobs For America bill, his public works program that would also hire back laid-off teachers, firefighters, and police officers.

While the figure the White House released prior to the speech is $450 billion, that figure wasn't confirmed during the speech, which was a politically savvy move as, were he to put forth a specific amount, Mr. Obama would have had to elaborate on how he intended to disperse that sum as part of his speech. This would have been hard to do in a thirty minute time spot. The Republican side of the aisle looked restless enough as they were already in danger of missing the NFL playoffs, so instead, as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney later intimated, the details will be announced early next week.

Secondly, and more importantly, President Obama didn't mention where he intends to get the funds from which is another astute move as venturing into the specifics of who benefited the most financially, over the past decade and in the post-9/11 era, would only roil and further inflame his congressional opponents.

And, yes, something else that went unmentioned was the upcoming tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, a rather stunning omission.

Some might say, this was a speech about the economy, so why go off on a tangent about the so-called war on terror? What does the war have to do with the estimated $14 million, or 9,1% of Americans who are presently out of work, not to mention the many millions more who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and have given up looking altogether?

The reference to ending federal subsidies to oil companies that have made out like bandits over the past ten years was an adroit way to address that issue, surely, but there was no mention of what can only be called institutionalized tax evasion that allows U.S. corporations to establish headquarters overseas in order to avoid paying taxes.

The Republicans have made reducing the corporate tax rate for corporations from 35% to 25% or less a core campaign issue. The Democrats must now show that the real issue is collecting corporate income tax, and changing the tax code so that it becomes a criminal offense for a firm to open a subsidiary overseas as a way to legally evade paying income tax.

Republicans are right about one thing. We don't need another stimulus package. We need perestroika. We need the kind of restructuring that speaks to a 21st Century need for economic justice and empowerment, and that legislatively opposes profiteering by the few at the expense of the many.

While the president ably, and admirably talks about the need for everyone to pay their fair share, and alludes to rolling back the Bush tax cuts to the upper 1% that should have been allowed to lapse in the first place, the underlying need is not for less government, but for a government that works for the people instead of the other way around, was nowhere in sight. While we are inching towards a plan, there is no sense of an overarching vision, and more than a plan now, we need a vision.

By avoiding mention of 9/11, the president also avoids taking a closer look at the infrastructure of terror set in motion ten years ago which, in and of itself, has cost the American taxpayer more than the $450 billion Mr. Obama has now put on the table. It might be politically dangerous to do so, but nothing substantive can happen when one sticks one's head in the sand. Until this president works to dismantle the terror industry, any steps he takes will largely amount to moving the furniture around on the Titanic.

It was Richard M. Nixon who said, back in October, 1969, "I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war," a position that has been shared by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

There's another major milestone coming up next month. October 3rd will mark the tenth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan which has since cost the U.S. taxpayer $452 billion, a figure that is daily growing. As the AFP reports, one day in Afghanistan costs the U.S. taxpayer about $300 million. The war in Iraq, over the past decade, has cost us nearly twice that, $794 billion, and also growing. http://costofwar.com/en/

It's true, of course, that under this president the defense budget has been reduced. Still, the combined costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, for 2012 alone, will be $118 billion. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA
Remember, too, this figure does not include the cost of operations in Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and everywhere else there is a U.S. military presence.

Despite requests by the Iraqi government for all U.S. forces to leave Iraq and for there to be no U.S. bases and, despite the president's assurances that he intends to comply with those wishes, some of his advisors are intent on keeping some 3,000 American troops in Iraq. According to the Congressional Research Service, it costs a whopping $390,000 a year to keep just one soldier in Iraq. http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm
Now, multiply $390,000 by 3,000, and you'll see how Mr. Obama may come up with the funds necessary to rehire all laid-off teachers, as well as rebuild roads and schools.

Oh, and as long as we're on the subject of 9/11, consider, too, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that top line Department of Defense contract spending nearly doubled over the past decade, increasing from $173 billion in 2001 to $390 billion in 2008, only to drop, marginally, to $368 billion in 2010. Surely, there's some room for austerity measures when it comes to defense contracts.

And, while many Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail object vocerifously to big government spending, and insist on austerity measures for you and me, they wouldn't even blink upon learning that, in the post-9/11 era, defense contract spending grew by nearly 10% annually, roughly twice that of non-contract spending. When he gives his next speech to the nation on September 19th, surely this is one "entitlement program" President Obama would like to address.

Any federal budget that provides for ten times as much spending on defense than education is one that reeks of moral bankruptcy.

For those who are upset about the president's willingness to make concessions on Medicare and are concerned about any future concessions on social security, and for those who are upset that Mr. Obama has agreed to review regulations that the business community think are less than profit-friendly, remember that his speech tonight, at its core, emphasized economic justice in a way that we have yet to see since Dr. Martin Luther King. For this, Mr. Obama is to be congratulated. Still, there are those, like myself, who would like him to address the obvious which is that war is not only our number one export, but it is our number one entitlement program.

President Obama's reference to John F. Kennedy was moving. It is important to remember, as JFK suggested, that all of man's problems are manmade. It is equally important to remember Mr. Kennedy's vision of "complete, and total disarmament" at a time when the world has faced a greater nuclear reactor disaster than Chernobyl, Fukushima, and at a time when we are, yet again, faced with another threat of terrorism.

Sadly, we are further away from John F. Kennedy's vision of disarmament now than ever before. We are also further away from collective responsibility for the economic mess this country is in now. Both parties must own their share of contributing to this downturn. The "free marketeer" deregulators have only shown that, without government oversight, the market will be free for them, and costly for the rest of us.

In the end, it is not merely the machinery of war that will have to be dramatically reduced, or dismantled, but the attitude of obstructionism, especially from the most radical elements of the Republican Party that will defeat anything this president proposes even when it doesn't come close to approaching the kind of restructuring needed to restore normalcy, let alone prosperity.

"Mean, Ornery, and Just Plain Wrong"

2011-09-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

Eric Cantor's ideological purity overrules common sense and heart

By Michael Winship

For Manhattan at least, last week was the weather week that wasn't. But the minor earthquake and weakened Hurricane Irene served as reminders of the caprice of nature and -- only a couple of weeks before the tenth anniversary of 9/11 -- the knowledge that at any given moment calamity literally is just around the corner.

Both also should serve as wake-up calls to those know-nothings and kleptocrats who reject the value of government and would like it rendered down to nothingness -- the helpless infant that Eric Cantor, Grover Norquist and their pals wish to see drowned in the bathtub.

I've never been through a major earthquake, although I've experienced some minor tremors, the first early on a New Year's Day in upstate New York while I was still a teenager. Just as you read about in animal behavior books, the dog, lying at the foot of my bed, apparently sensed something was up, jumped off and scurried out of the room mere seconds before the shaking began. Not a word of warning from her. So much for man's best friend.

The 5.8 we had on the afternoon of August 23 was like an aftershock I experienced out in Burbank a number of years ago, while working in post-production on a documentary. It felt like a truck had hit the building. This time, there was a thump and I looked out the window to see if something heavy-duty was rolling down Seventh Avenue. Nothing -- but the apartment kept wobbling up and down. Then another hard thump and more wobbling.

Hours later, just off the phone with my brother and sister in Washington, DC, who had been in a taxi and felt nothing, I noticed that several of the pictures on the walls were now hanging at peculiar angles. That was the extent of damage at my house.

As for Irene, I live in what the city has designated Evacuation Zone C, meaning we would be sent out of the neighborhood if a direct hit by a Category 3 or 4 storm -- or maybe an asteroid -- seemed imminent. That didn't happen, but my girlfriend Pat was moved to a hotel in midtown because the television newsroom at which she works needed her close at hand. Graciously, she invited me along.

(Coincidentally, the hotel was the first at which I ever stayed in New York City alone, also during my teenage years. The student rate back then was $12 a night.)

Fearing high winds, in parts of the hotel they weren't placing guests above the tenth floor. We had a small room, on the third floor away from the street, so little chance of windows blowing in, which was good, facing the airshaft, which was bad. One look out the window and we quickly drew the shades; it looked like the place where pigeons go to die -- or at least throw their trash. Maybe the storm would give it a good wash.

It didn't. Irene weakened as it reached Coney Island and we slept right through the main action, finally returning to my place early Sunday afternoon. Branches and leaves littered the streets and trees were down by a nearby playground. Plenty of rain and wind but nothing like the loss of life, power outages and billions worth of wind and flood damage inflicted outside the city. Beyond the media centers of New York and Washington, where reporters were quick to judge the storm “not so bad,” there was more than enough disaster to go around, bringing misery to millions.

I remembered Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes in June 1972. It roared through central Virginia and Pennsylvania up into the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, creating more damage than any hurricane in the United States before it. (That time, Agnes hit DC with a vengeance -- more than a foot of rain in parts of the area and 16 deaths as people were swept away in the floodwaters. I was there, and will never forget the usually placid Rock Creek roiling like Colorado River rapids. The Potomac overflowed into the C & O Canal, and a crowd of us stood in Georgetown watching the water slowly creep up lower Wisconsin Avenue.)

Fresh water from Agnes' floods flushed into the saltwater of Chesapeake Bay, damaging the seafood industry there for years, and the damage inflicted on the tracks of already financially crippled railways in the Northeast helped lead to the creation of the federally funded Conrail freight system (later divided into CSX and the Norfolk Southern Railway).

Storms like Agnes and Irene are insidious, often striking slowly over time in ways that can be unpredictable and far more damaging than anticipated. Government preparedness and response are critical. There was no Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1972; in fact, like Conrail, its origins can be traced, in part, to the Agnes disaster. Jimmy Carter signed it into creation seven years later. Since then, FEMA has had noteworthy ups and downs, performing reasonably well when those who believe in the value of government are in power, suffering lamely when they're not.

By all accounts, and at this writing, the White House, FEMA and other government agencies, including state and local, have acquitted themselves ably during the lead-up to Irene, the actual hurricane and its aftermath, although many remain in need. Eighteen FEMA teams were positioned along Irene's path from Florida to Maine, spreading north as the storm proceeded toward New England, providing support, supplies and experienced advice all along the way.

As even The Washington Post's resident smartass Dana Milbank had to admit, “Don't expect anybody to throw a tea party, but Big Government finally got one right... a rare reminder that the federal government can still do great things, after all other possibilities have been exhausted."

However, he continued, "Americans won't have long to savor this new competence in government. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] has already been hit with budget cuts that will diminish its ability to track storms, and FEMA, like much of the federal government, will lose about a third of its funding over the next decade if Tea Party Republicans have their way...

"Tea Partyers who denounce Big Government seem to have an abstract notion that government spending means welfare programs and bloated bureaucracies. Almost certainly they aren't thinking about hurricane tracking and pre-positioning of FEMA supplies. But if they succeed in paring the government, some of these Tea Partyers (particularly those on the coasts or on the tornadic plains) may be surprised to discover that they have turned a Hurricane Irene government back into a Katrina government."

Cuts have been approved by the House Appropriations Committee to the program that sends "hurricane hunter" aircraft into storms to measure data crucial for hurricane forecasts. Weather satellites are on the chopping block, too. At a May press conference, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco warned, "The future funding for our satellite program is very much in limbo right now... We are likely looking at a period of time a few years down the road where we will not be able to do severe storm warnings and long-term weather forecasts that people have come to expect today."

She noted that cutbacks had forced the agency to delay the launch of a much-needed satellite. As per NPR's Jon Hamilton, "It would have traveled in a polar orbit, beaming down information for weather and climate forecasts. As a result, when the current satellite doing that job stops working, there will be no replacement." It's these polar orbiting satellites that also warn of deadly tornadoes and other severe weather conditions.

In the short term, the cost of Irene means diverting monies from the government's Disaster Relief Fund, cash intended for tornado clean up in Joplin, Missouri, and other towns. Congress will need to vote for more, probably billions more. And hurricane season isn't even over yet. (As I write, New Orleans faces Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Katia lurks in the Atlantic.)

But even though his own Seventh Congressional District was damaged by Irene, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, our national scold, says no, not unless spending cuts are made elsewhere to offset the cost, dollar for dollar. (That includes earthquake damage, too, by the way, despite the fact that the epicenter of the August 23rd quake was in his Virginia district.)

"Just like any family would operate when it's struck by disaster," Cantor told Fox News, "it finds the money to take care of a sick loved one or what have you, and then goes without trying to buy a car or put an addition onto the house." It's more like "selling the family station wagon for spare parts," the website Media Matters said, and a far cry from 2004 when Cantor came running to fellow Republicans George Bush and Tom Ridge for no-strings-attached federal disaster assistance after Tropical Storm Gaston hit home. Nor when Bush was president did Rep. Cantor ever scream for offsets when it came to tax breaks for the wealthy, waging war, or -- surprise -- raising the debt ceiling.

What he's doing now is ornery, mean and just plain wrong -- ideological purity overruling common sense. Even New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, fresh off his pre-Irene "Get the hell off the beach" performance and no stranger himself to pigheadedness, declared, "We don't have time to wait for folks in Congress to figure out how they want to offset this stuff with other budget cuts... I don't want to hear about the fact that offsetting budget cuts have to come first before New Jersey citizens are taken care of."

Approving emergency aid in a national crisis is not to be held over our heads like some vindictive ransom note. It's neither penny wise nor pound foolish; it's immoral and, yes, un-American. This is not the way we were raised, not the way we were taught to treat one another. We lend a hand and figure out the costs later.

Yet in a time of national crisis, whether in or out of hurricane season, Cantor continues to spout pettifoggery and right wing Republicans go along with him, mindlessly nodding in obeisant agreement like so many bobble head dolls, even as the economy burns, infrastructure crumbles, funds are slashed and untold millions suffer.

Heckuva job, Eric.

########

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East and former senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

Remember this during Wednesday's Republican presidential debate

2011-09-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

Savor the irony of the second Republican 2012 presidential debate not only because it takes place in the Ronald Reagan Library, but because Reagan's economic policies are the best argument against the Republican Party platform today.

What, for the past few decades, has been loosely lumped under the
heading "Reaganomics," "supply side economics," or "trickle down," actually
manifested in ways strikingly familiar to what has been happening to public workers today in Wisconsin, and other states.

It was thirty years ago almost to the day, back on August 3, 1981, that a first term president, Ronald Reagan, ended the air traffic controller strike by firing striking air traffic controllers. As ABC reported that day, Mr. Reagan seemed convinced that "being tough is what the public wants." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5JSToyiyr8&feature=related Oddly enough, it seems to be what the public wants today, too, only from a Democratic president, Barack Obama.

A closer look at what it means to be tough also comes through, as Jonathan Kozol reported in Illiterate America, when at a time 60% of America's population, roughly one-third, were functionally illiterate President Reagan requested that federal funding for literacy programs be cut by 50%. Nor did it escape Kozol's notice that the intent for doing so was to create a permanent welfare class consisting mostly of people of color.

So, while conservatives are so fond of blaming Democrats for what they call a "welfare state," don't forget that Reagan's agenda of cutting funding for literacy programs in half is largely responsible for creating what can only be called a welfare class.

Mr. Reagan departed drastically from the policies of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, who not only identified the problem of illiteracy in this country but, as Kozol said, "defined it as an obligation he would not shirk."

Funding for literacy programs in the U.S., in the mid-1980's, was $100 million, and the president wanted to reduce its size to $50 million. What did he want to do with the rest? http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year1984_0.html In 1983, he proposed the establishment of strategic defense missiles, "Star Wars," as a way to shield against nuclear ballistics attacks, and in 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization was launched.

Arguably, government, or the public sector, thanks to Star Wars, quickly became the biggest growth industry under Ronald Reagan. Any attempt to make Reagan the guru of "smaller government" by any of the Republican candidates this Wednesday is simply laughable. Any arguments to the contrary by Eric Cantor, Rand Paul, or Paul Ryan merely show the extent of their disconnect with history.

Remember, during Wednesday's Republican debate, when any of the aspiring Republican presidents are asked about how they feel about cutting the defense budget, the failure to drastically cut defense can only be offset by reductions in so-called "entitlements" like literacy, and support for public education. In his 1984 federal budget, Reagan authorized nearly ten times more for Defense than Education, $269 billion for Defense, $29 billion for Education.

Oh, when you hear Romney, Perry, Paul, Bachmann et. al talk about the need to reduce the federal deficit, and cut spending, don't forget that the total spending for 1984 was more than seven times the federal defict, or $852 billion for spending to $185 billion deficit. It's fair to say Ronald Reagan spent his way out of recession.

President George W. Bush shouldn't feel bad. He wasn't the only one who came into office with a surplus, and left office with a deficit. Reagan did, too.

And, when you hear his Republican progeny like Perry, Romney, and Bachmann extol his virtues, and call him a job creator, keep in mind that it was a rise in unemployment in his first term that nearly kept Mr. Reagan from a second term, and yes, it was only by increasing the federal deficit that Mr. Reagan was able to not only stabilize employment, but grow it.

The fluctuations in the stock market pale by comparison to the ups and downs of unemployment under Reagan. At the start of 1981, and at the beginning of his first term, the unemployment rate in the U.S. was 7.5% and it grew to nearly 8.6% by January, 1982. By the end of 1982 and during his first term, official unemployment stood at nearly 11%, and increase of nearly 3%.

As the unemployment began to decrease, arguably as a result of federal spending, Mr. Reagan's chances for a second term grew proportionately. His popularity began to plummet not because he increased federal spending on military programs, and the federal deficit, but because of the Iran-Contra debacle.
http://reagan.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003988

So, where were all the deficit hawks when Ronald Reagan was in office? Where were all the obstructionists when Ronald Reagan raised the debt ceiling some eighteen times?

And, where were the folks who want to privatize everything from Social Security to Medicaid to public education, folks like Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, the folks who call for "smaller government" and, who like Sarah Palin, speak worshipfully of Reagan when, back in August, 1981, Ronald Reagan said "Government has to provide, without interruption, the protective services that are its reason for being."

Of course, that statement was made in the context of breaking the backs of air traffic controllers, but a former union organizer himself, Ronald Reagan was alarmingly prescient given the efforts of those like Scott Walker, and yes even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who chose to furlough state workers instead of government bureaucrats.

It was under Ronald Reagan that the concepts of deregulation and free markets became inextricably intertwined setting the stage for the massive
mortgage and housing fraud, and failure that resulted in the crash of 1987, and that has brought this country closer to total economic collapse than we have been in more than eighty years.

Maybe, in the end, Republicans running for the White House in 2012, might be wise to avoid skipping in the shadow of Ronald Reagan as those who walk with ghosts must learn to live with them. And, while some may hunger for another Ronald Reagan, we really can't afford one.

So it is...

2011-09-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

so it is
you come to
me in
a dream and
promise to
take me on
a flight
through
time only
nothing ever
happens
really
except for
a
cloud that
parts
obstinately
as it absconds
with a
piece of
the sun.

by jayne lyn stahl

.

"Omelet" sells out

2011-08-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

Thrilled to report that the staged reading of An Omelet for Vinnie, my play about the reunion of estranged father and son veterans at a halfway house in upper Manhattan, which was produced by the Malibu Stage Company Repertory Theatre, sold out last night!

Legendary actors Ed Asner and John Savage were joined by Malibu Stage Company actors Oscar Best and Sarah Phillips. Director Richard Johnson tells me the play was a huge hit.

Sometimes we get dealt a bad hand, which often happens in air travel these days, and I'm heartbroken to report that I wasn't able to attend the reading last night because the 1 p.m. flight I was scheduled to be on was delayed for close to five hours due to mechanical problems with the aircraft. And, as the customer service agent at the gate said, too, there was "no guarantee" that the plane would be airworthy in time to take off at 5:30 either; "if you guys wanna hang around to see if it takes off, that's okay," she said.

From late the night before, I had a strange sense of foreboding about the trip that I couldn't quite pinpoint. I'd never felt that way before a flight before, and I'm glad that the Delta pilot made the decision to put passenger safety first.

It's been a childhood dream to watch Ed Asner perform in one of my plays, and the reading Saturday night was a once in a lifetime event. Moreover, I'm a huge fan of John Savage.

I would have moved heaven and earth to be there, but it was just not possible, so I'd like to thank the cast, Richard Johnson, the artistic director, Geoffrey Ortiz, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Malibu Stage Company Repertory Theatre who produced the play, and everyone involved in making magic happen Saturday night for me, as well as all who were fortunate enough to have been there.

Michael Winship

2011-08-26T18:24:00.001-07:00

Rick Perry's Tall Tales of Texas
By Michael Winship

Although born and raised and raised in a small town in the Finger Lakes region of New York, I'm the hybrid child of an upstate NY father and a mother from Texas -- they met at Fort Hood (then Camp Hood) during World War II. And you thought different species couldn't mate.

As a result, we were the only kids on the block who said, "Y'all," or had relatives named Bubba, Vade, Hoyt and Cleburne. My mother's father was known in our family as Granddaddy Lloyd. CARE packages of unshelled pecans and Frito-Lay products (then largely unknown above the Mason-Dixon Line) would arrive at Christmastime. And among the books in our house was a buff-covered, dog-eared paperback titled Tall Tales of Texas.

I flipped through it over and over. Inside were wild and woolly stories of the outlaw Sam Bass, frontiersman and Texas Ranger Bigfoot Wallace, Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Even taller were tales of Pecos Bill, with his lasso made from a live rattlesnake, the toughest cowboy in the world; and his wife Slue-Foot Sue, riding down the Rio Grande on the back of a giant catfish.

So, courtesy of some Lone Star DNA and basic reading comprehension skills, I think I know a Texas tall tale when I hear one, and presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry's tales of "the Texas miracle" are as tall as they come.

Between December 2000 and December 2010, the state did have a net gain of 907,000 jobs, more than half the 1.6 million new jobs nationwide during that same period. But a lot of the state's success in job creation looks more like dumb luck than evidence of ole Pecos Perry's political prowess or expertise in governance. "It's not that the emperor has no clothes," Dan Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas, told the website AOL Jobs. "But he's got little more than a fig leaf over his crotch. It is a true fact, but he had nothing to do with it."

Perry points to deregulation and low taxes, including an incentive program called the Texas Enterprise Fund, said to have created 58,000 jobs, but there were many factors largely beyond his control, including increased trade between the United States and Mexico and the high price of gasoline that pumped revenue into the state, accompanied by new technologies for oil and gas extraction. In the August 15 New York Times, Clifford Krauss reported, "The oil and gas industry now delivers roughly $325 billion a year to the state, directly and indirectly. It brings in $13 billion in state tax receipts, or roughly 40 percent of the total, financing up to 20 percent of the state budget."

What's more, a lot of the increase has been funded -- say it ain't so, Pecos! -- by federal largesse, including President Obama's economic stimulus. In the last ten years, federal spending in the state has more than doubled to over $200 billion a year (thanks in large part to NASA and the many military installations in the state, including the aforementioned Fort Hood, one of the world's largest military bases and the biggest single employer in Texas).

Of all the US government jobs added in this country between 2007 and 2010, 47 percent of them were in Texas. According to Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Joe Biden, "Texas employment wasn't down much at all in these years, as the state lost only 53,000 jobs. But looming behind that number are large losses in the private sector (down 178,000) and large gains (up 125,000) in government jobs." Which shows, Bernstein goes on, that Texas has followed "a traditional Keynesian game plan: as the private sector contracts, turn to the public sector to temporarily make up part of the difference."

In 2009, Governor Perry made a show of rejecting $556 million in federal funds for unemployment, saying there were too many strings attached. In fact, that money was equal to only two percent of the more than $20 billion in stimulus money Texas did accept, including cash used to cover 97 percent of the state budget's shortfall for 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

This, in spite of GOP attacks on the public sector, Perry's claim that the stimulus was failed and misguided and the pledge in the announcement of his presidential candidacy that he would "work every day to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your lives as I can." As the August 20 Washington Post noted, "The significant role of government in Texas' relative prosperity stands in stark contrast to the 'go-it-alone' image cultivated by Perry, who credits a lack of government interference for fostering a business-friendly environment in Texas."

For those like Governor Perry who brag about being no-nonsense, freedom-loving cowpokes, it's a delusion that goes all the way back to the early settlement of the American West. As Patricia Nelson Limerick writes in her seminal history The Legacy of Conquest, "At any period in Western history, the rhetoric of Western independence was best taken with many grains of salt." Whether it was fighting Indians or gaining access to public grazing lands, the federal government has always been integral. "Nothing so undermines the Western claim to a tradition of independence," she writes, "as this matter of federal support to Western development...

"And yet humans have a well-established capacity to meet facts of life with disbelief. In a region where human interdependence has been self-evident, Westerners have woven a net of denial." Sounds familiar.

Accompanying Governor Perry's denial is cronyism and patronage, both good ole boy-style and corporate (of the $102 million in campaign contributions raised for his gubernatorial races, Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote, half came "from just 204 sources," and the Los Angeles Times reports, "Nearly half of those mega-donors received hefty business contracts, tax breaks or appointments under Perry.")

So, too, with greed comes hubris and shortsightedness. The Times' Krauss reported, "Critics, among them Democrats... have long complained that the state's economic health came at a steep price: a long-term hollowing out of its prospects because of deep cuts to education spending, low rates of investment in research and development, and a disparity in the job market that confines many blacks and Hispanics to minimum-wage jobs without health insurance."

A report from the policy research and advocacy group Demos and the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities notes "27 percent of Texas workers lack health insurance compared to 17 percent nationally. The ranks of the uninsured have grown steadily as access to employer-sponsored health insurance has declined... Fewer than half (48 percent) of the state's workers have access to a retirement plan at work, a figure that has plummeted since reaching a high of 61 percent in 2000."

Over the past twenty years, college costs in Texas have quadrupled, with the steepest jump occurring since tuition was deregulated by the state in 2003. Former first lady Barbara Bush observed in a February op-ed that the state ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores: "We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma... the United Way estimates that the price tag for dropouts to Texas taxpayers in $9.6 billion every year.” But the state's latest budget cut $4 billion from public schools.

A recent, four part series on Perry's Texas from a team at the Houston Chronicle reports, "After a decade of Perry-style frugality the Texas welcome mat is growing increasingly threadbare as the state struggles to accommodate a booming, young populace hoping to travel its roads, get educated in its schools, drink its water and access its health care system. During Perry's tenure the state has postponed investment or turned to debt to finance crucial infrastructure needs, experts say."

The average urban Texan loses a week a year to traffic delays on the state's "overburdened" highway system. While Perry boasts of luring thousands of doctors to the state, "lawmakers this year cut $805 million from doctors serving Medicaid patients" and "postponed $4 billion in Medicaid costs for payment in the next payment cycle." Texas is 48th out of 50 states in the number of physicians per 100,000 residents.

Perry doubts climate change is real, yet, "As Texas endures its most severe one-year drought in its history, state leaders have identified $53 billion in state investments needed to expand water capacity by 2060 but have not resolved how to pay for it. Unless Texas increases its water resources, experts say 83 percent of Texans will not have an adequate supply of water in times of drought." Perry issued a proclamation urging Texans to pray for rain.

With more bad news ahead, stagnant wages and an explosion in population and the labor force that now has unemployment advancing much faster than Perry's touted job growth, "the Texas miracle" is heading into a ditch.

Which brings to mind another tall tale, the old joke about the Texan who says to an Eastern visitor, "Yessir, I can drive across my ranch all day and all night and still not get to the other end." To which the visitor replies, "I know what you mean. I have a car like that, too."

########

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

"An Omelet for Vinnie"

2011-08-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

Elated to say that the Malibu Stage Company Repertory Theatre will be presenting a one-time staged reading of my play, An Omelet for Vinnie, starring legendary actors Ed Asner, and John Savage, on the evening of
Saturday, August 27th.

The play is about the reunion of estranged father and son, both veterans of different wars, in a halfway house in upper Manhattan.

Details at this link:

http://malibu.patch.com/events/malibu-stage-company-presents-an-omelet-for-vinnie

Some Final Thoughts on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn Case

2011-08-22T17:51:00.001-07:00

Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, had little choice but to drop the criminal charges against Dominique Strauss_Kahn.

While there is no question that whatever happened in the Hotel Sofitel room that day included sex, there is reasonable doubt that force was involved which is the maid's assertion, and physical force is required for a charge of forcible rape. To accuse someone of rape is immensely serious, and must result in the most severe penalties. When a woman is psychologically coerced to comply with a man's advances that does not meet the criteria of forcible rape. Period.

It was a grave mistake on the part of the Manhattan district attorney to rush to judgment based on any one person's story. In this case, it was the maid's story. The defendant wasn't even able to utter a sound before trial by media resulted in his having to give up control of the IMF, and forget about any presidential aspirations he may have had.

Apparently, this was not the first time this woman claimed she was raped. As the prosecution contends, there were many inconsistencies in her story.

While those who say that it was up to a jury to render a decision on her credibility, beyond reasonable doubt,

the defendant was held, and treated like a criminal, without being given even a fleeting benefit of the doubt. That is unacceptable.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn will return to Paris where he will face other charges which, while also questionable, will certainly raise serious questions about his mental stability, at the very least, as well as whether or not he is fit to hold public office. He is seriously sleezy, but seriously sleezy is not the same as rapist.

The allegations of the Sofitel maid must not be dismissed altogether. The issue of psychological coercion, of having someone in a position of authority command one to perform sex acts or lose one's job, must also be addressed.

Any relief this woman will have to depend upon a civil settlement. If, as it appears, her motive was to accuse a wealthy, and highly visible public figure of something that might destroy his career and, when that fails, go after him in a civil action, she has succeeded in her mission. That said, while the charges against Strauss-Kahn may be dismissed, one must not dismiss the maid completely, and instead examine just how rampant sexual harassment in the workplace is, as well as how to contain it.

Michael Winship

2011-08-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

How Washington Could Create Jobs Right Now
By Michael Winship

I like to ask friends about the oddest summer job they ever had. One talks about how he used to don a rubber suit every morning at a Sylvania electronics plant in Syracuse, NY, and climb into a tank, where he dipped television tubes into some sort of mercury solution. He now moonlights as a thermometer.

Another spent a summer walking from floor to floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. His job was to take a long stick and un-jam the mail chute that ran alongside the elevator banks from the highest floor of the building to the bottom. When he reached the basement, he took the elevator back to the top and started all over again, a Sisyphean postman.

A third worked in a factory that canned orange juice concentrate. In the process of filtering for impurities, the pulp was removed from the juice. But lots of people insisted on the authentic taste and texture of pulp in their o.j., so my friend's job was to sit with an ice pick and an enormous frozen block of pulp. As cans of concentrate came by on a conveyor belt, he'd chip off a bit and throw it in.

Much of that kind of summer work doesn't exist these days for teenagers or anyone else, not only because of our snail-like jobless recovery, but also the simple reality that technology has kissed goodbye to so many of our relatively mindless, rote occupations. My first college summer job was working at The New Republic magazine, where I was in charge of compiling the publication's semi-annual index, a deadly duty that required a typewriter and piles of index cards on which were noted subjects, authors, dates, etc. I then spent several days taping them onto long sheets of legal paper which were shipped off to the printer. My first published work. Today, computers compile and collate that kind of data in nanoseconds. Good for them and us, I guess, but at least it was a job when I needed one.

Technology, outsourcing, the colossal economic meltdown of 2008 -- according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in June, there were 4.5 out of work men and women for every available job. That's down slightly from 4.6 to 1 in May, but "still extremely high," reported Heidi Shierholz of the progressive Economic Policy Institute. "June marks two-and-a-half years straight that the job seeker's ratio has been substantially above 4-to-1... [That means] for three out of four unemployed workers, there are simply no jobs."

She continues, "Unfortunately, instead of helping the unemployment situation, the debt ceiling deal..... will slow growth and make joblessness worse." Gene Robinson of The Washington Post concurs and adds: "The Republican solution has been to eliminate jobs rather than create them. Last month, the economy added 117,000 jobs -- a performance so weak that unemployment changed little. The private sector actually added 154,000 jobs, but the public sector lost 37,000 jobs as Republicans continue to impose an austerity program at an inopportune moment."

Republican House members even oppose House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson's proposal to set up a joint select committee on job creation, with representatives from both parties, similar to the new, debt deal supercommittee that's supposed to carve at least $1.2 trillion out of the deficit. (Hard to believe Capitol Hill could ever resist creating yet another committee but go figure.)

Speaker John Boehner's spokesman says it "sounds like a scheme for more of the same failed 'stimulus' government spending," but as Gene Robinson noted, "The GOP seems to believe that a federal, state or local job somehow isn't a 'real' job. I'll bet most Americans know otherwise."

Because there actually are lots of solid proposals beyond the Republicans' broken record of more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, deregulation and continued exploitation of fossil fuels -- "their mantra," as Wall Street exec and former Treasury official Steven Rattner writes, of "repeal and retrenchment, devoid of new initiatives or a positive agenda."

There are jobs to be had, jobs for the creating, even good ones, if Washington can just pull its head out of... the hole it's dug for itself. But just as a starting point of reference, for all the GOP denigration of TARP, actions by the Federal Reserve and the Obama stimulus, according to a recent report issued by the non-partisan policy group Demos, "It's important to remember that we dodged a far more lethal bullet. The Great Recession could have turned into another Great Depression. The fact that it did not is attributable to the federal government's forceful macroeconomic intervention in late 2008 and early 2009. Economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi (one a former Clinton appointee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and the other a former economic advisor to Senator John McCain) have estimated that the nation's unemployment rate would have reached 16 percent rather than its actual 10.1 percent in the absence of this intervention."

The report, "Back to Work: A Public Jobs Proposal for Economic Recovery," written by Rutgers law and economics professor Philip Harvey, recommends an approach that "doesn't require us to wait for the economy to recover in order to put people back to work. It puts people back to work as a way of nourishing the recovery. It's a strategy for producing a job-led recovery rather than the jobless recovery we have been experiencing so far.

"The recovery strategy... is conceptually simple: Create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public's benefit. What this does for the unemployed is obvious. They get decent work while they wait for the recession to run its course... Benefits delivered... trickle up to the private sector, inducing private sector job creation that supplements the immediate employment effect of the job creation program itself."

A million temporary jobs in a federally administered, direct jobs creation program -- jobs in childcare, eldercare, education, public health and housing, construction and maintenance, recreation and the arts. And as many as 414,000 jobs created outside the program. Annual cost in program spending: $46.4 billion. Actual net cost, taking into account revenues and savings: only $28.6 billion. How? For a fuller explanation, you can read the complete Demos report at: http://www.demos.org/pubs/BackToWork.pdf. (Full disclosure: I'm a fellow at Demos.)

By the way, Harvey adds, "We currently need about 8.2 million more jobs to reduce the nation's unemployment rate to 4.5%. Creating that many jobs in a program like the one described... would require a net increase in federal spending of about $235 billion during the first year... If the Bush-era tax cuts had been allowed to expire at the end of 2010, the federal government would have collected about $295 billion in additional revenue during 2011. This would have been more than enough to cover the cost of the job program."

Aspects of the report's proposals are mirrored by legislation soon to be introduced by Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky -- the Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act. Over two years, her plan would cost $227 billion and would be paid for by tax increases for those earning more than $1 million and $1 billion, closing corporate tax loopholes and ending subsidies for big oil. She says such programs as a School Improvement Corps, a Park Improvement Corps, a Community Corps, and the Neighborhood Heroes Corps, among other such New Deal-echoing creations, would create 2.2 million jobs and decrease unemployment by 1.3 percent.

Before you uncase your dueling pistols or put quill to parchment in an angry letter to the Times, for those of the right and center who seethe that Rep. Schakowsky's plan veers too close to the days of FDR or even the sunny side of Bolshevism, there's also a proposal floating about from the Alliance of American Manufacturing, a coalition of leading manufacturers and the United Steelworkers, that focuses on private sector job creation. One manufacturing job, they say, supports four or five others.

Among its provisions, according to AAM's executive director Scott N. Paul: a national infrastructure bank leveraging capital for transportation and energy projects (a similar proposal is favored by President Obama); reshaping the tax code "in a revenue neutral way to provide incentives for job creation and investment," including R&D tax credits and lower tax rates for manufacturing in America; "buy America" provisions for all federal spending; expediting small business loans; and shifting "some education investment to rebuilding our vocational and technical skills."

I especially like this one: "Kick any CEO off of federal advisory boards or jobs councils who has: (1) not created net new American jobs over the past five years, or (2) is expanding the company's foreign workforce at a faster rate than its domestic workforce. Replace them with CEOs who are committed to investing in America. Shame is a good motivator."

The president will make a major speech on jobs shortly after Labor Day. According to the Associated Press, "It is likely to include tax cuts to help the middle class, a build-up-America construction program that goes beyond any infrastructure proposal Obama has had already, and targeted help for the particularly worrisome group of people who have remained unemployed for many months in a row."

All good, but unfortunately, if the past is any indication, what President Obama proposes will not be as bold or far-reaching as many of the ideas presented above. It certainly won't include my personal favorite, as suggested by Steve Benen at Washington Monthly's "Political Animal" blog: "Have the White House take the several hundred letters GOP lawmakers have sent to the executive branch since 2009, asking for public investments, and let President Obama announce he'll gladly fund all of the Republicans' requests that have not yet been filled. This is especially important when it comes to infrastructure, a sector in which GOP members have pleaded for more investment in their areas...

"If these Republican lawmakers have identified worthwhile projects in need of government spending, which they themselves insist will boost the economy, why not start spending the money GOP officials want to see spent?"

Why not indeed? Alas, such an idea runs smack into more deficits: a deficit of irony among Republicans, certainly, but worse, a deficit of commitment and vision from a White House which until now at least, has been more focused on the pragmatic middle, despite a gainsaying opposition that yields nothing. Still, as Benen writes, "When Republicans say 'no jobs, no way,' at least the nation will be able to see where both parties stand, and then choose accordingly next year." Amen.

########

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

Mitt Perry?

2011-08-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

Think about it, what would the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, need for a winning ticket in the 2012 presidential race?

As John F. Kennedy realized back in 1960, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, it is hard to win any presidential race without a Southern stronghold like Texas.

But, it's even harder for Republicans. As an article in CNN first reported, no Republican ticket has succeeded in winning the White House in the past thirty years or more without a Texan as part of the team.

So, there is nothing curious about Perry's grand entrance recently in the Republican fold. Is his decision to run, as Perry asserts the result of his wife's coaxing, or perhaps somehow related to the same folks who coaxed him to change parties after being a Democrat for years?

It is, after all, about packaging. Essentially, Perry is Romney with a bit more testasterone maybe. They're both wedded to big business. They both morph according to political convenience. Both are uber-politicans. Both tout their business acumen which, roughly translated, means they're effective in the sack with corporate special interests. Both seem to respect corporate personhood more than human personhood. And, both Perry and Romney will benefit from the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United. Romney is indeed the Tweedle Dee to Perry's Tweedle Dum.

So, why then wouldn't Romney and Perry join forces? They seem to complement each other like two sides of the same coin. It would come as no surprise were Gov. Romney to invite Gov. Perry to be his vice president. Why? Again, go back over the Republican administrations of the past thirty years or more, starting with Ronald Reagan, et voila, there's been a Texan on the ticket.

And, in a Shakespearean twist of irony, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts' decision to invite another Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, led to passage not only of the Civil Rights Act, but the Voting Rights Act, and sweeping legislation for desegregation.

Even Democrats have been forced to pay lip service to the so-called Southern strategy that Perry, Bachmann, Paul, and Palin represent, a strategy first adopted by Richard Nixon, and continued under Pres. George H.W. Bush, that other "Texas miracle."

The Southern strategy, as the New York Times first reported back in 1996, was to win elections by exploiting racial antagonism harbored by Southern white voters against African-Americans using the euphemism of states' rights. The "states rights" argument has often been code for circumventing the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Why should
the Republican nominating process in 2012 be any different?

To the contrary, what's happening now is remarkably similar to what happened half a century ago. John F. Kennedy, a Northerner, found himself partnering up with Lyndon B. Johnson, the quintessential Southerner.

But it wasn't until Richard Nixon came along that the ascendancy of Southern white supremacy became a political strategy.

Rick Perry's comet-like entry into an otherwise insipid Republican field reeks of of the tea party's promise "take our country back." And, whether he likes it or not, Mitt Romney will have to fast rewind to another president, Ronald Reagan, and also find himself partnering up with a Texan.

By the time Labor Day 2012 rolls around, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry will congeal so effectively that, like peanut butter, they will simply come to be known as "Mitt Perry."

Rick Perry by the Numbers

2011-08-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, now that Texas governor, Rick Perry, is officially a candidate for president, and while he's busy putting out the pablum that he wants to "get America working again," as he told a South Carolina audience yesterday, it might be helpful to look at some statistics about just how that state has changed while he's been at the helm:

First, Gov. Perry would like you to think he is for smaller government, but as when he became the governor of Texas in 2000, the total spending by the Texas state government was approximately $49 billion, according to Economic Policy Journal. http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/06/first-look-rick-perry.html
Perry nearly doubled the total spending by Texas state government in the past ten years.

Secondly, Despite anything the governor would like you to think, and according to usdebtclock.org, the debt to GDP ratio in Texas is 22.9% and the debt per citizen is $10,645. http://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-texas-debt-clock.html In California, a state that is in a state of fiscal emergency, the debt to GDP ratio is just 18.7% and the debt per citizen is only $9932. Don't expect the Perry campaign to announce these figures any time soon.

And, let's not forget, that the total debt for the state has nearly doubled since Perry took over as governor back in 2000, per the Web site Politifact. http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/mar/04/bill-white/white-says-texas-debt-has-doubled-under-perry/

In terms of the myth of job creation, yes, as governor, Perry created about a million new jobs, but as NPR reports, the jobs he created "are not sufficient for families to support themselves." http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/08/13/139603925/perry-jumps-into-presidential-race-touting-texas-job-growth Texas has underfunded its medicaid program, as well as postponed its payments to schools and, per NPR, many thousands of teachers can expect to receive layoff notices.

Mr. Perry would also probably want you to forget that he is a lapsed Democrat with religious extremist ties that make the Rapture folks look like they play for the little league.

As Rachel Maddow reports, the stadium prayer event the governor did a week ago links him directly to religious leaders who think that Hurricane Katrina was the lord's way of retaliating against the sinners of New Orleans, and who say there is a direct correlation between man's sins and violent storms, flooding, and even the horror of the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima. http://www.politicususa.com/en/rachel-maddow-outs-msms-downplay-of-rick-perrys-extremist-supporters The teflon Texan is spiritually in bed with folks that make Michele Bachmann's wildest statements seem moderate by comparison. And, like that other Texan whose seat he inherited when George W. Bush ran for president, Rick Perry thinks he has a direct line to the Almighty, too, so should he be elected, we can certainly expect more jihads in the name of a war on terror.

Listening to Gov. Perry babble on about the sins of regulation, and how this has messed up the so-called free market reminds one of another strikingly handsome, charismatic figure, Ronald Reagan, and like the former president, Mr. Perry appears to have completey forgotten his humble Democratic beginnings. As the voters learn more about his far-fetched claims of economic prowess, this will cost him bigtime in November, 2012.

(with thanks to a comment on my HuffPost article for this information)

From Michael Winship

2011-08-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

Big Business Has Been Very Very Good to Mitt Romney
By Michael Winship

As the noted philosopher and rock and roll irritant David Lee Roth once said, "Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it."

I often think of his sage words as I watch the early days of the 2012 political campaigns. For the phrase "buy you a yacht," simply substitute "buy you an election." Then behold the havoc wrought by Citizens United and other court decisions that have unleashed a mudslide of corporate cash into our electoral system, much of it anonymous, hurling the average citizen out of the democratic equation.

An estimated $40 million will be spent in those nine Wisconsin State Senate recall elections -- most of it from outside, third-party interest groups and twice what was spent last year on all 116 of the state's legislative races. Most believe President Obama will raise a billion dollars or even more for his re-election bid; enough, as NPR's Peter Overby observed, to buy up all the TV ads on the Super Bowl -- four times.

The Republican nominee may also raise and spend a billion. If it turns out to be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, buying that electoral yacht will be a tad easier than for others. Back in 2007, The New York Times estimated his worth at nearly $350 million, and he plowed a reported $44.5 million of his own money into his 2008 presidential campaign.

Certainly, there has been a deep strain of noblesse oblige throughout the history of American governance, the wealthy feeling the urge (and having the disposable income and free time) to come to the aid of their country, both for good and ill. But with Romney, so much a complaisant creature of the corporate culture that dropped us into our current mess without a parachute, we have a tsunami-in-waiting.

As he scurries to the right, running away from his moderate record as Massachusetts governor (although there's no escaping the irony of this week's reports that the state's upgrade to an AA rating from Standard & Poor's during his tenure was achieved, in part, through tax hikes), it's illuminating to remember not only how Romney amassed his personal fortune, but also how the fundraising apparatus surrounding him probes for yet more ways to scam the system. Not content with the freewheeling liberties already granted by the courts, his money machine relentlessly pursues ever more insidious routes to the fattest wallets and checkbooks.

The opening chapters may be familiar to you. As a June 2007 article in the Times reported, Romney's personal fortune was amassed from his leadership at the private equity firm Bain Capital. "Mr. Romney's Bain career -- a source of money and contacts that he has used to finance his Massachusetts campaigns and to leap ahead of his presidential rivals in early fund-raising... exposes him to criticism that he enriched himself excessively, sometimes by cutting jobs to increase profits." The newspaper quoted Boston University business professor James E. Post: "Increasingly, this world of private equity looks like a world of robber barons, and Romney comes out of that world."

A similar article that same month and year in The Boston Globe noted that Bain Capital specialized in leveraged buyouts and cited MIT Sloan School of Management professor Howard Anderson. Bain, he said, would do "everything they can" to increase the value of the companies it bought. "The promise [to investors] is to make as much money as possible. You don't say we're going to make as much money as possible without going offshore and laying off people."

Stephen Colbert may have summed it up best: "Mitt Romney knows just how to trim the fat. He rescued businesses like Dade Behring, Stage Stories, American Pad and Paper, and GS Industries, then his company sold them for a profit of $578 million after which all of those firms declared bankruptcy. Which sounds bad, but don't worry, almost no one worked there anymore."

Another of the companies sucked into Bain's gravitational pull was the medical testing firm Damon Corp. that, according to the Globe, “later pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government of $25 million and paid a record $119 million fine.

"Romney sat on Damon's board. During Romney's tenure, Damon executives submitted bills to the government for millions of unnecessary blood tests. Romney and other board members were never implicated... But court records suggest that the Damon executives' scheme continued throughout Bain's ownership... Bain, meanwhile, tripled its investment. Romney personally reaped $473,000."

But unlike the companies it bought, at Bain itself, failure could be rewarded -- if your name was Mitt. Take a look at the sweetheart deal Romney got when he took over Bain Capital, a spinoff of consulting firm Bain & Company where he had been an executive. In an arrangement any start-up enterpriser would kill for, as per the Globe, founder Bill Bain guaranteed that if the Bain Capital experiment tanked, "Romney would get his old job and salary back, plus any raises handed out during his absence." What's more, if he proved unfit for the task, "Bain agreed to craft a cover story if necessary, promising to bring Romney back to the consulting firm and explain Romney's return as a matter of his being more valuable to Bain as a consultant."

Nice. No wonder Romney told an Iowa crowd this week that, "Corporations are people, my friend." Like Garrett Morris' Chico Escuela in the early days of Saturday Night Live, big business been berry berry good to him. Would that it had been berry berry good to the hundreds fired at companies taken over by Bain Capital.

Yes, corporate people power has served Romney well, especially when it comes to political fundraising. As Huffington Post reported this week, "According to disclosure reports filed at the end of July, 61 registered lobbyists and five lobbyist-linked political action committees contributed $137,650 to Romney's campaign between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2011. The former Massachusetts governor raised more money from lobbyists during this period than all of his competitors combined... Craig Holman, legislative representative for the watchdog group Public Citizen, told HuffPost that Romney's lead in lobbyist cash 'strongly suggests that Romney is the favored candidate for wealthy special interest groups, especially K Street. They clearly think that they can get their foot in the door with Mitt Romney.'"

Then there's this in the July 20 Washington Post: "The largest corporate sources of money for Romney are mostly finance industry leaders, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. Goldman Sachs employees have given nearly a quarter of a million dollars in contributions... The keys to his success appear to be large donors and contributors from the New York area. Nearly three-quarters of Romney's money came from donors giving the maximum $2,500 contribution, and one in eight of Romney's donors live in New York City and its suburbs." Of the $18 million raised by his campaign in the second quarter this year, one million came from a single trip to New York in May, including a University Club event crammed to its poshly appointed walls with banking executives.

So it's not surprising that in the Romney camp, the creative accounting techniques perfected by Wall Street are a specialty. It was again The Boston Globe -- which seems to have covered Romney's political ambitions since they first danced in his head -- that wrote back on April 15, "The former Massachusetts governor has become a master of a controversial but legal fund-raising technique that relies on a network of loosely regulated state political action committees to collect those funds."

Example: four members of the Marriott hotel family, close friends with the Romneys and fellow Mormons, wrote checks totaling $215,000 to Romney's campaign, far more than an individual is allowed to give to federal political committees. "Romney, more fully exploiting the system he employed in the 2008 election cycle, got around those restrictions by taking in contributions through political committees set up under the rules of individual states. Most of the money was then transferred to Romney's federal political action committee, Free and Strong America, and used to pay the salaries of top aides, political consultants, and traveling expenses."

Consider, too, the super PAC Restore Our Future, supposedly independent, but run by former Romney political aides in support of their man's candidacy. Restore Our Future raised $12.2 million in the first half of 2012. Under the new, relaxed rules it can raise unlimited funds but must disclose who contributes and cannot legally coordinate with the candidates themselves or the candidates' official campaign committees. Of Restore Our Future's 90 wealthy donors so far, the ubiquitous Marriotts among them, four gave a million dollars apiece. One was John Paulson, described by the website Politico as "a New York hedge fund billionaire who became famous for enriching himself by betting on the collapse of the housing industry."

The other three allegedly are corporations but none of them conduct any real business. Two, Eli Publishing and something called F8 LLC, each list the same Provo, Utah, address as trusts set up by the families of two executives at the anti-aging product company Nu Skin Enterprises. Nu Skin founders and fellow Mormons Stephen Lund and Blake Roney were big contributors to Romney's first White House campaign in 2008. (For what it's worth, twice in the nineties, Nu Skin was hauled before the Federal Trade Commission and paid a total of $2.5 million to settle allegations of unsubstantiated product claims.)

The other shell company, W Spann LLC, was even more mysterious. As first reported by Michael Isikoff of NBC News, it was dissolved only months after it was created, and just two weeks before Restore Our Future reported the company's donation. As Isikoff wrote, "Campaign finance experts say the use of an opaque company like W Spann to donate large sums of money into a political campaign shows how post-Watergate disclosure laws are now being increasingly circumvented."

After days of media demands and questions, the man behind W Spann finally came forward: Edward Conard, a retired managing director of -- surprise -- Bain Capital. But he only stepped up after the groups Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center requested investigations by the Justice Department and the Federal Elections Commission. He made his donation "after consulting prominent legal counsel regarding the transaction," Conard said, "and based on my understanding that the contribution would comply with applicable laws."

Phony businesses set up for the sole purpose of laundering campaign money and shielding who's really behind massive contributions? The donors responsible for the dummy corporations all say they have noting to hide. So why hide it? Maybe to keep their distance, because Restore Our Future could be planning attack ads on Republican rivals and President Obama that will be harsher and more truth bending than anything Romney and his nearest and dearest can officially support.

We need to discover this and other answers before the money machine completely supplants the voting machine, and any last chance to have our voices heard is permanently stilled by cold hard cash.

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Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS

Rick Perry and J.R. Ewing: Both Bad for Jobs

2011-08-11T17:48:00.000-07:00

Now it's well, almost, official that Texas governor Rick Perry will throw his Stetson in the ring and seek his party's presidential nomination, though it's taking longer for him to declare than it takes most cowboys to die from a bullet wound in westerns.

And, right around the time the Republican National Convention meets in Tampa next August, Dallas will be back on the map not only because of Rick Perry, but because the hit TV series of thirty years ago will be making a comeback. While the show's producers might call this a coincidence, they couldn't have picked a better time to debut. The comparisons between the "Dallas" on TV, and the kind of country Rick Perry would work to preserve are irresistible.

Okay, I confess to have watched "Dallas" often myself, and to be captivated not just by the relationship between J.R. and Bobby, but by the Mercedes sports cars, and perfectly chiseled features of opulence. I found myself quickly sucked up into a vacuum of unparalleled luxury, and simultaneously excluded from it for, during the day, I joined the multitudes who were either working a nine to five job, or looking for one. The last part of the newspaper one might expect to find J.R. Ewing mulling over is the "help wanted" section. It's no easier to imagine Rick Perry mulling over the classifieds either unless he's looking to buy a new yacht.

Since he took over as governor of Texas, an office abandoned by George W. Bush in 2000 when he entered the presidential race, Rick Perry has been about as good for job growth as J.R. Ewing.

Yes, it's true that Perry will boast that, on his watch, Texas added more than a million new jobs, more any other state and, according to ABC News, it's equally true, and widely known, that they were predominantly low paying jobs. What the governor may not be too quick to admit though is that Texas ranks up at the top of the list of states having the most minimum wage workers.

The great partiarch of that Dallas ranch comes to mind when you consider how a governor could let an innocent man be executed knowing considerable evidence existed that showed the man was innocent. Consider the character of a public official who, when confronted with the man's likely innocence, opts to fire members of a commission working for the man's exoneration, and has the man executed anyway. If that doesn't smack of J.R. Ewing, what does?

Of course, there are differences, too. Rick Perry isn't an oil man like J.R. Ewing, though most of the state's economy still depends on oil and gas, and he hasn't moved one finger in the direction of changing that.

Do we really want a commander-in-chief who hails from a state that not only has had the most growth of minimum wage jobs in the past decade, but also the most executions, and how will this help contain our global military efforts?

Moreover, while Texas is one of the fastest growing states in the country, and has the second largest population, how does the state legislature, and its Republican governor plan to address the state's gaping budget deficit of $27 billion? By cutting funding for public schools by nearly $5 billion. According to the Huffington Post, layoffs in education and state agencies combined will cost about 100,000 workers their jobs. Keep this in mind when you watch the airwaves inundated with advertisements extolling Perry's prowess at job creation. Remember, too, that he'd rather hire more ranch hands and gardeners for J.R. Ewing than teachers, and fire fighters.

After all, when was the last time you saw gardeners involved in collective bargaining? Surely not in feudal times, and this is exactly where the governor of Texas, and his radical right cronies, would like to time travel most.

In fairness, Texas isn't the only state targeting education as a way to remedy their growing budget deficits. California, New Jersey, and Wisconsin have also done so. Notably, though, in the past decade, this has only happened on a Republican governor's watch. If there's ever a question as to who should be forced to endure the gravest austerity measures, make no mistake, it will be those least represented by unions.

The idea of balancing the budget on the backs of state workers is a heinous one, and that anyone could be taken seriously as a presidential candidate who would greenlight such a policy smacks of the right wing reactionaries who, with their phobic preoccupation with the federal budget deficit, mask their real concern which is keeping the wealth exactly where it has been for the past thirty years in the upper 2%, and insulating it from attack.

Public workers have something else that folks like Governors Walker and Perry want to do away with, strong unions. It's not the size of federal government, per se, that Tea Party supporters like Rick Perry think needs shrinking. They want to divest public unions of their power. In a clash of management and labor, Gov. Perry wants to ensure that labor loses, or if they get anything, what they get amounts to little more than the crumbs from the table.

It's not in the least surprising that Rick Perry joins the cowards chorus who want to see the public sector take the largest hit as he happens to be a fan of the Tea Party, a group that claims to support smaller government.

Yet, though he inveighed against the size of the federal government, as ABC News also reports, that didn't stop Governor Perry from taking every federal dollar of stimulus money he could get his hands on.

The next time you're at a rally, and you hear a candidate for public office advocate for smaller government, ask them if they believe in smaller government enough that they would resign to make it happen.

It's going to be hard for Gov. Perry to keep a straight face when he tries to talk about balancing the budget during the presidential campaign season in light of how he balanced his state's budget. It's also going to be too easy to defuse any pablum he puts out about job creation. If given half a chance, there would be no public sector if it were up to Perry. Walker, Bachmann, and Rand Paul, there would be only a "private" and a "less private" sector.

The truth is, Texas is now doing to public workers what Wisconsin did. Were the White House to be handed over to Rick Perry by election, or by Supreme Court, we'd see union busting unlike anything we've seen since the days of Ronald Reagan not to mention even greater cuts to education, law enforcement, and social agencies.

A Rick Perry presidency would only benefit those who are part of his cabal and hurt those who aren't. In 2007, he ordered all 12 year old girls vaccinated against HPV not because he's health conscious, but because a lobbyist for the HPV vaccine also happened to be a close personal friend. Sounds like something right out of the J.R. Ewing playbook.

As ABC notes, something else that might bring a big smile to J.R.'s face is if he were to hear Gov. Perry tell a rally of Tea Partiers, back in 2009, that having Texas secede from the union is indeed "an option."

So, if you find yourself seduced by that big Texan smile, the allure of massive amounts of testasterone at play, if you miss the cowboy mystique of his predecessor, George W. Bush, another Texan and former president, remember this: the only union Gov. Perry is interested in is the kind you can secede from.