Some Consequences of the Confederacy

E. M.Armstrong, Sr.'s (partial) letter to Baker W. Armstrong, Dec. 20, 1884

Update below
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been immersed in reading letters written by Tom's great-great grandfather and his family, all of Virginia. Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., had been a prosperous merchant in Romney [now in West Virginia] before the Civil War. His father, William Armstrong, had immigrated to America from Ireland as a young boy, settled in what was then Virginia, and eventually represented Virginia in the U. S. Congress.

In 1861, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr.  was elected a delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1861, a convention in which delegates were to discuss and to vote on whether or not Virginia would secede from the Union. He was among those who voted against seceding from the Union. Both representatives of Hampshire County, Virginia--Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., and David Pugh--voted no. But the Ordinance of Secession eventually passed, and a majority of the citizens of Virginia ratified the vote.

We have no letters of the Armstrong family from before the Civil War or from during the Civil War, so I have little insight into why Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., and several of his sons from his first marriage to Hannah Pancake, decided to fight for the Confederacy. One son, Isaac Armstrong, was mortally wounded in the battle of Gaines Mill; lingering for weeks, he finally succumbed to his wounds. I suspect, though, that like many Southerners who weren't connected to the plantation system, the Armstrongs joined the war out of loyalty to their state, to their region, to a sense of place. That doesn't make the decision right--for the Civil War was about slavery--but it makes the decision more understandable to those of us on the other side of Civil Rights.

After the war and now with children from a second marriage joining those from the first marriage, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., moved to Salem, Virginia. He was never again to be as prosperous as he had been before the War; his last years were spent farming and worrying how to support his family. He also was a board member of the Union Theological Seminary, then associated with Hampden-Sydney College, which today remains one of the few all-male liberal arts colleges.

The letters that Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., wrote his son Baker White Armstrong, the son who moved to Texas and who became my husband's great-grandfather, reveal the man to be kind, generous, loving, and very religious. That he fought for the Confederacy does not make him a bad man; it makes him a misguided man, misguided by the zeitgeist of the plantation economy:  the idea that some people are more equal than others, that some people deserve privileges bestowed on them by an accident of birth and the color of their skin, that some people, by that accident of birth and/or color of skin are providentially destined to be either leaders or laborers. He serves as a reminder of how good people can be persuaded to fight for bad causes--and of how religion can also be used as a tool for a bad cause.

In his letter of October 5, 1883, Edward wrote his son Baker:

I heard a splendid speech from Major Daniel last Monday. He had a full House, and many Re-Adjusters to hear him -- I think it highly probable that this country will gain a democratic majority this fall --Many of the old democrats who were enticed off by re-adjusterism have returned to the democratic fold, [and] others will follow. Mahoneism is a disgrace to our old state, and I can but hope there will be good [and] honest people enough found to throw off the party shackles and redeem the state at the Nov. elections.

The politics behind this letter are murky, the waters muddied by individual expectations and needs and the wider politics of a state that had lost the War. The politics have to do with railroads and debt and government services and the rights of poor whites and blacks freed by the defeat of the South. "Mahone" is William Mahone: he had been a slave owner, he had backed secession, he had been in charge of Virginians who massacred Union Colored Troops, and he moved up the ranks in the Confederate Army to major general. He was also a railroad tycoon, and after the Civil War, he fought to build railroads that would also provide profit for his railroad. Here is where E. M. Armstrong's personal desires probably intersected with politics, for Armstrong had bought land near Salem, hoping to profit from the Norfolk and Western Railroad's building yards, shops and a roundhouse in Salem. This didn't happen, and the family was reduced to what some call "genteel poverty." Perhaps William Mahone's financial success had something to do with E. M. Armstrong's failure to profit from his land acquisition.

During Reconstruction, the Virginia Constitution of 1870 provided suffrage for all men, black and white, over the age of 21, and also instituted state-funded public schools. Later, however, Conservatives used the state's war debt as a way to argue for cutting social services, and thus the access of blacks to education. William Mahone used this argument over debt vs. services as a way to gain political power. He created a biracial coalition of Conservatives and Republicans, and in 1881, was elected to the U. S. Senate. This coalition led by William Mahone was known as the "Readjusters," for its focus on "readusting" the state's war debt downward; this group of uneasy alliances also passed legislation that "abolish[ed] anti-black regulations, establish[ed] Virginia State University, increas[ed] financial support to public institutions, and charter[ed] labor unions." Mahone raised the ire of many Virginia voters, however, by caucusing with the Republicans, and his leadership tended to be autocratic.

A riot in Danville, Virginia, on November 3, 1883, gave Conservative Southern Democrats--the Democrats of the Old South-- the extra fuel they needed to ignite their political campaign to re-take state offices. Some reports describe a scuffle that broke out between some black men and white men after a meeting of prominent white men who were determined to defeat the government of the Readjusters. Other reports describe the riot as having started when black residents failed to give way to white residents on the sidewalks of the town. Whatever the specifics, the riot was obviously the result of the uneasy relationship between white and black citizens, and the repugnant idea of white supremacy. Several people were shot and killed, and the Conservative Democrats used this incident to incite "the fears of white voters."

William Mahone lost the 1884 election to another former Confederate officer, John W. Daniel, the man Edward Armstrong, Sr., had mentioned in his letter of October 1883, to  his son Baker. By the election of 1884, however, Baker W. Armstrong had moved to Bryan, Texas, to seek employment as a druggist with a drug store there. His brother Robert provides the news of the 1884 election, in a letter of November 10, 1884:

"Old Va" I am glad to say went Democratic on last Tuesday, [and] I cannot but hope that Mahone is "done for."

And in a letter written the 20th of December of that same year, E. M. Armstrong, Sr., tells his son Baker:

I wrote to Major Daniel requesting him to send you a copy of his Richmond jollification speech, and, if he could conveniently, his photo which I hope you will receive and appreciate.

And so the experiments in white and black coalition governments in the South came to an end, with the stoking of racial fears. Major John W. Daniel was also to serve as a delegate to Virginia's 1901-1902 Constitutional Convention, the focus of which was to disfranchise African-Americans. Conservative Democrats had campaigned for the convention, touting the need for "electoral reform and better state government," code words then --and even now-- meant to obscure the marginalization of a minority group. But make no mistake--disfranchisement of African-Americans was the convention's main goal:

The main question for the delegates was how to eliminate the black vote without violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Eventually they proposed that under Virginia's new constitution, a man would be eligible to vote if he could satisfy one of the following three requirements: he could read or understand the state constitution; he had paid taxes on property worth at least $333; or he was either a U.S. or Confederate veteran or the son of a veteran. All three conditions were loopholes designed to protect white voters. Further narrowing the pool of possible voters, minimum requirements were set for age, residency, and literacy, and a poll tax requirement was also instituted.[ "Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902", on the web site of the Virginia Historical Society]

To make sure that blacks would not be able to vote on a constitution that would disfranchise them, "the Convention instead took the unusual step of proclaiming it the law of the commonwealth." ["Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902," on the web site of the Virginia Historical Society]

And so are good people manipulated and deceived through fear, personal interest, and a misguided sense of superiority.

Unfortunately, plantation politics continue today, and the myth of the Lost Cause obscures the horrors of slavery, of the debasement of one people to the enrichment of another.

Election "fraud" is still used as an excuse to make voting more restrictive even when the "fraud" is practically non-existent. [See "UFO Sightings are More Common than Voter Fraud," Hamed Aleaziz, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee, Mother Jones, July/August 2012.]

And yesterday the politically-evenly split Virginia state senate pushed through a re-districting map while one of their Democratic colleagues (a civil rights veteran attending the presidential inauguration)  was absent and then afterward adjourned their session on Martin Luther King Day by paying tribute to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Perhaps there is a way to honor "good" men who fight for bad causes. This is not the way: publicly honoring a white man who fought for the enslavement of African-Americans on a holiday established to honor a black man who fought for the political and social freedom of African-Americans. This was also the day our first African-American president was inaugurated for his second term. Anyone who sees such actions as purely accidental and devoid of political motivation is willfully blind or ignorant. [For more juicy details, see: the blog of Blue Virginia, "Breaking: While Dems Distracted by Inauguration, Virgina Senate GOP Stages a Coup," in which Republican state senator Deeds is described as "rambling" on about Stonewall Jackson's love of peaches, lemons, and women.]

The poisonous fruit of the Confederacy continues to blossom. Let's hope that good men and good women are not deceived. The murky waters of politics require an alert and engaged citizenry.


UPDATE:
As one of the readers of this post has noted, although Edward McCarty Armstrong did vote against secession, he eventually did sign the ordinance to secede. The majority of the delegates elected to the convention were Unionists, and the debate'"raged on for months." You can read about that debate on the Encyclopedia Virginia website here: "Virginia Convention of 1861".

Writing for the Encyclopedia Virginia, Nelson D. Lankford describes how the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Fort's surrender and then Lincoln's proclamation "calling for all loyal states to send their militias to put down the Confederate rebellion" swayed many of these southern Unionists to change their vote. They had withstood months of prolonged debate and the fiery rhetoric of secessionists, but in the end:

[t]he tragedy of the Unionist majority in the convention was that, though its members loathed the thought of leaving the United States, in the end they could not countenance fighting against fellow white Southerners. [Lankford, Nelson D. "Virginia Convention of 1861." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 23 Jan. 2013. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 5 Apr. 2011 .]

See a copy of the Ordinance of 1861 here: Virginia's Ordinance of Secession.

Another Death in the "War on Terror"

I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president in November, and I have good reasons to do so. The Democratic ticket more closely represents my ideals, though it isn't perfect. I believe in gay rights; I believe in a woman's right to choose her own birth control and to have low-cost, easy access to methods that prevent pregnancy in the first place. I believe that the wealth gap is widening in our country, that corporations and the rich have too much power. I really think we should have universal healthcare and that the government should be able to negotiate lower drug prices. I believe in a public education that helps its citizens to become critical thinkers. I believe in the separation of church and state. The Republican Party, as it exists today, supports policies that are inimical to  these ideas, and it's largely responsible, through following the rhetorical instructions of people such as Newt Gingrich, in creating the toxic public rhetoric that drives our politics today. In addition, under the presidency of Barack Obama, Republicans have been pig-headedly obstructive in these times of economic crises, putting politics before the good of the country.

That being said, one of my really big disappointments in the Obama administration is its inability to shut down Guantanamo Bay and its continuing many of the war policies of the Bush administration. And I despise the fact that the DOJ hadn't the balls to go after those who approved administration-sanctioned torture in its "war on terror." (How's that working? Has terror disappeared from the face of the earth?) Unfortunately, voting Republican would not create a change here, either. Mitt Romney is being advised by some of the same neo-cons who got us in the war in Iraq with their lies and unbelievable naiveté about how long the war would last, how much the war would cost, and how little the war would impact the very people we were supposed to be liberating. 

My disappointment is magnified by stories such as that of Adnan Latif, who was finally successful this past week in his many attempts to commit suicide in that national disgrace of a prison, Guantanamo Bay. 

Congress, of course, is greatly at fault, too, in abdicating its responsibility to declare war and in allowing the executive branch to accrue more power. And so are we responsible, too, in our silence, in our eager readiness to follow that presidential advice years ago to "go shopping" rather than to deal with the harsh realities of our nation's actions.

Adnan Latif is finally returning home after ten years. . . . in a coffin. I doubt his death has aided the "war on terror." Do you?

Men Love Darkness Rather than Light: Republican Response to Dark Money

Campaign finance reform? Republicans aren't for that anymore. Now that the Supreme Court has armed them with Citizens United and their Wall Street financiers and billionaires are supporting the GOP with millions and millions of dollars, Republicans want to keep citizens in the dark about who is contributing to whom and why. The whole "Obama's enemy's list" talking point is all about that: convince folks that campaign donations should not be public knowledge:

So this is the world conservatives now want to create—unlimited donations, and we’ll never know from whom. That’s the goal. Trying to gin up a blog post into an enemies list is merely a device, a handy way to try to attain the goal. There is no enemies list. There is only, as usual, a lie, and a vast propaganda machine pushing it. [Michael Tomasky, "Stop the 'Obama's Enemies List' GOP Lies," posted 19 June 2012, on The Daily Beast]

some history here: Andy Kroll, "Follow the Dark Money," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

more info here: Alex Seitz-Wald, "GOP Senators: No Disclosure, Please," Salon, posted 19 June 2012.

Grow Up! "Vagina" is not a "bad" word!

Unbelievable.  Michigan House Republicans  "prohibited state Rep. Lisa Brown from speaking on the floor Thursday after she ended a speech Wednesday against a bill restricting abortions by referencing her female anatomy." She used the word vagina.

What? Is the Michigan House full of middle-schoolers who snicker at words that refer to female anatomy?

See the story here: "Lawmaker Barred from Speaking Over 'Vagina' Comment," Detroit News, 14 June 2012, reported by Chad Livengood.

And you can listen to her words here: "Rep. Lisa Brown speaks out against House attack on women's health."

More here:  from the Detroit Free Press

I'm getting really tired of these Neanderthal attitudes towards women's bodies.

Reasons not to Vote Republican, Part 2a: Demonizing the Opposition

Reason #2a: Demonizing the Opposition
I'll talk policy in a later blog. For me, the extreme demonizing of the opposition and the refusal to disavow conspiracy theories get to the emotional heart of my viewing the current Republican Party as a party on the fringe of reason. * [update below]  Now, I understand that there is always going to be a bit of mudslinging in political races. I don't like it, but I get it. People are not truly rational; they are motivated by emotion. Candidates want to move the emotional meter in their favor, so they dredge up anything about the other candidate that might not be too shiny and besmear their opponent's image some more. However, the Republican Party and its advertising allies have taken this besmirching to new lows.  The now iconic Willie Horton ads of of George H.W. Bush's campaign against Michael Dukakis relied upon racial fear for their effectiveness, and that method has been used over and over again in campaigns since then: associate the opposition with some scary figure, with someone or some group that will activate racial or ethnic fears.

When we were living in Georgia (the first time), we witnessed Republican Saxby Chambliss's senate campaign against Democrat Max Cleland, a man who had lost both legs and one arm fighting in Vietnam. Chambliss's ads followed the pattern established by those Willie Horton ads. This time, the scary figure was Osama bin Laden. The personal attack ads began with bin Laden's photo ("scary Muslim"), followed by a photo of Max Cleland. The ads questioned Cleland's courage and leadership and distorted Cleland's voting record on Homeland Security. They also illustrate another tactic that I've seen over and over again in Republican ads: question the patriotism of the Democratic opponent. It was an irony evidently lost on a majority of Georgian voters that Chambliss, who received student and medical deferments to avoid the draft, was questioning the courage of a man whose limbs were blown off while fighting for his country.

Questioning the patriotism of an opponent descended to new lows in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (an ironic title if there ever was one) attack ads on the military career of John Kerry, in the 2000 presidential campaign. While the ads weren't official ads of the Republican Party and were heavily financed by a billionaire known for his financial support of Republican causes, Houston home builder Bob J. Perry, funding was also supplied by President Bush and Tom Delay. And George W. Bush and the Republican Party didn't repudiate the ads, did they? Again, the irony is that the one whose military career raised real questions was George W. Bush, who landed a cushy appointment with the Texas National Guard while John Kerry was fighting in Vietnam. But those attack ads, vicious and untrue as they were, worked: questions about Bush's military career were dropped while Kerry's military career was smeared.

And this is the way Republican campaign ads work: question the patriotism of the opposition, associate the opposition with people who arouse ethnic or racial fears, and label the opposition as "elitist" and "other." Barack Hussein Obama is a Republican campaign advertiser's dream: the Muslim name, the black father, the childhood spent in a foreign country, the Harvard degree. Have a Muslim name? You hate Christians. Not wearing a flag pin in your damn lapel? You hate your country. Have lived in a foreign country (even though as a child and your living situation wasn't of your choosing)? You hate your country. Have an Ivy League degree? You hate your fellow citizens. Have a dark face? You hate whitey.

In 1996, Newt Gingrich compiled a list of emotionally-laden words and provided that list to a conservative Republican group to distribute to Republicans for use in their campaigns. The title of his memo is revealing: "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Controlling whom? You, dear citizens. Us.

"Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party," Gingrich advised:

anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs; betray; bizarre; bosses; bureaucracy; cheat; coercion; 'compassion' is not enough; collapse(ing); consequences; corrupt; corruption; criminal rights; crisis; cynicism; decay; deeper; destroy; destructive; devour; disgrace; endanger; excuses; failure (fail); greed; hypocrisy; ideological; impose; incompetent; insecure; insensitive; intolerant; liberal; lie; limit(s); mandate(s); obsolete; pathetic; patronage; permissive attitude; pessimistic; punish (poor...); radical; red tape; self-serving; selfish; sensationalists; shallow; shame; sick; spend(ing); stagnation; status quo; steal; taxes; they/them; threaten; traitors; unionized; urgent(cy); waste; welfare. [my emphasis]

(Your homework: find a political speech by Newt Gingrich on You-Tube and see how many of these words and their derivatives he uses to describe Democrats or other opponents.)

I'm not advocating abolishing emotive words in campaign speeches. But when someone uses language to distort reality, to manipulate emotions so as to distort the truth, that's a serious problem. Demonizing the opposition (calling them "traitors," labeling them as anti-flag, anti-family, claiming they endanger life and decency) suggests to me an inability or unwillingness to grapple the serious issues of governing a democracy.

Update:
I mis-wrote here, I think, in saying the Republican Party is on the fringe of reason. Republican Party leaders are pandering to the unreasonable fringe within the party (more discussion in a later post) to gain power and are using language effectively to appeal to emotion in order to circumvent reason. Studies in neuroscience are showing us just how much emotion and the use of emotional code words affect our reason. Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, discusses the results of such studies in his book The Political Brain: How We Make up Our Minds Without Using Our Heads. Folks need to be made aware of how they can be manipulated. Emotion AND reason are required to make good decisions (or so I think). A review of Westen's book is here: The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of a Nation, by Richard M. Waugaman.

More on this kind of stuff, if you're interested:

• "Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives," Andrea Kuszewski guest-posting on Chris Mooney's blog The Intersection on the Discover Magazine web site.
• [more to come--got to do some other stuff now]

The Stupid, Stupid Scapegoating of Public Employees

So...evidently Mitt Romney has in this evening's debate of Republican presidential candidates claimed that he would "link pay of public employees to that of private-sector workers." However, as the writers at Think Progress point out, such a claim would actually require RAISING the pay of public employees. According to an article in the Washington Post, Saturday, November 5:

The federal government reported Friday that on average, its employees are underpaid by 26.3 percent compared with similar non-federal jobs, a 'pay gap' that increased by about 2 percentage points over last year while federal salary rates were frozen.

Got that, Mitt Romney, and all the other Republican talkingpoint-bots who like to scapegoat public employees? 

It's all just a diversion tactic--to get people to focus on what's NOT important and to forget what IS: the increasing income gap in this country, the over-weaning power of corporations, and unemployment.

Cynicism Redux

I've been following the debt ceiling debate with growing--and now matured--cynicism. Today, House Minority Leader Harry Reid has evidently offered the Republicans a debt plan that includes $2.7 million in spending cuts, with no new taxes, with the stipulation that the debt ceiling be raised through 2012. (h/t Brian Beutler at TPM). As Matt Yglesias points out, however, the House Republicans don't want to accept this plan that nominally meets their publicly stated requirements because it doesn't repeal Medicare and it doesn't take future tax increases off the table. The Bush tax cuts are supposed to expire in 2012:

In particular, the plan doesn’t cut Medicare, which means that Democratic party candidates for office in November 2012 and 2014 can accurately remind voters of the content of the Republican budget plan. In case you forgot, this plans repeals Medicare. Having repealed Medicare, it then gives seniors vouchers to purchase more expensive private health insurance. And having replaced Medicare with a voucher system, it then ensures that the vouchers will grow steadily stingier over time. It was only after voting for this plan that Republicans seem to have realized that repealing Medicare is unpopular. Since that time, they’ve been trying to entrap Democrats into reaching some kind of Medicare détente with them, which would immunize them from criticism. Reid’s plan doesn’t do that. "Harry Reid Calls House Republicans' Bluff"

Politicians hope that people won't REALLY understand what they're up to: Repealing Medicare is unpopular with the American people, so Republicans have tried to sell their voucher plan. Yet the Republican voucher plan for Medicare will increase costs for old folks and thus result in denial of services. Republicans hope that no one will notice the switcheroo in their plan. (Ca-ching--another coin in the cynicism bank)

And, dang it, those tax cuts are SUPPOSED to expire. Not only that, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "middle-income Americans are now paying federal taxes at or near historically low levels, according to the latest available data. That’s true whether it comes to their federal income taxes or their total federal taxes." "Federal Income Taxes on Middle-Income Families at Historically Low Levels."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also points out just what is responsible for our current debt crisis:

If not for the Bush tax cuts, the deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression (including the cost of policymakers’ actions to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019. The stimulus law and financial rescues will account for less than 10 percent of the debt at that time. "Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits"

And a graph in the New York Times handily compares the results of new budget policies under Bush and Obama, based on data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "Policy Changes Under Two Presidents"--A $5.07 trillion increase under Bush and a $1.44 trillion increase under Obama.

As Steve Benen points out: "And now these same Republicans [who helped turn a large surplus into a massive deficit] claim the high ground on fiscal issues, and demand that President Obama clean up their mess immediately. Worse, they demand he do so in a way they find pleasing, or next week, they’ll crash the economy on purpose." "Blame Where Blame is Due"

Kevin Drum describes the Republican narrative that too many people are buying into:

Up until very recently, Republicans were mostly taking a hard line on the deficit and weren't shy about making sure everyone knew it. The hard line itself hasn't changed since then, but over the past few weeks they've come to realize that it doesn't make for very good PR. So now their enablers in the media are furiously pushing the story that it's really Obama who's completely intransigent and insincere, rejecting deal after deal no matter how much Republicans try to accomodate his crazed desire to punish the rich. This narrative, as near as I can tell, is now virtually unanimous among conservative commenters.

So the question is, will anyone buy this? It's so self-evidently preposterous that it doesn't seem possible, but then, I wouldn't have figured that they could successfully make the world so quickly forget that they were responsible for the deficit in the first place, nor that they were also responsible for the most epic financial meltdown since the Great Depression. But they have. Their ability to shape popular narratives can hardly be underestimated. "Republicans and the Deficit Narrative"

It's amazing to me that anyone still takes these Republicans seriously. Oh, I know that there are conservatives who are speaking out against the rash policies of these radicals, but those folks aren't in power.

It's like a bunch of whiny kids who trashed a house at a party. Another group of kids come in to clean up and have to buy supplies to do so. The ones responsible for the mess then scream about the costs of the clean-up and convince bystanders that the clean-up crew is responsible for all the costs and damages. Unbelievable.

Outrage Fatigue

Reading the news online these days gives me outrage fatigue. Today I got out of bed at 4 a.m. because I couldn't sleep. Now, four hours later, I'm exhausted and would like to stay in bed all day to recover. Here is my day's quota of outrage:

• First up, a list of banking crises and bailouts in Paul Krugman's and Robin Wells' article in The New York Review of Books has me wondering why we can't learn from our mistake of not regulating the banking industry (and larger financial industry) more vigorously: The Busts Keep Getting Bigger. Why?". Clearly, some people have been getting very, very rich through insufficiently regulated speculation and trading, but millions of Americans have suffered because of the greed of a few:

  what we have experienced is, in a very real sense, the triumph of Wall Street and the decline of America...[T]the vast sums of money channeled through Wall Street did not improve America’s productive capacity by “efficiently allocating capital to its best use.” Instead, it diminished the country’s productivity by directing capital on the basis of financial chicanery, outrageous compensation packages, and bubble-infected stock price valuations....And what has happened in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 crisis is still worse: all the evidence suggests that the United States is on track to spending the better part of a decade experiencing high unemployment and sub-par growth blighting millions of lives—particularly the old, the young, and the economically vulnerable.

• Next up, an article about how a law to protect pregnant women from domestic violence is being used to criminalize women who have miscarriages: Ed Pilkington's "Outcry in America as Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Murder Charges," The Guardian, 24 June 2011. Women whose addictions may or may not have caused them to abort are being arrested and charged with murder. And this is in a country where abortion is still--theoretically, at least--legal. Now, I believe in a woman's right to have a legal, safe, medically-arranged abortion, a right that is becoming increasingly difficult to attain in states that are throwing up more and more legal barriers. Personally, I don't think abortion is the right way to practice birth control; I would prefer that women and teenagers have cheap and easy access to birth control. However, the same folks who would refuse abortions to women who seek them (or women who require them for medical reasons) also fight to prevent easy access to birth control. I believe that women have the right to make their own decisions about reproduction, and I'm not really sympathetic to the idea that a bunch of cells can have "rights" from the moment of conception. Yet that seems to be where our current anti-abortion groups are leading us--to a place where women's bodies become their prisons, their fetuses--at whatever stage--their jailors. It's difficult for me not to see misogyny in how this law is being pursued:

  At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.
  
  South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy. (my emphasis)

  Once again, we have a law whose consequences folks just weren't far-sighted enough to imagine.

• Even David Brooks is calling out the Republicans for obstinancy: "The Mother of All No-Brainers," The New York Times, 4 July 2011. Brooks describes the fanatic movement that has taken over the Republican party as unwilling to compromise, "no matter how sweet the terms," as lacking "moral decency," as deniers of facts (refusing to believe scholars and impartial experts), and as unfit to govern. This is DAVID BROOKS, not some lefty. What I don't get is why so many citizens are influenced by these same fanatics. And I found Michael Lind's article "The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Right" useful, too, in understanding my own outrage at today's conservatism--because today's conservatism isn't the conservatism that I grew up with: it's fundamentalism, not Burkean conservatism. And just as I grew more and more outraged as the Southern Baptist Church, the church in which I was born and reared, became more and more fundamentalist, I have become more and more outraged as conservatism has become fundamentalist. And that makes sense. For, as Lind points out, one cannot have a civil discussion with people who think they are always right--and therefore Good--and anyone who disagrees with them is always wrong--and therefore Evil:

  The rise of triple fundamentalism [Protestant fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism, and market fundamentalism] on the American right creates a crisis of political discourse in the United States. Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed. But if your sect alone understands the True Religion and the True Constitution and the Laws of the Market, then there is no point in debate. All those who disagree with you are heretics, to be defeated, whether or not they are converted.

Enough outrage for the day. It's mid-morning; I can still salvage the day.

Protecting the Rich and Powerful

This morning, I read on Salon's website an article titled "The Rich Aren't Like You and Me," by Michael Winship. Winship describes how the rich are getting richer and richer and the poor, poorer and poorer. CEO pay and compensation continues to grow while workers' salaries stagnate. Of 438 companies analyzed:

[a]t 158 of the companies, more was paid to those in charge than was shelled out for outside audit fees. And 32 of them paid more in top salaries than they paid in corporate income taxes. The pay of 2591 executives was up 13.9 percent in 2010. Total, before taxes: $14.3 billion, almost equal to the GDP of Tajikistan, population: more than seven million.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (See also, here) was passed in 2010, in response to the financial crisis, but interested parties have been chipping away at its regulatory power. One of the requirements of the Dodd-Frank would have made transparent the difference between CEO compensation and worker compensation of publicly traded companies: "The Dodd-Frank Act requires publicly traded companies to disclose the median annual total compensation of all employees of the company, the annual total compensation of the CEO, and the ratio comparing those two numbers."

Some folks, however, think that gathering this information is just "too burdensome" for companies and that the money spent gathering that information would best be spent on hiring workers. (Really, how difficult would it be for a company to publish that information in its annual report?) So Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) has sponsored a bill--which has passed in the Committee on Financial Services--to do away with this "burdensome" requirement. Companies, of course, have a vested interest in not making this kind of information easily available to the public--and their own workers. Nan Hayworth also has a vested interest. As Michael Winship points out, Nan Hayworth's official biography

cites 'reducing regulatory burdens on businesses' as one of her top priorities. Among her leading 2010 campaign contributors: leveraged buyout specialists Vestar Capital Partners, distressed debt investors Elliott Management and financial services giant Credit Suisse. Not to mention the anti-taxation Club for Growth.

Businesses, of course, are making profits once again in our stressed economy; workers, however, are not seeing their pay rise accordingly.

So I was curious to see who co-sponsored this bill to lift such a "burdensome" requirement, as outlined in H.R. 1062: Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act. Here are the names: Judy Biggert (R-IL), Francisco Canseco (R-TX), Bob Dold (R-IL), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Michael Grimm (R-NY), Peter King (R-NY), Bill Posey (R-FL).

As Peter Whoriskey reports in his article in the Washington Post, "Business Group: Public Companies Shouldn't have to Compare CEO and Worker Pay":

The committee vote was largely along partisan lines: Twenty-nine Republicans and four Democrats supported repeal; 21 Democrats opposed it.

As income disparity grows in this country, it's interesting to see just who forms alliances to hide that disparity and to protect the rich.

And so it goes.

Additional information:
members of the Committee on Financial Services

Register opposition or support: popvox

Christians and Hatred

Justin Elliot of TPM Muckraker points out today that the guy who showed up with an AK-47 at an event where Barack Obama spoke attends a church where the pastor preaches sermons with titles such as "Why I Hate Barack Obama." In fact, Chris Broughton, the man with the AK-47 and handgun, had heard just that sermon the day before showing up armed. I tried to listen to the entire sermon, but I couldn't stand to hear such hatred. The preacher referred to "the whoredoms and witchcrafts of the U.S. government and Barack Obama" and said that he prays to God that Barack Obama will "die and go to hell."

We might be tempted to wave a hand dismissively and label this pastor as a small feeder on the fringe. But elected Republicans are spouting language that is just as incendiary. Republican Senator John Inofe (Oklahoma) told his constituents, "We're almost reaching a revolution in this country." (h/t Steve Benen, Josh Marshall) He says he doesn't know what's in the health reform bill, won't read it, and will vote against it (in the full splendor of his self-proclaimed stupidity). Representative Michele Bachman (R-MN) wants her constituents to be "armed and dangerous." These people may claim to be using such language "figuratively," they may be punctuating their calls to arms with little moues of self-righteousness, but they are building a fire they will not be able to control.

Oh, for Pete's Sake!

Sometimes the short-sightedness, weirdness, and stupidity of people and organizations leave one sputtering, speechless:

• First up, a story of the Bureau of Prisons, which had at first refused to let a prison inmate read Barack Obama's books, Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope. The bureau's reasoning? "The books contained material 'potentially detrimental to national security,' prison officials said in two separate rejections from August and September." However, in November, the Bureau allowed the man to read the books.
  
  
• Next, another fight is brewing in Texas over curriculum standards for public schools, this time in social studies. Three men appointed by Republicans to a panel to "help guide" the teachers, community representatives, and academics who are charged with writing the standards have complained about the credit given to some civil rights leaders. One of them has "questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure." Another thinks Cesar Chavez "'lacks the stature, impact, and overall contributions of so many others'"--and thus is not as worthy of discussion.
  
  The condescension of these men is captured very well in the tone evangelical minister Peter Marshall adopts toward the inclusion of Anne Hutchinson in the social studies text. (Hutchinson was "a New England pioneer and early advocate of women's rights and religious freedom." She was later invited by Roger Williams to "help establish a colony in what became Rhode Island.") According to Marshall, Hutchinson "does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen" [William Penn, Roger Williams and other early leaders]. Can this short-sidedness and stupidity be topped? Oh, yes, for David Barton, a former vice-president of the Texas Republican Party, "said that because the U.S. is a republic rather than a democracy, the proper adjective for identifying U.S. values and processes should be 'republican' rather than 'democratic.' That means social studies books should discuss 'republican' values in the U.S." (from "Conservatives say Texas Social Studies Classes Give Too Much Credit to Civil Rights Leaders," published in The Dallas Morning News, 9 July 2009, and written by Terrence Stutz)
  
  
• Oh, and, finally, Sarah Palin. I know that she is the darling of certain conservatives, but, please, give me a break. She speaks of responsibility and leadership, yet she resigns her governorship before her term is up--and blames her shortcomings on others: just another person falling back on the politics of victimhood. While I certainly disagree with Peggy Noonan on many issues, I think her criticism of Sarah Palin in The Wall Street Journal is pretty accurate: "In television interviews she [Palin] was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. 'I'm not wired that way,' 'I'm not a quitter,' 'I'm standing up for our values.' I'm, I'm, I'm."
  
  Noonan ends her editorial with a call to arms for the Republican party: "Here's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think." I may lean liberal, but I'm behind you on this one, Peggy.

More on Taxing the Rich

A picture is worth a thousand words and a graph maybe just as much. Steve Benen posts a graph that illustrates how Obama's "taxing the rich" plan compares with tax rates under previous presidents. You won't see this graph on Fox News because it takes the steam out of the hysteria of the right. See it here: "Soaking the Rich (Redux)" and its original post here: "The Thin Line Between Socialism and Capitalist Nirvana." And for more comparisons, read Hilzoy's comments here: "Be Like Reagan and Thatcher! Soak the Rich!"

Republican Hypocrisy

Chuckling over the Republican's complaining about the Obama administration's adding to the national debt with the stimulus package? Wondering how Republicans can still call themselves "fiscal conservatives"? Here's a factoid for your Republican friends who remain firmly entrenched in Fox Fantasy Land: the Bush administration added $5 trillion to the national debt. That's what the Obama administration inherited. Republicans need to stop mewing about the stimulus plan and start acting responsibly to get this nation back on track. Obstinately refusing to act in good faith with the current administration that's now dealing with the after-effects of their atrocious governing is not the way to do that.

Here is George Packer's take on what the Republican-Democratic debate is really about.

And here is Steve Benen's post about Republican behavior.

Update, February 14, 2009: Steve Benen posts on Rush Limbaugh's and Republicans' "rooting for failure" of the Obama administration and of the stimulus package. As Benen points out, Republicans would have screamed "unpatriotic" to anyone who might have openly rooted for failure of the Republican-led government.

"The Voices of the Conservative Movement's Conscience"

It's old news that Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey laid some soft-soap criticism on Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing rose up in anger. Then Phil apologized to Limbaugh. It's a real shame that regional Republican "leaders" such as Gingrey can't buck that loud-mouthed, hate-spewing, "I hope Obama fails" blowhard. Instead, Gingrey posts on his website a letter of love to the likes of Limbaugh, a portion of which Gingrey e-mailed to me in response to an e-mail I sent to him, a response that clearly indicates my e-mail wasn't read. Oh, well, I'm not part of Gingrey's constituency--since I live a couple of counties outside the 11th Congressional District (Paulding, Bartow, Polk, Cobb, Carroll, Haralson, Floyd, and Chattooga counties), a district that, according to the 2000 Census and my quick (and questionable math), is over 78% white. [For ethnic demographics by county, go here: Georgia's Office of Planning and Budget Census Data Program.]

But when the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Gingrich are called the "voices of the conservative movement's conscience," you know morality and truth have reached a new low in the Republican party.

Here is the quote:

Now more than ever, there is a need to articulate a clear conservative message for moving our nation forward. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement's conscience. Everyday, millions and millions of Americans-myself included-turn on their radios and televisions to listen to what they have to say, and we are inspired by their words and by their determination. At the end of the day, every member of the conservative movement, from political commentators and thinkers to elected officials, share an important and common purpose in advancing the cause of liberty, reigning in a bloated federal government, and defending our traditional family values.

"Advancing the cause of liberty"? What about the suspension of habeas corpus under that very Republican rule of the past administration? Or the extensive wire-tapping? Or the use of torture? What a joke!

"Reigning in a bloated federal government"? What government has left us trillions of dollars in debt and in economic crisis?

"Traditional family values"? Is Newt Gingrich the spokesperson for those values? What a hoot!

Haven't had enough? Go to Congressman Phil Gringrey's website and wonder why so many Georgians put guys like this in positions of responsibility: Loves Rush. Oh, and in case you don't know what Old Glory looks like, there's a photo right there on that page, titled "Our Flag." Just another indication of Republican attitude toward U.S. citizens: we're so dim we can't even recognize the flag of the United States unless it's labeled.

Not a Hater

Sarah Palin has long referred to people who do not support her or who actively work against her administration as "haters." She did this as governor of Alaska; she is following this same pattern on the stump as vice-presidential nominee. Everyone else, Democrats, liberals, people who don't live in small towns (most of this country's population is metropolitan) are "other." This kind of rhetoric not only unites the ones who support Palin; it unites those who oppose her politics and her worldview.

In the last presidential debate (if I remember correctly) and in speeches since, John McCain has raised the issue, as if it were something negative, of how much money Barack Obama has spent on political advertising. What McCain hasn't said is that the money is coming from supporters, most of them ordinary Americans such as I. Every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth to rally the faithful, every time she says she loves to visit the "pro-America" parts of the country such as North Carolina, she gets the dander up of all those other citizens who are just as patriotic, who realize that they are being labeled unpatriotic because of their politics or because of where they live. I've given more money to Barack Obama's campaign than I've ever given to another political campaign, and I am just one of those patriotic Americans who feels as if I am being slapped in the face each time someone in the Republican party claims that those who do not adhere to their views are unpatriotic. I betcha there are hundreds of thousands of Americans such as I.

Another example of how the "hater" remarks, the remarks that divide citizens into pro-American and anti-American groups, is generating response from those who feel unfairly labeled or from those who just do not like this recurring theme in our political landscape, is the money that poured into the campaign coffers of Michelle Bachman's political opponent yesterday. Elwyn Tinklenberg, the Democratic opponent for Bachman's Republican seat in Congress, reported that he raised $488,000 in 24 hours and that his campaign headquarters has received unprecedented support since Bachman publicly suggested that members of Congress should be investigated to determine whether they are "pro-American" or "anti-American."

While it's encouraging that people (such as I) are reacting positively to this negative campaign tactic by supporting those who do not employ it, these actions indicate that the tactics are further dividing parts of the electorate. Research shows that when like-minded people hang out together, excluding those with other views, shared views become more radicalized; no opposition is present to voice another view, to induce discussion, to initiate self-examination. So when leaders with strident voices insist that those Americans who adhere to one view are the "true Americans", they are not only rallying the faithful, they are radicalizing the country, pushing those whom they deem "outside" to congregate, to commiserate with one another, to act more strongly in rejecting the unfair labeling.

I am not a "hater," but I despise Sarah Palin's rhetoric and the rhetoric of those like her. I despise her "know-nothing" attitude about the wider world. And I'm worried that the rhetoric is further radicalizing those who vote Democratic and those who vote Republican. We need leaders who can remind us of what we have in common, of the values we share. And the Republican party at this time is woefully unwilling and powerfully unable to provide that kind of leadership. At one time, I would have said that John McCain is the kind of man to provide that leadership, but then he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, he hired campaign managers who promote extremely divisive political tactics, and he hired the very company that the Bush campaign used to slime him in the 2000 presidential race. Long-time acquaintances are appalled by McCain's campaign. "Where is the John McCain we knew?" they ask.

The Republican party is in such disarray that some of the party faithful are abandoning ship. Colin Powell just announced his support of Barack Obama. Christopher Buckley, long-time Republican supporter and son of the late William F. Buckley, has stated his support of Barack Obama.

For the sake of the country, the Republican party needs to re-examine its own values and to eschew the divisive tactics that have brought it power at a tremendous price to democracy. And if the Democrats win this race, they must prove our support was well-founded. However, with the divisiveness already so solidified, the fight for unity will be a hard one.

Update: Now, I don't want to leave the impression that I think that spending an exorbitant amount of money on a political campaign is a good thing. When a very rich person has a lot of disposable money to spend on his or her campaign, this is definitely not a good thing, for the process then eliminates the less rich but equally or better qualified. However, when hundreds of thousands of Americans pour money into one person's campaign, $10 here, $25 there, $100 when he or she can afford it, that's the voice of the people speaking. I wish there were better ways to fund political campaigns in this country--but that's where we are now.

And here is another voice on campaign financing, from Hilzoy, over at Political Animal, The Washington Monthly: "McCain on Obama's Fundraising"

And James Fallows on John McCain and Colin Powell: "Intersecting Arcs: McCain, Powell".

"Wade into the Democrats. Spill Their Blood."

This morning I have been reading of the corruption of the Republican party and its leaders. First, I started with an essay by Thomas Frank, who has a new book out exploring how "the spectacular misrule of the GOP was not an accident." In this book, Frank explores the roles of "Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Newt Gingrich, and the whole troupe of activists, lobbyists, and corpora-trons who got their start back in the Reagan years." Frank's essay discusses some of the issues of his book.

I then read an interview with Frank, in which Frank discusses the conservative youth movement, its connection with the South African apartheid government, and of the International Freedom Foundation's connections with the apartheid government. Frank says:

The funny thing is, the IFF later turned out to be a project of South African military intelligence. For all its constant attacks on the left for being closet tools of the Soviet Union, the conservatives were the ones who were on the payroll of a foreign power -- discreetly, of course. Abramoff and Company were, once again, fighting liberalism for pay. This was pretty big news in South Africa when it came out during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. Not so big here.

From a reader's comment on Frank's essay, I found the link to Bill Moyers' series on the corruption of top Republican leaders and lobbyists. Now, I've read a lot on the Jack Abramoff scandal and of Tom Delay's venality, so much of the information in this series wasn't new to me. However, the details are fascinating, and Moyer's discussion of the money trail is one of the clearest descriptions I've heard.

Watch all four videos and weep over how easily people can be misled. Ralph Reed publicly was against gambling and rallied many evangelical Christians to his side, yet he was taking vast amounts of gambling money from the Louisiana Coushatta Indian tribes' casinos.

Suzil Paynter, director of the Christian Life Commission of the Texas Baptist General Convention, describes in the series how her "heart hurt" when she discovered the duplicity of Ralph Reed. Chris Geeslin, pastor and president of the U. S. Family Network, mourns how:

We were supposed to be presenting this moral value to the country and bringing the country back to God. . . and supporting these programs--and we did some of that--but. . . really, I feel now that was kind of a charade. . . "

Geeslin had discovered where the money came from to support the USFN: Russian oligarchs--and others--seeking Tom Delay's influence. The U. S. Family Network was really a money laundering machine.

Or listen to Michael Scanlon's description of how he, Reed, and Abramoff manipulated religious people, specifically stirring up Texas Christians against gambling, in order to preserve the regional casino-gambling monopoly of the Coushatta tribe:

Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos. The wackos get their information from the Christian Right, Christian radio, the Internet, and telephone trees.

At the end of his series, which can only be seen at 3 p.m. on Sunday afternoons in our area (not a prime viewing hour), Moyers reminds us of what has since happened to some of the key players in these corruption schemes. Jack Abramoff is in jail, and Michael Scanlon "pleaded guilty to charges connected to Abramoff." While Ralph Reed lost an election in Georgia, he "now runs a public relations firm in Atlanta" and "is on the host committee for a John McCain event later this month."

And what about Tom Delay and Grover Norquist, two other compatriots of Jack Abramoff? Ole Tom "has launched a new organization called Coalition for a Conservative Majority. His goal is to organize chapters in 50 states." Grover Norquist is still "busy as a lobbyist in his role as president of Americans for Tax Reform, the organization that funneled money to Ralph Reed."

In the early 1980s, young recruits for College Republicans

were told to memorize a speech from the movie Patton. But for the word "Nazis" they were to substitute the word "Democrats." "Wade into them," the young recruits repeated. "Spill their blood!"

Perhaps thinking they were patriotic, they supported an ideology and its leaders that have just about destroyed our country's credibility and the ideals for which our country has long stood. And created a poisonous political atmosphere in which calls to murder liberals and Democrats no longer seem to be metaphors.

Sources

• Rick Perlstein, "Thomas Frank on the Bush administration: Sabotage by design," an interview with Thomas Franks on Salon, posted Friday, August 8, 2008.
• Thomas Frank, "How conservative greed and corruption destroyed American politics," essay in Salon, posted Friday, August 8, 2008.
• Bill Moyers' Journal, Capitol Crimes, a series on PBS, with video and transcripts at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08012008/watch.html

"One More Good American"

Perhaps it's old news that the U. S. Department of Justice politicized the hiring of career attorneys under the management of Monica Goodling, the DOJ's White House Liaison and Senior Counsel to the Attorney General, but the recently released investigative report on improper hiring procedures puts the story in headlines again today. As the U. S. Dept. of Justice's investigative report describes:

It is not improper to consider political affiliations when hiring for political positions. However, both Department policy and federal law prohibit discrimination in hiring for Department career positions on the basis of political affiliations. (p 12)

The report reminds us once again of the lawlessness of the Bush administration and the political hackery found throughout that administration. As the report indicates, Goodling broke the law in using political affiliation to make decisions on hiring career attorneys. In one instance, Bradley Schlozman, then interim U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, asked for waivers to hire an Assistant U. S. Attorney, and he described some of the candidates in conservative political terms, calling them, "rock-solid Americans." The e-mail interchange between Schlozman, EOUSA Deputy Director John Nowacki, and Monica Goodling indicates that the three equated "Good Americans" with Republicans:

That same day, Nowacki forwarded the three résumés by e-mail to Goodling in the OAG. Later that day, Goodling sent an e-mail to Nowacki saying, “Tell Brad he can hire one more good American.” Shortly thereafter, Nowacki sent an e-mail to Schlozman saying, “You can go ahead and hire one more good American.” Nowacki acknowledged to us that he understood the phrase “good American” to refer to someone with Republican credentials. (p 30)

I am so disgusted with this whole idea that Democrats and liberals are not "rock-solid American" or "Good Americans." This whole idea that one's political affiliation indicates one's true patriotism is downright un-American.

How do we combat this pernicious attitude? It is not only un-American, it undermines the effective workings of our government. Kevin Drum points out how one highly qualified candidate was dismissed because of his wife's political party affiliation! The individual who was subsequently placed in the position was very un-qualified, lacking the counter-terrorism experience required of the position as well as the minimum years' experience as a federal criminal prosecutor.

Oh, just read the whole report and weep! Monica Goodling's political vetting was not an isolated event. Candidates for positions with the Coalition Provision Authority were also vetted politically, and many young and inexperienced people were sent to Iraq unprepared, having met the administration's requirement that they be Republican but knowing little or nothing about the country they were to help lead. The consequences were disastrous. As "one more good American" AND a Democrat, I'm saddened and outraged by this incompetency--and lawlessness.

Why Would You Want to Help Those People?

“Why Would You Want to Help Those People?”

The title of this blog is a quote from former Surgeon General Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who appeared before a Congressional panel on Tuesday of this week. He attributed the quote to administration officials who encouraged him not to attend a Special Olympics event because the Special Olympics have long been associated with a prominent family—the Kennedys.

That quote just about sums up the divisiveness and partisanship of this administration. Promising to be a “uniter,” President Bush has been anything but. A leader sets the tone for a nation, and the tone that this administration has set has been one of division, hostility, and a perverse rejection of reality.

Carmona, a Republican-appointed official, described how the administration had insisted he water down scientific findings in order to protect business or radical Republican ideology. This hostility toward facts has long been a characteristic of the Bush administration. Carmona described how a report on second-hand smoke had been delayed by the administration for years because the report revealed how “even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm” [New York Times, 10 July 2007]. He described attending a meeting with government officials who dismissed global warming as a “liberal cause.” Although scientific reports show that the best sex education includes a discussion of contraceptives, the government again told Carmona not to speak on the subject because of its narrow policy of “abstinence only” sex education.

Again and again, this government has twisted arms to make research reflect its own radical agenda, its own fantasy, its own ideology.

Vice-president Cheney used his power to undercut environmental practices that were supported by scientific research and by the Republican appointees who would enforce those practices. Christine Todd Whitman, Republican appointed Environmental Protection Agency administrator, resigned from her position because of Cheney’s insistence that the agency adopt more pro-industry policies that were detrimental to the environment and to the health of the nation.

What I don’t understand is this: Why would anyone want to vote for those people?

Harris, Gardner. “Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised.” New York Times. 11 July 2007. Online: www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html

Becker, Jo and Barton Gellman. "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Leaving No Tracks." Washington Post. 27 June 2007: A01. Online: blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/