By Don Klein
Ever since the Tea Party has emerged as a potent force on the American political scene the focus of their attention has been to reduce governmental spending. This has led to a Republican willingness to cripple important programs to attain these goals.
Reducing government spending is an honorable goal. The United States is the world's largest debtor nation and it spends much more than it can afford. Its debt payments alone are close to half of the funds it needs to operate.
In reducing expenditures the problem arises in determining what should be cut from a budget that runs along a varied path from important humane safety net costs to immense national defense outlays.
In addition to budget cuts, the Tea Party argues against new expenditures that are not accompanied by equivalent other budget cuts. On the face of it that is not such a bad idea but when you include the demands by Republican partisans, of which most Tea Party adherents are apart, the country faces a serious dilemma.
The Republican-Tea Party position evolves into a crisis mode for the middle class taxpayer. The RTP coalition wants to cut what they call “entitlements” and refuses to consider increases in corporate or personal income taxes even when exclusively directed to the wealthy class.
They would rather load the financial burden of recovery on the backs of the lowest economic element in society by chipping away at Medicare and Social Security while shielding the most affluent in our society from any additional tax costs. It should be noted that most senators and a large number of House members are in the higher income category.
There are tons of money the government can save if they really wanted to. First of all, you might ask why we are still in Iraq. The war is over but the Iraqi government still wants our troops there as a stabilizing force.
The solution: Since they need a reliable force to ballast their shaky democracy shouldn’t the Iraq government pay the cost of US troops on their territory. Bodyguards don’t come cheaply.
Also, we are spending tons of money to defend the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. The US had three goals in Afghanistan. 1, to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Done. He is dead, 2, to support the Afghans against the Taliban. The Afghan government is discussing an accord with the Taliban surreptitiously. Why should the US. stay?, and 3, to support the so-called next door ally, Pakistan. Since Pakistan is unreliable and untrustworthy as a ally, we have no need to support them any further.
The solution: Get out of Afghanistan.
The US maintains a force of 50,000 troops in Germany 66 years after the end of World War II, thousands more in Japan, Korea and many other locales around the globe. These countries have built up their own military and can take care of their own needs.
The solution: Close these garrisons and bring the troops home and then reduce the size of the military to a smaller but more efficient and deadly force, highly skilled in the task of defending the homeland.
There are scores of other vestigial projects left over from previous generations that cost billions despite no longer making sense or remaining viable. Let’s look at these residual federal fund guzzlers, identify them and ax them before we draw the curtains at the heart of current human needs like Medicare.
At the same time we should increase the salaries of members of Congress to at least a million dollars each to eliminate the chances they will be influenced by bribes and as a lure to get better people to run for office. It will also make the penalty for losing a seat in Congress of such financial magnitude that it could eliminate corruption in office.
The salary increase would cost the country about $450 million more than presently, but could save hundreds of billions in wasted funding of projects pushed by influential lobbyists.
Other cutbacks should be made in subsidies to profitable organizations, also ending individual tax shelters and eliminating earmarks as a device for congresspersons to enhance their districts as the costs to the rest of us.
Talking about earmarks, there is an interesting development among the Tea Party members. They have clearly stated publicly that they will not approve any government expenditures, that is, except those earmarks they want for their own districts.
They are willing to cut into Medicare funds which help millions of seniors at the same time they are trying to collect federal dollars for pet projects that favor their constituents. Another case of political hypocrisy.
The New York Times reports that Tea Partyers “have pushed for projects in their districts, including military projects opposed by the president,, replenishing beach sand lost to erosion, a $700 million bridge in Minnesota and a harbor dredging project in Charleston, S.C.”
The information was uncovered by an examination of spending bills, new releases and communications with federal agencies and from information gained through the Freedom of Information Act.
“...Nearly two dozen (Tea Party) freshmen have sought money for projects that could ultimately cost billions of dollars, while calling for less spending and banning pork projects” for others. The Times reported.
As an old friend of mind used to say, the budget cutting process depends on whose ox is being gored. If it affects the other guy it is all right. He also said we are all hypocrites to a certain degree but politicians make a career of it as they seek quick (usually poor) solutions to solve complicated problems.
Showing posts with label Friday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday. Show all posts
Friday, July 22, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Let's talk about duopoly
By Don Klein
Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, refers to the current political condition of the United States as a duopoly. He says he is in favor of a third party in the country.
I don’t know about the viability of a third party in America so I’ll put that subject aside for the moment, but he certainly is right on target with his duopoly label. The dictionary describes duopoly as “an oligopoly limited to two sides or the preponderant influence or control by two political powers.”
That aptly describes this country for the last several decades. It is a wonder anything gets done, and little has. As we look to the immediate future it appears less likely there will be much accomplished in the next 18 months unless the public acts up and demands a change.
It is a simple circumstance – or a deadly situation which could spell doom for the American era – on the one side we have a party dedicated to protecting the rich and powerful and the giant corporations that breast-feed them.
On the other side we have a political party that caters to the needs of the middle class, supports social relief programs, sees value in ordinary people, but like the proverbial Ferdinand the Bull is timid beyond belief about taking forceful action.
The Republicans are obstinate in their belief in small government with limited spending and the lowest possible taxes on people and businesses while the Democrats believe that only through energetic government programs can the masses be helped. They feel the well-to-do and corporations should pay more taxes to meet those needs because they have more to start with.
They are both stubborn in their beliefs and hypocritical in their actions. The Republicans like to label the Democrats as Socialists yet they support massive government giveaways to agricultural giants, oil companies and multi-billion dollar industrial combines. And, of course, they love tax loopholes and tax cuts for the rich. They’ll never admit it but that is their form of socialism.
The Democrats like to present themselves as the party of the people but lack any sense of urgency or stomach to fight to prove it. When they held a majority in both houses of Congress after the 2008 election they twiddled away the time until the death of a member deprived them of a cloture protection in the Senate and rendered the party helpless.
Whether they purposefully allowed the opportunity to escape them or really didn’t want to deliver on their promises to the little guy is not clear, but the Democratic Party cannot escape the charge of being incompetent and dysfunctional.
So here we have two parties which through the years allowed the government to tight walk at the edge of disaster inviting a financial catastrophe to finally turn the country into a debtor nation of extreme proportions three years ago without resolving even a portion of their differences.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to realize that the current state of affairs does not allow them to continue in partisan upmanship. The nation is crying for leadership, needs hard decisions and all it gets is drivel.
President Obama, the ostensible leader of the country, seems to spend most of his time sitting on the sidelines like a sagacious Guru seeking consensus which never comes while the Republicans shuffle the deck of the most illogical backwater assortment of has-beens and unknowns to lead the party into the 2012 presidential elections.
The people are left to wonder if this is the end of the American dream?
Maybe it’s too much to hope for an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt to come to our rescue in these dire times, but most voters will settle for at least someone who acts appropriately in their behalf. But none seem to exist in today’s world.
As much as many hoped Obama to be our national savior, he is no FDR. He doesn’t have the fight in him, nor the willingness to act, and seems to squander every political advantage at hand. His courageous approval of the Navy Seals attack on Osama bin Laden his sole achievement worthy of great leadership. Elsewhere he continues too many Bush programs he once abhorred as a candidate and otherwise fails the people who supported him.
On the other side, the Republicans have offered the public a bland salad of leftover hacks and dim-witted hopefuls as a counterbalance to the president. The traditional centrist Rockefeller Republican no longer exists and all that remains is Right Wing ideologues and fat cats trying to outdo each other for the minuscule Tea Party support by holding the budget hostage to their simplistic views.
The nation is stuck in neutral. We are going nowhere while living in the worst hard times in memory of most of us. Duopoly is the right word all right. Both sides are thinking of themselves and neither side is thinking of the people – and the people remain silent. That makes no sense.
We cannot depend on the current flock of politicians. It is up to the people to find representatives in both houses of Congress and in the White House who have more than good ideas, but also have the courage of their convictions and the boldness needed to push through legislation that is needed for the common good.
It is time for Republicans voters to throw out of office those party members who embrace Tea Party ideals and look for true conservatives and its time for Democrats to turn their backs on the wishy-washy types who only want to be re-elected and seek real progressives who want to serve the people.
The best results in American history was when reasonable conservatives and true progressives fought it out in the political arena. We have to get back to that. Then maybe we will know where the country is going?
Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, refers to the current political condition of the United States as a duopoly. He says he is in favor of a third party in the country.
I don’t know about the viability of a third party in America so I’ll put that subject aside for the moment, but he certainly is right on target with his duopoly label. The dictionary describes duopoly as “an oligopoly limited to two sides or the preponderant influence or control by two political powers.”
That aptly describes this country for the last several decades. It is a wonder anything gets done, and little has. As we look to the immediate future it appears less likely there will be much accomplished in the next 18 months unless the public acts up and demands a change.
It is a simple circumstance – or a deadly situation which could spell doom for the American era – on the one side we have a party dedicated to protecting the rich and powerful and the giant corporations that breast-feed them.
On the other side we have a political party that caters to the needs of the middle class, supports social relief programs, sees value in ordinary people, but like the proverbial Ferdinand the Bull is timid beyond belief about taking forceful action.
The Republicans are obstinate in their belief in small government with limited spending and the lowest possible taxes on people and businesses while the Democrats believe that only through energetic government programs can the masses be helped. They feel the well-to-do and corporations should pay more taxes to meet those needs because they have more to start with.
They are both stubborn in their beliefs and hypocritical in their actions. The Republicans like to label the Democrats as Socialists yet they support massive government giveaways to agricultural giants, oil companies and multi-billion dollar industrial combines. And, of course, they love tax loopholes and tax cuts for the rich. They’ll never admit it but that is their form of socialism.
The Democrats like to present themselves as the party of the people but lack any sense of urgency or stomach to fight to prove it. When they held a majority in both houses of Congress after the 2008 election they twiddled away the time until the death of a member deprived them of a cloture protection in the Senate and rendered the party helpless.
Whether they purposefully allowed the opportunity to escape them or really didn’t want to deliver on their promises to the little guy is not clear, but the Democratic Party cannot escape the charge of being incompetent and dysfunctional.
So here we have two parties which through the years allowed the government to tight walk at the edge of disaster inviting a financial catastrophe to finally turn the country into a debtor nation of extreme proportions three years ago without resolving even a portion of their differences.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to realize that the current state of affairs does not allow them to continue in partisan upmanship. The nation is crying for leadership, needs hard decisions and all it gets is drivel.
President Obama, the ostensible leader of the country, seems to spend most of his time sitting on the sidelines like a sagacious Guru seeking consensus which never comes while the Republicans shuffle the deck of the most illogical backwater assortment of has-beens and unknowns to lead the party into the 2012 presidential elections.
The people are left to wonder if this is the end of the American dream?
Maybe it’s too much to hope for an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt to come to our rescue in these dire times, but most voters will settle for at least someone who acts appropriately in their behalf. But none seem to exist in today’s world.
As much as many hoped Obama to be our national savior, he is no FDR. He doesn’t have the fight in him, nor the willingness to act, and seems to squander every political advantage at hand. His courageous approval of the Navy Seals attack on Osama bin Laden his sole achievement worthy of great leadership. Elsewhere he continues too many Bush programs he once abhorred as a candidate and otherwise fails the people who supported him.
On the other side, the Republicans have offered the public a bland salad of leftover hacks and dim-witted hopefuls as a counterbalance to the president. The traditional centrist Rockefeller Republican no longer exists and all that remains is Right Wing ideologues and fat cats trying to outdo each other for the minuscule Tea Party support by holding the budget hostage to their simplistic views.
The nation is stuck in neutral. We are going nowhere while living in the worst hard times in memory of most of us. Duopoly is the right word all right. Both sides are thinking of themselves and neither side is thinking of the people – and the people remain silent. That makes no sense.
We cannot depend on the current flock of politicians. It is up to the people to find representatives in both houses of Congress and in the White House who have more than good ideas, but also have the courage of their convictions and the boldness needed to push through legislation that is needed for the common good.
It is time for Republicans voters to throw out of office those party members who embrace Tea Party ideals and look for true conservatives and its time for Democrats to turn their backs on the wishy-washy types who only want to be re-elected and seek real progressives who want to serve the people.
The best results in American history was when reasonable conservatives and true progressives fought it out in the political arena. We have to get back to that. Then maybe we will know where the country is going?
Friday, May 20, 2011
Sex entitlements for the privileged
By Don Klein
The turbulent combination of power and sex has ruined more political careers than oafish behavior or incompetence can ever hope to, but men of rank and authority never seem to be able to avoid an illicit fling when it presents itself.
They feel that because they are privileged people they have exceptional sexual entitlements.
In the last few weeks the cynics of the world were entertained by the ethical and professional demise of a United States senator, the marriage split of the former governor of the country’s largest state and most stunning, the arrest in New York of the head of the International Monetary Fund.
The hoi poloi could say good riddance to the bums but that would not be fair to all. The case against IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has not yet been resolved and he deserves the judicial benefit of the assumption of innocence.
Not so in the cases of Senator John Ensign, of Nevada nor former Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, of California.
Ensign had to resign in order to avoid expulsion from the Senate on sexual harassment charges. This is a man who refused to resign until the very last minute after facing the Ethics Committee for the sordid circumstances following an affair he had with a staff associate who was the wife of a long-standing friend, chief of staff and political sidekick.
That’s not even chutzpah, that’s beyond misconduct, it’s repulsive. What little respect or loyalty was there for his closest friend if he would schtup his wife behind his back. She said she feared losing her job, and her husband’s, if she didn’t give in.
Good riddance, indeed.
Then we have the Schwartzenegger case. The body builder who became the bad actor who married a Kennedy and who eventually ascended to became perhaps the worst governor of that large state, admitted misbehaving. His life has been marked by two words: infidelity and incompetence.
As governor he exploited with bravado and ignorance the idea that governing was easy. The voters bought the message thinking that a muscle-bound Kennedy-in-law could muscle away California’s fiscal problems. He did just the opposite.
When he took office the state’s debt was $22 billion and its deficit was $14 billion. When he left office just months ago those negative figures had increased to $34.7 billion and $26.6 billion respectively. He was a colossal flop and the people will have to pay for his blundering in the years to come.
One must wonder about the absurdity of the voters electing him after being forewarned about the great Arnold’s sexual propensities. They knew he considered any woman near him fair game for groping or worse. Now we learn that he sired a son by one of his household employees before he ran for governor and kept it secret all these years. His marriage now is in shambles and his renewed film career in question.
Another good riddance.
We can go back further on this sex-power connection to many others, the most notable recently being John Edwards’ fathering a child out of wedlock during his campaign for president in 2008 while his wife was suffering from cancer and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street immorality, being caught in a Washington hotel room with a hooker.
Shameful hypocrites both.
All of those mentioned were personal acts of indiscretion and downright bad taste, but not criminal in any way. It falls in the category of what the French like to feel is their national credo -- a person’s private life is his concern and no one else’s. Political transparency is the only sustainable contrary argument
Now we come to what is probably the biggest fish of all. The man who was expected to become the next president of France – head of IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He has been charged with seven counts of sexual assault.
Even the French are not calling this a private matter. They know the difference between privacy and felony. French society is split in two with the women seeming to want to hear the facts coming out of DSK’s trial and the men demanding that he receive special treatment and not be handled by police like any other criminal defendant.
The alleged attack of a housekeeper in a posh New York hotel is completely out of character for DSK, an acknowledged womanizer but a non-violent man. His previous sexual transgressions have been winked at by the French public since none of his female targets summoned the courage to file complaints.
The New York case is different. The housekeeper was quick to report the attack, police were called and DSK was eventually taken off a Paris-bound flight by detectives who traced him there. The second blow was when the judge refused to allow bail, considering him a wealthy man and the likelihood of him fleeing the country.
Perhaps the Roman Polanski incident played a role in this decision. Polanski was convicted of having illegal sex with a minor – a 13 year old girl -- and fled the country while on bail. He relocated to Paris and the French refused to extradite him to California as a fugitive. The N.Y..court would not want a repetition of that.
No matter, Strauss-Kahn’s political future is in the toilet. He will be replaced as managing director of IMF and he will never be president of France. Ensign’s political career is in ruins, Schwartenegger’s future is cloudy as is Edwards’ and only Spitzer seems on the rebound.
All because of the belief held by powerful men that they had special license that allows them to sexually exploit others.
The turbulent combination of power and sex has ruined more political careers than oafish behavior or incompetence can ever hope to, but men of rank and authority never seem to be able to avoid an illicit fling when it presents itself.
They feel that because they are privileged people they have exceptional sexual entitlements.
In the last few weeks the cynics of the world were entertained by the ethical and professional demise of a United States senator, the marriage split of the former governor of the country’s largest state and most stunning, the arrest in New York of the head of the International Monetary Fund.
The hoi poloi could say good riddance to the bums but that would not be fair to all. The case against IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has not yet been resolved and he deserves the judicial benefit of the assumption of innocence.
Not so in the cases of Senator John Ensign, of Nevada nor former Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, of California.
Ensign had to resign in order to avoid expulsion from the Senate on sexual harassment charges. This is a man who refused to resign until the very last minute after facing the Ethics Committee for the sordid circumstances following an affair he had with a staff associate who was the wife of a long-standing friend, chief of staff and political sidekick.
That’s not even chutzpah, that’s beyond misconduct, it’s repulsive. What little respect or loyalty was there for his closest friend if he would schtup his wife behind his back. She said she feared losing her job, and her husband’s, if she didn’t give in.
Good riddance, indeed.
Then we have the Schwartzenegger case. The body builder who became the bad actor who married a Kennedy and who eventually ascended to became perhaps the worst governor of that large state, admitted misbehaving. His life has been marked by two words: infidelity and incompetence.
As governor he exploited with bravado and ignorance the idea that governing was easy. The voters bought the message thinking that a muscle-bound Kennedy-in-law could muscle away California’s fiscal problems. He did just the opposite.
When he took office the state’s debt was $22 billion and its deficit was $14 billion. When he left office just months ago those negative figures had increased to $34.7 billion and $26.6 billion respectively. He was a colossal flop and the people will have to pay for his blundering in the years to come.
One must wonder about the absurdity of the voters electing him after being forewarned about the great Arnold’s sexual propensities. They knew he considered any woman near him fair game for groping or worse. Now we learn that he sired a son by one of his household employees before he ran for governor and kept it secret all these years. His marriage now is in shambles and his renewed film career in question.
Another good riddance.
We can go back further on this sex-power connection to many others, the most notable recently being John Edwards’ fathering a child out of wedlock during his campaign for president in 2008 while his wife was suffering from cancer and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street immorality, being caught in a Washington hotel room with a hooker.
Shameful hypocrites both.
All of those mentioned were personal acts of indiscretion and downright bad taste, but not criminal in any way. It falls in the category of what the French like to feel is their national credo -- a person’s private life is his concern and no one else’s. Political transparency is the only sustainable contrary argument
Now we come to what is probably the biggest fish of all. The man who was expected to become the next president of France – head of IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He has been charged with seven counts of sexual assault.
Even the French are not calling this a private matter. They know the difference between privacy and felony. French society is split in two with the women seeming to want to hear the facts coming out of DSK’s trial and the men demanding that he receive special treatment and not be handled by police like any other criminal defendant.
The alleged attack of a housekeeper in a posh New York hotel is completely out of character for DSK, an acknowledged womanizer but a non-violent man. His previous sexual transgressions have been winked at by the French public since none of his female targets summoned the courage to file complaints.
The New York case is different. The housekeeper was quick to report the attack, police were called and DSK was eventually taken off a Paris-bound flight by detectives who traced him there. The second blow was when the judge refused to allow bail, considering him a wealthy man and the likelihood of him fleeing the country.
Perhaps the Roman Polanski incident played a role in this decision. Polanski was convicted of having illegal sex with a minor – a 13 year old girl -- and fled the country while on bail. He relocated to Paris and the French refused to extradite him to California as a fugitive. The N.Y..court would not want a repetition of that.
No matter, Strauss-Kahn’s political future is in the toilet. He will be replaced as managing director of IMF and he will never be president of France. Ensign’s political career is in ruins, Schwartenegger’s future is cloudy as is Edwards’ and only Spitzer seems on the rebound.
All because of the belief held by powerful men that they had special license that allows them to sexually exploit others.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Uncaring adults, deadly result
By Don Klein
When a teenage girl was found hanging in the stairwell of her New England home not too long ago it was not just the tragedy that all adolescent suicides are. It was a failure of the adults in her life to face up to their responsibilities, not to mention the fault of her malevolent adolescent counterparts.
Phoebe Prince, 15, may have been a victim of abusive peers in her high school but she died because the grownups in her life never stepped up to protect the child, as all children should be protected, from the hurtful behavior of ruthless school mates.
The abusive teenagers who drove the poor child to her end are shameful products of adolescent quirks driven by hormones raging through bodies placing them somewhere between child and grownup. But the question I ask is when will adults start acting as adults and accept their roles as guardians of youth?
Why didn’t teachers and school authorities act when they learned of, or witnessed, the harmful taunting and threats hurled at this student. Phoebe’s friends knew about it, her young provocateurs knew, the girl fled in tears to the school nurse, she knew, and her family knew. Teachers witnessed attacks on more than one occasion and Phoebe pleaded to administrators for help.
Yet no one did anything. No adult stood by her. Shame on them all.
When we send children to school they become temporary wards of educators, they become the responsibility of the teachers and school administrators. School officials are surrogate parents while the children are in their care whether they like the role or not. They are obligated to see no harm comes to them, they must care for their safety and good health. Most educators do.
If not, no parent would allow their child to go to school if they are on their own with no oversight by tending adults. Yet that seems to have been the failure in Phoebe’s case. No one took custody for her well being. No one nipped the abuse before it reached the fatal level.
Three 16-year-old girls are being held in this case for taunting and bullying young Phoebe, an immigrant girl from Ireland. The intimidation was gross and intense and drove the victim to despair. Why? Apparently it was that curious explosive energy that drives most teenagers – boy-girl relationships.
Prosecutors in Northwestern Massachusetts have charged the girls as youthful offenders with felonies including violation of civil rights and stalking, and have also accused them with similar crimes under juvenile laws. Three other students have been charged as adults, two of whom being accused of statutory rape.
Gus Sayer, the superintendent of schools including South Hadley High School, where the abuse took place, said he could not discuss some of the pertinent matters in the case because of "privacy rules." How many times have we heard that lame excuse to cover-up their own failings.
Privacy my foot. A young girl’s life is ended in suicide. Those feeble rules no longer exist.
Teenage bullying is a lot more dangerous than any adult would suspect. What if Phoebe had turned the tables on everyone and somehow got her hands on a gun. That is not very difficult in a country whose gun laws and virtually written by adherents of the National Rifle Association. What if she took that gun to school to even the score with her tormentors and in the process shot many uninvolved innocent kids and teachers.
That would get national attention and we would be asking why?
Don’t say that is far fetched because it already happened. Remember the Columbine High School mass murder in Colorado brought about by teenagers who felt abused and ostracized by their peers. It also happened elsewhere where kids attacked schoolmates and teachers with deadly weapons after feeling they were picked on incessantly.
Oddly enough there is only one group of adults who usually can spot these antisocial trends brewing in youngsters. They are teachers. They spend more time with the kids than their parents do. In many cases parents don’t have a clue about their children because most teenagers don’t confide in them.
The teachers at Columbine and other schools where youngsters resorted to shooting up the place and causing grievous human damage were, in essence, negligent in their duties by spotting disturbing trends among their students and not doing anything about it. That is the case at South Hadley High School.
There is no one who respects teachers more than I do because they are the ones who mold the future for us all. Their work is the most honorable you can imagine, but they have become aloof when it comes to dealing with the behavioral problems of students. The parents ignore them when they point out problems and the administration usually backs down and hides behind rules and regulations.
Without the support they deserve teachers often develop the attitude whereby they do just what the lessons require and leave issues like pupil interaction and deportment for others to solve. In the end it is really the parents who must change. They should support teachers and maybe then they will find dividends in the outreach of teachers towards troubled students.
The Associated Press reported that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in a radio interview said that "adults did not seem to have acted like adults" in the case. He did not distinguish between school administrators or the parents of the teens charged.
How right he is. We cannot afford to ignore children as they continue to victimize each other.
When a teenage girl was found hanging in the stairwell of her New England home not too long ago it was not just the tragedy that all adolescent suicides are. It was a failure of the adults in her life to face up to their responsibilities, not to mention the fault of her malevolent adolescent counterparts.
Phoebe Prince, 15, may have been a victim of abusive peers in her high school but she died because the grownups in her life never stepped up to protect the child, as all children should be protected, from the hurtful behavior of ruthless school mates.
The abusive teenagers who drove the poor child to her end are shameful products of adolescent quirks driven by hormones raging through bodies placing them somewhere between child and grownup. But the question I ask is when will adults start acting as adults and accept their roles as guardians of youth?
Why didn’t teachers and school authorities act when they learned of, or witnessed, the harmful taunting and threats hurled at this student. Phoebe’s friends knew about it, her young provocateurs knew, the girl fled in tears to the school nurse, she knew, and her family knew. Teachers witnessed attacks on more than one occasion and Phoebe pleaded to administrators for help.
Yet no one did anything. No adult stood by her. Shame on them all.
When we send children to school they become temporary wards of educators, they become the responsibility of the teachers and school administrators. School officials are surrogate parents while the children are in their care whether they like the role or not. They are obligated to see no harm comes to them, they must care for their safety and good health. Most educators do.
If not, no parent would allow their child to go to school if they are on their own with no oversight by tending adults. Yet that seems to have been the failure in Phoebe’s case. No one took custody for her well being. No one nipped the abuse before it reached the fatal level.
Three 16-year-old girls are being held in this case for taunting and bullying young Phoebe, an immigrant girl from Ireland. The intimidation was gross and intense and drove the victim to despair. Why? Apparently it was that curious explosive energy that drives most teenagers – boy-girl relationships.
Prosecutors in Northwestern Massachusetts have charged the girls as youthful offenders with felonies including violation of civil rights and stalking, and have also accused them with similar crimes under juvenile laws. Three other students have been charged as adults, two of whom being accused of statutory rape.
Gus Sayer, the superintendent of schools including South Hadley High School, where the abuse took place, said he could not discuss some of the pertinent matters in the case because of "privacy rules." How many times have we heard that lame excuse to cover-up their own failings.
Privacy my foot. A young girl’s life is ended in suicide. Those feeble rules no longer exist.
Teenage bullying is a lot more dangerous than any adult would suspect. What if Phoebe had turned the tables on everyone and somehow got her hands on a gun. That is not very difficult in a country whose gun laws and virtually written by adherents of the National Rifle Association. What if she took that gun to school to even the score with her tormentors and in the process shot many uninvolved innocent kids and teachers.
That would get national attention and we would be asking why?
Don’t say that is far fetched because it already happened. Remember the Columbine High School mass murder in Colorado brought about by teenagers who felt abused and ostracized by their peers. It also happened elsewhere where kids attacked schoolmates and teachers with deadly weapons after feeling they were picked on incessantly.
Oddly enough there is only one group of adults who usually can spot these antisocial trends brewing in youngsters. They are teachers. They spend more time with the kids than their parents do. In many cases parents don’t have a clue about their children because most teenagers don’t confide in them.
The teachers at Columbine and other schools where youngsters resorted to shooting up the place and causing grievous human damage were, in essence, negligent in their duties by spotting disturbing trends among their students and not doing anything about it. That is the case at South Hadley High School.
There is no one who respects teachers more than I do because they are the ones who mold the future for us all. Their work is the most honorable you can imagine, but they have become aloof when it comes to dealing with the behavioral problems of students. The parents ignore them when they point out problems and the administration usually backs down and hides behind rules and regulations.
Without the support they deserve teachers often develop the attitude whereby they do just what the lessons require and leave issues like pupil interaction and deportment for others to solve. In the end it is really the parents who must change. They should support teachers and maybe then they will find dividends in the outreach of teachers towards troubled students.
The Associated Press reported that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in a radio interview said that "adults did not seem to have acted like adults" in the case. He did not distinguish between school administrators or the parents of the teens charged.
How right he is. We cannot afford to ignore children as they continue to victimize each other.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Greed hurts all but the greedy
By Don Klein
Imagine yourself a school bus driver with a second job as a newspaper route delivery driver. Your wife works as a kitchen helper at a local hospital. You have three kids and you want the best for them. You see a $650,000 house you would like to move into but cannot afford.
Surprise, the sales agent puts you in touch with a banker who says he will lend you the money and you only have to pay the interest for a number of years while you improve your earnings to eventually handle the principal. You ignore the obvious pitfalls because you are either brainless or terribly hungry for a better life style.
In your foolishness you fall for such a gambit, but the real estate seller and the banker know what the score is. They are shrewd. They are downright crooks who know how to make money even though they are convinced you’re destined to default. They have a plan.
The salesman gets his commission for selling the house, the banker meanwhile takes your feeble mortgage and packages it on Wall Street with thousands others just likes yours. They then sell a whole package of loans at an appealing price to investors – many of which represent pension funds and important charities. That becomes the recipe for a financial crisis.
The real estate sales person and the banker know there is trouble ahead, but they will make their profits passing off the package and sticking it to investors. When the day of reckoning comes and a bubble payment is due, you, the homeowner, will rely on your our little plan. You will sell the house you never could afford but lived in for years and make a solid profit considering the normal ascent in home prices.
Alas, the day comes and the real estate market collapses. You can’t sell your house and the mortgage is in default. At the same time neither can the thousands of others whose mortgages were sold when you took out the loan. The result: An international financial crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The guilty: The home buyers and sellers, and worst of all the bankers who put up the money for the loans that should never have been made.
You did it because you wanted a better life style for your family and yourself.
The seller was willing to complete the sale because the banker was willing to put up the money and Wall Street was taking the financial risk. The toxic package was passed off to the oblivious investor. None of this would have happened if anyone along the way had a modicum of integrity.
In the end it was the banker who made it all possible. It was the banker who tried to outsmart all others for his gain, and his enhanced year-end bonus. The more mortgages he sold, the more the payoff and to hell with the home owner who defaulted and the pension funds now holding worthless stock.
The banker is the culprit in the financial crisis smothering the global economy for nearly a year and a half. This scenario demonstrates the power of greed. Greed is as normal to a banker as counter clockwise motion is to flushed toilet water. It’s incontrovertible. It cannot be altered.
The 1987 film "Wall Street" spelled it out clearly when the fictional Gordon Gekko expressed the well recalled stock manipulator’s philosophy, "Greed is good."
Greed has become the epithet for Wall Street bankers. It is their synonym like Homosapien is the synonym for the species of man. After the recent testimony of four top bankers before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington we can now add "ingrate" to define Wall Street money changers. It’s no wonder their predecessors were chased from ancient temples.
At one point in the testimony the head of Goldman Sachs had the nerve to liken the hellish recession to a Hurricane and other manifestations of rampaging Nature. Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman, couldn’t let that go unanswered. "Acts of God we’ll exempt. These were acts of men and women."
The commission is investigating to determine if the Wall Street insiders intentionally put the bad assets together and passed them off as healthy investments even when they knew better. All the bankers managed to say was they "regret" people lost money in these transactions. No apologies offered.
The banks under scrutiny at the hearing besides Goldman Sachs were Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. They all received bailout money from TARP and have already repaid some of the loans. But worst of all is their bonus programs. Billions are disbursed to employees of the banks who benefitted from federal funding assistance to make their year a profitable one.
The bankers never admitted that they had any responsibility for the garbage assets they peddled on the market. They were just interested in moving the rotten goods out of their store and making a profit like an avaricious grocer selling baskets of rotten tomatoes. When the banks recovered thanks to taxpayer funds, they moved to "reward’ their top executives with millions of dollars in bonuses.
John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, made one of the most pointed comments at the end of the hearing. "If the leaders of Wall Street did not consider the possibility of housing prices dropping" through their own experience, nor all the red flags raised about mortgage fraud for years and did not realize that high cost, interest-only loans were being made "then their spirited defense of their employees falls flat."
"Based on what we heard today," Taylor concluded, "they should be firing people not giving them bonuses." Amen.
Imagine yourself a school bus driver with a second job as a newspaper route delivery driver. Your wife works as a kitchen helper at a local hospital. You have three kids and you want the best for them. You see a $650,000 house you would like to move into but cannot afford.
Surprise, the sales agent puts you in touch with a banker who says he will lend you the money and you only have to pay the interest for a number of years while you improve your earnings to eventually handle the principal. You ignore the obvious pitfalls because you are either brainless or terribly hungry for a better life style.
In your foolishness you fall for such a gambit, but the real estate seller and the banker know what the score is. They are shrewd. They are downright crooks who know how to make money even though they are convinced you’re destined to default. They have a plan.
The salesman gets his commission for selling the house, the banker meanwhile takes your feeble mortgage and packages it on Wall Street with thousands others just likes yours. They then sell a whole package of loans at an appealing price to investors – many of which represent pension funds and important charities. That becomes the recipe for a financial crisis.
The real estate sales person and the banker know there is trouble ahead, but they will make their profits passing off the package and sticking it to investors. When the day of reckoning comes and a bubble payment is due, you, the homeowner, will rely on your our little plan. You will sell the house you never could afford but lived in for years and make a solid profit considering the normal ascent in home prices.
Alas, the day comes and the real estate market collapses. You can’t sell your house and the mortgage is in default. At the same time neither can the thousands of others whose mortgages were sold when you took out the loan. The result: An international financial crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The guilty: The home buyers and sellers, and worst of all the bankers who put up the money for the loans that should never have been made.
You did it because you wanted a better life style for your family and yourself.
The seller was willing to complete the sale because the banker was willing to put up the money and Wall Street was taking the financial risk. The toxic package was passed off to the oblivious investor. None of this would have happened if anyone along the way had a modicum of integrity.
In the end it was the banker who made it all possible. It was the banker who tried to outsmart all others for his gain, and his enhanced year-end bonus. The more mortgages he sold, the more the payoff and to hell with the home owner who defaulted and the pension funds now holding worthless stock.
The banker is the culprit in the financial crisis smothering the global economy for nearly a year and a half. This scenario demonstrates the power of greed. Greed is as normal to a banker as counter clockwise motion is to flushed toilet water. It’s incontrovertible. It cannot be altered.
The 1987 film "Wall Street" spelled it out clearly when the fictional Gordon Gekko expressed the well recalled stock manipulator’s philosophy, "Greed is good."
Greed has become the epithet for Wall Street bankers. It is their synonym like Homosapien is the synonym for the species of man. After the recent testimony of four top bankers before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington we can now add "ingrate" to define Wall Street money changers. It’s no wonder their predecessors were chased from ancient temples.
At one point in the testimony the head of Goldman Sachs had the nerve to liken the hellish recession to a Hurricane and other manifestations of rampaging Nature. Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman, couldn’t let that go unanswered. "Acts of God we’ll exempt. These were acts of men and women."
The commission is investigating to determine if the Wall Street insiders intentionally put the bad assets together and passed them off as healthy investments even when they knew better. All the bankers managed to say was they "regret" people lost money in these transactions. No apologies offered.
The banks under scrutiny at the hearing besides Goldman Sachs were Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. They all received bailout money from TARP and have already repaid some of the loans. But worst of all is their bonus programs. Billions are disbursed to employees of the banks who benefitted from federal funding assistance to make their year a profitable one.
The bankers never admitted that they had any responsibility for the garbage assets they peddled on the market. They were just interested in moving the rotten goods out of their store and making a profit like an avaricious grocer selling baskets of rotten tomatoes. When the banks recovered thanks to taxpayer funds, they moved to "reward’ their top executives with millions of dollars in bonuses.
John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, made one of the most pointed comments at the end of the hearing. "If the leaders of Wall Street did not consider the possibility of housing prices dropping" through their own experience, nor all the red flags raised about mortgage fraud for years and did not realize that high cost, interest-only loans were being made "then their spirited defense of their employees falls flat."
"Based on what we heard today," Taylor concluded, "they should be firing people not giving them bonuses." Amen.
Friday, January 1, 2010
A new Third World country
by Don Klein
Isn’t this a great country? We have one of the highest standards of living anywhere in the world. We have more great universities than any country. We have world class symphony orchestras all over the land, more than anywhere else. We have great theater, a robust film industry, inventive dance companies and the world’s pre-eminent opera company. More books are sold and read here than anywhere else.
Our women are attractive and well groomed, our men are handsome and rugged, our kids are lovable and smart, we have plenty to eat, almost all of us have autos, we are an inventive, energetic and industrious collection of humans, we welcome foreigners into our society with open arms, our country is beautiful and bountiful, self-confidence abounds, our lives are predominantly pleasant.
We are prestigious in many ways, yet we are becoming a Third World country.
We hardly manufacture anything anymore. The television I watch was made in Japan, the American-made car I drive was manufactured in Canada and yours may have been built in Mexico, my sports jacket comes from Ukraine, my slacks from Vietnam, my shirt from Bangladesh, my underwear from Indonesia, and even my ballpoint pens come from China. If I wore a tie it probably would be Dominican made.
We don’t even supply all the food in our supermarkets. I eat cherries from Chile, shrimp from Thailand, our ground beef has South American meat mixed in it. There used to be just German and Czech beer and French and Italian wines available as liquor store imports but now there is Mexican beer (God protect us) and Australian wines to compete with Milwaukee beer and California wines.
American roads were once cluttered with Studebakers, DeSotos and Packards, all of which have been replaced by Korean, Japanese, Swedish, German and soon by Chinese cars. If you watch carefully there seems to be more foreign cars on suburban roads than American cars.
The Asians have taken over the camera business while German and American photography enterprises are hanging on by their fingertips. Even pineapples have gone foreign. They once came in boatloads from Hawaii, now they are less juicy, less desirable and come from Costa Rica.
But wait it gets worse. Try calling a major company today to discuss your service or a problem with your bill. For the first ten minutes you are interrogated by an intransigent recording. Press No. 1 if you are a new customer, No. 2 if you are an existing customer, No 3, if you need equipment repair, No. 4 if you wish to check the status of a shipment, No. 5 to check your balance, No. 6 for additional options, an so on.
I don’t like being subjugated to a fifteen minute third degree with a robot, even with a soft and sexy voice, and then when I finally get a human being on the other end of the line she is speaking from India with a perplexing accent.
Try to get a medical or dental appointment in less than four months, that is if you are not doubled over in pain or on the brink of death. Try to talk to the your home delivery agent when your newspaper is not delivered and you get an apologetic recording, as if they know they should be answering the telephone when they are not.
You have a 9.30 appointment with the doctor? You will be lucky to see him before lunch. Some doctors don’t understand that an appointment is a joint agreement between the patient and the doctor to meet at a given time. Try calling your stockbroker these days and be prepared to wait.
The following happened to me. I needed to speak to a particular person at an auto dealership where I recently purchased a new car. First I got her voice mail and I asked her to call me. Two hours later, after not hearing from her, I called again. Got the voice mail again. I asked for someone else in her department to talk to. A girl came on, took my message and after I waited eight minutes
disconnected me.
Then I called again and asked to speak to the sales manager. Voice mail again. Left message again. No call back. Called again. Same thing again. Finally got his assistant who gladly took down all my information then said, "I give you a live person." Shocked, I said, "I was under the impression you were live?" He said, "Yes, but it’s not my department, I’ll switch you" and promptly sent me back to the original voice mail I had called twice before – unsuccessfully. Frustration set in.
Finally got to the office manager after an umpteenth call who took charge and called me back with the following explanation: "The work you need has been completed a week ago but the women in charge had to leave for a personal emergency." she said. No one picked up her lapsed work. It just sat on her desk as time fizzled like air out of a flattening tire.
This reminded me of when I was on a business trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico 30 years ago and tried for three hours to telephone the local newspaper office to invite them to a reception we were sponsoring for local businesses. When I finally got someone to answer the phone he said, "Sorry, but Jose is next door fixing a toilet." Imagine an editor of a daily newspaper not available for three hours because he was repairing someone's plumbing.
A colleague explained, "What do you expect. Puerto Rico is the equivalent of the Third World nation."
Today I must ask, is the US becoming a Third World nation, a banana republic whose only crops are indifference, delay and manana.
Isn’t this a great country? We have one of the highest standards of living anywhere in the world. We have more great universities than any country. We have world class symphony orchestras all over the land, more than anywhere else. We have great theater, a robust film industry, inventive dance companies and the world’s pre-eminent opera company. More books are sold and read here than anywhere else.
Our women are attractive and well groomed, our men are handsome and rugged, our kids are lovable and smart, we have plenty to eat, almost all of us have autos, we are an inventive, energetic and industrious collection of humans, we welcome foreigners into our society with open arms, our country is beautiful and bountiful, self-confidence abounds, our lives are predominantly pleasant.
We are prestigious in many ways, yet we are becoming a Third World country.
We hardly manufacture anything anymore. The television I watch was made in Japan, the American-made car I drive was manufactured in Canada and yours may have been built in Mexico, my sports jacket comes from Ukraine, my slacks from Vietnam, my shirt from Bangladesh, my underwear from Indonesia, and even my ballpoint pens come from China. If I wore a tie it probably would be Dominican made.
We don’t even supply all the food in our supermarkets. I eat cherries from Chile, shrimp from Thailand, our ground beef has South American meat mixed in it. There used to be just German and Czech beer and French and Italian wines available as liquor store imports but now there is Mexican beer (God protect us) and Australian wines to compete with Milwaukee beer and California wines.
American roads were once cluttered with Studebakers, DeSotos and Packards, all of which have been replaced by Korean, Japanese, Swedish, German and soon by Chinese cars. If you watch carefully there seems to be more foreign cars on suburban roads than American cars.
The Asians have taken over the camera business while German and American photography enterprises are hanging on by their fingertips. Even pineapples have gone foreign. They once came in boatloads from Hawaii, now they are less juicy, less desirable and come from Costa Rica.
But wait it gets worse. Try calling a major company today to discuss your service or a problem with your bill. For the first ten minutes you are interrogated by an intransigent recording. Press No. 1 if you are a new customer, No. 2 if you are an existing customer, No 3, if you need equipment repair, No. 4 if you wish to check the status of a shipment, No. 5 to check your balance, No. 6 for additional options, an so on.
I don’t like being subjugated to a fifteen minute third degree with a robot, even with a soft and sexy voice, and then when I finally get a human being on the other end of the line she is speaking from India with a perplexing accent.
Try to get a medical or dental appointment in less than four months, that is if you are not doubled over in pain or on the brink of death. Try to talk to the your home delivery agent when your newspaper is not delivered and you get an apologetic recording, as if they know they should be answering the telephone when they are not.
You have a 9.30 appointment with the doctor? You will be lucky to see him before lunch. Some doctors don’t understand that an appointment is a joint agreement between the patient and the doctor to meet at a given time. Try calling your stockbroker these days and be prepared to wait.
The following happened to me. I needed to speak to a particular person at an auto dealership where I recently purchased a new car. First I got her voice mail and I asked her to call me. Two hours later, after not hearing from her, I called again. Got the voice mail again. I asked for someone else in her department to talk to. A girl came on, took my message and after I waited eight minutes
disconnected me.
Then I called again and asked to speak to the sales manager. Voice mail again. Left message again. No call back. Called again. Same thing again. Finally got his assistant who gladly took down all my information then said, "I give you a live person." Shocked, I said, "I was under the impression you were live?" He said, "Yes, but it’s not my department, I’ll switch you" and promptly sent me back to the original voice mail I had called twice before – unsuccessfully. Frustration set in.
Finally got to the office manager after an umpteenth call who took charge and called me back with the following explanation: "The work you need has been completed a week ago but the women in charge had to leave for a personal emergency." she said. No one picked up her lapsed work. It just sat on her desk as time fizzled like air out of a flattening tire.
This reminded me of when I was on a business trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico 30 years ago and tried for three hours to telephone the local newspaper office to invite them to a reception we were sponsoring for local businesses. When I finally got someone to answer the phone he said, "Sorry, but Jose is next door fixing a toilet." Imagine an editor of a daily newspaper not available for three hours because he was repairing someone's plumbing.
A colleague explained, "What do you expect. Puerto Rico is the equivalent of the Third World nation."
Today I must ask, is the US becoming a Third World nation, a banana republic whose only crops are indifference, delay and manana.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Ghost of Leon Klinghoffer strikes
By Don Klein
It was one of the most depraved exploits in a century marked by appalling human evils. Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound 69-year-old American Jew on a Mediterranean vacation, was murdered and thrown into the sea from the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Arab hijackers on October 7, 1985.
The world was horrified at first, then exhilarated when US Navy jets later intercepted the aircraft transporting the killers and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sicily. Then the balloon burst when inept Italians, who took control the perps, let them escape into friendly Arab confines.
That incident of 24 years ago was all but forgotten by most of us when Farouk Hosny, Egypt’s minister of culture, decided he would like to top off his public career by running for director general of Unesco, the world body’s educational, scientific and culture organization.
At least the Arabs were hoping everyone else forgot about the Klinghoffer murder and its aftermath because Hosny, 71, in the past had boasted of his role in helping to organize the escape from Italy of the Achille Lauro killers.
This was not an isolated xenophobic moment on Hosny’s part. On another occasion he demonstrated his anti-Semitism when he told the Egyptian parliament that he would personally burn every Israeli (Jewish) book in the library in Alexandria, his country’s most important depository of literature.
It is an interesting look into the Arab mind. Here was a man who admitted publicly to being complicit in helping hijack-murderers of a helpless old cripple to escape justice and later in his career declared he would gladly be a book burner if given the opportunity, was thought to have the proper credentials to become the director of an international cultural organization.
What a curriculum vitae! And yet until the last vote was taken this past week he was within a hair’s breath from getting the plum assignment. It was like someone who lived on a diet of beans and potato chips applying for the job of top chef at a leading gourmet restaurant.
Fortunately people did not forget. When the nations squared off in Paris to choose a new Unesco director the vote eventually came to a 29-29 tie between Hosny and Bulgarian diplomat, Irina Bokova, 57, a former Communist, now of the Socialist Party. Bokova picked up two votes from countries which switched from the Egyptian. The final ballot was 31 to 27 and Hosny was vanquished.
Hosny’s defeat was certainly not by any means justice for Klinghoffer or his family because in a moral world he would be behind bars for being an accomplice in the escape of cold-blooded murderers. His book burning propensity, further, would also be enough to bar him from such a UN role.
But we do not live in a moral world. Too often we willingly ignore criminal activities and nauseating behavior. Sometimes we even reward the criminals. That’s why you have to be of a certain discernment to work in the diplomatic corp if it means having to operate side-by-side with villains of this nature.
The Bokova victory came on the fifth ballot when the Bulgarian benefitted from the switched votes of the Italian and Spanish delegations, according to The New York Times. I’d like to know what took them so long to see the light since both nations have been victimized by Arabs for decades?
Ask yourself why the Italians would ever consider supporting an Egyptian after being so insulted and embarrassed over the scandalous escape of the hijackers a quarter of a century ago. Do they have short memories or are they just cowards seeking to avoid commercial counteracts from the oil rich Arabs. I buy the latter reason.
And what about Spain? Think of the 191 Spanish commuters killed in that Madrid train bombing on March 11, 2004. Muslims were out to kill in brutal calculation men, women and children innocently riding a train one day. How could they have ever considered voting for Hosny? But both countries apparently were in his corner in early voting as they were later identified as having changed their stand on the last ballot.
Is it no surprise that so many Americans have no respect for many West Europeans. They sit around allowing themselves to be targets of terrorists and Arab miscreants and never act forcefully when they have the opportunity to do so. They are slaves to oil.
Let us not forget one thing. The defeat of Hosny at Unesco will never make up for aiding Klinghoffer’s killers to escape justice. Nor will the millions in settlement dollars paid to his family by the Palestinian Liberation Organization years after the incident. Money can never make up for murder.
It is good to know that the ghost of Leon Klinghoffer hurled a shadow over the Egyptian’s effort to move up the UN ladder. That perhaps is the biggest flaw in the United Nations. People with dirty hands benefit in many ways when the UN should be more discerning about who they put into key positions.
Bokova doesn’t come without demerits, though. "Those who do not like Communism in (Bulgaria) are not happy about her promotion," a political critic told The Times. "For people in this region, her appointment sends the message that the West can swallow someone’s Communist past very easily but cannot abide an Arab who is anti-Israel." Wrong. One protected assassins, the other did not.
At least we can relish small victories. The relatives of Klinghoffer (an American not an Israeli) and those anonymous 191 Spaniards who died at the hands of Arab terrorists can take some solace in Hosny’s trouncing. It’s better than nothing, but not much.
It was one of the most depraved exploits in a century marked by appalling human evils. Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound 69-year-old American Jew on a Mediterranean vacation, was murdered and thrown into the sea from the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Arab hijackers on October 7, 1985.
The world was horrified at first, then exhilarated when US Navy jets later intercepted the aircraft transporting the killers and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sicily. Then the balloon burst when inept Italians, who took control the perps, let them escape into friendly Arab confines.
That incident of 24 years ago was all but forgotten by most of us when Farouk Hosny, Egypt’s minister of culture, decided he would like to top off his public career by running for director general of Unesco, the world body’s educational, scientific and culture organization.
At least the Arabs were hoping everyone else forgot about the Klinghoffer murder and its aftermath because Hosny, 71, in the past had boasted of his role in helping to organize the escape from Italy of the Achille Lauro killers.
This was not an isolated xenophobic moment on Hosny’s part. On another occasion he demonstrated his anti-Semitism when he told the Egyptian parliament that he would personally burn every Israeli (Jewish) book in the library in Alexandria, his country’s most important depository of literature.
It is an interesting look into the Arab mind. Here was a man who admitted publicly to being complicit in helping hijack-murderers of a helpless old cripple to escape justice and later in his career declared he would gladly be a book burner if given the opportunity, was thought to have the proper credentials to become the director of an international cultural organization.
What a curriculum vitae! And yet until the last vote was taken this past week he was within a hair’s breath from getting the plum assignment. It was like someone who lived on a diet of beans and potato chips applying for the job of top chef at a leading gourmet restaurant.
Fortunately people did not forget. When the nations squared off in Paris to choose a new Unesco director the vote eventually came to a 29-29 tie between Hosny and Bulgarian diplomat, Irina Bokova, 57, a former Communist, now of the Socialist Party. Bokova picked up two votes from countries which switched from the Egyptian. The final ballot was 31 to 27 and Hosny was vanquished.
Hosny’s defeat was certainly not by any means justice for Klinghoffer or his family because in a moral world he would be behind bars for being an accomplice in the escape of cold-blooded murderers. His book burning propensity, further, would also be enough to bar him from such a UN role.
But we do not live in a moral world. Too often we willingly ignore criminal activities and nauseating behavior. Sometimes we even reward the criminals. That’s why you have to be of a certain discernment to work in the diplomatic corp if it means having to operate side-by-side with villains of this nature.
The Bokova victory came on the fifth ballot when the Bulgarian benefitted from the switched votes of the Italian and Spanish delegations, according to The New York Times. I’d like to know what took them so long to see the light since both nations have been victimized by Arabs for decades?
Ask yourself why the Italians would ever consider supporting an Egyptian after being so insulted and embarrassed over the scandalous escape of the hijackers a quarter of a century ago. Do they have short memories or are they just cowards seeking to avoid commercial counteracts from the oil rich Arabs. I buy the latter reason.
And what about Spain? Think of the 191 Spanish commuters killed in that Madrid train bombing on March 11, 2004. Muslims were out to kill in brutal calculation men, women and children innocently riding a train one day. How could they have ever considered voting for Hosny? But both countries apparently were in his corner in early voting as they were later identified as having changed their stand on the last ballot.
Is it no surprise that so many Americans have no respect for many West Europeans. They sit around allowing themselves to be targets of terrorists and Arab miscreants and never act forcefully when they have the opportunity to do so. They are slaves to oil.
Let us not forget one thing. The defeat of Hosny at Unesco will never make up for aiding Klinghoffer’s killers to escape justice. Nor will the millions in settlement dollars paid to his family by the Palestinian Liberation Organization years after the incident. Money can never make up for murder.
It is good to know that the ghost of Leon Klinghoffer hurled a shadow over the Egyptian’s effort to move up the UN ladder. That perhaps is the biggest flaw in the United Nations. People with dirty hands benefit in many ways when the UN should be more discerning about who they put into key positions.
Bokova doesn’t come without demerits, though. "Those who do not like Communism in (Bulgaria) are not happy about her promotion," a political critic told The Times. "For people in this region, her appointment sends the message that the West can swallow someone’s Communist past very easily but cannot abide an Arab who is anti-Israel." Wrong. One protected assassins, the other did not.
At least we can relish small victories. The relatives of Klinghoffer (an American not an Israeli) and those anonymous 191 Spaniards who died at the hands of Arab terrorists can take some solace in Hosny’s trouncing. It’s better than nothing, but not much.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Et tu Baucus?
By Don Klein
What Marcus Junius Brutus was to Julius Caesar, Senator Max Baucus is to the public option in the universal health care legislation proposed by President Obama.
Baucus has wheeled and dealed the public option out of the health plan desired by the majority of Americans polled so far and thereby has plunged a knife into the back of legislation which was the hope of so many. And the real crime is he did it with a filibuster proof Senate majority on his side.
Will the voters of Montana remember Baucus’s treachery the next time he runs for reelection in 2014. The 50-year-old Democrat in his seventh Senate term made concessions to the Republican members of the committee because he claimed he wanted a bipartisan bill. He knows full well that the GOP will not support the bill no matter what he deletes from it in committee.
Important to politicians, he is jeopardizing the Democratic members of Congress who are up for re-election next year. Fortunately for him, Baucus doesn’t face the electorate for another five years. But all is not lost. It is unlikely that the final bill will get to the full Congress without the public option included.
"Health care reform without the public option is not reform," said Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee, it will do nothing but add to the cost, he claimed. Dean is a doctor and the onetime governor of Vermont.
In contrast, Bill Frist, another doctor and former Republican Senate leader, sees the public option as having the potential to bankrupt the country. They both agreed the current system is not working but Frist believes that the government can bring down costs of medical care by working with the existing insurance companies.
The interesting thing is that although Frist does not think the government can run a health program he admitted that Medicare, the government run program for seniors, is doing very well. On the Charlie Rose TV Show he said he would not vote to repeal Medicare if he was still in office. Neither would any of the current health plan opponents. Today they embrace it but when Medicare was being debated in Congress in 1965, Republicans were as opposed to it as they are opposed to today’s universal health plan.
It is clear to all that Republicans, who almost unanimously oppose the health plan offered by Obama, are reaching for straws to kill it. They are now passing around the claim that the government intends to euthanize seniors who are chronically ill in order to save money by not having to pay for treating sickly people in their later years.
This is a distortion of a clause in the bill to provide coverage to people who choose to consult with professionals when they wish to prepare a living will. This would be covered by the new law, as it already is in Medicare. Some Republican opponents have maliciously suggested that government personnel will visit people and ask them how they wish to die if the bill becomes law.
The GOP doesn’t have Harry and Louise this time around as they did with the Clinton health bill back in 1993 so they are inventing new outrageous fears. They want to preserve the exorbitant profits of the medical insurance companies which ply them with all sorts of campaign funds and fear that a public option as part of this planned legislation will bring down profits of their insurance company friends or possibly put them out of business.
That’s sheer lunacy but they’ll use any underhanded tactic to hurt the bill.
Unfortunately for the nearly 50 million without insurance in this country there are a number of rogue Democrats who are willing to play along with the plan’s enemies. The committee Sen. Baucus runs and which dropped the public option is only one of two in the Senate and three in the House of Representatives working on this measure. Chances are the public option will find its way back into the bill before or during the conference committee session to be held in the fall.
Obama said he would not sign a bill without it. The Democrats are aware they would be committing suicide if there was no public option in the end version, especially since 72 percent of Americans have indicated they favor that clause in recent polls.
Unfortunately for the nearly 50 million without insurance in this country there are a number of rogue Democrats who are willing to play along with the plan’s enemies. The committee Sen. Baucus runs and which dropped the public option is only one of two in the Senate and three in the House of Representatives working on this measure. Chances are the public option will find its way back into the bill before or during the conference committee session to be held in the fall.
Obama said he would not sign a bill without it. The Democrats are aware they would be committing suicide if there was no public option in the end version, especially since 72 percent of Americans have indicated they favor that clause in recent polls.
No one said that passing a universal health plan for the country was going to be easy. Nothing that favors ordinary people ever comes easy in the House of Hypocrisy, otherwise known as Congress. It is a wonder people haven’t reacted with more ardor than they have during the current session over the shenanigans on Capitol Hill.
It seems certain that the House of Representatives will muster enough clout to pass the legislation. Speaker Pelosi has just about guaranteed that and she should know the head count. The question mark is the Senate, and that chamber's leader, Sen. Harry Reid appears determined to find bipartisanship where it doesn’t exist.
At best he will only be able to count on two or three Republicans and is bound to loose as many conservative Democrats. But Reid has an ace in his back pocket if he invokes the maneuver known as "reconciliation." Under such rules the threshold for passage is reduced from 60 (the filibuster proof level) to 50 ( a simple majority).
Without any real support from the GOP we have to depend n the Democrats to do the right thing and give the country a much-needed health care bill of which all can be proud. Even Sen, Baucus.
Without any real support from the GOP we have to depend n the Democrats to do the right thing and give the country a much-needed health care bill of which all can be proud. Even Sen, Baucus.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Fond memories of Army's 'Mr. Inside'
by Don Klein
When I was a young reporter I never liked writing obituaries. I always felt I was being punished by my editor for committing an umbrage. How wrong can youth be? Now I read obituaries every day because despite the sadness it often brings when realizing a life has ended, the story is usually the most elegant and evocative piece in the paper.
I read obituaries not for the reason an aging wag once explained "to make sure my name was not on it" but because it is a wonderful last tribute to someone who formerly lived a life of interest. We all live interesting lives whether we realize it or not.
Stop anyone on the street and if you can get them to talk about themselves, as reporters are more likely to do than most people, you will realize the remarkable factors that go into making a "normal" life. Besides, with most newspaper obits a reader gets that one last chance to spend time with someone they haven’t thought of for years.
Take Felix "Doc" Blanchard, the former West Point football star of the World War II era. Blanchard died this week in Texas at the age of 84, but when I was a callow youth in my early teens he was the rough and tough star of Army football when Army had the greatest football team of the day. The team never again attained such glory.
Every Saturday when Army football games were broadcast on radio – there was no commercial television in those days – I would find a suitable chair and sit on its edge to listen to the exploits of Blanchard and his sidekick Glenn Davis.
During Blanchard’s three years with Army, the team never lost a game.
Blanchard was called "Mr. Inside" because of his exceptional running talent erupting like a volcano up the middle of the field. Davis was known as "Mr. Outside" because he was speedier and could turn the corners better than his colleague. Between the two, Army football was invincible in those days and like any male adolescent during wartime I was completely enthralled by the duo.
Now with the death of Blanchard there comes to mind distinct memories of those wonderful days. Much like the death of actress Fay Wray five years ago, the curtain was closing on my memorable early years of star worship. Wray was the first actress to stir admiration for the opposite sex as she writhed in the clutches of King Kong in my prepubescent days. Blanchard came later and was probably the last of my teenage heroes. As I grew, I realized there are not nearly as many to admire as a child might have thought.
Davis died four years ago and now that Blanchard is gone the famed "touchdown twins" are no longer, but the memory remains. Blanchard scored 38 touchdowns in three years and Davis 59 in four.
I remember a particular day from that era. My grandfather was in a hospital not too far from where we lived in the Bronx. My mother had six sisters and three brothers and many of them used our apartment as a pit stop before or after visiting grampa. On a November Saturday in 1944 Army was playing either Navy or Notre Dame when my Aunt Rose and Uncle Sol from Brooklyn dropped off their sons, my younger cousins, Philly and Irwin, while they visited the hospital.
I had just turned 16 so my mother explained to me how to put up a pot of spaghetti for us three boys while the grownups were visiting the ailing patriarch. Everything went well until I drained the spaghetti into a serving dish and put it, mixed with sauce, on the kitchen table. The radio was blasting away reciting the resolute exploits of Blanchard and Davis.
I was glued to the squawking box during one of the more exciting moments of the game and when I turned back, Philly and Irwin had their hands deep into the pasta bowl and were stuffing their mouths without utensils like cavemen. Today all three of us are grandparents and still whenever I see my cousins I think of the time they ate handfuls of spaghetti like Fred Flintstone while Blanchard and Davis made it a perfect football day for us.
Davis was more of a ladies man and even went on to become one of Hollywood actress Terry Moore’s numerous husbands. He also played professional football for two years with the then Los Angeles Rams. In contrast, Blanchard turned down all offers of personal fame and professional football to become an officer in the Air Force (this was before the Air Force Academy was started in Colorado Springs) and served honorably until he retired as a colonel in 1971.
He served a brief spell as an assistant football coach at West Point. But his greatest achievement was how he inspired a bunch of adolescent boys during a very dark period in the country’s existence. No one did a better job than he on his school’s football field, the first to win the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player while still just a junior. Then after graduation he fulfilled his obligation as an fighter-bomber pilot officer. He flew 84 combat missions over North Vietnam.
Blanchard was all but forgotten as he served in the Air Force and for decades few people heard about him. But kids like me will never forget reading the exploits of the touchdown twins week after week for three consecutive football seasons. At the time I thought the excitement this pair generated would never be equaled, and it wasn’t.
The US Military Academy previously retired Davis’s uniform number 41 and, before he died, West Point announced it would retire No. 35, Blanchard’s famous uniform number. It is fitting that no future Army football player wear these two numbers. It is hard to conceive that ever again there will be two such great running backs playing for the same team at the same time as Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside.
When I was a young reporter I never liked writing obituaries. I always felt I was being punished by my editor for committing an umbrage. How wrong can youth be? Now I read obituaries every day because despite the sadness it often brings when realizing a life has ended, the story is usually the most elegant and evocative piece in the paper.
I read obituaries not for the reason an aging wag once explained "to make sure my name was not on it" but because it is a wonderful last tribute to someone who formerly lived a life of interest. We all live interesting lives whether we realize it or not.
Stop anyone on the street and if you can get them to talk about themselves, as reporters are more likely to do than most people, you will realize the remarkable factors that go into making a "normal" life. Besides, with most newspaper obits a reader gets that one last chance to spend time with someone they haven’t thought of for years.
Take Felix "Doc" Blanchard, the former West Point football star of the World War II era. Blanchard died this week in Texas at the age of 84, but when I was a callow youth in my early teens he was the rough and tough star of Army football when Army had the greatest football team of the day. The team never again attained such glory.
Every Saturday when Army football games were broadcast on radio – there was no commercial television in those days – I would find a suitable chair and sit on its edge to listen to the exploits of Blanchard and his sidekick Glenn Davis.
During Blanchard’s three years with Army, the team never lost a game.
Blanchard was called "Mr. Inside" because of his exceptional running talent erupting like a volcano up the middle of the field. Davis was known as "Mr. Outside" because he was speedier and could turn the corners better than his colleague. Between the two, Army football was invincible in those days and like any male adolescent during wartime I was completely enthralled by the duo.
Now with the death of Blanchard there comes to mind distinct memories of those wonderful days. Much like the death of actress Fay Wray five years ago, the curtain was closing on my memorable early years of star worship. Wray was the first actress to stir admiration for the opposite sex as she writhed in the clutches of King Kong in my prepubescent days. Blanchard came later and was probably the last of my teenage heroes. As I grew, I realized there are not nearly as many to admire as a child might have thought.
Davis died four years ago and now that Blanchard is gone the famed "touchdown twins" are no longer, but the memory remains. Blanchard scored 38 touchdowns in three years and Davis 59 in four.
I remember a particular day from that era. My grandfather was in a hospital not too far from where we lived in the Bronx. My mother had six sisters and three brothers and many of them used our apartment as a pit stop before or after visiting grampa. On a November Saturday in 1944 Army was playing either Navy or Notre Dame when my Aunt Rose and Uncle Sol from Brooklyn dropped off their sons, my younger cousins, Philly and Irwin, while they visited the hospital.
I had just turned 16 so my mother explained to me how to put up a pot of spaghetti for us three boys while the grownups were visiting the ailing patriarch. Everything went well until I drained the spaghetti into a serving dish and put it, mixed with sauce, on the kitchen table. The radio was blasting away reciting the resolute exploits of Blanchard and Davis.
I was glued to the squawking box during one of the more exciting moments of the game and when I turned back, Philly and Irwin had their hands deep into the pasta bowl and were stuffing their mouths without utensils like cavemen. Today all three of us are grandparents and still whenever I see my cousins I think of the time they ate handfuls of spaghetti like Fred Flintstone while Blanchard and Davis made it a perfect football day for us.
Davis was more of a ladies man and even went on to become one of Hollywood actress Terry Moore’s numerous husbands. He also played professional football for two years with the then Los Angeles Rams. In contrast, Blanchard turned down all offers of personal fame and professional football to become an officer in the Air Force (this was before the Air Force Academy was started in Colorado Springs) and served honorably until he retired as a colonel in 1971.
He served a brief spell as an assistant football coach at West Point. But his greatest achievement was how he inspired a bunch of adolescent boys during a very dark period in the country’s existence. No one did a better job than he on his school’s football field, the first to win the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player while still just a junior. Then after graduation he fulfilled his obligation as an fighter-bomber pilot officer. He flew 84 combat missions over North Vietnam.
Blanchard was all but forgotten as he served in the Air Force and for decades few people heard about him. But kids like me will never forget reading the exploits of the touchdown twins week after week for three consecutive football seasons. At the time I thought the excitement this pair generated would never be equaled, and it wasn’t.
The US Military Academy previously retired Davis’s uniform number 41 and, before he died, West Point announced it would retire No. 35, Blanchard’s famous uniform number. It is fitting that no future Army football player wear these two numbers. It is hard to conceive that ever again there will be two such great running backs playing for the same team at the same time as Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside.
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