There are some things that worry me because they’re permanent, or at least set in place for the long haul. Our reputation in the world, for instance … very distressing; it will take years to put ourselves back together in the eyes of those who watched in disbelief as we re-elected a man many of us acknowledged was a crackpot if not a criminal, and who have been victimized by Bush’s international ambitions. Trust takes time — we’ve spilt that milk.
The cogs that turn quietly at the direction of NeoCon and Christocratic civil servants is problematic, too. They won’t be leaving when Bush does, and their re-education would by no means be secured with a party change. Every department in government is filled with them now, and it will take a series of incidents and discoveries to identify them, and tight oversight to manage their activity.
But worst, in my opinion … is the Supreme’s. Yes, there are some things that worry me into the next decade and this is on the top of my list. It was a dark day when Sam Alito went virtually unchallenged to take a lifetime seat in the highest court in the land … when we gave away the farm to the Hard Right.
Jude
Latest 5-4 Ruling Further Proof of the Alito Effect
Common Dreams
In Response To The Supreme Court’s 5-4 Decision Today In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, People For The American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas Released The Following Statement:
WASHINGTON - MAY 29 - “Today’s ruling is just the latest sign of the Court’s rightward lurch following the replacement of moderate conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor with ultraconservative Justice Samuel Alito and the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice.”
“The Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Alito, ruled against a female former employee of Goodyear who claimed she had been subjected to gender-based salary discrimination over many years. Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the right-wing bloc (as he did in Gonzales v. Carhart) to severely limit the relief available to many workers who fall victim to wage discrimination.
“It is often exceptionally difficult for employees to learn about salary disparities and to sue for wage discrimination while continuing to work for a company. By making it more difficult for Americans to recover wages unfairly denied them, and less costly for companies to engage in discrimination against employees, the Court majority displayed its hostility to individual rights and to the laws passed by Congress to protect them.
“In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accused the majority of straying far ‘from interpretation of Title VII with fidelity to the Act’s core purpose.’ Having successfully argued so many important sex discrimination cases when she was an attorney, Justice Ginsburg must feel as though she is going back in time with each passing day. And she would be right.
“The fulcrum of the Court has shifted rightward from Justice O’Connor to Justice Kennedy. It has become increasingly clear that whenever he aligns with his four ultraconservative peers, the outcome will be destructive. In decision after decision, Alito and Roberts are demonstrating the hostility to crucial rights and protections that the opponents to their confirmation warned about.” ++
Injustice 5, Justice 4
New York Times Editorial
May 31, 2007
The Supreme Court struck a blow for discrimination this week by stripping a key civil rights law of much of its potency. The majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. The ruling is the latest indication that a court that once proudly stood up for the disadvantaged is increasingly protective of the powerful.
Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsden, Ala., sued her employer for paying her less than its male supervisors. At first, her salary was in line with the men’s, but she got smaller raises, which created a significant pay gap. Late in her career, Ms. Ledbetter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A jury found that Goodyear violated her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Goodyear argued that she filed her complaint too late and, by a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court agreed. Title VII requires employees to file within 180 days of “the alleged unlawful employment practice.” The court calculated the deadline from the day Ms. Ledbetter received her last discriminatory raise. Bizarrely, the majority insisted it did not matter that Goodyear was still paying her far less than her male counterparts when she filed her complaint.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that there were strong precedents supporting Ms. Ledbetter. The Supreme Court ruled in a similar race discrimination case that each paycheck calculated on the basis of past discrimination is unlawful under Title VII. The courts of appeals have overwhelmingly agreed. So did the E.E.O.C., the agency charged with enforcing Title VII.
In addition to interpreting the statute unreasonably and ignoring the relevant precedents, the majority blinded itself to the realities of the workplace. Employees generally do not know enough about what their co-workers earn, or how pay decisions are made, to file a complaint precisely when discrimination occurs. At Goodyear, as at many companies, salaries were confidential. The court’s new rules will make it extraordinarily difficult for victims of pay discrimination to sue under Title VII. That is not how Congress intended the law to be enforced, merely how five justices would like it to be.
It is disturbing that Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing justice, cast the deciding vote in favor of gutting a key part of the Civil Rights Act. Fortunately, Congress can amend the law to undo this damaging decision. It should do so without delay. ++
Democrats seek to overturn pay ruling
AP, USA Today
5/30/07
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats said Wednesday they would try to reverse a Supreme Court decision that limits the time that workers have to sue their employers for pay discrimination.
“All Americans deserve equal pay for equal work, and it is my hope that Congress can remove the technical hurdles that will prevent individuals from receiving what is rightfully theirs,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., a Democratic presidential candidate.
The Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Tuesday to throw out a Goodyear employee’s complaint that she earned thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts.
COURT RULES: Time limit put on pay-bias lawsuits
Under the court’s decision, an employee must sue within a 180-day deadline of a decision involving pay if the employee think it involves their race, sex, religion or national origin.
Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., sued right before she retired. She ended a 19-year career making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor, and claimed earlier decisions by her supervisors kept her from making more.
The court’s five most conservative members said the woman waited too long to complain. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in dissent for the court’s four liberal members, urged Congress to amend the law.
“As Justice Ginsburg suggests, the ball has now fallen into Congress’ court and we intend to address this ruling,” House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., said Wednesday. “The Supreme Court’s narrow decision makes it more difficult for workers to stand up for their basic civil rights at work, and that is unacceptable.”
COMPETING VIEWS: Ginsburg, Alito differ
Miller will be working with his Senate counterpart, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., on legislation to help reverse the court’s decision and give workers more time to build their cases.
Kennedy said Congress did not intend to set such a short time limit.
“Many victims of pay discrimination who didn’t immediately realize they were being paid less than others will have no remedy, even though the discrimination continues with every paycheck,” Kennedy said. “With women earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, the nation needs strong laws against pay discrimination. This is not what Congress intended when we passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1991, and we need to restore full protection against wage discrimination.” ++
Dear Winston: the Supreme Court could suck even worse edition, and more
by Steve, The Last Chance Democracy Cafe
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Dear Winston,
I know that most of the regulars at The Last Chance Democracy Cafe are hardcore Democrats. But in light of the way the Democratic Congress caved on the Iraq funding bill, can you give me one good reason why I should ever support them again?
Signed,
Furious in Fresno
* * *
Dear Furious,
Believe it or not, there actually are a lot of good reasons for liberals to continue voting Democratic, even if we sometimes have to hold our noses while we’re doing it. But the one overriding reason, against which all others pale in comparison, is the future of The United States Supreme Court.
And, yes, I know how sick many liberals are of hearing what some call the “Supreme Court scare tactic” — the argument (the very one I’m making now) that we need to keep voting Democratic, despite the party’s shortcomings, because otherwise that awful bogeyman of an ultra-right wing Supreme Court will jump out of the closet at night and get us. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in a column for The Nation back in August of 2000, titled Vote for Nader:
Ah, the Supreme Court! Never mind that pro-choice Justice O’Connor was a Reagan appointee or that Clinton’s man Breyer is one of the most economically conservative Justices around–the Supreme Court gets dragged out every four years to squash any attempt to escape the Democratic Party.
But, of course, Ehrenreich was dead wrong in most of her underlying assumptions in 2000, as she herself has since reluctantly admitted. Sadly, the Big Bad Bush Wolf she downplayed the fear of turned out to be pretty damned big and bad after all. And frighteningly, the Big Bad Supreme Court Wolf may very well turn out to be far worse over the long haul.
Bush will disappear in shame into the mists of history soon (I won’t say he’ll disappear “soon enough” because tomorrow morning wouldn’t be soon enough, but he will be gone relatively soon); the extremist Supreme Court he’s leaving behind, on the other hand — a Court that will become even more extreme and long-lasting if the Republicans win the presidency and the Senate next election — may well be with us for another generation if not longer.
So here we sit, watching helplessly from the sidelines, as American law is being radically transformed into The Federalist Society’s wet dream: already during the Court’s current term, freedom of choice and the right to bring suit for discrimination have each taken significant hits. Much worse will be coming later this year — count on it.
And this isn’t just about abortion, although freedom of choice is by itself a damn important issue, as my new friend Claire will gladly tell you. The thing about abortion rights, however, is that even if Roe v. Wade were to disappear, God forbid, we would still be free to fight politically to maintain freedom of choice through legislation. And in some parts of the country we would almost certainly win. In fact, absent the security blanket provided by Roe, progressives would probably fight harder, gain more allies and win more often on abortion issues in the political arena.
(One caveat: if a Republican president, elected in 2008, were able to appoint several more arch conservatives to the Supreme Court to replace some of the Court’s so-called liberals — something that could well happen — all bets on abortion would be off: such a radically conservative Court might actually go so far as to declare a fetus to be a person entitled to equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, effectively outlawing all abortions nationwide, not to mention playing havoc with a multitude of medical issues surrounding pregnancy.)
But the greatest reason to fear the current very conservative Supreme Court — let alone the ultraconservative Court further right wing appointments would all but guarantee — is largely unrelated to hot ticket social issues like abortion and gay rights: no, the true potential catastrophe here is the likelihood the Court will interpret the constitution in ways that severely limit the power of the federal and state governments to pursue progressive goals like environmental protection, civil rights, worker rights, business regulation and much more (while at the same time whittling down individual liberties).
Even before the Court’s recent surge to the right brought on by the appointment of Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, the Rehnquist Court had almost certainly already become the most radical Supreme Court in the history of the nation, having declared more federal statutes unconstitutional than any Supreme Court preceding it. One shudders to think what will happen now that Alito has joined the bench. But the thought of having a new Republican president add two or three more Scalia/Thomas clones to the Court on top of Alito is absolutely terrifying.
With a Supreme Court like that it may not matter all that much who ends up controlling the White House and Congress in the future, since their ability to pursue progressive reforms will be largely precluded by judicial decree. To lose the Supreme Court to the far right indefinitely is to effectively lose the war for the nation’s political soul for at least a generation to come. End of story.
So, should liberals jump ship from the Democrats out of a fit of anger over the Iraq vote (as opposed to continuing to fight to change it from within), notwithstanding all of the progress we’ve made in the last few years in getting the voice of the rank and file heard? Not if we care about the future.
Sincerely,
Winston ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
May 31st, 2007
I have a hunch that the Democratic Congress will rue the day they blew their opportunity with Bush’s war budget … and alienated the public who had given them their trust. I think the ramifications of that aren’t simmering on the back burner anymore, but pulled to the front and beginning to bubble. They failed to see that it wasn’t a “politics as usual” period in history … they’re always behind the curve, self-protecting and deal-peddling … but this time, it was a glaring error, not a misstep. The whole two-party system will take it in the shorts for their lack of insight.
I’m sure they’ll be surprised to learn, come November ‘08, that they can’t depend on us — just like we can’t depend on them. I’m sure they think this will all blow over — instead of blowing them away. I’m sure they’re thinking about vacation — while we think about their vacating. If I’m reading the ether’s correctly, they might not even know what hit ‘em … blindsided to the end. We are done with the old — working within a system as broken as is ours is no longer a viable option. It’s not that the Democrats are “bad” — it’s that the new century can no longer support their compliance with what is no longer workable. The New Paradigm has no room for them … but they won’t know it ’til we tell ‘em.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”
Here are worthy reads, starting with another of Bernard Weiners “Shallow Throat” articles, with his ongoing insider-character; Dave Lindorff examines Dubby’s “signing statements” and Doug Thompson has an emotional rant. Ted Rall is as direct and spot on as ever. The last piece teaches us something about how to “frame” our commentary and our activism … good, we’ve been framed long enough, I think it’s our turn. What goes around, comes around — if we’re going to take on the system, we need to use every tool at our disposal and learn how to work smart.
Jude
“Shallow Throat”: Dems’ Cave-In Is Truly Scary
Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
May 30 2007
“Shallow Throat” looked like a ghost — exhausted, pallid skin, and, when the wrap-around shades came off, I could see dark circles under the eyes.
The GOP mole high up in the Bush Administration had contacted me through our secret code. Given our numerous conversations* over the past six years, where the inner secrets of Republican strategy were revealed, I hurried to set up a meeting. This one took place in a back room of a pharmacy in a location near Washington, D.C.
“You don’t look so hot,” I said.
“You should see the other guy,” said ST, using the old joke but with a grimace. “I feel like crap because the tenure of these extremists in the White House has just been guaranteed for the next year-and-a-half by your liberal Democrat buddies. They had CheneyBush backed into a corner, on the ropes, reeling, and the Dems walked away.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I interjected, “I’m just as appalled as you are by the craven surrender of the Democratic leadership on the war-funding bill, lobbying reform and the possibility of impeachment hearings. So don’t hang that charge around my neck. The progressive base of the party, which I support, has been very active in trying to get Pelosi and Reid and the others to do the right thing on these issues and in denouncing them when they don’t.”
Shallow Throat thundered a reply: “If you progressives want to get through to the Dem leaders, you’ll have to lead them! Right now, they have you by the shorts. They know that regardless of what they do, you liberals have nowhere else to go. You’re not going to support the GOP, you’re not going to commit suicide by trying to form a third party, so the Bushistas can just run over you, time and time again, convinced that you’ll eventually come back to the fold with your money and energy because the Republicans are even worse. Why shouldn’t they take you for granted? You make it so easy for them.”
NOW IT’S THE DEMS’ WAR ALSO
ST scratched at the new wig and continued: “Your guys blew your one best chance to stop this war, or at least to begin to bring it to a close. I could understand the Dems’ timidity if the population were evenly divided on the issue of the war and on the need to get our young soldiers out of there ASAP — but, damn it, that’s not the case!
“Nearly 70% of the public agrees that Bush’s war strategy is mistaken and will lead to even more deaths and maiming of untold numbers of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. By nearly two-thirds, the public is in support of starting to withdraw our troops soon. In short, your ass was covered! Why on earth would you give in so easily after just one or two tries? You could have let Bush veto the war-funding bill for the second time and sent it back to him again and again, each time carving away a few more wavering Republicans. You could hammer Bush each time as not being willing to bend a bit to ’support the troops’.
“Instead, out of fear of being criticized for ‘not supporting the troops’ and and for being insufficiently ‘patriotic,’ you gave away the store, and became, ipso facto, enablers of the Republicans and this slaughter. The blood of young American troops is now on your hands too. Now it’s not just Bush’s war, but also the Democrats’ war! How could your Dem buddies have been so stupid?”
COULD DEMS LOSE WHITE HOUSE IN 2008?
Shallow Throat was breathing heavily after those white-hot denunciations. I passed over my water bottle and let the traditional conservative official take a long swig.
“I agree that they blew this one big time,” I said. “I think that the vacationing Senators and Representatives will feel the heat of the public’s anger this week when they are back home. I suspect they will come back to Washington with more starch in their spines to hold the Bush Administration’s feet to the fire in September.”
“As a lifelong Republican,” said Shallow Throat, “I guess I’m expected to take comfort in how badly the Democrats are bumbling with regard to the race for the White House in 2008. The GOP could lose the House and Senate again but hang onto the Presidency, and that’s supposed to make me feel good.
“But, as I’ve told you many times, Bernie, I am appalled and terrified by the brand of far-right extremists who have hijacked my party. Just looking at the crop of candidates running for the GOP nomination — not one of them electable who proudly represents those of us in the traditional-conservative middle — doesn’t give me hope that anybody decent will emerge that would change the self-destructive direction of the party. And it’s not clear whether the Democrats will come up with anyone significantly better.
“Let’s face it, plutocrats in hock to or agreeing with corporate/military-industrial mentalities are in control of most of the leadership of both parties. Granted, the Republican leaders are much more authoritarian and greedy and vicious, but the Democratic leaders, lacking a unifying moral and political theory of governance, aren’t all that much better. Almost all of them owe their souls to the company store, as it were.”
THERE IS RAGING ANGER OUT THERE
“What I find somewhat optimistic,” I countered, “is that the liberal/progressive citizen base of the party is filled with seething anger at the sell-out of their leaders on the war-funding bill; Cindy Sheehan, for one, has had enough and says she’s exiting the Democratic Party. These activists will direct their rage right where it needs to go — to Pelosi and Reid and Emanuel and the whole DLC crew. This Democratic boat will be turned from its present direction. Come September–”
“September is too damn late!” interrupted Shallow Throat. “The Dems have just given the war a long-term lease, at the very least until Bush and Cheney depart the White House in January of 2009. The Dems will just be nibbling around the edges of the policy they’ve authorized by their cowardly vote approving the war funding.”
“So what options are available?” I asked. “Just demonstrating and shouting our anger at these creeps doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. Where should we be going?”
“USE THE POWER YOU HAVE”
“Look,” said Shallow Throat, “your side still has some leverage. You control the Congress and thus can use the investigative function, subpoena powers, putting witnesses under oath, etc.
“But, damm it, you have these one-day hearings, a lot of fulminating when the Administration witnesses skirt and evade the questions, and then you let them go. If you really want to learn what really happened, you’ll have to invite or subpoena them back again and again until you get full, honest answers, threaten them and maybe even cite them for contempt of Congress.
“If necessary, take them to court to get them to supply the documents and copies of e-mails you subpoenaed; establish an impeachment panel and start the early work on Gonzales, Cheney, Bush; inquire how Bush, with last week’s secret ‘National Security Presidential Directive,’ totally cut the Congress out of any say in how the government would be organized in case of an ‘emergency’ — he appointed himself sole decider of all matters civil and legislative, including when to declare martial law, and nobody is permitted to override his dictatorial decisions.”
“Not sure any investigations along those lines will necessarily lead anywhere, practically speaking,” I said. “The Republicans have ways of gumming up the works.”
CHANGING THE DYNAMIC
“So what?” Shallow Throat yelled. “At least give the public some truths to hang onto, and some hope that the Democrats are trying to do something rather than just rolling on their backs in total submission to the snarling tactics of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and their friends. Besides, you need to keep those guys on the defensive every day of every week. Don’t let them get traction, momentum. Force them to play defense, scatter their energies, let them sweat for a change.
“And I suggest you get right on it, since the HardRight extremists running this Administration and the GOP in Congress have all sorts of bad news up their sleeves, including another major escalation of the Iraq War, aiding in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military installations, and clamping down even more on Americans’ constitutional rights, including the possible declaration of martial law.”
“Now you’re really scaring me,” I said.
THE FRIGHTENING POSSIBILITIES
“Good! You’d better be frightened,” said Shallow Throat. “If the Republicans hold the White House in the 2008 election, we could have a kind of civil war inside the military right here in this country.
“When General Petraeus tells the Congress in September that the U.S. is making ‘clear progress’ with the surge but needs another ten thousand troops and six months more time to turn around the situation in Iraq, there will be a political insurrection inside the Pentagon, with mass resignations of the highest-ranking officers in the military, conservative men and women willing to take on the Bush Administration and those officers who choose to stay and obey these reckless, likely illegal Administration orders. These officers of conscience will not acquiesce to more self-destructive madness, more wrecking of an already stressed, stretched-too-thin military and National Guard; more shredding of the Con–”
I interrupted: “Are you suggesting the possibility of an armed confrontation between the two sides, or just a massive public airing of different points of view about U.S. military policy around the world? Is this what you meant by the possibility of martial law?”
“Hear what I’m saying. There are growing rumbles from both inside and outside the government: If the situation after September looks hopeless in preserving the Constitution and re-establishing a sane foreign/military policy, and if key nations decide to retaliate against America by calling-in the U.S. debt bonds they hold (thus ruining the United States economy), nothing will be off the table inside this country,” said Shallow Throat, and quickly left the room.
I sat there stunned, unable to move, petrified by fear. ++
*Bernard Weiner, a playwright/poet, has had numerous conversations (http://www.crisispapers.org/weinerpubs.htm#shallow) with the Shallow Throat character over the past six years.
Whatever Happened to Signing Statements?
Dave Lindorff
May 29 2007
Perhaps the best indication of the toothlessness and complicity of the new Democratic Congress is that President Bush, who between September 2001 and December 2006 used so-called “signing statements” and a bogus claim of extra-constitutional executive authority as commander in chief in time of war to invalidate 1200 laws or parts of laws passed by Congress, hasn’t issued a single one since January.
As for vetoes, there was just one, for the first Iraq War supplemental funding bill–the one that actually contained a deadline of sorts for ending the conflict.
The truth is, this Congress, elected by a public that made it clear it was sick and tired of the Iraq War, has really done little or nothing to challenge the president–not on global warming, not on the Iraq War, and not on his unilateral gutting of traditional and Constitutionally protected civil liberties.
The truth is, there has been little for this president to object to coming out of this supposedly oppositional Congress.
On Memorial Day, as close to 150,000 US troops risk death and create mayhem in Iraq, as 3500 soldiers’ graves at home get fresh flowers, as 26,000 gravely injured Iraq War veterans nurse their wounds with little help from an over-stretched and underfunded Veterans Administration medical system, we Americans have to face the fact that we have lost control of our government to a trillion-dollar war machine that moves of its own accord.
A criminal president and vice president have succeeded in tricking us into a war that had no justification, and that can have no good end. And what once was an opposition party has succumbed, though a combination of greed and cowardice, to become an accomplice in crime.
The president, now surely among the least popular leaders in the nation’s long history, has no need of signing statements any longer because he faces no organized opposition in Washington.
The amazing thing is that most Americans seem to understand what has happened. A few years ago, it took a certain amount of fortitude to wear a peace button, or to put an anti-war bumper sticker on one’s car. It took a certain amount of courage to hold a sign calling for the president’s impeachment. Today, do any of those things, and you’re far more likely to get a thumbs up sign, or a wry smile of agreement anywhere you go in the country.
Americans everywhere know we’ve been lied to, misled and sold a bill of goods with Iraq and the so-called War on Terror. But we also are coming to understand that there is little we can do about it with the Congress we’ve got.
We elected people who vowed to stand up and put a stop to the crimes, and after we voted them into office, they have failed us.
We’ve all learned this without the help of the mainstream media, which goes on about its devious business of pretending that everything is as it was, with two combative and ideologically opposed parties.
The public knows better.
Maybe now we can really start to tackle the problem.
Some progressive Democrats like Progressive Democrats of America and Democrats.com are calling for candidates to mount primary challenges against the sell-out Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who are making president Bush’s job so easy.
That’s great. With luck, the voters will realize this is their chance to revivify the rotting corpse that is the Democratic Party, and maybe some of those leaders will be dumped.
The next step will be what we, the voters, do in the next general election. Will we revert to form and vote yet again for what used to be called the “lesser evil,” but which is now revealed as just another face of the same evil? Or will we abandon the frauds and withhold our vote from those who promise much and then betray us? ++
America the not-so-beautiful
When America looks in the mirror, she screams with horror
DOUG THOMPSON, Capital Hill Blue
May 29, 2007
As a nation we have a long tradition of screwing things up. It might be our sordid use of slaves, the outright theft of land from Native Americans, internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II or knee-jerk passage of the USA Patriot Act and the imprisonment of who knows how many Americans in the aftermath of 9/11. Each is a dark moment in our history.
In each case, America took a wrong turn. In some cases, she backtracked and tried to make good on her mistakes.
Over the past Memorial Day weekend, America was forced, once again, to take a long, hard look in the mirror. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t like what she saw.
She saw a nation deeply divided by the most controversial war since Vietnam. She saw a country where the vast majority of its citizens no longer trust their government and lack faith in their leaders.
She saw a country that paused to honor its war dead while wondering why they had to die in yet another foreign land for reasons that did not exist.
The face that stared back at America looked drawn, haggard and depressed. It was the face of age and weariness, wrinkled by too many fights with too many foes - real and imagined. It was a face withered by moral ambivalence, weathered by sin and pockmarked by corruption.
Perhaps it is a face that no plastic surgeon can save and masking a soul that no salvation can redeem.
Or perhaps, behind those dark sullen eyes lies a spark of resolve, a desire to rise one more time to the challenge and fight to survive.
Our so-called leaders have raped America, leaving her body ravaged and her morale all-but-destroyed. It is easy to rise up on partisan haunches and point the finger of blame at the other side but the sad fact remains that all of us - Republican, Democrat, independent, conservative, liberal, moderate, right, left and middle - share the blame for the political, ethical and moral tide that sweeps over America like a tsunami.
The many problems that plague this nation span Presidential administrations, changes in Congressional leadership and shifts in prevailing national philosophies.
These problems lie in a national psyche that places individual desires above national interest, greed above service and lust for power above consideration of the common good.
And we can’t begin to solve these problems until we put aside our partisanship, our anger, our hate and our need to win at all costs. Until we do, America will continue her headlong plunge into the abyss.
Because when America looked in the mirror this past weekend, the face staring back at her belonged to all of us. ++
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Funding Battle Highlights American Embrace of Moronitude
Ted Rall
Tue May 29
ORLANDO–I’m against the war. Who isn’t? (Maybe the two percent who tell The New York Times/CBS poll that
Iraq is going “very well.”) But this column isn’t about the war. It’s about logic.
In his new book Al Gore argues that Americans are losing the ability to, well, argue. “Reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions,” claims the President-in-Internal-Exile. Never mind left versus right; irrationality has become so prevalent that outlandish jingoism and sentimental lunacy have displaced reason as the framework of our national dialogue. What passed for debate on the latest funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes a convincing case for Gore’s thesis.
The 2006 midterm sweep was widely interpreted as an electoral mandate to end the war. Democrats were supposedly now in the driver’s seat on Iraq. So why do they keep steering right, as if November never happened? Despite Democratic control of both houses of Congress and polls that show widespread contempt (76 percent) for the war and Bush (63 percent), party leaders felt they had no choice but to give Bush exactly what he wanted: another $100 billion, no strings attached.
Even for the majority that believes invading Iraq was a mistake, there are several reasonable, even liberal, arguments for staying the course: preventing a bigger civil war, keeping the conflict from spreading into other Middle Eastern nations, honoring our commitment to rebuild a country we’ve destroyed, the superpower’s strategic imperative of flexing its military prowess just because. Logic, however, never entered the debate. Instead, an absurd rhetorical turd carried the day, among prowar Republicans and reluctant Democrats alike: supporting the troops requires funding the war.
“Like it or not, we ran out of options,” said David Obey, the Democratic chairman of the House appropriations committee. “There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off those funds to those troops in the field.” Even Hillary Clinton, one of just 14 senators who voted no, said she’d thought “long and hard” about her vote because she wanted to “do everything we can to protect the troops.”
Remember, this isn’t about war–it’s about logic. Cutting off funding would do nothing to jeopardize U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. That’s obvious. It would, of course, endanger the war itself. Without Congressional appropriations, Bush would be forced to bring them home. Which would make them, despite the reductionist and false 2003 GOP talking point that the streets of some U.S. cities are more dangerous than Iraq, safer. A lot safer.
Both parties, with the media playing along, have painted a bleak, transparently ridiculous portrait of besieged American soldiers, surrounded by rabid insurgents. It’s The Alamo 2007, or maybe 2008, and our brave young men and women go down, fighting to the last man (or woman) until they run out of ammo, cursing Washington politicians for failing them. Save the last bullet for me, buddy!
It is baffling that this fiction prompted any response from the media, or Democratic pols, beyond dismissive laughter. The fact that it carried the day in a Congressional vote, without even a word of comment from national barometer Jon Stewart, stands as testimony to the triumph of what Mike Judge termed “idiocracy.”
“Thank goodness we are finally here,” Republican Congressman John Boehner said in reference to the Democratic agreement to support the war, “choking up” for C-SPAN. “Three and a half months [the time spent on the debate] to respond to our troops and their families is too long,” added his colleague Roy Blunt. What are they talking about? The troops don’t need or want the appropriation. They get a paycheck whether they’re stationed in Iraq or here in the States. The Congressional appropriation in question goes to weapons manufacturers, contracting firms such as Halliburton, and Iraqi tribal sheiks in the form of bribes. The troops don’t see a cent, much less their families.
What puts our troops in harm’s way is the war. No war, no worries. Sure, Iraq falls apart (faster). Sure, Iraqis die (faster). But lost in the malarkey is the brutal truth: Voting for more money for the war means more troops get killed and wounded. Again, there are valid arguments for subjecting them to these risks. But there is no logical basis for the claim that the money will make them safer.
Stupidity isn’t new, but the willingness of a culturally sophisticated and technologically advanced society to swallow such obvious hogwash brings it to a higher plane of moronitude: We’re smart enough to know better, but we choose not to. A striking symbol of such willful idiocy takes the form of a new Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. The $27 million facility posits that the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on a section of Noah’s ark…There are 52 videos in the museum, one showing how the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah’s flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days.”
Hipsters are driving rented Zipcars to Kentucky to revel in smirky awe at the cheese of it all, but there’s a serious reason fundamentalist churches spend $27 million on such propaganda: It works. A new Newsweek poll finds that 48 percent of American adults don’t believe in evolution, and “one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact.”
Back among the chattering classes, the war=troops trope has outlived the funding battle. Attacking Democratic presidential aspirants Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, John McCain decried their votes “against funds to support our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.” I wonder: Is McCain that stupid? Or is he a liar who knows he can count on a brainless public not to call him out? ++
The Framers Got It Right: Congress is the Decider
Evan, Rockridge Institute staff
Friday, May 25, 2007 04:35 PM
In this new article by George Lakoff and Glenn Smith, the Rockridge Institute issues a call to action in response to Congress’s passage of the Iraq supplemental spending bill.
Critics of Congress’s passage this week of the Iraq supplemental spending bill lament a lack of political courage. But Congress would find it easier to act courageously if the public understood the constitutional stakes. And that public understanding requires correct and persistent framing by Congress itself. What needs to have been framed — indeed what still needs to be framed — is Congress’s constitutional responsibility and power to set the course on military missions like Iraq.
Here is what two of the country’s most distinguished scholars on Constitutional powers testified to Congress on January 30, 2007:
“Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate ongoing military operations and even to bring them to an end.”
~ David J. Barron, Harvard Law School
“The legislative judgment to take the country to war carries with it a duty throughout the conflict to decide that military force remains in the national interest. … Congress is responsible for monitoring what it has set in motion. In the midst of war, there are no grounds for believing that the President’s authority is superior to the collective judgment of its elected representatives. Congress has both the constitutional authority and the responsibility to retain control and recalibrate national policy whenever necessary.”
~ Louis Fisher, Constitutional Specialist, Library of Congress
Here’s what this means:
The Framers of the Constitution framed the current debate over Iraq: Congress sets the overall strategy, and retains control over troop levels, redeployment dates, etc. The president’s job is to carry out the strategic mission set by Congress.
The United States Constitution designates Congress as The Decider: they decide on overall military strategy. That is their constitutional duty. The president is the commander in chief of the military — and only the military. He is not commander over Congress, nor is he commander over the people of the United States. As such, the president’s duty is to carry out the strategic mission given to him by Congress.
But Congress has abdicated its duty.
Congressional leaders have neglected to remind the nation what the Constitution says. They have allowed the president to reframe the Constitution, usurping their power for himself. The Framers framed it right. The Congress irresponsibly let the president reframe the Constitution.
The issue is more than the vital details of Iraq spending, withdrawal, timetables, and the safety of our troops. The issue is whether Congress will continue to allow the president to exercise dictatorial powers. Or whether Congress will insist on the framing of the Framers.
Framing has been vital. Opponents of the president’s Iraq policies should have framed the issue immediately when Democratic leaders took control in January 2007. The message should have been: Congress defines the strategic mission; the president’s job is to carry it out. He is refusing to carry out his mission.
Congress allowed the president to take over its job to decide the strategic mission and to put Congress in the role of merely providing funding. This allowed the president to cast Congress in the role of “refusing to fund the troops,” “endangering the safety of our troops,” “playing chicken with the lives of our troops,” “hamstringing our troops,” and so on. It allowed President Bush to portray Congress as responsible for the safety of our troops, whereas the real responsibility lay with him. By allowing the president to reframe the Constitution and take away their powers, Congress made itself fatally vulnerable. Most of the Democrats wound up adopting the president’s framing of them as responsible for the safety of the troops.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid excused the vote by saying that the Democrats did not have a veto-proof Congress. But they did not need one. They could have chosen to exercise their authority by refusing to pass a spending bill without redeployment timetables.
House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey said it was the best deal Congress could make because “the White House is in a cloud somewhere in terms of understanding the realities of Iraq.” This is tantamount to saying that Congress has no choice but to accede to an irrational demand of the President.
Representative Louise Slaughter defended her vote this way:
“As such, we had a choice. We could send Mr. Bush the same bill, or allow something to pass that wouldn’t be vetoed. And we elected to let something pass - to let Republicans, if they so choose, fund their own war.
Considering that 90% of the Out of Iraq Caucus was with us in this decision, there must have been at least some reason for it. In fact, there are two in my opinion. With this White House, and with this Republican minority, it is safe to say that a standoff with the Administration would have meant that our troops would be left in harm’s way, only now with even less funding to back them up. I don’t think that would have been right to do - to make them do even more with even less. The President doesn’t seem to care how much our troops suffer. All evidence indicates that he will make them fight if they have needed funding or not.
Secondly, a standoff would have allowed the President to keep using our soldiers as pawns, accusing Democrats of abandoning them while it is really his war that has left them to fend for themselves.”
In other words, allowing themselves to be framed in a subordinate position, many who originally voted to impose timetables retreated, thinking that they were forced to accept the president’s framing of them. And being progressives — with the fundamental values of empathy and responsibility — they were doubly trapped. Their empathy for the troops — and their inability to take on their Constitutional role — forced even many Out of Iraq Caucus members to vote against their own position.
Now, one might read the Constitution a bit differently, perhaps maintaining that the Congress is only co-equal with the president. But that still does not put the president in a superior position and Congress in the position of merely a funding funnel for the mission he determines. Even under this interpretation, Congress has abdicated its Constitutional duty.
If you mistakenly believe that framing is mere PR or spin, recall that there is a reason why we speak of the “Framers” of the Constitution. All of our concepts come in the form of frames. Our deepest values and most enduring truths were “framed” by our “Framers.” To protect those values and those truths requires the right framing. And to remind the public of those values and truths requires repeating over and over how the Framers framed our form of government, and why it matters today. Framing is a matter of life and death — and the survival of our democracy.
Many public critics of the Iraq occupation have accused the Democrats of cowardice, of weakness, of “caving in” — even of “betraying” the American people who voted for withdrawal from Iraq. But that is too easy a judgment. The result was determined in January 2007 when they allowed the president to reframe the Constitution.
The good news is that the present spending authorization is for “only” until September. We have until then to get the Framers’ framing right. By “we,” we don’t mean just those in Congress, or those on the blogs. We mean the progressive grassroots throughout the country. We all need to act, and we can!
But before discussing actions, it is important to recognize other framing mistakes that need to be avoided.
Using the term “war.” Literally, a war is a battle between two armies over territorial control. It is over when one army defeats the other. That happened in May, 2003, with the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime and when President Bush stood on that battleship under the “Mission Accomplished” banner. At that point an “occupation” began — an “occupation” of a country engaged in ethnic and religious conflict. Bush is technically no longer a war president; he is an occupation president. “War” has given the president a chance to claim extraordinary powers. There are other terms to use: occupation, military engagement, military operation, and so on. If Senator Jim Webb can use the term “occupation,” as he did in his campaign, so can every other elected official.
“The power of the purse.” Controlling appropriation is a constitutional duty. Referring to this duty with such a dismissive term promotes the idea that the president sets the mission and the job of Congress is just a cashier.
“Providing a check on presidential power.” This sounds like Congress is just getting in the way, keeping the president from exercising his legitimate authority.
“Micromanaging the war,” “overriding the commanders in the field.” Congressional leaders should never let the president get away with such claims. Congress sets the overall policy agenda. The job of the commander-in-chief is to carry out that agenda, making sure that the commanders in the field are serving the Congressional mission. Say this over and over.
Permitting the Betrayal Myth: America, as a moral country with a strong military, should defeat all enemies. If America does lose a war, it is a result of too little support at home. In other words, but for betrayal, our good intentions and military might would win all conflicts. If the U.S. loses, the opponents of the military operation at home are to blame for “not supporting our troops,” and for “undermining their morale.”
Progressives must point out that it is the president, with an enabling Congress, who commenced a foolhardy adventure with no clear exit strategy or way to “win.” That same president has refused to properly prepare or adequately equip soldiers — and now he is blaming Congress. When Congress passed a supplemental spending bill with reasonable timetables attached, he refused it. The betrayer is the president. Say it over and over: The president has betrayed our troops and the nation.
Allowing the question to be asked whether “Congress has a constitutional duty to fully fund troops during wartime.” It is Congress that determines what “wartime” is.
That is its Constitutional duty. The president does not have the Constitutional authority to declare whether we are at war. Only Congress has that authority, and it can only exercise it for at most two years at a time.
The president wants the country to believe that he is the soldier’s protector and Congress is the villain. This is a cynical, revisionist narrative. The storyline that must be maintained casts Congress as the helper of heroic troops, the president as the false-hero or villain who sent them into harm’s way inadequately armed and unprotected on a mission based upon lies. It is Bush who, with his veto, stood in the way of providing the troops with the funding they need. Progressives have missed this framing opportunity.
The continued abdication of the proper Constitutional role for Congress comes from the fear of blame for military casualties. Opponents of the Iraq occupation are concerned, and rightly so, that the Bush administration will frame killed or wounded soldiers as victims of Democratic mismanagement or partisan politicking. It is a fair guess that Democratic consultants are fretting that, if the Democratic Congress takes control of setting the mission in Iraq, Bush will lift the blackout on news coverage of returning injured and dead U.S. soldiers, using them as props in allegations that the casualties are the fault of “politicians.” Progressives must publicly confront the president about this as they reclaim their Constitutional power, derailing any attempt to shift responsibility.
Those are the pitfalls to be avoided. Now it is time to plan a course of unified grassroots action.
ACTION: Write to your Congresspersons and Senators and ask them to frame their Constitutional role as the Framers did. We suggest that you raise the following issues:
The Constitution provides Congress with the power to define the military agenda, including troop re-deployment and the establishment of timetables.
The role of the president is to carry out the agenda defined by Congress.
Congress must continuously assert its Constitutional power and responsibility.
Congress must not give in to the betrayal myth. The president was offered funding with timetables but he turned it down — he is the betrayer.
Congress must frame the matter as an issue of Constitutional authority
Congress must place the safety of the troops directly in the hands of the commander-in-chief, whose job is to carry out the agenda given by Congress, which includes protecting the safety of our troops.
Don’t just write to your Congressperson. Write to the editors of your local newspapers.
Flood the email boxes of the television and radio news shows, as well as national magazines. Send this call for action to your email lists. And write to progressive activist organizations like MoveOn, Democracy for America, and so on, to ask their memberships to support this action.
And don’t do it just once. Repetition is the key to success. Keep it up until the next funding vote in September. ++
Research Assistant Christina M. Smith contributed to this report.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
May 31st, 2007