mykeystrokes.com

"Do or Do not. There is no try."

“Speaking Ill of the Dead”: Robert Bork, An Unrepentant Reactionary Who Had Boundless Contempt For Modern America

What do you say when a public figure you find repellent dies? Do you hold your tongue, not speak ill of the dead, and wait some decent interval before saying what you really thought of them? After all, there’s no time like their death. Robert Bork died today, and the truth is that in a few months nobody is going to be talking much about his legacy. So now’s the time to weigh in, which Jeffrey Toobin does, in a rather unrestrained way:

Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century. The fifty-eight senators who voted against Bork for confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1987 honored themselves, and the Constitution. In the subsequent quarter-century, Bork devoted himself to proving that his critics were right about him all along.

Hard to disagree—Bork’s philosophy was a particularly nasty one, and he spent much of his public life expressing his boundless contempt for modern America, particularly the ways it had become more humane than it once was. For all I know he was beloved by his family, and I could offer them my sympathies, but that would be meaningless for them; they don’t know me from Adam.

I think it’s possible to talk honestly about someone’s contributions, and your criticisms of them, without getting needlessly uncivil. For instance, the media provocateur Andrew Breitbart died earlier this year at the young age of 43. That was a personal tragedy for his family and friends. But there are few people who injected as much poison into American politics in as short a time as Breitbart did, and when he died that had to be acknowledged. You don’t have to do that in a vulgar way, of course, but like Bork or anyone else who chooses to participate in a visible way, he chose the life he did.

Being criticized, even harshly, is the price you pay for participating in public life. If you can live with it while you’re alive, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem with having it happen when you die. So even though my death won’t be reported on the evening news, I’d like to state for the record that should anyone want to take the occasion of my demise to remind their audience that in their opinion I was a knave and a fool, go ahead and have at it.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 19, 2012

December 20, 2012 Posted by | Ideologues, Public Figures | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Culture Of Violence”: The National Rifle Association Is The Problem

As a political consultant and Senate staffer, I have worked for a lot of office holders and candidates who were strong advocates of hunting and the Second Amendment.

For many years, I worked a lot in the West and in rural districts. I cut my share of ads with candidates out in the prairies or the mountains with their guns and dogs. I have also done ads for the Humane Society of the United States that excoriated practices such as bear-baiting, canned hunts, and trophy hunting, as well as ads on animal cruelty.

The defense of hunters was always used by the National Rifle Association as a cornerstone of their programs. They pushed gun safety and the proper care and use of guns; they conducted camps and taught people how to shoot.

But as their power and finances grew, a lot changed. More and more, we were urged to get guns to “protect ourselves” or to become a collector. Guns for guns’ sake. The technology got more and more sophisticated. Weapons could shoot more rapid-fire bullets and the bullets became more lethal. Cop killer bullets, some were called.

The NRA raised more and more money to attack politicians who argued for reasonable checks at gun shows or opposed carrying concealed weapons into schools or churches or community centers. You were either with them all the way or against them—no middle ground.

For the NRA, it became about expansion of gun sales and ammunition sales. Why were 300 million guns not enough? Why do we need assault rifles that can penetrate body armor? Why do we need to lift the restrictions on where guns can be carried?

Follow the money.

Last year, according to the Washington Post, gun sales topped $12 billion. The gun manufacturers collected nearly a billion in profit. There were nearly 6 million guns bought last year. Six million.

This is absurd.

This isn’t about hunting. This isn’t even about protection. This is about money.

The NRA answers to the gun manufacturers, the ammunition makers, but rarely to their members.

I don’t think we will see much at Friday’s NRA press conference: words about kids and families, some minor bromides thrown out. But they are the problem.

I have had it with groups like the NRA who must take a large share of the blame for the culture of violence that engulfs our country. More and better weapons are leading to larger and more devastating slaughters, more murders on our streets, more domestic arguments that turn deadly. Yes, guns kill people. More and more frequently we see their devastation. More and more we see lives and communities ruined. It is time to tell the money-men behind these weapons of mass destruction that enough is enough. It is time we became a civilized nation. It is time to take on the NRA and the gun manufacturers. And, maybe, just maybe, it is time for them to admit the truth and do something about it.

 

By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, December 19, 2012

December 20, 2012 Posted by | Public Safety | , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

“Robert Bork’s Legacy”: The Prototype For Republican Entrenchment And Obstruction

Judge Robert Bork has died. But the tradition started by his failed 1987 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has sadly become entrenched.

Bork was a conservative hero and a threat to liberals. His nomination to the high court was thwarted not because of his intellectual fitness for the bench, but for his views and lower-court rulings on issues ranging from civil rights to abortion. In a famous address, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy warned of the specter of “Robert Bork’s America,” a world in which civil rights and women’s rights were imperiled.

Kennedy was not wrong in his assessment of Bork; nor was he wrong in opposing the nomination of a man who threatened to roll back hard-won advancements in social policy. The senator was criticized for politicizing a Supreme Court nomination, but the same charge could have been made against President Reagan for nominating someone with such a clearly conservative agenda. The trouble is that since then, an ideological witch-hunt has been imposed on a slew of nominees—even those for much less prestigious positions and nonlifetime appointments. The nomination of Donald Berwick, a widely respected physician and health policy maven, was stymied by Senate Republicans who said Berwick shouldn’t head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services because he believed in some version of socialized medicine. The evidence for that was sketchy, based on comments Berwick made praising Britain’s National Health Service. In reality, conservatives just wanted to slow down the implementation of Obamacare while they fought it (unsuccessfully) in court.

Then there was Peter Diamond, who ultimately withdrew his nomination to the Federal Reserve amid threats of a filibuster by GOP Sen. Richard Shelby. Shelby expressed concerns that Diamond’s economic background was not the right sort for the Fed. The Nobel Prize committee had disagreed, awarding Diamond its prize in Economics.

Now, senators are sending subtle threats about putting a former colleague, Chuck Hagel, through the wringer if President Obama nominates him to be Defense Secretary. Hagel is a respected former Nebraska senator, a two-time Purple Heart winner, and was known as an expert on military affairs when he was in office. It’s also a gesture of bipartisanship for Obama to consider someone from the other party to be in his cabinet. But to some lawmakers, Hagel has not been sufficiently toady-like in his allegiance to Israel—actually, his allegiance to the Israeli lobby. The fact that Hagel served his own country in Vietnam and in the Senate seems to have taken a back seat.

Bork may well have been a poor addition to the Supreme Court. But thwarting nominations for the sake of frustrating a sitting president in the other party is the worst legacy his nomination has left.

 

By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 19, 2012

December 20, 2012 Posted by | Politics | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Desecration Of Michigan’s Heritage”: Republicans Ambush Labor In Michigan

It takes a lot to get Theodore J. St. Antoine mad. But what really got my Uncle Ted’s Irish up (our family hails from County Roscommon) was Michigan Governor Rick Snyder conspiring with the Republican-controlled legislature to turn the ancestral home of American labor into a “right-to-work” state – and to do it through fast-track legislation snuck through without public hearings or even notice while angry citizens mobilizing to protest this desecration of Michigan’s heritage were barred by police from their own State Capitol until the wretched deed was done.

The new law, says the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, was passed “in a travesty of normal democratic deliberation” as Snyder and Republicans rushed the right-to-work bill through a lame-duck session in a way that was “insidious.”

The anti-union crowd waited until after the election to pass it, said Dionne. Then Snyder, who had previously avoided taking a stand on right-to-work “miraculously discovered that it would be a first-rate economic development measure.”

Further, the law was attached to an appropriations bill as a rider to make it much harder for voters to later challenge the law through a popular referendum. It was the first time, Ted told the Wall Street Journal, he had ever seen a right-to-work law passed using a spending bill as a human shield to prevent the people from later shooting it down.

And so in a curtly-worded letter to Governor Snyder, Ted, who is a long-time labor law professor and one-time dean of the University of Michigan Law School, wrote this: “You have been elected to represent all the people of this State. You should do so.”

Ted now devotes most of his time to speaking and writing about subjects like the Model Employment Termination Act, a law he wrote as official draftsperson and which protects workers against arbitrary and capricious bosses.

As I said, Ted has a long fuse and his equanimity has been honed by years spent mediating union and management disputes, including the dozens of Major League Baseball arbitrations he’s settled involving super stars (and super-sized egos) like Curt Schilling, Sandy Alomar, Jr. and Darryl Strawberry.

And so Ted was surprised and disappointed that Governor Snyder, who posed as a sensible centrist, would act in such a ruthless and underhanded way against labor in a state that honors and even reveres labor unions.

“Although I am a life-long Democrat, I voted for you because I felt you had the business acumen and the balanced judgment to lead Michigan through some serious financial difficulties,” Ted said to Governor Snyder.

Though he understood the pressures Snyder was under, Ted said the Governor’s actions were disappointing nonetheless since “almost no one who seriously studies labor relations believes so-called ‘right-to-work’ legislation is a matter of ‘worker freedom.'”

Existing federal and state law already forbids workers from joining a union against their will or being subject to its discipline, said Ted. What the law does require is that if a majority of the employees want union representation, the union and the employer may agree that all the employees in the unit must pay their fair share of the representation costs that the union is legally obligated to provide for all the employees in the unit, without discrimination among union members and nonmembers, said Ted.

“Right-to-work” laws, said Ted, allow some workers to become “free riders” who benefit from the fruits of the union’s negotiating without having to pay for those benefits.

“It’s wholly contrary to democratic principles to argue that the minority need not pay what can fairly be described as the tax that the majority has levied to fund the collective representative,” said Ted.

But let’s be honest with ourselves, Ted told Snyder. “‘Right-to-work’ legislation is not proposed for the benefit of workers. Its proponents are the same persons who in the past have opposed minimum wages, workers’ compensation, Social Security, and a wide range of other social legislation.”

Right-to-work laws are supposed to attract new business into a state, but studies say their track record is mixed as best. “What we do know is that as union strength has waned, income and wealth inequality in this country has greatly increased,” said Ted. “Both the working class and the middle class have been the losers. And the true objective of ‘right-to-work’ legislation is to stifle even further the strength of unions.”

Indeed, as Dionne says, “the moral case for unions is that they give bargaining strength to workers who would have far less capacity to improve their wages and benefits negotiating as individuals. Further gutting unions is the last thing we need to do at a time when the income gap is growing.”

And not just the income gap. At a time when Big Money is stronger than ever, our democracy pays a huge price not having the countervailing power which labor unions provide.

It’s hard not to see this vote against unions, so quickly after Republicans were soundly defeated all throughout the union strongholds of the Midwest, as being a petulant reprisal against those who beat them and an effort to pave the road to Republican victories in 2014 by using the law to erode the foundations of the opposition.

After Republicans lost the popular vote for the fifth time in the last sixth presidential elections, Dionne said he was initially hopeful Republicans understood “new thinking might be in order.”

But after the sneak attack Republicans launched against labor in Lansing, Dionne is not so sure anything has really changed. It now looks as if Republicans are once again in the hands of those who reject adjusting to a new electorate and new circumstances and instead believe the strategy for future victories lies in using naked government power to “alter the political playing field in a way that diminishes the political influence of groups likely to be hostile to the conservative agenda.”

And that is why my disappointed uncle sent his “Dear Rick” letter to Michigan’s Governor Snyder.

 

By: Ted Frier, Open Salon, December 19, 2012

December 20, 2012 Posted by | Collective Bargaining, Unions | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Manning The Missle Batteries”: Neocons Now Pushing Against Chuck Hagel As Secretary Of Defense

After word leaked from the White House late last week that Chuck Hagel was in line to become the next secretary of defense, Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard manned the Patriot missile batteries to shoot down that trial balloon.

The neoconservative journal, no fan of the iconoclastic former Republican senator, published a smear under the headline: “Senate aide: ‘Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite.’ ” In the posting, this anonymous aide went on to accuse Hagel of “the worst kind of anti-Semitism there is.” As evidence, the article included a doctored quotation from Hagel referring to the “Jewish lobby.”

Other right-wing publications and conservative Zionist groups inevitably joined the chorus, including a column by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal saying Hagel’s prejudice has an “especially ripe” odor.

The Hagel hit is wrong on the merits, but it’s particularly egregious because the former senator from Nebraska is among the best and bravest public servants. He was an enlisted man in Vietnam, earning two Purple Hearts in jungle combat. In his legislative career, he was a powerful voice against the chicken hawks who have recklessly sent American troops to their deaths; he became one of the most outspoken critics of George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.

Hagel would probably be swiftly confirmed by the Senate, and he should be: A man of unassailable military credentials who regards war as a last resort is exactly the sort of person to head the Pentagon.

Kristol’s criticism of Hagel included a variety of supposed sins in various categories: terrorism (“Hagel was one of 11 senators who refused to sign a letter requesting President Bush not meet with Yasser Arafat. . . ”), Israel (“Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a letter expressing support for Israel during the second Palestinian intifada”), and Iran (“Hagel was one of only two U.S. senators who voted against renewing the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act”).

It’s fair criticism to say Hagel isn’t sufficiently pro-Israel, although much the same is said of the man who would nominate him. But Kristol, and then others, went further, publishing a passage from a 2008 book in which Hagel is quoted as saying: “The political reality is that . . . the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”

That was a dumb phrase — many Christians are pro-Israel and many Jews aren’t — and Hagel said he misspoke (he used the phrase “Israel lobby” elsewhere in the interview). But, as an American Jew who has written about anti-Semitism in political dialogue, I don’t see this as anti-Semitic or anti­-Israel. As Slate’s Dave Weigel points out, the actual quote in the book includes nothing about “the political reality,” and the sentence preceding the quote said that “Hagel is a strong supporter of Israel and a believer in shared values.”

Hagel was explaining why he didn’t sign all of those nonbinding letters from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, justifiably calling them “stupid.” He further said: “I’m a United States senator. I support Israel. But my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States. Not to a president. Not a party. Not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that.”

Hagel’s foes claim groundlessly that this means he was accusing others of divided loyalties; that, they say, and his less-than-perfect record of voting AIPAC’s position disqualify him from running the Pentagon. But let’s examine Hagel’s record further:

He voted for the Iran Nonproliferation Act, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act and the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act. He co-sponsored resolutions opposing any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state and praising Israel’s efforts “in the face of terrorism, hostility and belligerence by many of her neighbors.” He also co-sponsored legislation urging the international community “to avoid contact with and refrain from supporting the terrorist organization Hamas until it agrees to recognize Israel, renounce violence, disarm and accept prior agreements.”

Such gestures won’t satisfy the neocon hard-liners, and Hagel’s occasional criticism of the Israeli military’s excesses doesn’t help. But this isn’t indicative of anti-Semitism, or even of anti-Israel sentiments.

It’s indicative of an infantry sergeant who isn’t opposed to war (he voted for the conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq) but knows the grim costs of going to war without a plan. And it’s indicative of a decorated military man who, unlike some of his neocon critics, knows that military action doesn’t solve everything.

 

By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 18, 2012

December 19, 2012 Posted by | Politics | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »