by Cameron Salisbury

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s ‘emergency’ $700 billion bailout was authorized in record time by both houses of Congress despite the opposition of an estimated 80% of U.S. taxpayers, each of whom seems to have contacted his/her legislators more than once. For days, Congress was flooded with emails and calls with one message: No Wall Street bail out! When the bail out was fully funded, with lightning speed but no hearings, logical justification or concrete plan, it became clearer than ever that the opinions, wishes, demands of the electorate are scarcely worth the cost of the ballots they cast.

Although the immediate cause of the current economic meltdown was the deregulation of Wall Street, banks and the financial services industry, this was far from the first time that citizens have been sold out by elected representatives doing the bidding of Big Business. In fact, dismantling the regulatory/consumer safety net and throwing the taxpayer under the bus has become a way of life in Washington.

We prefer safe drugs. Instead, we get FDA approval of drugs that sicken and kill us. When the body count reaches a boundary of tolerance, they are withdrawn until Big Pharma’s lobbyists can wrangle them back on the market. This game earns billions for Big Pharma and is worth every calculated penny they pay lawmakers and their victims.

We prefer safe and fuel efficient vehicles. Instead, we get what the auto makers decide to serve up, and that is neither notably safe nor fuel efficient. Detroit’s auto industry is now insisting that they are entitled to their share of the buy out billions. They were part owners of Congress long before the current economic crisis, so what they want now is simple payback.

We prefer a sane and reasonable energy policy. Instead, we are held hostage by an unregulated energy sector that rewards run-amok speculation. In 2008, speculators single handedly raised the price of oil to the extent that the economy threatened to grind to a halt. After the price of food, consumer goods, and transportation skyrocketed, after we were left with a lowered standard of living and Congress belatedly threatened action, they crawled back into their holes and oil prices returned to a semblance of normal. Today, with the tacit approval of a complicit Congress and in conjunction with the rest of the economic crisis, the damage done by Big Oil’s engineered bubble appears irreversible.

We prefer an ethical, honest government that understands the need to protect the economy, the environment and citizens with responsible regulation. Instead, we get the likes of Henry Paulson and Nancy Pelosi, so heavily subsidized by their corporate sponsors that they lose sight of public accountability and, I suspect, their own consciences.

How else to explain an AIG? Even in the Land of Bail Out Oz, these delinquents are in a class by themselves, done in by a highly lucrative and utterly irresponsible insurance swindle called credit default swaps. There is no rational justification for rewarding this 21^st century casino, and the gamblers – whom they prefer to call ‘investors’ - who kept it in business, with one cent. And yet, their heavy lobbying has paid off, once again, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars even as they continue to throw expensive parties and, like the rest of the bail out jackpot winners, hand billions in bonuses to their amoral managers - whom they prefer to call ‘Wall Street elites’ – who are at the root of the turmoil. It would make as much sense to throw a few billion at Starbucks and Caesars Palace.

Will anything change with a new administration? We have clues. President-elect Obama was among the first to say the bail out was needed immediately, no questions asked, no second thoughts about disregarding the wishes of the vast majority of Americans. If he had any concerns about the outsized, poorly reasoned giveaway to the reckless greedy, or to the concept of a Wall Street bail out as absurd as it was intellectually dishonest, he never showed it.

And this episode wasn’t the first clue. As others have documented, President-elect Obama’s voting record has been enough to give most supporters pause, as were his speeches at various high dollar fundraisers during the campaign. The myth that the Obama campaign was financed by legions of individual $10 donations is belied by his campaign disclosure statements (www.opensecrets.org).

Obama’s first, immediate, appointment was Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. Emanuel is a temperamentally volatile man who never met a war in the Middle East that he didn’t want the U.S. to finance and then star in, and he never met a free trade agreement that he didn’t love. Does he sound like a first round draft pick in a ‘change’ administration? Or does he sound more like a plant preordained by big donors to further their own agendas?

It seems likely that Barack Obama is the best person for the presidency that we could have elected. He is a reasoning, intelligent man of goodwill, a difference of light years from the mean-spirited, short-sighted, unapologetic corporate hustler that he replaces.

But it is naïve to think that he is not caught in the Washington money game or that whatever remains of his ideals, after four years in the Senate and a presidential race, are not prone to extinction by the groupthink that inhabits the East Coast.

Even with Barack Obama as the president elect, our democracy remains fragile, its future uncertain. Here are a few is ideas on how we might restore it.

First, everybody knows that private money should get out of politics. Barring that, politics should get out of Washington.

So, first, close Washington down. Zip it up and return it to the Indians or give it to the Smithsonian for a cautionary display of how not to do democracy.

Elected representatives have shown themselves spectacularly incapable of managing the public trust when they flock together. Grouped, away from the voters who sent them, they make easy prey for corporate predators dispensing lots of money. Events repeatedly show that it is nearly impossible for most of them to rouse their brain cells to independent activity in a crowd. We need to get them out of their noxious geographic comfort zone and send them home.

Given the current economic crisis, we should expect lawmakers to willingly relinquish their cushy, expensive Washington pads and establish primary offices in their home states, among their friends, neighbors and voters. They could thereby patriotically save the taxpayers at least part of the money they gave away to Henry Paulson. They would have an allowance for staff, offices and limited travel. All meetings would be conducted by telecommunication, like it’s the 21^st century.

Further, lawmakers will be reminded daily, up close and in person, of the wishes of those who brought them. There won’t be another misbegotten, taxpayer-financed, Wall Street bailout when directives are delivered by the irate face to face and in the same time zone.

Although this plan will not keep lobbyist entirely at bay, it should make their lives considerably more difficult, a big plus.

Next, the talking heads residing in the New York-Washington corridor should be banned from the air waves. They talk only to each other, being elites and all, and not one of them has had an independent or creative thought in years. We don’t need any more pundits from Yale, Columbia or NYU; we don’t need Brian, Katie or Charlie; we don’t need anyone else from an East Coast think tank giving us their pompous, arrogant version of reality.

There is a continent of alternatives. Let’s get an assessment of the options to Paulson’s opinions from, say, an economist at the University of Missouri; an ungarbled analysis of the Russia-S. Ossetia situation from someone without a vested interest in getting it wrong, maybe a political analyst from the University of Idaho; let’s find people who understand the catastrophe of a toxic ruling class and who won’t lose their jobs for telling the truth right out loud. Because we’ve had enough of the smug politics of condescension.

Getting our news from the western side of the Alleghenies and keeping our elected lawmakers home are actions that could go far toward saving our democracy.

If the United States can elect an Obama, it can do anything.

                                              by Cameron Salisbury

This is the reverse of the way deregulation was supposed to work.  It was supposed to be trickle down prosperity, remember?  Ronald Reagan and successive cadres of snake oil salesmen repeatedly convinced our bought-out, brain dead representatives in Washington  that the way to make everyone better off – to lift all boats, they said - was to shred the regulatory safety net that had functioned so effectively since the Great Depression to protect the economy, the country and the consumer from the insatiable, creative greed of Wall Street. The sole purpose of the decades of deregulating rules and markets, every step of the way, was to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. And, boy, did it work!  When shredding the rules didn’t make the rich filthy rich fast enough, they cut taxes, too!

On Main Street, millions of jobs were lost as employers were rewarded by the American government for packing up and scurrying overseas or importing cheap foreign labor.  The deficit skyrocketed as Americans bought foreign goods that were no longer manufactured at home.  As oil prices ballooned thanks to Wall Street speculators, everything became more expensive, and the formerly well paid workforce, many of whom now slaved for minimum wage at McDonalds or Wal-Mart, was barely keeping up.  The recession hit Main Street but there was no talk of relief, bail out, re-engineering trade agreements, or in any way helping desperate citizens.

The foreclosure crisis was the latest blow brought to U.S. citizens by the not-so-invisible hand of Wall Street.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to foresee the reckoning that has now settled in.  When drive-by mortgages are handed out like candy at Halloween; when documentation is barely needed to prove identity much less an income; when money is thrown at people with an interest-only repayment plan; when loans are given with no down payment and then the unholy mess is passed off to securities firms to butcher and repackage as top grade mortgage backed investments and sold to trusting investors, well, everyone  remotely connected to the real estate industry could see it coming.  Everyone, that is, with the exception of investors with pension plans and 401Ks who were kept in the dark, and are now being castigated as ‘speculators’ whose losses, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson quaintly observes, they deserve. (“They were in it for the good times; they have to take their medicine when times aren’t good.”) He’s made no such pronouncement about the bail outs for AIG, Bear Stearns, money market mutual funds, Freddie or Fannie.

The pain from Main Street threatened to trickle up to Wall Street, and Paulson is doing his level best to make sure all his Wall Street friends are inoculated against it.

Exactly who is Henry Paulson, this white knight of Wall Street who is now screeching that, for the good of the Whole World, the Street must be protected from the consequences of its own fraud, deception and irresponsibility?  Well, until two years ago he was the head of Goldman Sachs.  Since Paulson was at Goldman Sachs as late as 2006, he is directly involved in the current circumstances of a shaky Goldman Sachs and of the Wall Street meltdown.  Bringing this fox into the hen house to fix the financial mess is nothing less than a travesty.  His conflict of interest is palpable; his complicity, transparent. He shrilly threatens Congress with an instant Armageddon if his bailout demands aren’t met NOW! and appears on every talk show that will have him to do his Chicken Little routine.  It’s been a remarkable display of overweening, self righteous, arrogance and narcissism.  There is never any voice of reason sharing the stage with him.

What unadulterated hogwash!

The scare tactics that railroad decision makers into instant action with no time for responsible discussion are the way that the Patriot Act was passed and Homeland Security established. It’s the method of a huckster.  And just to make sure everyone understands that they’re being taken for a one-way ride to the edge, Paulson insists that his decisions are not to be reviewed by ‘any court or any administrative body.’  Wouldn’t that make him king?  Unprecedented.

We have some questions.

First, if Lehman Brothers didn’t need bailing, why did Bear Stearns?  Was Bear Stearns just the first of many bad decisions?

Second, the Federal Housing Administration, a stodgy, effective agency of the U.S. government, has been ethically and efficiently helping people buy homes for many years before anyone had ever heard of privatizing profits and socializing losses through the likes of Freddie and Fanny.  Why does Paulson want to bail out those corrupt, badly managed, agencies? Let the FHA take over their function and flush away those poorly conceived travesties.  No Bail Out!

He also wants to bail out private money market funds, to save the big guys who could have had insured deposits in a bank money market but chose to go for a better return. Are you melting with sympathy yet?  Who is next?  Starbucks?  What utter idiocy.  No Bail Out!

If Paulson’s next questionable proposition, that AIG needs to be saved to keep the world’s financial system from crumbling, is true, why hasn’t the federal government moved in lock, stock and barrel and tossed the bums out? If AIG is so important, it clearly needs the adult supervision sorely lacking in its private sector management, the type of management provided everyday by the maligned federal bureaucracy. The federal workforce is among the most ethical, intelligent and corruption-free set of workers anywhere.  Why?  Partially because they work within a set of strict regulations. 

Why do taxpayers need the bail out that Paulson is trying to railroad through congress?   What is there to gain? What is he saving us from? 

Pension plans and 401Ks have already taken their hit.  The foreclosure crisis shows little sign of abating. Does he think that he can save American financial hegemony if he just taxes us enough?  Too late.  No country, no international institution, will trust Wall Street or the American financial system again for a very long time, bail out or no.  So No Bail Out! 

Our overweening financial hegemony is a thing of the past, and the value of the dollar is quickly following. If Paulson wanted to save Wall Street, he could have made a good start during the decades he spent there by firing his lobbyists.  But that was never what he wanted.  What he has always wanted is the utter freedom to act recklessly and have the taxpayer pick up the tab.  And it’s a last gift that he wants to leave his friends before he leaves office with Bush.

So here is an idea or two on how we might solve the problem of the Wall Street-Washington ‘elite’, as they so nauseatingly like to think of themselves, who have done us so much damage.

First, abandon Washington.  Let it return to the swamp from which it arose or turn it into an extension of the Smithsonian.  Help to balance the budget by keeping all congressmen and senators home in the districts that elected them. Their constituents will have daily contact with them, making sure the elected ‘elites’ remember who brought them. The elected will be given a budget to maintain local offices, their staffs and for limited travel.  All communication will be carried out by teleconferencing and other nifty 21^st century techniques currently used by many organizations. One of the numerous benefits of this plan is that the lives of lobbyists will become significantly more difficult. 

Second, ban the appearance on national airwaves of any expert, pundit, or talking head living in the corridor between New York and Washington, D.C.  We don’t need to hear from even one more political analyst from NYU, economics professor from Yale or China expert from Columbia.  We don’t need Sally Quinn’s fatuous Washington gossip or Brian Williams’s intense eyebrows.  Since they only listen to each other, being ‘elites’ and all, not one of them has had an original thought or creative idea in years. 

The people who are capable of a realistic sense of the health and well being of the country live inside the country, not on the Atlantic edge.  We should get our economics analysis from a professor at the University of Iowa, our assessment of the S. Ossetia situation from an unbiased analyst from the University of Minnesota, a discussion of the real meaning of the Wall Street fraud scandal from someone at, say, the University of Oregon.  You get the idea.

With an unknown number of Henry Paulsons running amok through the East Coast government and media, its time we shifted our class of experts far away from their old geographic comfort zone.

Send an email to your senators and congressman now.  Go to http://www.congress.org for easy access.  Say it in small words that they will understand.  No Wall Street Bail Out!  No Paulson Railroad!

by Cameron Salisbury

Without a doubt, you are two very nice guys.  Anyone would like to have you for friends, have you over for dinner, go to your parties, sit down with you and discuss current events. Unfortunately, you are not running for best friend.  So STOP IT! Now! Unless your campaign develops a harder edge, and you acquire weapons for dealing with your street tough opponents other than your reasoned civility, your victory may be another missed Democratic opportunity.

Remember 2000? That was the election that Gore lost when a majority right wing Supreme Court, in a fit of dementia, said so.  It was a breathtaking subversion of democracy that will live in infamy, but Gore was such a nice guy that he never raised his voice against the decision. When Karl Rove flew Brooks Brothers thugs into Tallahassee to intimidate election workers, Gore maintained his fastidious silence and wouldn’t let his campaign spokesmen comment either.  Ditto when Jim Baker painted the Democrats as anti-American when they tried to enforce federal election laws regarding absentee ballots. Al Gore, in all his niceness, effectively sold out the majority of voters and the nation. If Gore had not rolled over at every step in the process, the history of the early 21^st century might read differently.  Our future as a nation might be different, too.  But, then, he was a nice guy.

And then there was John Kerry and the election of 2004.  As Kerry was telling his campaign workers that they were not to comment on the sorry Bush record of using daddy’s influence to evade military service during the VietNam war, Republican goons were putting together the swift boat ad questioning Kerry’s patriotism and calling a real hero, a liar.  Kerry, a nice guy to the core, could never bring himself to call a well dressed bully a thug.  He, too, lost the election despite being smarter, better prepared, and less beholden to the forces of evil, also known as the oil companies and their henchmen, like Dick Cheney.

It’s been very nice of Barack and Joe to remind voters of their respect and admiration for McCain, a great American, they say.  But there has been a notable lack of bonhomie coming from the other side. So do us a favor, guys, and STOP IT!  McCain is a great many things that should inspire contempt rather than glowing praise and there is evidence that his health is more marginal than he wants us to believe. So no more praise, please. Talk to your audience about the Republican candidates in terms that matter.

While it makes pragmatic sense to steer clear of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, as well as her mother’s decision to put the hapless girl in the spotlight as a sacrifice to her own ambition, it makes less sense to tell your staff that anyone who alludes to Palin’s self absorbed agenda will be fired.  In fact, I think I hear the muted laughter of high-fiving Republicans right now.  We understand that Barack was born to an 18 year old who was probably unmarried, but you don’t call ‘Just Say No’  a sex education policy.  Palin is a walking, talking neon sign for Republican fuzz and hypocrisy, yet your campaign treats her like fragile glass.  STOP IT!  She’s a politician! Even without mentioning Palin’s family life, your campaign should be capable of finding a way to discredit her.  There are sooooo many issues to choose from.

And another thing.  In attacking your record and in representing their own, Palin and McCain aren’t engaged in ‘misrepresentation’, ‘misstatements,’ ‘exaggeration’ or any of the other media fuzz designed to hide the truth, and which, so far, you are condoning with your silence.  So STOP IT.  They are liars as everyone paying attention knows.  So you can use the word.  L-i-a-r-s.  Try saying it out loud.  According to media reports they are planning swiftboat ads against you, so you need to step up both your passion and your vocabulary.

The problem is that neither Barack nor Joe are as implacably, fanatically, angry as their opponents, and we’re fast reaching a point where the high road will have to be option and not a calling.  But who is there to take on the rabid Republicans?  Hillary refuses to engage Palin, choosing instead to concentrate her remarks on both members of the ticket.  Joe “I-don’t-do-zingers” Biden is saying the right things in his own colorless way, apparently relying on his big smile and affability to get him to the vice-president’s mansion. Barack is being his aloof, cerebral self, discussing the issues without fire or passion, occasionally sounding as though he was reading from a boring script.  

At the moment, no one is galvanizing the Democrats even though there is a popular, smart, political genius pacing the sidelines, camera-ready, media savvy and anxious to take on the lies, distortions and slick Republican nonsense, as well as the media, and with quotable flair.  Bill Clinton could be the Democrats best friend in this election and he does do zingers, so, Barack and Joe, why are you keeping him leashed to the sidelines ala Gore and Kerry?  STOP IT!  Put him to work today! Let Bill Clinton put McCain/ Palin into the sound bites that neither of you are comfortable with.

What is the difference between a pit bull and a Democratic candidate?  One is made of papier-mâché.  You choose.

by Cameron Salisbury

Now that the national guessing game has turned to Obama’s vice-presidential possibilities and commentators everywhere are discussing their lists and preferences, it’s time for some serious vetting.  Despite the competence and accomplishments of those on the lists, many are obvious nonstarters. 

Hillary, for example.  A few months ago the media was propelling her as almost a sure thing. They gleefully proclaimed, over and over as they are wont to do, that her addition to the ticket would combine her strengths with Obama’s. A Dream Team! What’s not to love? Little has been heard of this inspiration since Jimmy Carter matter-of-factly noted the obvious:  it would also combine their negatives.

Onward.

General Wesley Clark makes a lot of lists.  However, the fact that he’s a four-star general and a Rhodes Scholar can’t compensate for the awkward feel he brings to the Democrats.  Although he’s now a convert to the progressive cause and has been a good friend and supporter of Hillary, he’s made statements in the past that sounded right-wingish and his opinions on a number of issues when he ran for president in 2004 were muddy.  Despite his keynote address at YearlyKos, we might be pardoned for wondering who he really is. 

Kathleen Sebelius, twice elected Democratic governor of red-state Kansas, also seems to make everybody’s list.  She has done tough-minded work for conservation and civil rights in her state against pressure from a Republican legislature. But given a national audience after Bush’s 2008 State of the Union address, she failed to cash in on the golden opportunity.  The image left in the mind of the viewing public was not of strength, resolve or the vice presidency.  Stuff happens.

Janet Napolitano (AZ) has been another noteworthy Democratic governor in a red state.  Despite her resume, it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect that the addition of a female, any female, to the ticket with a black man is going to boost Democratic chances.  Remember the misogyny on display during the primary season?  Ms Napolitano is only 50.  We should see more of her in the future but now is not her time.

Senator Joe Biden and former governor Bill Richardson suffer from the same electorally fatal condition:  Failure to excite.  Biden is one of the more hawkish Democrats, which will not play any better in the national election than it did in the primary season. 

Richardson makes much of his Latino roots, ignoring the immigration hot button and seeming not to understand, as Obama does intuitively, that ethnicity is not a suitable qualifier for national office.  Further, he publicly and unnecessarily betrayed his good friend Hillary by endorsing Obama, and Hill’s supporters have long memories. Richardson seems to lack good judgment at crucial intersections.

Several lists contain the name of Senator Evan Bayh, (IN) for reasons that are entirely unclear.  He’s another legacy politician – the son of long-time Indiana Senator Birch Bayh.  He likes tax cuts and the Wall Street Journal likes him, leading some to wonder if he is actually a closet Republican. If he left his senate seat, a Republican in his very red state would be selected to replace him, jeopardizing the Democrats majority in the senate, such as it is. Worse, he and Obama seem to share little of the same vision.  

Another you’ve-got-to-be kidding prospect who makes a surprising number of lists is Senator Chuck Hagel (R,NE).  His main qualification seems to be his strong anti-war position which apparently compensates in some minds for his solid Republican  credentials.

With Senator Jim Webb (VA), we’re getting closer.  Senator Webb is a charismatic, no-nonsense, don’t-b.s.-me, type that Democrats have hungered for. He is pro-choice, pro-prison reform, and supports same sex unions.  He is nearly as disdainful of John McCain as he is of George Bush and Little George’s war. So far so good.  But if he were Obama’s running mate, Republicans would make sure that he answered for his past misogynistic comments at a time when plenty of women are incensed over the treatment Hillary received during the primary.  Webb has said that “women can’t fight” because they are biologically unsuited for combat; he called the Naval Academy “a horny woman’s dream”; he derided the Navy’s attempt to clean up its act after the infamous 1991 Tailhook sexual harassment scandal.  Jim Webb for Secretary of Defense, maybe, but not for vice president. 

And now for the real contenders:  Senators Sherrod Brown (OH) and John Edwards (NC).  Both are economic populists, opposed to the war and against free trade as it is now engineered.  If Sherrod Brown stepped down from the senate, the Democratic governor of Ohio could appoint another Democrat to replace him. Not to mention that Ohio is a delegate-rich state.  But few outside of the Beltway and Ohio have heard of him.  To make him a positive addition to the national ticket would require some effort.

John Edwards, on the other hand, is a known quantity. As a result of the polling that was done during his losing presidential campaign, we know that Edwards has the priceless advantage of being both well known and well liked. The polls repeatedly showed that he was the single Democratic presidential candidate who could beat any Republican challenger, any day of the week, across the board – a remarkable fact that the media never saw fit to mention in their public relations blitz for Hillary and Obama.

Obama is currently looking unbeatable.  His choice of a running mate may be almost irrelevant to his chances of winning the election, which gives him the opportunity to create a ‘dream team’ to run the country based on his own political and economic vision.  He doesn’t have to compromise by slotting a running mate to attract the greatest numbers of delegates or for the sake of symbolism.  Adding a John Edwards, or even a Sherrod Brown, to his ticket would help to reassure his base of his real intentions as he tacks to the right on more and more issues, like NAFTA, gun control, wiretapping and campaign financing. 

In fact, at the rate he’s now modifying his positions, he may need all the help he can get by Election Day.

by Cameron Salisbury

I’m sick to death of the Hillary bashing so I can imagine how her supporters feel.

The blatant sexism, poor judgment and self satisfied insolence of media commentators from both the left and the right, TV and radio, is matched only by the blatant sexism, poor judgment and self satisfied insolence of the progressive blogosphere. With two viable presidential candidates who enjoy broad national support, progressives should be thanking providence. Instead, we’ve gone out of our way to throw away all claim to ethical or intellectual high ground.

The 2008 Hillary bashing sounds a lot like the 2000 Gore bashing, except that Gore’s trouble came largely from the terminally myopic arrogance of the national press in league with the far right. Hillary, on the other hand has to deal with those and everyone else, too, including us. 

Regardless of our own personal candidate of choice, we could react generously and applaud her candidacy, or, if we can’t bring ourselves that far, to give  reasons for our disengagement. Instead, the progressive blogosphere, much like the mainstream media, is full of snide, rationale-free invective, which is also known as misogyny. 

Despite the fact that many of us think she has lost her way on some issues, she deserves respect for her sound record of liberal leadership and for being an intrepid trail blazer for women. She has kept the faith with us better, on most days, than we have with her.  Her voting record is among the most liberal in Washington, far more liberal than Edward Kennedy’s (http://www.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib.htm.) 

 Much has been made of Hillary’s so-called name calling of her opponent, another example of what for her is a treacherously uneven playing field. Every one of her comments about Obama has been fact-based.  She has said nothing that comes close to the mindless venom that has been directed at her. 

To prove that there are female misogynists, a woman at a McCain rally called Hillary a bitch.  To show that he was on her side as a misogynist, Senator McCain tittered in apparent agreement, although you probably can’t expect much from a man who calls his wife far worse in public.

Hillary didn’t deserve to be called a monster by an Obama campaign aid. 

She didn’t deserve to be compared to Tonya Harding by an apparently deranged questioner at a Democratic rally.

She also didn’t deserve her remarkable array of false friends. She has been gratuitously and  publicly betrayed by Ted Kennedy and Bill Richardson, as well as by NARAL for whom she’s has been stalwart.  It’s hard to imagine any competent, qualified and viable male candidate getting the same treatment from either gender. 

Recently, when giving reasons for ignoring the pundits who  have been calling for her withdrawal since February, she mentioned campaigns that went into June including her husband’s and Bobby Kennedy’s race that ended in his assassination.  The mention of the word ‘assassination’ was certainly ill-advised and she apologized immediately, but that wasn’t good enough because no one else in history has ever said anything they instantly regretted.

Dunderheads in both the media and in the blogosphere have said that she really meant that Obama should be assassinated.  Where do these people come from?   Obama brushed it off as did Bobby Kennedy, Jr.  Even conservative  NY Times columnist David Brooks said that the reaction to her statement has been overblown and small minded.  David Brooks, for godsakes!

No one in the media or among progressives seems to consider the favor Hillary has done Obama just by staying in the race.  Had she allowed herself to be railroaded out of the campaign by the mindless hatred that came from all sides, we would never have learned so much about Obama.

In January, Hillary was the media’s clear favorite with lots of campaign financing, nearly 100% name recognition, and  a double digit lead in the polls. The election was hers to lose, they said. 

By February, in what surely must be one of the fastest and most ill-considered u-turns in pundit history, the same talking heads had begun saying that she should abandon the race - for the good of the party, of course. 

Lucky for Obama, she’s bright enough to recognize bad advice when she hears it.

For many people, Obama is an acquired taste. To know him is often to like him but how would that have happened if he was alone in the field and talkng to himself?  As the race has gone on, the polls have shown increasing numbers of people who like his manner, like what he says, and who plan to vote for him.  

They were converted by time, the time to learn about him, time that was given to them by a campaign that was not foreshortened by a  media stampede.

But Hillary has also done the rest of us a favor by refusing to abandon the race.

By staying the course, she has involved the entire country in the election process, a novelty in the day when winners can and have been announced before the polls close. She’s made voters feel as though they mattered and that politics had a place for them –at the ballot box. 

I wish I wasn’t the only one saying,  “Thanks, Hillary.”

 by Cameron Salisbury

My Texas friends tell me that their Great State has the biggest of … well, you name it. Given the events stemming from the raid at the polygamous compound early in April, I’m ready to concede the point. It’s hard to conjure up a bigger mess, socially, legally and politically, than Texas has on its hands right now.

The facts so far: 1) the charges made by a person who anonymously claimed to be a 16-year-old domestic abuse victim living in a polygamous FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas, cannot be confirmed, and 2) the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers forcibly removed 463 children from their homes and their parents claiming child abuse with no proof that the taken children had been abused. The first event was used to justify the second, with no compelling, or even logical, evidence that there was a connection between the two that would justify a quasi-military action by Texas law enforcement against its own citizens.

Hundreds of attorneys arrived in Eldorado from every corner of the state to be part of the action, which makes you wonder how they occupy themselves on slow news days. Already the court calendar has been pushed back to give the attorneys time to review the documents prior to defending their bewildered young clients.

The judge’s docket is jammed to eternity and beyond with the caseload that the CPS pieced together out of what appears to be little more than their own prejudice and from which they now cannot easily back away.

.

Hundreds of children have been bussed to foster homes far from their parents, in a statewide diaspora of trauma, inhumanity and grief palpable to anyone who witnessed those televised scenes. If the legal system moves with the glacial pace for which it is known, and if the authorities in Texas cannot bring themselves soon to admit their poor judgment, many of those children could grow up without their parents.  

Legally, children cannot arbitrarily be taken from parents even in the Bible Belt, even by the Texas Rangers, even if the local cowboys decide to use the ‘best interest of the child’ defense.  Sooner or later someone will have to explain why the best interest of the child doesn’t include staying with mothers who have been accused of no crime, and how inflicting such pain on children and parents can be good for anyone. With no clear basis for the actions of the CPS and the local police, with CPS patting itself on the back and giving interviews to showcase their cultural sensitivity, there is talk of releasing children for adoption, and people state-wide are lining up.

All of this without admitting, much less addressing, the real issue, and it isn’t child abuse.

It’s polygamy. 

Polygamist males, for whom the institution exists, can’t legally marry more than one woman, no matter how much they yearn to sleep with lots of girls and show off their virility by having lots of kids.  The solution for a polygamist sect is ‘celestial marriage’, a union entered into with church, but not state, sanction, as many times as a guy could wish.  Voila. Lots of sleeping partners, lots of kids, and, since the sect gets Medicaid and other government assistance for single mothers and their kids, no need to support any of them.  What more could a fixated adolescent want? 

The women are indoctrinated from birth to subvert their own autonomy and by the time they get to puberty they know that they will be expected to also surrender their bodies and marry – ‘celestially’, of course – an older man. Mothers encourage early marriage and rationalize it as being good for the girls, much as the mothers on another continent sanction the genital mutilation of their daughters.

There is plenty about the sect’s way of life that seems repellent, even bone-chilling, to many of us, but for several years after the FLDS compound was built, there was nothing happening that authorities could latch on to as illegal.  They must have waited impatiently for a reason to storm the compound, and finally, tenuous as it was, they got it.  It came in the form of anonymous calls from a woman who has not been found, detailing abuse that cannot be confirmed, in a compound where she did not live.  

With 31 teens pregnant or parents themselves among the compound’s 14 to 17 year old girls, it seems likely that the locals, their law enforcement, their child protective services, their jails and their media will have enough scandal to keep them all riveted for a long time. 

As the children of FLDS grow up, attorneys will be debating and appealing the tar babies of this episode:  religious freedom, privacy rights, parental rights and civil rights.  It will cost taxpayers a lot.

It could have been so much easier, cheaper and less harmful to the victims if authorities simply shifted their attention from the group’s adolescent girls to the adolescent boys. When the children boarded the busses that would take them from their home, the small number of boys among the 400-plus children was shocking. There is a reason for that.

Polygamous sects sponsor another crime that is not nearly as salaciously gripping as sex abuse but is equally illegal: Child abandonment. 

In order for the sect’s middle aged men to have flocks of wives, male children must be cast out when they reach adolescence. These boys are also the victims of polygamy. If states with polygamous settlements simply prosecuted parents who threw away their underage teens, to either fend for themselves or become wards of the state, polygamy would lose an important supporting pillar.

The raid on the FLDS compound had all the markings of a Ruby Ridge or a Waco, without the fatalities, at least so far. Each of these groups had a deep distrust of the government, and in each case the government proved the misgivings of these U.S. citizens well founded. 

It’s far past time that local and federal law enforcement created and then adhered to stringent guidelines when dealing with sects.  Its also past time that the criminal justice system enforced all child protection laws, not just those that are the most titillating.

by Cameron Salisbury

Someone finally said the obvious right out loud. A talking head on the PBS News Hour told Jim Lehrer that Americans must get used to a lower standard of living. In the years since globalization made corporate competition synonymous with exporting American jobs, closing factories, removing tariffs, and importing low paid H1-B workers to replace U.S. citizens and reduce wages, the downward spiral has picked up steam.

The approaching abyss had been held at bay by the now defunct mortgage-securitization bubble. Homeowners were encouraged to treat their houses like a piggy bank, refinancing at ever higher valuations and lower interest rates to maintain life styles that they could no longer afford on their receding incomes. Much of that liquid equity was transferred to China and other third world countries to buy the goods that free trade produced at bargain prices and that a hollowed out U.S. manufacturing sector could no longer produce. More than one economist declared the U.S. bankrupt in all but name.

As households and the nation slid ever deeper into debt the pundits blamed the free-spending U.S. consumer for problems that government policies had caused.

Armageddon, no longer invisible in the distant fog, was held back, at least temporarily, by sheer terror in the rest of the world at the dimensions of the U.S. fiscal mess.

The regulatory safety net, created during FDR’s New Deal, for decades provided the underpinning for sane capitalism and general prosperity. The dismantling of financial sector regulation was bought and paid for by the same rootless, multinational corporations that lusted after cheap foreign labor and the elimination of import penalties.

The stock market briefly climbed to over 14,000 before the house of cards crumbled, right on schedule, as the irresponsibility of Wall Street and Congress settled in. All those no-documentation, no down payment, adjustable rate home mortgages imploded in slow motion, one foreclosed home, one “high grade” investment, at a time.

As foreclosures annihilated neighborhoods and cities, Bear Stearns went on life support; hedge funds and airlines struggled, with mixed results, to avert collapse; 232,000 U.S. workers lost their jobs in the first 3 months of 2008, and CEOs, true to form, walked away with millions.

And then, playing their accustomed role in the repeating drama of corporate financial malfeasance, the U.S. government stepped in to bail out – ok. You know who, and it wasn’t the taxpayer. Corporations that had spent millions in tax sheltered lobbying expenses to effectively destroy the regulatory safety net couldn’t make their way to the taxpayer trough fast enough. For the good of the country, of course.

While corporate titans saw the American worker as their opponent in a zero sum game, our government acted as their enablers. The collusion of our elected representatives with their corporate financiers in the hollowing out, selling off and mismanagement of a once vibrant economy has been a sad, and possibly final, chapter in the American success story.

As Jim Lehrer’s guest implied, what comes next may be a standard of living that none of us could have imagined – except those who have spent time in a third world country.

Take Ecuador, for example.

I visited Ecuador not long ago when my daughter was in the Peace Corps. I knew before I went that it was a poor country and that the water was undrinkable. But nothing, not the guide books, not the internet, not descriptions from previous visitors, prepared me for the shock of living, even temporarily, in a culture where government services are virtually nonexistent, and where 80% of the population is officially classified as poor (WHO/UNICEF.)

In real terms, here’s what that means:

–Even in urban areas, where the majority of homes have water connections, it is available only 50% of the time and the quality is always iffy. Ditto for electricity. In many areas, the day ends when the sun goes down.

–The lack of water treatment facilities means, among other things, that toilet paper cannot be flushed away. It is kept in the home for later disposal.

–Women in much of the country wash clothes by hand in a concrete tub. I actually saw a woman using a rock to clean clothes.

–Trash is everywhere. One of the first things visitors notice is the ubiquitous filth.

–Streets are filled with whisper-thin stray dogs and cats.

–In very poor barrios there are no trees or grass or flowers to be found. Just dirt or mud, depending on the weather.

–Car and bus drivers are supposed to be licensed, but with few police and effectively no traffic control, no one knows how many actually are. Obeying traffic signals is a matter of personal preference. Car insurance is a luxury and “not required” as one official told me. Remember this the next time you read about yet another bus accident in Central or South America, where a bus tumbles off a highway and down a mountain, killing everyone on board. Traffic accidents are a leading cause of death in much of the third world.

–Unfinished buildings are everywhere, frozen in time, awaiting further funds from adult children working in the U.S. or Spain. An estimated one in ten young Ecuadorians has emigrated for work reasons, often, tragically, leaving their own lost children to the uncertain mercies of friends or family.

– The relative opulence of a home is often a testament to the number of children a family has working abroad. The poorest of the poor live in shacks made of cane sugar stalks.

– It’s not unusual to see visitors walking along looking at their feet. That’s because the sidewalk is uneven and holes, including sewer holes, as well as sudden mountains of pavement, can appear unexpectedly. Roads can be so rutted that taxis refuse to navigate them.

–People get around by bus. Driving a bus is an entrepreneurial activity for upwardly mobile families in Ecuador. A family saves up enough to buy a second hand bus and they’re in business: the dad drives and the kids go along for the ride and collect the fares. Mom is probably at home managing the small store that is the front room of their three room house. The store sells to their neighbors whatever vegetables the family has raised and other small items, like cigarettes at three for a dime or bottled water for 25 cents.

–I saw police (or were they soldiers? Hard to tell when the military and law enforcement are interchangeable) only twice during the time I spent in Ecuador. They were standing guard outside banks, state of the art weaponry at the ready. What little law enforcement exists seems there to protect the property of the rich.

–Criminal activity is a constant concern. Barred windows appear in all areas of the country and among all types of homes. In my daughter’s travels, she found that armed robberies on busses were rather routine, which accounts for the fact that many busses have a barrier behind the driver separating new and possibly dangerous arrivals from seated customers.

–Typical for third world countries, public education is limited. It is usually only the families who can pay whose children attend school. Huge numbers of families can’t afford tuition or uniforms or books, children may go to work before their teens, and the country remains impoverished.

–A few thousand of Ecuador’s estimated 13 million citizens are tall and white and Spanish, unlike the majority who are Indian or mestizo (mixed race). They are the upper class, and for many decades, they were the ruling class. Today they live behind tall barriers in exclusive enclaves, and they trust no one from outside with so much as their phone numbers. They hire body guards, send their children to be educated in the U.S., and remain active in politics in this politically unstable region.

–Since precise statistics are unavailable and most estimates in the third world are essentially guesses, no one knows the true extent of unemployment in Ecuador. Nevertheless, we observed massive numbers of people, with neither education nor skills nor available jobs, who simply stayed at home every day. We were awed by the lack of productivity in much of the country.

My daughter made good friends in Ecuador with people who were, in many ways, very much like us. Their ability to stay in touch after her tour ended was nearly impossible, however, since the mail system in Ecuador is close to nonexistent and because the overwhelming majority are too poor to have good access to telephones or computers. Even if they did, those living in or near poverty spend most of their time on tasks necessary to their survival.

Concerns with public health and safety are ample reasons to hope the U.S. doesn’t descend too far into the approaching abyss. But there is also much to recommend this other world. Families are strong, neighborhoods are stable. Life is simple, ads for the latest trinkets are nonexistent, and no one worries about keeping-up consumerism.

As U.S. citizens travel the economic path laid out by our multinational corporate government, we may all have reason to look for the bright side.

As soon as you discarded the hard political patina, pulled back the veil and became a real, and really fatigued, person during ‘The Moment’ the day before the primary in New Hampshire, I knew you had it won.  George Stephanopolous is still probably saying that, by rights, you should have blown it beyond recovery and the talking heads are still debating the polls.  They should all move on.

First, about those polls.  There were eight of them by respected organizations.  They all said the same thing, that Obama was going to win handily.  The chance that those professionals erred in unison is nonexistent this side of Never Never Land.  When the polling closed two days before the election, Hillary was going down.

Neither the polls nor the pundits bargained on Hillary morphing into a real person in front of the cameras a day later, someone doing her best to deal with vulnerability and disappointment, someone who was sincere, misunderstood, sad, and tired.  She became everywoman.  Her success, viscerally, became theirs and they voted for her in massive numbers, propelling her to a decisive victory and everyone else into a polling nightmare. 

See?  I do understand.  Now let me tell you why I’m containing my own enthusiasm.

In all honesty, your Senate voting record in total has been clearly liberal. You can be counted on to advance positive education initiatives; you have said that free market capitalism should be controlled; you are in favor of improving access to health care; of better protection for the environment; of restrictions on gun sales; of internet neutrality; of stem cell research without government imposed restrictions.

You stand on other issues is cloudy.  Prayer in schools, for example.  That seems to be both yes and no.  And Social Security?  You will convene a committee to look at it.  That sounds like a cop out at a time when we need specifics.

And then there are those staggering failures.  Not only did you effectively vote for a war of choice against a third world country and for continuing to fund that war ad-nauseam, but you defended those votes far beyond any semblance of reason.

You are an ardent supporter of our current, disastrous, Middle East policies.

You want to continue the Cuban embargo – which benefits ….  Ok.  Who?

You sponsored a flag burning amendment. 

You voted for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, giving the Bush administration another go-ahead for the same insanity in Iran.

You voted to loosen wiretapping restrictions.

You voted in favor of the Patriot Act. Twice.

And you voted in favor of a bankruptcy bill that penalized the poor and gave a bonanza to credit card companies.   It was the same bill that your husband had vetoed, at your urging, during his administration.

Can you see why people view you with distrust?

The problem, as I see it, is your fund raising.  You are queen of the war chest. None of your opponents has been able to match those tens of millions of dollars that corporations and individuals have handed to your campaign. Those donors really, really, want you elected.  In ways that mattered, you performed admirably for them as a senator and they will expect even more from you as chief executive of the nation.  You have given neither them nor us reason to believe that their expectations will not be