On the Contrary

This week as the nation we face some, and I would say the biggest challenges of our short history, and what we get in Washington is political circus.  Of course it is grist for the media bozos who love this stuff over substantial issues.  Why is that you ask when we are facing some of the biggest choices we are going to have to make?  Because opinion in these soap operas masquerades as journalism and does not require the discipline of doing your homework.  A prime example was in the San Francisco Chronicle Editorial pages where they claimed that the Secretary of the Senate had grounds to send Blagojevich appointee Roland Burris packing because his appointment letter wasn’t signed by the Illinois Secretary of State.  There are two problems with this statement, first of which is that the Secretary of State has no approval authority, just a requirement to sign the appointment letter.  The second is that Rule 2 of the Standing Rules of the Senate is only a recommended procedure.  At least if you are going to give us an opinion, have it based on reality.  But here are the other related follies that are distracting us from our real business:

• Harry Reid is an idiot – Harry Reid is George Bush in Democratic clothing.  By that I mean he is not a deep strategic thinker.  Any fool could have figured out that his promise to not seat any appointment of Governor Blagojevich would put him in a box with no way out.  The fallacy of this stand is detailed in my blog, “The Rule of Law”, but let me just reiterate that if the Senate gets in the business of nitpicking duly appointed or elected officials from the states, we are going to go down a political road that won’t be pretty.  Even Diane Feinstein figured this out.  Harry has made other stands that he has later had to retract and he just makes the Democrats look stupid and weak.  In the meantime they will finally roll over and look stupid once again.  If I were Burris, I would not agree to the “not run in 2010” compromise.  I have no horse in this race, but the Senate needs to stay out of the State’s business.  Illinois has already shown how capable they are of making fools of themselves.
• Diane Feinstein is a prima donna – That is probably an unfair characterization since most Senators having become use to their exercise of power are prima donnas.  I have been somewhat prejudiced against her since she supported the Patriot Act and said she would support a Constitutional amendment banning flag burning, a true assault on free speech.  But her being miffed about President-Elect Obama’s choice of Leon Panetta to lead the CIA since she wasn’t consulted, was true pouting.  Reminds me of Robert Reich’s description of his confirmation process for Secretary of Labor.  He had studied all the issues and was ready in his confirmation hearings to show he had a command of all the issues.  That is when he figured out what the process was really about, genuflecting to power in the Senate.   I like Rachel Maddow’s opinion of this pick:  Obama doesn’t want anyone tainted with Bush administration policies, whether that be torture or violations of our constitutional rights.  Diane Feinstein and her pick for that position, Jane Harmon, may have gone along with the flow a little too much and stood by while our Constitution was trashed.  Time for some new blood.
• In Minnesota, what is the issue? – In Minnesota, Al Franken was certified the winner, but Republican Norm Coleman filed suit.  This one is a no-brainer.  While this is being contested, the Senate cannot seat Franken because Republicans with their filibuster friend will refuse to seat him.  What I would like to know is what is the real basis of Norm Coleman’s suit.  More to the point are the votes Norm Coleman is contesting likely to give him the seat?  Oh excuse me that would take real investigative reporting requiring work and opinions are so much easier.  I don’t fault Norm Coleman for filing suit in an election that close, I would just like to find out if he is being prudent or not.
• Super majorities are being badly abused – The contested elections above all have one thing in common, power.  The Democrats can no longer get the 60 Demos to prevent a filibuster (Thank you Georgia and the backwards South, if you people had your way we would be a theocracy), but they can get close (59).  This is critical to moving the country forward and enacting Obama’s agenda without too much obstructionism from the Republicans.  But the 60 vote super majority rule in the Senate makes it sound like the Democrats didn’t win in November and gives the Republicans way too much power to thwart change.  We face the same problem here in California where it takes two-thirds of the State Senate to pass a budget making a handful of ideological Republicans in charge of our ship of state.  I am sorry, but this is just stupid.  Change is hard and in the organizations I have worked in (large federal bureaucratic organizations) you are never going to get a super majority to agree to anything.  So let’s get real.  If you want to make a fundamental change in rights, that should take a super majority.  For all other issues, simply majority rules. Otherwise, when the people speak in election, it is then thwarted by these stupid rules.   If you want to see how counter productive this is, just watch California go broke.
• Caroline Kennedy – Maureen Dowd wrote a great column Wednesday in the New York times (Sweet on Caroline), and made a similar point that I did in my blog on 12/15, “Three Things to Pay Attention To” (also addresses the Blagojevich issue),  which is that if you are judging Caroline on her ability to be a politician, ability to slap backs, say sound bytes, and be disingenuous, then she is unqualified.  But if you want someone who is genuine, has not compromised her values, then it might just be a breath of fresh air in the Senate.

Won’t it be nice when we are done with these sideshows and start a real discussion about what sort of economic stimulus will move us forward and build our future?  I’ll give you a hint:  Tax cuts are a waste of our money.  Care to debate it?

As the year draws to a close, nothing really changes and the latest in foreign affairs may get us distracted from our own economic woes.  So with that in mind here are a few tidbits to think about:

• Hamas and the Israelis (New York Times) – Well they are at it again.  Hamas has been dropping rockets (up to eighty a day) from Gaza into Israel on a fairly continuous basis and now the Israelis are responding.  The UN is going to meet and call for a cessation of hostilities and around and around we go.  Now I will give you that the Israelis have been bad actors and their settlements in disputed territory are an abomination, but does anybody get the continued launching of rockets is a terrorist activity?  If you want to end this, it is time to settle it and the Israelis have taken the first step.  The only way that Hamas with their sworn destruction of Israel strategy will stop their ceaseless violence is for the people to finally reject their terrorist acts.  If each time you launch a strike, you pay dearly, after awhile maybe the population will put a stop to tolerating these rocket attacks.  What should catch your attention is that Hamas must keep the conflict going with Israel or they would actually have to deal with the problems in Gaza created by themselves and the Palestinians.  It is time for the UN to take a side and end this madness.
• India and Pakistan (New York Times)  – The Pakistanis are moving troops out of the Taliban controlled areas so they can confront the Indians.  Once again they are playing right into the terrorists hands.  The whole idea was to stir up trouble between India and Pakistan so that the pressure would be off their tribal areas.  Both this and the Hamas/Israeli problem remind me of Shakespeare’s Henry V.  Henry knew that a war with the French would distract his own citizens from their own injustices and focus them on an external foe.  So instead of dealing with your own issues it is so much easier to stir up trouble with someone else and then get your citizens to rally around the flag.  Remind anyone of George Bush?
• Healthcare – I see where Tom Daschle, as Barack Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services,  in his first major speech since being asked to head President-elect Barack Obama’s healthcare reform effort, on Friday announced a nationwide campaign this month to solicit public input on improving the nation’s healthcare system.   I find this a little strange and time wasting to tell you the truth.  As a friend expressed it to me the other day, people who think they have healthcare only have to get sick to find out they don’t.  We have a system based on profit and as such incentivizes denying care and only insuring healthy people.  All the problems arise from this basic flaw.  But what is most troubling about this fact finding is that it ought to be around the world, not the United States.  If you look at England, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, and Taiwan, you would find completely different implementations of single payer plans, and you do like the Taiwanese did, design you system to take advantages of the best of each of these systems.  But no, we have to reinvent the wheel.  We are an arrogant bunch aren’t we?  No wonder we are falling behind the rest of the world.
• Energy Efficient Houses (New York Times) – I read an interesting article about how in Europe they have gone back to building extremely “tight” homes to reduce or eliminate heating costs and have solved the problem of indoor pollution by using extremely efficient heat exchanges so that fresh air brought in from outside is preheated.  In another article I saw where the hope in California for the economy is the rebirth of the housing industry.  See the connection?  Why are we still building houses with yesterday’s technology?  Why aren’t we requiring that new houses meet extremely stringent energy standards so that our energy needs in the future would be greatly reduced?  Oh, I forgot, that would be government interference with the marketplace so we can continue to do stupid and short sighted things.
• Caroline Kennedy – Oh can we get over this soap opera?  Governor’s can appoint who ever the hell they want to.  The voters will eventually get their say.  Governor Patterson is no fool and he will appoint someone who he thinks can bring home the bacon for New York.  For those of you who are afraid of a dynasty, then why the hell did you vote for George Bush after his dad?  If Governor Patterson thinks Caroline works, and she doesn’t, you will get your chance to have your say on the re-election of both of them.  In the meantime the media needs to get a life.
• Man Shoots Talker in Movie Theater (CNN) – Apparently a family that kept talking during a movie so enraged a gentleman that he shot the father.  I would have to say that if I was on the jury I could not convict.  I could be in his shoes, but my wife won’t let me take a gun to the movie.

It is always heart warming to know that after another year we have learned nothing.

There are three items in the news that we ought to pay attention to.  The first is the California budget mess.  Why should other states care about California, the home of gays and liberals?  Because the stalemate is a microcosm of the Republican approach to our nation in general.  The second is the pundit’s trashing of Caroline Kennedy’s possible appointment to Hilary Clinton’s Senate seat, and the third are some thoughts on Governor Blagojevich’s guilt and the rush to judgment.

Let’s look at California first.  Here in the Golden State we are going broke rapidly.  The legislature has been stalemated for years on solving the insolvency of the State.  The Republican’s, true to their dogma, will not approve anything that smacks of a tax increase.  The Democrats and our Republican Governor offered them a compromise that had a package of new taxes and spending cuts, but true to form and stuck in their dogma, they vetoed the deal because they will approve no new taxes.  Well today they released their own plan.  Here are some details:
•    Cut $10.6 billion from K-12 schools
•    Cut $1.3 billion from care for the elderly, blind and disabled
•    Cut $ 1 billion from the University of  California and California State University systems
•    Cut another $9 billion from services to poor and elderly like medical care, junior college aid, and mass transit

Do you get the drift?  In a time when those most needy need help, they turn away.  After all aren’t the young, old, or helpless worthless anyway, unless of course the young, the old, or the helpless are part of their family.  Here we have the basic difference between Republicans and Democrats.  Republican conservative ideology is basically selfish, self-serving, and insular.  Democrats believe we can all give up a little to help those less fortunate.  As some Democrats have pointed out, cutting the schools could wreak long term havoc on our future economy.  They don’t care because they got theirs and after all, aren’t all the rest just selfish, lazy people or they would be rich, right?  In California it truly is the party of fat old white men and thank god, they will soon be outnumbered and a minority.  That is when I will object to programs for minorities.  They have been gouging us for years as they have made themselves richer with an ideology that justified their selfish pursuits.  These are the same conservatives who will go after Obama’s attempt to pull us out of the coming depression.  Beware.  They may totally wreck the country before they are done.

Meanwhile in “we haven’t a clue” pundit land, the pundits are criticizing Caroline Kennedy’s potential appointment to the Senate to replace Hilary because she is too soft and what does she know of hardball politics to be successful.  Let’s see if I have this right.  They have complained bitterly about partisan politics for years and now someone who may not play that game is unfit?  Most of us have recognized that the political process of moving up the ladder from city council politics to national politics has not produced us a bumper crop of geniuses to legislate for us in Congress.  Now someone who may actually still have their values firmly in tact comes along and you think she is too naive?  I would just remind you of several facts about her.  She grew up in a family that knows the rough and tumble of the game.  The first book I read from her (”In Our Defense”) was about the cases that defined the Bill of Rights as we know it today.  She carried on and chaired the “Profiles in Courage” awards each year to recognize those people who went against the grain of politics to do the right thing, sometimes ending their careers.  If she is appointed, she will only serve till 2010 and then she will have to run.  Get a grip people.  For once could we put somebody up there who actually understands the difference between the politically expedient and what is right?

Finally we have the case of Governor Blagojevich and the “crime” he committed.  Now we all are appalled at selling of an office, but it goes on all the time.  Start with your local supervisors in your own jurisdiction that sell out to the high bidder for funds to win their election. I agree, no crime, but it is about the money.  Then there are the “big” contributors who get an ambassadorship somewhere.  We don’t think they bought the office?

Politicians routinely get contributions from supporters for their decisions.  We have let this go on way too long and now it is harder and harder to see the line between business as usual and crime.  Okay, I will give that a real transaction of cash for an office is a crime and it is clearly across the line.  But when did it become a crime?  When he thought about it?  When he talked about it? When he proposed an actual deal? Or was it a crime when money actually changed hands.  I think about crimes all the time.  I plan the perfect robbery, I think about blowing up other cars in traffic, and once in a while I think about running over a pedestrian who is sauntering slowly in the cross walk.  But it doesn’t become a crime until I do it.  You cannot arrest a prostitute or a john until money changes hands.

It is a slippery slope when we arrest someone for talking.  Patrick Fitzgerald said he had to move fast to protect the political process.  But what if after all the talk, Blagojevich did the right thing?  It is kind of like arresting some of the suspected terrorists in this country because they shot paint balls at each other and planned some terrorist act.  Until they actually do something illegal, like procure explosives, the crime will most probably never occur.  I really don’t want to think that in this country we can’t say stupid things and then regret them later instead of spending major time in the big house.

One last thought.  Those of you who want quick justice in Illinois should think carefully about what quick justice means:  Sloppy police work, a rush to judge, and many more miscarriages of justice where innocent lives are ruined.  Let’s take our time and get this right.