Haiku Politics

In John Kerry's op-ed column today in the New York Times, he once again illustrated why he was hopeless as an opponent to Bush last year. In the column, in which he critiques the Bush administration policies in Iraq, he manages not to say the one thing that should be said--namely, that it was wrong to go to war in the first place. This is a continuation of his "I can manage this war better than Bush can" rhetoric during last year's campaign for the Presidency. This is also consistent with his continuing caution and hesitation and--dare I say it?--flip flopping--over the Downing Street memos. At first, it appeared that he was going to join in on the growing criticism of Bush as a result of his decision to "fix the intelligence". But then, essentially, he has backed off, having said virtually nothing on the subject.

Last year, Kerry, as the leading politician of the Democratic Party establishment, offered no principled antiwar alternative to Bush's war in Iraq, and now he continues to muddle the issue. In the above cited op-ed column, he offers a proposal for getting out of Iraq that smacks of Nixon's "Vietnamization" plan for a gradual withdrawal. 30 years after we left Vietnam, and John Kerry is reviving the Nixon doctrine!

Posted by The Haikuist at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments

Much has rightly been made of the Downing Street Memo, and the implications of how Bush "fixed" the intelligence to justify his war with Iraq. But we should not let the Democratic Party off the hook, because the Democratic Party establishment was largely complicit in this war.

Counterpunch has published a couple of interesting articles that, once again, illustrate the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.

One is an excerpt from Joshua Frank's book, Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush. The article is an excellent and pointed exposé of how the Democratic Party brought about its own demise by collaborating with Bush on the Iraq war and by shoving the antiwar movement aside during the presidential campaign.

Frank begins the article with a quote from John Kerry on October 9, 2002, in which Kerry explained that he was voting to authorize war with Iraq. As Frank pointed out,

Despite what the spin doctors say, Democrats are largely to blame - not only for discounting the peace movement but also for laying the groundwork Republican hawks needed to justify attacking Saddam's regime and waging Bush's greater "War on Terror."

To illustrate this point, he further points out that Dick Gephardt helped draft the war resolution, Tom Daschle actively supported it, and Hillary Clinton "hitched a ride on the war-wagon". Democrats, every last one of them. Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, had been beating the war drums against Saddam Hussein for some time before Bush took office. (I personally find it amusing when Bush apologists use Clinton's anti-Hussein rhetoric as a justification for Bush's having gone to war. Not only is it bizarrely ironic that many of these same Republican yahoos who passionately hated Clinton would use Clinton's views on any subject as a justification for a given position, but it also reflects a certain simplistic conception of bipartisan duality--as if the Democratic and Republican party establishment defined the limits of acceptable public opinion).

Frank points out that "with political interests and propaganda in mind, most establishment Democrats" left "the millions of protesters who took to the streets across America prior to the invasion with few representatives in Washington, historically or otherwise." He further points out that by the time the war stated, "the Democrats, who had failed to articulate any basis for citizens to vote for them as opposed to their Republican rivals regarding the Iraq situation, had lost control of the Senate as well as many seats in the House. They didn't challenge Bush on any major issue." By that, he refers specifically any major foreign policy issue, including the war in Iraq.

Frank concludes his article with the following passage:

Needless to say, claims that this war has made the United States - and we the people - any safer are laughable. Democratic henchmen Al From and Bruce Reed must have been hallucinating when they proclaimed Kerry would protect America from all that is evil. Kerry, of course, has proven to be no different from Bush on foreign policy issues, save for the "D" next to his name on the ballot in 2004.

An aggressive unilateral policy only breeds terrorism, and Kerry's foreign policy would have only nurtured future terrorist activity, as Bush's is surely doing now.

Unfortunately, the same cretins continue to control the Democratic platform. They dictate what is or is not acceptable discourse within the party. Being antiwar, as we know, is most definitely unacceptable, which explains why those who listened did not hear Kerry breath even the faintest sigh of peace rhetoric along the campaign trail.

Although 82 percent of registered Democrats believed the war to be a grave mistake, according to a 2004 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll conducted on June 21-23, Kerry was steadfast in his support for the Iraq war. His own campaign platform was a glaring memento of the Democrats' inability to offer significant alternatives to George W. Bush. They simply believed they could manage the situation more astutely. "This administration did not build a true international coalition," Kerry's campaign platform proclaimed. He simply would have done it better.

In the context of a party hell-bent on war, whose foreign policy is essentially identical to the Republican policy, it doesn't matter how many MoveOn members donate money to the Democratic Party. In the end, such reformers are left with nothing. No party. No money. No hope. And - perhaps worst of all - no unity.

This is, alas, so true. Now that the election is over, and support for the war continues to drop among Americans, the problems with the Democrats become ever more apparent. As John Walsh points out in his Counterpunch article, in which he analyzes a recent Gallup poll on the Iraq war,

The least popular option in this poll, viz, sending more troops (10%) which has been least popular since Gallup first asked this question in August, 2003, is the stance of the Democratic leadership! When John Kerry ran for president, he was for sending 40,000 more troops, as was the "anti-war" Howard Dean, and that remains their stance to this day. So the Democratic leadership has managed to adopt a stance on the war less popular than Bush's ­ quite an achievement.

In fact Gallup also asked: "If President Bush were to send more troops to Iraq, would you be upset or not?" 56% said they would be upset, up from the still substantial 40% last September before the U.S. Presidential election. Are you surprised that Kerry lost the election?

You have to hand it to these Dems; they are men and women (let's not forget Hillary) of principle. Having voted for a criminal and illegal war, they are willing to sacrifice as many Iraqi and American lives as necessary to win that war ­ as long as their children are not part of the carnage.

Walsh's question about whether we are surprised that Kerry lost the election is rhetorical. There is no surprise here. Kerry offered no principled leadership in opposition to the war, and without a principled opposition to Bush and the reactionaries in the Republican Party, the voters will simply not be drawn to him or his party. This is a lesson that the Democratic Party is unlikely to learn any time soon.

Posted by The Haikuist at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments

In Paul Krugman's June 13 column, he notes that a 2003 poll showed that "72 percent of Americans favored government-guaranteed health insurance for all." This percentage appears not to have changed much over more than half a century, because he also notes that in 1945, 75 percent of Americans favored nationalized health insurance.

So if the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans favor universal health care, and have done so for 60 years, why is it that we don't have it? Answer this question, and you will discover so much that is wrong with the existing political and economic system of the United States. After all, we're supposedly a democracy, aren't we? But how can that be, if the vast majority of the people are unable to obtain something important that they want in overwhelming numbers?

Krugman also notes that the Democratic Party, which kinda sorta endorses national health insurance, nevertheless continually shies away from a single payer solution, thus illustrating once again why the Democrats are ideologically impotent and hopeless, and anything but a party of progressive principles. As Krugman points out, Clinton's convoluted universal health care proposal, which was dead on arrival, was not a single payer plan. But the Democrats, rather than taking away from that the lesson that perhaps a single payer plan is the way to go with universal health care, instead are even more committed to appeasing the corporate elite, in this case the insurance industry, and thus in supporting market-based solutions. Thus the Democratic Party once again shows itself to be mired hopelessly in its dead-end neoliberal ideology.

When the institutions of power, and the dominant political parties, cater not to the people but to corporate interests, what does that say about the supposedly democratic nature of society?

Posted by The Haikuist at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments

Howard Dean, as head of the Democratic Party, has stirred a lot of discussion lately over his sharp-tongued attacks of the Republican Party. Many liberals have praised him as being just what the doctor ordered to rescue a flailing party. At long last, it is argued, the Democratic Party is showing some spine.

Yes, it is certainly true that one of the problems with the Democratic Party has been its lack of will. There has often been a tendency of Democrats to "play nice" in the face of Republican ruthlessness, which gets the party absolutely nowhere. Karl Rove has shown that playing down and dirty makes for highly effective politics, and Dean's sharp tongue has served as a kind of response to this.

However, I would argue that spinelessness is really only one of the problems with the Democrats, and of less significance than its much more serious problem. The other, bigger problem has less to do with tactics and more to do with ideology. Put simply, the Democrats simply have no ideological compass. All the sharp-tongued Deanisms in the world won't make up for the fact that the party has embraced the pro-globalization, pro-neoliberalism consensus that dominates the major political parties throughout the industrialized West. And as long as the Democrats participate in this consensus, they will continue to offer nothing in the way of a real alternative voice to the American people, they will continue to lose elections, and they will continue to remain useless as an "opposition" party to the Republicans.

Many liberals describe themselves as "Dean Democrats", with the implication that Howard Dean represents a progressive, transformative force within the Democratic Party that they identify with, as a way of "rescuing" the party from its doldrums. While it is true that Dean's opposition to the Iraq war galvanized many progressives within the party, the fact is that this single issue has served to cloud Dean's overall record, leading to a lot of liberal wishful thinking.

The following highly instructive comment from Howard Dean appeared in E.J. Dionne's column last year. It is something that liberals ought to ponder as they jump on the Dean bandwagon:

"I've balanced budgets, I've supported the death penalty in some instances, I got an A from the NRA -- and I'm the most left- wing Democrat?" Dean laughs. The labeling, he says, is a mark of how the nation's political discussion has been pulled to the right. "What passes now for 'moderate,' '' he says, "used to be called 'conservative.' ''

Richard Nixon has sometimes been called the last liberal President. Given what has happened to American politics over the last 35 years, this makes a certain amount of sense. As a conservative, he did things that would be unthinkable now in the current political climate. He signed into law OSHA, the EPA, and the Clean Air Act. He once proposed a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans--a proposal that now would be derided by everyone as "socialistic". I am not suggesting that Nixon was a good President, of course. He was a warmonger, an imperialist, and a crook, among other things. The point is that, in 1970, he stood to the left of where Al Gore was in the 2000 election. Some Democratic Party loyalists don't get why so many people were drawn to people like Ralph Nader in the last two Presidential elections. The answer is quite simple--there is a gaping void in American politics, a void resulting as both parties continually march to the right. And Howard Dean isn't going to change this process one bit, sharp tongue or not.

Here is a statistic from the June 5 New York Times: "From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162, according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, each taxpayer at the top brought in an extra $18,000." What is the Democratic Party proposing to do about that? What is the Democratic Party going to do about the outsourcing of our jobs in the modern globalized economy? What is the Democratic Party going to do about the Walmartization of the American economy? What is the Democratic Party going to do about the decline of organized labor in the United States? (John Kerry's platform last year didn't say a thing about repealing Taft-Hartley. Ralph Nader and some other third party platforms called for its repeal. Which of those candidates did organized labor endorse last year? Answer: the one who ignored the issue. What does that tell you?)

This same neoliberal, pro-globalization consensus has dominated politics elsewhere, and more and more we are seeing popular frustration with the political agendas of the ruling political elites. In Germany, for example, Gerhard Schroeder's supposedly "left wing" Social Democrats are largely in agreement with the right wing Christian Democrats in supporting further rollbacks of protections of workers, cuts in corporate taxes, and other elements of the neoliberal agenda. In so doing, the voters, increasingly angry with this process, defeated Schroeder's party in recent state elections. The problem in Germany, as in the United States, is that both major parties embrace the tenets of global corporate capitalism. Thus they are left without a major political force with which to express their frustration. In their elections, it is, essentially, a case of "heads you win, tails we lose."

Similarly, the recent rejection of the European constitution by French voters was another expression of that same frustration. Voters were tired of having globalism rammed down their throats by the political elite. They rightfully fear cutbacks in major social protections, including the 35-hour work week.

And, most recently, the resistance to the global capitalist corporate agenda has also taken root in Latin America, with the recent popular uprising in Bolivia being a manifestation of this process.

The steamroller of globalization is facing roadblocks around the world. More and more, people are getting fed up with what is being force fed to them by the political elites and the ruling classes of the world.

Yet, as long as the major political parties continue to ignore the true, democratic voices of the people, they will continue to prove to be irrelevant to the needs of the American people. George Bush is an unpopular president. He wasn't particularly popular last year, either, but the Democratic Party could not, would not, refused to offer a real alternative to the reactionaries in the Republican Party, and lost the election despite Bush's obvious failings. The reason is not the inherent conservatism of Americans, as some despondent Democrats suggest. The reason is simply that the Democrats offered no real, legitimate, serious, principled alternative to the Republican Party.

Some people think that the Democratic Party can be saved. Organizations like the Progressive Democrats of America hope to rescue the party, but without really explaining how they can seriously hope to do so as long as it continues to give its unqualified support to the party's candidates while it continues to push the nation's agenda rightward. The Democratic Party loves the votes of progressives--but that doesn't mean it wants to implement a progressive agenda.

Meanwhile, Howard Dean thinks that a sharp tongue is the ticket that will rescue the party. But that won't save it either.

The people, independent of the political elites, need to realize that they can save themselves by organizing outside of the existing pro-corporate, pro-ruling class, pro-globalization political elites. And it is time that those on the left of American politics consigned the Democratic Party to the dustbin of history.

Posted by The Haikuist at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments

When Bush fixed the data to justify going to war with Iraq, he was acting in accordance with a general practice that has always characterized his style of government. Another clear example of this has been his environmental policy. Bush's hacks who implement his environmental policy have a long history of editing out any scientific information that doesn't conform to Bush's policy. The New York Times today reported on another example of this kind of behavior.

In this case, a former oil industry lobbyist with no scientific credentials edited several government environmental reports that were prepared by agency scientists so as to "play down links between such [greenhouse gas] emissions and global warming, according to internal documents." The individual who did this was Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the rather ironically named White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The Times obtained documents from an organization that represents Rick Piltz, who resigned last March from the office that produced the scientific research that Cooney blue penciled. Piltz sent a memo last week to "top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies", in which he said

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change. But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

Similar examples of this sort of behavior can be found throughout Bush administration policies. For example, back in March, news stories came out with headlines like "Bush pushes questionable abstinence programs. Funding boost proposed despite classes' unproven effectiveness". Even though the data found no support for the Bush policy, he pursued them anyway.

Perhaps the most important question is why Bush continues to get away with this sort of thing. But that's another posting for another time.

Posted by The Haikuist at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments

It's not often that you find an expose on a sordid practice in the Sunday New York Times book review section, but last weekend, the article "Cash Up Front" investigated a phenomenon that I would term "bookstore payola". It refers to the practice of publishers paying bookstores to prominently display certain books. One bookseller that engages in this practice is Barnes & Noble:

It is known, somewhat deceptively, as a cooperative advertising agreement. In plain terms, it means that many of the books on display at the front of a store or placed face out at the end of an aisle are there because the publisher paid for them to be there, not necessarily because anyone at the bookstore thought the book was noteworthy or interesting.

Under such programs, booksellers -- mostly chains, but also larger independent stores -- keep a certain percentage of a publisher's net sales, usually 3 percent to 5 percent annually, depending on the agreement with the publisher. This money is then parceled out for various purposes, to help, for example, defray the bookseller's advertising costs, when a chain takes out ads or prints fliers to promote certain books. But the publisher's money may also buy coveted space on the store's front tables or on tall, highly visible racks, known as stepladders, announcing to customers that these books are considered the most important in the store.

The article specifically backs away from identifying this practice with payola, even saying that there is nothing unethical about it. It also compares it to similar practice in grocery stores And yet, the article also points out, "the practice seems less savory in bookselling, where bookstore owners and managers were once assumed to serve as an editorial presence, recommending and featuring books they liked." It also admits that "bookstores don't tell customers about it."

In fact, if there were nothing wrong with this practice, you'd think that neither the publishers nor the booksellers would be ashamed of it. But they are. In fact, according to the article, "Trying to get publishers or booksellers to talk about display agreements, even off the record, is like trying to persuade Mafiosi to break the oath of omertá. One respected New York publishing executive contacted by this reporter couldn't get off the phone fast enough when asked about it."

I am having a hard time finding this any different from the payola scandals of the 1950s--although, it should be pointed out, many in the music industry will say that new and more subtle forms of payola exist in that industry today.

I love going to the sorts of independent bookstores where the employees have taped pieces of paper to the shelves under books that they liked, with handwritten reviews explaining why the books are so good. That kind of personal service is, of course, stands in contrast to the large, impersonal, corporate bookstore chains that take payment from booksellers to prominently display certain books.

Consumer choices are inevitably influenced by what others may recommend. This is especially true in the arts--movies, books, plays. We read reviews so that we can get an idea if a particular work of art is worth investing our time and money in. When the integrity of the recommendations that we receive are subject to question, the ability to make intelligent, informed consumer choices crumbles. We become beholden to the information that is bought and sold for us.

Yet this is the overwhelming reality of the modern capitalist marketplace. Powerful interests, with powerful motivation for influencing the information that you receive about the choices available to you, use the cash nexus to alter the information that is distributed to you. It often happens subtly, behind the scenes, in ways that even the perpetrators findembarrassingg. Capitalism makes information a commodity, like anything else, bought and sold. Because we are dependent on information, we are ultimately dependent on those who buy and sell it. In this way, often without realizing it, the "free consumer" is not really free.

Posted by The Haikuist at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

AP correspondent Charles J. Hanley reveals yet another incident of John Bolton's bullying behavior, but what is particularly interesting about this is this incident ties directly to the Bush regime's decision to go to war with Iraq in 2002. Thus it serves as another bit of evidence, along with the Downing Street Memo, about the ways that Bush not only fabricated evidence to support the push for war, but also prevented other evidence from coming to light that would have undermined the justification for war.

In Bolton's case, it turns out that he illegally got Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (a global arms control agency) fired from his job. The reason? Bustani tried to get chemical weapons inspectors into Iraq. As the AP article points out, "Bustani's inspectors would have found nothing, because Iraq's chemical weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s. That would have undercut the U.S. rationale for war because the Bush administration by early 2002 was claiming, without hard evidence, that Baghdad still had such an arms program."

Posted by The Haikuist at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments

Joe Cohen, writing in the Boston Globe about the celebration in France after the victory of the 'non' vote against the European Constitution, has this poignant comment about French versus American politics:

I was impressed by the peacefulness, conviviality, and civility of the process -- how people in normally impersonal Paris would talk freely with each other, sharing their thoughts and feelings. An echo of May 1968.

It also seemed that I was observing a genuinely democratic process, not far from the spirit of ancient Athens. It struck me that the French, not for the first time, were collectively rejecting their rulers. The rulers, understandably, are not amused. Perhaps the elite does know some things better than the common folk. Nonetheless, I still think I saw a magnificent process in motion -- a people asserting their own intrinsic and inalienable sovereignty.

All this made me think about the recent history of the United States. What would have happened if, like the French, Americans had risen up after the falsified election and judicial coup d'etat of 2000? Or before the deceitful run-up to the Iraq war? Why did we go along instead of standing up for simple justice?

Maybe the quarrelsome, arrogant, petulant French do get touched now and then by divine inspiration. Maybe the human spirit continues to live, despite many efforts to the contrary.

The reference to May, 1968 is a powerful one. In that fateful month, the people of France came oh so close to creating something truly revolutionary in the Western world. That month represented throughout the world what we now realize was the high point of the left within the twentieth century, when everything seemed possible. It wasn't obvious until later that this was the case, and, alas, the right has been in ascendancy every since that moment. But in May of 1968, the French, God bless them, took the world to the brink of possibility.

That was not the first time that France took the world close to a radically new vision. In 1871, revolution took hold in the city of Paris, when the Paris Commune was founded. Unfortunately, the Commune was ultimately crushed by the reactionaries in France.

The defeat of the EU Constitution at the ballot box isn't exactly the same as manning the barricades in May, 1968. But it does represent a significant clash, a reaction to the neoliberal globalization that has enveloped the industrialized West. The French said, "enough is enough". This clash of visions and economic futures must come to a head, and where it will end up is anyone's guess. Perhaps the French will take respond to this clash between a morally bankrupt neoliberal capitalism and the "social Europe" that market forces are seeking to destroy, and ask themselves if perhaps a new, better world is possible.

Posted by The Haikuist at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments

The White House and various apologists for US foreign policy have been criticizing or even smearing Amnesty International and questioning its integrity after it criticized the US for its human rights record. Amnesty International is fighting back.

Irene Khan, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, wrote a powerful letter to the Washington Post in response to its editorial that objected to the use of the word "gulag". And in a news conference, Ms. Khan had this to say: "The administration's response has been that our report is absurd, that our allegations have no basis, and our answer is very simple: if that is so, open up these detention centers, allow us and others to visit them."

Bravo!

Posted by The Haikuist at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today's New York Times put it succinctly in its commentary on the failure of the EU referenda to pass in France and the Netherlands::

The governing parties of the left and the right are saying the same things to their people: that painful, free-market economic reforms are the only path toward rejuvenation, more jobs, better futures. And the people, who have come to equate the idea of an expanded Europe with a challenge to cradle-to-grave social protections, are giving the same answer: We don't believe you.

Here we see in a nutshell what has gone horribly wrong with European politics--and, by extension, politics in the US as well. In Europe, we have seen that all the major political parties have signed on to the mantra of neoliberal globalization. This includes the parties of the so-called "left". And these parties are doing so despite the wishes of the people of Europe.

This drift towards an ideology of global markets illustrates what has gone wrong, seriously wrong, with the European "left". It also, alas, mirrors a similar trend among the Democrats in the United States. In both the US and Europe, the parties of the so-called "left" have abandoned progressive values and the interests of working people in favor of a pro-corporate agenda. And, meanwhile, the mass of people who have rejected this ideological drift are left without a political voice among the major forces in the governments of Western nations.

The people in France and the Netherlands were given a chance to voice their frustration through referenda. But, in general, there has been a feeling in Europe that the citizenry have been denied a say in this trend towards globalization capitalism. A similar process has happened in the US, where progressive voices have been shut out of the American politician process. Many progressives and liberals continue to cling to the hope that they can be rescued by the Democratic Party. Yet the Democratic Party is a hopelessly out-of-touch organization that has long ago thrown in its lot with corporate interests, globalization, and "market reforms", and that has refused to offer a bona fide left wing alternative to the reactionaries of the Republican Party. It serves up centrist, pro-globalization candidates like John Kerry for President--and then scratches its head when it finds that the voters do not enthusiastically embrace their party or candidates. In this way, the Democrats have only served to contribute to the overall rightward drift in American politics. (For an excellent analysis of this process, I recommend the Counterpunch article, "How the Democratic Party Fosters Conservatism").

As long as the voters in the US and Europe are prevented a means to express their frustration with this situation--in other words, as long as the Western political systems are hamstrung by undemocratic processes that deny people any real options or voice--then we'll see a continuation of this slide.

Europeans are perhaps facing more clearly than their American counterparts the reality of being caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they support the continuation of social welfare benefits that have insulated them from the worst effects of global capitalism. On the other hand, the market pressures of globalization are working to undermine these benefits. The tug-of-war is becoming more apparent--between unfettered capitalism and the hope of sustaining "capitalism with a human face". But the human face of capitalism is crumbling, and underneath its facade we are seeing the grim, ugly reality of something much darker and more unpleasant.

Posted by The Haikuist at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments

I although I earlier wrote a commentary about the positive role that Mark Felt (Deep Throat) played in exposing the crimes of Nixon in the Watergate scandal, David Price makes an excellent point in Counterpunch about the role that he also played in the FBI as a Hoover protege who participated in repressive actions against dissidents. Price writes:

Mark Felt was a Hoover devotee who worked on these very COINTELPRO operations, but he did not feel the need to leak documents on the damage done to American democracy by these illegal campaigns.

This raises the point that whatever his motivations were in leaking information to the Washington Post, his overall role in the FBI suggests a more mixed record in the history of American democracy.

When we consider that while Watergate may have brought down a paranoid, criminal, right wing President, it had little, if any, lasting effects on the democratization of American society. Nixon was replaced by another conservative President, he managed to avoid prosecution, and the next election in 1976 ushered the new era of of centrist Democratic politicians that only led to the ongoing rightward slide in politics that have continued to this day. We still have a political system that is corrupt and dominated by corporate interests. We still have an electoral college, we still have an electoral system that shuts out alternative voices, and now we have repressive government measures like the USA Patriot Act. In the long run, it seems that very little, if anything was really gained by the American people through the ousting of Richard Nixon. The right wing is now in ascendancy, and the human rights situation in the US is as bad, if not worse, than it was in 1974.

Celebrating Mark Felt as a hero may be a little premature, especially in light of what David Price has pointed out about Felt's role in repressive actions against US dissidents. It is one thing to celebrate the ousting of Nixon, who was, of course, a very bad person--but can we really say that the nation as a whole as benefited in the long run?

Posted by The Haikuist at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments

George Bush has nominated Christopher Cox to head up the SEC, now that the current chairman, William Donaldson, is resigning. According to Reuters, Donaldson decided to resign "amid mounting criticism from some in business for his aggressive post-Enron reforms."

Having just seen the documentary film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, the mind-boggling scope and nature of the Enron scandal is rather fresh in my mind. This was one of the greatest corporate scandals in American history, if not the greatest. If anything had ever suggested to believers in modern capitalism that reforms were needed, it would have been this scandal. Thus it is interesting, but not surprising, to see that Bush and his cronies ultimately don't see the need for any such reforms, to the point of actively but quietly opposing them; and now that Enron is yesterday's news, they plan on making sure that the country's corporate elite are back to business as usual.

What is interesting about this is why Bush and his corporate friends would wish to establish as few rules as possible governing corporate investment. After all, isn't establishing investor confidence critical to the success of the entire system of corporate ownership? And aren't rules and regulations and organizations like the SEC designed to ensure give investors confidence in the fairness of the system, to make sure that it isn't rigged? Isn't that why we have laws against, for example, insider trading?

All true. And yet, for the rich corporate elite, such rules and regulations still rankle--because investor confidence is only one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is the social darwinist ethic that underlies the modern American economic system, and which sustains and inspires its ruling class. This corporate ethic on the one hand needs the perception of a system of fairness to survive, and yet on the other its very ethic resists actual fairness at every turn. We have a system in which the acquisition of wealth by the owners of capital is the guiding principle. Anything that corporations and their governing elite can get away with in its pursuit of greater profits is acceptable.

Consider that there is nothing "fair" about either suppressing unionization or predatory pricing, but these are both standard business practices by Wal-Mart and other successful corporations. Nor is there anything "fair" about the extremely high salaries that CEOs get in relation to their lowest paid workers. And there is certainly nothing "fair" about incompetent CEOs who get fired and yet receive huge severance bonuses (such as Carly Fiorina, who was fired earlier this year as CEO of HP but received a severance package worth over $20 million).

It's isn't about fairness--it's about acquiring as much money for themselves as possible. That's what underlies capitalism. In order for the ruling class to make lots and lots of it, they have to exploit the system (and the people who work within the system) in every way possible. Thus the raw, naked, and exploitive nature of global capitalism both hates fairness, and yet needs at least some perception that fairness exists. As a result, it reluctantly submits to regulation by a government body like the SEC. But the key word is reluctantly. Perhaps what matters more is the appearance of fairness than the actuality. As long as people think that the SEC makes the system fair, that's more important than any actual fairness.

Bush himself has an interesting history with respect to the SEC. Back when he was on the board of directors at Harken, he sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock--just two months before the company reported a $23.2 million loss. This was clearly a case of insider trading, not unlike the what his friend Kenny Lay did at Enron. On April 20 of the same year, just two months before Bush sold that stock, Harken President Mikel D. Faulkner wrote to the board of directors (which included Bush) that the company was facing a "liquidity crisis." On May 18, the Senior Vice President, Bruce Huff, wrote a letter to senior officers (including Bush) announcing more severe problems with the company's financial situation. Huff told the SEC a year later that "By June 1990, the company was constrained by its worsening cash and credit situation. ... The company was in the midst of the severe cash crisis."

So Bush sold that stock on insider information, raising enough money for him to pay off a loan for his interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team, and thereby became a multimillionaire.

The SEC performed a perfunctory investigation of Bush as a result of this, but Bush was lucky enough to have his father as President at the time, so the SEC then closed the investigation--but, interestingly enough, made a point of saying that even though they weren't going to investigate him any further, Bush actually wasn't cleared of anything. According to the SEC, their decision not to press charge "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result." But there's more. The very same man who had served as SEC general council during the time period of that perfunctory SEC investigation, a man named James R. Doty, was the lawyer who then represented Bush when Bush sold the Texas Rangers.

Bush's history with the SEC explains why he has come down on the side of less regulation to ensure "fairness". He has no illusions about a "fair" system. If the system were "fair", he wouldn't have become a rich man, after all. The "fairness" that is supposed to inspire investor confidence is a sham, but it servers as a convenient fiction that helps to keep the engine of capitalism going. It allows a small elite at the top to get richer, and that's what it is all about.

Posted by The Haikuist at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments

It is always good for a laugh when Bush mangles the English language (well, it's humorous in a dark, depressing, how-did-this-idiot-become-President sort of way), but here is a misstatement from yesterday's press conference that is double entertaining, because Bush not only used the wrong word in a sentence, he actually then accompanied that with a definition of the word he was misusing. Here is it, straight from the horse's mouth--actually, from the official White House transcript:

It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.

What is perhaps even more interesting about this is that, in some cases, the press decided to edit what Bush said in its news reports. I did a search in news.google.com for the phrase "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble". What I found was that many reporters did report the phrase as is, such as Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei, Scrpps-Howard reporter Bill Straub, and William Douglas of Knight Ridder. I then did a search for a corrected version of the phrase, using the word that Bush obviously meant to say: "people that had been trained in some instances to dissemble"--and found that the report by Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune had the edited version of this transcript. Whether the responsibility for this change comes from Silva himself, or an editor, or a spell checker program, or just plain unconscious editing on the reporter's part, I don't know, but the article with this corrected version was reprinted in several newspapers around the country.

I once came across a much more overt example of editing a Bushism on November 20, 2003. Bush on that day made the statement, "We could have less troops in Iraq, we could have the same number of troops in Iraq, we could have more troops in Iraq, what is ever necessary to secure Iraq." Aside from the fact that Bush said "less troops" instead of "fewer troops", a not uncommon sort of grammatical error among many Americans that Bush frequently engages in, it was clear that he meant to say "whatever is necessary", rather than "what is ever necessary". I found that many newspapers, including both the Washington Post and the Washington Times, had edited the transcript to correct the misstatement, while the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported his words verbatim.

Posted by The Haikuist at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments

Now that the identity of Deep Throat has been revealed, I feel a little disappointed. I liked the theory proposed by the 1999 Kirsten Dunst movie Dick (an amusing satire on the Watergate scandal that seems to have been missed by a lot of filmgoers), in which Deep Throat turned out to be two rather naive teenaged girls who befriended Nixon. Instead, it turns out to have been Mark Felt, the number two man in the FBI. In light of this, the question inevitably arises: where are the Deep Throats of today?

As former US Senator Mark Gravel wrote yesterday,

"The greatest threat to democracy is secrecy. It is a generic flaw of our representative system of government...The only antidote to the excesses of secrecy is the occasional patriot leaking the truth to the media or to the Congress. Unfortunately, the Congress is all too complicit in maintaining secrecy in government. Thank you, Marc Felt, for your service to freedom and democracy; let us hope that your revelation is an incentive to present-day whistleblowers. The need for whistleblowers has never been greater."

More than 30 years after Watergate, we have another President whose level of secrecy and corruption easily matches that of Richard Nixon. And yet, there seem to be no Deep Throats out there, and no young investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein who are willing to pursue the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that Bush has committed over the last four years. Things have certainly changed over the last three decades, haven't they?

The ultimate smoking gun against Bush, the document that ought to serve as the grounds for impeachment, is the recently revealed Downing Street memo from 2002. Jason Leopold contrasts succinctly and brilliantly Bush's public statements about Iraq during that time period,versus the facts reported in the memo, which showed that Bush had decided to go to war against Iraq by the middle of that year and then, lacking any real legal justification for war, needed to come up with a pretext to justify it. (Those who are interested in this issue should check out the web site http://www.downingstreetmemo.com.)

As Leopold points out, "despite the fact that the memo was splashed across the front pages of dozens of international newspapers, it was relegated to the back pages-or not covered at all-in U.S. papers." And herein lies the tragedy. The mainstream US press is uninterested in pursuing this issue, Bush controls both houses of Congress, and any would-be Deep Throats have nowhere to turn if they wanted to reveal the sordid details of the crimes of the Bush regime.

Mark Gravel's comment above about secrecy is an important one to remember. Leopold points out that "the parallels between the Bush and Nixon administrations are eerily familiar. Both bullied the press, were/are highly secretive, obsessed over leaks, engage(d) in massive cover-ups and quickly branded aides as disloyal if they dared to raise questions about the President's policies." John Dean, a former member of the Nixon administration who played a key role in the Watergate hearings, has this to say about the Bush regime:

George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have created the most secretive presidency of my lifetime. Their secrecy is far worse than during Watergate, and it bodes even more serious consequences. Their secrecy is extreme, —not merely unjustified and excessive but obsessive. It has created a White House that hides its president's weaknesses as well as its vice president's strengths.

It has given us a presidency that operates on hidden agendas. To protect their secrets, Bush and Cheney dissemble as a matter of policy. In fact, the Bush-Cheney presidency is strikingly Nixonian, only with regard to secrecy far worse (and no one will ever successfully accuse me of being a Nixon apologist). Dick Cheney, who runs his own secret governmental operations, openly declares that he wants to turn the clock back to the pre-Watergate years, —a time of an unaccountable and extraconstitutional imperial presidency. To say that their secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement.

One of the George Bush's early acts as President in 2001 was Presidential Order 13233, which effectively rescinded the Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978 in the aftermath of Watergate. Bush's executive order prevented the release of records about members of his own government who were in his father's administration. As John Dean wrote back in 2001 when this executive order was signed,

What appears to have provoked President Bush's action is the fact that some 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready for release by the National Archives.

These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's Vice President, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release.

If Bush is indeed even more Nixonesque than Nixon, what is important to realize is that, ultimately, the nation has constitutionally gained nothing as a result of the lessons of the Watergate scandal. The temporary reprieve against abuses of Presidential authority that emerged in the 1970s after Watergate were only a minor victory in the context of a long term defeat. When considering the state of American democracy, we are actually worse off now than we were in 1974. And with a compliant mainstream press and a compliant Congress, there is nothing in the halls of power stopping Bush from getting away with lies, corruption, and secrecy, not to mention the impeachable offense of going to war on a fabricated pretext. We cannot rely on the political and media elite to save us this time.

Posted by The Haikuist at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments