Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

U.S. Domestic Policy

Newfoundland geese, Nigerian bombers

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Apparently the Canada geese that knocked that plane down into the Hudson river a few months ago were really from Newfoundland. Quick-thinking scientists did DNA tests on them that proved they were invaders from somewhere around l’anse aux meadows on the northern tip of the northern peninsula of the island where the Vikings once began the invasion of the Americas. For some reason this was met with a sigh of relief in certain quarters since it demonstrated that these weren’t American canadian geese. US geese apparently don’t do such things.

And now we have yet another shoe bomber/self immolator who strived mightily and unsuccessfully to commit suicide by killing 300 other folks in the process, and he too came from foreign shores. The result of this misadventure was total chaos in airports servicing the US market as security was tightened to the point of strangulation. The question is: what difference does it make where the wannabee killer came from, the result would be the same. Why have the greatest disruptions occurred at the US customs barriers at major European and Canadian airports, where security is surely better than at many domestic airports? Would the US Homeland security boss’s amazingly nutty statement some months ago that the 9/11 bombers came from Canada have anything to do with it? Canadians are amazed to still hear that urban myth when they visit the US and are even more amazed to discover Mme Napolitoni is still in charge of homeland security, though back then she had no idea how and where the 9/11 killers got on their planes.

In any case it is already clear that the only success that failed assassin will enjoy will involve the further isolation of the US because of border controls that are as useless as they are disheartening and ultimately counterproductive. Travellers are already looking around for some other place to visit and spend their money than in a place where a star-wars strip-search at the border has become a routine and legal procedure. Maybe the beaches of Cuba?

Healthcare Reform: Baby Steps

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Watching the healthcare reform legislative process was like watching someone remove a huge splinter from my finger. Hurt like hell and made me mad. But maybe I will feel better when this particular splinter is out. Not really sure. The Senate bill that is finally about to pass eliminates the public option and the buy into Medicare for those over 55. It is basically an insurance reform bill that does little to control costs or to improve delivery. But it is all we could get due to Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and all of the Republican Senators.

Theories abound as to just why Lieberman continued his evolution into one of the Senate’s worst obstructionists. Some think it is because he is not so bright; others that he was in the pocket of the insurance industry; for a few others it was more simple and basic – that his core values influenced his obstructionist behavior. But the explanation that may make the most sense is that he is seeking revenge on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party for having forsaken him. He ran for president and got nowhere, lost the Democratic nomination for his Senate seat and then had to run as an independent. Whatever the case – whether it is one or more or all of the above – I do hope the day will come when the Democratic leadership will finally tell him to go screw himself.

Ben Nelson used his opposition to mollify Christian right folk in his state of Nebraska (whose population is about .6% of the country) by reducing the separation between church and state to get stronger anti-abortion language in the bill. Curiously, the day before he agreed to support the Senate bill he was lobbied by three religious leaders in Nebraska to support the bill; one of those leaders was a Jesuit priest. The other payout he got for his fellow cornhuskers was a permanent increase in federal contributions to the cost of expanding Medicaid in Nebraska. The fact that other states did not get this – or require being bought off – is indicative of just how venal Nelson is.

As for the Republicans, they are as hypocritical as ever. They fell all over each other to support Bush’s criminal Iraq War that killed hundreds of thousands but cannot bring themselves to support a bill that will save people’s lives. Sam Brownback is crying over the continued existence of at least a shred of the separation of church and state; John McCain has supported wasteful wars his entire career but cannot find a way to stomach spending a dime to improve his constituents’ healthcare. Olympia Snow had a day or two in the spotlight only to disappear into the Maine woods and Judd Gregg continues to pontificate with self-serving charts and elegant ways of saying “no” to everything. But they have done their damage. We will have a bill that gives the health insurance companies a windfall and avoids the tough issues related to costs.

If the final bill actually gets passed some 35 million Americans will newly have access to health insurance, children under the age of 18 will not be denied insurance for “preexisting conditions” and, in time (2014) all Americans will have that protection. It is a baby step on the way to full maturity and compassion in the way we provide healthcare in this country. But it is a start.

Lament for a great university

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Though it has not gone unnoticed, there has been too little written about the disastrous decline that must inevitably occur in one of the world’s great universities, arguably the finest state university in existence, the University of California at Berkeley. Compared to the cultivated mustiness of the elite UK universities, or the inborn snootiness of the French écoles superieurs, not to mention the artificiality and class structure of such ridiculously rich private US outposts such as “America’s McGill”, Harvard, or the somewhat seedy centres of German knowledge such as LMU München, Berkeley has long offered an almost unique mixture of intellectual intercourse and natural beauty mixed in with a splendid library and a revolutionary streak that keeps the place jumping. And that at a price normal people can afford with some belt-tightening, unlike those with tuitions of $50,00 a year, who have also coincidentally come under great financial pressure as their hedge-funded endowments have collapsed in the last year. Poor Harvard has seen its endowment sink from 40 billion Dollars to either 30 or 22 billion, depending on who you believe, a sum that does not lead to displays of sympathy at working-class Berkeley
But unless something completely unexpected happens, the budget of the University of California system will face a shortfall of 600 million dollars next year, an 8% cut from last year’s budget and by law the system cannot run in a deficit. So this staggering sum of money must be taken out of the hide of the universities themselves, and it seems that the board of Governors has decided to simply pass the pain on to everyone equally. Chico State University and many others like it will thus have the same problem as Berkeley, to somehow cut 8% of the budget. The disaster at Berkeley can only lead to a sudden serious decline in the quality of the library, the closing of small non-profitable departments, the loss of elite faculty members as they search for greener pastures at expanding Canadian universities, which are largely unaffected by the economic crisis since hedge fund betting is illegal there, as well as the loss of the youngest and the brightest since there will be a hiring freeze. The only hope is that the injury time will be relatively short and the recovery from a potentially debilitating attack can still be attained.

Whiting out the USA

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According to last week’s New York Times, the US Homeland Security folks have ordered the guards at their new border station in Massena, New York – across from Cornwall, Ontario – to whitewash – erase -the name United States from the side of their building, as they consider the name itself to make it a security threat. The Montreal Gazette then wrote that the word “paranoid” no longer suffices to describe the US border policy, “surreal” is the right word.

Can it really be that such a great and powerful country whose own border it is supposedly defending is afraid to name itself? Can anyone imagine Romania or Bulgaria, both of which are now easier for Canadians to enter than the USA is, giving out such an order to their border guards? Is the lady who not long ago announced that the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada still in charge of Homeland Security?
Please, Barack, put some people who live on this planet in charge of your borders before it is too late.

Obama and the Politics of Disappointment

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As the Obama presidency approaches the six-month mark the record is decidedly mixed. Our friends, the brothers Mackenzie, have indicated their disappointment in a recent posting critical of the “Buy American” element of the stimulus package and lays the blame on the “Obama regime”. While American presidents do not normally have the luxury of leading a “regime”, Bob and Doug point out the need for a more vigorous political stance by the president.

“Buy American” represents a gut response from politicians unwilling to provide leadership to the electorate, and unable to resist foisting easy answers onto a population whose inability to accept the reality of the decline of America leads them into a mythical America Uber Alles. A Buy American campaign fails to recognize that foreign companies hire many Americans and it begs for retaliation by other nations, leading to even greater trade imbalances and reduced employment in the future. Globalization is here to stay and politicians need to recognize that and deal with it honestly and realistically.

While the Republicans in Congress continue on an obstructionist journey to oblivion, Democrats in Congress share the blame for Buy American sentiments as well as for more serious failures looming on the horizon. Solidarity is not a keystone of the Democratic Party so while the Republican Senate and House of Representatives could support just about anything George W. Bush dreamed up, Democratic Senators and Representatives lack the kind of party discipline needed for a Democratic president to move the country toward major change – change perceived by some as threatening to lobbyists and major campaign contributors. Obama’s apparent commitment to  “pragmatism” in working with Congress in developing policy leads inevitably to disappointment.

While disappointments are there, more are sure to come. Prisoners remain in Guantanamo while members of Congress from both parties cower in fear over the possibility that any of them might be housed in prisons in their states; the stimulus package is far from successful and may very well end up an economic fiasco; a variety of security programs of questionable legality initiated by the Bush administration remain in place; the war in Afghanistan is beginning to look like a project of questionable value to the national interest; the health care debate seems headed toward the continuing of private insurance programs with no public alternative; the Congress  is unlikely to allow the Department of Defense to shake off the influence of the military industrial complex and  many major  public welfare initiatives are likely to fall victim to the economic  recession.

The current Congress lacks the statesmanship, ethics and intelligence necessary to deal effectively with domestic policy that has been built on a long history of private gain at public cost. There is an argument that capitalism has been the great strength of the United States but as we become increasingly committed to bailing out inefficient and even crooked industries, capitalism as we’ve known it begins to look more like the problem than the solution. If Obama is to have success it appears that it may have to be in foreign affairs, where presidents have more power and less need to coddle members of congress.

The Supreme Court as a Legion of Decency

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The current U.S. Supreme Court has distinguished itself as an activist handmaiden of the Christian religious right. Two recent decisions illustrate the nuttiness that might have contributed to the retirement of Judge Souter and led many observers to wonder how in the devil we allowed such a takeover of one of our most important institutions. Both decisions relate to the efforts of the former chairman of the FCC to protect our tender eyes and ears from certain kinds of words and sights. One case involved the FCC’s policy to fine TV and radio stations for allowing “fleeting expletives” to go out on the airways. So if a sportscaster goes into a locker room and – shocking as it may seem – a professional athlete should refer to a loss as a “fuckin disaster” the broadcaster is liable to receive a sizable fine. Similarly, if a rock star wins a Grammy and accepts it in a live broadcast with the words, “fuckin awesome” the same holds. This FCC policy is apparently the brainchild of former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, an absolutist when it comes to the FCC’s right to determine what we can and cannot hear and see. The other case, of course, is the infamous half-second display of Janet Jackson’s left (or was it the right?) nipple during the Superbowl halftime extravaganza. The FCC fined CBS TV over $500,000 for that incident and surely the morals of American youth have not yet recovered. In any case the fine was overturned in a lower court and now the Supreme Court has sent it back to be reconsidered.

None of this would matter all that much if it were not emblematic of a right-wing activist court bent on controlling our lives in ways that are silly but nonetheless disturbing. Which brings us to the retirement of Justice Souter and the immediate response of Republican Senators that President Obama must not appoint anyone who might just possibly bring a modicum of sanity to a court populated with a majority of right-wingers who have done all possible to further the narrow ideology promoted by right-wing Christians. This before Obama has even mentioned possible names. What we are in for is a time wasting, grandstanding display of ignorance and hypocritical piety by Republican Senators who will carry the water of the likes of Pat Robertson and Pope Benedict. This in a country founded on the basis of separation of Church and State.

The complaints from the right will focus on what they contend are the evils of “activist” judges, (conveniently forgetting that the court has been – in their word, “activist,” for a number of years in the promotion of THEIR agenda), now defined as any judge who decides cases differently from what their religious beliefs would dictate. The political make-up of the Senate makes it likely that the Christian right will not prevail in the upcoming battle for the integrity of the Supreme Court but they will certainly make some of us scream for sanity.

TORTURED LOGIC

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“Thus, although the subject may experience fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in Section 2340A Memorandum, “pain and suffering” as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering.”… Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering”….Jay Bybee, former Dept. of Justice Lawyer in the Bush Administration and current 9th Circuit Judge

Judge Bybee, a graduate of the University of Obfuscation Law School, might also have noted that chopping off a prisoner’s leg is allowable since he had two of them. He did not comment on what to do when you run out of legs but perhaps there are other body parts to consider– testicles, arms, kidneys etc. Reading the memoranda makes it clear that in this and other instances our Law Schools have helped create some monsters that would make Goebbels proud.

The release of four selected torture memoranda from the Bush Justice Department have raised two firestorms, each interesting in its own way. From the right we get the old familiar argument to screw the law and do anything we wish to anyone we think might want to hurt us, regardless of evidence and American values. A deep thinker from the Heritage Foundation reminded us on TV that in the white heat of post 9/11 it seemed clear that we needed to make sure we got the information needed to protect the country regardless of our laws or international law. He conveniently forgot that some of the memoranda were written as late as 2005 and that – in fact – we HAD the information that 9/11 was around the corner, that the information was given to Bush and National Security Advisor Rice – and ignored by both, and that there is little if any evidence that the subsequent use of torture ever improved the quality of information received.

It was not a huge surprise to see an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the release of the information by former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who were apparently upset that leaking the memos’ “…effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11, 2001.” They must have missed the part – referred to above – where Rice and Bush were warned well before 9/11 – a warning based on intelligence gathered via more traditional – and legal – means. But then Hayden and Mukasey both have metaphorical blood on their hands in this matter so it’s not so surprising they take this view.

The blast from the left is criticism of Obama for deciding not to prosecute Intelligence operatives for torturing prisoners with the approval, even urging, of lawyers from Bush’s Department of Justice. (a piece in today’s NY Times details one such case) This is a quandary since to say “they were only following orders” has a 1940s reminiscent stink about it, but this was clearly a decision intended to protect intelligence operatives from the consequences of the folly of their masters and to avoid harming those agencies that – like it or not – we depend on for a degree of security. As for bringing the likes of Judge Bybee and others in leadership positions to justice, it seems unlikely until and unless Obama gets a much larger majority in the Congress. And even then, he would more likely argue for a kind of Commission on Reconciliation and Truth but when looking at the Bush administration and his cronies in Congress it is hard to imagine anything like truth or reconciliation being of any concern to them. And to be credible, such a Commission would need to be bipartisan.

In other news: President Obama welcomed Texas Governor Rick Perry’s suggestion that Texas secede from the Union and offered his assistance in facilitating the process. There is a strong rumor that George W. Bush would emerge from retirement to fill the Office of Texas Monarch, leaving Perry with even less of a job than he has currently.

The destruction of US cities

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The Baltimore Opera went bankrupt last week and its assets are being auctioned off to pay off debts. This is not something that will be recovered, and one of America’s most historic and, well, real cities will have one more empty theatre and has suffered another serious body blow to its reeling downtown core. Rumour has it that the venerable Baltimore Sun is in trouble and perhaps one of the great American newspaper cities will soon share the fate of newspaperless Denver and online-only Seattle.

How could these bitter blows be allowed to happen in the richest country in the world? Hundreds of millions of dollars owned by the citizens of this country, who would like to read the paper and occasionally go to the theatre, are being given away to the worst corporate executives imaginable who display no shame at the exposure of their unimaginable greed in accepting that money. Was that the former president of Harvard we saw on tv claiming that contracts like this could not be broken? Is that what they teach in the Business Administration programmes at universities that charge incredible sums for students to suck up such knowledge? Maybe it’s time to send those kids to universities that teach the economics of civic pride, corporate honesty, the necessity of spending money to keep cities livable, and the fair distribution of that money.

The GOP: Grand Obstructionist Party: Part III – Healthcare Reform

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There are two things about the U.S. healthcare system that are obvious to all but the comatose: one is that it is the most expensive system in the world and the second is that it is far from the most effective.

A 2005 study by the Commonwealth Fund reported that the annual per capita cost for health care in the U.S. was $6697. The next highest, Canada’s, was $3326. Virtually all of Western Europe followed, just below Canada’s cost. The Fund’s measurements of effectiveness AND efficiency in delivering health care placed the United States behind virtually every industrialized nation in almost every meaningful measure: infant mortality, access to care, mortality amenable to health care, healthy life expectancy at age 60, etc. To see the Fund’s reports go to this link.

The Republican opposition to any and all administration suggestions for action has focused on scare tactics that are clearly not relevant and a vague threat that Obama wants to “Europeanize” us. This would presumably mean making us more like France, Germany or Italy with their programs of universal health insurance and accessibility to the best healthcare available in those countries. Since healthcare in those countries ranks as high or higher than care available in the U.S. in almost every category – at approximately half the cost in terms of per capita dollars spent annually as well as in relation to national GDP- it is hard to see the Republicans’ downside.

If indeed we were to Europeanize our health care system we would in effect cut costs in half, improve the measurable overall health of the population, reduce infant death rates, increase longevity and make health care available to all Americans. The existence of powerful private sector lobbies will most likely keep us from replicating the plans in France or Germany or Italy and that is too bad. But clearly some action is required to reduce costs, increase accessibility to health care, and improve the overall quality of life in America. And if taking on a slight French accent is part of the cost, well, c’est la vie.

GOP: The Grand Obstructionist Party, Part II

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Three GOP governors are competing for Überscrooge and each manages the affairs of a state with reprehensible basic human services programs. Recently Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal stood on the Capital steps wearing what looked to be his bigger brother’s overcoat proudly throwing his unemployed constituents under the bus by stating his intention to refuse federal stimulus funds aimed at increased unemployment benefits. He was joined by Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina who is determined to provide as little support as possible to his un-or under-employed constituents. And Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi simply cannot stand the thought of opening the floodgates of minimal federal support for his constituents. They stand in stark contrast to Governors Crist of Florida and Schwarzenegger of California who recognize the human needs of their constituents, the failure of past (and present) Republican economic policy, and the responsibility to put the country ahead of their narrow political ambitions.

The three obstructionist governors share a disinterest in the welfare of their lower-class constituents, and a blind commitment to economic policies that have become something of a joke after the disasters of the Bush economy. And two of them – Sanford and Jindal – are playing to the nutty rightwing fringe of the Republican party to put themselves in position to steal the next presidential nomination from the current party darling, Sarah Palin.

It will not matter much which of these putative candidates end up with the nomination as long as they hold onto their frozen-in-time economic theories. But it does matter to those of their constituents who need help to survive in the current Republican-produced economy. To put their behavior in some context: CQ Press has for 18 years published its state livability rankings and its most recent publication placed Mississippi dead last, barely edging out South Carolina which came in 49th four spots behind Louisiana (45th). For discussion of how the rankings are developed, see this LINK.

America’s Health Rankings, done annually by the United Health Foundation since 1999 puts Louisiana at 50th place in the country, Mississippi at 49th, and South Carolina at 48th place. For details on these rankings see this LINK.

So, governors of the three least desirable states in terms of the health of the population and livability in general (including education, poverty, income, infant mortality, education, etc.) are carrying the flag for the Republican party while their constituents are left to fend for themselves. In his response to President Obama’s speech to Congress last night Jindal’s message was to simply follow his example, meaning that soon the entire country could be in the same miserable situation overseen by these three obstructionist idealogues.

In other news: Michael Steele told a Fox News host (who else!) that he was “open to” punishing Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter for their votes on the stimulus package, by withholding RNC monies for their re-election bids. He then said he was “open to everything, baby”. Simply cannot make this stuff up.