The Lion that Squeaked

Sixteen months into his administration, President Obama has established himself as Wimp-in-Chief.  While he ran on a platform of “change”, the extent of the change has (thankfully) been the return to normalcy from the lunacy of the Cheney/Bush administration.  Those of us who went door-to-door to convince voters to select Mr. Obama expected bold, progressive change.  Instead we got a good leader, but one who could best be categorized as a moderate Republican on the political spectrum.

While incremental progress is being made, many of those baby steps can be easily undone by a more conservative successor.  Real change comes in bold steps like President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, President Truman’s nationalization of the steel industry, and President Nixon’s trip to China.

Take, for example, President Obama’s approach to the economic stimulus package.  While it created thousands of jobs and can be credited for the very slow turnaround in the economy, we are not out of the woods yet.  The stimulus, as passed, has massive tax cuts – not a really great way to close the deficit, and as we learned from the Reagan and Bush administrations, tax cuts do not create jobs.  Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman argues that we need a second stimulus now in order to maintain the recovery – but we haven’t heard anything from the President on this.

Similarly, on Health Care – the President was involved only in the final innings.  Congress managed to squeak through a weak reform package – really a gift to the insurance industry – primarily due to the skills of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Had the President been involved from day one, we might have had real reform, including the much-needed single-payer approach to help contain insurance premium rates.

On other issues such as the closing of Guantanamo and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the President’s proactive leadership has been conspicuous by its absence.  We are already five months past the President’s own goal of closing Gitmo, and DADT could have been quashed with a stroke of the executive pen.  Yes, we are taking small steps to fulfill these promises, but it’s like running a race with your sneakers tied together.  For each of these initiatives, the administration develops lame excuses as to why the pace is so slow.  Yes, the Republic party would go bonkers over a decisive move to fix these problems, but how much cooperation have they provided in the last sixteen months anyway?

Now, the President has another opportunity to make a bold move to do what’s right for America, but he’s blowing it.  Allowing BP to continue fixing the oil rig off the coast of Louisiana and develop a solution for the Niagara of oil that spills into the Gulf every day is just the proverbial fox guarding the hen house.  This time, the excuse is that the Federal Government does not have the equipment and expertise to solve these problems, while BP does.  True, but equipment and expertise will not solve the problem, management of the crisis will.  The President should immediately appropriate the resources of BP America and appoint a board of experts to manage the crisis.  The board should consist of an international panel of oil drilling experts who are not on BP’s payroll as well as environmentalists, academics, and other experts.  They should be funded out of the nationalized BP’s profits and continue operation until the situation in the Gulf is stabilized and a robust cleanup strategy is in place and funded.

Like it or not, from today’s perspective, Obama’s legacy will be defined by the economy, the Iraq war, and the BP disaster.  We’ve only taken tentative steps to address the first two and success has been lacking.  Let’s be bolder in addressing the third.

The Thumb on the Scales of Justice

George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm contains a series of commandments for the denizens of Manor Farm, which eventually boil down to “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." While Orwell’s story was a parable describing the former Soviet Union, this commandment rings true today in the World’s Greatest Democracy.

The Declaration of Independence asserts that it is “self-evident” that “all men are created equal.” But in reality the rich and powerful are clearly “more equal” than others.

A quick on-line search reveals the prison sentences that are given to those convicted here in Burlington County, NJ. Some examples:

• A man convicted of aggravated assault – 7 years.
• A man convicted of harassment – 120 days.
• A man convicted of terroristic threats – 3 years.
• A woman convicted of a drug offense – 71 days.

Without knowing the particulars of these cases, I trust that the criminal justice system worked, these people were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and their sentences are deserved for what they did.

Yet, there is another whole class of citizens whose crimes (or in some cases alleged crimes) are at least as harmful as those described who have not served a single day in prison. The difference? They are part of the “more equal” powerful elite.

The late 1980s was the genesis of government-funded bailouts. At that time, a large number of banking institutions known as Savings and Loans failed due to deregulation of their industry. Among those was an institution known as Silverado Savings and Loan, of which Neil Bush was a director. Neil Bush is the son of the then Vice President, George H.W. Bush. While he denied any culpability, he was involved in approving bad loans to his business partners, and giving loans to himself. Eventually, the bailout of Silverado ended up costing us $1.3 billion. The younger Bush was never indicted on criminal charges, and ended up getting civil charges dropped for a measly (for him) $50,000 in an out of court settlement. Neil Bush never served a day in jail.

Also in the 1980s, Caspar Weinberger was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Defense. He was involved in illegal arms sales during the Iran-Contra affair and was indicted in 1992. Before he could be tried, he was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. Weinberger died in 2006 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, surrounded by genuine heroes. Caspar Weinberger never served a day in jail.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney when both were involved in what is nothing less than a treasonous act – the intentional outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. While never tried for the outing of Plame, Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice and received a 30 month prison sentence. He was immediately pardoned by President George W. Bush. Neither Scooter Libby nor Dick Cheney ever served a day in jail.

Some of the rich and powerful have not been so lucky. Jeffery Skilling of Enron, the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff come to mind. All were convicted, sentenced, and jailed. But for every Madoff, there are dozens of Wall Street criminals who have taken the life savings of common Americans and filled their own coffers with obscene bonuses while crashing the American economy. Not one of the bankers who caused the 2008-2009 near-depression ever served a day in jail.

Today, there is a whole new class of criminals. They are the energy company executives of companies like Massey, BP, Transocean, and Halliburton, whose disdain for worker safety and environmental consequences has caused dozens of worker deaths and untold harm to our environment, not to mention the billions of taxpayer dollars that the next generation of Americans will be paying for the cleanup. Will these executives be brought to justice, or will they just have to incur the pompous wrath of Congressional hearings? If they are tried and convicted, it’s unlikely that President Obama will be as free with the pardon pen as the Bush nobility was, but an environmentally clueless future President Palin might.

Conservative Hypocrisy

Once again, death-penalty-loving right-to-lifers are demonstrating their unending hypocrisy. In an article in today’s New York Times, it was reported that many states are forcing women who are seeking abortions to undergo ultrasound procedures, whether or not these procedures are medically warranted.

It seems odd that the same people who vigorously oppose requiring life-saving health insurance are mandating a medical procedure that in some cases is cruel and unnecessary. Conservatives oppose life-saving health insurance mandates on dubious constitutional grounds, but don’t hesitate to legislate superfluous and unwanted medical tests. Senator Franken was spot on when he remarked that conservatives believe “life begins at conception and ends at birth."

Abortions should be legal, safe, and rare. The conservative agenda works in the exact opposite manner.

Support The Troops

Cross posted at Blue Jersey

Every day of the year, our uniformed military sacrifices life and limb to fulfill the missions that we assign to them. Yet on only one day per year, Memorial Day, do we formally recognize these sacrifices. We do so with parades, flags, speeches, and barbecues. During the rest of the year, we may send care packages and drive around with magnetic yellow ersatz ribbons on our cars, but for the most part unless we have a loved one serving in the war zones, we go about our business and the soldiers are largely forgotten. Despite the fact that we are in the longest war in American history, news from the front is relegated to the back pages – after the headlines about Dancing with the Stars or the sexual proclivities of a politician.

While we say we “support the troops”, do we really? We send them to an ill-conceived war without adequate body armor. We put them unnecessarily in harm’s way by spending millions of dollars on corrupt or incompetent contractors who provide unsafe facilities that electrocute our servicemen and women. We go through eight years of Bush Reaganomics which wrecks the economy, making service in the military not “voluntary” but rather the “employer of last resort” for some. We stretch our troops so thin that they are cruelly redeployed for three, four, and five tours after they have bravely served our nation. We kick out motivated, well-trained, and well-qualified troops simply because of their sexual orientation.

So how can we support the troops this Memorial Day? Certainly we should continue sending care packages and displaying ribbons on our automobiles, whether or not these activities are symbolic or meaningful. More importantly, we need to realize that the nation is at war, and the justification for that war is subject to debate. If it weren’t for vigorous debate and endless protest, the war in Vietnam might have stretched out several more years, killed more Americans, and had the same outcome. It would be a fitting tribute to our troops if, by next Memorial Day, they were all home and the billions of dollars that we are throwing into overseas wars were spent here in America on deficit reduction, jobs, health care, and education for our veterans and for all Americans.

Just Wondering...

...if the reason that President Obama is not using the Army Corps of Engineers and the rest of the military to clean up the mess that BP has created...

...is because our military personnel and equipment are stretched too thin fighting the oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

... just wondering...

Après le Deluge

As soon as the flood of oil started gushing from the remnants of the Deepwater Horizon well, BP started a full court press to control the damage.  Not the damage to the environment, but the damage to their corporate reputation.  They’ve been spending tens of thousands of dollars running full-page advertisements in national print media.  Here’s a handy guide to translate BP’s response into plain English. 

What BP Said (source: BP’s ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/23/10)	How to Interpret
Since the tragic accident on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon rig first occurred, we have been committed to do everything possible to stop the flow of oil at the seabed, collect the oil on the surface, and keep it away from the shore.	The rig was owned by Transocean, but we are helping with the cleanup out of the goodness of our corporate hearts.  But as far as the oil that is not mentioned (the thousands of gallons that are neither on the seabed or the shore), we have no clue on how to clean that up.
BP has taken full responsibility for dealing with the spill.  We are determined to do everything we can to minimize any impact.  We will honor all legitimate claims	We discovered that pointing the finger at Transocean and Halliburton does not work, so f##k ‘em.  We get to determine what a “legitimate” claim is.
This is an enormous team effort.  More than 2,500 of our operational and technical personnel from around the world are working tirelessly in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard and federal, state, and local government agencies.  We are also getting tremendous support from specialists across the industry to resolve an unprecedented set of technical issues.	We are happy that the American taxpayer is footing the bill for our errors.  Clearly, our ability to manage drilling technology is a dismal failure, having ignored safety rules and regulations.  So we’re counting on others to help us get out of this mess.
On the seabed, we are using multiple technologies to reduce the flow of oil and ultimately stop it.  On the surface, hundreds of boats of all sizes, including local fishing fleets, are working together to contain the spill.  Over 4 million gallons of oil/water mixture have been collected.  More than 1.2 million feet of boom have been placed to protect the shore.	The stuff we used to disperse the oil was highly toxic, but at least we are polluting the ocean in a different way.  Reluctantly, we are now using a less-toxic mix to clean up the oil, but we have to buy it from our competitor.
Our efforts along the coast are being organized through 14 staging areas across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, coordinated by three command posts in Houma, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; and St. Petersburg, Florida.	We hope we don’t have to set  up any more in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Delaware, and New Jersey.
But the greatest response of all is from the more than 15,000 people working for BP full-time or as volunteers.  We are also grateful for the dedicated support of the federal, state, and local government officials and emergency responders.  None of this would be possible without the tremendous commitment of these volunteers and officials.	Wow!  Lots of free and taxpayer-funded labor to help us get out of this jam.  Bailouts are great!
We will continue to keep everyone fully informed about the events as they unfold.	We are just another “too big to fail” near-monopoly.  So we’ll take what we can get now, and expect the congressmen on our payroll to look out for our best interests in the future.

Update 5/24/10: BP has refused to obey the order from the EPA to stop using the toxic dispersant. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/23/nation/la-na-oil-spill-20100523

What Do These Three Men Have in Common?

Here's a little quiz for you.  These three people have been in the news over the past several years.  I suspect that they share common views on some issues, and vigorously disagree on others.

Hint: One is a homophobic anti-Semite with ties to Libya.  One is a Saudi prince who allegedly took bribes for an arms deal.  And one is running for Senate from Kentucky.





Scroll down for the answer.

















Answer:  These are the only three people who weaseled out of an appearance on Meet the Press after confirming their participation.