ALL IN THE (CHENEY) FAMILY

So let’s see. What’s new and baffling?

You may have seen that President Bush has nominated Dick Cheney’s son-in-law as general counsel of Homeland Security. Philip J. Perry will oversee 1,500 lawyers – can you imagine such a thing? One wonders what sorts of things this army of lawyers have in mind to make the nation more safe, considering the fundamental questions thus far about the efficacy and fairness of the whole Homeland Security enterprise.

Perry, besides working on the Bush-Cheney transition team, and coaching his father-in-law for the vice-presidential debates, is a partner in a white shoe law firm – oh, and lobbied for Lockheed Martin, one of the top Homeland Security contractors.

Perry's wife, ie Cheney’s daughter, Elizabeth, was named last month by Condi Rice as second-ranking US diplomat for the Middle East.

Nice. Meantime, Cheney’s other, “lesbian” daughter, has a million dollar book contract from the new publishing outfit setup by a key GOP operative and run by Bush-Cheney adviser Mary Matalin.

Now what about all the outrage over Kofi Annan’s son doing consulting work for a UN contractor? As you’ll probably recall, that sort of thing is raising hackles on the Hill, where key GOP legislators are calling for him to resign.

Someone please explain the rules of what is – and is not – okay in the nepotism department.

--

SAM SMITH FOR THE CIA
Sam Smith, the brilliant, long-reigning and often-visionary editor of The Progressive Review, http://www.prorev.com/ , today considers the new recommendations of the presidential commission exploring intelligence failures. Among those: encourage more dissent. As Sam wisely points out, he’s a longtime dissenter. They really should ring him up.

He further notes that those who come up with bold new ideas are nearly always ridiculed except for a brief window of opportunity when all the ducks line up, including the ducks of the establishment media. All the rest of the time, presidents and other powerful people are listening to advisers who are essentially offering warmer-over concepts, playing it safe, pitching wrongheaded concepts that didn’t work before and still don’t work. “..[I]t was nice to feel normal in Washington, if only for a few minutes,” Smith writes. “Now about that single payer health care I was mentioning.”
- posted by Russ @ 9:12 AM

Hentoff v. Hertzberg: The Schiavo Truth Duel

“She is not brain-dead or comatose…she is not in a persistent vegetative state, according to an increasing number of radiologists and neurologists”

-Nat Hentoff, this week’s Village Voice

“She…[is in] a ‘persistent vegetative state,’ with no evidence or hope of improvement—a diagnosis that..has been confirmed, with something close to unanimity, by many neurologists on many occasions..”

-Hendrik Hertzberg, this week’s New Yorker

How is such a gap possible at this late point and what does this tell us about the clarity of the discourse? Certainly, it doesn’t speak well of the ‘system’ that is supposed to help us understand fairly basic things.

Looking more closely, Hertzberg’s near-unanimous neurologists represent the historical record. Hentoff’s “increasing number” of radiologists and neurologists suggest that either she has gotten better lately, after 15 years of no improvement, or that the essential integrity or capabilities of the doctors commenting on the case has somehow changed.

Hentoff attacks “the disgracefully ignorant coverage…by the great majority of the media, including…the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, and the Los Angeles Times….”

Whatever and whoever deserves the blame in this mess, won’t somebody please do a little due diligence here, and figure this thing out? If something as seemingly verifiable as this can’t be clearly established, well, no wonder half of the American public still thinks Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

##
- posted by Russ @ 4:43 PM

NEW "LIFE-SUPPORT" HYPOCRISY

A 2003 article in Britain’s Guardian about the Terri Schiavo affair, which includes an interview with her father Robert Schindler, has a rather remarkable final paragraph. The piece, which has been revived by the website Buzzflash, concludes thusly:

But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."

The doctor’s response is not included in the Guardian article. But it is implied.

What’s so troubling about this is how such a stunning revelation evaded our formidable domestic newsgathering mechanism. Isn’t this enough, in and of itself, to completely transform – and perhaps end – the national debate over whether to prolong the artificially-extended life of Terri, who after 15 years in a vegetative state clearly is not going to “have a chance…of coming out of this thing?

Despite claims by Robert Schindler and the groups supporting him, all relevant medical exams have suggested that Terri’s condition is irreversible. And this makes it even more unfair to Terri, because if, as “feeding” advocates claim, she is aware, then she is living trapped in a prison she knows she can never leave. In which case, release is the only merciful alternative.

Add to the contradictions surrounding Schindler’s position the revelation about Schiavo agitator Tom DeLay, who approved of pulling the plug on his own father, and we have a hypocrisy scandal of major proportions. Furthermore, those who argue that all life is sacred would have a tough time arguing that a young Terri matters while elderly parents don’t.

Another story, reported in the Miami Herald but not apparently widely publicized, noted that Gov. Jeb Bush had dispatched armed state police to the hospital to forcibly take Terri Schiavo away – but that they backed down. This would have been a huge scandal -- local police facing down state police, all of them armed.

Why can’t this -- the basic cynicism and manipulativeness of these people, and the willingness of the media to foster it into an all-consuming circus – be the big story that everyone discusses? Rest assured that in the hands of the Far Right media machine, they’d know what to do with such powerful evidence. For one thing, they would make sure that it led the news.

##
- posted by Russ @ 10:57 AM

VIOLATING CITIZENS' FREEDOMS

Have you ever seen tables turn so fast? The same people who for so many years have decried a decline in personal freedom are now domestic interventionists.

The Terri Schiavo case, of course, is striking. People who were all about a husband’s rights, about the sanctity of the marriage institution, will now stop at anything to override a husband’s rights.

And now we have the pharmacists. Today’s Washington Post has a piece about a growing trend in which pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that doing so would violate personal tenets.

This is a complicated issue, since pharmacists are ostensibly agents of the health care system, and as such shouldn’t be making decisions on what members of the public can and cannot access. Defenders of this new vigilantism, including a group called “Pharmacists for Life,” claim that patients can always get their needs filled by another pharmacist. But as critics point out, that isn’t always that easy – sometimes, there is no other pharmacist around (especially in rural areas), and sometimes, the “Life” pharmacists even refuse to release the prescription to someone who will honor it.

The Post chronicles cases where it took patients so long to find a pharmacist who would honor the prescription, that the window for, say, preventing a pregnancy, had already passed. One wonders what kind of responsibility those “Life” pharmacists would like to have for the well-being of the child born of an unintended pregnancy. Or how they feel about their probable role in actually increasing the number of abortion procedures.

This, and the Schiavo case, are only examples of a rising tide of individual decisions made “for” others -- which includes teachers not wanting to teach evolution. But it really hits home when life and death are concerned. It probably won’t be long before we hear about police officers, emergency medical technicians, and others starting to ignore the rules and making their own personal, “moral” judgments.

Then we’ll really see the whole issue of rights – and who should exercise them -- explode. Now would be a fine time to start discussing this. And not leave it to religious extremists to set the agenda.

##
- posted by Russ @ 3:59 PM

I see that Dick Cheney spoke yesterday at a town meeting in McCandless, Pa. I’ve never been to McCandless, though I’m sure it’s a fine place.

Still, I’m struck by the fact that the second most powerful person in America (or the first, depending on how you look at it) spends so much time in places I’ve never heard of. This is nothing new. Whenever he goes on a policy-sales swing, he’s in all manner of town, village, hamlet. Same thing during the re-election campaign last year.

Cheney is Mr Small Town. I’ve never seen a really good explanation, although I suppose that in carefully selecting small places, you can minimize the likelihood of hecklers, or that the audience will contain enough well-informed critics to start a dialogue that will get picked up by national media.

Obviously, Cheney doesn’t go to small towns specifically to win the modest amount of political support to be found there. He goes for a free ride into regional, state and national media. Most readers and viewers won’t glean much in the way of specifics from the bits that get covered – and even if they did, wouldn’t necessarily come to any kind of new understanding.

No matter. What counts is that people will say, Gosh, Edna, there’s the vice president taking the time out of his busy schedule to explain to regular folks in the heartland what he’s doing on their behalf.

The stuff obviously works. Long after everyone else in the administration had stopped claiming that Saddam had WMDs or that he was in bed with Al Qaeda, Cheney was still making such claims – of course, in all these minuscule places. And somehow, about half of the American populace still believes it. If that worked, is it impossible to imagine Cheney and his handlers imaging that they can sell the citizens on why it’s good to destroy one’s safety net?
- posted by Russ @ 11:21 AM

ONE PERSON'S POISON.....

In today’s New York Times, we read of concerns in New Hampshire about the Bush Administration’s relaxation of standards on factory mercury emissions. In case you haven’t been following the controversy, mercury is that stuff that can badly damage the nervous systems of infants (and all of us, really), that settles into the food chain and ought to make us think twice about how much sushi we consume.

Anyway, in the article, the reporter spoke with a fellow who was fishing. When she told him that the lake in which he was fishing was a probable mercury “hot spot,” he replied, “You’re worrying me.”

And there, my friends, is a political goldmine for good environmental policy. For many years, the NRA has had the upper hand with the hunting-and-fishing crowd. It has been so successful in stressing threats to the right to carry a gun that the NRA almost single-handedly, with help from the Christian Right, transformed Congress into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Corporate State.

Hunters and fishermen are not all the same, to be sure, and they’re also not as ideologically one-dimensional as they are often portrayed. If they understand the larger consequences of the NRA-wrought “revolution,” they’ll become alarmed about the threats that face them. Shrinking stocks of fish, more pollutants in the food chain, erosion of natural area by development and logging – all of these are disturbing developments for any human being, and certainly for those who spend a lot of time in the outdoors.

With Christian fundamentalists, we’re starting to learn that they’re not all in lock-step. While the majority certainly backed Bush in the last election, a surprising number did not. And in the Terri Schiavo matter, religious conservatives are hardly all on the side of government intervention, though that is the preferred position of the Religious Right.

The same is certainly true for the millions of Americans who hunt and fish. Thus far, the environmental movement and progressives in general have not done nearly enough to engage with these people. When they are made to understand the direct consequences of the administration’s steady unshackling of polluters, they will realize that there’s more at stake with their vote than the kind of gun they may carry.

##
- posted by Russ @ 8:21 AM

WEALTH CAMP


In today’s Wall Street Journal I read of a new phenomenon. The wealthy are sending their kids to wealth camp. According to the article, “A Crash Course on Staying Wealthy,: the idea is to teach the tykes how to manage their money – or, more precisely, money they will get via their parents.

Certainly, from the vantage point of the families that send their children away to these courses, ranging from a half day to a multi-year commitment, it makes sense. So, too, do the fancy new cell phones for kids described in another Journal report today. Parents know where kids are, and safety and communication are improved.

But in the case of the kiddie cells, there are other consequences, such as the displacement of spheres of privacy, the encouragement of neurotic constant monitoring and bothering, the effect the flood of these devices have on others in earshot, all of which get too little consideration.

As for the wealth camps, there are endless questions – about what this does for character, for notions of a fair playing field, and more.

For the society as a whole, these are just two more drops in a nearly overflowing bucket of self-absorption that will before too long inevitably produce some kind of cataclysmic flood engulfing all of us. Scarcely a day goes by when we don’t hear about another instrumentalization of gluttony and materialistic near-parody. As such behavior grows, we need to look in the mirror. Are we not becoming more like, say, Latin American countries where the poor and struggling middle classes fight every day for survival and dignity while a small if growing upper class showily debauches?

All of this ties in to the Social Security debate – and ought to tie into a debate on universal health care, a debate that should be raging right now but really isn’t. The point of both programs is to emphasize the commonality of interests, the sharing of concern, on the part of all members of society.

Looking after – and caring about – only yourself and your immediate family is both a pathetic way to live, and short-sighted. You can’t live in a cocoon, and as long as you’re part of the human race, you really shouldn’t want to. Of course, everyone is free to associate with his or her “class” – but there are larger issues out there that deserve the attention of all. The ruling elites, through the Bush Administration, find it beneficial to their continued powerlock to divide us up into small, self-concerned groups, and to sever the larger communal links.

All the talk about an “ownership society” are designed to fool the large majority into thinking that there is something in it for them to support fragmentation, rather than organizing for a common good. Will we all end up having our kids in “wealth camp”? Ask Bush if there will be vouchers for the tuition.
- posted by Russ @ 1:03 PM

CONDI IN 06!

Have you signed up yet for the Draft Condi movement? Looks like the media certainly have.

The last few days have seen a deluge of articles and electronic media stories mentioning “rumors” that Condi is planning to run for president. Who could possibly be floating such rumors? Is it Karl Rove, trying to get his next client in gear? Trying to cement the Bushite reign so that all those wonderful “reforms” can continue to be implemented for another four years?

What motivates the newspapers, television shows and websites of the mainstream media to keep on harping about this? Is there no skepticism?

Let’s pause for a sanity break. Here we have an unqualified and inexperienced President who works nearly fulltime as the pitchman for policies conjured up by others, now represented internationally by the unqualified and inexperienced Rice, who sees her primary job as to very rigidly express the “views” of the president.

Rice, it must be said, really never had the credentials to be National Security Advisor, and, truth be told, she’d be somewhere like #137,542 on a list of those best informed on and experienced in global affairs. But compared to Bush, she comes off as downright impressive – if for no other reason than that she’s such a prepared and forceful talker, even if much of her effort thus far has gone into protecting others, issuing platitudes, or dissembling.

In any case, as a black woman, she is probably an ideal choice to pit against Hillary Rodham Clinton, a likely Democratic candidate. That will really throw the conventional Democratic coalition into disorder. For, some blacks and some women who usually vote Democratic will prefer her over Clinton, and so, even, will some of the more racist members of the political Right. It’s a reasonable calculation, and so it seems that the rumors must be more carefully examined to see where they are coming from.
- posted by Russ @ 9:11 AM

MANIPULATING THE PUBLIC VIA SCHIAVO AFFAIR

If ever there were a classic example of who has the upper hand in controlling the American dialogue, it is the extraordinary attention given to the see-saw legal battle over the fate of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband wants to take her off life support, and whose parents do not.

That’s a compelling saga, but is it unique? It’s of course tragic that a family is torn over what to do with a person’s life. But how about some perspective? Every year, hundreds and perhaps thousands of families disagree over what to do with incapacitated loved ones.

Another consideration: why should the future of a single person, and particularly one in such a marginal condition, take precedence over those of entire groups of perfectly healthy people? With the second anniversary of the Iraq invasion, might we ask how much debate Tom DeLay, Denny Hastert and George Bush would like over the loss of 1,500 young American lives for a misrepresented cause? How about all the National Guardsmen who, based on precedent, signed up for Guard duty assuming they would be piling sandbags to prevent damage from rising American rivers, not being killed in an increasingly sectarian conflict they don’t understand?

While we’re talking about the medical care Terri Schiavo receives, how about the medical care that millions of generally-viable Americans do not get because they cannot afford health insurance? How important is that to the leadership?

Once again, as with Elian Gonzalez, Monica Lewinsky and other previously-unknowns of soap opera potential, cynical conservative leaders are effectively using the Schiavo affair to divert Americans from the real goings-on in Washington. While we’re all debating this one case – or focusing on steroids in baseball –who’s got the time and energy to explore more complex, nuanced matters?

Like congress’s penalization of ordinary Americans through a massive giveaway to the highly profitable (and even more deceptive) credit card industry under the guise of “bankruptcy reform?” Like what the House Majority leader thinks about selling off one’s vote on an important issue for a trip to the British Isles. Or whether a small increase in energy output warrants destroying the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Or whether repealing a tax on wealthy seniors' Social Security checks is a good idea with the deficit exploding.

The American media must shoulder a big share of the blame for allowing this con game. These kinds of tabloid phenomena – part of an endless parade, including the Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson trials – manipulate our emotions and use authentic narrow-scope tragedy to push buttons and generate ratings.

Would anybody like to see the camera pulled back wider on these tawdry dramas to reveal the stage upon which they play out? The GOP leadership’s despicable entry into the Schiavo matter, the 11th hour Hill vote, Bush’s choreographed rush back to Washington to sign special legislation – it is all fodder for a serious discussion of deception as the new central motif for governing.
- posted by Russ @ 1:16 PM

March 18, 2005

READING BETWEEN THE LINES ON…CONGRESS AND STEROIDS

Congress appears to have mastered the art of the tabloid. Get people talking about a single brain-dead woman and some baseball players on steroids, and who’s got the time and energy to explore more complex, nuanced matters?

Like what the House Majority leader thinks about selling off one’s vote on an important issue for a trip to the British Isles. Or whether a small increase in energy output warrants destroying the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Or whether repealing a tax on wealthy seniors' Social Security checks is a good idea with the deficit exploding.

A quick eyeballing of news reports showed vastly more reporting on the two tabloid stories than on the policy ones. That’s not to say that steroids in baseball isn’t bad, or that the Terri Schiavo story isn’t heart-rending. But when Congress embraces them and the media hypes those stories (front page of today’s New York Times on the steroids) it becomes even harder to focus a distracted public on what really affects them and their lives.

None of this happens in a void. Media consultants monitor the changing tastes of the public – and the press corps’ anticipation of that demand – so it is no accident that the GOP-controlled Congress was the setting of debate over both steroids and the Schiavo case as legislators raced to roll back reason and balance like there were no tomorrow.

There’s a saying: the public can’t handle more than one big, complex domestic story at a time. If that’s so, then Social Security is it. Everything else, no matter how troubling, becomes nothing more than a quickie, the “B” material of the news machine. Except, of course, the tabloid stuff. Can’t be long before the Michael Jackson case draws legislative scrutiny as well. Must be some good fodder in there to put the Democrats on the defensive.
- posted by Russ @ 3:00 PM

READING BETWEEN THE LINES ON… BUSH’S 3/16 NEWS CONFERENCE

Bush opened by saying he was on his way to Crawford, Texas, for “Easter Week” and sort of suggested that his departure was the reason for this chat with the press. That seems odd, given that he takes so many trips to his ranch and has so few news conferences – and doesn’t bother to have news conferences when there’s a real reason – a major controversy where he needs to be clear and out front.

In any case, Bush mentioned that he’d have some meetings with foreign leaders while in Crawford. Elsewhere, I read that he’ll be at his ranch for 10 days. Would be nice to see some reporting on how much total time he spends in a year at the ranch, and what percentage of his time there is actually spent working. It’s easy enough to escort a dignitary around the property, watch some sports together, whatever, then issue a canned announcement. Pretty good work if you can get it.

To his credit, this Bush sounded surprisingly articulate and well-informed – by comparison with the low standards he set early on. I’d like to see some analysis of how and why he now seems to generally know what he is talking about – and why he doesn’t mangle sentences as much as he used to. Give the guy some credit if he’s been practicing.

Regarding social security, a reporter pressed Bush to take charge of his own proposal and to spell it out, but Bush would have none of it. He uttered a bunch of phrases including “I’m not interested in playing political games,” “there’s some interesting ideas out there,” “we’re open for ideas,” “I can understand why people say…force the President to either negotiate with himself or lay out his own bill,” “I want to work with members of both political parties” “I’m looking forward to people bringing ideas forward,” “the American people want something done,” and more such goodies. But nothing you could barter for a cup of coffee. Evidence of why staying too long in the White House press corps can lower your i.q. by a few points.

One new and intriguing detail did emerge. Bush, sounding like the country haberdasher he yearns to be, noted that, “a Democrat economist name of Posen” had stopped by the White House to talk about the need for a progressive social security solution. Bush said that he hadn’t personally met with Posen, but at least he knew the man was on the property. Good for him.

##
- posted by Russ @ 1:35 PM

Reading Between the Lines on.....Tom DeLay:

Tom DeLay, facing inquiries on a variety of potential ethics violations and alleged crimes, went on the offensive yesterday, as reported in today's Washington Post. It's worth deconstructing his methods:

He charged that his critics were relying on "fiction and innuendo." He said that "With all the partisan politics of personal destruction that the Democrats have announced and have carried through on, I have yet to be found breaking any House rules….It is very unfortunate that the Democrats have no agenda. All they can do is try to tear down the House and burn it down in order to gain power."

For perspective, one might keep in mind that DeLay was an enthusiast for the campaign to go after Bill Clinton on the Lewinsky affair. But while the underlying issues in the Lewinsky matter, besides the lying about it, were a consensual sexual relationship, DeLay is being scrutinized for essentially selling off the levers of democracy. To characterize complaints against that as simply motivated by partisanship without acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations is remarkable. Meanwhile, his claim that he is "yet to be found breaking any House rules" skirts the central issue: the investigation has barely begun, although already there are indications of improper acts. It also begs the question of how the House is to find him having violated any rules, given the way he and the GOP leadership have determinedly neutered the Ethics Committee, whose job it is to look into possible improprieties.

In his public relations offensive, DeLay claimed that he had opposed a bill restricting Internet gambling not because he got a free trip from opponents of the bill, but because the bill was not strong enough -- and cited another bill he later supported, which he said was stronger. However, as the Post notes, the later bill was not stronger. That should be a pretty clear reason for social conservatives who are vehemently anti-gambling -- and who are part of DeLay's core constituency -- to start doubting DeLay's sincerity. Yet DeLay managed to wow them by simply switching topics. In a speech to the faithful the same day, he spoke of wanting Congress to get involved with the case of a brain-damaged Floridian whose husband wants to remove her feeding tube.

That's an incredibly obvious way to distract attention from an important but technically-complex topic involving the integrity of the democratic system -- introduce a heart-string issue that has little if anything to do with Congress. Yet, the old switcheroo seems to work again and again. That’s in part because the mainstream press, perhaps fearful of being tagged as biased by the very same forces allied with DeLay, tends to report discrete remarks without complete context.

Reporters don't need to leave it to editorial pages to connect the dots. If a politician is blatantly confusing an issue or dodging the essence of a matter, that's not opinion -- that's fact. And should be made as clear as possible to the reader.

##
- posted by Russ @ 11:38 AM