The School of Americas Bites Back

A recent issue of Parade Magazine (March 29, 2009) contains an article entitled “What’s Wrong With Our Prisons?” written by Senator Jim Webb (D. VA) which focuses on two consequences of the drug trade in Mexico and the United States. Curiously, however, just one of the consequences deals directly with our prisons, while the other concerns the enhanced danger to American citizens created by Mexican drug cartels.

First up, Senator Webb tells us that persons imprisoned for drug offenses rose from 10% of the inmate population to about 33% between 1984 and 2002. Moreover, 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses, and nearly 60% of those serving time in state prisons had no history of violence or of any significant drug selling activity. On top of it all, there’s a well-known racial bias built into the system of prosecuting drug offenders in this country in that African-Americans, who comprise about 12% of the U.S. population, account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of drug offenders put in prison.

What this adds up to is that the United States now has the world’s highest incarceration rate, by far. With 5% of the world’s population, we house 25% of the world’s prisoners. We currently imprison 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, more than five times the average worldwide — resulting in the fact that one out of every 31 adults in the US is either in prison, in jail, or on supervised release.

This said, Senator Webb then segues into the second problem — the increase in crime along our southwestern border caused by the traffic in drugs masterminded by Mexican cartels, the profits of which are said to reach $25 billion annually. The cartels, which exert absolute control over certain parts of Mexico and took the lives of more than 6,000 Mexicans last year alone, are also said to be running operations in 230 American cities. With 370 kidnapings last year, they have turned Phoenix, Arizona, into the kidnaping capital of the country, second to Mexico City in the hemisphere. Moreover, according to Senator Webb, the cartels “are known to employ many elite former soldiers who were trained in some of America’s most sophisticated military programs.”

Senator Webb reaches two conclusions which, when combined, create a rather strange tandem. He declares, first, that “we are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life,” and, second, that “we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail.” The remedy for this? The best the Senator can do is: “American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problem of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.”

While I sort of admire Senator Webb, it seems to me that, like a lot of politicians, he’s long on problems and short on solutions. With all due respect, however, when it comes to solutions, partial or otherwise, here are two: First, regarding the drug trade and the high prison population in this country — legalize marijuana, then regulate it and tax it. Second, regarding the involvement of American-trained “elite former soldiers” now working for the Mexican drug cartels, stop training them, Senator — which means closing the School of the Americas where those “elite former soldiers” undoubtedly received their training.

The School of Americas was initially established in Panama in 1946, but was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. In 1984 it was re-established at Fort Benning, Georgia, where, ever since, Latin American security personnel have been trained in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics tactics and strategies. The purpose of the School for the most part has been to train “elite” forces which would support American interests by supporting Latin American dictators.

By now it’s clear that graduates of the School of Americas are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower level graduates of the School were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of 14-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and hundreds of other human rights abuses.

On November 16, 1989, a US Congressional Task Force issued findings that those responsible for the massacre in El Salvador of the six Jesuits, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were trained at the Army School of the Americas. In a tiny apartment in Fort Benning a year later, the SOA Watch designed to monitor the School of Americas was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois. Father Bourgeois is an American Maryknoll priest, former US Naval officer, and a veteran of the war in Vietnam where he was awarded a Purple Heart. He became a Catholic priest in 1972 and went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and SOA graduate General Hugo Banzer. Father Bourgeois had become involved in the US policy in El Salvador years before he started SOA Watch after four US churchwomen — two of them Maryknoll sisters and friends of his — were raped and murdered by Salvadoran soldiers in 1980.

Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” Then Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, a supporter of SOA Watch and a friend of Father Bourgeois, said, “the U.S. Army School of the Americas became a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." Over the years, the School has produced at least eleven Latin American dictators. In 2001, the Pentagon renamed the SOA the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHISC) because of the bad publicity caused by the SOA Watch which, among other things, had effectively renamed it the “School of Assassins.”

On September 20, 1996, after lying about their existence for years, the Pentagon was compelled to release seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used in Latin America and in intelligence training courses at the SOA between 1987 and 1991. The manuals — one of which was entitled, “Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla” — taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America; they contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnaping a target's family members. Joseph Kennedy said "These manuals taught tactics that come right out of a Soviet gulag and have no place in civilized society." The Pentagon admitted that they were a "mistake" and were merely the product of an unknown lower-level military operative’s excessive zeal. They had never been “officially cleared for publication” declared the Pentagon, so no one was to blame. Appeals to President Clinton, with the weirdest of logic, were referred back to the Pentagon. The SOA manuals were, in a sense, the moral equivalent of those that would later govern the treatment of prisoners at Abu Gahrib and Guantanamo, and their exposure was treated with similar denial and obfuscation by the military.

Protest demonstrations — which are actually peaceful, nonviolent vigils — are conducted every November by the SOA Watch. Over the years, they have grown considerably; a friend of mine who was there reports that 22,000 persons were at the gates of Fort Benning in 2006. As a result of arrests of SOA Watch protesters, usually for trespassing on a federal military installation or “disturbing the peace,” 237 human rights defenders have collectively spent over 98 years in prison, and more than 50 persons have served probation sentences. The protest held this past November resulted in six more arrests, six more convictions, and six more persons serving time in federal prisons.

To give you a flavor of who does the protesting, the “2008 SOA Six” included Father Luis Barrios, an episcopal priest and college professor who teaches courses on gangs, criminal justice, US-Latin American foreign policy, and Latin Studies at City College of New York; Theresa M. Cusimano, a lawyer and public interest advocate for twenty years from Colorado; Kristin Holm, 21, a first year student at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago; Sister Diane Therese Pinchot, of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, a school teacher and sculptress; Al Simmons, 64-year-old retired pre-school teacher and Vietnam vet who has been involved in peace and social justice campaigns “for the past forty years;” and Louis Wolf, 69 years old, a conscientious objector, author, and third-world traveler.

From our area, Kay and Randy Bond have protested the SOA in Fort Benning twice (arrested once), and Sally Neal has been there and done that five times. There may be others. In 2007, Valerie Fillenwarth of Indianapolis, the wife (of 45 years) of a Notre Dame law school classmate of mine, a former Maryknoll sister, the mother of seven and grandmother of 17, served 100 days in the Danbury Correctional Center in Danbury, Connecticut, for trespassing at Fort Benning (a Class B Misdemeanor), though she’d never before received even a traffic ticket. And, of course, Father Bourgeois himself has been imprisoned many times for nonviolent protests at Fort Benning, just as he has been imprisoned many times in many countries throughout Central and South America.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, that creating a facility like the School of Americas to train soldiers to do the dirty work of American-sponsored dictators south of our borders would result in a situation in which those very soldiers, or others like them, began performing the same kind dirty work for vicious criminal cartels that threaten our own national interests today. The saying may be trite, but it applies: What goes around, comes around.

In 2007, a bill in the US House of Representatives designed to close the School of Americas was defeated by just nine votes, 203 to 214. Representatives Bart Stupak and Dave Camp from northern Michigan voted in favor, and Peter Hoekstra voted against the measure. Overall, with just 76.6% of House Democrats and 11.4% of the Republicans voting in favor two years ago, it’s hoped that a similar bill will pass in the new Congress this year.

By the way, one of the consistent supporters of the effort to close the School of Americas in the United States Congress is Dennis Kucinich. However you may have voted in last year’s primary, Mr. Kucinich has to be the friend of every person in this country who calls him- or herself a liberal.

Anyway, with thanks for his article on the prison problem, as far as it goes, I do have some free advice for Senator Webb — Close the School of Americas, Senator. And have a talk with Dennis. Soon.

Quote of the Day. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel

Joke of the Day. How many watched the president’s news conference last Tuesday night? He got a little testy there, you know. When he was asked why he waited three days to speak out against the AIG bonuses, President Obama said he likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks. So, yet another reversal of the Bush policies. — Jay Leno

"Malapropism" Defined

Former President George W. Bush recently gave his first address since leaving the presidency. He delivered it, not at a military installation in the United States, his favorite venue while in office, but in Calgary, Canada. There were no reporters, no TV, no radio coverage of the speech and, in fact, the whole deal seemed clothed in secrecy. Two things we do know, however: we know that Mr. Bush went to the auditorium from his hotel via an underground tunnel, thereby avoiding a mass of protesters outside wielding, you guessed it, shoes, shoes of the “throw these at George” variety; and we also know he charged his listeners, whoever they were, a ton of money. (George was quite candid about one of the things he planned to do upon leaving office: “refill the ol’ coffers,” he said on several occasions.)

Notwithstanding all the secrecy, there were the inevitable “leaks” regarding the big secret, that is, leaks about what it was he said. One of them is that in the speech he described a book he was writing, or intending to write, the subject of which is something like “the 12 toughest decisions” he made as president. Reportedly, Bush has no interest in (nor, it might be added, the ability for) writing a full-blown, detailed memoir like so many persons do after leaving high office. (Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld, among others, are said to be doing that right now. Can hardly wait, can you?) So, he’s content to regale us with a few high points (or, low points, as the case may be) he experienced as “The Decider” over the past eight years. The underlying reason for writing such a book, he went on to say, was that when the history of his presidency is written “at least there [will be] an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.”

Whoa. As we must when listening to Mr. Bush for any length of time, in order to figure out what he was trying to say it's a good idea to turn to the dictionary. The word “authority” means “an accepted source of information or advice.” The word “authoritarian” is defined as “characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.” And “malapropism” means “ludicrous use of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound.” It’s pretty evident that, if there were a Nobel Prize for malapropisms, Mr. Bush would be a shoo-in, after which the Nobel Committee would retire the prize altogether.

As Rachel Maddow, reflecting on Mr. Bush’s speech, remarked: “Not all Freudian slips are created equal.”


You Know It’s Bad When . . . . You know those junk-mail “come-ons” we receive on a regular basis from credit-card companies trying to entice us to join up? Well, American Express has a new spin on that undertaking. Rather than luring new customers with cash rewards as it once did, AmEx is now offering selected customers a $300 prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts. Yep, AmEx is now paying some customers not to do business with it anymore.

“The intention is to help cardholders lower their debt and encourage responsible management of their credit,” said an AmEx representative. “It’s being promoted as a means for customers to 'simplify their finances.'” Yea, right. I’ll bet this type of credit assistance wasn’t on the mind of AmEx when it signed people up in the good ol’ days, encouraging them to spend profligately at every conceivable opportunity and to reward them when they did. What AmEx is actually doing is giving some not-so-good customers 300 bucks as an incentive to "simplify" things by paying off AmEx. This recently adopted strategy is a “huge paradigm shift,” according to CardRatings.com, a credit-card review web site. They expect “other large companies to follow suit with offers to entice consumers to pay off their balances, as card issuers cope with increasing defaults.”

Quite rightly, consumer advocates don’t see it that way. “It’s a nice way of saying, ‘We want you out and we want to entice you financially to get out,” says CardRatings.com. “It’s not about them handing out $300 out of the kindness of their hearts.” Put it this way: say you have a $5,000 credit-card debt (a not unusually high amount). The $300 “gift card” amounts to a 6% discount if you pay it off and don’t come back. (If the credit-card debt is $10,000, the discount of course is only 3%.) In other words, it’s really a device to dump the folks the credit-card companies have decided are dead-beats.

Speaking of dead-beats . . . . AmEx is one of several credit-card issuers that have closed accounts and increased late fees and interest rates for cash advances in recent months. More significantly, AmEx, that model of financial responsibility, after converting into a bank-holding company in late 2008, received $3.4 billion from the U.S. Treasury in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds in exchange for a government stake in the company. Okay, TARP was a remedy for the great big dead-beats, but where, we might ask, is the bailout for the little guys — the little dead-beats? Oh, that’s right: they don’t get one because they got themselves into that jam all by themselves. And the big guys didn't. Right.

By the way, you know those ubiquitous credit-card solicitations we receive in the mail I mentioned at the outset? (In the last couple of weeks, I’ve received three just from Capital One.) Harper’s Index says that 5.2 billion such solicitations were sent to Americans in 2008. That means the credit-card people sent out about 20 million each business day, enough to provide every man, woman, and child in the country with 17 solicitations over the period of the year.

And that, folks, on top of the other issues, is a lot of trees.

The Republicans' Man of Steele

I can hardly be called a fan of the Republican Party and normally would relish any form of misfortune that might be visited upon it. But the present state of the Grand Old Party is, well, not so grand; in fact, it’s in such a deplorable condition that it’s embarrassing even for Democrats.

Take a look at the leading major figures in the GOP at this time. They are: Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader who, according to Gail Collins of the Times, has “the natural charisma of an oyster” and often looks like he just swallowed a bad one; John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, who, best known for his prowess around the tanning salon and his perennial tan, apparently aspires become the congressional version of George Hamilton; Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, who was given the impossible job of following President Obama’s speech to Congress and whose hapless retort proved beyond doubt that, at least for him, it was impossible; Rush Limbaugh, whose persona is about as ugly as that of Jeffrey Dahmer and who actually claims to be the “defacto” Party head; and, finally, Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican Party.

Ah, Michael Steele. Now here’s a guy you could really feel sorry for — if he weren’t such an insufferable jerk. Let’s put it this way: Michael Steele is one of just a handful of black persons in the Republican Party, he’s tall and handsome, he dresses well, and his elocution is good — which is to say that, though what most of what he says is bullshit, he says it distinctly. As an example of the latter, Steele, who like most Republicans thinks the President’s stimulus package spends too much money (itself a non-sequitur), claims, rather loudly, that it’s impossible for government spending to create even a single job. “No, Sir,” he has said, “government spending may create work, but it cannot create jobs.” Excuse me? (He actually said this, many times.) And by the way, Michael’s also the guy who, in his speech at the Republican convention last summer gave us that mind-altering slogan, “Drill, baby, drill!” — As Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, Michael loves to use the word, “baby.”)

But poor Michael has other problems. Like paying his sister’s catering business, Brown Sugar Unlimited, $37,262 for services supposedly rendered during Steele’s unsuccessful run for the Senate in 2007; since his sister, once married to the former boxer Mike Tyson, dissolved her company before the payment, some think it’s doubtful the services were ever performed. Or paying more money ($64,000) to a friend’s firm for “political consulting” when the firm turned out to be in the business of trading commodities. Or transferring more than $500,000 in campaign funds without authorization, a claim made by Alan B. Fabian, Steele’s former finance chairman who, incidentally, was sentenced in October to nine years in prison for involvement in a $40 million fraud scheme, unrelated to his work on the Steele senatorial campaign. (These matters are currently being investigated by criminal prosecutors.)

But once on the job at Republican headquarters, Michael did his best to initiate a “change.” Yesssiree, he worked a change alright. Michael, it seems, fired everyone in the office, except for one guy who, apparently finding no one around the water cooler, quit. True. Rachel Maddow reported on March 6 that, except for Michael himself, there is no one working at the Republican Party Headquarters in Washington. It has no political director, no finance director, no communications director, no chief of staff. Just Michael.

So, how does Michael Steele keep busy? Well, for one thing, he’s been trying to do a Republican Party make-over by making it “cool” — that’s right, “cool.” To this end, claiming that “I’m always open to everything, baby, absolutely,” he promised the conservative Washington Times that under his tutelage the Party would come to stand for conservative principles applied “to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” I don’t know about you, but here in Leelanau County, Michigan, where I’m from, though the citizenry usually votes overwhelmingly Republican (the recent presidential election being a notable exception), “hip-hop settings” are just damn hard to come by. The Republican Party is in dire need of a lot of things, but acquiring a “cool” image is rather far down the list. Maybe they can get Michael off the subject for a while by having the Party regulars all wear Republican baseball caps — with the bills turned backwards.

Michael’s also been busy recently getting into pissing matches with Rush Limbaugh over who’s heading up the Republican Party. In the course of this heady debate, Michael accused Rush of being “ugly and incendiary,” a “smear” for which he was forced to apologize and for which, in fact, he did apologize. Yep, he apologized to Rush for saying something nasty about him! Contrite as an altar boy, Michael said he didn’t mean to question the “leadership” of Rush, for whom he has “enormous respect,” but he’d just been a “bit inarticulate.” Classy guy, this Michael.

Finally, in the weird world of Republican politics, Michael Steele has been trying his best to be an enforcer of the idea that it’s bad for the country for states to accept stimulus funds. This is the reason that the Republican big guns in Congress have uniformly endorsed a “spending freeze,” saying there should be no spending through September, the end of the government’s fiscal year. Now you don’t have to be an expert in Keynesian fiscal policy to know that in a recession or a depression it’s critically necessary to stimulate demand, and that means that somebody out there has to begin buying stuff. We’ve got plenty of supply, as we know: just take a drive by your friendly auto dealer’s lot. But when average folks aren’t buying, then it’s only natural, and necessary, to look to the government to, well, spend; like get involved in public works projects. This is especially helpful when the country is also in need of public works — i.e., new and newly refurbished infrastructure. Need a new bridge, Minneapolis? In passing it should also be noted that in a recent survey 7,500 truckers were asked what they thought were the worst roads in America; they came up with a list of specific highways in six states and “all roads in Michigan, especially I-75 into Detroit.” Need better roads, Michigan?

Anyway, you’ll remember that President Obama was able to garner the necessary sixty votes in the Senate to pass his stimulus package with the help of three Republicans: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, all of whom are very highly respected members of the Senate. Well, Michael recently went on record saying that as Party head he would not underwrite any of the re-election campaigns of any Republican member of Congress who voted against the Republican position on this issue. This prompted Senator Snowe to ask, “You don’t really mean that, do you, Mr. Steele?” Michael was quick to back down, and replied to the Senator that no he didn’t. But then, characteristically, the next day Michael repeated his threat to disenfranchise such insubordinate congresspersons. This bright move might just have been the proverbial last nail in the coffin for Michael.

Oh, there’s one Republican “leader” I forgot to mention: Newt Gingrich. Good ol’ Newt. Remember “Contract for America,” which was discreetly placed in the trash bin of history back in the mid-90s? Newt recently sent one of those trial balloons aloft saying something about running for president in 2012. (Just think of the Republican primary in three years: Newt v. Huck v. Milt v. Bobby J., etc., all orchestrated by Michael Steele. — Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?) In a sit-down interview before a speech the other night, Newt, in an unusually familial mood, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "Callista and I will look seriously and we'll probably get our family totally engaged, including our two grandchildren, probably in January, 2011." He added, “I see the Party heading for a wholly new generation” (whatever that meant).

I don’t know about Callista, who Newt married in 2000, but his grandchildren are surely part of a new generation. As for Newt himself, sounds like the old generation to me.

If You Think You've Seen Everything . . . .

Over the past several years we’ve watched as colleges and universities have gotten into the travel business. It’s a way some of the faculty can exercise their expertise in history, literature, language, foreign affairs, and the like by conducting seminars during the off-season while students are on summer break. In addition, these tours, which are rather pricey to say the least, are surely a ripe source of income.

Accordingly, from time to time I receive fancy brochures from the alumni societies of both Williams College, where I was an undergraduate, and Notre Dame, where I got my law degree. Ordinarily they quickly go into the circular file without even being opened. However, because I’ve always had a desire to tour Scandinavia and eastern Europe — Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and eastern Russia — just for the hell of it recently I took a closer look at a brochure entitled “Saxony Cruise plus Prague and Berlin” billed as “an exclusive educational and travel experience.” The tour group will cruise down the Elbe River aboard the “MV Katharina Von Bora,” the base of operations and which, from the brochure, looks to me like a very fancy barge.

The itinerary includes seven cities and towns in Germany and the Czech Republic located on or near the Elbe. One of them is Torgau, a “beautiful Renaissance town dramatically set on a cliff overlooking the Elbe” which is “a monument to the Lutheran spirit of reform.” Even though for the better part of ten years beginning in the mid-80s I was a member of a Lutheran congregation (serving as an acolyte and member of the church council), I never bothered to learn much about Lutheran history or, for that matter, Lutheran theology. Thus I know very little about Martin Luther, except that, as everyone knows, in 1517 he nailed Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg and initiated the German Reformation.

The tour includes visits to the German cities of Wittenberg and Torgau, both of which are steeped in the history of the Reformation. To be seen are churches, museums, exhibits, the first Protestant place of worship, a Renaissance castle with a chapel consecrated by Martin Luther, the original Gutenberg Bible — all of which are rapturously described. When it comes to the day spent in Torgau, the brochure sets out the following highlight: “View the tomb of Martin Luther’s wife in the Marienkirche.” (Her name, by the way, was Katharina Von Bora.)

But wow! The tomb of Martin Luther’s wife! Just imagine it! To actually see it! I guess that’s enough to get your touristic juices flowing, right? And just to think . . . well . . . err . . . Hell, I didn’t even know the dude was married!


• Is There a Gold Medal for Celebrating? In Val D’Isere, France, last week the United States Ski Team was looking good, seeking another victory on the World Cup circuit. At the top of the list of U.S. skiers was the blonde, attractive Lindsey Vonn, who won the overall World Cup title last season and held a 1,114 to 935 lead over Maria Riesch of Germany in this season’s standings. On Monday, Lindsey had won both the Super-G (the super giant slalom) and the downhill, and was poised for the giant slalom.

But another event intervened — the Monday night victory celebration, an absolute must. Here, as fate would have it, Lindsey didn’t fare too well. She severed part of a tendon in her right thumb as a result of cutting herself on a broken champagne bottle. She was flown to a private hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, for surgery, then spent a day with experts attempting to construct a splint to enable her to grip her pole. Lindsey missed the giant slalom on Friday, but showed up for the regular slalom on Saturday, the final women’s race of the championships. Unfortunately, she fell and Maria Riesch of Germany went on to win.

When she fell in the last race at Val D’Isere, Lindsey landed on her side and held up her injured thumb to avoid damaging it further. “It’s OK,” she said. “It was hurting and then I crashed, so now it’s hurting even more.” So, between now and the next World Cup event in Tarvisio, Italy, this week, Lindsey presumably will be taking it easy on the slopes — remaining at the lodge and devoting her time to practicing drinking, no doubt.

All said and done, however, Lindsey’s indiscretion wasn’t any worse than Mark Phelps’, also an exceptional young athlete who happens to be rather fun-loving. Gee, whaddaya know — young people who are fun-loving? (But does A-Rod fit into this category?) Actually, I hope Lindsey puts it behind her, gets back in shape and does well.

Here’s mud in your eye, Lindsey girl.


• Thanks, Mom. Those of us who have seen “Milk,” the Oscar-bound biographical movie of the activist Harvey Milk, the first gay person in the U.S. to be elected to a major political office, vicariously experienced the ruthless oppression and intense suffering homosexual men and women actually experienced — and in many places continue to experience — pretty much on a regular basis. The movie, by the way, is a must-see; and while everything about the film and everyone in the film is really good, Sean Penn’s performance is over the top.

Which calls to mind a report in the current issue of “Civil Liberties,” the ACLU’s national newsletter, about Brian Carrell of Roscoe, Illinois, a small, conservative town near the Wisconsin border. Brian is a 2008 winner of the ACLU Youth Activist Scholarship Program, which honors graduating high school seniors from around the country who make outstanding contributions to the struggle for civil liberties and the rights of young people.

You see, Brian is gay. Last year he tried to organize his high school’s first Gay Straight Alliance. School administrators sent his proposal to the district school board, where anti-gay groups packed the room at every board and subcommittee meeting, attempting to argue and shout down the start-up of a GSA. Despite the opposition, Brian started an aggressive internet campaign to rally GSA supporters and volunteered to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the school (to be brought by the ACLU) if the board voted against the proposal. Thanks in large part to Brian’s efforts, the school board ultimately voted 5-2 in favor of the GSA.

Later, Brian made the following statement: “I believe it is paramount to a free and open democracy that all voices are acknowledged, regardless of age, race, creed, sexual orientation, or social status. . . . Now that I have seen what a group of students working together can accomplish, I am encouraged to stay active in the democratic processes of my community and my nation.”

Oh. There was one other obstacle Brian had to overcome in his effort to create a GSA in his school: speaking against him at all the public meetings was . . . his mom.

Let's Hear It for Bipartisanship. Booooooo!

• For those of you who’d like to know what’s wrong with President Obama’s stimulus bill, here are two suggestions. One, tune into the Rachel Maddow Show week-nights at 9:00 EDT. Two, read Paul Krugman’s column Mondays and Fridays in the New York Times.

In a recent column entitled “The Destructive Center,“ Krugman began by asking, “What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?” The answer: “A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.”

Krugman, for one, has made it very clear where he stands: and it’s not in the center. In order to extricate ourselves from this mess, he stresses the importance of very large government investments — in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and, yes, autos — “insisting that these be big enough to overwhelm depression, systemic and psychological.” “The worst mistake,” he says, “would be taking a five-foot leap over a seven-foot pit out of fear that acting to save the financial system is somehow ‘socialistic.’”

Krugman blamed the President’s belief “that he can transcend the partisan divide,” a belief, he says, that “warped his economic strategy.” Accordingly, he offered a plan “that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would.” Amazingly, he was listening to Republicans who, like Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, felt that the Obama stimulus bill “wandered off into too much spending.” Excuse me? Too much spending — in a stimulus bill? And this from a Republican, whose president over the past eight years spent us crazy into the biggest deficit in American history. Does this make any sense at all?

And then there was Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader and Republican economic wizard, who, attempting to prove that spending is the way into socialism and not out of a depression, told us with fervor in his voice that “it wasn’t New Deal spending that got us out of the Great Depression, as every historian knows it was the Second World War.” While he’s right about that, what McConnell doesn’t get is that, considered only in economic terms, World War II was . . . well, er . . . government spending. As John Steele Gordon said recently in the Wall Street Journal, “there have always been two reasons for adding to the national debt,” which is, of course, created by deficit spending: “One is to fight wars [and] the second is to counteract recessions.” Deficit spending under Roosevelt did both.

I remember as a kid my father, a staunch Republican, deriding the New Deal by calling it a bunch of “make work” programs and telling me that Roosevelt was paying people to dig holes and then to immediately fill them up — which, by the way, was a conservative fantasy. I wish I had known enough at the time to have asked him what benefit accrued to the U.S. economy from producing a bomb and then dropping it on a German building? Economically, of course, it had the same effect here at home as if it had been dropped in the ocean. Which is to say that producing bombs had everything in the world to do with stimulus, even though economically it was the equivalent of digging a hole and filling it up — or digging a hole, planting a seedling, and filling it up; or building a bridge and letting it stand there while driving cars over it for 50 years; and so on.

And so, events proved President Obama wrong about bipartisanship. Though his advisors at one time thought this bipartisan strategy would gain the happy result of 80 or more votes in the Senate, it wound up eking out a razor-thin 61-36 victory, just one vote more than the required two-thirds to avoid a filibuster. And to do that it was necessary to engage the so-called “centrists.” These were three Republicans (Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Olympia J. Snow and Susan Collins, both of Maine) and two Independents (Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont) who, added to the 56 Democrats in the Senate, pushed it over the top, doing so, however, at rather great expense to the stimulus purpose of the package. Thus, at the end of the day, after presenting a somewhat watered-down stimulus package and smoozing at “bipartisan” cocktail parties and the like in order to garner Republican votes, he wound up with three. The American people need to ask: Was that a good deal? Was that in the nation’s interest?

While all this was going on in Congress, Rachel Maddow was insisting that the Democrats should abandon the BS about bipartisanship altogether and call the Republicans on their threat to filibuster. Just let a bunch of them stand there in the senate chamber in the dead of night and read the District of Columbia phone book and see what happens, said Rachel. She’s was betting that the nation wouldn’t stand for it. Invoking the sanctity of Senate Rules, Barbara Boxer, the Democrat from California, made a decent, though conventional, explanation of why that wouldn’t work, but it didn’t convince Rachel, and it didn’t convince me either. The Republicans pulled the same legislative tactic, you may remember, when the Democrats proposed amendments to military appropriations bills in the Senate in 2006 designed to bring the troops home by certain dates. There, however, the Republicans were able to operate under cover of such phony principles as “support our troops or be known as a traitor,” stuff that the Dems, including great minds like Carl Levin, fell for hook, line and sinker.

• Now There’s an Idea. Do you remember George W. Bush’s first big push following his reelection in 2004 — just after he announced, “I earned . . . political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”? It was the Republican’s attempt to privatize the Social Security system which, despite the system’s merits as public policy, is the foundation on which the social programs of the Democratic Party rests. It would have changed the system into one that allowed stock-market accounts for individuals otherwise entitled to social security. Wheeeeee! This at a time when even the guys who knew what they’re were doing didn’t know what they were doing. As Nicholas Lemann mused in The New Yorker recently, can anyone even imagine just how that would have worked out by the end of Bush’s presidency?

• Yes We Can — Keep on Protesting. In a close-up on Pete Seeger and Joan Baez in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Baez says that in January after the start of her current tour she began exclaiming, “Yes we did!” One night a woman yelled back, “Now there’s nothing left to protest against anymore,” to which Baez yelled back, “Oh, no, my good woman — this is where it starts.”

Sean Penn made a similar statement in the same issue of Rolling Stone (he’s on the cover). When asked whether he was politically optimistic, Penn replied: “Yeah, I am. I’m optimistic about this man, not about him by himself, and not about his Cabinet. But I’m optimistic about the people who put in him in office — if they support him first but then challenge him.” (Italics mine.)

Despite, or perhaps because of, the hope and promise Barack Obama brings to the nation and to the heart of each of us, it’s still very important that we challenge him from time to time when the situation demands and to protest his policies when we think they’re wrong. We need to remember that President Obama is not a real liberal; he’s a moderate Democrat, one for whom bipartisanship is part of the program, sometimes — as we’ve seen — even to the detriment of the program.

The bottom line: We need him, and he needs us.

What's this Stuff About the Status Quo Ante?

On Sunday, July 18, 2006, about a week after Israel commenced air attacks and ground operations against Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed overseas for talks, but played down the possibility of an early end to hostilities. Ms. Rice declared that she would not “try to get a cease-fire that I know isn’t going to work.” About two weeks later, on August 3, in an interview on the Sean Hannity Show, she explained this position by stating that, while the U.S. desired an end to the violence, “we just want to make certain that we have principles in place that will not permit a return to the status quo ante. . . .” On September 25, she repeated herself, saying in an interview with editors and reporters of the New York Times that”I would hope that [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] would interpret its mission in a way that allows it to really do what it is supposed to do, which is not to allow a return to the status quo ante in the south [of Lebanon].” Secretary Rice used the phrase status quo ante almost every time she spoke about the Israeli-Lebanese War of 2006.

On Friday, January 2, 2009, about a week after Israel commenced air attacks against Palestinians in Gaza, Secretary Rice emerged from the White House after meeting with President Bush to tell reporters: “We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a reestablishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza. It is obvious that that cease-fire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a cease-fire that is durable and sustainable.” Secretary Rice has and continues to use this phrase almost every time she is queried about the current Israeli War in Gaza.

So what’s the big deal about the status quo ante? What does it mean? Why does Secretary Rice use the phrase over and over again? Well, other than to convince us that she studied political science in college, she’s using a diplomatic term of art which refers to the status of balance of power dynamics before the outbreak of a war or any form of hostile conflict. Technically, the phrase is a shortened form of “in statu quo ante bellum” (in the state in which it was before the war) or, more simply, “in statu quo ante fuit” (in the state in which it was before).

Thus when Secretary Rice says that the United States opposes a “return to the status quo ante,” she means that the U.S. favors an outcome that will bring about some kind of change. And, in this context, where the protagonists are a Goliath (Israel) and a David (Hamas/Gazian Palestinians) (excuse the wholly ironic metaphor), change inevitably favors the bigger guy. As a consequence of these power dynamics, the approach the United States took in 2006 and is now again taking in 2009 is to back off, do nothing, speak platitudes, let the two fight it out, and then step back in when Israel has decimated its opponent. As Max Rodenbeck, the Economist’s mid-east correspondent, wrote in 2006: “So it is that American lent its diplomacy not to stopping the fighting as soon as possible, but to providing an umbrella for Israel to ‘finish the job’ of crushing Hezbollah.” By that time, when the status quo ante is nowhere in sight, the U.S. — drum-roll please — can step into the role of the Prince of Peace and, with great grandeur and sublimity, establish a cease-fire.

That kind of a cease-fire of course will always favor Israel. In fact, the whole idea of keeping the United States on the sidelines and everyone else well up in the bleachers, thereby allowing Israel to annihilate the opposition down on the playing field, is precisely how Israel wants the game to be played. It’s no surprise that the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, following a meeting on January 5 in Israel with officials from the Czech Republic, Sweden and France, said:

In other conflicts, countries send in forces in order to battle terrorism, but we are not asking the world to take part in the battle and send their forces in — we are only asking them to allow us to carry it out until we reach a point in which we decide our goals have been reached for this point.

If the world community will just step back and let Israel do the heavy lifting, Israel should have little trouble achieving its goals and to thereby “change the equation” in the region, as Ms. Livni put it. We should admit up front, however, that it’s hard to criticize a goal designed to “change the equation,” or “alter the balance of power,” for no nation ever commences a war without having in mind some sort of change in the status quo; if it were content with the way things were it wouldn’t go to the trouble. Though I personally am close to being a pacifist and oppose most all wars, what I’m critical of here is the attempt by the United States to disguise its alliance with Israel as a sort of benign policy of cool neutrality, which it’s not. The United States is not neutral in this conflict. By trying to make it seem otherwise, the U.S. winds up achieving little more than proving to the world once again that our policy for Gaza is a transparent fraud and that we are, indeed, just a bunch of inept manipulators.

There are several conclusions to be drawn from this. First, it should by now be clear that the policy of the United States regarding Israel’s incursion into Gaza is in perfect lock-step with that of Israel itself. This is so even though we’ll have to await the historical record to learn exactly what our government knew and what it didn’t know in advance of the current incursion into Gaza, just as down the line we’ll have to consult the historians to learn just how complicit our leaders were in the planning and execution of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. It’s hard to determine sometimes whether the U.S. is Israel’s proxy, or if Israel is ours, though in the final analysis it matters little, for when Israel did what it did, in each instance we were right there to give our unwavering support.

Second, when the U.S. government gives the impression that it is maintaining a neutral “hands off” position, or by saying something silly like, “we don’t have a dog in that fight,” it is being hugely hypocritical. This, for two reasons: number one, our dog has already been there, done its stuff and gone home — which is to say that we’ve already armed Israel to the teeth and, almost on our own, built it into one of the three or four strongest nations in the world in terms of military prowess. Number two, as Foreign Minister Livni candidly admitted, the power differential between Israel and the Palestinians is so great that, unlike other conflicts in the world, Israel has demanded that the U.S. and everyone else stay the hell out of the area, at least for the time being. Israel doesn’t want nor does it think it needs the help of anyone to subjugate the people of Gaza, or even Hamas for that matter (they may be wrong about the latter), and to invite others into the fray would only complicate things and perhaps even require that the Israeli military become accountable. In other words, when playing the role of gentle, benevolent giant and staying out of the “unfortunate mess” in Gaza, George Bush is not doing something high-minded, he’s simply doing what Israel wants us to do.

Third, although Bush, Cheney, Rice et al. are of the view that the U.S. can hide its real intentions behind the smoke screen of pronouncements such as the status quo ante bullshit, the rest of the world has already got the real picture. They see right through the outrageously hypocritical pronouncements our leaders utter that we whole-heartedly support Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and, oh by the way, of course we also “sympathize” with the Palestinian people over the pain and depravation they’re suffering in the event. In this connection, it’s not exactly irrelevant that (as this is being written) it’s reported that the Israeli incursion into Gaza has resulted in the deaths of ten Israelis and 680 Palestinians (mostly civilians), plus substantial destruction of the Gazian infrastructure.

And so once again the Bush administration is viewed around the globe as a sanctimonious, arrogant, malevolent bunch of jerks. In city after city around the world, the popular outrage against the invasion of Gaza has been the focus of demonstrations, not only against Israel, but against the United States. It should come as no surprise that in the Whitehall district of London on January 4, and elsewhere throughout Europe, not to mention the Islamic Middle East, shoe-throwing has now become the demonstration tactic du jour.

We deserve it.

Blaming the Victim, the Homeless Victim

• A few weeks ago I had occasion to talk with a friend with whom I hadn’t been in contact for months. During the conversation he regaled me with the usual elaborate descriptions of his travels, as he travels widely. Highlighting a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia, this past summer, he said he loved the city, which he found cosmopolitan, beautiful, and full of great places to eat. But one thing bothered him. “What was that?” I asked. “The homeless,” he replied. “Oh?” “Yea, the homeless are everywhere in Vancouver.” Citing a discussion of the problem he had with a tour guide, he was informed that “they’re there” because of the extensive medical facilities available, and, as you know, he continued, “the Canadian government pays all the bills.” There was a pause in the conversation. Finally, I said, “Well, that much is good, anyway.” “No,” he rejoined, “that’s not good. The government has no business bailing these guys out. They should be out looking for work rather than sitting around on their butts with their hands out.” He then concluded, “I guess that’s just another point on which you and I differ.” “I guess so,” I said. The conversation ended on that rather unpleasant note.

The conversation left me a little shaken. I wondered how could anyone be so insensitive, so lacking in compassion. I knew what it was that my friend didn’t like about the homeless people of Vancouver: he didn’t like to look at them. They bothered him — they’re not particularly picturesque, and they presented a subjective threat to the good time he and his family planned to have on their vacation. Vacationing in places where the indigenous population is poverty-stricken is not unusual for Americans, and it’s also not unusual for us to feel guilty when we lavish in their beautiful environs while they sweat it out in the kitchen. But my friend was turning his disquiet into anger, blaming these victims of poverty and oppression for laziness, ineptitude, and, well, just being around to look at. Relegating him to an ultra-conservative or extreme libertarian place on the socio-political spectrum was easy, but I was nonetheless saddened by the encounter. I felt compassion not only for the homeless guys of Vancouver my friend complained of, but for my friend himself.

Shortly thereafter, however, and to my chagrin, I learned my friend had real-live, honest-to-goodness support for his point of view — support from no less than a syndicated columnist and faculty member of one of the nation’s leading universities, Thomas Sowell. I found it in Mr. Sowell’s column in the Record-Eagle on December 3 fetchingly entitled, “Freedom and the Lefties.” Now for those of you who do not know this guy, Thomas Sowell is an academic economist, social critic, author, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. (Personally, however, I’ve never figured out why the Record-Eagle pays him a red cent for the privilege of publishing his opinions.) In this particular column, Sowell rants against the “arrogance” with which school administrators and college admissions committees reward students for performing “community service.” The arrogance to which Sowell objects is that of school officials imposing their “notions as to what is or is not a service to the community” on their students. While I might agree that a wiser school policy would be to provide a menu of community services from which students could chose, that’s not the issue that concerns me at present. What concerns me is Mr. Sowell’s use of aiding homeless persons as a prime example of community service ill spent.

Here’s what Sowell says on the subject: “Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as “community service” — as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service, rather than a disservice, to the community. Is a community better off with more people not working, hanging out on the streets, aggressively panhandling people on the sidewalks, urinating in the street, leaving narcotics needles in the parks where children play?” Mr. Sowell’s idea, I guess, is that if we don’t “aid and abet” these dysfunctional, criminal deadbeats, sooner or later they’ll just up and walk across the street and get a job. Reminds me of Jay Leno’s comment about Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign in the 80s — “Just Say ‘No’!” Remember that one? Leno said she was going to start up a similar campaign to eradicate homelessness — she’d call it, “Just Get a House!” Simple as that.

A response to this nonsense was made in the Record-Eagle by John O’Neill, the executive director of the housing council in Benzie County, who, unlike Sowell, actually came up with some facts. “Some people make poor choices,“ O’Neill began, “but most are not homeless due to laziness. Loss of manufacturing jobs, low service-sector wages, and loss of affordable housing strongly correlate to increased homelessness.” Foreclosures, illness, disabilities, immigration and naturalization issues, and other personal crises aggravate homelessness. Far from abjuring work, most homeless people are desperate for a job; O’Neill cited the U.S. Conference of Mayors which found that 17.4 % of homeless adults with children worked while 13 % of singles held jobs. Nearly half of all homeless women are abused; a quarter of homeless men are veterans; two-thirds suffer from addictions; and another third are mentally ill.

Further research reveals that last year 23 % of people seeking shelter were turned away, and 29 % of those were children. As for children, in 2003 children under the age of 18 accounted for 39% of the homeless population, and 42% of these were under the age of five. Unaccompanied minors comprise 5% of the urban homeless population, though the numbers of homeless children in rural areas are much higher. Regarding families, the number of homeless families with children has increased significantly over the past decade and are among the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. In its 2007 survey of 23 American cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that families with children comprised 23% of the homeless population. These proportions are likely to be higher in rural areas where families, single mothers, and children make up the largest groups of homeless persons. Presumably Mr. Sowell figures that along with the other homeless these single mothers and their children will, if left to their own devices, sooner or later become self-sufficient on their own.

So, helping these people is a disservice to the community? Really?

Postscript: As a member of the Board of Directors of Goodwill Industries of Northwest Michigan, I’m aware that, with the economy in the dump, the two major homeless shelters in the Grand Traverse Area — Goodwill and Safe Harbor — are full most of the time. During nights like those we’ve experienced with the temperature in the teens and below which put the homeless in grave danger, the overflow used to be parked for the night in the county jail — at least when Ralph Soffredene was Chief of Police. (Ralph is also a member of the Goodwill Board.) But the current sheriff (current, that is, until January 1) would have none of it: he has consistently refused to allow the city to use any part of the jail as a temporary homeless shelter because “they smell badly” (which is often true). So where do Traverse City police officers now take homeless persons in cold weather? Well, sometimes there’s no place at all to take them, and sometimes they take them to the branch banks in the area that have those little closed vestibules that house ATM machines and are open all night.

One final note: After the first of the year, those of you living in northwest Michigan please join me in sending a letter to the newly elected Sheriff of Grand Traverse County, Tom Bensely, asking him to reinstate the policy of placing homeless persons in the county jail overnight in very cold weather. Sheriff Bensely’s address will be: Grand Traverse County Sheriffs Office, 851 Woodmere Avenue, Traverse City, MI 49686. Thanks.

Automaker CEOs Working for a Dollar a Year? Well, Sort Of

In 1979, when the federal government bailed out Chrysler, its then-CEO Lee Iacocca helped win congressional approval of a $1.5 billion loan guarantee by agreeing to a $1-a-year paycheck. At the time, little did he know that he was setting a precedent that would return to haunt his successors 29 years later.

On December 2, the three auto CEOs were questioned by House and the Senate committees — relentlessly and a little unbecomingly in my opinion — not only about compensation but such things as their use of the corporate jet and how they traveled to Washington the second time around. Honda’s — excuse me, Alabama’s — Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate panel, in an effort that seemed designed to humiliate more than elicit real information, grilled the executives about how they got to Washington, suggesting that driving in lieu of flying was a stunt. Shelby’s line of questioning included these queries: “Did you drive or did you have a driver? Did you drive a little and ride a little? Are you going to drive back?” This prompted Senator Christopher Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, laughing uncomfortably, to interject: “Where did you stay? What did you eat?” “The chairman wants to make light of this,” Mr. Shelby replied. He was not amused.

But it was no joke when it came to foregoing compensation and, for a while anyway, the CEOs were ambivalent on the subject. On their first day of testimony, when Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO, was asked whether he’d cut his $2 million salary to $1, he demurred, saying, “I think I’m ok where I am.” GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner brushed back a similar inquiry, saying “I don’t have a position on that today.” That weekend, Saturday Night Live did a number on the execs and the boards of directors of each company began to register concern about adverse public opinion, as well they might. So, when they showed up again on Capital Hill, they were a little more compliant.

Although press reports were not always clear on the point, it seems that all three CEOs agreed to limit their 2009 compensation and their executive perks in one way or another. Rick Wagoner of GM told Congress that his compensation and that of GM’s board of directors would be reduced to $1 in 2009, that the next four highest ranking corporate officers would have their cash compensation cut in half, and that use of corporate aircraft would cease. Ford confirmed that it would sell its five corporate jets and that, “should Ford need to access funds from a potential government bridge loan,” CEO Mulally would work for a salary of $1 a year. Further, Ford said it was canceling all bonuses to be paid in 2009 for all management employees worldwide and foregoing bonuses for all employees in North America. The company also will not pay merit increases for North America salaried employees in 2009. Over at Chrysler, CEO Robert Nardelli reported that his annual salary is already set at $1 and that he gets no health care, insurance or similar benefits from the Company. Furthermore, Chrysler did not pay salaried merit increases or performance bonuses in 2008, and has not planned salaried merit increases or performance bonuses for 2009. Management has no options or restricted stock units. Nardelli promised that top management “will continue to share in the sacrifices of the salaried workforce and bear 100% of their healthcare premium costs.”

These cuts in executive pay are good, though they’re mainly window-dressing and image-making devices that don’t come close to solving the automakers’ liquidity problems. On the other hand, they do address an underlying problem that’s much bigger than the auto industry: the gross overpayment of CEOs in this country, a practice that has been gaining steam for the past 30 years. For example, it’s a little hard to feel sorry for Alan Mulally who, though biting the bullet next year, has taken home about $50 million since taking over at Ford in 2006 — that’s all of two years ago. And Rick Wagoner’s 2007 compensation package totaled $15.7 million, though GM reported a loss of $38.7 billion that year. As for Robert Nardelli, because Chrysler is privately owned and not publicly traded, it is not obligated to report its executive compensation. It’s been said, however, that Nardelli’s employment contract with Chrysler does not call for the payment of compensation. But don’t cry for him either: when he was fired as the CEO of Home Depot in January of 2007 before coming to Chrysler, his golden parachute was estimated to be valued at $210 million. In so doing, I’m sure Home Depot’s shareholders take solace from the fact that it was they, not the feds, who ultimately bailed out, not Chrysler, but its CEO. Hopefully, their generosity will get Mr. Nardelli at least through the middle of next summer.

• Banker CEOs Working for a Dollar a Year? Don’t Think So. Do you know how the funds comprising the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) are being used by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.? Well, if you thought they are being used to buy “troubled assets” held by banks (as the name Congress gave to the fund implies), you’re wrong. You’re wrong for the reason that on November 12, Secretary Paulson made the stunning announcement, surprising even those in the financial world, that he wouldn’t spend a dime for that purpose. Oh, and Paulson also decided not to refinance defaulted mortgages, which was another objective of the bail-out discussed in congressional hearings. No, the only use to which the fund is being made is for bank recapitalization, that is, to purchase preferred stock of banks.

Okay. So now the government owns a piece of the banks, (though it owns only preferred stock, which has no voting rights — another stellar decision). But what have the banks used the money for? The law provides that they can use the money for any “lawful purpose” which, of course, includes funding contracts the banks are legally obligated to pay. And that, folks, means paying off the employment contracts the banks have with their executives, including the obscenely large bonuses — contracts that are legally enforceable but which funded the corporate greed that created part of the problem in the first place.

Frank Rich of the New York Times reports that during the week of December 15 ABC News asked 16 of the banks that have received handouts from the Treasury Department the same two questions: How have you used that money, and how much have you spent on bonuses this year. Their answer? Most of them told ABC to jump in the lake — that is, they refused to answer. Rich also said that Congress “can’t get the answers either.” The congressional oversight panel declared in a first report this month that “the Treasury is doling out billions ‘without seeking to monitor the use of funds provided to specific financial institutions.’” When the Government Accountability Office looked into it, it found that “the standard agreement between Treasury and the participating institutions does not require that these institutions track or report how they plan to use, or do use, their capital investments.”

While ABC couldn’t get anywhere with its investigation of current practices, the Associated Press performed a study of bank executive compensation in 2007. On December 22 the AP reported that banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts (and were thus under-performing) awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year. The study included some 600 executives who, on the average, were thus compensated at the rate of $2.6 million for the year. The $1.6 billion total would have covered the bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so afar accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines, the AP said.

Whatever one may think about it, it’s hard to deny that Congress and the Treasury Department treat Wall Street one way and Detroit another. And as far as accountability is concerned? The lack of it in the Greenspan era of deregulation when things fell apart is being matched by the lack of it in the Paulson bailout plan designed to put things back together again. Accountability wasn’t part of the system then, and it’s not part of the system now.


The lesson to be learned from these stories is that despite the fact that so-called “class warfare” is decried and deplored in this country, the class of the financially rich continues, day after day, to dump a load not on just the poor, but on the middle class. Perhaps even more important is that our representatives in Congress do pathetically little to protect and support us. The big question now is what President-elect Obama will do about it.

The "Gas Man"

Do any of you ever read the column that appears periodically in the Traverse City Record-Eagle on the subject of oil and gas prices? It’s written by Stephen Sutherland, an area local who, he says, has been “in the oil business for most of my life,” and who labels himself “The Gas Man.” Mr. Sutherland touts himself as an expert on the production and marketing of oil in both the domestic and world markets. I have my doubts. But one thing I don’t doubt is that whatever might be his level of knowledge about oil prices, Mr. Sutherland is on the steep side of the learning curve when it comes to the environmental effects of the consumption of oil and other fossil fuels.

In his most recent column [December 5], Mr. Sutherland states that in the first 10 months of this year the demand for oil in the U.S. fell by 5.2%, the largest drop since 1981. Because of this environmentalists have lost interest in global warming. “Tell me, when was the last time you heard former Vice President Al Gore or any other politician talk about ‘Global Warming?’” he asks. “The words have been removed from nearly everyone’s vocabulary.”

To this very interesting, if implausible question, Mr. Sutherland has an equally interesting, implausible answer. Implying that environmentalists are adrift in their own alarmist theories, he suggests that their most recent ploy is to resort to putting the global warming pea under a different shell and calling it something else. “Now, it’s called climate change,” he says. (Yes, he really says this.) “Even the newest commercial on the survival of the polar bears does not mention global warming,” he continues, “it talks about climate change.” Sutherland then asks, “But when did that happen and why has it not been reported?” (Yes, he really asks this.) He concludes his commentary with the grand pronouncement that “Of course the climate is changing, as very little in this world remains constant.” Ho hum.

What Mr. Sutherland doesn’t know, of course, is that in the contemporary context global warming and climate change are much the same thing. This is to say, we’re are talking about a change not to a colder, but to a warmer climate and, to state the obvious, the earth gets warmer when its temperature and its climate get warmer. How else would you warm the earth, we might ask, other than by raising its temperature?

"Climate change," according to the Environmental Protection Agency, "refers to any distict change in measures of climate lasting for a long period of time." "In other words," the EPA continues, "'climate change' means major changes in temperature, rainfall, snow, or wind patterns lasting for decades or longer." (“Climate,” by the way, is defined as “the meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.”) On the other hand, "global warming," says the EPA, "is an average increase in temperatures near the Earth's surface and in the lowest layer of the atmosphere. Increases in temperatures in our Earth's atmosphere can contribute to changes in global climate patterns. Global warming can be considered part of climate change along with changes in precipitation, sea level, etc."

The fact of the matter is that when it comes to the basics about global warming and climate change, Mr. Sutherland really doesn't know what he's talking about.

In In Praise of Nature, Stephanie Mills sets all of this out in just a couple of sentences: “Primarily from our burning of fossil fuels, we are adding carbon dioxide (and several other “greenhouse” gases) to the atmosphere. (For instance, an automobile driven ten thousand miles a year will produce its own weight in CO2 annually.) This increased concentration of greenhouse gases is trapping more solar warmth. The consequence of this global warming will beggar the imagination, and only radical change in our pattern of energy use can mitigate them.” Unfortunately, Mr. Sutherland seems to have no understanding of these matters, nor does he appreciate the effect that burning oil products contributes to global warming — or, for that matter, to climate change. My suggestion to Mr. Sutherland is that he very quickly get busy doing some heavy reading of the likes of Stephanie Mills and Bill McKibbon.

[For those of you who are not from this part of northern Michigan, Stephanie Mills is a highly regarded, published author who often writes about nature and environmental issues. Moreover, she’s also local, residing near Maple City here in Leelanau County.]

The Fart Theory of Market Fluctuations and Other Items of Interest

• UBS, the Swiss banking giant, announced on Monday that its top executives would not get a bonus at the end of the current year “as public scrutiny of bankers’ compensation intensified under bailout plans by governments.” The move followed that of the top seven execs at Goldman Sachs who also fell on their compensation sword the day before and, a month before that, the CEO of Deutsche Bank announced he would forego his bonus this year “as a very personal sign of solidarity.” Other banks and investment houses (e.g., Morgan Stanley) were expected to follow suit. This activity followed a warning given by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee, that banks that use taxpayer bailout money to pay bonuses would face a public outcry. This was a major sacrifice (read: “very personal sign of solidarity”) by these top dogs. For example, this year, Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, will have to get by just on his base pay — $600,000. Last year his total compensation, base pay plus bonus, was a mere $68.5 million. Hopefully, ole’ Lloyd put some of that somewhere safe, like under his mattress and not in Goldman stock (which is down about 70% since the same date last year), and that he’ll be okay during these tough times.

• Matt Taibbi, the insightful but underrated political correspondent for Rolling Stone, has a post-election analysis in the current issue entitled, “Requiem for a Maverick.” But it’s the sub-title that’s the winner: “John McCain ran one of the most incompetent, schizo campaigns in history — and for that we owe him big-time.” My sentiments, exactly.

• The New York Times reported on Thursday that a federal appeals court blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska’s North Slope. The reason: the court found that the Bush Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company’s drilling permit. Failure to properly perform an environmental study is a violation of the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act which means, of course, that a federal agency violated a federal law. What was overlooked was the requirement that the federal agency assess the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope.

• Also on Thursday the Times also reported that a federal district court judge in Washington issued “a sharp setback” to the Bush administration, ruling that five Algerian men were held unlawfully in Guantanamo for nearly seven years. Until the Supreme Court ruled last summer that Guantanamo detainees had the right to raise constitutional issues affecting their detention in habeas corpus petitions, the government could, and did, hold persons without charge, without counsel, and without allowing even the detainees themselves to be informed of the evidence against them. This was the first such habeas corpus case to reach the courts. The “secret evidence” against the five Algerians consisted of a single “classified document from an unnamed source.” So here we have: five men, seven years, secret evidence, one document, and an unnamed source — Franz Kafka couldn’t have thought up a more insidious scenario. It was the second important story of the day about the federal government violating a federal law.

• On Friday, the stock market was heading for another big dive when, all of a sudden — ta, da — word leaked out that President-elect Obama was about to nominate Timothy Geithner to the post of Treasury Secretary. Timothy Geithner is currently president of the Federal Reserve of New York, an extremely important position in the financial and economic worlds, and is a guy that Wall Street absolutely loves. So, what happens? What happens is that after the news reached the Street in the late afternoon, the Dow surged upward by nearly 500 points (more than 5%), thus ending the day, and the week, on a somewhat positive note for a change. (The Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial on Saturday was entitled, “Geithner Nets 500 Points.”) All this on the appointment of one guy.

It seems to me that any financial system that is that sensitive to the presence or absence of one guy, even the top guy, is just a tad nuts. I don’t care if Obama selected one of the twelve apostles to run the Treasury, it shouldn’t determine the investment fortunes of millions of people. But it’s been that way for some time now. Remember Alan Greenspan? Remember his explanation for the stock market boom of the 90s — “irrational exuberance”? Remember back then when Alan could do no wrong (he later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and received the Legion of Honor from the French). Unfortunately for Alan, however, is that he’s been in for severe criticism lately, and he himself admitted before a Congressional committee on October 23 that he “made some mistakes,” mainly about de-regulation.

One thing I do remember back in the 90s is how everyone was irrationally exuberant about the deference they were willing to pay Alan and how they fawned on his every word. If he said something even vaguely nice about the economy, the market went up by 40 or 50 points; and if he rolled his eyes about interest rates or the prospects of inflation, the market went down by an equally significant number. I had the feeling then that if Alan were to fart down-wind, the market would go down, and, conversely, farting in the other direction made the market go in the other direction. It was then that the Fart Theory of Market Fluctuations was first conceived. That theory is still sound, and it was evidenced once again by Timothy Geithner’s expected appointment as Secretary of the Treasury.

More On "Irrational Exuberance"

Last time I closed with a bit about how, most of the time, the brokers and traders who buy and sell on the stock market, and thereby determine market prices, have very little idea what they‘re doing. While they’re not always exuberant — and lately they’ve been far from that — to my mind they’re often irrational. These are the guys who Michael Moore recently described as Wall Street “Ponzi schemers who concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies.” In any event, there’s another compelling story of irrationality in the market last week. On Monday, December 1, the Dow Jones average once again went into the tank, this time for a minus 680 points (7.70%). It was the fourth biggest point drop and the 12-biggest percentage drop in history — and history means since the Dow was created in 1896. The reason: well, according to the experts, the reason was that a committee of economists (the National Bureau of Economic Research) “officially declared” (the operative words) that we are in a recession. Yes, these guys announced we are in a recession and, not only that, but said that we’ve been in it since last December! And so the Dow took another dive. Never mind that everyone has known this for some time — the economic indicators (gross domestic product, unemployment rate, stock prices, bank closings, mortgage foreclosures, wholesale prices, and the like) have all been doing bad things for quite a while now — so, in real time, nothing actually changed. Except that the recession was “officially declared.” So it follows that the market plummets. Right? Wrong. Actually, there is a way of handling such terrible statements of the obvious. To learn how to do this we have only to turn to our good friends in Latvia. Yes, no kidding: Latvia. On the same day we got the official bad news about the recession, the Wall Street Journal reported that Latvia recently took the “novel step” of containing its economic crisis by directing its Security Police to bust an economist for being “too downbeat.” “Too downbeat” . . . hmm. Presumably that would include shouting from the rooftops that we’re in a recession. Over in Latvia it seems that Dmitrijs Smirnovs, a 32-year-old university lecturer in economics, was taken into custody and questioned for two days for “badmouthing the stability of the Latvia’s banks and the national currency.” “All I did was say what everyone knows,” said Dmitrijs, which, of course, is exactly what was done here last Monday. The Police ordered him to keep quiet, not to leave the country, and confiscated his computer, in what was described as a “form of deterrence” designed to protect “state economic security.” Hopefully, the guys in Washington and New York who oversee our stock market (if there are any) will learn from this, for we probably could have avoided this most recent historic fall in stock prices altogether if the committee of economists had simply been told in advance to shut the fuck up.