3/2/10

Those of you who read these essays regularly know that I have been very displeased with the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff. He's no Leo McGary, that's for sure. He is not even a Dick Cheney, whose work for Gerald Ford was bent toward the accretion of power to a fumbling President. Rahm is a hot head and a profane ... not just profane, but actively and forcefully profane ... person. The smooth functioning of the Obama White House is his responsibility. Now you tell me: is the Obama White House functioning ... let alone smoothly?

Now comes the Washington Post with a long article about how perhaps the problems with this inglorious adminstration are that Rahm Emanuel is not listened to by Barack Obama. Horsefeathers! First, even if it were true that Emanuel is being ignored by the President (and believe me there are lots of reasons a hothead loses credibility), why would Obama keep him around at all? Rahm is an insult to the rest of the Executive staff, a martinet, a verbal abuser, and not smart enough to realize that he is at the pinnacle of power on this planet and due for a vocabulary and attitude make-over!

I think the article is the first in a developing story that Rahm Emanuel is on his way out. In other words, I read this article as a negative, not as a print. The people who think Rahm is being ignored are precisely the people who we do not want to lead. They are claiming that Obama is missing the art of the possible by being too wedded to his illusions. Well, bipartisanship is the only place where I see Obama completely deluded ... and listen! ... Rahm Emanuel was brought in to facilitate that process precisely because of his reputation as Majority Whip in bringing votes in the House to closure. Rahm has been stunningly inept at this with both the House and Senate from his perch in the West Wing. Not just stunningly inept. He has failed every test!

Maybe it is wishful thinking on my part. Maybe Rahm does have something to say besides "F*** YOU" to the denizens of D.C., but if he is not smart enough to have gotten the ear and the imagination of his boss, nor has he accomplished simple tasks like getting holds on appointments out of the pockets of Republican pranksters and ideologues, he does not deserve the job. You name it, Rahm has failed. The article has to be the overture to his swan song.

Obama will treat him well, I am sure. Perhaps he should be Ambassador to Israel.

JB

2/9/10

The question posed in the title, above, is one that has been nettling me and other observers for the past six to eight months. Finally, the punditocracy of Washington is asking, too. This article appeared yesterday and you should read it, if you are wondering where Change is and why it is lost in the bushes.

I think that the hold the Chicago "team" has on the White House is a national emergency, but I am equally sure that Obama does not ... in fact cannot ... see it. He probably believes himself helpless without these people. Well, he is helpless with them.

Now that the cat is finally out of the bag, it is time for some statesmen on the Hill to tell Obama how to be President!

JB

2/5/10

Steven Pearlstein, a columnist for the Business Section of the Washington Post defies gravity today in his article about the impending lockjaw or log jam in the U.S. Senate now that the Democrats are down to 59 potential votes. I say this because the forces that have created this mess in Washington are not the least unlike the pervasiveness and irreducibility of physical gravity. Ubiquitous and inexorable are these forces and the cure is not for Vice President Biden to become CEO of the Senate and get himself impeached or worse. The problem is also way deeper than newly sworn-in Senator Brown, although he does seem to resemble a talisman of the problem.

The problem in Washington is partly the deliberately inherent clash of forces envisioned by the Framers as a bulwark against tyranny of the Legislature or the other two branches. Understanding that representatives have split personalities ... if not the mental wherewithall to carry that off ... they are tossed by the need to teach and listen at home, on the one hand, and to rise above their petty concerns towards the "statesmanship" required for legislating in the 3rd most populace nation on earth.

Then, with statesmanship in the tool box, ideology must give way occasionally to pragmatism. The Republicans' idea of pragmatism currently is to understand that thwarting anything Obama tries to accomplish will accrue to their general benefit, that is, a program completely devoid of the substance of ideology and purely obstructionist. Joe Biden cannot fix that with the slender powers given him by the Constitution!

The failure in Washington, as always, is one of leadership. Nancy Pelosi and her team seem to have the House in some kind of herded cats order, but dear old Harry Reid and the rest of the pompinjays on the Democratic side in the Senate are utterly bereft of statesmanlike leadership. True, Harry can make a deal, but equally those deals fall apart the moment Harry leaves the room. He just does not have clout ... and the White House cannot give it to him, especially a White House "run" by Rahm Emanuel, whose cachet is rampant vulgarity, childish temper tantrums, and ineffective persuasion. Rahm has not accomplished anything in Congress, and I defy anyone to point out a single instance of success. Just one!

Pearlstein is right about one thing. We are nearly at a state of paralysis from this misbegotten sloganeering about bipartisanship. Obama is completely deluded if he thinks that the center will hold for him if he plays these games. There is no way that the center holds; it is a fiction and a state of mind based in indecision and clearly not statesmanship. Obama must change, Emanuel must leave or be tossed out on his ass, and the Senate must look elsewhere than Nevada for Majority leadership. Joe Biden can work with these folks, but his titular Presidency of the Senate is another of those buckets of warm spit.

JB

The Sunday, January 24th, edition of the New York Times "Book Review" section contains a very interesting article by Walter Isaacson on the views of "war powers" in the U.S. federal government, the notorious John Yoo of Bolt Hall (U.C. Berkeley and recently the U.S. Department of Justice) on the executive powers side and with Gary Wills on the other side, reading the Constitution literally and noticing formally that Congress has the (reserved?) authority to declare war. Wills's side of the argument is not the one that history favors, of course, and Yoo's side has been the focus of much anguished attention here and throughout the liberal blogosphere and press and media.

The interesting thing about the article is the search for authority conducted by Yoo and by Wills, going back to the earliest moments of the republic. Yoo notes that President Washington, presumably having had his fill of the fiscal conservatism chatter in the Congress, asserted his executive powers to quell an Indian disturbance, effectively putting the new country at war with the native inhabitants without so much as a formal nod to Congress.

Having been a naval officer in my younger days and fully aware of the nature of modern warfare, I am convinced that a nation defending itself and its interests must act very much like an individual, not like a committee. (That is one "loaded" sentence, btw.) Defending ourselves against marauding Indians is one thing, but acting during a 15 minute window before all hell rains down in a nuclear weapons attack is quite another. (But, having written that sentence,) it becomes clearer that response time is not just trigger-pulling, but also the time for fact-finding and effective target-selection. The excuses for leaving Congress out of the equation become poorer and poorer, even in the nuclear context where retaliatory nuclear strikes can be envisioned, scripted, double-scripted, and fail-safes implemented ... by Congress or under some review by Congress.

The big question ... packed into my "loaded" sentence ... is what constitutes a U.S. "interest" beyond the life, limb, and property within the 50 states and territories? WWI was fought for "national interests" that clearly went way beyond the loss of U.S. ships and of foreign ships with U.S. passengers. Congress declared that war, but only "resolved" to ask the President to respond to the undoubtedly (in hind-sight) contrived event in Tonkin Gulf some fifty years later.

The question of "interests" then doubles back upon itself when you take into the discussion the emergence of the U.S. (in President Eisenhower's terms) as a nation-state characterized as "a military-industrial complex." You have to consider that Congress is bought and paid for by the very elements of the industrial sector committed to armaments. And, needless to say, both the legislative and executive branches of government prosper in times of war, both in accretion of power and personally financially.

This line of thought goes directly to the questions raised by the "Special Study Group" that concocted the "Report from Iron Mountain," which this website takes as its ironical point of departure. In other words, Isaacson's piece in the Times makes me think anew about the M-I complex, which I had been dating only back to Eisenhower, but clearly has roots in 18th c. America. I am confronted with the idea that the U.S. was potentially a military-industrial complex from the very beginning, lacking only the pervasiveness of the complexity, the thorough-going development of industry, and the thorough undermining of the moral commitments we see between the lines in the Constitution. Idealism fails in the heat of a sordid reality. All the more reason to keep vigilant and demand shared responsibility.

JB

1/22/10

Benito Mussolini, the most notorious exponent of Fascism (who used the "fasces" as the symbol of his political party in the 1930's and 1940's) said that the philosophy of Fascism would be better described as "corporatism," that is, a melding of the corporate interests of the productive sectors of the nation with the government of the nation, in other words a merger of corporations with government. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations may not have their spending on political campaign restricted, because that is an infringement on their civil rights ... reiterating the 1870's ruling that corporations are "individuals" with classical civil rights!

The ruling 140 years ago, made during the so-called Gilded Age when robber barons and financier plutocrats ran the federal government, was wrong, of course, and now this Supreme Court has doubled-down on that fallacious argument and brought our fragile democracy to the gallows.

This ruling, in my opinion, is no less partisan and ill-considered than the ruling in Gore v. Bush, where without reference to any real ... not supposed ... thread of jurisprudence or philosophy the Court misruled. But the point is that it is partisan and unworthy of the Court, a travesty, and a clear and present danger to the republic, worthy certainly of impeachment, would that anyone in Congress had the cojones to do that.

The only relief from this horrible act of ideological treachery is for Congress to swiftly pass restrictions that go to the essential question of equal protection of the law in an environment where equal financial resources are an ugly joke. They must do this immediately and tell the Court that it has ruled badly and without consideration for the balance of voices in our society. The Court will likely rule against any such legislation, but it will take time to bring such a case to the Court. This time we must overturn the 1870's ruling that corporations—which clearly are NOT INDIVIDUALS and therefore have no civil rights—and end this threat to our democracy.

JB

1/4/10

The other day as we were cleaning up after a festive, delicious, but slightly sloppy meal, I produced the Pledge™ to eradicate some spots on the pub table. She quickly responded that I should not be using this s**t, because it is full of chemicals ... dangerous chemicals. The producer counters this allegation in its commercials on television by emphasizing that the company is "family owned" for a couple of generations, a feel-good bit of information that is entirely irrelevant to the chemical products industry. After all, The Family in NJ is just as likely to kill you off as not. Why should the makers of Endust™ or any other chemical concoction that we breath in on a ... er ... weekly basis be bad for us. And, more to the point, how will we know whether products are made out of atomized honey or trinitrotoluene?

Enter Lyndsey Layton, a writer for the Washington Post, with an apt article about an appalling law protecting producers from even telling us what is in the products we use. I am hoping that Layton's article sparks a general rumble throughout the country and that this b.s. law is repealed forthwith.

JB

12/28/09

I think that most of us are astounded and deeply disappointed to the point of utter disgust and, frankly, apprehension, that the vaunted anti-terrorism apparatus of the United States has been proved to be porous, leaky, and INEPT! I will not go so far as to say that I agree with Republicans on this issue, but I will say that the failure of the "system" (State, Homeland Security, FBI, whatever) to understand the gravity of a situation in which a Muslim father fingers his own son is incomprehensible.

The ever-defensive of Washington foibles Washington Post ascribes the failure to detect and detain the Nigerian Abdulmutallab, who intended to blow up a Northwest Airlines over Detroit to "noise." Yes, of course, there is noise in any intelligence gathering system. But, the cultural tone-deafness of the "system" in this case requires some answers. How could it be that our personnel do not understand the gravity of reporting one's own son to the authorities? Do these people live such technocratic lives that the personal flagwaving of a distraught father go unnoticed, unweighed, unmeasured? It is an unacceptable situation!

The American public should demand that heads roll on this one. Someone hired to be awake at the switch was asleep, despite the Post's hope that we will be all satisfied that there is just too much information. Everyone who goes through the hell of modern commercial air transportation understands that there is too much information AND that they—the "system"—is wasting its resources being "democratic" and "even-handed" about evidence gathering. Enough! Profile! There is nothing in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that says profiling is illegal. It could be misused, but so could a slavish, stupid, adherence to false privacy doctrines as well ... as the Detroit/Northwest incident proves!

Obama, get your people to understand that zero defects is possible and mandatory! Fire the jackass who made the decision to bury the Abdulmutalllab intel under "noise." If this happens again, you can kiss off your majorities in Congress and a second term. And woe betide us when that happens!

JB

12/18/09

Originally, the United States Senate was conceived as a counter-balance to the perils of democracy as posed by the United States House of Representatives. Also, originally, the Senate was elected by state legislatures, often from among their own number, thus replacing "representative democracy" with the opportunity to establish an old men's club responsible only to a good-old-boy network and whomever it was that contributed most to their campaigns. Flash forward to the present day and only one thing has changed. We now elect Senators directly, instead of having our state senators and assemblymen do it for us.

I have been trying to think of one thing, just one, that the Senate has done well since I was born. My criteria are that the Senate must have saved us from some exuberance of the House, provided otherwise unavailable wisdom in our national legislature and national polical discourse, or actually hatched a really good idea from among its 100 members and brought that good idea all the way to fruition benefitting the public in such a way as we might most of us understand that we "owe it all" to the Senate.

I cannot.

Just to refresh your memory, the Senate does not originate taxation or other revenue producing bills; the Constitution gives this honor to the House

Section 7.
All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

In fact the Senate is more of a judicial body of supposedly wise solons who act as the court in the case of the House impeaching a federal officer, or by reviewing the qualifications of persons nominated to fill important federal government positions, including the Supreme Court. The Senate also approves or disapproves treaties ... in at least one case removing the U.S. from an international organization that might have avoided WWII (and much else both before and after) had we been a member and counter-acted the short-sightedness of some of the participants.

Lately, the U.S. Senate has become embroiled in a contest between factions which for various reasons do or do not want the federal government to insert itself (further) into the national health care quagmire. Among those who favor legislation that will wrest control of medical care from the insurance companies whose first interest is financial profit are progressives and liberals who noticed that while we were sitting around on our hands the rest of the industrialized world had provided their populations with health care systems that actually work, hold down costs, keep insurance companies at bay, and stimulate private citizens to take responsibility for healthy living.

Those against Health Care Reform either believe that the government should not compete with private industry no matter how poorly private enterprise is doing, or they are owned lock, stock, and barrel by insurance or other medical corporations. This last issue obtains most often in poorer and less populace states where the high cost of getting and staying elected cannot be borne by the citizens of the state, but must be augmented and subvened (and owned) by large donations from corporate donors.

The Senate this week is showing how much further removed it is from its role as wise council in the legislature that the Framers envisioned. Owing to its own rules of engagement and parliamentary procedure, the individual Senators are making a mockery of the few vestiges of democracy intended for that body. The vote of Republicans is being disciplined by the iron laws of blood politics, that is, Republicans are refusing, en masse, to cooperate in any fashion that could later be used to flatter or support the Democratic administration or Democratic majority in Congress. The votes of individual Democrats reveal the depth of servitude these men and women have to their owners and managers in the corporate world, and to a lesser degree the depth of servitude these folks have to obsolete and outdated ideologies.

Nevertheless, economists like Paul Krugman believe that the majority (everyone but the corrupt and the Republicans, who may be seen as ideologically incapable and corrupt) have produced a response to the bill passed by the House that in and of itself provides needed reform ... as bad as it is having left out so many things that a responsible Senate could have produced. Krugman says the rules in the Senate must change, but first pass this bill. I agree. The Senate must reorganize or else. The "else" will be a political revolution through the ballot box or at the point of bayonets. The fact is that we no longer need a Senate as provided for in the Constitution. All they need do is continue to abuse their position and responsibilities further and we, the people, will disabuse them of their chamber, their fatcat sinecures, and their salaries, pensions, and other perquisites of "office." Enough is enough.

JB

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