Fed Up With The Founders

 I'm fed up with the freakin' Founding Fathers. Jefferson, Madison... the whole bunch of them. (Well, maybe not Franklin, a refreshingly urbane, diplomatic fellow with a wicked sense of humor, an honest eye for the ladies, and a hat-full of inventions to his credit.)

More precisely, I'm fed up with listening to the right wing call upon the Founders to support every single one of their poorly-conceived opinions and policies, bar none. Why all this kissing of the Founding asses?

Taxes? Whoa-ho-ho - the Founders wouldn't want any kind of taxes. (Oops, forgot about Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises...)

Deficits? Shiver me Founders... they loved a balanced budget, although they started the country off in severely debilitating debt. (Back in 1789, James Jackson, Revolutionary War hero and Senator of Georgia, said something about the debt with a familiar ring to us today: "It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the Sovereign authority, until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring.")

States rights? Oh boy oh boy, the Founders wanted the states to be little countries practically! Scarcely.

Women? Founders liked theirs in the kitchen or out back of the slave quarters. Oh, and that little suffrage problem...

Spare the Founder, spoil the child!

The most predictable thing about the radical right is that they are always gassed off about something. 

Then, failing to formulate any useful solutions to pressing 21st century problems, the right wing buses in the Fabulous Founders, powdered wigs, waist coats and all, as if they were some sort of Oldies pop act.

But the right allows the Founders to bring onstage only small snippets of their original compositions - Founding sound bites, one might say - without ever letting the whole song play through.

The right clamors for what they consider the Fabulous Founders' greatest hit, "Let Me Tell You 'Bout the 2nd Amendment, Bro."  Only problem is... they want the Founders to start singing the lyrics half way through, skipping over the "Well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." part of the song.

The right also tends to forget the "Free Bird" of the Fabulous Founders: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

All that intent stuff is sooo confusing, I'm feeling woozy myself. Plus there's that creepy word the secessionists, interpositionists, and nullifiers all hate: "Union." Directly up front in the Rockin' Preamble lyrics. 

The Fabulous Founders didn't write "a bunch o' loosely-connected, small-time political entities enabled to reject majority wishes at whim." Hard to find a melody that goes with that, anyway.

And what's all this about Posterity? Seems clear the Founders meant forever and ever - one nation kept together for all generations that follow. General Welfare? A wild guess here, but that means everybody's welfare. Hey, these aren't the lyrics to Louie, Louie. The Fabulous Founders didn't slur their words.

Finally, at the right wing revival concerts, they shout out for an encore: Play the "Powers of States," you Federalist devils!

That would be the radical right's touchstone tune - the 10th Amendment. It reads: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. 

Hard to sing along with, let alone dance to, but it gets the fundamentalist right wing toes tapping. What can it mean? What's that strange syncopated beat? The right would have us believe that it means that anything that is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution is forbidden, an absurdist reduction if there ever was one. 

This issue was firmly settled by the refusal of both Houses of Congress to insert the word ''expressly'' before the word ''delegated,'' and was re-affirmed in United States v. Darby, 1941, which says in the majority opinion,''The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered."

But popular song lyrics - even of classics - have long been misheard, and certainly consistently misinterpreted: 

The Beatles: "Michelle ma belle, some say monkeys play piano well, play piano well.."

There are other Oldies groups waiting to perform. The Flaming Whigs, Rocky and The Robber Barons, The New Frontiersmen, The Half-Dead Reaganites.

Nevertheless, the Fabulous Founders linger at the bash... Love your act, guys. Now get out of here. It's 2010. 

...

Maternal and Infant Mortality: The Bitter Fruit of Right Wing Resistance To Health Care Reform

When I started this blog, before I went astray, I hoped to continually point out the connection between virulent right wing policies and (often tragic) outcomes among people. As they say, back to the roots.

Amnesty International has issued a report - Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the U.S.A. - showing that the maternal death rate during and immediately after giving birth in the United States has doubled in the last 20 years. (On the local level, New York State ranks 47th of 50 states on the negative side of this troubling statistic.) In 1987, the rate was 6.6 maternal deaths per 100,000 births. Today it is close to 14 per 100,000.

The likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the USA is five times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain. Greece has the lowest rate at 1 death per 100,000 births, a number that probably represents an absolute achievement. Many things may be wrong with Greece economically at the moment; this isn't one of them.

The United States ranks 40th in the world in this category in spite of the fact that we spend more on health care than any other country. Women in America suffer 2 to 3 deaths per DAY while giving birth, or about 9,000 deaths per year. Another 34,000 experience what Amnesty calls "near misses," meaning that new mothers come close to dying during the birth and immediate postpartum period.

African-American women are nearly four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. This disparity has not improved in more than 27 years.

As bad, according to the U.S. census, the infant mortality rate here is 630 per 100,000 births (6.3 per 1,000). Even more shockingly, the District of Columbia's rate is 14 deaths per 1,000 births. Right in the shadow of the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court.

A few things that Health Care Reform was designed to address? Prenatal care, nutrition, prevention, and pre-existing conditions. Additional access to mental health and drug and alcohol addiction services is also built in.

Of course, the right wing, in its infinite wisdom, in its cynical pomposity, in its reckless disregard of the lives of actual living human beings as opposed to fetuses - potential but not actual human beings - made sure that provisions for abortion at any stage of gestation were deprived of funding. And funding for birth control for minors is severely restricted. (In fact only half of the states currently have options for free birth control, and under the new legislation states will still have a "veto" over providing free birth control and even birth control information to minors without parental consent.)

How many deaths are attributable to such restrictions?

We know that the younger a female is the more likely it is that she and/or her baby will have complications. (We also know that there is another set of risks for women over 40.) Women and girls under 20 account for about 8% of all births in the United States. These 8% of births account for about 38% of all maternal and infant deaths at or shortly after delivery.

Impoverished women account for about 61% of such deaths.

We hope that better prenatal care and nutrition will help to some degree.

Free access to birth control and early and mid-term abortions, however, is crucial to saving the lives of these women and girls, and would save the lives of those babies being born in less than dangerous circumstances.

This can only be blamed on the fanatical religious right wing who insist on enshrining their rigid beliefs on an altar upon which drips the blood of thousands of young, poor women and their new babies. An ounce of prevention...

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”
                     - Martin Luther King

The Supreme Court, Religion, and Ideology

Deconstructionists would have a field day with the current composition of the Supreme Court vis a vis religious affiliation. The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens focuses the spotlight on the quirkiness of religion and the Court, and on deep-seated prejudices still at large in the land.

For most of its history the Court was dominated by white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, although as early as 1777 there were Catholics, Roger Taney being the first. Lewis Brandeis became the first Jewish Justice in 1916.

Today, Justice Stevens is the lone Protestant member. There are currently 6 Catholic and 2 Jewish members.

Conspicuous by their absences are Atheists/Agnostics/Non-Religious, Muslims, Mormons, Pentecostals, Orthodox Catholics, Baptists, and Buddhists.

The Non-Religious population in the United States (atheists, agnostics) number between 28 and 34 million people, more than all other non-Christian groups combined, and more than any other single group except Catholics and Baptists (57 million and 36 million respectively). Many experts claim the number of affirmed Non-Religious is much higher than surveys allow, since in many regions there is still a stigma attached to declaring "I don't believe in god."

There are between 5 and 7 million Muslims in the United States (figures estimated by US News & World Report and Council on American-Islamic Relations). This is about the same number as Jewish people in the country.

There are about 3 million Mormons, 6 million Pentecostals, 2 million Greek and Eastern (Russian, Ukrainian etc.) Orthodox, and 2 million Buddhists.

It is difficult to discern whether or not theology bears on decision-making on the bench. There are, for instance, 4 radically ultra-conservative Catholics, one moderate, and one liberal Catholic serving now. In general, Catholics, like Baptists, are anti-choice.

Jews have been very liberal historically.

The Non-Religious population according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) identifies almost universally with liberal political ideals.

What are the odds that a non-Catholic, non-Jew, non-Protestant will be nominated and appointed? What are the (longer) odds that a Non-Religious/Atheist/Agnostic will be appointed?

No need to dial (702) L-A-S-V-E-G-A-S. The chances are slim to none that any of those 50 million plus Americans falling outside the Catholic-Protestant-Jewish pale will ever be called, let alone chosen.

THE TRUE ENEMIES OF AMERICA - PART ONE

The radical right wing believes it is legitimately patriotic and pro-American. In fact, they are against the real American way of life. Up and down. On all levels. Here are a few of their leaders depicted in future roles were they ever to gain power. Funny... but scary. 
Limbaugh, Hannity, Bachmann, Beck, Perry, Coulter

Massey Energy's "Corporate Social Responsibility Report" To Its "Stakeholders" and The Reality

First, the corporate statement, followed by the reality.

We are committed to doing our best – and then learning and working to do even better.

On behalf of all Massey Energy members, we are proud to present our first Corporate Social Responsibility Report, providing an overview of our long-standing tradition of stewardship of our most important resources: Our people and our planet.

For more than 50 years, Massey has focused on what we do best – safely and efficiently mining coal in the heart of Central Appalachia and supplying it to our customers.

At Massey, we are committed to protecting our people, protecting our planet and serving our community – doing our best and then learning and working to do even better. Our greatest asset, our nearly 5,600 Massey members, are focused on these corporate commitments.

Doing what is right: Everything we do as a company – the equipment we buy, the training we provide, the technologies we deploy and the careful steps we take to protect the environment – is all based upon a long-term perspective of focusing on the fundamentals of our mining operation and sound, ethical business practices. This is not always easy; it takes time, dedication and financial investment, but we believe it is the right approach for our company and the future.

Safety is the top priority for every Massey member. No coal company can succeed over the long term without a total commitment to safety and a significant investment in the necessary training, equipment and personnel. We strive to remain an industry leader in safety by developing new technologies and employing effective training programs to reduce accidents and improve safety for all of the hard-working men and women of Massey Energy.

All mining operations adhere to stringent safety standards intended to prevent accidents. We work hard to instill a zero-tolerance policy and commitment from all members, whether they work at corporate headquarters or in the mines, to make safety the number one priority – every day.

The Reality:

On January 19, 2006 a belt line fire killed miners Don I. Bragg, 33, and Ellery Elvis Hatfield, 47, at Massey's Aracoma Alma Number 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. Efforts to fight the fire were hampered by inadequate fire extinguishers, fire house couplings which did not match the water line, and a lack of water in the lines. On December 22, 2008 Massey Energy agreed to pay $4.2 million in civil and criminal penalties for the accident. It is the largest financial settlement in the coal industry's history.

On Jan. 15, 2009 the Charleston (WV) Gazette reported that Aracoma widows Delorice Bragg and Freda Hatfield urged U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver to reject Massey's plea bargain and fine for the accident. Widow Bragg stated that it was clear "that Massey executives much farther up the line expected the Alma Mine to emphasize production over the safety of the coal miners inside."

On February 1, 2006, bulldozer operator Paul K. Moss, 58, of Sissonville, West Virginia died when his machine ruptured a natural gas line at Elk Run Coal Co.'s Black Castle surface mine. The bulldozer was immediately engulfed in flames according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Operator Moss exited the cab but his body was found behind the blade.

On Oct 8, 2008 Steven Cain, 32, of Comfort, West Virginia was killed at Massey Energy's Independence Coal Justice No. 1 Mine when he was crushed by a rail car. The MSHA report concludes Cain was killed because Massey managers assigned him a dangerous job, although he had “little mining experience and minimal training.”

In January 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered Massey to pay fines totaling $30 million as part of an agreement resulting from a May 2007 complaint filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency‎.

In early 2008, the company agreed to a $20 million settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) to resolve thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act for routinely polluting waterways in Kentucky and West Virginia with coal slurry and waste water. Although this was the largest Clean Water Act settlement, the violations were estimated to have fines on the order of $2.4 billion. 

Over 700 miles of rivers and streams in the coalfields have been buried by the waste rock left over from mountaintop removal, a method of strip mining coal which requires the blowing up of mountain tops, removing from 500 to of mountaintop in the process. 

In October 2000, a Massey Energy subsidiary in Martin County, Kentucky accidentally released 306 million gallons of coal slurry waste from an impoundment into two mountain streams, Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek. The Martin County Sludge Spill was an accident that occurred after midnight on October 11, 2000 when the bottom of a coal sludge impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky, USA, broke into an abandoned underground mine below.

It was called the worst ever environmental disaster in the southeastern United States by the EPA. The spill smothered all aquatic life in the streams and left residents with contaminated drinking water. Cleanup costs for the spill were approximately $50 million. 

My Union Bona Fides

My experience as a union worker was mostly positive, although the work was grueling and the bosses on my construction sites were as demon-possessed as any bosses ever to walk the face of the planet. Time indeed was money.

I was in the local Laborers Union of the AFL-CIO. The years were 1968, '69 and '70. My primary job the first year and a half was hand-digging ditches, trenches, channels and squares, and scraping foundation holes to within 1/128th of an inch so footings and piers could be sited and poured. My secondary job was to break down the forms made up of wide planks that the concrete for the footings and piers were poured into. That lumber was then cleaned of 60d nails (think crucifixion size nails) and re-stacked for re-use. My third job was generally to clean up the various staging yards and fetch just about anything the skilled labor guys wanted at Mach 2 speed. My fourth job was to take uncensored verbal abuse as one of the "rabbits," the young, mostly college kids who held these summer jobs.

Dozens of my contemporaries held well-paying blue-collar summer jobs in those days. They worked building roads, in small steel mills, as meat cutters in slaughterhouses, in factories that made grinding wheels as big as a house and as small as an eyelash brush. Some painted houses, some put in sidewalks, some drove truck, some did tree work for the county.

Aside from playing into our romantic self-conceptions - we were all in our minds "On The Road" just like Kerouac, Neal Cassady, or even Tom Joad - we earned damned good money, money that could almost pay for a full year of college, plus spending cash, in that era.

I was part of a crew that lived in a motel that was astronaut themed. It was sweaty, nasty, back-breaking work building the Stony Brook University Campus near Port Jefferson on Long Island: dormitories, a library, and two administration buildings. But...

The "rabbits" earned - get ready - $7.14 per hour for straight time. We earned double time - $14.28 an hour for overtime, and $21.42 an hour for any time we put in before 7:30 AM and after 6 PM. Great money for an unskilled man supporting a family in those days, a king's ransom for a college kid. I averaged about $475 per week before deductions over the course of 8 to 10 weeks.

Breaks were union regulated. Twenty minutes for every two hours worked. Forty-five minutes for lunch on top of that. If you worked before 7:30 AM or after 6 PM, the construction outfit bought your meals.

The shop steward made rounds constantly on a little traffic cop scooter. If you were looking a little peaked in the July sun, he'd blow a whistle, point to you and shout out "water," and his "boy," about 14 years old, would run a big tin can of ice water to you. The steward watched you drink it, then rub the ice cubes over your neck, arms and chest. After a stopwatch-timed 5 minutes he blew the whistle, and shouted "work on." And back to work you went.

After a summer and a half of that, I was chosen to learn surveying, the assumption being that someone in college had a strong sense of geometry. What a relief! A little higher pay and almost no shoveling. I started holding the sticks (surveying rods) and eventually did the triple check, peering through the transit level and siting up the sticks after the chief surveyor-engineer had done it twice himself. All the figures had to be spot on each other through each of the three readings. One bad set of numbers and you started all over.

Transit levels - now called theodolites - are very accurate. They measure long lines in fractions of minutes of an angle. At a distance of one mile, one minute of angle covers about 1.5 feet. At a distance of one mile, one-tenth of a second of angle covers about 0.003 feet. Our buildings were 200 to 250 feet on a side, so we would be accurate to .000105 feet. Some serious measuring and squaring up. Of course this is absolutely necessary because if an angle starts slightly out of true, by the time you travel 250 feet it is wayyyyy out of true. The parallelogram effect.

The digging, scraping, trenching, and lumber cleaning gave me an animal appreciation for a 6,800 calorie a day diet. (One which, given the level of physical exertion, allowed me to lose 14 pound over the summer.)

The surveying gave me an abiding reverence for the building of the pyramids and the Roman aqueducts.

The quashing of unions in the last 30 years is a terrible, terrible thing for our country. In another generation we will know the full meaning of this almost cosmic blunder. Meanwhile,

Raise your glass to the hard working people

Let's drink to the uncounted heads

Let's think of the wavering millions

Who need leading but get gamblers instead...

      - Jagger/Richards

Virginia's Confederate History and Slavery Glorification Month Proclamation

 The Governor of Virginia's Racist Proclaimation (link)

I made a valiant effort to stop fuming and foaming over the callous, despicable political move by Bob McDonnell, Governor of Virginia. This is a direct affront to all people of color, indeed all people, in his state and our country. It is a further affront to the truly brave people who fought to preserve the Union and dismantle the repugnant institution of slavery.

I urge you to write to McDonnell and explain the revulsion we should all feel at such a proclamation. Here is the "contact the governor" page link, and here is what I wrote to this loathsome human being:

Dear Governor:

We are thinking here in New York of proclaiming a Traitorous Actions of the Confederate Fiends Month. This would include informing our local school children and others of how a group of hideously immoral people wantonly attacked their elected government, killed hundred of thousands of people needlessly - all in order to keep millions of human beings in permanent bondage. 

There is no glory in what the soldiers of the South did. Their heroism was misguided. Their memory is forever tarnished. They brought destruction and disgrace upon their homes and families fighting for an ugly, inhuman cause. You forever have associated yourself with the worst in the human spirit. I am sending today a check for $100 to the Virginia Democratic Party to help begin the process of removing you from office in the fastest legal way possible. I will also urge every acquaintance, friend and relative I have never to spend a nickel in Virginia until this racist declaration is reversed. What an awful thing for you to have done.You should be ashamed of yourself.
 ...

Coal, Death, and Unions

 We know that coal is not an unequivocal good for our country or world, the way it is mined and burned now. Nor are unions an undiluted good for either their workers or the overall economy.

Coal is with us, however, for better or worse, workers are with us, and unions are still the best way yet to be conceived to protect working people's health, safety, security and wages.

The United Mine Workers Union has squandered its patrimony by not standing up more firmly to the mining companies. Is it better to die in a pit 500 feet in the ground like trapped rats burned and gassed to death, or to stand up and organize, resist and if necessary shed blood for what is fair and right? UMW: look to your history for inspiration.

The tragedy that is unfolding in the Massey Energy Company's Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, dramatizes what happens at a non-union facility when the diabolical neglect of a mining company and government indifference intersect.

Upper Big Branch was fined three times in March alone because of dangerous methane and CO2 levels. Workers have to report problems to authorities anonymously because the Massey Energy Company, the largest mining company in central Appalachia, has bitterly resisted unionization and persecutes any worker who speaks out on crucial issues. Federal and state governments are reactive rather than pro-active concerning safety issues and are essentially AWOL when it comes to environmental damage until the evidence is sickeningly overwhelming. Prevention is worth - oh, a few million pounds of cure.

In 2008 Massey paid a $20 million fine to the EPA for violating water pollution permit limits at its mines and plants 4,520 times between January 2000 and December 2006. Massey had polluted and clogged hundreds of streams and rivers in Kentucky and West Virginia by releasing countless thousands of tons of metals, sediments and acid mine drainage into those states' waterways. It took 8 years from the first incident to the moment the fine was leveled.

Massey is a company hell-bent on creating environmental and human disasters. Massey CEO Don Blankenship is unapologetic: “Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process,” he said. (Translation: we know there are laws but we don't care and violate them anyway because our profits are more important than people or the environment.)

Due primarily to Blankenship's efforts, only one-quarter of mine workers in Appalachian states are unionized, down from 95% less than 30 years ago. This has bred more environmental and human catastrophe at a time when, in fact, more and better safety technologies than ever before are available.

In addition, Blankenship has laid out a plot to pollute West Virginia's political process with campaign contributions that dwarf anything honest opponents can muster. When Massey lost a $50 million dollar jury award to another company that Massey had forced out of business, Blankenship set to work to dismantle plaintiff-friendly courts in West Virginia.

In 2004 Blankenship gave $3.5 million to back the successful candidacy of obscure Republican Brent Benjamin for a seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court. That's how important putting morally corrupt judges in place is to Massey. (Blankenship’s gargantuan contribution inspired the U.S. Supreme Court to order Benjamin to step down from an appeal involving Massey.)

All this in a state that consistently ranks 48th or 49th in per capita GDP nationally. (Per capita income for all West Virginians is around $30K. Blankenship's personal income is approximately $34 million per year, 1100 times larger than the average. Is it any wonder he's padding the pockets of friendly, right wing politicians?)

Do you hear that desperate sound coming from underground? It's the extremist right leaning madness that's taken a deat hold on one of our poorest states, which happens also to be our most environmentally damaged state.

The United Mine Workers Union needs to look to its militant roots and stop serving as the facilitator for Blankenship and others like him. The UMW membership needs to stop sitting on their hands and raise their fists in the air.
...

Say It With Eggs

At the height of the Health Care Reform rhubarb three weeks back, mellowed-out extremist Pat Bucchanan seized center stage on MSNBC and ranted that during Richard Nixon's second inaugural parade, left wing protestors actually threw eggs at the President's motorcade. The President! Can you imagine?

Never mind that this occurred 37 years ago, and never mind that Nixon was the most fiendish person to ever hold the White House. Never mind the secret war in Cambodia, the politically motivated crack down on anti-war protestors, the enemies list, and a paranoiac hatred of the left stretching back to the 1940s. Bucchanan was still outraged.

The wily old propagandist was conflating the appropriateness of the irresponsible right wing's egging members of Congress today over health care legislation with tossing eggs at a president who kept a mile-long enemies list, broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Watergate, and would leave office in the foul wake of corruption a year and a half later.

*       *      *

My first personal experience with egg throwing as a social statement came in 1961 in my town in the New York suburbs where lived a crotchety man - let's call him Mr. Potter - whose house was guarded round by high thick hedges. His property also adjoined a local empty field where we played baseball.

We hit many baseballs into Potter's yard: never did one come back and never were we allowed to fetch them. This was a major hit to the local children's economy. Balls cost $1 at the time while a weekly allowance might be 10 or 15 cents (if you got one at all). A strategy was devised.

The night before Halloween, 10 of us, the Raw Egg Avengers, were in a dark place literally and figuratively. (The Egg Partiers?)

At exactly 8:30 we struck with coordinated fury then melted into the chill October night. The sound of eggs pelting against the tyrant's house was very satisfying. The next day the local paper had an item in the "Police Blotter." (I kid you not.)

"Vandals!" it said. We were vandals. Well, we knew better as to whom the real vandal was in this case. A thief. A Blue Meanie. A child-hating, anti-baseball zealot.

Long and short of it is that after a few more well-timed eggings, eventually the baseballs came rolling back through Mr. Potter's hedge, competing interests having arrived at an unwritten, mutual settlement.

We had a simple, direct grievance and confronted it with simple, direct action, then stopped. And we were pre-teens not given to deep political contemplation. 

But today's right wing, which is vulgar, uninformed, and basically inchoate in its purpose, is throwing eggs (and racial and anti-Gay epithets) for what seems like no better reason than that they despise government, all government. Their government. One where anyone over 18 may vote. One where anyone may organize, lobby, petition, etc.

Most of the reactionary Tea Partiers have no idea at all what is really in the health reform bill. They just know they don't like it.

Because it comes from government... a duly elected government that happens not to be involved in anti-Constitutional activities and genocide as was the Nixon Administration. (3 to 4 million North and South Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians were killed as a direct result of the war.)

One can believe that health reform is misguided or it grows government too large. But, let's be serious: it doesn't fall into the column of "evil," or "clear and present danger" to the Republic. The extremists are being dishonest with themselves and the nation.

*       *      *

I confess that on a cold January 20th in 1973, I was among the egg-throwers on Pennsylvania Avenue and centered one up on then-Attorney General Richard Kleindienst's head just above the ear. I perched upon the base of a street light pole as my girlfriend handed me the eggs one at a time. I delighted as my friends - and you know who you are - caused the Secret Service to scramble in order to block the incoming eggs headed for Nixon.

Ten months later, Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, one of the most illustrious of the 20th century's Know-Nothings, resigned because he had been caught taking bribes, laundering money, and evading income taxes. Worth an egg or two? I say at least a dozen ostrich eggs were in order.

By August of '74, Nixon, too, because of Watergate, would resign in shame, the only President in U.S. history to do so.

His right wing sympathizing successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned Nixon. Nixon would later say he was hounded out of office by the "eastern political establishment" and leftists in the media.

I like to think we just egged him on to quit.

...

Red State-Blue State: The Visceral Vs. The Cerebral

At least since the early 1950s, the right has proudly painted the left with a brush labeled "too intellectual to be American." 

Conservative press pinned the word "egghead" on Adlai Stevenson, mocking not only Stevenson's intellectual bent, but his balding pate. (Ironically, this label was more or less coined by columnist Joseph Alsop, a graduate of the Groton school and Harvard University.)

Eventually, Stevenson's true mettle would become apparent when, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, he bull-whipped Soviet UN representative Valerian Zorin in front of the Security Council and the whole world regarding the presence of the rockets. 

Almost exactly one year later Stevenson was spat on by anti-UN protesters in Dallas, a month before JFK was assassinated there. Stevenson said something very telling: "I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school." 

Notably, and in contrast to the likes of Michelle Bachmann and Eric Kantor's reactions to the disgusting behavior of fellow extremist travelers in their party, politicians on both sides of the aisle condemned the spitting and epithets that flew around Dallas. (Click here for Time Magazine article, November 1, 1963)

A few years later, as Richard Nixon began fighting it out with Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election of 1968, Nixon's VP candidate, Spiro Agnew, began using monickers for Democrats such as "pointy heads." 

This was a path Agnew would stay on, even through one of the most serious challenges to our constitutional system a few years later, Watergate: "Nattering nabobs of negativism," "Effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals," "the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history," and so many more, many of them created by that now-kindly old right wing fanatic you so often see on MSNBC, Pat Bucchanan. A graduate of of Georgetown University and Columbia University, one can see how grotesquely cynical Bucchanan's anti-intellectualism has been.

Ronald Reagan picked up the "proud to be a dumb bell" banner for the right wing when he declared, among other pithy statements, that "Facts are stupid things," "A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?" and in the best Orwellian tradition, "There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right."

So, the right wing lurches forward on the strength of the conviction in its own intellectual failures. Yet... yet... this seems to have an almost perpetual attraction for roughly 25% of Americans.

Why? Because it is visceral. Someone can feel angry, feel put upon, feel over-taxed, feel as if the person of color has jumped over him unjustly, feel that women get preferential treatment over men, feel fear, feel they played by the rules when others gamed the system. Reality often has nothing to do with feelings.

It's red meat for the spiritually lost and politically hungry. It's comfort for those who haven't been able to lay down their hatreds. It's balm for those who fear modernity. It's a bed for those who don't want to re-train for re-employment.

It's the classic "I and Thou" set up. The right wing is playing it like a fine old fiddle.

"I am authentic," the internal song runs. "While you are somehow cheating me through your complicated, educated, inscrutable, urbanized ways."  Indeed: didn't we see Wall Street do that to virtually the entire world?

So, what is the liberal's "red meat?" 

In a word, at this moment, I say it's "celebration." Perhaps not a word one associates with uncertain economic times while two wars are being prosecuted overseas. But it's the right word right now. 

Why do we take such great delight in Joe Biden's F-bomb at the presidential lectern? He was celebrating. Celebrating the way everyone does when our team wins the World Series, or when we pull down a big contract or buy a new car. When our kids are born. When we get married to the person of our choice. When our kids graduate. When we get a little bigger bonus. When we let loose at a concert. When we got our groove on.

Biden's reaction was natural, humorous, non-decorous, authentic. 

So why aren't we happier? Why aren't we celebrating? Why are we sitting back while the Party of I-Don't-Know keeps grabbing headlines? 

Because we are the party of the cerebral, the carefully measured. We have been since the raucous, contentious spirit of the 1960s came in for a crash landing. Good boys and girls don't dance on anyone's grave. They don't get drunk and howl at the moon.

When you look back at the mass peace rallies of 40 years ago, the speeches of Reverend King, Bobby Kennedy, the crazily exuberant Hubert Humphrey, or even the besieged LBJ, you see the passion of the era. You immediately grasp what we have lost. 

We traded soul for the cerebral. We traded the fire down below for what is above the shoulders. We continue to think that the right will somehow play nice. They haven't ever, they aren't, and they won't. Dismiss the notion from your mind. Purge it from your gut.

Have you seen ONE demonstration against a Senator or Representative who voted against health care reform? Nope, not one. Pathetic. The right votes to perpetuate illness and death, we vote to promote health and well-being, and we can't muster one supporting gesture on the grass roots level?

Joe Biden said "This is a big fucking deal," but I'm not sure any of us really get it.

Hedge Fund Managers and Social Justice

 Says Plutocracy: There's no growling. Your burden is no 

heavier than mine. Look at the taxes I am carrying.

Good Friday. A time to ponder morality, social justice, sacrifice and the very large questions.

We read yesterday that the top 25 hedge fund managers averaged $1 billion each in income last year. Let us begrudge no one being smart or lucky. However, let us begrudge their not paying the appropriate amount of America's tax burden.

The inequity goes beyond those top 25, who neither make a product, innovate new technologies, or provide some strategic service to society. 

Ponder this: The nation’s richest 270,000 Americans make as much money as the bottom 160 million. Of course, this trend has greatly accelerated during the Great Recession, although it was already speeding up throughout the presidency of George W. Bush.

In reality, this is a broad historical trend that began around 1975 and continues today. US real income per family grew at a modest 1.2% annual rate from 1976 to 2007. However, when excluding the top 1% of earners, the average real income of the bottom 99% grew at an annual rate of only 0.6% which implies that the top 1% captured 58% of real economic growth per family during that period.(1)

This means that if a typical wage earner was earning $19,000 in 1976, today he or she would be making about $40,000. On top of this, the overall tax burden - i.e., federal, state, county and town property, and sales taxes - has actually expanded by over 15% for the salaried and hourly paid worker over the last 35 years. (The only area of significant tax reduction has been on the federal level; but, while the bottom 99% saw some benefit, the tax cuts overwhelmingly favored the rich.)

Meanwhile, the overall tax burden for the top 10% of our nation's earners has diminished to practically zero. (Warren Buffet's famous observation that he pays less in taxes than does his secretary comes to mind.) The mega-rich only pay "unavoidable taxes" - property, school, and sales taxes. And, since their contributions to Social Security, unemployment taxes, workman's comp fees, etc., are capped, their featherweight burden is even less than we might reasonably expect. 

The right wing would have us think that this is a natural and right state of affairs. In fact, it is wrecking our lives and economy. It is destroying our national spirit and unity, as well. Where is the logic or justice in taxing non-labor earning virtually nothing while overtaxing the broad 99% who work for a salary by using their hands, heads and hearts? Why is only one sliver of the economy engaged in "trickle down" while the rest of us wait for our few drops of the trickle to reach them? How did we end up a nation of Oliver Twists?

Contrary to the right wing plutocratic view, this compression does not accord with our post-Civil War history at all. Even in eras that gave us Henry Fords and John D. Rockefellers, their overall share of the wealth was much less than is that of today's mega-rich. Why? Once we erase the exaggerated schoolbook images of the robber barons on one hand and squalid slums on the other, we can bring into focus an enormous middle class. More crucially, the path into the middle class life was clear for most Americans. (The destruction of the [since rebuilding] fragile black middle class for instance, was largely a product of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, just the period when income disparity rates exploded.)

It isn't wise to execute a "soak the rich" tactic, although emotionally that is damned appealing. The rich, and especially the mega-rich, need to contribute their 20% of the tax burden just as everyone else does. And, the cap on Social Security and other social program taxes needs to be lifted.

When you look through current college history or social studies texts, you will see a list of societies described as plutocracies, societies ruled by a wealthy elite who dominate government. Ancient Athens and Carthage are on the list. The trading cities of Venice, Pisa, Florence and Genoa are there, as are the zaibatsu of pre-World War II Japan.

The two contemporary examples given to college students? 

The Russian Federation and The United States of America.

(1) Top Incomes in the Long Run of History
Anthony B. Atkinson, Nuffield College, Oxford and London School of Economics
Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics
Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley

Think, Baby, Think - Offshore Drilling: The Grander Strategy

The best way to get ourselves off of the heroin of oil we're hooked on is to figure out alternative energy sources and to conserve now.

Is the opening of offshore territories the best way to begin?

In spirit, no. In reality, yes.

The President's overall strategy seems a bit obscure at the moment. If I were a betting man, though, I would bet on the opening of offshore drilling as a strategy to either a) draw in Republican and conservative Democratic fence-sitters for a larger energy bill, or b) set up a similar scenario as the one we witnessed with health care reform, where a bill is pushed through without right wing help because, with a clearer conscience, we can say "we tried and they didn't respond."

So take heart.

The opening of the off shore areas to bidding will not begin until 2012. The bidding itself will be met by challenges both from groups like the NRDC and the EDF, and by state governments of the affected areas. Then, if the challenges to bidding fail, new geological surveys will proceed. Once oil is found in economically useful amounts, permitting will begin - and be challenged anew. One can expect this process to take another 7 to 10 years.

This will give ample time to stop this madness in its tracks, no matter how cumbersome or distasteful the process. Meanwhile, hopefully, some version of cap and trade, and the development of real alternative energy sources can be implemented.

However, as one can imagine, the best way to do something right now is to conserve now on energy use.

Start planning day to day driving trips so you are multi-tasking. (No separate trips to pick up milk, pick up the dry cleaning, grabbing the kids from school, etc.) Drive at 55. Go easy on the acceleration. Make your next car the most economical on the market you can afford. Car pool. If everyone simply car-pooled when taking kids to school, we'd save millions and millions of gallons of gas every day. Take public transportation whenever possible.

Immediately convert all light bulbs to compact flourescents. Insulate your home for both heating and cooling savings. Lower the thermostat for heating, raise it for air conditioning. Be Draconian in turning off lights and lowering appliance settings. (More than 90% of American homes have their refrigerators and freezers set too high, for instance.) We can all save up to 15% of our personal energy consumption just by taking such steps, creating far more net change than any domestic drilling or digging can ever provide.

Lobby, lobby, lobby your federal, state and local governments to not just implement tougher measures but to take the lead in conserving on public services requiring energy: greener buildings, vehicles, street lighting, etc.