By Don Klein
To most of us it is inconceivable that a parent would not report the missing child for 31 days. It is unimaginable that during those 31 days that the parent would go out dancing and revel with friends and never saying anything about the child.
It certainly is the behavior of a irresponsible, self-centered and immature mother to act that way. But that does not prove her guilty of murder as so many sidewalk busybodies have concluded.
The Casey Anthony case is a sad one no matter how you look at it. To begin with it is the lose of the life of the sweet-faced, playful little two year old Caylee who deserved a lot better than she got. Looking at that pixilated little victim on TV screens is enough to break your heart.
It is also sad that the Florida prosecutor, who leveled serious capital charges against this foolish 25-year-old mother, apparently saw an opportunity to make a name for himself by setting in motion a trial that had no real evidence. He clearly was not seeking justice for Caylee he was seeking headlines for himself, which he got.
And finally it is sad to observe on cable television a street full of gabby gossipers crying their eyes out as they shouted their disapproval of the jury’s verdict in this case. Not only did they demonstrate the worst understanding of the American judicial system, they helped create a lynch mob atmosphere by their rage.
The blabbermouths who screamed into the microphones held by cable TV minions decided with outlandish conviction that the defendant was guilty without ever hearing a word of testimony in the courtroom. They completely disregarded the basic rule of criminal justice in this county – the presumption of innocence.
Listen to any judge as he charges any jury saying that just because the prosecutor brings charges against a defendant that does not mean the defendant is guilty. The case has to be proven by the evidence presented in court and not whatever is seen or heard anyway else.
The founding fathers knew that when they included due process in the nation’s basic law, the Constitution.
In this country you are innocent until proven guilty, yet to those meddlers outside the courthouse, Casey Anthony was guilty no matter how wanting was the case against her. They wrongly compared the verdict to the infamous Los Angeles trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995.
Admittedly I did not follow the Anthony trial during its lengthy and sordid telling on television but of course I could not avoid learning of the verdict and all the hubbub that followed. The recapitulations I heard and read left me with the feeling that the case against the errant mother was never proved.
Inasmuch as there was no cogent evidence of her guilt the jury did the right thing in finding her not guilty. This is a mystery which will never be solved. It could have been a case of getting away with murder, or a foolish attempt to coverup an accident, or possibly some other explanation. The only important issue here is that the prosecutors failed to prove murder and the jury knew that better than anyone else.
This trial, and others, have sharpened my feeling that journalists have to be restrained in their handling of capital cases. Pretrial publicity often is horrendous and nourished by devious attorneys eager to make their case before the public.
Although I believe strongly that trials should be open to the public and fully reported in the press I do not favor televising trials. That often leads lawyers and judges to showboating and leaves commentators like Nancy Grace, of HLN channel, and others to prejudge the case before thousands of viewers.
Although it is far from perfect, I like the jury system and rarely dispute its decisions. As far as I am concerned the key to any case is what motivates the prosecutor, not what motivates the defendant. District attorneys who take their oaths to represent the interests of all the people, which includes those accused of crimes, are unique in America. Most seek justice often in “hot” cases to enhance their ambitions.
In that regard I take my hat off to Cyrus Vance, Jr., the New York D.A., who handled the ticklish rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn as well as he could. He looked at the evidence against the Frenchman and found it weak and possibly unsubstantiated. He is considering decreasing the charges.
The foreign accusations of some branding the US judicial system as “rushing to judgment” in the Strauss-Kahn case are ridiculous. The man was on a Paris-bound flight and had to be arrested before the victim’s claims could be fully verified and he fled the country’s jurisdiction. Once investigation proved the alleged victim was not credible, the charges were lowered.
In both cases, Anthony and Strauss-Kahn, I think Americans can be proud of the action in its courts. More importantly, the Anthony case has spurred more than a dozen states to propose laws which in the past I think were never necessary. These laws would make it a crime for a parent not to report a missing or dead child within a brief time period.
That, sadly for poor Caylee Anthony, would be her only legacy to the rest of us.
Showing posts with label Saturday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saturday. Show all posts
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Cool-aid for Republicans
By Don Klein
Remember when the Rev. Jim Jones convinced his religious followers at Jonestown in the South American country of Guyana more than 30 years ago to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Cool-aid. In the end 909 people died senselessly. It was an inexplicable tragedy.
Today we have a close replica of that bizarre act of insanity and it is occurred right before our eyes first in the House of Representatives, and now in the United States Senate, by a large number of suicidal legislators.
Members of the Republican Party, 235 in the House, recently voted to end Medicare as we know it today and replace it with an unacceptable plan to subsidize a privatized health system in an effort to reduce future budget deficits.
In contrast, shortly afterward they voted to continue multi-billion dollar subsidies to extremely profitable oil companies. There was no concern about budget-cutting here.
They did not realize at the time that they were sipping their own brand of poison flavored-aid. They certainly know it now. In a special election they lost a seat to a Democrat in upstate New York, in a district which had been traditionally held by a Republican for over four decades.
As if this was not bad enough, 40 Republican senators voted the day after the New York debacle to enact the same anti-Medicare legislation. Fortunately, the Democrats hold a majority in that body and the measure failed with only five members of the GOP defecting to the other side.
The curious element in this GOP maneuver was that everyone knew the legislation had no chance of enactment from the start because it could never pass the Democratic Senate. In essence it was a gesture, not lawmaking.
And what is even more curious is that the measure, which was included in the Republican version of their budget proposal, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, was certain to enrage the 35 million or so seniors who depend on Medicare and want no changes.
Supporters of the bill kept telling everyone it did not effect those over 55 years of age, and in doing so they added even more opponents to the measure – the millions of 40 to 55 years olds who didn’t want to be shortchanged when their turn came to be seniors.
Here they were with a bill that made at least half the country angry with them and which they knew would never become law, yet in brazen arrogance, Speaker John Boehner went ahead with the proposal. It was suicidal from the getgo.
When many of these congressmen and women went home during the recent recess they got an earful from their constituents. That was the first indication the measure had hit a nerve. Then, all of a sudden, the special New York race for 26th House District took a turn for the worse.
This “safe” GOP seat suddenly showed the Democratic candidate within striking distance of the Republican candidate. Then it worsened as the two seemed to tie in the polls and then the Dem pulled ahead.
The campaign focused on the effort of the Republicans led by Boehner and Ryan, to attempt to balance some part of the budget on the backs of grandmas and her contemporaries while reducing taxes for the wealthy.
The Republican candidate started taking a defensive position saying that although she supported the idea of the Ryan Medicare approach it was not necessarily going to become law. What an argument? I would have supported this bill because I knew it would fail.
On election day the Democrat was swept into office by a four point margin with voters – Republican, Democratic and Independents – all rallying behind the save Medicare banner. Did the Republicans learn a lesson?
The day after the results of the election were announced the Senate Democrats forced a vote on the measure and 40 Republican senators stepped up to take their sip of the Ryan Cool-aid. Five other Republicans had the good sense to oppose the measure. Six of those senators who voted to kill Medicare are up for re-election next year.
So if you combine all the Republican votes in both houses of Congress, 275 of them voted in favor of cutting Medicare and only nine voted to save the law. It is almost the same ratio at Jonestown in 1978 where over 900 died and only some 30 survived.
It seems when you are arrogant with power – as members of an insane religious gathering or a modern day Republican -- you cannot tell the difference between the elixir of life and suicidal poison.
The Democrats now have an easy issue to exploit in the coming presidential election year. All they have to do is show the constituents in every district where an incumbent house Republican and senator is running, except those nine who jumped ship on Medicare, proof of their commitment not to serve the people’s interests.
We can hope for the best but the modern Democrats don’t seem to have the stomach for a real fight. They failed to show any smack in the 2010 election and took a beating. Will they fail again next year? The current Democrats have the distinct ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
I have a simple solution. The Democrats ought to let Bill Clinton and Howard Dean loose on the nationwide campaign trail if they hope to win back the House and improve their margin in the Senate. The rest can work their home districts.
Remember when the Rev. Jim Jones convinced his religious followers at Jonestown in the South American country of Guyana more than 30 years ago to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Cool-aid. In the end 909 people died senselessly. It was an inexplicable tragedy.
Today we have a close replica of that bizarre act of insanity and it is occurred right before our eyes first in the House of Representatives, and now in the United States Senate, by a large number of suicidal legislators.
Members of the Republican Party, 235 in the House, recently voted to end Medicare as we know it today and replace it with an unacceptable plan to subsidize a privatized health system in an effort to reduce future budget deficits.
In contrast, shortly afterward they voted to continue multi-billion dollar subsidies to extremely profitable oil companies. There was no concern about budget-cutting here.
They did not realize at the time that they were sipping their own brand of poison flavored-aid. They certainly know it now. In a special election they lost a seat to a Democrat in upstate New York, in a district which had been traditionally held by a Republican for over four decades.
As if this was not bad enough, 40 Republican senators voted the day after the New York debacle to enact the same anti-Medicare legislation. Fortunately, the Democrats hold a majority in that body and the measure failed with only five members of the GOP defecting to the other side.
The curious element in this GOP maneuver was that everyone knew the legislation had no chance of enactment from the start because it could never pass the Democratic Senate. In essence it was a gesture, not lawmaking.
And what is even more curious is that the measure, which was included in the Republican version of their budget proposal, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, was certain to enrage the 35 million or so seniors who depend on Medicare and want no changes.
Supporters of the bill kept telling everyone it did not effect those over 55 years of age, and in doing so they added even more opponents to the measure – the millions of 40 to 55 years olds who didn’t want to be shortchanged when their turn came to be seniors.
Here they were with a bill that made at least half the country angry with them and which they knew would never become law, yet in brazen arrogance, Speaker John Boehner went ahead with the proposal. It was suicidal from the getgo.
When many of these congressmen and women went home during the recent recess they got an earful from their constituents. That was the first indication the measure had hit a nerve. Then, all of a sudden, the special New York race for 26th House District took a turn for the worse.
This “safe” GOP seat suddenly showed the Democratic candidate within striking distance of the Republican candidate. Then it worsened as the two seemed to tie in the polls and then the Dem pulled ahead.
The campaign focused on the effort of the Republicans led by Boehner and Ryan, to attempt to balance some part of the budget on the backs of grandmas and her contemporaries while reducing taxes for the wealthy.
The Republican candidate started taking a defensive position saying that although she supported the idea of the Ryan Medicare approach it was not necessarily going to become law. What an argument? I would have supported this bill because I knew it would fail.
On election day the Democrat was swept into office by a four point margin with voters – Republican, Democratic and Independents – all rallying behind the save Medicare banner. Did the Republicans learn a lesson?
The day after the results of the election were announced the Senate Democrats forced a vote on the measure and 40 Republican senators stepped up to take their sip of the Ryan Cool-aid. Five other Republicans had the good sense to oppose the measure. Six of those senators who voted to kill Medicare are up for re-election next year.
So if you combine all the Republican votes in both houses of Congress, 275 of them voted in favor of cutting Medicare and only nine voted to save the law. It is almost the same ratio at Jonestown in 1978 where over 900 died and only some 30 survived.
It seems when you are arrogant with power – as members of an insane religious gathering or a modern day Republican -- you cannot tell the difference between the elixir of life and suicidal poison.
The Democrats now have an easy issue to exploit in the coming presidential election year. All they have to do is show the constituents in every district where an incumbent house Republican and senator is running, except those nine who jumped ship on Medicare, proof of their commitment not to serve the people’s interests.
We can hope for the best but the modern Democrats don’t seem to have the stomach for a real fight. They failed to show any smack in the 2010 election and took a beating. Will they fail again next year? The current Democrats have the distinct ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
I have a simple solution. The Democrats ought to let Bill Clinton and Howard Dean loose on the nationwide campaign trail if they hope to win back the House and improve their margin in the Senate. The rest can work their home districts.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Are we the chosen people?
By Don Klein
The headline in Saturday’s New York Times said, "Libyan Intervention Is Costing the U.S. Less Than Expected, Analysts Say." Yippee. I suppose we should all cheer. A fighter jet in action costs a mere $13,000 an hour and a Tomahawk missile is priced at a rock-bottom $1.4 million apiece.
What a bargain! At these rates we should consider engaging in two or three more wars. Of course we could be spending nothing if we kept our noses out of the Gaddafi upheaval. But no, we are super Americans and problems around the world become ours eventually.
The cost is minuscule in military terms. Imposing a no-fly zone should amount to anywhere between $400 and $800 million. In the first days of attacks on Libyan forces the US fired 178 Tomahawks, costing the American taxpayer some $250 million.
I remember Sen. Everett Dirksen’s remark many years ago. "A billion here, a billion there, and soon we are talking about real money." There are those who believe that such expenditures during a period of economic strife is absurd.
We are cutting down on teachers pay, taking cops and firefighters off the line, slimming medical costs and unemployment funds and our infrastructure is falling apart, all because we have no funds and suddenly out of nowhere we are concerned with the welfare of a bunch of strangers whose fate has no impact on our lives.
Shouldn’t we be spending money on the well-being of American citizens rather than worrying about the welfare of unapproachable, illiterate, undependable, disorganized outlanders who probably will turn against us at first opportunity.
The first question that must be answered affirmatively before going to war should be is there any national interest of the United States in the fate of Libya? The answer is an emphatic NO.
Think of this for a change. Suppose the US had withdrawn all it forces from Europe and Asia some time ago, would we be involved in all these so-called "humanitarian" issues? If we didn’t have bases in Europe would we bother with Libya? It is easy to contemplate intervention when you have aircraft carriers cruising nearby and air force bases a hop, skip and a jump away from the troubled areas.
US troops should not be based in Europe and Asia any longer. The big war ended 66 years ago, the Soviet threat is gone, foreign nations can handle their own defenses, why do we remain there at great cost to taxpayers? But that’s a subject for another time.
The American military should have one purpose only, One and just one. To defend Americans from attack at home. To stop an enemy from doing harm to us. Not to act as the world’s protector and conscience. We have no more business in Libya than we do in providing advanced dental care for the Eskimos in Antarctic.
For 42 years the Libyan people endured under Gaddafi and we stood aloof from their plight. Even when the dictator was behind the killing of Americans in Europe all we did was a single bombing sortie over Tripoli and that was all. Today Gaddafi has harmed no Americans, has made no threats against us, and we launch an all-out attack.
It is senseless, except to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are the moral leader of nations. That’s a tired old argument. Quoting the frustrated poverty-stricken Tevya in "Fiddler on the Roof" when speaking to God asked, "You say we are the chosen people. Why not choose someone else for a change?"
Alas, He did choose others to help. The British, the French, the Arab League. Hah. In the past only the British has shown any real support for US in the Middle East. Remember the French introduced the UN no-fly over Iraq resolution, then reneged after it was passed and implemented.
The Arabs? Having Arab allies reminds me of my cousin Herb. He lived in Arizona and dropped by Baltimore years ago when my daughters were kids and promised them both stylish cowboy boots once he returned home in a couple of weeks. My daughters now have children of the age they were when the promise was made and still have not received the boots. Herb was as reliable then as the Arabs are today.
Qatar promised to send four (yes, you read it right, FOUR) jets to the combat area weeks ago. We are still awaiting their arrival. Whatever we get from the Arab League will be too little and too late. Suicide bombing is their forte, not a stand-up fight.
The biggest surprise here is that President Obama agreed to this brutal incursion in the first place. He ignored his own words opposing such interventions when still a member of the Senate and Bush took us into Iraq. Another promise broken.
Whoever said that women are the peacemakers and men the warriors got it all wrong. The reluctant Obama was persuaded to enter the fight by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Advisor Samantha Rice despite calls for restraint by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen.
As Maureen Dowd writing in The Times said, "...everyone is fascinated
with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the secretary of defense, top male White House national security advisers — outmuscled by the fierce women around President Obama urging him to man up against the crazy Gaddafi."
This war – or whatever the president wants to call it – is wrong and should never have been mounted. If one American is killed (none so far reported) it will be blood on the hands of Obama the same way that more than 4,400 American deaths in Iraq remain eternally on George W. Bush’s bloody hands.
The headline in Saturday’s New York Times said, "Libyan Intervention Is Costing the U.S. Less Than Expected, Analysts Say." Yippee. I suppose we should all cheer. A fighter jet in action costs a mere $13,000 an hour and a Tomahawk missile is priced at a rock-bottom $1.4 million apiece.
What a bargain! At these rates we should consider engaging in two or three more wars. Of course we could be spending nothing if we kept our noses out of the Gaddafi upheaval. But no, we are super Americans and problems around the world become ours eventually.
The cost is minuscule in military terms. Imposing a no-fly zone should amount to anywhere between $400 and $800 million. In the first days of attacks on Libyan forces the US fired 178 Tomahawks, costing the American taxpayer some $250 million.
I remember Sen. Everett Dirksen’s remark many years ago. "A billion here, a billion there, and soon we are talking about real money." There are those who believe that such expenditures during a period of economic strife is absurd.
We are cutting down on teachers pay, taking cops and firefighters off the line, slimming medical costs and unemployment funds and our infrastructure is falling apart, all because we have no funds and suddenly out of nowhere we are concerned with the welfare of a bunch of strangers whose fate has no impact on our lives.
Shouldn’t we be spending money on the well-being of American citizens rather than worrying about the welfare of unapproachable, illiterate, undependable, disorganized outlanders who probably will turn against us at first opportunity.
The first question that must be answered affirmatively before going to war should be is there any national interest of the United States in the fate of Libya? The answer is an emphatic NO.
Think of this for a change. Suppose the US had withdrawn all it forces from Europe and Asia some time ago, would we be involved in all these so-called "humanitarian" issues? If we didn’t have bases in Europe would we bother with Libya? It is easy to contemplate intervention when you have aircraft carriers cruising nearby and air force bases a hop, skip and a jump away from the troubled areas.
US troops should not be based in Europe and Asia any longer. The big war ended 66 years ago, the Soviet threat is gone, foreign nations can handle their own defenses, why do we remain there at great cost to taxpayers? But that’s a subject for another time.
The American military should have one purpose only, One and just one. To defend Americans from attack at home. To stop an enemy from doing harm to us. Not to act as the world’s protector and conscience. We have no more business in Libya than we do in providing advanced dental care for the Eskimos in Antarctic.
For 42 years the Libyan people endured under Gaddafi and we stood aloof from their plight. Even when the dictator was behind the killing of Americans in Europe all we did was a single bombing sortie over Tripoli and that was all. Today Gaddafi has harmed no Americans, has made no threats against us, and we launch an all-out attack.
It is senseless, except to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are the moral leader of nations. That’s a tired old argument. Quoting the frustrated poverty-stricken Tevya in "Fiddler on the Roof" when speaking to God asked, "You say we are the chosen people. Why not choose someone else for a change?"
Alas, He did choose others to help. The British, the French, the Arab League. Hah. In the past only the British has shown any real support for US in the Middle East. Remember the French introduced the UN no-fly over Iraq resolution, then reneged after it was passed and implemented.
The Arabs? Having Arab allies reminds me of my cousin Herb. He lived in Arizona and dropped by Baltimore years ago when my daughters were kids and promised them both stylish cowboy boots once he returned home in a couple of weeks. My daughters now have children of the age they were when the promise was made and still have not received the boots. Herb was as reliable then as the Arabs are today.
Qatar promised to send four (yes, you read it right, FOUR) jets to the combat area weeks ago. We are still awaiting their arrival. Whatever we get from the Arab League will be too little and too late. Suicide bombing is their forte, not a stand-up fight.
The biggest surprise here is that President Obama agreed to this brutal incursion in the first place. He ignored his own words opposing such interventions when still a member of the Senate and Bush took us into Iraq. Another promise broken.
Whoever said that women are the peacemakers and men the warriors got it all wrong. The reluctant Obama was persuaded to enter the fight by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Advisor Samantha Rice despite calls for restraint by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen.
As Maureen Dowd writing in The Times said, "...everyone is fascinated
with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the secretary of defense, top male White House national security advisers — outmuscled by the fierce women around President Obama urging him to man up against the crazy Gaddafi."
This war – or whatever the president wants to call it – is wrong and should never have been mounted. If one American is killed (none so far reported) it will be blood on the hands of Obama the same way that more than 4,400 American deaths in Iraq remain eternally on George W. Bush’s bloody hands.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
House of charades
By Don Klein
Congress is in session and it is time again for that famous and well-worn Washington game called, "Congressional charade." How better to spend your limited time as a member of Congress than seeming to be doing something when actually you are not.
The burlesque occupying the members of the House of Representatives through its second week of the new session is called repeal of the Health Act passed last year when Congress was controlled by Democrats.
It is a mockery because everyone knows, especially the Republican leaders of the House, that the bill will never be enacted even if it passes with flying colors in the Republican dominated lower chamber of the national legislature.
"It’s symbolic," John Boehner, the new speaker of the House admitted, "we promised our constituents." Known for saying his party is fulfilling the desires of the American people he ignored the fact that the majority of voters in the latest poll by CNN have an exact opposite view of the Health Care Act.
Over 60 percent said they like it and in fact many wish it went further than it does.
But that is not the only fact the Republicans en masse dismiss when they talk about the law. The Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan statistical arm of Congress, claimed that the Health Act will save taxpayers $230 billion over the next decade against the alternative of doing nothing and would cover an additional 32 million Americans.
Republican after Republican who were asked about this deficit increase that would result from the repeal deny this simple fact. "It’s got to cost more," Rep. Mike Ross, (R-Arkansas) said, when you add millions more to the insurance rolls. The GOP has been in the act of denying facts ever since George W. Bush became president.
Recall how after the Army searched for months over hill and dale in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and found none, then President Bush insisted there WMD’s still were threatening the nation. Remember Vice President Cheney saying deficits were good, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Speaker Boehner in his remarks to House members on the first day of the 112th Congress said there would be open sessions on all bills, then exempted the health repeal effort from debate and amendments. He also said that all new legislation offered must be accompanied by an explanation of what funds will be cut or trimmed to avoid adding to the deficit.
That too was violated by the leadership in exempting from the rule the health proposal and a handful of other favorite GOP pieces of legislation slated for action by the party. Of course who can forget the massive addition to the deficit buried in the bosom of a massive tax cut for the wealthy squeezed from Obama by the Republicans during the lame duck session last year.
To them it is a game: sounds like jobs through tax cuts for millionaires . Looks like acting for the people. Sounds like open House rules. Charade. Charade. Charade. It is all a game, but a dangerous one. Might as well play Russian roulette.
The reason the health repeal won’t work is because the Senate is still controlled by the Democrats and is unlikely even to take up the repeal. If they do it should be defeated, ending the effort there. If by chance it should pass the Senate, Obama will veto it and Congress will not be able to override the president’s rejection.
"Don’t you think it’s a waste of time?" a reporter asked Boehner.
"No, I do not," he said. "I believe it’s our responsibility to do what we said we were going to do. And I think it’s pretty clear to the American people that the best health care system in the world is going to go down the drain if we don’t act."
Even though health repeal will be dead on arrival, the GOP leaders of the House insist on pushing it through against the will of the people, and against their own commitment to lower the deficit, and against all reasonable hope of final enactment. The question we should ask is why they do things just to be symbolic during a period of severe unemployment and economic stress in the nation?
Why isn’t the House trying to do something about stimulating employment? They criticized the Democrats when they were in power for not doing enough to blunt joblessness.
In their way of thinking, all that matters if what is good for the insurance companies which after repeal would be able to reject covering the needy. Next target will be social security and medicare?
The deplorable fact is that nothing significant will happen during the next two years because the noxious bills the House may pass will never be approved by the Senate. And the Senate will never get anything done until they revise the filibuster rule, which is not a certainty at all.
So welcome to the 112th Congress which will be noted for spinning wheels, attending masquerade parties on the House and Senate floors, and playing endless charades. Even with the reduction by members in cutting House office costs by five percent they will still be the best Congress money can buy. But the money will come from corporations and the waste paid for by taxpayers.
Congress is in session and it is time again for that famous and well-worn Washington game called, "Congressional charade." How better to spend your limited time as a member of Congress than seeming to be doing something when actually you are not.
The burlesque occupying the members of the House of Representatives through its second week of the new session is called repeal of the Health Act passed last year when Congress was controlled by Democrats.
It is a mockery because everyone knows, especially the Republican leaders of the House, that the bill will never be enacted even if it passes with flying colors in the Republican dominated lower chamber of the national legislature.
"It’s symbolic," John Boehner, the new speaker of the House admitted, "we promised our constituents." Known for saying his party is fulfilling the desires of the American people he ignored the fact that the majority of voters in the latest poll by CNN have an exact opposite view of the Health Care Act.
Over 60 percent said they like it and in fact many wish it went further than it does.
But that is not the only fact the Republicans en masse dismiss when they talk about the law. The Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan statistical arm of Congress, claimed that the Health Act will save taxpayers $230 billion over the next decade against the alternative of doing nothing and would cover an additional 32 million Americans.
Republican after Republican who were asked about this deficit increase that would result from the repeal deny this simple fact. "It’s got to cost more," Rep. Mike Ross, (R-Arkansas) said, when you add millions more to the insurance rolls. The GOP has been in the act of denying facts ever since George W. Bush became president.
Recall how after the Army searched for months over hill and dale in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and found none, then President Bush insisted there WMD’s still were threatening the nation. Remember Vice President Cheney saying deficits were good, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Speaker Boehner in his remarks to House members on the first day of the 112th Congress said there would be open sessions on all bills, then exempted the health repeal effort from debate and amendments. He also said that all new legislation offered must be accompanied by an explanation of what funds will be cut or trimmed to avoid adding to the deficit.
That too was violated by the leadership in exempting from the rule the health proposal and a handful of other favorite GOP pieces of legislation slated for action by the party. Of course who can forget the massive addition to the deficit buried in the bosom of a massive tax cut for the wealthy squeezed from Obama by the Republicans during the lame duck session last year.
To them it is a game: sounds like jobs through tax cuts for millionaires . Looks like acting for the people. Sounds like open House rules. Charade. Charade. Charade. It is all a game, but a dangerous one. Might as well play Russian roulette.
The reason the health repeal won’t work is because the Senate is still controlled by the Democrats and is unlikely even to take up the repeal. If they do it should be defeated, ending the effort there. If by chance it should pass the Senate, Obama will veto it and Congress will not be able to override the president’s rejection.
"Don’t you think it’s a waste of time?" a reporter asked Boehner.
"No, I do not," he said. "I believe it’s our responsibility to do what we said we were going to do. And I think it’s pretty clear to the American people that the best health care system in the world is going to go down the drain if we don’t act."
Even though health repeal will be dead on arrival, the GOP leaders of the House insist on pushing it through against the will of the people, and against their own commitment to lower the deficit, and against all reasonable hope of final enactment. The question we should ask is why they do things just to be symbolic during a period of severe unemployment and economic stress in the nation?
Why isn’t the House trying to do something about stimulating employment? They criticized the Democrats when they were in power for not doing enough to blunt joblessness.
In their way of thinking, all that matters if what is good for the insurance companies which after repeal would be able to reject covering the needy. Next target will be social security and medicare?
The deplorable fact is that nothing significant will happen during the next two years because the noxious bills the House may pass will never be approved by the Senate. And the Senate will never get anything done until they revise the filibuster rule, which is not a certainty at all.
So welcome to the 112th Congress which will be noted for spinning wheels, attending masquerade parties on the House and Senate floors, and playing endless charades. Even with the reduction by members in cutting House office costs by five percent they will still be the best Congress money can buy. But the money will come from corporations and the waste paid for by taxpayers.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Not doing the right thing
By Don Klein
When I think of bravery and self-sacrifice I can’t help but visualize the indelible and lasting image of those martyred firefighters and policemen racing into the scorching, choking New York skyscrapers in September 2001. That picture will never escape my mind.
As thousands of innocent occupants fled the inferno to safety several hundred first responders, laden down with heavy hoses and air packs, rushed into danger without regard to their safety. It was surreal. Why would they do that when good reason would insist that they exit, not enter, the death traps?
When the toll was counted after the collapse of the buildings, 343 firefighters and 60 policemen died in the tragedy.
By and large that is what firefighters and policemen do. They go where the trouble is and don’t slow down because it might be dangerous or because it is a holiday.
But that is not the end to the calamity. For months afterward scores of surviving firefighters, joined by other volunteers and off-duty cops, searched the rubble looking for survivors and when that hope dissipated, they worked to recover as many of the 2,742 of the dead they could from the entangled debris to provide them with honorable burials.
There was nothing anyone could do for the dead but the first responders who stayed at the scene for months have been rewarded by fate with dreadful health problems (severe lung ailments and untreatable cancers). Now the United States Senate rewarded them with callous indifference.
Legislation to provide relief for these heroes passed the House of Representatives but has been delayed, if not halted altogether, by Senate Republicans. Why? One reason is it involves a lot of money and in this age of monstrous deficits the Republicans only have room to remember the rich with a $900 billion unfunded boondoggle in tax cuts while real American heroes can wretch themselves into oblivion.
Senate Republicans will allow these 9/11 champions to suffer and die while they pander to the most covetous, wealthy of Americans. The Republicans don’t care because they will never get a dimes worth of campaign donations from firefighters while the upper crust will reward their political lap dogs handsomely before the next election.
Most Americans strongly disagree with these astigmatic Republicans. When I was an adolescent living in my family’s apartment in the Bronx I was awaken one night by a noisy commotion across the street in the early hours of a wintery morning. It turned out that a three alarm fire had engulfed a five story apartment house. It was so cold the water thrust from multiple fire hoses into the upper floors froze into long stalactites hanging from the fire escapes on the way down.
Mesmerized by the scene unfolding before my eyes I suddenly noticed housewives from other houses in the areas, my mother included, each bundled against the cold, carrying pots of hot coffee to the firefighters as the battle against the flames went on for hours.
It was a small gesture and they didn’t have to do it, but the sense of community was strong in those days. The firefighters were protecting their families and the least they could do was to offer them something hot on a frigid night.
Not so with our apathetic senators. Their hearts are so cold they see nothing wrong with spitting on ordinary people. They have been doing it for years. It is their second nature. What is difficult to understand is why we keep sending these contaminated minions of the rich and privileged back to Congress election after election?
Sen. Jon Llewellyn Kyl, (R-Arizona) gave another explanation why the bill to relieve the first responders should not be brought up during the lame duck period. They would have to work over the Christmas holiday week and that, according to him, "would disrespect" Christians observing Christmas.
I would like to see Kyl present one Christian, other than a rock-ribbed Republican, who would object to Congress working during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and one who would not favor giving assistance to 9/11 heroes.
The Republicans are the first to holler "class warfare" whenever anyone says that the rich should pay a larger share of income taxes than others. Yet it is senators like Kyl who are the people engaged in class warfare. Why? Because it is all right for you and me and every other ordinary citizen to work during the Christmas-New Year’s holidays but not members of Congress.
Check any fire house or police station anywhere in the country this holiday season and you will find men and women on duty as they have been during every holiday in the history of the United States. These are the working brothers and sisters of the injured first responders that Kyl disregards because he doesn’t think there is enough time to do the right thing.
We could hope the day never comes when Jon Llewellyn Kyl’s house is on fire and when the local fire house gets the alarm the crew on duty stops to take a vote requiring a super majority before the trucks roll. It would never happen because firefighters are committed to serving the public. Too bad Republican senators are not.
When I think of bravery and self-sacrifice I can’t help but visualize the indelible and lasting image of those martyred firefighters and policemen racing into the scorching, choking New York skyscrapers in September 2001. That picture will never escape my mind.
As thousands of innocent occupants fled the inferno to safety several hundred first responders, laden down with heavy hoses and air packs, rushed into danger without regard to their safety. It was surreal. Why would they do that when good reason would insist that they exit, not enter, the death traps?
When the toll was counted after the collapse of the buildings, 343 firefighters and 60 policemen died in the tragedy.
By and large that is what firefighters and policemen do. They go where the trouble is and don’t slow down because it might be dangerous or because it is a holiday.
But that is not the end to the calamity. For months afterward scores of surviving firefighters, joined by other volunteers and off-duty cops, searched the rubble looking for survivors and when that hope dissipated, they worked to recover as many of the 2,742 of the dead they could from the entangled debris to provide them with honorable burials.
There was nothing anyone could do for the dead but the first responders who stayed at the scene for months have been rewarded by fate with dreadful health problems (severe lung ailments and untreatable cancers). Now the United States Senate rewarded them with callous indifference.
Legislation to provide relief for these heroes passed the House of Representatives but has been delayed, if not halted altogether, by Senate Republicans. Why? One reason is it involves a lot of money and in this age of monstrous deficits the Republicans only have room to remember the rich with a $900 billion unfunded boondoggle in tax cuts while real American heroes can wretch themselves into oblivion.
Senate Republicans will allow these 9/11 champions to suffer and die while they pander to the most covetous, wealthy of Americans. The Republicans don’t care because they will never get a dimes worth of campaign donations from firefighters while the upper crust will reward their political lap dogs handsomely before the next election.
Most Americans strongly disagree with these astigmatic Republicans. When I was an adolescent living in my family’s apartment in the Bronx I was awaken one night by a noisy commotion across the street in the early hours of a wintery morning. It turned out that a three alarm fire had engulfed a five story apartment house. It was so cold the water thrust from multiple fire hoses into the upper floors froze into long stalactites hanging from the fire escapes on the way down.
Mesmerized by the scene unfolding before my eyes I suddenly noticed housewives from other houses in the areas, my mother included, each bundled against the cold, carrying pots of hot coffee to the firefighters as the battle against the flames went on for hours.
It was a small gesture and they didn’t have to do it, but the sense of community was strong in those days. The firefighters were protecting their families and the least they could do was to offer them something hot on a frigid night.
Not so with our apathetic senators. Their hearts are so cold they see nothing wrong with spitting on ordinary people. They have been doing it for years. It is their second nature. What is difficult to understand is why we keep sending these contaminated minions of the rich and privileged back to Congress election after election?
Sen. Jon Llewellyn Kyl, (R-Arizona) gave another explanation why the bill to relieve the first responders should not be brought up during the lame duck period. They would have to work over the Christmas holiday week and that, according to him, "would disrespect" Christians observing Christmas.
I would like to see Kyl present one Christian, other than a rock-ribbed Republican, who would object to Congress working during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and one who would not favor giving assistance to 9/11 heroes.
The Republicans are the first to holler "class warfare" whenever anyone says that the rich should pay a larger share of income taxes than others. Yet it is senators like Kyl who are the people engaged in class warfare. Why? Because it is all right for you and me and every other ordinary citizen to work during the Christmas-New Year’s holidays but not members of Congress.
Check any fire house or police station anywhere in the country this holiday season and you will find men and women on duty as they have been during every holiday in the history of the United States. These are the working brothers and sisters of the injured first responders that Kyl disregards because he doesn’t think there is enough time to do the right thing.
We could hope the day never comes when Jon Llewellyn Kyl’s house is on fire and when the local fire house gets the alarm the crew on duty stops to take a vote requiring a super majority before the trucks roll. It would never happen because firefighters are committed to serving the public. Too bad Republican senators are not.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Bad execution vs. bad behavior
By Don Klein
For years we have been hearing the same plaintive cry from frustrated citizens: “There is not much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It doesn’t matter which one is in power, the result is always the same.”
Recent behavior of President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress has given us all a clear-cut lesson in this dazzling distinction.
Of course, there are basic policy dissimilarities. The Democrats are primarily concerned with the nondescript workers and voters, unions and the moral high ground while the Republican are influenced by corporations, the military and the infinite greed of the wealthy.
Aside from this there is something that goes beyond basic policy. An important element that deserves consideration is called political style. The Democrats for all their desire to do good are poorly organized and are horrible political tacticians. The recent capitulation of Obama on Bush tax cuts is a painful example. In sports it’s called good planning, bad execution.
The Republicans on the other hand are organized and brutal in pursuit of their goals. They were despicable in their cold dismissal of such reasonable measures as medical aid to 9/11 first responders and the rejection of the patently unfair policy towards gays and lesbians called, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
They stand on these pillars of decadence to protect their “holy grail” tax cuts for the wealthy. The Republicans don’t care how much the tax breaks for the rich will damage the deficit while they are determined to fight to the death to end unemployment insurance payments to the jobless without corresponding spending cuts.
They don’t seem to care that they are borrowing money today to pay for tax cuts that our children and their children in the decades to come will have to redeem. More importantly they are damaging the worldwide stability of the nation to reward their rich patrons.
Further, this contemptible behavior by the Republican leadership manages to get virtually 100 percent support from their ranks in Congress while the Democrats skirmish with each other like alley cats over the issues agreed to by their leadership.
You could say when thinking of the difference between the two parties the Republicans are disciplined and obedient and the Democrats act like rowdy disputants at a condo association meeting. They prove Will Rogers correct. He once said, “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”
Democrats can be disappointed with their leaders, as they are now with the Obama tax deal that has split the party, but Republicans are worse than just disappointing. They are calculating and carry the banner of hypocrisy with pride and callousness.
Take one of the leading and very confusing Republicans –- Senator John McCain. He is a politician who at one time seemed to be the bright light in the Republican firmament. I am ashamed to say that at one time I considered him a candidate worthy of my vote. That was ten years ago -- before he lost his way.
If you remember 2000 when he, a war hero, fought George W. Bush, a war eluded, for the GOP presidential nomination, he was the man of rationale battling the man of claptrap. The party chose the wrong man and the country will pay for that mistake for decades to come.
The McCain who ran for president in 2008 was not the same man. He moved to the right to garner the support of those extreme elements that voted for Bush in the previous two elections and added insult to injury by choosing a buffoon as his running mate.
Take “don’t ask, don’t tell” for example. When the issue came up some time ago a reasonable McCain said that he would vote in favor of abolishing the policy if military leaders indorsed the idea. Then earlier this year when the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs recommended an end to the policy he said he wanted to wait until the Pentagon report on the subject was released in December.
Now that that report was out showing that the vast majority of servicemen and woman supported the end of the policy, the inscrutable McCain said it was not the time for this act because of a bad economy and he asked for another survey. Soon he is liable to oppose ending DADT because the beer tax is too high.
McCain is an enigma and a hypocrite. That should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to today’s Congress. He is just one of hundreds there. McCain is not so much the “maverick” he claims to be but more of an obedient follower who stood by his party in its deplorable disregard for 9/11 heroes and lack of concern for the jobless.
In the end Democratic leaders like Senator Harry Reid may be slow to act and negligent and President Obama may be a lousy negotiator, but the Republicans have downright scoundrels like McCain in their ranks. It’s a bad choice no matter what.
It is as if Will Rogers could see into the 21st century with his appropriate quip made years ago: “Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what is going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House.”
For years we have been hearing the same plaintive cry from frustrated citizens: “There is not much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It doesn’t matter which one is in power, the result is always the same.”
Recent behavior of President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress has given us all a clear-cut lesson in this dazzling distinction.
Of course, there are basic policy dissimilarities. The Democrats are primarily concerned with the nondescript workers and voters, unions and the moral high ground while the Republican are influenced by corporations, the military and the infinite greed of the wealthy.
Aside from this there is something that goes beyond basic policy. An important element that deserves consideration is called political style. The Democrats for all their desire to do good are poorly organized and are horrible political tacticians. The recent capitulation of Obama on Bush tax cuts is a painful example. In sports it’s called good planning, bad execution.
The Republicans on the other hand are organized and brutal in pursuit of their goals. They were despicable in their cold dismissal of such reasonable measures as medical aid to 9/11 first responders and the rejection of the patently unfair policy towards gays and lesbians called, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
They stand on these pillars of decadence to protect their “holy grail” tax cuts for the wealthy. The Republicans don’t care how much the tax breaks for the rich will damage the deficit while they are determined to fight to the death to end unemployment insurance payments to the jobless without corresponding spending cuts.
They don’t seem to care that they are borrowing money today to pay for tax cuts that our children and their children in the decades to come will have to redeem. More importantly they are damaging the worldwide stability of the nation to reward their rich patrons.
Further, this contemptible behavior by the Republican leadership manages to get virtually 100 percent support from their ranks in Congress while the Democrats skirmish with each other like alley cats over the issues agreed to by their leadership.
You could say when thinking of the difference between the two parties the Republicans are disciplined and obedient and the Democrats act like rowdy disputants at a condo association meeting. They prove Will Rogers correct. He once said, “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”
Democrats can be disappointed with their leaders, as they are now with the Obama tax deal that has split the party, but Republicans are worse than just disappointing. They are calculating and carry the banner of hypocrisy with pride and callousness.
Take one of the leading and very confusing Republicans –- Senator John McCain. He is a politician who at one time seemed to be the bright light in the Republican firmament. I am ashamed to say that at one time I considered him a candidate worthy of my vote. That was ten years ago -- before he lost his way.
If you remember 2000 when he, a war hero, fought George W. Bush, a war eluded, for the GOP presidential nomination, he was the man of rationale battling the man of claptrap. The party chose the wrong man and the country will pay for that mistake for decades to come.
The McCain who ran for president in 2008 was not the same man. He moved to the right to garner the support of those extreme elements that voted for Bush in the previous two elections and added insult to injury by choosing a buffoon as his running mate.
Take “don’t ask, don’t tell” for example. When the issue came up some time ago a reasonable McCain said that he would vote in favor of abolishing the policy if military leaders indorsed the idea. Then earlier this year when the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs recommended an end to the policy he said he wanted to wait until the Pentagon report on the subject was released in December.
Now that that report was out showing that the vast majority of servicemen and woman supported the end of the policy, the inscrutable McCain said it was not the time for this act because of a bad economy and he asked for another survey. Soon he is liable to oppose ending DADT because the beer tax is too high.
McCain is an enigma and a hypocrite. That should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to today’s Congress. He is just one of hundreds there. McCain is not so much the “maverick” he claims to be but more of an obedient follower who stood by his party in its deplorable disregard for 9/11 heroes and lack of concern for the jobless.
In the end Democratic leaders like Senator Harry Reid may be slow to act and negligent and President Obama may be a lousy negotiator, but the Republicans have downright scoundrels like McCain in their ranks. It’s a bad choice no matter what.
It is as if Will Rogers could see into the 21st century with his appropriate quip made years ago: “Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what is going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House.”
Saturday, December 4, 2010
The wizard that wasn't
By Don Klein
During the campaigns of 2008 many of us were lifted to great emotional heights by the words and political wizardry of Barack Obama. We saw in him the antithesis to the dark, unsettling years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
We anticipated, or wished, that from this brilliant light from the heartland would spring forth a bold new vision of progress. We saw a young, articulate leader of intelligence and hope who would make the country well again.
Elegant and eloquent was he. Just what we needed. We saw him as a reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy combined.
We were wrong. As president Obama was a disappointment , a pathetic 21st Century version of failed leadership. We were treated to a massive dose of languor from the Obama White House. He was a reluctant warrior.
To the dismay of the rest of us, it seems the Republican figured out Obama from the beginning. Obama is not a fighter. He is no Lyndon B. Johnson or Harry S. Truman. He is not in the mold of traditional great Democratic presidents. He will not grab an opponent by the lapels and push his ideas to fruition. Rather he is a re-embodiment of Ferdinand the Bull.
We must face the fact that he is wimpish. We need a leader for president not a easy-going guy who seems to put more energy into his basketball playing than governance. The latest betrayal by the GOP (no Senate action until tax cuts are extended) one day after "amicable" talks in the White House demonstrates how brazen his enemies have become.
The GOP has perfected the act of showing disrespect for him and the office he holds. Obama originally invited the Republican leadership to the White House for talks earlier only to be told no thanks. They said reschedule the meeting to their convenience or no soap. It is unheard of to snub an invitation to meet with a head of state on his schedule.
They seem to know they can get away with anything with Obama, especially when it is demeaning. It’s like rubbing a dog’s nose in his own grunge.
The signs were there from almost the start of his administration. His attempts at bipartisanship were a flop because he failed to recognize what everyone else knew –- the GOP was not going to cooperate on anything he proposed. He wasted a filibuster-proof Senate until Senator Ted Kennedy's death ended this advantage.
The result: the GOP emasculated the health care bill by dumping the public option into the trash can with Obama’s approval. They also weakened his financial regulation bill so that it is not much of an improvement over the past. They refused to pass legislation to care for the 9/11 first responders nor extend unemployment insurance for those longtime jobless Americans.
And what did the White House do? An infrequent mention of these events embodied deep within a speech somewhere in the hustings when a fighter would have been shouting these outrages from the rooftops.
Obama supporters are befuddled by his inaction. What happened to their knight in shining armor elected to right the wrongs of previous years?
Did he sacrifice a meaningful health care bill just to be able to brag that he was the first president ever to enact a health bill of any kind? Did his advisers suggest he should look good while not being particularly helpful.
Obama has to wake up. Get his dander up. Get rid of those who have been advising him to failure. He is half way through his initial term and he doesn’t have much time to improve if he expects a second term.
This pussycat has to turn into a tiger or the Republicans will make him look like a dupe.
1. He must hold fast to his commitment not to extend Bush tax cuts to the wealthy even if it means no tax cut for anyone else. If the GOP stands firm on its position to increase the deficit by extending tax cuts, end them all. The president can do it by a simple veto, which the GOP cannot override.
2. To cut the deficit he can do a number of things. First, end the Afghanistan war and cutoff aid to Pakistan. And while he is at it, close US bases in Europe and Asia and bring home troops based there. He must tell the Republicans they will not get their way with his prerogatives as president. Use the veto whenever.
3. He must loudly trumpet all the shifty Republican policies which do not serve the public – like denial of unemployment insurance and health care for first responders.
4. He should be at least as forceful with Congress as he was in the case of the Harvard professor and the Cambridge cop. In that instance he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. In Washington politics his nose belongs in the GOP’s face.
The truth is I don’t think he will do any of these things in the next two years. He looks upon confrontation as bad politics (even though it worked for the GOP in the midterm elections) and will continue fruitlessly to try to work with his political opponents.
In that case I believe, even though it is unlikely under normal circumstances, that there will be a strong attempt to oppose a sitting president in the 2012 party primaries and he could be replaced by a more aggressive potential leader. If Obama doesn’t change his tactics many will find that solution favorable.
During the campaigns of 2008 many of us were lifted to great emotional heights by the words and political wizardry of Barack Obama. We saw in him the antithesis to the dark, unsettling years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
We anticipated, or wished, that from this brilliant light from the heartland would spring forth a bold new vision of progress. We saw a young, articulate leader of intelligence and hope who would make the country well again.
Elegant and eloquent was he. Just what we needed. We saw him as a reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy combined.
We were wrong. As president Obama was a disappointment , a pathetic 21st Century version of failed leadership. We were treated to a massive dose of languor from the Obama White House. He was a reluctant warrior.
To the dismay of the rest of us, it seems the Republican figured out Obama from the beginning. Obama is not a fighter. He is no Lyndon B. Johnson or Harry S. Truman. He is not in the mold of traditional great Democratic presidents. He will not grab an opponent by the lapels and push his ideas to fruition. Rather he is a re-embodiment of Ferdinand the Bull.
We must face the fact that he is wimpish. We need a leader for president not a easy-going guy who seems to put more energy into his basketball playing than governance. The latest betrayal by the GOP (no Senate action until tax cuts are extended) one day after "amicable" talks in the White House demonstrates how brazen his enemies have become.
The GOP has perfected the act of showing disrespect for him and the office he holds. Obama originally invited the Republican leadership to the White House for talks earlier only to be told no thanks. They said reschedule the meeting to their convenience or no soap. It is unheard of to snub an invitation to meet with a head of state on his schedule.
They seem to know they can get away with anything with Obama, especially when it is demeaning. It’s like rubbing a dog’s nose in his own grunge.
The signs were there from almost the start of his administration. His attempts at bipartisanship were a flop because he failed to recognize what everyone else knew –- the GOP was not going to cooperate on anything he proposed. He wasted a filibuster-proof Senate until Senator Ted Kennedy's death ended this advantage.
The result: the GOP emasculated the health care bill by dumping the public option into the trash can with Obama’s approval. They also weakened his financial regulation bill so that it is not much of an improvement over the past. They refused to pass legislation to care for the 9/11 first responders nor extend unemployment insurance for those longtime jobless Americans.
And what did the White House do? An infrequent mention of these events embodied deep within a speech somewhere in the hustings when a fighter would have been shouting these outrages from the rooftops.
Obama supporters are befuddled by his inaction. What happened to their knight in shining armor elected to right the wrongs of previous years?
Did he sacrifice a meaningful health care bill just to be able to brag that he was the first president ever to enact a health bill of any kind? Did his advisers suggest he should look good while not being particularly helpful.
Obama has to wake up. Get his dander up. Get rid of those who have been advising him to failure. He is half way through his initial term and he doesn’t have much time to improve if he expects a second term.
This pussycat has to turn into a tiger or the Republicans will make him look like a dupe.
1. He must hold fast to his commitment not to extend Bush tax cuts to the wealthy even if it means no tax cut for anyone else. If the GOP stands firm on its position to increase the deficit by extending tax cuts, end them all. The president can do it by a simple veto, which the GOP cannot override.
2. To cut the deficit he can do a number of things. First, end the Afghanistan war and cutoff aid to Pakistan. And while he is at it, close US bases in Europe and Asia and bring home troops based there. He must tell the Republicans they will not get their way with his prerogatives as president. Use the veto whenever.
3. He must loudly trumpet all the shifty Republican policies which do not serve the public – like denial of unemployment insurance and health care for first responders.
4. He should be at least as forceful with Congress as he was in the case of the Harvard professor and the Cambridge cop. In that instance he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. In Washington politics his nose belongs in the GOP’s face.
The truth is I don’t think he will do any of these things in the next two years. He looks upon confrontation as bad politics (even though it worked for the GOP in the midterm elections) and will continue fruitlessly to try to work with his political opponents.
In that case I believe, even though it is unlikely under normal circumstances, that there will be a strong attempt to oppose a sitting president in the 2012 party primaries and he could be replaced by a more aggressive potential leader. If Obama doesn’t change his tactics many will find that solution favorable.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Have a good day!
By Don Klein
When I was a teenager I attended dances hoping to meet the "right" girl. I never did and got to the point that I lowered my expectations because I knew nothing special would evolve.
Today’s politics reminds me of those feverish adolescent times. No matter which party is in power it would be wise to lower expectations.
Even though the Democrats triumphed in spectator form just two years ago, today they are on the ropes. Although it was a shellacking, as President Obama put it, it could have been much worse if the Republicans had been diligent and selected more sober candidates instead of the ill-natured Tea Party prospects.
It was not necessarily an election the Republican won as it was an election the Democrats lost – through no fault other than their own. No matter who gets the credit or blame, the fact is the power in Washington has changed.
The mystery to me is why had the Democrats, who accomplished quite a bit in a short period of time, failed to act as if they were proud of their handiwork. Not one Democrat to my knowledge (who was running for office) ever mentioned the centerpiece of their success – the national health bill.
Neither did they talk openly about the new financial regulations they passed, nor any of the environment efforts, nor the tax cuts for working people that were made, nor such attractive matters as the children’s health bill.
Much of the good they did was ridiculed and mocked by the Republicans as viciously as the swift boat veterans attacked Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, with the same result. No competent response from the Democrats. They took blow on the chin after blow and expected the voters to figure out the whole complicated subject matter by themselves.
The Democrats were not nearly as aggressive as the GOP in standing up against wild claims of legislative excesses. Obama was as much to blame as the rest of the party essentially because he did not wake up to the facts of the failing campaign until much too late.
I cannot understand the outrage over national health care since the public was clearly misled. The law would reduce, not increase, medical costs, and would include millions more Americans than are now covered. Anyone would think it a win-win situation except those committed to partisan contention.
The worst factor in the law was the lack of a public option to force insurance companies to play straight with clients. Then the delay of full implementation until 2014 made its impact hardly noticeable today. These were factors the Democratic leadership in the Senate conceded in hopes of getting bipartisan support.
The Republicans outsmarted the timid leadership and after squeezing out these concessions refused to vote for the bill anyway. Mark that as an early GOP victory.
That may be considered water under the bridge but it is an indication of how superficial was the Democrats support for the issue. They gave health care much lip service, never in campaigns oddly, and applied little intestinal fortitude to the subject and sowed the seeds of their eventual defeat at the polls.
Many youthful Obama voters who stayed home would have voted were they not disgusted by the lack of fight put up by the administration and Senate Democrats during the heath care and other debates. Add to this to the scarce effort to solve joblessness, and there is a prescription for defeat.
They acted in similar wishy-washy ways in everything they did, claiming they were seeking bipartisanship, which never materialized. They rejected advice to shift into high gear and force the whole package and not try to compromise with people who vowed not to work with them.
The definition of stupidity is to continuously expect different results from the same failed policy. If you keep knocking your head against a wall you will soon suffer more than just a severe headache.
It would be just if only the Democrats were the ones with the headache but unfortunately the headache will spread to all of us with the possible except of the wealthy. Now we have a GOP controlled House of Representatives, a Senate still under Democratic rein although with less of a majority, and a Democrat in the White House.
Despite all the talk about working together, do not believe it. The 2012 presidential campaign has already started and little comity can be expected from the two parties.
The Republicans want to retake the White House and will do everything they can to upset the Obama applecart. The next two years will witness the House passing bills that the Senate will kill. If a House bill should somehow make itself past the Senate, the president will veto it and the GOP will not have enough votes to override it.
It will mean more gridlock. More ineffective government. More citizen dissatisfaction with Washington. And all those who voted the incumbents out this year because of lack of progress will be beside themselves trying to figure out how to get Congress to work for the people again.
Meanwhile the environment will worsen, China and India will be strengthened economically, the US will go into deeper debt, unemployment will eventually ease up but millions will be forever damaged by job loss, and attempts will be tried to restrict our personal freedoms. And everyone in Washington will blame the other guy.
Eventually we will all lower our expectations as I did many years ago and government will drone along like an aloof sleepwalker. Our children will grow up to leave the country to find work in Africa and Asia because most American businesses will be outsourced.
The American century of dominance will end with a whimper like the British Empire expired almost a century ago.
Have a good day.
When I was a teenager I attended dances hoping to meet the "right" girl. I never did and got to the point that I lowered my expectations because I knew nothing special would evolve.
Today’s politics reminds me of those feverish adolescent times. No matter which party is in power it would be wise to lower expectations.
Even though the Democrats triumphed in spectator form just two years ago, today they are on the ropes. Although it was a shellacking, as President Obama put it, it could have been much worse if the Republicans had been diligent and selected more sober candidates instead of the ill-natured Tea Party prospects.
It was not necessarily an election the Republican won as it was an election the Democrats lost – through no fault other than their own. No matter who gets the credit or blame, the fact is the power in Washington has changed.
The mystery to me is why had the Democrats, who accomplished quite a bit in a short period of time, failed to act as if they were proud of their handiwork. Not one Democrat to my knowledge (who was running for office) ever mentioned the centerpiece of their success – the national health bill.
Neither did they talk openly about the new financial regulations they passed, nor any of the environment efforts, nor the tax cuts for working people that were made, nor such attractive matters as the children’s health bill.
Much of the good they did was ridiculed and mocked by the Republicans as viciously as the swift boat veterans attacked Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, with the same result. No competent response from the Democrats. They took blow on the chin after blow and expected the voters to figure out the whole complicated subject matter by themselves.
The Democrats were not nearly as aggressive as the GOP in standing up against wild claims of legislative excesses. Obama was as much to blame as the rest of the party essentially because he did not wake up to the facts of the failing campaign until much too late.
I cannot understand the outrage over national health care since the public was clearly misled. The law would reduce, not increase, medical costs, and would include millions more Americans than are now covered. Anyone would think it a win-win situation except those committed to partisan contention.
The worst factor in the law was the lack of a public option to force insurance companies to play straight with clients. Then the delay of full implementation until 2014 made its impact hardly noticeable today. These were factors the Democratic leadership in the Senate conceded in hopes of getting bipartisan support.
The Republicans outsmarted the timid leadership and after squeezing out these concessions refused to vote for the bill anyway. Mark that as an early GOP victory.
That may be considered water under the bridge but it is an indication of how superficial was the Democrats support for the issue. They gave health care much lip service, never in campaigns oddly, and applied little intestinal fortitude to the subject and sowed the seeds of their eventual defeat at the polls.
Many youthful Obama voters who stayed home would have voted were they not disgusted by the lack of fight put up by the administration and Senate Democrats during the heath care and other debates. Add to this to the scarce effort to solve joblessness, and there is a prescription for defeat.
They acted in similar wishy-washy ways in everything they did, claiming they were seeking bipartisanship, which never materialized. They rejected advice to shift into high gear and force the whole package and not try to compromise with people who vowed not to work with them.
The definition of stupidity is to continuously expect different results from the same failed policy. If you keep knocking your head against a wall you will soon suffer more than just a severe headache.
It would be just if only the Democrats were the ones with the headache but unfortunately the headache will spread to all of us with the possible except of the wealthy. Now we have a GOP controlled House of Representatives, a Senate still under Democratic rein although with less of a majority, and a Democrat in the White House.
Despite all the talk about working together, do not believe it. The 2012 presidential campaign has already started and little comity can be expected from the two parties.
The Republicans want to retake the White House and will do everything they can to upset the Obama applecart. The next two years will witness the House passing bills that the Senate will kill. If a House bill should somehow make itself past the Senate, the president will veto it and the GOP will not have enough votes to override it.
It will mean more gridlock. More ineffective government. More citizen dissatisfaction with Washington. And all those who voted the incumbents out this year because of lack of progress will be beside themselves trying to figure out how to get Congress to work for the people again.
Meanwhile the environment will worsen, China and India will be strengthened economically, the US will go into deeper debt, unemployment will eventually ease up but millions will be forever damaged by job loss, and attempts will be tried to restrict our personal freedoms. And everyone in Washington will blame the other guy.
Eventually we will all lower our expectations as I did many years ago and government will drone along like an aloof sleepwalker. Our children will grow up to leave the country to find work in Africa and Asia because most American businesses will be outsourced.
The American century of dominance will end with a whimper like the British Empire expired almost a century ago.
Have a good day.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Gridlock, thy name is Congress
By Don Klein
Tired of the Democrats controlling Washington? They’ve been running the government for the last 20 months and you are unhappy with the results? Like millions of others you are ready for a change? Ready to throw the bums out, are you?
After all, Barack Obama has been in office less than two years and has not lived up to all our tantalized expectations. He managed to unite the country as promised but not as he wanted. The pros and cons are in agreement. They are both negative. The pros (progressives) and cons (conservatives) are bitter.
Time for a change, again? Some want "to take their country back." If they win, this is what might be in store for all of us.
1. There will be efforts to privatized Social Security again so that Wall Street brokers can make even larger profits than now and the financial destiny of senior citizens will be left to the whim of the stock market.
2. In order to continue the fiction of an allegedly insolvent Medicare, Republicans will force seniors to pay higher premiums to the government and shell out steeper co-pays to doctors in order to lower federal health expenses.
3. The new Republican Congress will extend the unfair Bush tax cuts providing the wealthy with savings of millions in income taxes and the middle class with merely hundreds. They will call this beneficial for all when actually it is acceptable only to the richest among us.
4. Instead they may propose an equally onerous national sales tax of 23 percent in lieu of the income tax. This sounds good until you realize that a family with $30,000 income incurs the same amount of tax for a loaf of bread as the family with $50,000,000.
5. To level the playing field which now finds some giant corporations not paying any federal income, the Republican Congress will reform the tax code to add more loopholes to allow many more flush corporations to be free of the burden of taxes while the working class will be clobbered with more taxes to cover the difference.
6. To further enhance corporate profits the Congress will offer broader tax incentives for companies to out-source work to India, Latin America and other developing areas so American products can more easily compete in the worldwide marketplace while laid off American workers no longer can afford to buy these goods.
7. The Republicans will attempt to impose their lifelong ambition to rescind the minimum wage law. This will encourage individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps the same way the wealthy pulled themselves up before they inherited Daddy’s legacy.
8. Unemployment insurance will prove too big a burden so the Republicans will try to eliminate all jobless benefits.
9. To keep costs down among deficit-ridden hospitals around the nation, emergency care facilities will no longer be required to treat destitute patients.
10. In order to cut government outlays to needy citizens Congress will enact laws turning over many social welfare responsibilities to religious organizations, after bolstering them with federal funds.
11. It will be a great period for unqualified ultra-conservative lawyers because the only Supreme Court justices who will be confirmed by the Republican Senate will be those of the Clarence Thomas ilk.
12. Embryonic stem cell research will be halted in the United States and adult stem cell research will be severely restricted by Republicans catering to the Evangelical bloc.
13. Gay marriages will be prohibited by federal law and aid to education will be sharply reduced.
14. Illegal aliens will be rounded up and held in concentration camps run by greedy contractors, like Halliburton or Blackwater, as harsh warnings to future outsiders thinking about entering the country illegally.
15. Environmental protection laws will be weakened or abandoned. The federal government under the Republicans will issues licenses for off shore drilling all along the East Coast from Florida to Maine.
With all of the above the GOP will not improve one iota the job market, nor reduce the prospects of foreclosures, improve the economy, nor better day-to-day life of the middle class.
Of course you might say some of these predictions are exaggerations -- and maybe they are. But others could happen if and when the new Republican Party "takes back the country" if they win the White House, as well as Congress, in 2012.
Right now take a look at what might happen after next week’s election. It could be almost as bad.
There are three possibilities once the votes are counted on November 2. The first is the Republicans will take over both houses of Congress. The second is
that the Republicans will win the House but not the Senate, or vice versa. And lastly the Democrats will continue to maintain control of both Houses, but with a smaller majority than currently.
Neither of these potentialities will serve the public interest.
In the first option many of the bills mentioned above could be passed and sent to the president, where he will veto them. The GOP will not have enough votes to override the veto. Hence: Gridlock.
In the second instance the GOP House will not get any of their bills passed a Democratic Senate, nor the Democrats get theirs passed the House.
Hence: Gridlock.
In the final scenario the Republicans, now a larger minority than before, will block all Democratic bills from getting out of Congress. Hence: Gridlock again.
So with the pros and cons chomping at each other necks they end up overshooting the most important goal – the welfare of all. We find ourselves back were we started before the election with gridlock the name of the game and the people not being served.
Tired of the Democrats controlling Washington? They’ve been running the government for the last 20 months and you are unhappy with the results? Like millions of others you are ready for a change? Ready to throw the bums out, are you?
After all, Barack Obama has been in office less than two years and has not lived up to all our tantalized expectations. He managed to unite the country as promised but not as he wanted. The pros and cons are in agreement. They are both negative. The pros (progressives) and cons (conservatives) are bitter.
Time for a change, again? Some want "to take their country back." If they win, this is what might be in store for all of us.
1. There will be efforts to privatized Social Security again so that Wall Street brokers can make even larger profits than now and the financial destiny of senior citizens will be left to the whim of the stock market.
2. In order to continue the fiction of an allegedly insolvent Medicare, Republicans will force seniors to pay higher premiums to the government and shell out steeper co-pays to doctors in order to lower federal health expenses.
3. The new Republican Congress will extend the unfair Bush tax cuts providing the wealthy with savings of millions in income taxes and the middle class with merely hundreds. They will call this beneficial for all when actually it is acceptable only to the richest among us.
4. Instead they may propose an equally onerous national sales tax of 23 percent in lieu of the income tax. This sounds good until you realize that a family with $30,000 income incurs the same amount of tax for a loaf of bread as the family with $50,000,000.
5. To level the playing field which now finds some giant corporations not paying any federal income, the Republican Congress will reform the tax code to add more loopholes to allow many more flush corporations to be free of the burden of taxes while the working class will be clobbered with more taxes to cover the difference.
6. To further enhance corporate profits the Congress will offer broader tax incentives for companies to out-source work to India, Latin America and other developing areas so American products can more easily compete in the worldwide marketplace while laid off American workers no longer can afford to buy these goods.
7. The Republicans will attempt to impose their lifelong ambition to rescind the minimum wage law. This will encourage individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps the same way the wealthy pulled themselves up before they inherited Daddy’s legacy.
8. Unemployment insurance will prove too big a burden so the Republicans will try to eliminate all jobless benefits.
9. To keep costs down among deficit-ridden hospitals around the nation, emergency care facilities will no longer be required to treat destitute patients.
10. In order to cut government outlays to needy citizens Congress will enact laws turning over many social welfare responsibilities to religious organizations, after bolstering them with federal funds.
11. It will be a great period for unqualified ultra-conservative lawyers because the only Supreme Court justices who will be confirmed by the Republican Senate will be those of the Clarence Thomas ilk.
12. Embryonic stem cell research will be halted in the United States and adult stem cell research will be severely restricted by Republicans catering to the Evangelical bloc.
13. Gay marriages will be prohibited by federal law and aid to education will be sharply reduced.
14. Illegal aliens will be rounded up and held in concentration camps run by greedy contractors, like Halliburton or Blackwater, as harsh warnings to future outsiders thinking about entering the country illegally.
15. Environmental protection laws will be weakened or abandoned. The federal government under the Republicans will issues licenses for off shore drilling all along the East Coast from Florida to Maine.
With all of the above the GOP will not improve one iota the job market, nor reduce the prospects of foreclosures, improve the economy, nor better day-to-day life of the middle class.
Of course you might say some of these predictions are exaggerations -- and maybe they are. But others could happen if and when the new Republican Party "takes back the country" if they win the White House, as well as Congress, in 2012.
Right now take a look at what might happen after next week’s election. It could be almost as bad.
There are three possibilities once the votes are counted on November 2. The first is the Republicans will take over both houses of Congress. The second is
that the Republicans will win the House but not the Senate, or vice versa. And lastly the Democrats will continue to maintain control of both Houses, but with a smaller majority than currently.
Neither of these potentialities will serve the public interest.
In the first option many of the bills mentioned above could be passed and sent to the president, where he will veto them. The GOP will not have enough votes to override the veto. Hence: Gridlock.
In the second instance the GOP House will not get any of their bills passed a Democratic Senate, nor the Democrats get theirs passed the House.
Hence: Gridlock.
In the final scenario the Republicans, now a larger minority than before, will block all Democratic bills from getting out of Congress. Hence: Gridlock again.
So with the pros and cons chomping at each other necks they end up overshooting the most important goal – the welfare of all. We find ourselves back were we started before the election with gridlock the name of the game and the people not being served.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Stay home Christine
By Don Klein
I try to steer my print comments away from local elections but Christine O’Donnell is too juicy to ignore. She s like a quirky kid sister who disrupts the normal family routine with just enough craziness that you want to hug her back to sanity.
In a strange way I actually like her. She’s not nearly as revolting as the screwball Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle, running a moronic senate campaign in Nevada nor California’s gubernatorial hopeful, the offish Meg Whitman, who emits a snobbery that would dismay even Thurston Howell III, the pompous millionaire on Gilligan’s Island.
Christine, on the other hand, is a sweetheart, loopy maybe, but a sweetheart nonetheless. I feel sorry for her disastrous comments and her failing campaign. But somehow I think she would be a welcome guest at my dinner table any night I was in the mood for some eccentric conversation.
Who else would admit dabbling into being a witch these days? That would fire up any conversation. Further, she is the first person to say something funny about masturbation since I was a teen and rollicked over an adolescent claim having something to do with hairy palms.
With this (albeit muted) affection for her I watched with interest her televised debate with Democratic opponent, Chris Coons. Who else could get me to watch a debate between two candidates from Delaware? Even in the best days of Vice President Joe Biden, when he was their senator, no one could interest me in Delaware politics.
In today’s screwy environment here comes Christine, perky as she is kooky, with her chance to show the world the stuff she is made of. In the end we discovered that she is not the independent she likes to claim she is. She is a right wing Republican who endorses every harsh step back to the past. "That isn’t so," she protests saying she is beholden to neither major party.
As she continues to talk, however, she contradicts herself saying exactly the opposite. The only President Obama policy she backs is the inherited bad Bush war in Afghanistan that the president has tentatively embraced. She also likes the stepped up drone attacks.
Then there is the exchange over Coons’ bearded Communist statement and Christine’s witchcraft. She insists she has the right to call her opponent a "self-proclaimed Communist" as long as others refer to her being a witch. She said both occurred when the candidates were a lot younger and made strange public remarks.
Well, I am sorry to tell you dear Christine, but there is a difference. Coons explained that his comments were a college spoof that everyone at the time accepted as a goofy charade and that he has always been a "clean-shaven Capitalist." Further, his career actions have proven his political credentials.
As far as Christine being a witch? No one ever took that seriously. Even when she first made the straight forward admission, people laughed at the prospect. It is not on the same level as accusing an opponent of something that you know is untrue. No one called Christine a witch in this campaign. If she hadn’t gone on television with a commercial starting with "I am not a witch" no one would be thinking of it now.
There again we see the behavior of troubled kid sister lashing out without concern for facts or perspective. She speaks like a teenager without evaluating the impact of her words.
Christine also tells us that evolution is a myth. Most educated people throughout the world know that God did not create the galaxy in six days and rested on the seventh. That’s biblical myth and even the overwhelming majority of devout people know it. By rejecting creationism they are not diminishing their belief in deity. One does not rely on the other to be true.
The plain fact is only the intellectually blind believe in the Bible’s version of creation. Let me point out one fallacy in that belief. If God as so many believe is an omnificent, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient a force that could create this complicated world in less than a week, does he really need a day off to rest?
What does being all powerful, all knowing, being everywhere at once with the ability to create whatever is needed mean anyway? Does such a force really need union hours? And what would this force do on it’s day off anyway? Frolic in the park with angels, watch a football game, visit a museum, rest in a hammock eating cherries?
Nevertheless Christine rejects evolution in favor of creationism. Is that the kind of person you want in the US Senate deciding on the serious issues of the day? Then when she was asked during the debate about her Evangelical beliefs, she gave the most vague response, "What I believe is irrelevant."
Hi De Hi, Hi De Ho! That’s when all viewers should have discovered being cute and perky does not mean you are ready for political prime time. What Christine believes is very relevant since she would be voting on matters that concern the future of the nation.
Fortunately the latest polls indicate that Christine has little chance of winning, being behind her opponent by double digits. For the record, Angle and Whitman are both doing better in close races in their states.
Christine O’Donnell I like you. Come to dinner at my house sometime. But stay out of Congress. There are enough kooks there already. We need people like you back here in the civilian sector to give us things to laugh about.
I try to steer my print comments away from local elections but Christine O’Donnell is too juicy to ignore. She s like a quirky kid sister who disrupts the normal family routine with just enough craziness that you want to hug her back to sanity.
In a strange way I actually like her. She’s not nearly as revolting as the screwball Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle, running a moronic senate campaign in Nevada nor California’s gubernatorial hopeful, the offish Meg Whitman, who emits a snobbery that would dismay even Thurston Howell III, the pompous millionaire on Gilligan’s Island.
Christine, on the other hand, is a sweetheart, loopy maybe, but a sweetheart nonetheless. I feel sorry for her disastrous comments and her failing campaign. But somehow I think she would be a welcome guest at my dinner table any night I was in the mood for some eccentric conversation.
Who else would admit dabbling into being a witch these days? That would fire up any conversation. Further, she is the first person to say something funny about masturbation since I was a teen and rollicked over an adolescent claim having something to do with hairy palms.
With this (albeit muted) affection for her I watched with interest her televised debate with Democratic opponent, Chris Coons. Who else could get me to watch a debate between two candidates from Delaware? Even in the best days of Vice President Joe Biden, when he was their senator, no one could interest me in Delaware politics.
In today’s screwy environment here comes Christine, perky as she is kooky, with her chance to show the world the stuff she is made of. In the end we discovered that she is not the independent she likes to claim she is. She is a right wing Republican who endorses every harsh step back to the past. "That isn’t so," she protests saying she is beholden to neither major party.
As she continues to talk, however, she contradicts herself saying exactly the opposite. The only President Obama policy she backs is the inherited bad Bush war in Afghanistan that the president has tentatively embraced. She also likes the stepped up drone attacks.
Then there is the exchange over Coons’ bearded Communist statement and Christine’s witchcraft. She insists she has the right to call her opponent a "self-proclaimed Communist" as long as others refer to her being a witch. She said both occurred when the candidates were a lot younger and made strange public remarks.
Well, I am sorry to tell you dear Christine, but there is a difference. Coons explained that his comments were a college spoof that everyone at the time accepted as a goofy charade and that he has always been a "clean-shaven Capitalist." Further, his career actions have proven his political credentials.
As far as Christine being a witch? No one ever took that seriously. Even when she first made the straight forward admission, people laughed at the prospect. It is not on the same level as accusing an opponent of something that you know is untrue. No one called Christine a witch in this campaign. If she hadn’t gone on television with a commercial starting with "I am not a witch" no one would be thinking of it now.
There again we see the behavior of troubled kid sister lashing out without concern for facts or perspective. She speaks like a teenager without evaluating the impact of her words.
Christine also tells us that evolution is a myth. Most educated people throughout the world know that God did not create the galaxy in six days and rested on the seventh. That’s biblical myth and even the overwhelming majority of devout people know it. By rejecting creationism they are not diminishing their belief in deity. One does not rely on the other to be true.
The plain fact is only the intellectually blind believe in the Bible’s version of creation. Let me point out one fallacy in that belief. If God as so many believe is an omnificent, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient a force that could create this complicated world in less than a week, does he really need a day off to rest?
What does being all powerful, all knowing, being everywhere at once with the ability to create whatever is needed mean anyway? Does such a force really need union hours? And what would this force do on it’s day off anyway? Frolic in the park with angels, watch a football game, visit a museum, rest in a hammock eating cherries?
Nevertheless Christine rejects evolution in favor of creationism. Is that the kind of person you want in the US Senate deciding on the serious issues of the day? Then when she was asked during the debate about her Evangelical beliefs, she gave the most vague response, "What I believe is irrelevant."
Hi De Hi, Hi De Ho! That’s when all viewers should have discovered being cute and perky does not mean you are ready for political prime time. What Christine believes is very relevant since she would be voting on matters that concern the future of the nation.
Fortunately the latest polls indicate that Christine has little chance of winning, being behind her opponent by double digits. For the record, Angle and Whitman are both doing better in close races in their states.
Christine O’Donnell I like you. Come to dinner at my house sometime. But stay out of Congress. There are enough kooks there already. We need people like you back here in the civilian sector to give us things to laugh about.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Finally, a butt-kicking leader
By Don Klein
Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out, fired by the president. Finally Obama acted with alacrity, and was never more presidential. That’s the way most Americans want their presidents to behave. There was no extended deliberative period. No drawn-out consideration of the facts.
McChrystal showed a terrible lack of judgment in allowing his aides to demean and mock one of the most crucial American credos – civilian control of the military – and paid the awful price. And they ridiculed not in the confines of the locker room but in the presence of a magazine reporter. What kind of judgment is that?
The stupidity of the situation brought into question the experienced general’s judgment and he had to go. That was the easy choice for Obama. Military men learn in early training that the civilians are in charge. That’s why in the centuries since 1776 there never was a junta taking over Washington.
What is admirable about this unfortunate situation is that Obama acted like a leader. He didn’t hesitate. He took charge immediately and made the change. And what is more outstanding was the brilliance of his choice of a successor in a circumstance that otherwise set Obama up for another round of political sniping from the Right.
The president chose Gen. David Petraeus, the most celebrated military man in current times to head up the Afghanistan conflict. By doing that he accomplished two important goals. 1. He put a man in charge who was a totally familiar with the war and is as well versed in the Middle East as anyone in government, and 2. he silenced the ready-to-pounce Republican jabberwockies who love all CEOs, whether corporate or military, and hate Democratic presidential authority.
This is what Obama supporters have been seeking from the president for almost a year and a half now. Action. Presidential action. Not just another extensive cerebral approach to a national crisis. More about Afghanistan later.
One has to think that the president has suddenly discovered the clout of the White House. Without any legal authority to do so, Obama twisted the arms of BP brass recently and got them to put $20 billion into an escrow account to pay for the losses to Gulf citizens as a result of the oil spill.
This was so effective that the Republicans in Congress were so flabbergasted that all they could do was cry foul. A Texas Republican apologized to the BP boss who was testifying before the House energy committee claiming the company was victim of a “shakedown.” He never mentioned any concern for the real victims of the oil spill along the coast, Americans who previously were labeled by the BP chairman as “small people.”
And, finally, it appears that Obama has won an uncharacteristically classic battle in Congress to establish a long list of regulations to bring the financial community under control. After it is enacted the question will be how enthusiastically will it be enforced? Given the history of federal bureaucracy my guess it not very vigorously.
Nevertheless, Obama deserves much credit. Things are beginning to look better for him and he seems to beginning to feel his oats by finally using the power that comes with the Oval Office. But none of these accomplishments will do much good for the Democrats this fall unless there is a sharp upturn in the economy and jobs.
Personally I’d like to see action designed to discourage out-sourcing. Whatever benefits are accrued to American businesses that go foreign there should by an equal monetary penalty to wipe out corporate profits at the expense of US workers’ jobs. I don’t think we will see anything in this department this year despite Obama’s campaign promises on this subject.
Back to Afghanistan. One of the factors that became very evident in the exchange of command from McChrystal to Petraeus was the president’s recommitment to the Afghan War. I think we need a further refinement of our role in that part of the world. What we are doing now is not succeeding and what we plan to do later is even more precarious.
Just how far are we willing to go in that God-forsaken patch of bleak terrain? It might be cruel to say this but I don’t care a hoot whether Afghan girls get an elementary education when our commitment to that nation constrains the rights of American girls to benefit from their birthright.
I am tired of reading the casualty lists as too many American youths sacrifice their lives for an ungrateful nation which embraces our enemy and refuses to fight for themselves. I don’t like spending billions on a country whose president is dealing with our enemy behind our backs. The same goes for Pakistan.
I don’t know why we are fighting the Taliban in the first place. That is an Afghan problem, not ours. We should get back to battling al Qaeda, our real enemy. Worst of all, Obama’s apparent commitment to the current policy in that part of the world reminds me a lot of the George W. Bush fiasco.
I wish Obama would reverse direction. We have more problems of our own than in most of my lifetime and let’s work on those solutions not the on Afghanistan’s. I like Vice President Biden’s views on the war. Go after al Qaeda with all the power we have and if Pakistan and Afghanistan fail to support us fully, withdraw our support of their governments. We should stop being their patsy, their unrequited sugar daddy.
Now that Obama finally found his muscle and started kicking butt these last few weeks, he still has plenty of other butts to kick. You found the formula, Mr. President, now get to work down the line.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out, fired by the president. Finally Obama acted with alacrity, and was never more presidential. That’s the way most Americans want their presidents to behave. There was no extended deliberative period. No drawn-out consideration of the facts.
McChrystal showed a terrible lack of judgment in allowing his aides to demean and mock one of the most crucial American credos – civilian control of the military – and paid the awful price. And they ridiculed not in the confines of the locker room but in the presence of a magazine reporter. What kind of judgment is that?
The stupidity of the situation brought into question the experienced general’s judgment and he had to go. That was the easy choice for Obama. Military men learn in early training that the civilians are in charge. That’s why in the centuries since 1776 there never was a junta taking over Washington.
What is admirable about this unfortunate situation is that Obama acted like a leader. He didn’t hesitate. He took charge immediately and made the change. And what is more outstanding was the brilliance of his choice of a successor in a circumstance that otherwise set Obama up for another round of political sniping from the Right.
The president chose Gen. David Petraeus, the most celebrated military man in current times to head up the Afghanistan conflict. By doing that he accomplished two important goals. 1. He put a man in charge who was a totally familiar with the war and is as well versed in the Middle East as anyone in government, and 2. he silenced the ready-to-pounce Republican jabberwockies who love all CEOs, whether corporate or military, and hate Democratic presidential authority.
This is what Obama supporters have been seeking from the president for almost a year and a half now. Action. Presidential action. Not just another extensive cerebral approach to a national crisis. More about Afghanistan later.
One has to think that the president has suddenly discovered the clout of the White House. Without any legal authority to do so, Obama twisted the arms of BP brass recently and got them to put $20 billion into an escrow account to pay for the losses to Gulf citizens as a result of the oil spill.
This was so effective that the Republicans in Congress were so flabbergasted that all they could do was cry foul. A Texas Republican apologized to the BP boss who was testifying before the House energy committee claiming the company was victim of a “shakedown.” He never mentioned any concern for the real victims of the oil spill along the coast, Americans who previously were labeled by the BP chairman as “small people.”
And, finally, it appears that Obama has won an uncharacteristically classic battle in Congress to establish a long list of regulations to bring the financial community under control. After it is enacted the question will be how enthusiastically will it be enforced? Given the history of federal bureaucracy my guess it not very vigorously.
Nevertheless, Obama deserves much credit. Things are beginning to look better for him and he seems to beginning to feel his oats by finally using the power that comes with the Oval Office. But none of these accomplishments will do much good for the Democrats this fall unless there is a sharp upturn in the economy and jobs.
Personally I’d like to see action designed to discourage out-sourcing. Whatever benefits are accrued to American businesses that go foreign there should by an equal monetary penalty to wipe out corporate profits at the expense of US workers’ jobs. I don’t think we will see anything in this department this year despite Obama’s campaign promises on this subject.
Back to Afghanistan. One of the factors that became very evident in the exchange of command from McChrystal to Petraeus was the president’s recommitment to the Afghan War. I think we need a further refinement of our role in that part of the world. What we are doing now is not succeeding and what we plan to do later is even more precarious.
Just how far are we willing to go in that God-forsaken patch of bleak terrain? It might be cruel to say this but I don’t care a hoot whether Afghan girls get an elementary education when our commitment to that nation constrains the rights of American girls to benefit from their birthright.
I am tired of reading the casualty lists as too many American youths sacrifice their lives for an ungrateful nation which embraces our enemy and refuses to fight for themselves. I don’t like spending billions on a country whose president is dealing with our enemy behind our backs. The same goes for Pakistan.
I don’t know why we are fighting the Taliban in the first place. That is an Afghan problem, not ours. We should get back to battling al Qaeda, our real enemy. Worst of all, Obama’s apparent commitment to the current policy in that part of the world reminds me a lot of the George W. Bush fiasco.
I wish Obama would reverse direction. We have more problems of our own than in most of my lifetime and let’s work on those solutions not the on Afghanistan’s. I like Vice President Biden’s views on the war. Go after al Qaeda with all the power we have and if Pakistan and Afghanistan fail to support us fully, withdraw our support of their governments. We should stop being their patsy, their unrequited sugar daddy.
Now that Obama finally found his muscle and started kicking butt these last few weeks, he still has plenty of other butts to kick. You found the formula, Mr. President, now get to work down the line.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Ecology versus investments
By Don Klein
Some Brits are annoyed with the American reaction to the despoiling of our coastal lands by BP. They don’t like the oil giant being branded by most Americans as the self-centered, lying entity that it is. Some of them say we are xenophobic and petulant.
The Brits are worried about their freaking investments – about their dividends and the viability of their pension funds. That is more important to them than the destruction of a large portion of the US ecological system. All they see is evaporating profits.
Their loss of dividends affects them more than the loss of income of thousands of innocent American workers in the area. It is a higher priority than the decimation of American wildlife and the potential for the oil spill to travel up the East coast spreading its devastation to half the population of the country.
Many Britons are upset, according to a report in The New York Times, at what they see not just as the economic costs of American anger, but also at language they say demonizes Britain, America’s partner in the so-called special relationship — "loose talk that taps into the British suspicion that Americans are insular and overly nationalistic."
A Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, in an astonishing statement of ridiculous snobbery quoted by The Times called the American reaction "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company."
That is similar to accusing a rape victim who has just identified her attacker as a person driven by "peevish revenge."
To begin with, let us get a few things straight. No one in the United States to my knowledge, has blamed the Brits for the spill. BP, once known as British Petroleum, is the culprit not the British people. If the outlandish defenders of BP were interested in continuing good relations with the US wouldn’t it be in their best interests to stay out of the fray. The oil spill that is corrupting our natural resources has nothing to do with the British people, and no one on this side of the Atlantic thinks it does.
If this ruinous oil spill had happened off shore in Britain and was despoiling its natural resources, putting its citizens out of work and threatening to spread over a wide range of the British Isles, would these same defenders of BP be calling outraged locals xenophobic and petulant?
It is understandable that British pensioners who depend on BP dividends to sustain their level of comfortable retirement are concerned, but any loss of income on this score is not because of anything Americans have done. It was all brought on by BP’s negligence and people in this country are irate, as should be the Brits.
Lord Tebbit and others can scold us all they want, but the more they talk this way the worse they sound. Tebbit and his greedy friends are concerned with dividends for their long range financial security but don’t give a seagull’s muck for the thousands of Americans who are victims of this debacle.
If they want a target to lambast, look to BP. Their bloody executives agreed to cut corners on safety and to increase the flow of oil all for a single purpose – to make more profits.
That may have been okay for shareholders and pensioners as long as it paid-off, but it did not in this case and they may now turn into the unintended fiscal victims of the problem having to face uncertainty– as will many Americans who have lost their livelihoods. No Brits died on the failed rig, 11 Americans did.
My advice to the Brits who find fault with the vigorous American response to being ravaged by an oil company based in England: Get used to the harsh language, it ain’t going away.
The new British Prime minister, David Cameron, took a more temperate route. "I fully understand the US government’s frustration because it is catastrophic to the environment," he told reporters, "BP needs to do everything it can clear up the situation. The most important thing is to mitigate the effects and get to the root of the problem."
You can bet that Cameron will wait for a later date when passions have cooled and no one is paying attention before he will make his appeal to the US to soften its claims against BP.
There is speculation that BP, third largest oil company in the world after Exxon and Shell, will either get away with murder by buying off enough congressmen to escape full responsibility or it will suffer the opposite – extinction.
Either way the liabilities are too great for even BP and in the end the taxpayers will again foot a portion of the bill to protect an industrial giant. A reprise of the unpopular Wall Street bailout. They screw up and we get screwed. A familiar story, but for the British to take the attitude that their money is more important than our livelihoods and our environment really should freak out lots of Americans.
The Brits have offered no assistance in the cleanup. Offered no technology worth a damn to help mitigate the situation. They have done nothing but take pop shots while ingesting their afternoon tea. That won’t do and we will remember that the next time the Brits are in need of crucial help from us.
Some Brits are annoyed with the American reaction to the despoiling of our coastal lands by BP. They don’t like the oil giant being branded by most Americans as the self-centered, lying entity that it is. Some of them say we are xenophobic and petulant.
The Brits are worried about their freaking investments – about their dividends and the viability of their pension funds. That is more important to them than the destruction of a large portion of the US ecological system. All they see is evaporating profits.
Their loss of dividends affects them more than the loss of income of thousands of innocent American workers in the area. It is a higher priority than the decimation of American wildlife and the potential for the oil spill to travel up the East coast spreading its devastation to half the population of the country.
Many Britons are upset, according to a report in The New York Times, at what they see not just as the economic costs of American anger, but also at language they say demonizes Britain, America’s partner in the so-called special relationship — "loose talk that taps into the British suspicion that Americans are insular and overly nationalistic."
A Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, in an astonishing statement of ridiculous snobbery quoted by The Times called the American reaction "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company."
That is similar to accusing a rape victim who has just identified her attacker as a person driven by "peevish revenge."
To begin with, let us get a few things straight. No one in the United States to my knowledge, has blamed the Brits for the spill. BP, once known as British Petroleum, is the culprit not the British people. If the outlandish defenders of BP were interested in continuing good relations with the US wouldn’t it be in their best interests to stay out of the fray. The oil spill that is corrupting our natural resources has nothing to do with the British people, and no one on this side of the Atlantic thinks it does.
If this ruinous oil spill had happened off shore in Britain and was despoiling its natural resources, putting its citizens out of work and threatening to spread over a wide range of the British Isles, would these same defenders of BP be calling outraged locals xenophobic and petulant?
It is understandable that British pensioners who depend on BP dividends to sustain their level of comfortable retirement are concerned, but any loss of income on this score is not because of anything Americans have done. It was all brought on by BP’s negligence and people in this country are irate, as should be the Brits.
Lord Tebbit and others can scold us all they want, but the more they talk this way the worse they sound. Tebbit and his greedy friends are concerned with dividends for their long range financial security but don’t give a seagull’s muck for the thousands of Americans who are victims of this debacle.
If they want a target to lambast, look to BP. Their bloody executives agreed to cut corners on safety and to increase the flow of oil all for a single purpose – to make more profits.
That may have been okay for shareholders and pensioners as long as it paid-off, but it did not in this case and they may now turn into the unintended fiscal victims of the problem having to face uncertainty– as will many Americans who have lost their livelihoods. No Brits died on the failed rig, 11 Americans did.
My advice to the Brits who find fault with the vigorous American response to being ravaged by an oil company based in England: Get used to the harsh language, it ain’t going away.
The new British Prime minister, David Cameron, took a more temperate route. "I fully understand the US government’s frustration because it is catastrophic to the environment," he told reporters, "BP needs to do everything it can clear up the situation. The most important thing is to mitigate the effects and get to the root of the problem."
You can bet that Cameron will wait for a later date when passions have cooled and no one is paying attention before he will make his appeal to the US to soften its claims against BP.
There is speculation that BP, third largest oil company in the world after Exxon and Shell, will either get away with murder by buying off enough congressmen to escape full responsibility or it will suffer the opposite – extinction.
Either way the liabilities are too great for even BP and in the end the taxpayers will again foot a portion of the bill to protect an industrial giant. A reprise of the unpopular Wall Street bailout. They screw up and we get screwed. A familiar story, but for the British to take the attitude that their money is more important than our livelihoods and our environment really should freak out lots of Americans.
The Brits have offered no assistance in the cleanup. Offered no technology worth a damn to help mitigate the situation. They have done nothing but take pop shots while ingesting their afternoon tea. That won’t do and we will remember that the next time the Brits are in need of crucial help from us.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Our own worst enemy
By Don Klein
I was hoping with the January 20, 2009 turnover of the government to the Democrats I would never again have to mention the name of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. No such luck.
For eight years while these two erstwhile war leaders had all Americans concentrating on the acts and threats of a bunch arrogant, suicidal extremists from the center of the Muslim world, Bush and Cheney sold us out to a more effective and deadly enemy. The oil industry.
No bearded, turbaned, wild eyed, Islamic radical bunch, no matter how numerous, will every defeat the United States. But Bush-Cheney’s oil friends, in $900 suits with trophy wives on their arms, are already destroying America. They are the real enemies of this country and need to be treated as the twenty-first century’s version of John Dillinger.
As we watch the wetlands of Louisiana and other Gulf coast states being rapidly swallowed up by unremitting tides of oily goo that is poured into the Gulf of Mexico from a British Petroleum downed offshore oil rig, there is a true sense of doom in the air. BP is unable to cap the break in their mile-deep pipe which blew apart because of alleged mismanagement on the oil company’s part. Now they don’t seem to know a way to stop the eruption it started before the entire coastline is polluted and dead.
The plume from this break could spread over to Florida, around the tip of the state and up the east coast soon. And the sad thing is it could have been prevented if Bush-Cheney did their jobs, if the Mineral Management Services did their job and if the Congress had acted like they cared about the health of the nation over the health of their wallets.
On top of that, the guy who succeeded Bush in the White House a year and a half ago, doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what he should do. Barack Obama’s apparent inaction is a great disappointment. What we need now is a Roosevelt, Theodore or Franklin, or a Harry Truman with guts and stamina to get things done.
Obama’s dismal lackadaisical approach to this disaster brings to mind the Democratic presidential primary campaign of two years back when Hillary Clinton claimed she would be a better president in making urgent 3 am decisions when necessary. It looks like she was right after all.
The gulf waters may lap alongside just a handful of states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- but the waters are America’s. The spoiled wetlands are in the five states but they belong to America, the fiscal disaster will be most felt in these states, but a good bit of America dies with it. As the attack on the World Trade Center hurt New York directly, it still affected every American. Same is true of the BP oil spill.
The men who were in charge when the drill platform crews were ordered to cut back on safety rules to enhance the profits for BP are responsible. They are criminals and should be locked up. The street thug may harm a person or two before being caught and tried. Tony Hayward, the BP top man, in contrast had injured millions. He should be brought to court in handcuffs and shackles like the master criminal he is.
What should be the charges? Destroying the livelihood of thousands of local workers, putting endless numbers of small businesses out of business, damaging the seafood industry of the entire nation, bribing government inspectors, not to mention the murder of 11 workers who lost their lives on the rig when it blew up because of his firm’s policy. That adds up to criminal negligence in most people’s books.
Hayward and his greedy accomplices in crime are worse than Osama bin Laden and have done greater damage to this country that one hundred al Qaeda agents, can or ever will, do. The sad fact is they will never be brought to justice. That won’t happen because BP money will buy-off anyone in government who tries to exact justice in this case.
In the meantime we will still be distracted into concentrating on watching for the elusive jihadist entering this country and setting off a bomb in a crowded venue when we should be watching our so-called money-hungry "friends" from Britain who run BP and other oil magnates. The irony is that we will be paying more for gasoline eventually to help BP defray the costs of this disaster.
Government inspectors at the MMS were bribed to look the other way while BP violated the law thanks to a cozy relationship established during Bush’s years. The oil company staff wrote safety reports which the inspectors just accepted as fact. They conspired – BP and MMS – to defraud the government and the American people with tragic circumstances.
Most people are nauseous just watching greedy bankers steal money from the people one year, then avaricious oil executives acting dangerously with impunity the next, while the rest of us suffer economically and lose jobs because of their errors. And worst of all, with a deprave former administration relaxing safety rules, and now a stumbling White House and corrupt Congress running the show, none of the wrongdoers will ever get to pay for their crimes.
I have said it many time before and I say it again. Pogo was right. "We have met the enemy and he is us."
I was hoping with the January 20, 2009 turnover of the government to the Democrats I would never again have to mention the name of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. No such luck.
For eight years while these two erstwhile war leaders had all Americans concentrating on the acts and threats of a bunch arrogant, suicidal extremists from the center of the Muslim world, Bush and Cheney sold us out to a more effective and deadly enemy. The oil industry.
No bearded, turbaned, wild eyed, Islamic radical bunch, no matter how numerous, will every defeat the United States. But Bush-Cheney’s oil friends, in $900 suits with trophy wives on their arms, are already destroying America. They are the real enemies of this country and need to be treated as the twenty-first century’s version of John Dillinger.
As we watch the wetlands of Louisiana and other Gulf coast states being rapidly swallowed up by unremitting tides of oily goo that is poured into the Gulf of Mexico from a British Petroleum downed offshore oil rig, there is a true sense of doom in the air. BP is unable to cap the break in their mile-deep pipe which blew apart because of alleged mismanagement on the oil company’s part. Now they don’t seem to know a way to stop the eruption it started before the entire coastline is polluted and dead.
The plume from this break could spread over to Florida, around the tip of the state and up the east coast soon. And the sad thing is it could have been prevented if Bush-Cheney did their jobs, if the Mineral Management Services did their job and if the Congress had acted like they cared about the health of the nation over the health of their wallets.
On top of that, the guy who succeeded Bush in the White House a year and a half ago, doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what he should do. Barack Obama’s apparent inaction is a great disappointment. What we need now is a Roosevelt, Theodore or Franklin, or a Harry Truman with guts and stamina to get things done.
Obama’s dismal lackadaisical approach to this disaster brings to mind the Democratic presidential primary campaign of two years back when Hillary Clinton claimed she would be a better president in making urgent 3 am decisions when necessary. It looks like she was right after all.
The gulf waters may lap alongside just a handful of states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- but the waters are America’s. The spoiled wetlands are in the five states but they belong to America, the fiscal disaster will be most felt in these states, but a good bit of America dies with it. As the attack on the World Trade Center hurt New York directly, it still affected every American. Same is true of the BP oil spill.
The men who were in charge when the drill platform crews were ordered to cut back on safety rules to enhance the profits for BP are responsible. They are criminals and should be locked up. The street thug may harm a person or two before being caught and tried. Tony Hayward, the BP top man, in contrast had injured millions. He should be brought to court in handcuffs and shackles like the master criminal he is.
What should be the charges? Destroying the livelihood of thousands of local workers, putting endless numbers of small businesses out of business, damaging the seafood industry of the entire nation, bribing government inspectors, not to mention the murder of 11 workers who lost their lives on the rig when it blew up because of his firm’s policy. That adds up to criminal negligence in most people’s books.
Hayward and his greedy accomplices in crime are worse than Osama bin Laden and have done greater damage to this country that one hundred al Qaeda agents, can or ever will, do. The sad fact is they will never be brought to justice. That won’t happen because BP money will buy-off anyone in government who tries to exact justice in this case.
In the meantime we will still be distracted into concentrating on watching for the elusive jihadist entering this country and setting off a bomb in a crowded venue when we should be watching our so-called money-hungry "friends" from Britain who run BP and other oil magnates. The irony is that we will be paying more for gasoline eventually to help BP defray the costs of this disaster.
Government inspectors at the MMS were bribed to look the other way while BP violated the law thanks to a cozy relationship established during Bush’s years. The oil company staff wrote safety reports which the inspectors just accepted as fact. They conspired – BP and MMS – to defraud the government and the American people with tragic circumstances.
Most people are nauseous just watching greedy bankers steal money from the people one year, then avaricious oil executives acting dangerously with impunity the next, while the rest of us suffer economically and lose jobs because of their errors. And worst of all, with a deprave former administration relaxing safety rules, and now a stumbling White House and corrupt Congress running the show, none of the wrongdoers will ever get to pay for their crimes.
I have said it many time before and I say it again. Pogo was right. "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Saturday, April 17, 2010
The tea and sympathetic party
By Don Klein
Tea Party rhetoric rings in my ears daily and for long time I have resisted writing about them because I felt they were inconsequential. I thought of them as a bunch of wacks who were roused by harum-scarum fears and madcap folly from their nesting deep in the underbrush to blow off steam. They were not worthy of comment.
Then I recalled that people also thought the National Socialist Party of Germany was made up of a bunch of crackpots and if no one gave them much attention they would dissolve into thin air and things would go back to normal. We all know that led to the most horrible of all consequences in the last century.
I am not equating the Tea Party with the Nazi Party -- yet, primarily because the former has not yet tasted real power. But there are many similarities. The Tea Party is so out of line with the rest of America it is shameful that they get so much national attention. They are mostly stingy older people who are very comfortable in life and want to protect their cushy existence at the cost of others.
Their motto should be "Me, me, me." I call them the party of shrill and no sympathy. Their ostensible leader and national icon, the ex-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who has proved herself to be a shade less well-informed than a simpleton, speaks in a shrieking voice as an authority on whatever subject she thinks will rally her phobic, racially bigoted and gun-toting followers.
They fear a self-concocted creeping socialism, they hate the thought of a black president and will do whatever is necessary to derail his programs, they love their second amendment rights and their bibles.
Naturally, Palin’s biggest target is President Barack Obama and her major objective is to save America from what she calls encroaching "big government." In Palin’s view, by pushing through the health care legislation Obama was robbing the citizenry of their freedom.
Not sure what freedom is being denied us poor souls, as Palin contends. She never explains anything. It doesn’t fit into her sound-bite delivery from the various podiums. In-depth interviews are out of question for her. She is still licking wounds from her disastrous interview with Katie Couric on national television a year and a half back.
Palin doesn’t like what she terms "gotcha" journalism and claims that asking a candidate which newspapers she reads was a gotcha moment, especially when the candidate didn’t know how to respond to such an evil query. She prefers fiery short to-the-point statements in battling health care – "don’t retreat, just reload."
The TP goes way beyond the inanities of Palin. They carry signs depicting Obama as a fascist, a socialist and a communist all wrapped up in one, thinking that will discredit him when it has the exact opposite effect. They forget he was elected by an overwhelming majority of voters to do just what he is doing. It shows how out of step they are, not him.
They also lie by the hour. They say the economy is worsening when in fact the recession has leveled off and the stock market is back over 11,000 for the first time in years. Also joblessness is slowly diminishing.
They were the ones that propounded the death panel talk and questioned whether Obama indeed was an American citizen. They continued that nonsense in the face of factual evidence to the contrary. They feel overtaxed and demand relief while being so ill-informed they don’t realize that taxes for most people last year was less than its been in years.
To the TP, the answer to all questions is to cut taxes and cut spending, except for the military.
The TP is made up of mostly older, white males who seem to fear that their privileges and status will be harmed by new social and economic programs. They are full of contradictions. They all speak of smaller government but none want to give up their Social Security or Medicare.
Their biggest fear is wrapped around what they call the tendency towards socialism in this country. I doubt if many of them can define socialism, but it is the bugaboo they dread will eventually take away their rights. Although almost all of them have adequate health care for themselves and their families they resent the program to provide health care for the uninsured.
Their political nemesis is Obama and the Democrats, even though most say they don’t like either major party and do not seek a third party. The overwhelming majority of TP members are extremely conservative and are unhappy Republicans.
They like to describe themselves as a grass roots movement but I see the TP as the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, on par with the evangelicals. That’s why you never hear a GOP hotshot challenging anything the TPs say. Fortunately, the TP is a small percentage of the country and has no current leader.
This is where Sarah Palin, and such outlandish purveyors of screwball ideas, Rep. Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, pose a danger. If either of these oddballs manage to latch on as a TP leader, watch out.
The sad truth about Palin and Bachmann is that they are unfit to hold any public office, but despite their ignorance and lack of curiosity about the world around them, they are potent figures by virtue of their charisma, their political cheerleading and their good looks. They are attractive candidates to a certain misinformed and disenchanted element of the electorate.
It would be a tragedy if either of them became national decision-makers. I can’t image either one in a seat of power here or anywhere, but it has happened before. Remember George W. Bush? One Bush in one lifetime is more than enough.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Doing the right thing
By Don Klein
Armageddon? Hardly. Death of freedom? Not likely. All it was is health insurance for 32 million Americans who could not afford it before.
President Obama finally followed my advice and reaped great results. All right, I wasn’t the only one suggesting he take off the gloves and get fully involved in the health reform controversy. There were scads more people promoting that idea.
It really doesn’t matter who pushed the Democrats to forget about bipartisanship with a recalcitrant Republican in-group committed to fighting any reform on health. We all said it was painful for the majority Democrats to totter away their time when they didn’t really need help from the backswept opposition to bring monumental change to the country.
What does matter is in the end Obama and the Democrats did the right thing. No one is claiming the bill signed into law warmly resembles the legislation that Obama promised during the campaign, but at least there is relief for the millions being shunned by insurance behemoths.
I won’t go into the details of the new law (anyone interested will know the facts by now) I prefer to concern myself with what I see as the consequences of this crucial battle. The aftermath is both good and bad.
1. On the good side. The law is only a great first step. It will have to be amended often and broadened by future Congresses. That makes November’s election of great significance. If the Republicans take over either house of Congress or greatly diminish the Democratic majority, chances for improvements will not be forthcoming soon.
2. Also on the good side, the vote demonstrated to the Republican opposition that refusing to participate in the process does not enhance the party’s political image. Quite the contrary. I don’t know of any candidate who has won a major election on the grounds of being in favor of political obstructionism. Voters prefer candidates who seek something positive – usually changes, always improvements.
3. The lamentable fallout of the vote has been the uncharacteristically bitter attitude by some who support the GOP stance of protecting the status quo. The US use to pride itself in fully debating a subject, putting it to a vote, and everyone falling behind the winning side and working to make the final decision as successful as possible. This apparently no longer is the national credo.
4. Egged on by ugly language from congressional Republicans, many irate onlookers, largely Right Wingers and Tea Party supporters, have behaved in the most loathsome manner. Shouting expletives at Congressmen on their way to the Capitol to vote, spitting on them and finally, the most despicable of all, threatening the wives and children of supporters of the bill. Why they are so incensed is beyond reasoned understanding.
5. Finally, the most brainless strategy of all, the Republicans are threatening to repeal the health care law. They cannot be that dense, but when appealing to their followers on the intellectual level of Neanderthals they think it will work. I refuse to believe there are that many slow-witted people in this country to win an election on that basis.
Already Obama’s approval ratings are climbing after months of slippage during the dragged-out Congressional debate. He used the power of his office and the persuasiveness of his arguments to get the bill enacted. He came out of his eruditious cocoon, put on the gloves and acted like a hard-nosed, tradition-breaking president should.
He may not yet go down in history as a Lincoln or FDR, or even a Teddy Roosevelt, but at least he is heading in the right direction. Basking is his newly exercised power, Obama now has to get three subjects under control and he will be well on his way to becoming one of the great leaders in US history.
First, he has to get a workable and effective economic recovery bill passed which puts millions of people back to work. That is most essential of all current legislation and is the one which will make or break the Democrats in November, not GOP negativity.
Then he must see to it that effective measures to control the miscreants of Wall Street and America’s posh board rooms from causing any more economic damage in the years ahead. He must rein in financial mischief with aggressive policing, formative laws and demanding prosecution.
Finally, this year’s menu of important legislation should include a step or two towards protecting the environment. We don’t have much time left to reverse the global warming trend. The government should ignore the naysayers and provide for curbs or we leave our progeny with dismal futures.
Woefully the Democrats will face continuing rear action sniping from an uncooperative opposition. The Republican Party is a headless monster with no uplifting leader, no creative themes, no positive ideas, so it is easy to fall into demagoguery. We already see the early signs of this with weirdo ramblings from the likes of unelected spokesmen Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.
Obama still has a majority in both houses of Congress and should use it. He squandered away the first year of his presidency and lessons were learned. Go for it now on these three issues – jobs, financial controls and the environment – and we will see who wins in November. Does anyone in his right mind think that the GOP motif of turning health care back to where it was can float in an era flooded with new ideas and hope?
All right, you may not believe that I was instrumental in getting the health care law enacted. I doubt Obama ever got any of my messages. Now I am giving him a second chance. I’m giving him a chance to do the right thing for the remainder of 2010.
Armageddon? Hardly. Death of freedom? Not likely. All it was is health insurance for 32 million Americans who could not afford it before.
President Obama finally followed my advice and reaped great results. All right, I wasn’t the only one suggesting he take off the gloves and get fully involved in the health reform controversy. There were scads more people promoting that idea.
It really doesn’t matter who pushed the Democrats to forget about bipartisanship with a recalcitrant Republican in-group committed to fighting any reform on health. We all said it was painful for the majority Democrats to totter away their time when they didn’t really need help from the backswept opposition to bring monumental change to the country.
What does matter is in the end Obama and the Democrats did the right thing. No one is claiming the bill signed into law warmly resembles the legislation that Obama promised during the campaign, but at least there is relief for the millions being shunned by insurance behemoths.
I won’t go into the details of the new law (anyone interested will know the facts by now) I prefer to concern myself with what I see as the consequences of this crucial battle. The aftermath is both good and bad.
1. On the good side. The law is only a great first step. It will have to be amended often and broadened by future Congresses. That makes November’s election of great significance. If the Republicans take over either house of Congress or greatly diminish the Democratic majority, chances for improvements will not be forthcoming soon.
2. Also on the good side, the vote demonstrated to the Republican opposition that refusing to participate in the process does not enhance the party’s political image. Quite the contrary. I don’t know of any candidate who has won a major election on the grounds of being in favor of political obstructionism. Voters prefer candidates who seek something positive – usually changes, always improvements.
3. The lamentable fallout of the vote has been the uncharacteristically bitter attitude by some who support the GOP stance of protecting the status quo. The US use to pride itself in fully debating a subject, putting it to a vote, and everyone falling behind the winning side and working to make the final decision as successful as possible. This apparently no longer is the national credo.
4. Egged on by ugly language from congressional Republicans, many irate onlookers, largely Right Wingers and Tea Party supporters, have behaved in the most loathsome manner. Shouting expletives at Congressmen on their way to the Capitol to vote, spitting on them and finally, the most despicable of all, threatening the wives and children of supporters of the bill. Why they are so incensed is beyond reasoned understanding.
5. Finally, the most brainless strategy of all, the Republicans are threatening to repeal the health care law. They cannot be that dense, but when appealing to their followers on the intellectual level of Neanderthals they think it will work. I refuse to believe there are that many slow-witted people in this country to win an election on that basis.
Already Obama’s approval ratings are climbing after months of slippage during the dragged-out Congressional debate. He used the power of his office and the persuasiveness of his arguments to get the bill enacted. He came out of his eruditious cocoon, put on the gloves and acted like a hard-nosed, tradition-breaking president should.
He may not yet go down in history as a Lincoln or FDR, or even a Teddy Roosevelt, but at least he is heading in the right direction. Basking is his newly exercised power, Obama now has to get three subjects under control and he will be well on his way to becoming one of the great leaders in US history.
First, he has to get a workable and effective economic recovery bill passed which puts millions of people back to work. That is most essential of all current legislation and is the one which will make or break the Democrats in November, not GOP negativity.
Then he must see to it that effective measures to control the miscreants of Wall Street and America’s posh board rooms from causing any more economic damage in the years ahead. He must rein in financial mischief with aggressive policing, formative laws and demanding prosecution.
Finally, this year’s menu of important legislation should include a step or two towards protecting the environment. We don’t have much time left to reverse the global warming trend. The government should ignore the naysayers and provide for curbs or we leave our progeny with dismal futures.
Woefully the Democrats will face continuing rear action sniping from an uncooperative opposition. The Republican Party is a headless monster with no uplifting leader, no creative themes, no positive ideas, so it is easy to fall into demagoguery. We already see the early signs of this with weirdo ramblings from the likes of unelected spokesmen Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.
Obama still has a majority in both houses of Congress and should use it. He squandered away the first year of his presidency and lessons were learned. Go for it now on these three issues – jobs, financial controls and the environment – and we will see who wins in November. Does anyone in his right mind think that the GOP motif of turning health care back to where it was can float in an era flooded with new ideas and hope?
All right, you may not believe that I was instrumental in getting the health care law enacted. I doubt Obama ever got any of my messages. Now I am giving him a second chance. I’m giving him a chance to do the right thing for the remainder of 2010.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
When did we lose democracy?
By Don Klein
The British Parliament enacted legislation that will tax bonuses to employees of financial institution to the tune of 50 percent. The French are planning to do the same. They refuse to allow banking leeches who were largely responsible for the financial crisis under which millions suffer to continue to draw blood from a suffering society.
Don’t expect any restrictive action vaguely resembling our overseas friends ever happening in the US. We have a Congress that doesn’t represent the people. The national legislature is bought and owned by the bankers and large corporations. It is not the land of the free and home of the brave we learned about in grade school.
Land of the free? Home of the brave? Really? If you think that describes today’s America, humbug. To Congress there’s a new definition. The term "land of the free" means that big concerns have the free use of the American economy sans penalty or restrictions. And "home of the brave" refers to the rest of us who have the painful right to suffer silently while the greedy bask in unearned rewards.
The parasites that inhabit Wall Street take their immense payoffs whether they make profits or not. They earn money with the thanks of the American taxpayer who bailed them out of tragic circumstances and then the ingrates raise interest rates on credit, boosts prices for services and pay their own flunkeys unconscionable bonuses.
They thumb their collective noses at the rest of us by using every bit of pressure (spelled: money) they can muster to impair corrective Congressional action. They payoff key members of Congress with campaign donations to insure they remain in office. That is their interpretation of the Constitutional right to petition the government -- also known as bribes. But they never use that word.
It’s a crime. It’s an injustice. But don’t expect anyone to go to jail for it. Why? Because Congress is in cahoots with the bankers, the insurance giants, the business barons who have as much public concern, community goodwill and personal honesty as a pile of rocks.
Not only do these bloodsuckers, who were on the edge of disaster when the taxpayers saved their skins, show no gratitude or restraint in overpaying themselves for not doing the right thing in the first place but they underwrite every campaign to destroy any hope for the country to improve life for the average citizen.
They oppose health care and fund the Republican political machine which opposes any reform in Congress and they fund the Blue Dog Democrats who see no reason to support their own party’s high minded resolve to help millions of the country’s uninsured. They underwrite the cost of fighting any effort to thwart global warming. All they care about is making as much money as they can no matter how many innocent people go without adequate medical care or how dangerous the world will be without pollution controls.
They are the most shortsighted people that ever existed. They don’t care about the future. They only live for the profits of the moment. They pay off Congress and fatten the wallets of government leaders in order to protect their bloated incomes. My desire is they live long enough to see how much damage they have done to their children’s and grandchildren’s worlds.
The Republican Party, with its antipathy towards any change in the way health care, is standing boldly shoulder-to-shoulder with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries in opposition to anything offered in the realm of health care reform. They are joined by enough reactionary Democrats to stop meaningful progress.
When it comes to the area of stimulating jobs in our weakened economy all the Republicans can think of is their precious taxes. They keep singing that discredited song that tax cuts for business stimulates employment when we all know that the tax cuts given during the Bush Administration resulted in a near depression.
And the Democrats are not blameless. They cannot get together to write stiff new rules that would restrict banks and investment firms from hoodwinking the public in the future even after the financial chaos following the Bush Administration. It is difficult to believe there are realistic objections in the shadow of such a financial disaster. Even the watered-down bill passed by the House this week failed to gain a single Republican vote.
But neither party has serious objections to restricting entitlements to the poor and middle classes. It’s no harm if the lower income echelon of society cannot buy as much with food stamps as before, or afford a doctor’s regular care, or pay their mortgages.
It is all right for the lower income families to send their youths to fight and die in a questionable war as long as the investors in Haliburton (like Dick Cheney) and Blackwater make billions selling their inflated, non-bid services to the military.
The ugliness of the American political scene is heartless. We have a Congress hobbled into inaction by one party which can only say "no" to all proposals and by Senate rules that demolish the democratic concept of majority rule. We no longer have democracy in America, we have borderline anarchy fed by contentious politicians rejoicing in logjams and gridlock. The only time bipartisanship rears its head is when funding warfare.
And there is no relief for the electorate.
It is Christmas time and if you are looking for the traditional goodwill and peace of the season, you’d better look somewhere else. You won’t find it in the US Congress.
The British Parliament enacted legislation that will tax bonuses to employees of financial institution to the tune of 50 percent. The French are planning to do the same. They refuse to allow banking leeches who were largely responsible for the financial crisis under which millions suffer to continue to draw blood from a suffering society.
Don’t expect any restrictive action vaguely resembling our overseas friends ever happening in the US. We have a Congress that doesn’t represent the people. The national legislature is bought and owned by the bankers and large corporations. It is not the land of the free and home of the brave we learned about in grade school.
Land of the free? Home of the brave? Really? If you think that describes today’s America, humbug. To Congress there’s a new definition. The term "land of the free" means that big concerns have the free use of the American economy sans penalty or restrictions. And "home of the brave" refers to the rest of us who have the painful right to suffer silently while the greedy bask in unearned rewards.
The parasites that inhabit Wall Street take their immense payoffs whether they make profits or not. They earn money with the thanks of the American taxpayer who bailed them out of tragic circumstances and then the ingrates raise interest rates on credit, boosts prices for services and pay their own flunkeys unconscionable bonuses.
They thumb their collective noses at the rest of us by using every bit of pressure (spelled: money) they can muster to impair corrective Congressional action. They payoff key members of Congress with campaign donations to insure they remain in office. That is their interpretation of the Constitutional right to petition the government -- also known as bribes. But they never use that word.
It’s a crime. It’s an injustice. But don’t expect anyone to go to jail for it. Why? Because Congress is in cahoots with the bankers, the insurance giants, the business barons who have as much public concern, community goodwill and personal honesty as a pile of rocks.
Not only do these bloodsuckers, who were on the edge of disaster when the taxpayers saved their skins, show no gratitude or restraint in overpaying themselves for not doing the right thing in the first place but they underwrite every campaign to destroy any hope for the country to improve life for the average citizen.
They oppose health care and fund the Republican political machine which opposes any reform in Congress and they fund the Blue Dog Democrats who see no reason to support their own party’s high minded resolve to help millions of the country’s uninsured. They underwrite the cost of fighting any effort to thwart global warming. All they care about is making as much money as they can no matter how many innocent people go without adequate medical care or how dangerous the world will be without pollution controls.
They are the most shortsighted people that ever existed. They don’t care about the future. They only live for the profits of the moment. They pay off Congress and fatten the wallets of government leaders in order to protect their bloated incomes. My desire is they live long enough to see how much damage they have done to their children’s and grandchildren’s worlds.
The Republican Party, with its antipathy towards any change in the way health care, is standing boldly shoulder-to-shoulder with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries in opposition to anything offered in the realm of health care reform. They are joined by enough reactionary Democrats to stop meaningful progress.
When it comes to the area of stimulating jobs in our weakened economy all the Republicans can think of is their precious taxes. They keep singing that discredited song that tax cuts for business stimulates employment when we all know that the tax cuts given during the Bush Administration resulted in a near depression.
And the Democrats are not blameless. They cannot get together to write stiff new rules that would restrict banks and investment firms from hoodwinking the public in the future even after the financial chaos following the Bush Administration. It is difficult to believe there are realistic objections in the shadow of such a financial disaster. Even the watered-down bill passed by the House this week failed to gain a single Republican vote.
But neither party has serious objections to restricting entitlements to the poor and middle classes. It’s no harm if the lower income echelon of society cannot buy as much with food stamps as before, or afford a doctor’s regular care, or pay their mortgages.
It is all right for the lower income families to send their youths to fight and die in a questionable war as long as the investors in Haliburton (like Dick Cheney) and Blackwater make billions selling their inflated, non-bid services to the military.
The ugliness of the American political scene is heartless. We have a Congress hobbled into inaction by one party which can only say "no" to all proposals and by Senate rules that demolish the democratic concept of majority rule. We no longer have democracy in America, we have borderline anarchy fed by contentious politicians rejoicing in logjams and gridlock. The only time bipartisanship rears its head is when funding warfare.
And there is no relief for the electorate.
It is Christmas time and if you are looking for the traditional goodwill and peace of the season, you’d better look somewhere else. You won’t find it in the US Congress.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Catching up with a scoundrel
By Don Klein
What would you think of a man in his forties who plied with alcohol your 13-year-old daughter or granddaughter, then drugged her and finally took advantage of her impairment to have sex with her in numerous ways, including what many would consider to be unconventional?
Would he be candidate for Man of the Year? Or would he be a villain who you would hope the authorities would hunt down and send to jail?
Now let’s assume the rapist was not some back alley trash but an artistic genius, who was known near and far as the director of a collection great films in the US and around the world. Would his high esthetic achievements make him a figure of sympathy and admiration who deserves to be excused for his misbehavior and the recipient of your open support?
Sounds familiar? Yes we are talking about Roman Polanski, the peripatetic filmmaker who finally was arrested recently in Switzerland on a warrant from the United States in favor of the Los Angeles district attorney. He will soon appear in a Swiss court to fight extradition as a fugitive from American justice.
The announcement of his detention surprised many people, including myself, who concluded he had successfully alluded justice before sentencing on his admission of guilt in this 31-year-old case. Worse, it traumatize many of his admiring fellow creative artists. What was more shocking was the reaction of the Hollywood community and some preposterous European sophisticates who instantaneously came to the rapist’s defense.
British novelist Robert Harris, author of "The Ghost," which Polansky is making into a movie, said the news of Polansky’s arrest in Zurich on an outstanding international warrant made him "feel almost physically sick."
The news of his arrest made him sick? Not the crime to which Polansky pleaded guilty? What kind of man is Harris? "Mr. Polansky has become a good friend," Harris wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. "Our families have spent time together. His daughter and mine keep in regular touch. His past did not bother me..."
Hollywood luminaries have expressed their support for Polansky, now 76. Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Michael Mann, Harvey Weinstein and 100 others are circulating a petition demanding Polansky’s immediate release.
Fortunately not all Hollywood is on this ridiculous bandwagon. Alison Arngrim, an actress known for "Little House on the Prairie," who had spoken out in the past about being molested as a child, said pointedly, "If Roman Polansky was a Catholic priest or a Republican senator, would these people feel the same way?"
Weinstein wrote a column in a London daily supporting Polansky and tried to whitewash the case. Apparently if the crime is more than three decades old it is no longer a crime in his eyes. "Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polansky has served his time," he said.
Weinstein has got to be delusional. How could he define "served his time" if Polansky has been living in posh exile in France and traveling freely all over Europe pursuing his film career and basically thumbing his nose at the US judicial system? Is Weinstein saying that if you are a renown artist you have a right to flaunt the law that everyone else has to live up to?
Besides, as The Times reported, "there is nothing ‘so-called’ about the crime. The passage of years does not alter the allegations in the indictment, which included rape, furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, committing lewd and lascivious act upon a child and sodomy." Polansky pleaded guilty to the single charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. In other words, statutory rape.
The child victim, now in her forties and having received in the past a handsome settlement from Polansky, is no longer willing to prosecute. But when rape is committed it is a crime against society, not just a violation of one’s personal and protected rights. Besides Polansky already pleaded guilty and fled before sentencing.
I can’t help but wonder whether the writer Harris who noted that Polansky’s past as a rapist of a child did not bother him would be comfortable to leave his daughter, when she was 13, alone with the errant director. I would ask the same of Scorsese, Weinstein and the others who feel Polansky should not be extradited.
I look at this situation on two levels, neither one of which is favorable for
Polansky. Of course the first is the rape of a child. No one should ever get a free pass on that crime, but Polansky with his money and connections was able to flee and remain to ramble wherever he could as long as the long arm of the law did not reach out to nab him. I think he should have been collared years ago when he first fled justice and am not sure why he was not.
But later is better than never in this case.
The other unforgivable crime is his calculated brushing off of the judicial system of the country that made him a multi-millionaire. He thumbed his nose at every law-abiding American during the 30 years of making films outside the reach of the courts. And we Americans foolishly went to his movies in droves and made him richer during his self-imposed deportation.
Hopefully his flight will have finally come to an end and the scoundrel will pay for his crime by spending the rest of his sordid life in prison.
What would you think of a man in his forties who plied with alcohol your 13-year-old daughter or granddaughter, then drugged her and finally took advantage of her impairment to have sex with her in numerous ways, including what many would consider to be unconventional?
Would he be candidate for Man of the Year? Or would he be a villain who you would hope the authorities would hunt down and send to jail?
Now let’s assume the rapist was not some back alley trash but an artistic genius, who was known near and far as the director of a collection great films in the US and around the world. Would his high esthetic achievements make him a figure of sympathy and admiration who deserves to be excused for his misbehavior and the recipient of your open support?
Sounds familiar? Yes we are talking about Roman Polanski, the peripatetic filmmaker who finally was arrested recently in Switzerland on a warrant from the United States in favor of the Los Angeles district attorney. He will soon appear in a Swiss court to fight extradition as a fugitive from American justice.
The announcement of his detention surprised many people, including myself, who concluded he had successfully alluded justice before sentencing on his admission of guilt in this 31-year-old case. Worse, it traumatize many of his admiring fellow creative artists. What was more shocking was the reaction of the Hollywood community and some preposterous European sophisticates who instantaneously came to the rapist’s defense.
British novelist Robert Harris, author of "The Ghost," which Polansky is making into a movie, said the news of Polansky’s arrest in Zurich on an outstanding international warrant made him "feel almost physically sick."
The news of his arrest made him sick? Not the crime to which Polansky pleaded guilty? What kind of man is Harris? "Mr. Polansky has become a good friend," Harris wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. "Our families have spent time together. His daughter and mine keep in regular touch. His past did not bother me..."
Hollywood luminaries have expressed their support for Polansky, now 76. Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Michael Mann, Harvey Weinstein and 100 others are circulating a petition demanding Polansky’s immediate release.
Fortunately not all Hollywood is on this ridiculous bandwagon. Alison Arngrim, an actress known for "Little House on the Prairie," who had spoken out in the past about being molested as a child, said pointedly, "If Roman Polansky was a Catholic priest or a Republican senator, would these people feel the same way?"
Weinstein wrote a column in a London daily supporting Polansky and tried to whitewash the case. Apparently if the crime is more than three decades old it is no longer a crime in his eyes. "Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polansky has served his time," he said.
Weinstein has got to be delusional. How could he define "served his time" if Polansky has been living in posh exile in France and traveling freely all over Europe pursuing his film career and basically thumbing his nose at the US judicial system? Is Weinstein saying that if you are a renown artist you have a right to flaunt the law that everyone else has to live up to?
Besides, as The Times reported, "there is nothing ‘so-called’ about the crime. The passage of years does not alter the allegations in the indictment, which included rape, furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, committing lewd and lascivious act upon a child and sodomy." Polansky pleaded guilty to the single charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. In other words, statutory rape.
The child victim, now in her forties and having received in the past a handsome settlement from Polansky, is no longer willing to prosecute. But when rape is committed it is a crime against society, not just a violation of one’s personal and protected rights. Besides Polansky already pleaded guilty and fled before sentencing.
I can’t help but wonder whether the writer Harris who noted that Polansky’s past as a rapist of a child did not bother him would be comfortable to leave his daughter, when she was 13, alone with the errant director. I would ask the same of Scorsese, Weinstein and the others who feel Polansky should not be extradited.
I look at this situation on two levels, neither one of which is favorable for
Polansky. Of course the first is the rape of a child. No one should ever get a free pass on that crime, but Polansky with his money and connections was able to flee and remain to ramble wherever he could as long as the long arm of the law did not reach out to nab him. I think he should have been collared years ago when he first fled justice and am not sure why he was not.
But later is better than never in this case.
The other unforgivable crime is his calculated brushing off of the judicial system of the country that made him a multi-millionaire. He thumbed his nose at every law-abiding American during the 30 years of making films outside the reach of the courts. And we Americans foolishly went to his movies in droves and made him richer during his self-imposed deportation.
Hopefully his flight will have finally come to an end and the scoundrel will pay for his crime by spending the rest of his sordid life in prison.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
A good day for the courts
By Don Klein
Two major court actions occurred on the same day and uniquely both were the right calls. It is almost enough to reestablish the faith we once had in the American judicial system before it was nearly fatally damaged in the muffed O.J. Simpson murder case.
The uplifting two cases were unrelated but the results of both were deserved and correct. The first was the Bernie Madoff sentencing in New York federal court. There was speculation that with all his money and influence there was a chance that the disgraced Wall Street bilker would get off with a slap on the wrist and a few years imprisonment.
Not so this time. Madoff’s 150 year term would be tantamount to life behind bars if he was born last year, let alone 71 years ago. He will die in prison and it seems no one will mourn his passing. His sons have disassociated themselves from him for months, his brother is nowhere to be seen and his wife said he is not the man she knew during their more than 50 gilded years of nuptial togetherness.
No one stood up to say a good word about Madoff when the judge invited comments before sentencing. You could almost feel sorry for the poor bloke – with not a friend in the world to speak up for him – if he were not such a scoundrel. Even his lawyer begged Federal District Judge Denny Chin for a 12 year sentence.
It is estimated by authorities that $170 billion passed through Madoff’s hands during his reign as a money manipulator. Much of that amount went into payoffs, a necessary ingredient of a Ponzi scheme. In other words he paid old investors with the cash that came in from new clients. The authorities reportedly have traced between $1 and $2 billion of the loot. However some $13 billion has been identified as "lost" money. No one knows what happened to it.
The only remaining question is where is the $13 billion? Did Madoff make off with it? It is still unaccounted for. Madoff’s personal assets do not calculate for any portion of the missing loot.
So where is the money? Some of Madoff’s victims claim the money is hidden in secret offshore accounts. What good will that do Madoff while sitting in prison for the rest of his life? The hope is that federal investigators will solve the riddle of the missing booty given more time working the books. It could take about a year or two. But that is only possible if you believe the feds are that smart. I am not sure they are. So they may never solve the mystery.
The other quirky aspect to the case is the battle that is now forming between the various victims all vying to get a piece of the confiscated Madoff assets. It seems a small proportion of the victims are showing their own special brand of greed in trying to get as much of the confiscated funds as they can for themselves even at the expense of other Madoff victims. These people are certainly victims, but they act like jackals fighting over the spoils of a kill. They got burned looking for a special market advantage in the first place and now are determined to muscle others to the side while they grab theirs.
Many of the other victims are just pathetic sufferers. They range from the hardworking little guys who scraped and saved to put away a nest egg for their later years to giant charities and universities who should have known better. Madoff’s clients were a cross-section of Americana.
The remaining questions are where were was the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was supposed to protect investors from such frauds? They were not just asleep at the switch, they apparently weren’t even on the job. They were warned several times that the Madoff figures didn’t make sense, but did nothing.
The SEC’s failure in this case plus the stock market crash has permanently damaged the image of the stock market in the eyes of many. It will take generations before the market will regain the trust of most of its middle class investors. Some will hide their money in fire-proof vaults instead of going to Wall Street in the future.
Speaking of fire brings us to the second happy achievement of the day. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New Haven firefighters who claimed to be victims of reverse discrimination. They passed the test for promotion but was denied the step-up because no blacks passed the test and the city feared this would bring a suit from the black firefighters charging discrimination. Instead the city decided to discriminate against those who passed the test, who happened to be white.
The disturbing aspect of the court’s 5-4 ruling was the vote breakdown with the four conservative justices in favor of the plaintiffs and the four liberals against and the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy voting with the conservatives. To me it was a simple case of justice, yet to the liberals it became an ideological contest.
I thought the inscription on the facade over the entrance to the Supreme Court building, "Equal Justice Under Law" meant strict impartiality and no other ingredient.
Justice was on the side of the firemen who passed the test and the liberals should uphold that value. I believe if the case was reversed and the only candidates to pass the test were blacks and they were not appointed for the same reasons the whites were not, the court liberals would have found that ripe for overturning.
On the whole the courts did the ideal of American justice proud this past week and we should all be happy. It doesn’t happen that often.
Two major court actions occurred on the same day and uniquely both were the right calls. It is almost enough to reestablish the faith we once had in the American judicial system before it was nearly fatally damaged in the muffed O.J. Simpson murder case.
The uplifting two cases were unrelated but the results of both were deserved and correct. The first was the Bernie Madoff sentencing in New York federal court. There was speculation that with all his money and influence there was a chance that the disgraced Wall Street bilker would get off with a slap on the wrist and a few years imprisonment.
Not so this time. Madoff’s 150 year term would be tantamount to life behind bars if he was born last year, let alone 71 years ago. He will die in prison and it seems no one will mourn his passing. His sons have disassociated themselves from him for months, his brother is nowhere to be seen and his wife said he is not the man she knew during their more than 50 gilded years of nuptial togetherness.
No one stood up to say a good word about Madoff when the judge invited comments before sentencing. You could almost feel sorry for the poor bloke – with not a friend in the world to speak up for him – if he were not such a scoundrel. Even his lawyer begged Federal District Judge Denny Chin for a 12 year sentence.
It is estimated by authorities that $170 billion passed through Madoff’s hands during his reign as a money manipulator. Much of that amount went into payoffs, a necessary ingredient of a Ponzi scheme. In other words he paid old investors with the cash that came in from new clients. The authorities reportedly have traced between $1 and $2 billion of the loot. However some $13 billion has been identified as "lost" money. No one knows what happened to it.
The only remaining question is where is the $13 billion? Did Madoff make off with it? It is still unaccounted for. Madoff’s personal assets do not calculate for any portion of the missing loot.
So where is the money? Some of Madoff’s victims claim the money is hidden in secret offshore accounts. What good will that do Madoff while sitting in prison for the rest of his life? The hope is that federal investigators will solve the riddle of the missing booty given more time working the books. It could take about a year or two. But that is only possible if you believe the feds are that smart. I am not sure they are. So they may never solve the mystery.
The other quirky aspect to the case is the battle that is now forming between the various victims all vying to get a piece of the confiscated Madoff assets. It seems a small proportion of the victims are showing their own special brand of greed in trying to get as much of the confiscated funds as they can for themselves even at the expense of other Madoff victims. These people are certainly victims, but they act like jackals fighting over the spoils of a kill. They got burned looking for a special market advantage in the first place and now are determined to muscle others to the side while they grab theirs.
Many of the other victims are just pathetic sufferers. They range from the hardworking little guys who scraped and saved to put away a nest egg for their later years to giant charities and universities who should have known better. Madoff’s clients were a cross-section of Americana.
The remaining questions are where were was the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was supposed to protect investors from such frauds? They were not just asleep at the switch, they apparently weren’t even on the job. They were warned several times that the Madoff figures didn’t make sense, but did nothing.
The SEC’s failure in this case plus the stock market crash has permanently damaged the image of the stock market in the eyes of many. It will take generations before the market will regain the trust of most of its middle class investors. Some will hide their money in fire-proof vaults instead of going to Wall Street in the future.
Speaking of fire brings us to the second happy achievement of the day. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New Haven firefighters who claimed to be victims of reverse discrimination. They passed the test for promotion but was denied the step-up because no blacks passed the test and the city feared this would bring a suit from the black firefighters charging discrimination. Instead the city decided to discriminate against those who passed the test, who happened to be white.
The disturbing aspect of the court’s 5-4 ruling was the vote breakdown with the four conservative justices in favor of the plaintiffs and the four liberals against and the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy voting with the conservatives. To me it was a simple case of justice, yet to the liberals it became an ideological contest.
I thought the inscription on the facade over the entrance to the Supreme Court building, "Equal Justice Under Law" meant strict impartiality and no other ingredient.
Justice was on the side of the firemen who passed the test and the liberals should uphold that value. I believe if the case was reversed and the only candidates to pass the test were blacks and they were not appointed for the same reasons the whites were not, the court liberals would have found that ripe for overturning.
On the whole the courts did the ideal of American justice proud this past week and we should all be happy. It doesn’t happen that often.
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