Dying for Change


Where the hell I have been the last couple of weeks? Ah, thanks for asking.

Well, my wife, Susan, and I have been right up to our chins in elder-care issues. My father is 90, my mother is 87 and Sue's mom is 99 heading straight for the century mark.

We're not complaining, mind you. We are so lucky that, at our stage of life, (we're no spring chickens either,) that we still have three out of four of them still with us.


But it's also been a real eye-opener.

We can't complain. Thanks to the fact that both parents were successful and thrifty during their productive years, they have the money necessary for good supplemental health coverage and can pay out of pocket for in-home care. But even so, the intersection of old age and the American health care system has been enough to drive the most loving and loyal offspring straight into anti-depressant-land. To put it mildly, the American health care system is simply not geezer-friendly.


With all we've been through with our parents over the last couple of years, from broken hips, to abdominal surgeries to mobility issues to trying to find qualified and trustworthy home-care workers, I have no clue how families that do not have our resources cope. Even at our modest, but comfortable level of financial security, the whole thing has been emotionally and physically exhausting. For those without adequate health coverage, and just making ends meet or less, old age can only be a terrifying glimpse into the bowels of hell itself.

Now, I, at a mere 64 years of age, have a ways to go before I get unceremoniously tossed into the ranks of Metamucil-For-Lunch-Bunch. But we're heading in that direction at what seems and increasing rate of speed. But Sue and I are merely 2 of the 80-million Baby Boomers trucking down that road. And America is simply not ready for what's about to slap it upside the head.

We Baby Boomers are, regrettably yet proudly, the most spoiled and demanding generation to ever cast a shadow on this planet. We grew up during a time of post-war super-abundance. We have become accustomed to near-instant results. And that goes triple for when we're ailing. If we wear out a part we expect a doctor to fix it no later than 3 p.m the next day.  If they can't, we start taking names.


So, can you even begin to imagine what it will be like when 80- or 90-year old Boomers begin hobbling into emergency rooms across the nation, demanding someone fix their crumbling basketball-abused knees, tennis elbows and golf-wrists? Then there are the usual parts that wear out naturally; eyeballs, vertebrae, prostates and the ever critical sewage disposal sub-systems.

Aside from that there will also be mushrooming mobility issues. Boomers are used to freedom of travel, freedom of movement. Twenty years from now there'll be 80 million (grouchy) codgers jockeying for room on our sidewalks and grocery store isles in their red and blue electric scooter-chairs -- the bumper-car generation from hell.


Dark humor aside, America and Baby Boomers are on a collision course. America's elder care infrastructure sucks. The only thing that has prevented a bloody geriatric revolt so far is that our parent's went through the Great Depression and fought and won a world war. Consequently their expectations still reflect the "Life is hard. Don't whine. Just-suck-it-up," grit that not only got them through all that, but in the process contributed to creating the richest most powerful nation on earth. But, in the process they also raised a generation that has come to consider abundance and quick results a birthright. And, as we Boomers age, we will also consider dignified end-of-life care a right as well. (Call it a death-right.)


I only mention all this because it's on my mind these days. As I watch our parents struggle to maintain the independence and dignity that has been the hallmark of their lives, I know one thing for sure: something has to change, and soon.

Because, what good is a nation that can spend trillions on weapons to "keep us free," if being free means that at the end of our lives we have less rights and less dignity than a terminally ill family pet.

We won't stand for it.


Call us selfish. Call us spoiled. We have surely been both. But we are also the generation that marched and fought in the streets to put an end to segregation. We are the same generation that marched in and fought in the streets to put an end to an illegal and immoral war in Vietnam.

So, spoiled and selfish, yes --  but also imbued with deep and enduring sense of right and wrong, justice and human dignity. And no where is justice and human dignity more deserved than after a long life of work and family and community. As the Obama administration and Congress struggle with fixing the American health care system, elder care and end of life care needs special attention.


Otherwise, who knows, we Boomers might have to hit the streets again. And, I don't know about you, but the idea of tens of thousands of aging former hippies and radicals marching, polyester pants bulging with adult diapers, dragging IV rigs and oxygen bottles chanting, "Hell no, we won't go," is more than I can bear.


Intervention


What's the right thing to do when a long-time friend becomes more trouble than you can tolerate?


What do you do when that friend returns your friendship only so long as you support everything he does, even the things you've repeatedly asked him not to do?

And, what's the right thing to do with a friend, like the one described, whose behavior and your support of it, poisons your relations with scores of other friends and potential friends?

This is the very question President Barack Obama is struggling with this month. And, if he gets it right, he will be the first post-war president ever to do so.

That friend, by the way, if you have not already guessed, is Israel.


Repeatedly we, and almost every other country on earth, have asked, even pleaded, with Israel to stop building settlements on Palestinian land and to stop expanding those already built.

And just as repeatedly one Israeli government after another have thumbed their nose at those pleadings.


Now, don't get me wrong. I've always supported Israel and Israel's right to exist, and still do. What I have never supported though is Israel right to use 5000-year old biblical title reports to expand beyond its 1967 borders in order to lay claim to real estate that does not belong to them.

Yet this naked thievery continues apace. Yes, I said thievery – a strong word indeed, and one that is certain to outrage my Jewish and Israeli friends. But, just as Americans had to accept the hard truth that "enhance interrogation techniques" really meant toture, I  can no longer pretend that what Isreal calls "settlements" are anything but thievery.


Believe me, I understand all the arguments Israelis use to justify the unjustifiable; the holocaust, never again, hostile neighbors, terrorism, etc. But the strategic situation has changed remarkably since Israel's formative years. Israel is a nuclear-armed nation with the strongest and most efficient military in the region – as it has demonstrated to its hostile neighbor's chagrin more than once.

Should Israel's survival ever be really threatened she could wipe that threat away – once and for all  – with the push of a button. Even Israel's most ardent foes have no illusions about that. Should they ever genuinely threaten Israel's existence, there'd be a holocaust,  and this time it would not be the Jews on the  receiving end.

As the years have passed it's become harder and harder to accept Israel's stated justifications for it's expansionist policies as anything other than cynical obfuscations. By expanding West Bank settlements and creating new ones Israel has been, piece by piece, preemptively dismembering any would-be Palestinian state.

And, by expanding these settlements Israel is also hoping they can push into the next century a loudly ticking demographic time bomb. Palestinian birth rates far outstrip the much slower Jewish population growth. Even within Israel's original borders, Israeli Arab voters will, at some point down the road,  outnumber Jewish voters.  What then? Disenfranchise any citizen with Israel who is not Jewish? Deport all non Jews? Create an system of apartheid for only true democracy in the Middle East?  

None of those solutions are realistic or acceptable in modern times. So, by expanding settlements and establishing new ones, Israel hopes Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe and elsewhere can at least for the a while, hold off the day when Israeli Arabs become Israel's new voting majority.

Look, here's the bottom line. In the weeks ahead President Obama needs to make it perfectly clear that America's friendship with Israel is about to be rebalanced. We will still support Israel, but no longer on long-standing,“Israel, right or wrong,” status quo. Like America, Israel faces very real dangers from very real foes. And both nations will continue facing those dangers for the foreseeable future. But that fact is not a greenlight to break the law or commit human rights offenses under cover of national security. We just got done learning that hard lesson here in America and nows the time to communicate it to our friends in the Middle East, including Isreal.

Now it's time to lay down the law for the other hooligan in this never-ending pissing match. Israel needs to:
  • Stop all settlement construction and expansion. Dead stop. Not another nail, not another brick.
  • Except for the large settlements right on or within stones throw of the West Bank/Israel border, Israel must begin dismantling of all settlements deeper within West Bank territories. Sure that's going to mean uprooting tens of thousands of Jewish “settlers,” but the wages of sin are rarely pleasant.
  • As for those settlements straddling that border, they can stay in Israeli hands, but only if Israel provides Palestinians an acre for acre swap for those lands. These in-kind lands must be adjacent to Palestinian lands on the West Bank border or Gaza.
  • Israel must begin serious negotiations with Palestinians on the final status of the historically blood soaked “holy city” of Jerusalem. That final status must include a genuine possibility of  Arab control of a portion of the traditionally Arab sector of Jerusalem. 
Now none of this will be either easy or painless for Israel. In fact it could spark an armed rebellion from Israel rabid right wingers who, all the holocaust rhetoric aside, simply hate Arabs, all Arabs. Israel's right wingers are that regions equivalent of our southern crackers during the civil rights years of the 1960s, or Afrikaners during apartheid in South Africa. They can't be changed, only controlled and contained and, when they act out, imprisoned.  (The exact same goes for members of Hamas and Hezbollah. Ignorant, racist, crackers, one and all.)

To make matters even more complicated Israel's new leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, can best be described as Dick Cheney in yamaka. His power is derived through creating and maintaining fear – fear of Arabs, fear of terrorism. Now no one in their right mind would suggest that Israel is not Target One for every Middle Eastern terrorist, the USA being Target Two.

But neither the US or Israel face anything even close to an strategic threat from terrorism. Neither country is going to be defeated, occupied and taken over by al Qaida, et al. It just ain't gonna happen – ever. But like Dick Cheney, Netanyahu would have Israelis and the rest of the world believe that that's precisely the threat his nation faces. It worked for Cheney – if not for his nation. Because, when belligerency is peddled as the only alternative to death and destruction, belligerency becomes, not just policy, but policy married to patriotism. The last remaining element needed to create a full-blown disaster is an ambitious demagogue. (H. L. Mencken  defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.")

Anyway, by now it should be clear to any sane person that, when it comes to Palestinians and Israelis there's never been a shortage of either demagogues or idiots to follow them. It's long past time for the rest of the world to draw red lines in the sand.

But this time it's gotta be TWO lines, not just one. There' has to be one clear line for Hamas and their ilk, and, for the first time, another clear line for Israel.

Because when a friend becomes self-destructive and more trouble than he's worth, there's really only two choices; desert your friend, or organize an intervention. Real friends intervene.

P.S. Okay, now you can email me and accuse me of being an anti-semite. (Which of course, I am not. I'm just fed up, right up to here, with both sides. I'm not anti-anything except anti-prick. So, an aside to  both sides: Stop being such giant, swaggering, unrepentant pricks.)






Capitalism's Greatest Hits


As Americans we've have had it drilled into our heads that there are only three kinds of economic models:

Capitalism: Which we've been been Pavlovianly conditioned to accept as “the best, most productive and most democratic economic system ever devised. (The current meltdown we are assured is the simply that exception that proves this rule.)

Communism: Which has repeatedly proven itself the least inefficient and least productive economic system ever devised by man,

Socialism: Which fans of unfettered capitalism assure us is simply communism in a dress.

I only bring this up because today the Republican National Committee, meeting in a spider hole somewhere where they will, in the next few days, demand that the Democratic Party rename itself the, Democrat-Socialist Party.

Well, most of Europe is run by “Social Democrats;” and they seem to doing okay. I mean, no one is doing great these days, but at least Europeans don't have to worry about being unemployed AND uninsured.

But if the RNC wants to make it's case against the Democrats socialist tendencies, they first have to make a better case for their unfettered capitalist tendencies. Is pure capitalism really all that efficient? And if so, at what human costs are these “efficiencies” attained?

Fortunately history provides report card on American capitalism. And, if it were, say a bus, that broke down every 20 miles or so and left its passengers to hoof it into town, I suspect we'd of replaced this thing with something more efficient a long time ago. Here's that report card:

October 12, 1837 - The Panic of 1837 (sparked by over-extended credit/defaults.) The House sanctioned the use of Treasury notes for a bailout, provided that they didn't exceed $10 million; Congress's efforts to stabilize the nation's currency failed to lift the depression which lasted seven years.

August 24, 1857 – Panic spared by the failure of New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company which had loaned $5 million to railroad builders, had been swindled out of millions by the manager of its New York branch and was unable to pay extensive debt to Eastern bankers.

September 24, 1869 - "Black Friday" crash of gold prices as Grant administration foiled attempts by financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk try to corner the gold market. Several brokerage firms went  bankrupt; national economy was severely disrupted for months.

September 18, 1873 – The Panic of 1873 began with collapse of Jay Cooke and Co., one of the country's most reputable brokerage houses of it's time, known as the "financier of the Civil War.” The Panic of 1873 exposed over-speculation which continued to wreak havoc on the nation's economy for months. The New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days to wait out the worst of the crisis. The secretary of the Treasury pumped $26 million of new currency into the economy, swelled the amount of paper money in circulation to $382 million. Panic did not subside, economy continued its slump through the end of the decade.

May 5, 1893 – Panic was once again sparked due to reckless speculation and over-leveraging. Panic swept the New York Stock Exchange and the stock market crashed; by year's end the country was in a severe depression.

November 9, 1903 - Panic of 1903 (known as the "Rich Man's Panic") reached its low; Dow dropped to 42.15; stocks of industrial companies fell to single-digit prices; fiscal crisis dragged on for the rest of the year, took severe toll on banks, many steel and iron producers.

October 1, 1907 - The nation plunged into the Panic of 1907 which lasted for a year – sparked by a run on Knickerbocker Trust in New York, which lacked resources to pay out to the demanding public, ultimately toppled the economy; President Roosevelt enlisted the aid of his one-time enemy, financier J.P. Morgan, who capitalized on his considerable reputation to borrow $1 million in gold from European countries. Outside U. S. Subtreasury building at Wall and Broad St. in October 1907

October 24, 1929 - "Black Thursday:' stock prices plummeted, a record  12,894,650 shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange Followed by "Black Tuesday" the markets tanked. Thousands of investors were wiped out as America's Great Depression began; 1932 - stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929; 1933, nearly half of America's banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce.

1985-89 - The Savings and Loan collapse... $167 billion in federal bailouts required.

October 19, 1987 - The stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value - its biggest-ever percentage drop; inflation and rising interest rates, the announcement of a surprisingly steep trade deficit and news of an American attack against Iran were both blamed for Wall Street's woes.

1998 – The Long-Term Capital Management failure.  The Fed had to  intervene to avoid sparking a worldwide panic over the condition of giant hedge fund companies like LTCM.

2000 – The Dot.com bubble crash

2007 – The housing bubble crash

2008 – The “Toxic Assets, Market Crash

Anyway, that's what the history books say. I don't cook it, I just serve it.

One final thing. If you want a taste of just how bizarre the RNC's demand the DNC change it's name really is, just watch this short video.




Serious Lapse of Judgement
 Indeed


Here's a bit of change we didn't bargain for:

DOJ: Torture Memos Just “Serious Lapses of Judgement”
New York Times — An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings. (Full Story)

If this DOJ judgement stands, civics and political science textbook publishers will only have until Fall to correct their texts to reflect this new measure of bad behavior. Among the events currently treated by history books as crimes and crimes against humanity requiring a serious downgrade to simply “serious lapses of judgement include such events as:

Japan: Ordering the “Rape of Nanking”
Germany: Ordering the “Final Solution”
Iraq: Ordering the gassing of the Kurds
Rwanda:  Ordering the Rwandan Genocide
Vietnam: Ordering the My Lai Massacre 
Palestinians: Ordering the Munich Massacre
Bosnia: Ordering the Srebrenica Genocide

Of course, it's a lot easier to change the judgement of history than to apologize to the dead but, if the DOJ's newly minted criminal behavior yardstick for those in charge sticks, we've got some apologizing to do to.  Because we executed or sent to prison a whole lot of folks after WW II for ordering actions the DOJ's would now apparently consider just “serious lapses of judgement.”

For example:

“After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.”... As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war.” (More)

And, hey, if Richard Nixon's actions, now known as, “Watergate,” weren't “serious lapses of judgement,” I don't know what is. So we need to set that injustice right as well.

Gawd, I don't know if the DOJ realized what a Pandoras Box of past injustices they opened with this new standard. The list of the people we've wronged over the years is almost endless; poor Bill Clinton and Monica, Scooter Libby, OJ Simpson, Blogo, Charles Manson, John Edwards' cancer-free mistress, Halliburton/KBR's  serial taxpayer screwings, Charlie Keating, Bernie Madoff -- each guilty only of "serious lapses of judgement" yet we treated them like common criminals. Shame on us.

And of course there's the MOTHER OF ALL SERIOUS LAPSES OF JUDGEMENT -- ordering the 9-11 terrorist attacks. ( We can only breathe a collective sigh of relief that poor, besieged Osama bin Laden survived long enough to benefit from DOJs new thinking on such matters)

Finally, just as it took a staunch anti-communist conservative, Richard Nixon, to soften America's views of Red China, it took a liberal Attorney General, Eric Holder,  to soften America's views of crimes against humanity. (I mean, imagine if a Republican AG tried this! We'd all be up in arms about it.)

Anyway, I feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders. Because, even though I've never personally committed anything even close to the kinds of "lapses of judgement," listed above, who knows? Shit happens.




Whose
 "Day of Reckoning?"


Here's a question to ponder this morning. It's one I've been pondering for some weeks now:


Is it worth your time and effort trying to engage in rational discussions with the increasingly nutty and frantic mouth-breathers on the political right? Or are were they all genetically wired at birth to become hybrids of Grandpa Simpson and Mr. Burns?

The only reason I mention this is that last night, as is my ritual, I settled in with the Wall Street Journal for my daily recon-mission into conservative “Neverland,” – a blame-free zone where the words, “Wow, we were sure wrong about that!”are never uttered.

I was doing fine, until I reached Neverland's dark heart, the WSJ Editorial Page – a  vortex of swirling nonsense where cocksure neo-cons rhetorically goose step in a tight clockwise circle – much like that roiling red spot of hot gas on Venus that roils madly but never seems to move or change.

In yesterdays editorial the editors were wringing their hands over all things Obama, in particular his budget and related economic rescue spending. Here's how they ended that piece:

"Mr. Obama is more popular than is policies, and sooner or later the twain shall meet. For now, we are living in another era of unchecked liberal government. The reckoning will come when Americans discover how much it costs.”

That's when I spit my evening brandy out of my nose. I mean, really?! The sheer chutzpah of it staggers the mind of anyone not on heavy doses of anti-psychotic drugs.

Where does a sane person, one with a functioning memory, even begin?

First, these are the same people  over at the WS Journal who supported the hyper-conservative GW Bush administration. You know, the guys who left us a world economy in near-depression, two unwon wars, and ice caps melting faster than Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter can change their spots.

So, if as the WSJ editors warn Mr. Obama faces an inevitable day of “reckoning” over his spending, shouldn't they first “reckon” with the trillions of dollars in debt their friends in the Bush administration left taxpayers holding? Shouldn't they first ask, “how much did Bush's policies cost us?”

Well, let's see. If they can't or won't do it, we can. After all we have all the receipts, and we're still getting bills for stuff we didn't even know about until now. But we can make a start:

The first thing the WSJ's friends did when they got in office eight years ago was to eat through the nation's entire supply of seed corn, stored for them by those damn liberals, the Clinton administration. When Poppa Bush handed Bill Clinton the keys to the White House he also handed him a $290 billion deficit.

Eight years later, when Bill Clinton handed the keys to Sonny Bush he hande him a $231 billion budget surplus -- the greatest surplus in U.S. History.

Not only did those damn Clinton liberals manage a budget surplus but were at the same time able to pay down the national debt by a staggering 2.4 trillion.


Within two years the budget surpluses were gone, and the national debt was on it's way back up as the Bushies began borrowing again to make ends meet. By the time they left office they'd add another $5 trillion to the national debt.

Then, once the seed corn was gone, the Bushies started to borrow and spend and cut taxes too boot since, to quote Dick Cheney, “deficits don't matter.” Suddenly now, the WSJ editors and their  dwindling army of dittoheads are all atwitter over “Obama's mounting deficits.”

Then there's the cost of Bush-era deregulation. Those expenses all came due just as George W. Bush was hightailing it out of Dodge last January – just in the nick of time. The full cost of failing (or just plain refusing) to police corporate America, especially the financial services sector, has already cost us trillions of dollars, and the full cost may not be known for a decade. because all those chickens haven't come home to roost yet. But they're on their way.

Not to pile on but, then there's the cost of all the environmental degradation that occurred on their watch. Instead of addressing the mounting evidence they took a page from Big Tobacco's playbook, first using phony science  to deny global warming was even happening. Then, once it became impossible to deny it any longer, they changed their argument to “Sure, but there's no proof than human activities have anything to do with global warming.” It was an argument designed to preclude even trying to do anything about global warming, and it worked. (Unfortunately we can't sue them like we did Big Tobacco.)

Then there's the war in Iraq. That little mistake cost us $12 billion a month for more than five of Bush's eight years in office – in all nearly a trillion bucks down a sandy rat hole, and counting.

In Afghanistan they spent a small fortune unseating the Taliban and trying to kill or capture the actual people who planned the 9-11 attacks. On the very verge of success though the Bushies lost interest,  turning their attention to Iraq before they achieved those goals in Afghanistan. In the end all the billions of dollars, (and hundreds of  US soldier's lives) spent in Afghanistan achieved nothing. All they did was  allow the Taliban and al Qaida to infect neighboring Pakistan, regroup and re-engage in Afghanistan, where they now control most of the country once again. Hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain there too, and also, still counting.

All that money the Bush administration spent, wasted, misappropriated, and, in the end, what did we get for those trillions? Well, we  got partial ownership of Iraq, full ownership of Afghanistan, and a growing ownership share in nuclear-armed, Taliban/al Qaida infested Pakistan.

Such a deal. Yet during all that no one at the WSJ predicted  Bush would “face a day of reckoning when Americans found out how much it all cost.”


Obama's spending is also at historic highs. But there's “spending” and there's “spending.” Governments, just as households, face two kinds of spending decisions: discretionary spending and capital-investment spending.

Discretionary spending satisfies the “I may not need it but I want it” reflex. Capital spending is money invested in things that promise to generate a return over time. Home improvements, are good example of household capital spending as they increase the value of a family's main asset, their home. That big screen TV, on the other hand, is discretionary spending.


The Bushies did very little capital investing and a whole lot of discretionary spending. For example:

Obama  is investing in education, because it's going to be educated, uneducated or mis-educated, children who will shape America's future. And  right now our schools are turning out an demonstrably inferior product.

Obama is investing in emerging technologies that hold the promise that someday will free us from the nut-hold of those smarmy phony Saudi “Princes.” And, will begin the process of cleaning up the environment, before the environment decides to do the job herself  – by getting rid of us.

Obama is restructuring the tax code, so that those who actually go to work, and actually provide services or real producing stuff real people really need, get to keep more of what they make.

That's the opposite of what the Bush administration did when they funneled tax breaks to those who already were doing just fine, thank you very much, while producing little more than paper, much of which has turned out to be so worthless you can't even pay anyone to take off our hands.

I won't belabor the point. But for the WSJ editors to posit that voters will soon be aghast at the cost of Obama's policies, couldn't go unnoticed. Because they sure didn't notice the ruinousness policies of the Bush administration when they could have, and when they should have.

And finally, of all people on earth who should know the difference between out of control discretionary spending, and wise capital spending, it should be the guys and gals running the newspaper a friend of mine refers to as “capitalism's racing form.”  

But of course, the do know the difference. But they are to mainstream American politics what the Taliban are to mainstream Islam: not just wrong, but crazy-wrong.


Who You Callin' a Minority?


If there's one characteristic that best describes a conservative is that they not only live in the past, but are willing to fight for the right to live in the past, even when it's not in their own long term interest.

I only mention this today because of this:

A Turning Point for Voting Rights Law
The Supreme Court hears oral arguments today on the constitutionality of a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, considered one of the most effective civil rights laws passed by Congress.... Conservative legal activists who mean to liberate the mostly Southern states that bear the biggest burden under the Voting Rights Act...The Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning in one of its biggest cases of the year, a suit that seeks to declare unconstitutional a key provision of the voting act. It is considered the most severe federal intrusion on state autonomy, but none of the states subject to it has joined the fight. (Full)

The conservative-leaning Court has slowly chipped away at this landmark legislation, under constant prodding from white conservative groups and organizations. Which leads me to issue this warning:

Memo to White Conservatives: Better be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.

The Voting Right Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson back in 1965 to assure minority American citizens had the same voter protections as whites. There was at the time a well-documented history of minorities -- most non-whites – being kept from the polls through a variety of legal, illegal and down right brutal schemes and tactics. Gerrymandering was one of the legal ways to marginalizing non-white voters. But there were other ways, dozens, hundreds of ways, because, the racist mind is never at rest when it comes to race.

Finally it proved necessary that Congress step in and enact a set of nationwide legal standards that assure d that every American who wanted to vote, could do so.

Which is why today, nearly 45-years later, we have a black President in the White House and men and women of all shades serving in elected office across the nation.

Now, let's get to why white conservatives are not only wrong (again) in their campaign to gut the Voting Rights Act, but are fixing to shoot themselves in the foot. Here's their "Oh s--t moment:"

Whites To Minority in U.S.
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in the United States by 2050, with immigrants and their children driving 82 percent of U.S. population growth in coming years, a new study said on Monday. Non-Hispanic whites would account for 47 percent of the total in 2050, it concluded. By that time, one in every five Americans will be a foreign-born immigrant, compared to one in eight in 2005.

While the white population, with its lower fertility rate, ages, the Latino population, the nation's largest minority, will triple in size. Latinos will be responsible for 60 percent of the population growth until 2050. They will account for 29 percent of the population, or 128 million in 2050, up from 14 percent now, the study said. "The number of whites will increase, but only by 4 percent," said D'Vera Cohn, one of the report's authors.

Get it? Within the lifetimes of younger conservatives whites, they will no longer be making the rules, but rather blacks, Hispanics and Asians. They will be the new majority. They will be deciding how voting districts are carved up. They will be making the rules for who can and cannot vote, choosing where polling stations will be setup and what languages ballots will display.

In short, the shoe will be on other feet --- white feet. Whites will be the new American minority group. From that day forward, when someone refers to minority voters, they will be referring white voters.

You don't need to be a descendant of Nostradamus to predict what will happen when that day arrives. White voting groups, many the very conservative groups currently attacking the Voting Rights Act, will be the ones screaming “descrimination," and claiming their voting rights are being violated. White voters will file their voter registration applications with black or brown elected registrars of voters. At polling stations whites will be asked for identification by poll workers of color. And, since former minorities will by then be the majority, most polling stations will be located in their neighborhoods.

All of which will stoke white conservative's racial already too robust xenophobia and racial paranoia. Race-based conspiracy theories will consume conservative talk radio and the Internet as the color of Congress goes from white, to beige to brown as voters of color do what white voters had been doing for 250 years.

Now, that's going to happen. The only quesiton conservatives should be asking themselves right now while they still have a majority say in such matters, is whether this demographically inivitable racial shift in politics will proceed legally or illegally.  Will politicians of color win honest races, in honestly drawn congressional districts, without any hint of voters suppression? Or will they play the same kind of racial gerrymandering and voter suppression games whites played with such vigor and skill before the Voting Rights Act made them illegal?

And, once whites are the minority, will white candidates have a fair crack at electoral office. They could, and they should. But there's only one thing guarantees they will -- a national law protecting minority voting rights.. the very law they are currently trying to get the Supreme Court to strike down as you read these words.

So, my conservative friends, the writing is only wall. (In fact it's right there on the White House mailbox, if you just look. “Mr. & Mrs. Obama.”)

Which is why we should all care what our conservative-leaning Supremes do with the latest, and most severe, challenge to the Voting Rights Act. Will the Court protect those rights for every minority voter, including whites? Or will they gut the Voting Rights Act, leaving the white minority in the near future at the whim of their new, racially mixed, majority?

But I'm not optimistic. After all, white American conservatives have shown they are more than willing to point a gun to their heads when they don't get their way and threaten, “One wrong move and the Sheriff gets it.”




What's in Name?
Only Everything.


Hey, did ya hear the latest idea from Republicans to revive their moribund party. Here it is:

Demand that the Democratic National Committee – AKA, the Democratic Party – change its name to – are you ready for this?

The Democrat-Socialist Party
.


Republicans Ask Democratic Party to Change its Name
Republican National Committee member James Bopp Jr. says President Obama wants "to restructure American society along socialist ideals." He and others in the RNC have drafted a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party." The proposed resolution ... calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party," said Bopp. He compared the branding to Reagan calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire." (Full)

After I stopped laughing I thought to myself, “Hey, wait, those guys may be on onto something.”

Stop and think about it for a second. First, there's no question that most Democrats believe the primary job of government is to provide for the welfare of those they govern. Democrats want to provide all kinds of public services; medical care, education, unions for workers. 

So I say let's do it. Let's change the name of the DNC to the Democrat-Socialist Party. But only if the RNC changes it's name as well. To what? Well, since it's the socialistic impulses of Democrats that apparently requires this "blackbox warning" right within their name, then the same must be true for Republicans.

Therefore, Democrats will agree to this “truth in party branding” if the RNC changes its name to:

The Republic-Fascist Party.

Now listen, I'm not trying to be a smart-ass here. Each party has it's leanings. Neither is all one thing or the other, but they each lean in a given direction. The Democratic Party is not really a bunch of pure socialists, nor is is the Republican party filled with fascists. I'm just following the lead of the RNC folks who thought this idea up. It's "tendencies" we're operating on here, right?

So, we know that fascism, in its purest form is a government that favors militarism over diplomacy, corporate rights over individual rights, will resort to inhumane measures (also known as "torture) when dealing with real or perceived enemies of the state, and fascists also like to give their countries nicknames like, "the Fatherland," "Motherland," or "Homeland."

Bingo.

So, fellas over at the RNC, I'm on board with your proposal for truth in party re-branding. So let's do it, and get this done before the 2010 mid-term elections. Because, I agree entirely with you that, when voters go to the polls, they have a right to know exactly what are the underlying tendencies that motivate each of the two party candidates on the ballot.

And what could be more clear and unambiguous than boiling the decision down to a choice between a socialist and a fascist?

Finally, a GOP idea I can get behind.

Cartoon of the Day


Too Big To WHAT?

It was an expensive lesson... at least $2 trillion so far, and the meter continues to click off additional billions every day.

The lesson, of course, was not to allow financial institutions to grow like tumors until they depart the mortal realm and become  “too big to fail.”


Or maybe more precisely, the lesson we should have learned is that to go ahead and let them grow as much as they want, as fast as they want. Let them take all the risks they want with money provided them by gullible and/or greedy investors. Then, when they get in trouble -- as they always do --  let the bastards fail. Doing so would deprive these losers of their final and most valuable tool of extortion.



I don't mention this in order to launch into another diatribe about the inequities of Washington's Wall Street/bank bailout. Rather I was musing over my morning (mourning) coffee about the similarities between the damage done by institutions consider “too big to fail,” and the constitutional/moral damage America faces now that we've apparently adopted another "too big" class -- those in this country who are “too big to jail.”

“...Mr. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, made a pretty unequivocal statement that these lawyers should not be targeted...."Those who devised policy, he believes that they were -- should not be prosecuted either," Emanuel told ABC's George Stephanopolous.” (Full)

So, it's come to this; to quote from the very lips of Richard Nixon, “If the President does it, it's not illegal.”

My, my, my.

But wait, there's more.

Among the crimes the previous administration is accused of committing is one that strikes at the very heart of our legal system – politicizing the Department of Justice. The White House told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who should be hired, who should be fired, who should be prosecuted and who should be left alone.

Those comments by the new White House Chief of Staff, coming as they did even though the stench of Bush administration corruption lingers at DOJ, shocks and saddens those of us who thought last November, we'd voted for “change we could finally believe in.”

Apparently not. Because, h
ere again, was the White House speaking for the Department of Justice. No, they will not prosecute former Bush administration officials for authorizing torture, Emanuel said. Implicit in that unequivocal pronouncement was that they won't even investigate those alleged mega-crimes. This, not out of the mouth of our top cop, the new Attorney General, but from the White House -- again.

As a former professor of constitutional law, President Obama should know that the White House is NOT supposed to meddle in DOJ's decisions over who, what, where or how to investigate alleged crimes. Period.


"You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make," the former U.S. Attorney from Arkansas, Bud Cummins, told the Los Angeles Times in March.”

I know Barack graduated from Harvard, but there's also a pretty good law school over at Yale, as well. Apparently Yale's teachings on executive branch obligations under the constitution were a bit more precise:

“...there is something about the modern presidency that overwhelms the rule of law. That something is the White House staff, hundreds of bright and ambitious loyalists constantly struggling on the president’s behalf. This ongoing struggle has sometimes generated an “us against them” mentality that supported the repeated assaults on legality over the past generation...Eric Holder.. must take effective action to restore the professionalism of his badly demoralized department. He must insulate the department’s Office of Legal Counsel from political pressures..” (Restoring the Rule of Law to the White House ---- Bruce Ackerman. Yale Law School, Class of 1967)

But nevertheless, we are where we are. And here's where we are: The concept of “too big to fail,” rather than of fixing the system, is simply feeding and keeping alive the very tumor-like institutions that landed us in fiscal intensive care to begin with. And that in turn simply sets the stage for another future round of taxpayer-funded chemo. (It's feels like being mugged then finding out the mugger bailed himself out jail on your credit card.)

But I guess we can live that. I mean, it might kill our 401ks but it won't kill us. Much more dangerous though than "too big to fail," is the creation of a class of individuals in America considered virtually untouchable, more equal than others, and therefore effectively “too big to jail.”

At least Nixon left one positive legacy. His rock-hard conservative credentials allowed him to open the door to Communist China. And history has recorded that deed.

Will history now record that it took a liberal Democrat, President Barack Obama, to close the door on 200 plush years of equal justice for all?

That ball's in your court, Barack.

P.S. Oh, and  Eric Holder  – here's a proposition for you to meditate upon as well; will you go down in history as another Alberto Gonzales?  If so, at least you'll have the peace of mind knowing you too have transcended the mortal realm rendering yourself too big to jail.




English Majors: Watch where you step
 


Stephen P. Pizzo
http://www.stephen.pizzo.com
Email me at: stephen(at)pizzo.com


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