TWO FROM UBER-TEXAN MOLLY IVINS

Well, it's the first day of class and I'm already loaded down with homework and rehearsal--in addition to the Tennessee Williams project we're doing at Swine Palace, I've also got to prep a new monologue and read the Bacchae by Thursday; man, it just never stops. At least it's all great fun.

Anyway, read these two essays from the always great Molly Ivins, via AlterNet:

Making Incompetence a Reality

In the case of the Internal Revenue Service, the problem appears to be more malice than incompetence.

Right-wing conspiracy theorists used to enjoy frightening themselves with the possibility that the IRS would somehow become politicized and be used as a tool by some nasty socialist like Jimmy Carter to go after their ill-gotten gains stashed illegally offshore. Always seemed like a good plan to me. Unfortunately, the only people who ever tried to politicize the IRS were on the right -- first Richard Nixon and now George W. Bush.

Hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have had their tax refunds frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, according to the IRS's taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson. Testifying before Congress this week, Olson said the average income of these taxpayers is $13,000. Olson and her staff sampled the suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.

Click here for the rest.

Hang in, and Raise Hell

Meanwhile, it's heartening to note that political nincompoopery is not limited to Texas. A couple of recent quotes out of Washington, D.C., cause the jaw to drop. Our very own Tom DeLay, upon announcing he would quit as majority leader, said: "During my time in Congress, I have always acted in an ethical manner, within the rules of our body and the law of our land. I am fully confident time will bear this out." Good grief, the man was sanctioned three times by the House ethics committee last year alone.

Equally stupefying is the attempted emergence of Newt Gingrich, of all people, as an arbiter of ethics. Gingrich has been going about the media, holding forth on the shortcomings of today's Republicans.

Let's see, that would be the same Newt Gingrich who originally started using the lobby as an arm of the Republican Party, right? Same Gingrich had the distinction of being the only House speaker to be reprimanded by his colleagues for ethical wrongdoing? Same Gingrich who was accused of misusing nonprofit organizations for political purposes, personally benefiting from political contributions, cutting a sleazy book deal and giving false statements to ethics investigators? Same Gingrich who was fined $300,000 for said lying? I thought it was that Gingrich.

They must really think we're morons.

Click here for the rest.

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So, the Abramoff mess is a GOP scandal after all

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page on the media myth of this "bipartisan" scandal. From the Houston Chronicle:

"There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff," Dean answered. "Not one. Not one single Democrat. ... There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money and we've looked through all those FEC (Federal Election Commission) reports to make sure that's true."

He's right, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps track of such things. Their analysis of FEC records shows that Democrats received about a third of the $4.2 million donated between 1998 and 2005 by tribes that had hired Abramoff to represent them in Washington, but none from Abramoff's own wallet.

By all indications, donations from the Indian tribes were no less legitimate than the donations any other individual, organization or industry with an interest in legislation gave to candidates. That's a shortcoming of campaign donation reports: They tell you how much money someone gave to a candidate but not why they gave it.

If anything, the tribes are one of the true victims in the Abramoff saga. Investigators say Abramoff referred to his Indian clients with racist slurs in his e-mails and represented some tribes while also representing their rival tribes who were competing for the same casino turf — the mother of all conflicts of interest!

Click here for the rest.

Here's something I wrote in Real Art comments last week during a friendly little argument with my pal Tara about whether the Democrats are involved in this or not:

It's hard to say exactly what, if any, Abramoff money made it's way toward Democrats--I don't think it's fair to say that the Indian tribes he ripped off are part of his machine. Now, having said that, let me state, for the record, my overall position. I think that Abramoff would have definitely been giving money to buttloads of Democrats if they were the majority party instead of the GOP. And buttloads of Dems would be lined up with their hands out, just waiting to be bribed. I feel certain that this particular scandal is Republican in nature, but Abramoff is just one lobbyist. What he represents, then, is a political system that is fully corrupt, which includes the so-called "liberal" Democrats, for whom I have little love. Really, they just got lucky on this one. Fuck them, too. However, given the extreme hostility and polarity of the politics here, for the moment I'm pushing GOP guilt.

In other words, I essentially agree with you: the Democrats are also mired in corruption and corporate cash. But you've got to admit that this whole Abramoff thing looks waaay worse for the Republicans.

So while the Democrats aren't at all off the hook for playing the same kind of game in their own way, this one is all about the Republicans, and, boy, I'm just loving it!

For the entire exchange between me and Tara, click here.

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Worries about Iraq, politicians grow

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

But the violence in Iraq has continued, before and after the latest round of elections in mid-December. And high-profile politicians in this country have been ensnared by scandal.

When people were asked in an open-ended question to name the nation's top problem, 25 percent named war, close to the level in October, but up from 19 percent in July. The number of people who named political leaders as the most important problem has almost tripled, from 5 percent in July to 14 percent as the new year starts.

Click here for the rest.

I've also read that Bush lost his recent "amazing" five percent bump in the polls and is now back in the thirties. I must admit that it's pretty weird for the general public to be catching up with where the left has been for several years now. The article seems to be trying to frame this shifting of priorities as being a function of an improved economy, but I don't buy it: wages are stagnant during this "recovery," jobs are still lagging way behind where they ought to be by now, and lack of access to health care continues to force middle income families into bankruptcy. No, this shift in public opinion has nothing to do with the so-called "improving" economy. Rather, people are starting to see the writing on the wall. Iraq rages on with no end in sight, and it's more clear than ever that our reasons for being there are totally bogus. The Abramoff scandal, the DeLay scandal, the NSA scandal, the CIA leak scandal, and all the bullshit associated with them make it obvious that we are being led by a pack of crooks and liars; remember all the trouble Kerry got into back in '04 for getting caught on tape calling the Bush administration a bunch of criminals? Turns out he was absolutely right, and it's not just Republicans in the White House, either. And now people are starting to figure it all out. Cool.

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MLK Day: Dreams and nightmares

From ZNet, the text of a speech by University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen about Martin Luther King Jr.'s true legacy:

So, we find ourselves today in an odd place: In a country in which we routinely repeat the phrase “God bless America” with no sense of shame; in which conventional politicians all clamor to be “tough” on national security and support bloated military budgets; in which the shopping mall is the real temple where people go to worship -- in that country, King is a hero. That means the King who condemned not only racism but nationalism, militarism, and materialism has to be pushed aside, forgotten -- “whitewashed,” if you’ll allow the term. King’s radical political analysis and vision have to be rendered invisible if we are to name a holiday after him. After years of calling him a traitor and a troublemaker, white America is willing to allow King is to serve as the icon for a national quest for racial justice, but only so long as we don’t actually listen to what he had to say or take it seriously.

None of this is surprising; it’s the nature of power: When faced with demands for justice by a movement of oppressed people, dominant groups tend to concede only as much as necessary to relieve the pressure. When enough time has passed and the threat to the system has been contained, then the importance of the movement and some of its leaders can be acknowledged, but only if their legacy can be constructed in a way that doesn’t undermine the existing distribution of power.

Click here for the rest.

Make no mistake about it, King wasn't simply a great speaker who said nice things about black children and white children holding hands: rather, he was, by the end of his life and career, a total radical who understood that you cannot truly have racial justice if it is not accompanied by social justice in general. That's why conservatives in the 60s branded him as a communist. That's why the FBI illegally tapped his phone (which is a damned good reason why we have to nail Bush on this NSA thing; it's just too tempting for Presidents to use such power against political opponents). Many believe that's why he was murdered.

I think that a lot of white people think of King as being a great man, but also kind of believe that revering him is more of a black thing. Not true. King was, is, a hero to all people, especially to the oppressed and downtrodden. You'll probably hear on radio and television tomorrow King speak that well known phrase "I have a dream" at least a couple of times. Don't forget that his dream also included ending the ravages of war, the savage inequities of modern capitalism, and the spiritual vacancy of American materialism.


Arrested at a sit-in, Montgomery, Alabama, 1958.

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HOUSE OF CARDS ECONOMY
Danger time for America

From the Economist courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

The economy's greater flexibility may indeed provide a shock-absorber. A spurt in productivity has also boosted growth. But the main reason why America's growth has remained strong in recent years has been a massive monetary stimulus. The Fed held real interest rates negative for several years, and even today real rates remain low. Thanks to globalisation, new technology and that vaunted flexibility, which have all helped to reduce the prices of many goods, cheap money has not spilled into traditional inflation, but into rising asset prices instead—first equities and now housing. The Economist has long criticised Mr Greenspan for not trying to restrain the stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s, and then, after it burst, for inflating a housing bubble by holding interest rates low for so long (see article). The problem is not the rising asset prices themselves but rather their effect on the economy. By borrowing against capital gains on their homes, households have been able to consume more than they earn. Robust consumer spending has boosted GDP growth, but at the cost of a negative personal saving rate, a growing burden of household debt and a huge current-account deficit.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I don't post these anti-capitalist bits of info in order to show that I know of a better system. Indeed, it strikes me that pretty much any economic orthodoxy is prone to a great deal of error. Rather, I post this stuff to show that, for much of the subject matter that we collectively call "economics," the experts literally have no idea what they're doing, despite all their titles and degrees. "Trust us," they say. "We know better than you." And most Americans do trust the experts, because most Americans understand very little about the field--thank you very much, shoddy indoctrinational public schools.

Consequently, many of the most important questions facing the public are answered by a class of people who are often just winging it. Even when the experts do seem to have the economy humming along nicely, most of the benefits from that are gained by those who are already quite wealthy, and that's where the biggest part of the problem lies: most economists are theologians and missionaries for free market fundamentalism, a.k.a. neo-liberalism, a.k.a. capitalism. That is, their worldview is shaped by the class of wealthy elites they serve, which usually means that their assumptions, conclusions, and priorities are heavily skewed in that direction. In other words, their analysis is screwed up because they don't really think, work, and live in the real world.

So, I guess my bottom line here is to ask, if American economists work exclusively for the minority of the opulent, and, in doing that, tend to offer bogus policy recommendations that ultimately sow the seeds of recession a cycle or two down the line, which screws over average citizens all the more, why the hell do economists have any clout at all?

For more on my love-hate affair with economics, click here.

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DELAY'S MACHINE
If You Don’t Know About
the K Street Project,
You Don’t Know Jack

From Think Progress courtesy of BuzzFlash:

In 1994, the right wing gained control over the House of Representatives on the strength of a series of reforms embodied in the so-called “Contract with America.” The contract ostensibly “aimed to restore the faith and trust of the American people in their government” and end the “cycle of scandal and disgrace” in government. A year later, then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) was already plotting to breach that contract by undertaking a project to develop cozier relations with Washington, D.C. lobbyists.

High-minded policy goals would take a backseat in DeLay’s pay-to-play system where the success of lobbyists would be dictated not by how compelling a case they could make, but rather by how willing they would be to line the pockets of DeLay and his colleagues. Conceptualized as a tool for the right-wing preservation of power, the “K Street Strategy,” as it became known, created the culture in which Jack Abramoff’s criminal activity was encouraged and rewarded.

Click here for the rest.

This brief essay is must reading if you want the context for all these DeLay and Abramoff scandals. I first read about the K Street Project back in 2003 and was pretty amazed by what was going on. My first thought was that the whole scheme was more complicated than I was willing to write about, so I just let it lie for a few years, but now that crooked lobbying has taken center stage in the mainstream media, it's probably time for me to comment on it. The reality is that the essence of the scam isn't so complicated: Tom DeLay managed to turn lobbyists into fundraisers by way of extortion. That is, under his leadership, Republicans in Congress refused to even talk to lobbyists who didn't fork over tons of cash to their campaign coffers and provide lucrative jobs for Congressional cronies--insisting that lobbying firms hire only Republicans served to shore up the system over the long term. In return, GOP Congressmen passed the laws the lobbyists wanted, making the whole thing, ultimately, a mutually beneficial bribery machine.

Anyway, it's all explained much better, with lots of links to evidence, by the essay excerpted above. Go check it out.

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Troubles erode DeLay's support in 22nd District

From the Houston Chronicle:

A criminal indictment and continuing investigations have severely eroded support for U.S. Rep Tom DeLay in his district, most notably among Republicans who have voted for him before, according to a Houston Chronicle poll.

Only half of those who cast ballots for DeLay in 2004 said they will do so again. And while a fourth of the 2004 DeLay voters still aren't sure whom they will vote for this year, almost 20 percent have defected to other candidates.

Responding to the poll this evening, DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty said the result is "contrary to the strong support we're seeing for Congressman DeLay throughout the district."

Click here for the rest.

Oh my god! This is great!

Of course, I'm very happy that DeLay, who recently lost his House leadership position, now stands a very good chance of losing his seat outright. But there is more significance to this poll than meets the eye: it shows that Texas Republicans, the staunchest of the staunch, have their breaking point. Tom DeLay has safely held his seat in Sugarland, a bland and materialistic suburb of Houston, for twenty years. They've loved this guy, and the Republican majority there really loved him. And they've supported his loony right-wing extremism for that long, too. For years, it seemed like there was no position too bizarre that DeLay could take that would alienate his constituents. Even while his corruption scandals have bubbled up over the past two years, voters there have written it all off as politics.

But not now.

It appears that the triple whammy of multiple admonitions by the House Ethics Committee, multiple indictments in Austin for campaign finance corruption, and his close relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff have finally made the people of Sugarland come to realize what all sane Americans already know--Tom DeLay is a criminal, and his "conservatism" is simply a fraud.

So. Right-wing Americans can be persuaded, apparently. All it takes is about a hundred times more evidence than it would take to convince anybody else of anything else. The evidence must be flamboyant, obvious, over-the-top, and whatever other extreme adjectives you can imagine. The corporate media must pound away at that evidence, day after day, until even the left wing is bored with it.

And that's how you can change a conservative's mind. It's a lot of work, I know, but it is possible, and that's something. Right?

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"Reid drops a giant stink bomb in DeLay's hometown paper."

Above quote and below excerpt courtesy of Eschaton. From the Houston Chronicle opinion section, an anti-DeLay essay by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:

In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.

Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family's station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.

My term on the gaming commission came to an end in 1981, and when it did, I thought I had seen such corruption for the last time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. It is not quite the mafia of Las Vegas in the 1970s, but what is happening today in Washington is every bit as corrupt and the consequences for our country have been severe.

Our nation's capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style.

Click here for the rest.

Well, my hometown's TV stations chickened out, but kudos go out to the Chronicle for not being intimidated by DeLay's Mafia style tactics. And good thing Atrios picked up on this essay; while I generally keep up with the Chronicle online, I haven't been reading the editorials lately--this flew in right under my radar.

And what a great essay it is. The DeLay/Abramoff style of political corruption is, indeed, very much like organized crime. The whole bribery-for-legislation thing totally depends on everybody involved keeping their mouths shut; likewise, if one of the central players does talk, the entire racket comes crashing down. Compare Michael Corleone's successful efforts to keep Frankie Pentangeli from testifying before Congress in The Godfather: Part II with the GOP's utter failure to accomplish the same thing with Jack Abramoff in real life. The only difference is the Corleone family's competence. And sense of honor.

Hell, at this point, I'd be willing to settle for rule by Godfather. I don't see how it could be any worse than what we have now.




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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Phil



Frankie



Sammy



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THE "N" WORD FOR WHITE PEOPLE

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Alito's wife leaves hearing room in tears

After sitting behind Samuel Alito for two days of intense questioning at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, she left the room during questioning of her husband by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

And Graham was trying to vouch for him.

Mimicking questions from Democrats, Graham asked Alito: "Are you really a closet bigot?"

The nominee said no.

Graham said, "No sir, you're not."

With that, Alito's wife began to cry. Then she left.

"Judge Alito, I am sorry that you've had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this," said Graham.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I'm sure that the overall stress from a couple of days of watching her husband being grilled like a tuna steak contributed to her breakdown, but it's very interesting that the straw that broke the camel's back was the suggestion that Alito might be a racist. Full disclosure: I very firmly believe that Alito is a racist. However, I also acknowledge that he's also probably the kind of guy who has no issue with race on an interpersonal level; Alito is an institutional racist. That is, he supports governmental policies which result in continued difficulties for people of color trying to advance their social status. He may very well just loooove black people, but clearly his legal philosophy is that they are essentially on their own, despite the fact that they didn't end up in their current position on their own--don't look to the government to help you out; it's not our problem.

It's amazing how so many white people refuse to acknowledge this kind of racism. To them, to us, the word "racism" is synonymous with Simon Legree, and white people just don't want to think of themselves that way. Thing is, at this point, I think most white people really aren't that way. Sure, there are still pockets of vile racial hatred here and there, but that sort of thing is far less of a threat today than it was fifty years ago. Why, the fact that whites so fear being called racist is evidence that American social norms no longer accept plain old fashioned racial hatred. But that fear has consequences: it enables the institutional racists to do their thing without criticism.

It works like this. Whenever some governmental or corporate policy is criticized for having racist consequences, the authors and executors of such policies shreik with outrage and indignation. "What do you mean? Let me tell you, I'm no racist." And they mean it. They're just fine with people of color. And their outrage is genuine--they don't want anybody thinking of them wearing robes and hoods. So the debate then becomes about whether or not the institutional racists like or dislike people who aren't white, rather than about how their policies screw people over. All substance is lost while the angry white people work out their emotional issues on cable news shows. This is a pretty fucked up dynamic, and this country's never going to get anywhere as far as racial healing is concerned until we can find a less cartoonish way to talk about race.

And that's not going to happen as long as "racist" amounts to the "N" word for white people. It's time to get over it, admit to this country's racist history, it's racist present, and get on with the task of changing things for the better. It's much better to ask "why do you think I'm racist?" than it is to freak out and say "I am not a racist!!!"

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HISD officials investigate strip-search of student

From the Houston Chronicle:

Houston Independent School District spokesman Terry Abbott confirmed today that a student at Harper Alternative School was strip-searched but said school officials had "reasonable cause" to conduct the search. The student, however, has complained that the search was inappropriate.

Click here for the rest.

When is there ever "reasonable cause" for a school official to strip search a student? The answer is clearly "never." Teachers and principals aren't cops, for god's sake. However, this rather extreme example shows that, institutionally, there are massive incentives to make these people think that they are, indeed, cops. I've written exhaustively about how the authoritarian culture of public schools overwhelms any true educational concerns and results in what amounts to zones of American totalitarianism. That is, schools are mini police states, even though most people don't think of them that way. As a teacher, I, myself, all the while understanding the institutional dynamic taking place, found myself often seized by a strange rule-enforcement zeal: it's pretty infectious in that atmosphere, and "educators" often cross ethical lines while trying to live up to the strong mandate of obedience and authoritarianism. I'm sure that the HISD employee behind the strip search believed he was just doing his job, and trying to do it well. This time it looks as though laws were broken, but what about the countless humiliations and years of anti-democratic social conditioning that aren't illegal? Why isn't anybody reporting about that?

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BIG EASY JUNK FOOD RETURNS
And Hubig's Said, Let Them Eat Pie

From the New York Times:

This city savors some pleasures not so much for what they are as for what they were.

Thus the local esteem for the Hubig's Pie, a glazed turnover of fried dough and fruit filling, sugary-sweet, palm-size, modest in its aspirations but, since the 1920's, unaltered. And, until Hurricane Katrina, never absent.

But for four months now, New Orleans has done painfully without: Hubig's lost half its employees and a third of its trucks, and returned to huge cracks in its ancient bakery.

Monday, the pies were back. All over town, any driver the Simon Hubig Company could find walked into whatever grocery stores were open, bearing cardboard trays of pies, palm up.

Click here for the rest.

I can't wait until they start shipping to Baton Rouge again.

Since Katrina, each trip to a convenience store here, seeing that there are no Hubig's Pies for sale, has been a sad reminder of what's happened to New Orleans . It's like Scrooge's vision of Tiny Tim's empty stool in the corner reminding the Cratchit family of his death. For a while there it was particularly poignant. Back in September, I would be like, "I'll just pick me up a Hubig's and...oh yeah...there aren't any Hubig's Pies anymore; there's not a New Orleans anymore." But as the Big Easy rebuilds, things are getting back to normal. Very slowly.

This is a good sign.

You might wonder why I even give a crap about a cheap-o fried pie in the first place. Well, obviously, these fried pies are pretty damned good. I mean, it's not like they're the greatest pastries known to man or anything, but they beat the hell out of any prepackaged dessert item I've ever had by miles and miles. Really. Look, I know that you may have the urge to write my assertions off as coming from the kind of nerdy weirdo you knew in high school who had a strange taste for Twinkies or Ding-Dongs, but it's not like that at all. Prepackaged desserts suck bigtime. That's why Hubig's Pies are so amazing: they don't suck. And for 89 cents a pop...well...that's just one of the fringe benefits of living so close to New Orleans--apparently, this is the only area where they're available.

So this makes me happy. It's a visible and eatable symbol of my favorite city's struggle to rebuild. Hooray! Hubig's is back!


Yum.

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THIS MONTH'S STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE IS...



Captain Kirk! "Above all else, a god needs compassion!"

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FAREWELL HUGH THOMPSON JR
A Real American War Hero

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai.

They landed the helicopter in the line of fire between American troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pointed their own guns at the U.S. soldiers to prevent more killings.

Colburn and Andreotta had provided cover for Thompson as he went forward to confront the leader of the U.S. forces. Thompson later coaxed civilians out of a bunker so they could be evacuated, and then landed his helicopter again to pick up a wounded child they transported to a hospital. Their efforts led to the cease-fire order at My Lai.

In 1998, the Army honored the three men with the prestigious Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy. It was a posthumous award for Andreotta, who had been killed in battle three weeks after My Lai.

And

For years Thompson suffered snubs and worse from those who considered him unpatriotic. He recalled a congressman angrily saying that Thompson himself was the only serviceman who should be punished because of My Lai.

Click here for the rest.

The My Lai Massacre was horrible, but it was only one atrocity performed by US servicemen in Vietnam among many. Given that killing civilians was so commonplace there, it was an act of extreme bravery for Thompson and his comrades to do what they did--there was a very good chance that the troops they were confronting might shoot them; after all, "fragging" was on the rise at this point, so there's no reason to believe that they were safe just because they were Americans. But that's what morality is all about. Don't ask "what would Jesus do?" Rather, ask "what would Jesus do with a gun at his head?" Morality isn't safe or comfortable, isn't about doing good if you feel like it. It's about risking everything in order to do the right thing. I hope that, if I'm ever in such a situation, I'm as much of a man as Thompson was.

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IF THE DEMOCRATS DON'T FILIBUSTER
ALITO THEY'RE TOTALLY WORTHLESS

Here's only part of what's on the line; from Democracy Now, former NARAL leader Kate Michelman talks about her own abortion story during the days before Roe v Wade:

But I was told by a doctor that I could apply to a hospital for a therapeutic abortion. But to get this therapeutic abortion, I had to be rendered unfit. I had to be medically designated as needing an abortion in order to get this hospital abortion. I went through a hospital board review, a panel of four men, two different interrogations that probed the most intimate details of my life. It was humiliating and degrading. They finally granted me permission to have this therapeutic abortion. And just as I was about to have the procedure, almost, I was told that they had forgotten one more legal requirement, and that was that I needed the permission of my husband.

I was -- I said, “You can't be serious. My husband has left us. I don't even know where he is.” And they said, “That is the law. You need the permission or we cannot do the procedure.” I had to leave the hospital and find my husband, who did give me his written permission, but it was a further humiliation and degradation. And so, when Judge Alito, in his opinion in the Casey decision in 1991, you know, wrote that the state requiring women to notify their husbands imposes no burden, no undue burden on women, and what does it matter anyway, because most women do involve their husbands voluntarily, so it would only be a few women who would be affected, I found that, obviously, personally and deeply disturbing, but outraged over his, again, lack of understanding about how these laws impact on the dignity and the self-respect of women and on our rights and our freedoms.

Click here to read, watch, or listen to the rest.

Alito is on record, again and again, as being opposed to abortion rights, not to mention a host of other civil rights, like, oh say, the right not to be wiretapped without a warrant. His assertion during nomination hearings earlier today that he firmly supports the concept of stare decicis is not at all compelling: he's also said that his anti-abortion statements in the past were lies on job applications. Well, he's essentially applying for the biggest job of his life now; why on earth should anyone believe that he's not lying today? The more you look at this guy, the worse he gets. He's also big on allowing corporations to pollute the environment, to save money by disregarding safety regulations for workers, and to pay sub-minimum wages. He's straight-up evil. If the Democrats in the Senate don't have the balls to filibuster this guy if that's what it comes to, then they're totally worthless, and so is the entire party.

They'd better do the right thing.

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Sago Mine Disaster Indicts Deregulation

From the Progressive:

But this mine disaster is an indictment not just of a company but of a philosophy—the philosophy of deregulation, which Bush and the Republican Party and libertarians have been promoting at every turn.

This is what happens when you deregulate industry.

People die.

This is what happens when you let companies act as their own watchdogs.

People die.

This is what happens when the penalties for safety violations amount to the gentlest of pats on the wrist.

People die.

“The Mine Safety and Health administration issued a total of 208 citations for alleged violations at the site last year,” reports The Boston Globe.

“Most of the citations were issued before the current owners took over the mine in November, but International Coal Group Inc. was cited by the federal government three times in five days in December for allowing flammable coal dust to collect in a work area.”

Still, the Bush Administration didn’t shut the mine down.

Click here for the rest.

It's often difficult to see how government action affects one's own personal life. Washington is far away, and the people there argue about and struggle over issues that seem entirely unrelated to plain ordinary folks. But make no mistake about it: government actions affect your life. Oftentimes it takes decades for the effects to be seen, and even then it's hard to see what actually caused them. The guys who wrote Freakonomics assert that the dramatic crime rate drop in the 90s resulted from the legalization of abortion during the 70s, rather than from the economic boom, the bounty from which was mostly limited to a select few Americans anyway. A history professor I had at UT in the late 80s attributed the rise in numbers and visibility of street people to Reagan administration funding cuts for inpatient care at psychiatric hospitals. Deregulation of the banking industry, also during the 80s, has ended up with tens of millions of Americans up to their necks in credit card debt today. It remains to be seen what the long term effects are of Clinton's "ending welfare as we know it" ten years ago, but, rest assured, something bad will come of it.

Clearly, this mining disaster is the twisted bastard child of two decades of neo-liberal philosophy guiding governmental economic decisions. Yes, the mining company made more money because of deregulation and a lack of will to enforce existing safety regulations, but now twelve citizens are dead. And all the politicians who made this possible are just as responsible as the company itself. That includes Democrats. "Good for business" is a slogan whose time has ended. To be sure, business is an important part of the overall equation for making our nation function, but it's not the only one, and it's definitely not the most important. Really, it was stupid in the first place to reduce the nuances of important political debate to mindless platitudes that kind of sound reasonable.

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DEMOCRATS TOOK NO MONEY FROM ABRAMOFF

From MyDD courtesy of the Daily Kos:

No Democrat has taken any money from Jack Abramoff. Not one. To say that any Democrat is "keeping Jack Abramoff's money" is a lie, plain and simple. It would be one thing if it was a lie coming from a rightist squawking head like Michelle Malkin, but it's absolutely outrageous coming from the office of the Speaker of the House.

The pressure is on for the media to parrot the Republican talking point that the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. It's not. As Howard Dean did a beautiful job of pointing out to a disappointed Wolf Blitzer on yesterday's Late Edition, the Abramoff scandal is Republican, through and through.

And

But the reality is that Democrats in Washington, DC haven't been worth bribing for quite some time. They lost control of the House in 1995, with no serious indication (until this year) that they might win it back. They lost control of the Senate that same year, only to win it back briefly in 2001 before losing it again in 2003.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I guess I was wrong. I had been assuming that the reports that some Democrats had taken money from Abramoff were greatly exaggerated, but probably true, because much of the party went corporate back in the early 90s when Clinton's DLC showed them how to do it. Silly me. Apparently the money they did take came from the same Indian tribes that Abramoff had bilked out of millions of dollars--I think it's fair to assume that the Democrats, with their forty year history as a serious supporter of civil rights, were supporting Native American issues already, and, furthermore, it's pretty obvious that a hardcore GOP lobbyist who is on record as referring to Indians as "troglodytes" is not the same thing as an Indian tribe. So, like I've been saying, this is a Republican scandal. I'm just saying it more strongly now.

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A Dialogue with Donahue

From AlterNet, an interview with one of my favorite liberals, Phil Donahue:

KLUGER: Is it possible to be anti-war in this country and have your own show?

DONAHUE: Yes -- if you're a comedian. You can't report on the war and have your own show unless you're funny. It's got to be "I oppose this war….ba-duh-bum!" Don Imus is against the war, Jon Stewart is against the war. Bill Maher and Al Franken are against the war. They all have good consciences -- and God bless them all, I wish we had more of them. But what distinguishes them from the rest is that they're all funny, so they can have their own show. Bill Moyers can't.

Click here for the rest.

That's just one of the many reasons that I still love Donahue: this is a brilliant observation. Like the fools of the Middle Ages, who were able to speak truth to power only because nobody took them seriously, the only liberal voices allowed to speak plainly in the corporate media today are those that also tell jokes. I guess that's what happens when you have a king instead of a President.

But that's just a tease. This interview, mostly about the media, is all over the place and well worth reading. I've loved Donahue since I was a kid, and I have no doubt that he was a part of the gumbo of cultural influences that ultimately made it impossible for me to maintain my youthful conservative views. Today, I see him as a sort of liberal elder statesman. He doesn't have his own show now, but he's just as sharp as ever, and as a former media insider, has remarkable insight about just how bad things have become.

Go check out the interview. It's good stuff.



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Economists say cost of war could top $2 trillion
Tally exceeds White House projections

From the Boston Globe courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion after factoring in long-term healthcare for wounded US veterans, rebuilding a worn-down military, and accounting for other unforeseen bills and economic losses, according to a new analysis to be presented today in Boston.

The estimate by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes far exceeds projections made by the Bush administration.

The figure is more than four times what the war was expected to cost through 2006 -- around $500 billion, according to congressional budget data.

The new study is billed as a detailed analysis not only of the potential costs of sustaining the operation in Iraq for at least several more years, but also the expenses likely to be incurred by taxpayers long after US troops withdraw.

The government will have costly obligations to a new class of veterans, be forced to make new investments in stressed military ranks thinned by multiple tours of duty, and withstand the enduring impact of the war on the nation's overall financial outlook.

For example, the study attributes a portion of the increase in oil prices -- $5 per barrel -- to instability in the Middle East caused by the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and sparked a bloody insurgency.

It estimates that the shock to the oil industry has already added at least $25 billion to the price tag of the conflict.

Click here for the rest.

Why does this come as no surprise to me? I know: I am now infinitely accustomed to learning that the Bush administration is worse than I thought. Two trillion is waaaay more than what they told us it was going to cost, but it doesn't really do justice to simply state it. I mean, going a million dollars over budget is difficult to truly comprehend in terms of visualizing what the number represents, let alone a billion or a trillion. Look at it this way. Imagine being told that you're going to probably get a bit wet if you were to ride Thunder River at the now defunct Astroworld in Houston, but then finding out that the ride actually takes you to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and leaves you there. Without a wet suit or submarine or whatever. That's what this study is essentially reporting about the cost of the war. Bush told us all that we were going to get a bit wet in Iraq, but he actually chained weights to our ankles and dropped us to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. That's what two trillion versus 500 billion means.

And let's not forget that before the invasion, the White House claimed that the entire thing would cost only a fraction of what we've actually spent on it so far.

Just another reason to get the hell out of there right now.

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STILL THE SAME 95 YEARS LATER
George Bernard Shaw on Education

Looking for audition monologues earlier today, I happened upon a 1910 Shaw treatise called "Parents and Children." Overall, the essay appears to deal philosophically with the problem of raising children in an industrial society. Interesting, but not enough to get me to read the entire piece--it's longish. But then a section on eductation caught my eye, and I just had to check it out. I found myself amazed that his criticisms of schooling then are so extraordinarily similar to my own today.

Look:

And this is what happens to most of us. We are not effectively coerced to learn: we stave off punishment as far as we can by lying and trickery and guessing and using our wits; and when this does not suffice we scribble impositions, or suffer extra imprisonments--"keeping in" was the phrase in my time--or let a master strike us with a cane and fall back on our pride at being able to bear it physically (he not being allowed to hit us too hard) to outface the dishonor we should have been taught to die rather than endure. And so idleness and worthlessness on the one hand and a pretence of coercion on the other became a despicable routine.

And

To my mind, a glance at the subjects now taught in schools ought to convince any reasonable person that the object of the lessons is to keep children out of mischief, and not to qualify them for their part in life as responsible citizens of a free State. It is not possible to maintain freedom in any State, no matter how perfect its original constitution, unless its publicly active citizens know a good deal of constitutional history, law, and political science, with its basis of economics. If as much pains had been taken a century ago to make us all understand Ricardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world would have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the greatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive knowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either place-hunters, anarchists, or sheep shepherded by wolves.

Click here for the rest, and if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, scroll down to the section entitled "School" to get the bits on education.

Education is not about learning as much as it is about subservience to an institution or system which is hopelessly laden with the dual imperatives of authoritarianism and obedience. Indeed, the system itself is authoritarian, and "obedient" is the best thing that can be said of a student inside that system. Everybody involved in the public schools, from students to teachers to administrators to staff, believes that what they all do is for the purpose of learning. So pervasive is this view that many students don't think they're being educated if they're not slaving away on meaningless "worksheets" or other equally torturous, dead-end assignments--it doesn't matter if they're actually learning; it's the work that matters, getting tasks done in the specified way in a timely manner. Comprehension plays a role in that, yes, but a rather minor one in the grand scheme of things. Getting it done in the right way is what counts. That's what "learning" means to all these people.

But then, the day-to-day moment-to-moment reality belies such a belief. One has to realize that what actually happens in schools has very little to do with learning as popularly understood, that is, the mastery of certain bodies of knowledge and facility in analyzing and evaluating such information.

If school really was about learning, then all those days and moments would add up to an enlightened population. They do not. What they do amount to is a docile, self-interested public that knows nothing of our democracy or its role in it, but fully understands that if one is to get anywhere in life he must do as he is told. Just as we did in school. Education, as Americans know it, is simply a fiction: the reality is that the schools' main purpose is to indoctrinate children into the culture of obedience and authority.

You can call it whatever you want, but titles and names don't change what actually happens. And one of the most brilliant English speakers of the last couple of centuries knew this unsettling truth 100 years ago.

Why has nothing changed since then?

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