See # 8 below for the reason why I would spend nearly half the space this time talking about things that it would appear have nothing to do with immigration . . . or just wait until you get to #8- it’s a free country.
Chute: Proving the government and business are unethically in bed together would be impossible given that the average conservative would dismiss all of the following things exhibited in a typical criminal trial: DNA evidence, the murder weapon, five impeccable witnesses with corroborating stories, paper trails, audio recordings, handwriting experts, an impartial jury, and motive. My 3 year old is better at understanding the complicated offensive schemes that will help him win a game of Chutes and Ladders than will a typical conservative willingly acknowledge “truth” that a hand-selected eminent representative or their collective genius did not concoct in the laboratories of their own souls.
Very convincing: Fortunately for me, most conservatives would be satisfied with a simple sentence that stated that the affects of immigration have on this country are crippling without me having to trot out a series of book quotations, citations, columns, statistics, articles (i.e. evidence) that would support that theory. Unfortunately for anyone who has an obsessive-compulsive disorder and must finish what they start, I am going to go ahead and dig up as much of that stuff as I find suitable anyway. Largely, this time, it is not the conservatives I must attempt to convince- it is the liberals.
Two definitions:
1) government by the people; rule of the majority. A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections; the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges.
2) government by the few; a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. A form of government where political power effectively rests with a small, elite segment of society (whether distinguished by wealth, family or military prowess).
Note: the element of the first definition that addresses the idea of the rule of the majority, means the rule of the majority of citizens not the rule of the majority of representatives.
Democracy or not: The type of government under which business in the United States is currently conducted falls more under the heading of which definition? Sure, we elect representatives to conduct the political business of the country, but how often do they represent our best interests? Effectively, far fewer individuals than you might tend to believe govern us, and not to our benefit. There is no reason to deny this- think of the recently passed MN transportation bill, which will earmark millions and millions to a light rail system that is already over-funded considering its actual utility to the public. I cannot imagine that people with a pulse could contend that the representative style of government currently employed in this country is working. Anyone who disagrees with that can certainly feel free to maintain a level of surprise that only Jeffrey Birnbaum would be proud of (see part 21). Business in this country is not now, and perhaps has not ever been conducted, based on the epitomizing democratic tenet. This tenet is to be found in paraphrased form in every state Constitution I reviewed and is contained in the Declaration of Independence, in paragraph two to be exact: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The elite: I would rather be governed by the educated, objective, altruistic elite, and not necessarily the economic elite. Lou Dobbs in his book, “War on the Middle Class” page 14 describes the various walks of life those who signed the Constitution actually originated from- some were doctors but some were farmers, some attended Yale and some were schooled at home or “were entirely self-taught.” Today, “Those making the rules, and often breaking them, are less representative of our country than at any time in our history.” (pg. 15) I cannot quote all of the pertinent material from Dobbs’ book, but anyone interested in some information relative to how little representative of the public our elected officials actually are, should check the book out from the library and open it to pages 71-75.
The Babe: Babe Ruth, after being asked by a reporter what he thought of being paid $5,000 more in salary than was president Herbert Hoover in 1930, replied: “I know, but I had a better year than Hoover.” There are plenty of politicians who would be paid less per year based on their performance, objectively judged, compared to athletes, assembly line workers, food sanitation inspectors, or even the annoying red-headed kid from that “Problem Child” movie if he delivered newspapers and had never been the antagonist in a major motion picture. Members of congress are in session an average of 153 days a year and were paid $168,500 per year in 2006. (pgs. 71 and 73 of Dobbs’ WMC).
The name’s the same: Thinking of the two definitions above, are we not governed by a few who exercise control, too often, if you pay any attention to the news, “for corrupt and selfish purposes,” going to war, allegedly, against Iraq because that nation threatened his daddy (hereditary). Admittedly, the reasons for attacking Iraq are more far-reaching and profound (weapons of mass destruction, oil interests, desire for middle-east stability, etc.), but that is one of them. Going back, historically, over 60 years ago, to draw a democratic example- Franklin Roosevelt, wanted to pack the Supreme Court with democrats in order to override the conservative court that was stalling the progress of his New Deal domestic programs. Even further, despite Jefferson’s best intentions for a small federal government, a nation of farmers, one had to own land and not be a slave, or be a woman in order to vote. One of the major drawbacks to voting for, and electing, Hillary Clinton, many experts, cynics, and laymen agree, is because we would have had an uninterrupted flow of at least 24 years where either a Bush or a Clinton sat in the White House.
Oligarchy: Which definition seems more accurate for an adequate description of how the United States government is run? The first definition is for democracy and the second is oligarchy. After being made aware of which style of government matches which definition above, does the assertion that American political business is being conducted under an oligarchy or a democracy? Make the decision based on an informed opinion, not on what we were taught to believe about how excellent it is to live in America in history, civics, or political science classes we attended back in fifth grade or as college freshmen. You do not need to spend all of your gullibility points to begin to believe that we are living under a government that is an oligarchy. Learning this truth is not too good to be true. Haven’t we all found a pair of pants in our size, color, and style and found them on sale? I buy those pants. I’m no democrat and no republican. The standing of the marionette-like middle class is economically at stake, and behind all fiscally motivated decisions stands one political party or another that we keep legitimizing with our vote, that is pulling the strings.
Oligarchy II: Oligarchy is a long, scary, unfamiliar word and the fact that some may never have heard of it shouldn’t be an indictment of your intelligence, nor a sign of my fanaticism- but rather that we are all capable of learning new things- that are more up to snuff, more real, more factual, more useful, than things we have been led to believe our entire lives. Imagine how you felt after finding out that Jackelopes weren’t real, or that New Coke was being pulled off the shelves- you were devastated- weren’t you? I’ll admit- .001 % of the people would bother writing this subject matter and many of those that would should double-up on their depression medication, or stop using Chapstick if they think that it is an anti-paranoia balm which is actually making them more paranoid. All I can do is present what I think to be true and see if it resonates with others- to the extent that there are others- hellooooooo. Nothing too frenzied, strange, dishonest or unfruitful about that- is there? I leave the propoganda to the government. The only thing that is unfruitful is the reality that I am not that computer savvy, and people cannot hit upon my blog with key words they might type in for a google search. Also, I am not economically well off enough to purchase a website or domain name that might surround my brooding with more beautiful electronic architecture.
That darn immigration sub topic: I began this overall topic about ten months ago indicating that two topics, taxation and immigration were at the head of the issue. I have since discovered that I was wrong. Shocking! Campaign finance is the lead sled dog of this governmental Iditarod, but immigration and taxation, two issues that I haven’t even completely explored, are right behind. If the subjection of the middle class economically were a family tree of issues, campaign finance would be the trunk and immigration and taxation would be the first two, rather large offshoots. These limbs are deeply connected to all of the other issues. I will have to get to taxation later. It is time for the immigration portion of the program.
Open up: Those are two words that dentists can use when they are going to scrape, floss and brush the patient’s teeth with any of a variety of distasteful toothpastes. Not a pleasurable experience, so too with the vaguely frustrating feeling we now have that our country is being overrun by all kinds of illegal dentists. The two things- the manner of U.S. immigration and dentistry have one more thing in common- the concern over cavities. Where are the immigrants getting in and just how much candy is a twelve-year-old consuming are major concerns. I paid a guy $20 for fifty metaphors and went back to him one too many times. I wonder what the return policy is on a crappy metaphor pack and if there is a patch that might help me be weaned from relying upon them. Anyway, what is the most concerning aspect of the issue of immigration?
1) the illegality of hundreds of thousands emigrating here each year;
2) the notion that 12+ million of illegals are already here;
3) the government’s lawful allowance of legal immigrants (in total number falling under all types of parameters/Visas). What I mean here is, we should not just be concerned about illegal immigrants, because the politicians might alter the parameters of illegality, adjust the definition, and the legitimate concern about total numbers would instantly have lost its merit from a political argument standpoint;
4) the political power that proponents of illegal or legal immigration already wield;
5) the devastating effects of any kind of immigration on natural resources, health care costs, welfare costs, education costs, free-trade agreements, redistricting of congressional districts based on population which sooner or later will have an effect on who is elected to political office on the local, state and national levels;
6) a number of tunnels beneath American soil in Arizona and California linking Mexico with the U.S.* 21 tunnels linking Mexico with the United States, have been found since September 2001, (through 2006) a month and year everyone should equate with our nation being attacked using our own commercial airplanes. Seems if the terrorists could work with the Mexicans, we would really be in trouble;
7) heartless racist Americans who can’t ever imagine being downtrodden enough to seek refuge in a land that provides a foreigner with some opportunities. (This is a real issue centered around compassion and not sarcasm, at least not now);
8) politicians constant bickering about what type of immigration legislation to pass is cripling this country, particularly the middle class. The percentage of tax paying AMERICANS want stiffer immigration laws? Who the hell knows. Let's just go with the word- PLENTY. I consider Rousseau’s line from The Social Contract- “Good laws lead men to make better ones; bad laws lead to worse.” He wrote- ‘good,’ not perfect. Just about any law at this point that does not treat the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans each year as if it were one giant game of Red Rover is a step in the right direction. Are republicans who will not favor any immigration law that includes amnesty for those already here, plausibly denying their complicity with the democratic party, so that republicans can gain votes and further protect some big manufacturing businesses from losing low-wage earning immigrants whom the businesses will not need to pay medical benefits to? Isn't that what democrats are for? Is the immigration policy about profit margins? McCain, Obama, Clinton, even Nader have weak immigration stances from an Independent’s standpoint, but that barely matters. What matters is what congress can do or what state legislatures can do, for even if they pass something of merit, the aforementioned presidential candidates can veto it, but a 2/3 vote in congress can overturn that veto.
9) how about all of the above?
#s 1 and 2 from directly above: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0516/p01s02-ussc.html It is impossible to find any website at all that accurately states how many illegals are here. I have seen articles from the last two years that put the number anywhere between five and twenty million or more. This is a problem. As I have established, the government cannot even keep track of the money it spends on things of a ridiculously wasteful nature, tax money that the people who have earned it could use to pay a heating bill, but that certain governmental departments (see part 9) spend on unredeemed airline tickets. Liberals, you are ok with a revolving door border? To what end? So that you can feel good about yourself for fifty years until your own death, passing the burdens contained in #5 above onto your own children, and their children? There is no altruism, goodness, or foresight in subjecting the rest of the future of this country to the whim of a poorly considered immigration influx stratagem. There is no place reserved for you in heaven, as a good Samaritan, for your opinion that all should be blessed with the chance of living in a country that boasts such opportunities, when that country’s merits (space, natural resources, etc.) are minimized as more excessive numbers of people are ushered into it. Think of the United States as a glass. An alcoholic, who can only drink one drink at a time, gains nothing physiologically or psychologically feeding their dependence, after the bartender has filled their glass of Crown Royal and Seven-Up to the rim. The portion of the beverage that trickles and then oozes over the top of the glass and spills all over the counter, becomes a puddle on the floor, and then floods the bar is of little use to an alcoholic with standards, even if they are equipped with a straw or can cup their hands seamlessly. In short, when the glass is full, stop pouring in. The idea of the metaphor is the indirect way of saying we are reaching a critical mass era in this country, and the invasion has to stop. We are reaching a critical mass stage on all types of fronts- government waste, national debt, college tuition prices, health care spending, taxation, etc.
The horse is out of the barn/fence- # 6 above: The problems in this country are not getting any easier to solve and they are not decreasing in number. The problems do not improve if more potential problems are let into the country. Imagine a farmyard surrounded by a fence designed to keep four horses penned in, or everything else out. A young boy unwittingly leaves the gate open and one horse wanders out into the world of opportunity. Shortly after its departure you discover the open gate. Initially, would you spend your time trying to run down the horse on foot, or close the gate first so that the other three horses don’t flee the pen? If you don’t close the gate, then the potential for problems is three times more real, whereas, if you close the gate and concentrate on the one horse, the one problem to be solved, that of a wild steed or a somewhat tamed but unpredictable nag running lose, then your chances of correcting the problem improve dramatically.
Kids with cartoon standards and Raisin Bran: A real-life example for those that can't imagine the horse analogy- your son is done eating his breakfast cereal and has no interest in watching Clifford because it is vastly inferior as a cartoon to the just concluded Curious George. His method of letting you know that he is done is to make it rain like Pacman Jones, but instead of using dollar bills, he uses his Raisin Bran, sans all of the raisins that he picked out. Parental quiz: do you first pick up the five or six flakes already on the floor, or do you take away the tray containing hundreds of other flakes so that they too do not fall through the air, cascading onto the floor?
The broadminded and # 7 above: I want to be clear, many, many legal and illegal immigrants are useful, law-abiding, important members of this society. I would gladly exchange plenty of rap music artists, members of the white-trash community, and cash considerations to the country of origin of any number of legal immigrants, for the welcome inclusion into this country of helpful Indians, Mexicans, Haitians, Laotians, etc. Many of them pay taxes and plenty of them value this country’s gifts while being disgusted by its flaws. In addition, the people that come here should be paid higher wages and derive health benefits, because it is highly likely they will have earned it. If you do not build a fence and/or employ more border security agents, we will have hundreds of thousands of unpredictable horses running free. (Note: if a reader objects to the use of an animal as a symbol for an immigrant in the metaphor above, then go register as a democrat, but before causing that type of problem go close the gate before three more nags gallop along with you). Robert Frost said- “A ‘liberal’ is someone so broadminded he won't take his own side in an argument.” Maybe that was true once upon a time, but it certainly is not true on the topic of immigration. Calling someone a racist and a xenophobe while it is an easy (ad hominem) way to deflect attention away from the issue, is just the bleating-heart’s way of becoming empowered. (And I mean 'bleating,' and not 'bleeding' for liberals are sheep first and only secondarily exhibit the contrived empathy that has made them famous); Oh, and liberals:
Horse escapes from barn and drives van into bus: A woman, using a false identity, without a driver’s license of any kind, failed to stop at a stop sign, crashed into a bus with the van she was driving, and killed four children. She lied to authorities about her name and where she was from. She “used an interpreter to tell police that she stopped at the stop sign (http://wcco.com/local/school.bus.crash.2.660427.html) and that she was grief stricken. Customs Enforcement agents were attempting to determine the woman’s identity, which is usually a task that is usually only difficult if a person was burned to death and a person needs to be identified by their dental records. To be fair, thousands and thousands of Americans have also been charged with vehicular homicides since the advent of the automobile, and that is a problem. Knowing that illegals are driving vehicles without licenses, or being able to speak English or read road signs written in English is a bigger problem. Those who focus just on the nature of the accident and ignore the fact that an illegal alien was the cause of it, probably think that Rambo was a documentary on how to rescue P.O.W.s from Vietnam. Morons! Hm, this horse escaped from the pen and killed four kids. I hope all the hoops that republicans and democrats jump through, trying to maintain the balance of power in elected office, trying to gather and keep the Mexican and Latino vote is worth the pain caused to the families of those children. They must think- Latin Americans- close enough.
Hardly an isolated incident: from Dobbs' WMC pg. 146- "in 2005, some twenty-four hundred cars were driven across the border illegally into Yuma County, Arizona. Half of those resulted in law enforcement pursuits. More than one hundred officers were assaulted. Yuma's sherriff estimates 75 percent of the crime in Yuma is related to illegal immigration." And racist immigrants have the nerve to attempt to justify their right to be here. Shame on them!
Dobbs on immigration and # 7 above: “Why do the national media conveniently and routinely neglect to report that the United States brings in more lawful immigrants than the countries of the rest of the world combined? Each year, we accept 2 million immigrants legally. We give a million legal immigrants permanent residency every year. We bestow citizenship on 700,000 people a year and provide almost half a million work-related visas a year." [http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/24/Dobbs.April25/index.html] (FYI- the Dobbs article also touches on the problem of more congressional seats going to states with a massive influx of immigration, Texas, Florida, and California and that “plans calling for eventual legalization would include family members . . . the legislation would open our borders to tens of millions of people . . . the 2006 version of the McCain-Kennedy bill would have added an additional 66 million immigrants over the next 20 years.” McCain giveth (campaign finance reform- see parts 19-21), and he taketh away).
Get ‘er done: So, proving that the American population that doesn’t want even more immigrants into this country are racists would be more difficult than proving a South Beach diet would do wonders for the figure of a water buffalo. See, no one could prove that, because buffalo do not eat meat. Consider this- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23056355 an Associated Press column from February 7, 2008, “Jobless After War: Veterans Find Tough Going.” I would be willing to wager that plenty of the 18% of jobless veterans who were found to be unemployed 1-3 years after discharge, and that the 1 of 4 with jobs who earned less than $21,840 a year, were required to own and learn how to operate a firearm, and plenty had the mental capacity, and devotion to country necessary to be employed as border control agents. The article refers to a Labor Department report showing the number of formal job complaints by reservists about being “denied jobs or benefits after they tried to return to their old jobs after extended tours in Iraq . . . 1,357 complaints with the Department of Labor in 2006 alone.” Yes, these people would have to move to Texas, but they would be fairly compensated, employed, and serving their country in a more meaningful endeavor than they were when fighting a war that congress never declared. But perhaps the Iraq war that the democrats do not favor is a necessary foreign policy evil that keeps the country from focusing on domestic concerns like immigration. Those who have served their country deserve a better fate and the country they served demands it. The unemployment rate of veterans from 1991-2003 was more than double that of non-veterans. In the immortal words of Larry The Cable Guy- “get ‘er done.”
Amnesty: The word ‘amnesty’ is the dirtiest word for any republican grammarian this side of the word liberal or even any of the words that once put together comprise the phrase- ‘redistribution of wealth.’ I agree with them. Unfortunately, conservatives should begin to wake to the fact that the illegals already here should be given amnesty, just as we are employing more border security agents and building a wall. The reality of hunting down 5, or 7, or 12 or 20+ million illegals, checking their documentation, their state ID, their social security number and shipping them out before more agents are hired or before a wall is built is not economically feasible in the least. We would have a better chance of teaching a camel how to start up a clamchowder.org website dedicated to the non-profit proliferation of information relative to cream-based soups which contain potatoes and near clams.
Amnesty II: Many of the illegals that are here are doing some hard work. Unfortunately this gives them a sense of entitlement well beyond their contributions, considering they are here illegally. Those that are already here illegally, but not working hard, let us say 10-20%, are much easier to find, and there is a better reason for finding them. Why? Because those are the ones committing crimes. The ones committing crimes must feel even more empowered or they wouldn't be so brazen as to commit crimes in the first place. If republicans, ignoring this reasoning, still want to get a massive number of illegals shipped out of the country while a wall is being built and guards are employed, then visit the biggest industrial plants in the country and raid them. The odds of catching criminals increase when you know where they are. If you want to buy a guppy, you do not go to the parakeet cage at PetSmart. So, they are criminals either way, whether they are violent offenders or hard working family men. However, hunting them down one or ten at a time is a waste of time, money, resources and energy and it kills me to say that. But it is true.
*- from Dobbs’ War on the Middle Class (pg. 147):
“In January 2006, the United States shut down the border, a passage linking Otay Mesa, California, with an industrial neighborhood near the airport in Tijuana, Mexico. This tunnel is almost a half mile in length, seventy-five feet deep, has electricity and a ventilation system, and is lined with concrete. Inside, officials found an estimated two tons of marijuana. Police were first tipped off to its existence in 2004, and finally found it after a two-year search, using ground-penetrating radar. Since September 2001, law enforcement officials have discovered some twenty-one tunnels beneath the Arizona and California borders with Mexico. Officials are not ruling out the possibility that the Otay Mesa tunnel may have—surprise—also been used to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States.” Do ya think?
Don’t believe Dobbs?: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/11/california.tunnel/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-29-drug-tunnel_n.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012601963.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/mexico-wall.htm
Next time: Be careful about focusing too much angst on the word “illegal” as it precedes the word immigration.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Middle Class Part 21: Campaign Finance concluded and Citigroup's Convoluted Corporate Portfolio
Almighty Proof: See, it is difficult to prove global climate change, or just how to deal with pharmaceutical companies that gain massive kick-backs from the government in terms of subsidies, money collected from taxpayers that never seems to lower prices on prescription medicine. But it is fairly easy to send the average citizen five links for some pretty provable money distributions lavishly directed toward certain politician’s bank accounts and traced back to a corporation that either has received, or will, a politician’s unethical reciprocation of garnered money? Unethical, is a matter of debate and is a word often used but seldom understood. It is unethical for politicians to continue to deny the will of the people, such as it is, and back a corporation’s desire to monopolize commerce, industry, production, trade, financial lending, or to continue to treat jaded environmentalists or old-school unions with kid gloves. But let us still have debate, for case against McCain, Feingold, Lieberman, etc. of having violated the Constitution is looking like a slam dunk acquittal with each passing day. I think Romney, who bowed out of the republican primary process the first week of February 2008, is still spending money in his dreams.
Historical Finances: I am not sure what is worse- someone who continues to deny the connection between campaign finance contributions that still go relatively unchecked and the level of corruption in politics, or the one who does not fail to see it, but considers it an evil that is so ingrained in the political culture that there is nothing that can be done to further curb its excess. Bush Sr. had vetoed a bill limiting campaign funding 10 years before Bush Jr. signed one into law in 2002. Not sure whether I am more surprised by Bush Jr.s vote or that the supreme court upheld the law’s major provisions in December 2003- 21 months later. The supreme court upheld the decision!!- thought it was important enough to write succinctly. Apparently, the law to reform campaign funding was not all that Unconstitutional. Three other things I find interesting:
1) the bill which the senior Bush vetoed in ’92 appeared to have more teeth than the one passed ten years later and a major proponent of both was John McCain;
2) the bill with more teeth was not supported as strongly in ’92 when the democrats held the congressional majority, but passed in 2002 when the republicans did- so, the conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. (And I know that a president might be more inclined to sign something when he knows the congress has enough support to override his veto, that half the game is about how a politician looks, in terms of strength and leadership, to their constituencies and the populace);
3) in ’92, the senate majority leader was democrat George Mitchell, the same guy that decided after over two years of legal leg-work, advised MLB commissioner Bud Selig not to pursue legal action against cheaters named in his report. I wonder whether politicians who are against campaign finance legislation might be considered cheaters, for they have the technical veto override in political power that silences the speech of the public speaking out for reform. Roscoe P. Coltrane was not as inept in his legendary “hot pursuit[s]” of the General Lee as plenty of the political criminals decrying the injustice of finance reform. I could spend an entire column on the strange connections I could draw between the effects that performance enhancing drugs have had on baseball and the effects that campaign contributions have on politics. By now, I bet you believe that.
For christ’s sake!: Mindful of last column’s presentation of the concern over religion’s role in state affairs- The material in this paragraph is courtesy of “The Buying of the President 2004: Joe Lieberman, The Center for Public Integrity’s quadrennial investigation of how money shapes presidential campaigns.” (http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/archives/2004/598/) It will then provide me with a jumping off point so that I might conclude the campaign finance reform portion of my gripe on behalf of the middle class. Joe Lieberman, Independent Senator from Connecticut, who between 1998 and 2003, “cosponsored nine bills that Pfizer directly lobbied, varying from tax breaks to patent extensions,” said that “pharmaceutical giant Pfizer” was “ ‘doing the Lord’s work.’ ” Lieberman became an Independent in the fall of 2006 after losing his seat in the Connecticut democratic senatorial primary. To be fair, I still think it abundantly likely that even should a number of Independent candidates become U.S. house representatives, governors, or senators, they will have become so with the persistent backing of millions of dollars in campaign finance contributions and so would also be just as beholden to those that helped get them elected as are their democrat and republican opponents. But I’ve already covered why it is important to begin supporting them.
The article above also mentions these very interesting connections (1-5):
1) Lieberman, in January of 2002, was the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee who announced that the Enron bankruptcy would be investigated;
2) Enron was the top donor of G.W. Bush’s presidential campaign, and also contributed financially to 71 senators and 187 members of the house of representatives. (so there is no wonder why the next point would be true- think of alienating that many of your colleagues who might otherwise desire to support your political aims);
3) Lieberman never called in “Robert Rubin, the Clinton administration’s treasury secretary who went on to become chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee” before deciding that Rubin could not provide any information and ignored the knowledge that Rubin had "called a former subordinate at the Treasury, asking him to pressure credit-rating agencis not to reduce Enron's debt to junk bond status." (For NFL fans, this is a bit like NFL commissioner Roger Goddell, who after the Jets had proven that the Patriots were taping defensive coach’s hand signals, must have asked the Patriots if they had ever gained a competitive advantage in other games, and then destroyed all evidence they turned over to him. The Patriots have since been accused by a source of allegedly taping the St. Louis Rams walk-through practice, the day before Super Bowl XXXVI in January 2002). Sure, I make a habit of asking a proven cheater (as the Pats were fined $500k and stripped of a first round draft pick) the truth about something. Don't lose sight of the fact that Rubin called a former subordinate at the Treasury and that it appears that Lieberman knew that Rubin had made the request reported in the story from which I quote. Any wonder why I would contend that business and politics are in cahoots;
4) Citigroup was one of many “large money donor[s] to Lieberman” the largest in his political career in fact, and “had helped to build the house of cards that was Enron.”
5) Perhaps out of a sense of guilt and hoping to unburden himself of democratic special interest group money he had received over the years, Lieberman decided to become and Independent in 2006, four years after cosponsoring “an amendment with Senator Fred Thompson . . . to aid prosecutors in enforcing campaign finance laws.” (Incidentally, if the most conservative candidate in the republican field running for president of the United States in 2008, widely acknowledged by conservatives, co-sponsored a campaign finance bill with a then democrat, why in the hell would you give McCain such a hard time. Rhetorical question. Republicans, if you were a walrus sitting on a large rock, just out to sea, attempting to warm itself in the sun, you couldn’t work harder on your posturing. You have less foundation for such a contention that campaign finance legislation is Unconstitutional as Britney Spears, this century’s Isadora Duncan, has on her face when she heads out on the town, harried, panty-less and racing away from the paparazzi . . . Barack Obama doesn’t have so little foundation in his campaign speeches . . . one more- conservatives are the Ramsey Clarke of campaign finance reform . . . Clarke was the attorney who volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein);
Other more interesting connections to be drawn from the recent history of Citigroup specifically:
6) Citigroup contributed $3.7 and $3.1 million to republicans and democrats respectively for the 2004 election cycle as reported by Charles Lewis, “The Buying of the President 2004” which I included in part 19, so they are certainly buttering their bread on both sides, mindful of the link between Enron and Citigroup in #s 2 and 3 above which link Enron to the sitting president and Citigroup to the previous one;
7) Most online articles or books will cite that the democrats actually receive the lion’s share of funding from Wall Street investment companies, hedge fund management companies, law firms, lobbyists, health care and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and nursing homes, environmental groups and unions (teachers, steel workers, attorneys, etc.) (I will probably get back to the teacher's unions at some point, but I’m on a roll- but see Ryan Caione’s January 10, 2008 column “Fat Cats and Strange Bedfellows,” and Bill Van Auken’s “On the Eve of ‘Super Tuesday’ primaries, Wall Street casts the money ballet,” February 5, 2008, or see Charles Lewis’ “The Buying of the President 2004”- the top 10 democratic donors contributed $95 million while the republicans received $55.2 million; Citigroup was 11th and 30th on the republican and democratic donor lists respectively; AT & T was 5th and 16th).
8) From John Bresnahan’s column on The Politico, “Waxman Eyes CEO Pay During Subprime Mortgage Crisis” (January 14, 2008). Bresnahan writes that the house oversight and government reform chairman wants to question Charles Prince, former CEO of Citigroup, and among other corporate geniuses who “ ‘stand to collect tens of millions of dollars in severance payments’ even as their current or former companies are losing billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage meltdown.” Citigroup would attempt to write off “ ‘as much as $20 billion in mortgage-related investments’ according to the Wall Street Journal, while laying off as many as 20,000 employees. According to the WSJ, Prince left Citigroup with ‘accumulated benefits’ valued at more than $29 million” (Note: there are dozens of investment companies with a business resume and antics such as those dreaded CEO pay package delivery methods favored by Citigroup, but for the sake of consistency and space, believe it or not, I chose to focus on one. Incidentally, Waxman, is the same congressman who led the charge against Roger Clemens’ link to steroids and human growth hormone in mid February 2008. Congress-people are apparently more interested in attempting to maintain that professional sports still have some integrity and the information about holding financial market luminaries such as Citigroup’s former executive accountable for massive lay-offs while receiving incredible pay packages upon their departure from service will happen when? . . . and be televised for about seven hours when. . . ??? More people watched the lunar eclipse on February 21st than will ever see a CEO taken to task for what everyone knows to be true, excessive pay packages);
9) From Jeff Nash’s column “Former Citi CEOs exit pay a not so princely sum” [November 6, 2007] The title is derived from the then expected $29 million pay package former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince obtained for failing the company and its employees (see #s 7 and above, and #s 10 and 12 below);
10) “Shares of Citigroup fell more than 5%” due to the bank warning that “it would take more than $8 billion in new mortgage debt-related write-downs;” Also in this article is the news that Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary and co-head of Goldman Sachs, will take over as chairman.” Goldman Sachs is a company named in plenty of the same columns I’ve been perusing for this particular sub topic of campaign finance contributions to the politicians. This Rubin guy with ties to Goldman Sachs, Enron, Citigroup, and the Clinton administration, which is said to have created Citigroup “as an all-purpose financial supermarket and too-big-to-fail banking marvel” (“Citigroup: Too Big to Fail?” William Greider- www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=248817) has his hands in more “stuff” than a proctoligist at a 20-week ultrasound verifying a moose pregnancy. Let us call him Rubin-esque . . . anyone who has ever studied 17th Century Flemish painters knows what I'm talking about. I would make a comment about Pee-Wee Herman, but I'll move on.
11) From Naomi Spencer’s April 13, 2007 article “Banking Giant Citigroup to cut 17,000 jobs”: “over 9,500 US workers are slated for outsourcing to ‘lower-cost’ locations.” Also this: Citigroup CEO “Charles O. Prince III announced . . . ‘You will see a . . . more tough-minded Citigroup than you have in the past.’ ” So, April 13, 2007, CEO Prince announces a job cut of 17,000 and in November of 2007, he is out as CEO of Citigroup, but receives approximately $29 million in a compensation package. Hmm. Should we believe that Prince was out because of the competitive and downtrodden financial market and out despite the elimination of 17,000 jobs, or he was rewarded by saving Citigroup so much money, taking the heat for eliminating so many jobs and therefore compensated the $29 million for having been the mercenary? Inconceivable. We should empower a group of federally funded commissioners to monitor events such as these . . . we might call them the Securities and Exchange Commission . . . what’s that, we already have done that. As Rosanne Rosannadanna (Gilda Radner) would say in her high-pitched little girl voice- “never mind.” We think of almost everything don’t we? Almost;
12) Elizabeth Lazarowitz of http://www.nydailynews.com/, and plenty of others, brought us this story in mid January 2008- “Huge Layoffs Loom at Citigroup; 20,000 Face Firing Starting Tuesday.” The article contains the information: “The job losses would come less than a year after Citigroup said it would cut 17,000 employees . . .” So, 37,000 jobs lost in one year because of a sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and a weakening economy among other reasons. Citigroup again changed its CEO, though this article reveals that they changed from Charles Prince to Vikram Pandit, while another article had led me to believe that Robert Rubin (see #3 above) had been made CEO following Prince’s escape with $29 million. Who can keep track of it all? In anticipation of the January 2008 layoff announcement, Citigroup “shares climbed 1.8%, or 50 cents, to $29.06.” So, the corporation makes good on the loss of the individual. Just the nature of the beast, neither can we be alarmed at every bit of economic news, nor can we be conscious and choose never to react to it. I am no mathematician, but things do add up, if you connect the dots;
13) I get it. Citigroup is a corporation that employs/employed a lot of people and when they are doing well, they can count on the government’s ability to tell people to look the other way. Government can be complicit with business, protecting the amount of taxes a corporation might pay and allow them to offshore, outsource, write-down debt and fire people so that the beloved stock price improves. This is the Play-It-Again Sports version of economics from an employee’s perspective. The employee sells a used hockey stick to a chain store that collects used athletic equipment and receives a 2.5% raise (for the sake of argument- they sell the stick for $6) and the corporation (the middle-man) turns around and raises its prices, selling the stick for $19.95. Just have to love the private market where employees are merely considered the most expensive controllable cost. Nature of the game I guess;
14) Think of this- people might think that if Citigroup contributes $3-$6 million to a candidate or political party that this isn’t coming from the pocket books of employees. So, shareholders are traditionally willing to part with the profits they gathered when the sub-prime lending, and other financial windfall conditions, that went largely unchecked by the federal government until fairly recently, were in full swing? Not likely. Or, the CEOs that are paid the types of salaries that juiced up major league ballplayers earn after hitting 45 homeruns or having an ERA of 6.13 (so, whether they succeed or fail, i.e. no connection to performance), will surely give up some of their $29 million buyout (see #s 6, 8, 9, 11 above) that shareholders cannot seem to curtail- see # 20 below. So, if CEOs and shareholders are not likely altruists (see # 12, the value of their shares increased in anticipation of 20,000 losing their jobs) then where in the heck is the money they donate to one or both of the political parties, and the money spent on additional lobbying, coming from? See # 6 above and 16 below, for a total of $11.8 million in two election cycles and I don’t know how much they gave to the parties directly. A typical, proof-monger would contend- “You’re complaining about $11.8 million, big deal.” These people are trying to disprove a set of postulates that all add up to the subjection of the middle class by political power brokers by the very established, perhaps Newtonian scientific theorem, of collective boredom. They don’t have the information, the will, the energy, or the foresight to see how far-reaching the problem of the middle class is going to be if things continue. These people only see the country’s finances as the completed version of the house on “Extreme Makeover- Home Edition.” They never consider how pathetic the surrounding homes probably look by comparison, and never watched what kind of work was done to the home that was plagued by mold, disrepair, a cracking foundation, and a leaky roof. As Ty Pennington might say if he were talking about building a house or improving the economic prospects of middle class kids- “let’s get to work PEOPLE!”
15) Information coming under numbers 15-17 stems from: www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=4685. I was unable to find definitive dollar amounts that Citigroup may have contributed for 2006 or for the current election cycle on the Internet, but did find that they helped to contribute to political parties, along with hundreds of other corporations, over $162 million that came from “individuals and PACs connected to commercial banks, insurance companies, and securities and investment firms” (i.e. hedge funds) during the 2004 election cycle;
16) Citigroup made political contributions of $1.6 million and spent $3.4 million on lobbying efforts in 2006. I couldn’t find information relative to how much they contributed to the two political parties in '06 or so far in '08;
17) “Citigroup’s progenitors pulled off the biggest lobbying coup in US financial history by bringing about the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to permit banks to be affiliated with insurance companies.” (A “coup”? Usually that word is restricted to the hostile takeover of a country, but if the shoe fits).
18) A profile of Citigroup can be found at www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=203 from 11/20/07: “As impressive as its profits may be, the real cost to investors and consumers alike is far less appealing and the scope of Citigroup’s malfeasance is nearly as broad as that of its business operations. Citigroup has spearheaded industry efforts to fight legislation that would restrict bank consolidation. Additionally, Citigroup has engaged in predatory lending practices that prey on the financially vulnerable. One such case resulted in a $215 million repayment settlement for manipulating consumers into buying overpriced mortgages. Investors have not been immune to Citigroup’s lack of ethics either, as evidenced by the company’s involvement in both the Enron and WorldCom scandals.” (It may be time to stage a coup against Citigroup);
19) “In July 2003 the SEC announced that Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay a combined $236 million to settle charges that they helped Enron manipulate its books to appear financially healthy.” (The SEC in action, finally! And where might that $236 million have gone? Perhaps it could have been put into an account somewhere so that the combined 37,000 people they let go in April 2006 and January 2007 could all work for a few more years. My math is almost as bad as my ability to be brief- but I think you could pay all of those employees, if they all grossed $40k, for a year to the tune of $148 million. Think of all the taxes that the government might gather from that, but instead perhaps they made out quite a bit better by allegedly collecting the $236 million (I wrote allegedly because didn't they pay a few military contractors for weaponry (see part 9) that was never delivered? But the government's accountants are better than mine, so I better defer. Now, what I did there was pure speculation, but most everything else isn’t, as I have been quoting articles, books, reports, etc. since I started this philippic);
20) “In 2005 Citigroup shareholders brought forth a resolution calling for a cap on executive compensation, not to exceed 100 times that of employees of non-managerial status.” The proposal was voted down. A link to this information is dead within the link to be found in #18.
21) There is plenty more, but I just can’t keep up. There are at least ten more, by this time, not so shocking bits of information injurious to Citigroup’s reputation. Reputation? Citigroup is the Iago of the economic world. Citigroup’s loss of reputation has been long in the making and is well-deserved. (Iago is one of literature’s foremost evil characters, appearing in Shakespeare’s Othello).
22) From Nader’s book, “The Good Fight,” (page 159): “According to Corporate Crime Reporter, thirty-one major convicted corporations gave $9.3 million to the two political parties in the 2002 election cycle.” These companies were convicted of price fixing conspiracies, eliminating competition, environmental crimes, book cooking, falsifying revenue totals, violating insider trading regulations, or “illegal and fraudulent promotion of unapproved uses of one of its drugs products.” From page 167 of the same book: among the fifty brokerage firms covering companies filing for bankruptcy in 2002, “forty-seven continued to recommend that investors buy or hold shares in the failing companies even as they were filing for Chapter 11.” What must it take for the government to convict a business of illegal activities?
These brokerage firms were making these recommendations to average investors. I am aware that Citigroup is not currently filing for Chapter 11, or even alleging that Citigroup is tied up in the violations that Nader cites. I am merely contending that government and business, government and any number of lobbyists, including unions that are heavily pro-democrat, are conspicuously partnered to the detriment of the middle class investor, worker, tax-payer, citizen. There isn’t irrefutable proof of this, for there would be fewer conservative talk-show host clones pretending to be the voice of reason, making contentions that run exactly counter to my assertions, but there are few things that are undoubtedly provable the instant one sits down to investigate. Who would have believed that the president of the United States would end up resigning from office in order to avoid impeachment because five guys were arrested at a hotel complex housing the Democratic National Committee in 1972 (better known as the Watergate scandal)? Again, because of plausible deniability, both government and business and any set of special interest groups, can be thought to be accidentally inept individually that to think they could combine efforts and keep it a secret is beyond comprehension. What we need is an Iran-Contra hearing type of investigation of such scope that we bring out what reporters and researchers know about the corruption of puppet politicians by any lobbyist group and sit our congress people, governors, and presidents before a tribunal and find them guilty. Problem is, not many congressmen or congresswomen would be able to conduct such proceedings without standing as the accused first, and with that, there would be few of the innocent remaining to empanel a legal court of justice. That is why I thought creating a panel of non-government affiliated persons was such a good idea.
Book Review: I checked out Jeffrey Birnbaum’s 2000 book- “Money Men, The Real Story of Fund-Raising’s Influence on Political Power in America.” Early on Birnbaum writes that the reader might be surprised about who is responsible for the majority of the work that places the money in the hands of politicians running for office. He calls these people solicitors, because they are “workaday folks who collect millions of political dollars, a thousand bucks at a time.” (pg. 50) Birnbaum’s credentials are impressive and I’d defer to his knowledge on who are the political bower brokers, but he shouldn’t have written a book about it, because nothing I read was all that surprising. I am surprised that someone with that much experience could seem so taken with the business as usual, almost romanticized version he describes. He may need to change the prescription on his rose-colored glasses.
The reasons people financially contribute “are much more diverse than most people think.” Some want a job in the administration they have contributed to, some for status, some are idealists, are simply rich, and some are “professional lobbyists.” (pg. 8) Not surprised. He writes that the contributors “aren’t who you think they are. For one thing, they aren’t all stinking rich. They also aren’t all interested in bending politics to their own narrow-minded, self-interested views.” (pg. 50) That seems like the set-up for some factual information. We’ll see.
Birnbaum cites a 1997 Joyce Foundation of Chicago survey that determined “the who and why of campaign giving. Not surprisingly, the donors surveyed were people of means. . . . Eighty-one percent of the contributors earned more than one hundred thousand dollars. . . . nine out of ten of the donors were white, four fifths were male, and more than four fifths were forty-five years of age or older.” (pg. 65) I’d be more surprised if penguins could fly while being converted to Buddhism, and penguins are already naturally equipped with wings. So, really, we'd just need to take care of that Buddhism thing while penguins were aviating. Here is a breakdown of the findings from the survey, relative to a contributor’s reason for giving:
19% “were motivated by general ideology or partisanship.”
16% “were focused on promoting some very specific issue.”
16% “gave as a way to enhance their personal contact.” Birnbaum found this interesting and probably surprising
20% “wanted to have the best person in Congress to help the folks back home.” This is not at all related to the other reasons listed directly above. Nope.
14% thought they contributed to a probable winner who would “grant them access once in office.”
Awe Shocks: That is a combined 85% of rich respondents of a non-shocking age, race, sex, or economic status giving money to a candidate who they think can win, and thus push through legislation and an ideology that favors the individual who financially contributes to a politician’s candidacy. Still not surprised. None of the reasons indicated are all that distinguishable from one another. They all want something for their contribution. Now, if the other 15% that Birnbaum didn’t feel compelled to account for, favored a candidate who the contributors were certain would support a legislative bill that scientifically promoted and supported a family of opossums for their interest in clinging to tree limbs right-side up, defying gravity, while learning how to read in brail, and praying to Allah to help cure them of repetitive stress syndrome then that would be surprising. I stopped skimming Birnbaum’s book at this point. I was tired of being shocked by his awe. Some cars I’ve owned have distributed the impact of shock more evenly. (To be fair- I don’t know that Birnbaum ever actually used the word shocked to communicate the irregularity of his expectations being matched with the “truth” at least according to what he perceives is common knowledge among the public, or based on the results of a survey erroneously interpreted, but as he took many liberties with the subject matter, I felt almost compelled to follow suit).
One more source to consult: I began reading Dick Morris’ book, “vote.com” (1999, 236 pages) who was as much of a Washington insider as Birnbaum, having been a political adviser to Bill Clinton, and he came to the exact conclusions as I have, that the representatives, special interest groups, lobbyists, and corporations are destroying representative government. That was as much the reason behind the XVIIth Constitutional Amendment as anything, (which involved voters in the election of senators to political office) an amendment which was not looked down upon by Woodrow Wilson who “warned of the insidious influence of lobbyists on Capital Hill in 1913.” (http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/1878.htm) Morris addresses the possibility of the downfall of big media as an influential component in politics, more referendum voting, politicians advertising on the internet because they get more bang for their buck, online election voting, the potential minimized future role of congress, and the welcome back of actual democracy favored by Jefferson with a desire to listen to the vox populi- which is Latin for, the voice of the people. The politicians, who favor the political climate as currently constituted, are going to have to be significantly muted for the people to be heard. But much of what Morris writes about is decades in the offing or never will come to fruition. His wishful thinking is a political utopia better left to the pages of a futuristic novel than consumed by a pie-eyed public clamoring to combat bureaucratic influence peddlers. Vote.com- a real website, check it out.
Keep in Mind: I could write much more on this sub-topic, but even an ass as stubborn as I am has to move on eventually. I am aware that those who spend the most money in order to win an election, aren’t always those seated in the position of power they sought. However, there is every reason to believe that candidates with the most bloated budgets believe themselves to be in a financial position of power, and must think that it increases their chances of winning, or else they wouldn’t acquire or spend so much.
Historical Finances: I am not sure what is worse- someone who continues to deny the connection between campaign finance contributions that still go relatively unchecked and the level of corruption in politics, or the one who does not fail to see it, but considers it an evil that is so ingrained in the political culture that there is nothing that can be done to further curb its excess. Bush Sr. had vetoed a bill limiting campaign funding 10 years before Bush Jr. signed one into law in 2002. Not sure whether I am more surprised by Bush Jr.s vote or that the supreme court upheld the law’s major provisions in December 2003- 21 months later. The supreme court upheld the decision!!- thought it was important enough to write succinctly. Apparently, the law to reform campaign funding was not all that Unconstitutional. Three other things I find interesting:
1) the bill which the senior Bush vetoed in ’92 appeared to have more teeth than the one passed ten years later and a major proponent of both was John McCain;
2) the bill with more teeth was not supported as strongly in ’92 when the democrats held the congressional majority, but passed in 2002 when the republicans did- so, the conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. (And I know that a president might be more inclined to sign something when he knows the congress has enough support to override his veto, that half the game is about how a politician looks, in terms of strength and leadership, to their constituencies and the populace);
3) in ’92, the senate majority leader was democrat George Mitchell, the same guy that decided after over two years of legal leg-work, advised MLB commissioner Bud Selig not to pursue legal action against cheaters named in his report. I wonder whether politicians who are against campaign finance legislation might be considered cheaters, for they have the technical veto override in political power that silences the speech of the public speaking out for reform. Roscoe P. Coltrane was not as inept in his legendary “hot pursuit[s]” of the General Lee as plenty of the political criminals decrying the injustice of finance reform. I could spend an entire column on the strange connections I could draw between the effects that performance enhancing drugs have had on baseball and the effects that campaign contributions have on politics. By now, I bet you believe that.
For christ’s sake!: Mindful of last column’s presentation of the concern over religion’s role in state affairs- The material in this paragraph is courtesy of “The Buying of the President 2004: Joe Lieberman, The Center for Public Integrity’s quadrennial investigation of how money shapes presidential campaigns.” (http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/archives/2004/598/) It will then provide me with a jumping off point so that I might conclude the campaign finance reform portion of my gripe on behalf of the middle class. Joe Lieberman, Independent Senator from Connecticut, who between 1998 and 2003, “cosponsored nine bills that Pfizer directly lobbied, varying from tax breaks to patent extensions,” said that “pharmaceutical giant Pfizer” was “ ‘doing the Lord’s work.’ ” Lieberman became an Independent in the fall of 2006 after losing his seat in the Connecticut democratic senatorial primary. To be fair, I still think it abundantly likely that even should a number of Independent candidates become U.S. house representatives, governors, or senators, they will have become so with the persistent backing of millions of dollars in campaign finance contributions and so would also be just as beholden to those that helped get them elected as are their democrat and republican opponents. But I’ve already covered why it is important to begin supporting them.
The article above also mentions these very interesting connections (1-5):
1) Lieberman, in January of 2002, was the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee who announced that the Enron bankruptcy would be investigated;
2) Enron was the top donor of G.W. Bush’s presidential campaign, and also contributed financially to 71 senators and 187 members of the house of representatives. (so there is no wonder why the next point would be true- think of alienating that many of your colleagues who might otherwise desire to support your political aims);
3) Lieberman never called in “Robert Rubin, the Clinton administration’s treasury secretary who went on to become chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee” before deciding that Rubin could not provide any information and ignored the knowledge that Rubin had "called a former subordinate at the Treasury, asking him to pressure credit-rating agencis not to reduce Enron's debt to junk bond status." (For NFL fans, this is a bit like NFL commissioner Roger Goddell, who after the Jets had proven that the Patriots were taping defensive coach’s hand signals, must have asked the Patriots if they had ever gained a competitive advantage in other games, and then destroyed all evidence they turned over to him. The Patriots have since been accused by a source of allegedly taping the St. Louis Rams walk-through practice, the day before Super Bowl XXXVI in January 2002). Sure, I make a habit of asking a proven cheater (as the Pats were fined $500k and stripped of a first round draft pick) the truth about something. Don't lose sight of the fact that Rubin called a former subordinate at the Treasury and that it appears that Lieberman knew that Rubin had made the request reported in the story from which I quote. Any wonder why I would contend that business and politics are in cahoots;
4) Citigroup was one of many “large money donor[s] to Lieberman” the largest in his political career in fact, and “had helped to build the house of cards that was Enron.”
5) Perhaps out of a sense of guilt and hoping to unburden himself of democratic special interest group money he had received over the years, Lieberman decided to become and Independent in 2006, four years after cosponsoring “an amendment with Senator Fred Thompson . . . to aid prosecutors in enforcing campaign finance laws.” (Incidentally, if the most conservative candidate in the republican field running for president of the United States in 2008, widely acknowledged by conservatives, co-sponsored a campaign finance bill with a then democrat, why in the hell would you give McCain such a hard time. Rhetorical question. Republicans, if you were a walrus sitting on a large rock, just out to sea, attempting to warm itself in the sun, you couldn’t work harder on your posturing. You have less foundation for such a contention that campaign finance legislation is Unconstitutional as Britney Spears, this century’s Isadora Duncan, has on her face when she heads out on the town, harried, panty-less and racing away from the paparazzi . . . Barack Obama doesn’t have so little foundation in his campaign speeches . . . one more- conservatives are the Ramsey Clarke of campaign finance reform . . . Clarke was the attorney who volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein);
Other more interesting connections to be drawn from the recent history of Citigroup specifically:
6) Citigroup contributed $3.7 and $3.1 million to republicans and democrats respectively for the 2004 election cycle as reported by Charles Lewis, “The Buying of the President 2004” which I included in part 19, so they are certainly buttering their bread on both sides, mindful of the link between Enron and Citigroup in #s 2 and 3 above which link Enron to the sitting president and Citigroup to the previous one;
7) Most online articles or books will cite that the democrats actually receive the lion’s share of funding from Wall Street investment companies, hedge fund management companies, law firms, lobbyists, health care and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and nursing homes, environmental groups and unions (teachers, steel workers, attorneys, etc.) (I will probably get back to the teacher's unions at some point, but I’m on a roll- but see Ryan Caione’s January 10, 2008 column “Fat Cats and Strange Bedfellows,” and Bill Van Auken’s “On the Eve of ‘Super Tuesday’ primaries, Wall Street casts the money ballet,” February 5, 2008, or see Charles Lewis’ “The Buying of the President 2004”- the top 10 democratic donors contributed $95 million while the republicans received $55.2 million; Citigroup was 11th and 30th on the republican and democratic donor lists respectively; AT & T was 5th and 16th).
8) From John Bresnahan’s column on The Politico, “Waxman Eyes CEO Pay During Subprime Mortgage Crisis” (January 14, 2008). Bresnahan writes that the house oversight and government reform chairman wants to question Charles Prince, former CEO of Citigroup, and among other corporate geniuses who “ ‘stand to collect tens of millions of dollars in severance payments’ even as their current or former companies are losing billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage meltdown.” Citigroup would attempt to write off “ ‘as much as $20 billion in mortgage-related investments’ according to the Wall Street Journal, while laying off as many as 20,000 employees. According to the WSJ, Prince left Citigroup with ‘accumulated benefits’ valued at more than $29 million” (Note: there are dozens of investment companies with a business resume and antics such as those dreaded CEO pay package delivery methods favored by Citigroup, but for the sake of consistency and space, believe it or not, I chose to focus on one. Incidentally, Waxman, is the same congressman who led the charge against Roger Clemens’ link to steroids and human growth hormone in mid February 2008. Congress-people are apparently more interested in attempting to maintain that professional sports still have some integrity and the information about holding financial market luminaries such as Citigroup’s former executive accountable for massive lay-offs while receiving incredible pay packages upon their departure from service will happen when? . . . and be televised for about seven hours when. . . ??? More people watched the lunar eclipse on February 21st than will ever see a CEO taken to task for what everyone knows to be true, excessive pay packages);
9) From Jeff Nash’s column “Former Citi CEOs exit pay a not so princely sum” [November 6, 2007] The title is derived from the then expected $29 million pay package former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince obtained for failing the company and its employees (see #s 7 and above, and #s 10 and 12 below);
10) “Shares of Citigroup fell more than 5%” due to the bank warning that “it would take more than $8 billion in new mortgage debt-related write-downs;” Also in this article is the news that Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary and co-head of Goldman Sachs, will take over as chairman.” Goldman Sachs is a company named in plenty of the same columns I’ve been perusing for this particular sub topic of campaign finance contributions to the politicians. This Rubin guy with ties to Goldman Sachs, Enron, Citigroup, and the Clinton administration, which is said to have created Citigroup “as an all-purpose financial supermarket and too-big-to-fail banking marvel” (“Citigroup: Too Big to Fail?” William Greider- www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=248817) has his hands in more “stuff” than a proctoligist at a 20-week ultrasound verifying a moose pregnancy. Let us call him Rubin-esque . . . anyone who has ever studied 17th Century Flemish painters knows what I'm talking about. I would make a comment about Pee-Wee Herman, but I'll move on.
11) From Naomi Spencer’s April 13, 2007 article “Banking Giant Citigroup to cut 17,000 jobs”: “over 9,500 US workers are slated for outsourcing to ‘lower-cost’ locations.” Also this: Citigroup CEO “Charles O. Prince III announced . . . ‘You will see a . . . more tough-minded Citigroup than you have in the past.’ ” So, April 13, 2007, CEO Prince announces a job cut of 17,000 and in November of 2007, he is out as CEO of Citigroup, but receives approximately $29 million in a compensation package. Hmm. Should we believe that Prince was out because of the competitive and downtrodden financial market and out despite the elimination of 17,000 jobs, or he was rewarded by saving Citigroup so much money, taking the heat for eliminating so many jobs and therefore compensated the $29 million for having been the mercenary? Inconceivable. We should empower a group of federally funded commissioners to monitor events such as these . . . we might call them the Securities and Exchange Commission . . . what’s that, we already have done that. As Rosanne Rosannadanna (Gilda Radner) would say in her high-pitched little girl voice- “never mind.” We think of almost everything don’t we? Almost;
12) Elizabeth Lazarowitz of http://www.nydailynews.com/, and plenty of others, brought us this story in mid January 2008- “Huge Layoffs Loom at Citigroup; 20,000 Face Firing Starting Tuesday.” The article contains the information: “The job losses would come less than a year after Citigroup said it would cut 17,000 employees . . .” So, 37,000 jobs lost in one year because of a sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and a weakening economy among other reasons. Citigroup again changed its CEO, though this article reveals that they changed from Charles Prince to Vikram Pandit, while another article had led me to believe that Robert Rubin (see #3 above) had been made CEO following Prince’s escape with $29 million. Who can keep track of it all? In anticipation of the January 2008 layoff announcement, Citigroup “shares climbed 1.8%, or 50 cents, to $29.06.” So, the corporation makes good on the loss of the individual. Just the nature of the beast, neither can we be alarmed at every bit of economic news, nor can we be conscious and choose never to react to it. I am no mathematician, but things do add up, if you connect the dots;
13) I get it. Citigroup is a corporation that employs/employed a lot of people and when they are doing well, they can count on the government’s ability to tell people to look the other way. Government can be complicit with business, protecting the amount of taxes a corporation might pay and allow them to offshore, outsource, write-down debt and fire people so that the beloved stock price improves. This is the Play-It-Again Sports version of economics from an employee’s perspective. The employee sells a used hockey stick to a chain store that collects used athletic equipment and receives a 2.5% raise (for the sake of argument- they sell the stick for $6) and the corporation (the middle-man) turns around and raises its prices, selling the stick for $19.95. Just have to love the private market where employees are merely considered the most expensive controllable cost. Nature of the game I guess;
14) Think of this- people might think that if Citigroup contributes $3-$6 million to a candidate or political party that this isn’t coming from the pocket books of employees. So, shareholders are traditionally willing to part with the profits they gathered when the sub-prime lending, and other financial windfall conditions, that went largely unchecked by the federal government until fairly recently, were in full swing? Not likely. Or, the CEOs that are paid the types of salaries that juiced up major league ballplayers earn after hitting 45 homeruns or having an ERA of 6.13 (so, whether they succeed or fail, i.e. no connection to performance), will surely give up some of their $29 million buyout (see #s 6, 8, 9, 11 above) that shareholders cannot seem to curtail- see # 20 below. So, if CEOs and shareholders are not likely altruists (see # 12, the value of their shares increased in anticipation of 20,000 losing their jobs) then where in the heck is the money they donate to one or both of the political parties, and the money spent on additional lobbying, coming from? See # 6 above and 16 below, for a total of $11.8 million in two election cycles and I don’t know how much they gave to the parties directly. A typical, proof-monger would contend- “You’re complaining about $11.8 million, big deal.” These people are trying to disprove a set of postulates that all add up to the subjection of the middle class by political power brokers by the very established, perhaps Newtonian scientific theorem, of collective boredom. They don’t have the information, the will, the energy, or the foresight to see how far-reaching the problem of the middle class is going to be if things continue. These people only see the country’s finances as the completed version of the house on “Extreme Makeover- Home Edition.” They never consider how pathetic the surrounding homes probably look by comparison, and never watched what kind of work was done to the home that was plagued by mold, disrepair, a cracking foundation, and a leaky roof. As Ty Pennington might say if he were talking about building a house or improving the economic prospects of middle class kids- “let’s get to work PEOPLE!”
15) Information coming under numbers 15-17 stems from: www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=4685. I was unable to find definitive dollar amounts that Citigroup may have contributed for 2006 or for the current election cycle on the Internet, but did find that they helped to contribute to political parties, along with hundreds of other corporations, over $162 million that came from “individuals and PACs connected to commercial banks, insurance companies, and securities and investment firms” (i.e. hedge funds) during the 2004 election cycle;
16) Citigroup made political contributions of $1.6 million and spent $3.4 million on lobbying efforts in 2006. I couldn’t find information relative to how much they contributed to the two political parties in '06 or so far in '08;
17) “Citigroup’s progenitors pulled off the biggest lobbying coup in US financial history by bringing about the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to permit banks to be affiliated with insurance companies.” (A “coup”? Usually that word is restricted to the hostile takeover of a country, but if the shoe fits).
18) A profile of Citigroup can be found at www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=203 from 11/20/07: “As impressive as its profits may be, the real cost to investors and consumers alike is far less appealing and the scope of Citigroup’s malfeasance is nearly as broad as that of its business operations. Citigroup has spearheaded industry efforts to fight legislation that would restrict bank consolidation. Additionally, Citigroup has engaged in predatory lending practices that prey on the financially vulnerable. One such case resulted in a $215 million repayment settlement for manipulating consumers into buying overpriced mortgages. Investors have not been immune to Citigroup’s lack of ethics either, as evidenced by the company’s involvement in both the Enron and WorldCom scandals.” (It may be time to stage a coup against Citigroup);
19) “In July 2003 the SEC announced that Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay a combined $236 million to settle charges that they helped Enron manipulate its books to appear financially healthy.” (The SEC in action, finally! And where might that $236 million have gone? Perhaps it could have been put into an account somewhere so that the combined 37,000 people they let go in April 2006 and January 2007 could all work for a few more years. My math is almost as bad as my ability to be brief- but I think you could pay all of those employees, if they all grossed $40k, for a year to the tune of $148 million. Think of all the taxes that the government might gather from that, but instead perhaps they made out quite a bit better by allegedly collecting the $236 million (I wrote allegedly because didn't they pay a few military contractors for weaponry (see part 9) that was never delivered? But the government's accountants are better than mine, so I better defer. Now, what I did there was pure speculation, but most everything else isn’t, as I have been quoting articles, books, reports, etc. since I started this philippic);
20) “In 2005 Citigroup shareholders brought forth a resolution calling for a cap on executive compensation, not to exceed 100 times that of employees of non-managerial status.” The proposal was voted down. A link to this information is dead within the link to be found in #18.
21) There is plenty more, but I just can’t keep up. There are at least ten more, by this time, not so shocking bits of information injurious to Citigroup’s reputation. Reputation? Citigroup is the Iago of the economic world. Citigroup’s loss of reputation has been long in the making and is well-deserved. (Iago is one of literature’s foremost evil characters, appearing in Shakespeare’s Othello).
22) From Nader’s book, “The Good Fight,” (page 159): “According to Corporate Crime Reporter, thirty-one major convicted corporations gave $9.3 million to the two political parties in the 2002 election cycle.” These companies were convicted of price fixing conspiracies, eliminating competition, environmental crimes, book cooking, falsifying revenue totals, violating insider trading regulations, or “illegal and fraudulent promotion of unapproved uses of one of its drugs products.” From page 167 of the same book: among the fifty brokerage firms covering companies filing for bankruptcy in 2002, “forty-seven continued to recommend that investors buy or hold shares in the failing companies even as they were filing for Chapter 11.” What must it take for the government to convict a business of illegal activities?
These brokerage firms were making these recommendations to average investors. I am aware that Citigroup is not currently filing for Chapter 11, or even alleging that Citigroup is tied up in the violations that Nader cites. I am merely contending that government and business, government and any number of lobbyists, including unions that are heavily pro-democrat, are conspicuously partnered to the detriment of the middle class investor, worker, tax-payer, citizen. There isn’t irrefutable proof of this, for there would be fewer conservative talk-show host clones pretending to be the voice of reason, making contentions that run exactly counter to my assertions, but there are few things that are undoubtedly provable the instant one sits down to investigate. Who would have believed that the president of the United States would end up resigning from office in order to avoid impeachment because five guys were arrested at a hotel complex housing the Democratic National Committee in 1972 (better known as the Watergate scandal)? Again, because of plausible deniability, both government and business and any set of special interest groups, can be thought to be accidentally inept individually that to think they could combine efforts and keep it a secret is beyond comprehension. What we need is an Iran-Contra hearing type of investigation of such scope that we bring out what reporters and researchers know about the corruption of puppet politicians by any lobbyist group and sit our congress people, governors, and presidents before a tribunal and find them guilty. Problem is, not many congressmen or congresswomen would be able to conduct such proceedings without standing as the accused first, and with that, there would be few of the innocent remaining to empanel a legal court of justice. That is why I thought creating a panel of non-government affiliated persons was such a good idea.
Book Review: I checked out Jeffrey Birnbaum’s 2000 book- “Money Men, The Real Story of Fund-Raising’s Influence on Political Power in America.” Early on Birnbaum writes that the reader might be surprised about who is responsible for the majority of the work that places the money in the hands of politicians running for office. He calls these people solicitors, because they are “workaday folks who collect millions of political dollars, a thousand bucks at a time.” (pg. 50) Birnbaum’s credentials are impressive and I’d defer to his knowledge on who are the political bower brokers, but he shouldn’t have written a book about it, because nothing I read was all that surprising. I am surprised that someone with that much experience could seem so taken with the business as usual, almost romanticized version he describes. He may need to change the prescription on his rose-colored glasses.
The reasons people financially contribute “are much more diverse than most people think.” Some want a job in the administration they have contributed to, some for status, some are idealists, are simply rich, and some are “professional lobbyists.” (pg. 8) Not surprised. He writes that the contributors “aren’t who you think they are. For one thing, they aren’t all stinking rich. They also aren’t all interested in bending politics to their own narrow-minded, self-interested views.” (pg. 50) That seems like the set-up for some factual information. We’ll see.
Birnbaum cites a 1997 Joyce Foundation of Chicago survey that determined “the who and why of campaign giving. Not surprisingly, the donors surveyed were people of means. . . . Eighty-one percent of the contributors earned more than one hundred thousand dollars. . . . nine out of ten of the donors were white, four fifths were male, and more than four fifths were forty-five years of age or older.” (pg. 65) I’d be more surprised if penguins could fly while being converted to Buddhism, and penguins are already naturally equipped with wings. So, really, we'd just need to take care of that Buddhism thing while penguins were aviating. Here is a breakdown of the findings from the survey, relative to a contributor’s reason for giving:
19% “were motivated by general ideology or partisanship.”
16% “were focused on promoting some very specific issue.”
16% “gave as a way to enhance their personal contact.” Birnbaum found this interesting and probably surprising
20% “wanted to have the best person in Congress to help the folks back home.” This is not at all related to the other reasons listed directly above. Nope.
14% thought they contributed to a probable winner who would “grant them access once in office.”
Awe Shocks: That is a combined 85% of rich respondents of a non-shocking age, race, sex, or economic status giving money to a candidate who they think can win, and thus push through legislation and an ideology that favors the individual who financially contributes to a politician’s candidacy. Still not surprised. None of the reasons indicated are all that distinguishable from one another. They all want something for their contribution. Now, if the other 15% that Birnbaum didn’t feel compelled to account for, favored a candidate who the contributors were certain would support a legislative bill that scientifically promoted and supported a family of opossums for their interest in clinging to tree limbs right-side up, defying gravity, while learning how to read in brail, and praying to Allah to help cure them of repetitive stress syndrome then that would be surprising. I stopped skimming Birnbaum’s book at this point. I was tired of being shocked by his awe. Some cars I’ve owned have distributed the impact of shock more evenly. (To be fair- I don’t know that Birnbaum ever actually used the word shocked to communicate the irregularity of his expectations being matched with the “truth” at least according to what he perceives is common knowledge among the public, or based on the results of a survey erroneously interpreted, but as he took many liberties with the subject matter, I felt almost compelled to follow suit).
One more source to consult: I began reading Dick Morris’ book, “vote.com” (1999, 236 pages) who was as much of a Washington insider as Birnbaum, having been a political adviser to Bill Clinton, and he came to the exact conclusions as I have, that the representatives, special interest groups, lobbyists, and corporations are destroying representative government. That was as much the reason behind the XVIIth Constitutional Amendment as anything, (which involved voters in the election of senators to political office) an amendment which was not looked down upon by Woodrow Wilson who “warned of the insidious influence of lobbyists on Capital Hill in 1913.” (http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/1878.htm) Morris addresses the possibility of the downfall of big media as an influential component in politics, more referendum voting, politicians advertising on the internet because they get more bang for their buck, online election voting, the potential minimized future role of congress, and the welcome back of actual democracy favored by Jefferson with a desire to listen to the vox populi- which is Latin for, the voice of the people. The politicians, who favor the political climate as currently constituted, are going to have to be significantly muted for the people to be heard. But much of what Morris writes about is decades in the offing or never will come to fruition. His wishful thinking is a political utopia better left to the pages of a futuristic novel than consumed by a pie-eyed public clamoring to combat bureaucratic influence peddlers. Vote.com- a real website, check it out.
Keep in Mind: I could write much more on this sub-topic, but even an ass as stubborn as I am has to move on eventually. I am aware that those who spend the most money in order to win an election, aren’t always those seated in the position of power they sought. However, there is every reason to believe that candidates with the most bloated budgets believe themselves to be in a financial position of power, and must think that it increases their chances of winning, or else they wouldn’t acquire or spend so much.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Middle Class Part 20: Campaign Finance continued
“I Love Cash!”: The politicians running for office, who break received campaign finance dollar amount records for every subsequent election should adopt the title of Oscar the Grouch’s theme song, but change one word- “I Love Cash!” The third word, which would be removed from the title, could then be more accurately put to work as a powerfully offensive noun used to summarize the reality of plenty of their campaign platforms- TRASH! Ah, it is only offensive if it isn’t true. Originally, I had meant to use the Oscar the Grouch line on those that gross $200k+ a year and want to act like little Leona Helmsley’s. Helmsley was once accused of saying “only the little people pay taxes,” and willed her dog $12 million. I’ve softened some since the beginning of this jeremiad, so I’ll leave some of the big people alone.
The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States (the first Amendment in the Bill of Rights) [Item A]:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grieveances.”
McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform [Item B]: Courtesy of http://www.opensecrets.org/news/campaignfinance/index.asp the major benefits of having campaign finance reform legislation passed are: 1) a ban on unlimited contributions to the national political parties for “party-building” activities; 2) restrictions on the airing of “issue ads” sponsored by outside groups that “tout or criticize a candidate’s position on an issue;” 3) bans ads “within 60 days of a general election that are paid for by outside groups and identify a particular candidate;” 4) groups spending more than $10k a year on TV ads have to disclose who pays for them. (FYI- McCain is a republican and Feingold is a democrat)
The Unconstituionality of Campaign Finance Reform: I introduced the two previous paragraphs immediately above as items A and B so that I could address them in concert. Those that seem to find the McCain-Feingold bill so reprehensible constitutionally are the republicans, so I’ll deal with the democrats first.
The democrats, so far as I’ve heard, have not come out attacking such a law (McCain-Feingold) on Constitutional grounds (think free speech violations), but I am hardly a Washington insider. The democrats gathered far more financial contributions from hedge-fund companies, lobbyists, unions, and investment companies combined compared to the republicans in the 2004 election cycle and so far in 2008. See the Charles Lewis book I quoted from and the CNN link I included last time. I would contend that the democrats would have more to lose and thus be more vocal in expressing their disgust with campaign finance reform. The democrats often prefer the garden variety mute mandate where they attempt to silence any critics of illegal immigration or violators of the less formal, just as annoying, passive-aggressively-instituted, generally understood, political-correctness decree. Meaning, say anything against a minority, or immigrant, or against someone’s sex, religion, race, sexual preference, question their talent as a singer, comment on the hubris professional athletes habitually display, or dump on an animal kingdom species in a way that offends them and you will rue your European ancestry; you will be brought to account, by a well-meaning liberal whose sense of justice is just a bit askew. (I’d reference a column where I addressed this specifically, but that would pretty much be all of them to date). See my Sneetches and Racism part II column for more particulars.
Lou Dobbs welcomed Janet Murguia, Executive Director for the National Council of La Raza and now associated with a group identified as “We Can Stop the Hate” onto the set of CNN, Lou Dobbs Tonight (February 3, 2008) [www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND76uPySDKY]. She constantly accused him of participating in hate-speech because of his consistent stance against illegal immigration. Murguia’s attitude, that of talking over Dobbs while attempting to demonize him, without relenting (i.e. shutting up) is the type of free speech that is most dangerous- the hypocritical type, squawking at those with a legitimate bone to pick who think that the accusers law-breaking ways are less than angelic. Murguia looked and sounded like the demon, shouting Dobbs down for having the nerve to question her motives and the actions of her group and council. Proponents of illegal immigration want to be able to say anything they want about this country, its laws and its culture, etc., but cannot stand when a well-meaning, experienced journalist, tired of politics as usual, speaks out against something that politicians won’t adequately address, with facts, or instances of immigration policy related failures (see pages 105-189 of Dobbs’ book “War on the Middle Class”). Dobbs consistently ferrets out self-righteous hypocrites and is consistently an enemy of liberals.
Ok, now for the republicans. Noting the complete text of the first amendment, let us consider how many times one might take offense at the more aggregious violations of the republican party concerning the constitutional rights of Americans:
Constitutional Violation (1)- Freedom of/from religion: There is no reason to evoke the name of god following or preceding any speech where the business of the state (the nation) is at hand. Bush concludes about every speech with “God bless America.” The separation of church and state is a principle long ago valued by the founders, but somehow that principle seems to have been forgotten by every state’s constitution into which I looked. Without exception, among the twenty-five state constitutional preambles I reviewed, a sentence similar to this one is included as the text of the preamble introducing each state’s constitution: “WE, THE PEOPLE of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION.” Apparently, they really mean it, thus the capitalization. I was a little surprised that of all the state’s I looked into, a sentence of that type preceeded one like this from the Michigan and Texas Constitutions, among others: “All political power is inherent in the people, Government is instituted for their equal benefit, security and protection.” I am surprised because the rights of the individual, divested of allusions to faith, are far preferred in the U.S. Constitution. Section 4 of the Texas Constitution asks that potential government office holders “acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.” I am uncomfortable with the idea that patriotism should be considered synonymous with religious piety.
Middle Class: What does all of that have to do with the middle class? I am showing how powerful people attempt to control and manipulate the rhetoric used in political discussion to subject the people without power to further economic servitude; it is all done because campaign finance legislation and the typical conservative’s charge that it is Unconstitutional is directly related to the economic future of the middle class. Powerful corporations give money to candidates expecting a reciprocated vote in return, there is absolutely no reason to deny this, and no reason to contend that the rich giving money to the political surrogate of their choice benefits the middle class (60-70% of the voting public economically and socially defined). I will further address this in part 21.
Supreme Deity: The founding fathers went out of their way to leave any references to a specific god or general religion out of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, using more deistic words such as “Divine Providence” and “Nature’s God.” I object to the use of religion in politics today for that reason, though I am far from being deeply offended or wringing my hands in horror at this juxtaposition of civic vs. faith-based verbiage. There is no doubt that conservatives are more authoritarian and demonstrative about their faith. We know that Romney is a Mormon and Huckabee an Evangelical, but both were fairly low-key about the media’s interest in drawing attention to their faith. I make this point because the U.S. Constitution has been subjected to the more prevalent and consistent leanings of the state constitutions as far as god is concerned.
god in civil society: Mindful of the conservative’s charge against campaign finance legislation as being unconstitutional, if conservatives seek to call to account those who check a fellow politician’s level of oligarchy by passing legislation that tempers their candidacy income, then a secularist can object to the ways in which politicians can assign duties, make responsible for protections, and generally assume auspices to an entity they haven’t proven exists. I have no problem with christmas trees, wreaths, or Easter bunnies being allowed into government buildings as symbols of a religious holiday, (those symbols in reality don’t mean what they once did anyway) because this country has an ambiguous relationship with religion and the heritage and culture of this country is undeniably one that wishes to acknowledge a god. We coin money with the words- “In God we trust,” the president takes the oath of office, and we hold witnesses in civil and criminal trials accountable to their consciences, by asking them to swear on the bible, etc (and do so without asking whether their conscience is obligated to consider the contents of that book with reverence). Unfortunately, I haven’t found politicians to be morally irreproachable enough to hide behind the sanctity of a supreme being of goodness, not in name, nor apocryphal deeds that gathered for the “Supreme Judge,” a reputation he has not earned, especially when those politicians set about conducting the business of government. Saying “god bless America” is not a political panacea in the same way that touching one’s forehead with “holy” water is not a religious one.
Constitutional Violation (2)- Unreasonable Searches and Seizure: Two words- Bush and wiretapping. (See the Fourth Amendment).
Constitutional Violation (3)- Declaration of War: Ron Paul brought this up during the California republican primary debate after a heated, ridiculous exchange between McCain and Romney about timing, troop withdrawal, the equivalent of foreign policy semantics, etc. and the nature of the U.S.’s continued involvement in the Iraq war. He said we never should have gone to war and that usually such interaction is only justified when Congress has issued a formal declaration of war. To be honest, I was in support of going into Iraq and removing Hussein, but I was in favor of an offensive, not a war, and given the cost of the war (an estimated $3.5 trillion shared between the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through 2017, see part 12), I’d be in favor of a troop withdrawal and maintaining a military presence in the Middle East. I was pretty sure that the Constitutional right to declare war is in the hands of congress, but just to make sure, I checked . . . yep, there it is in Article 1, Section 8.
Constitutional Violation (4)- Freedom to vote I: Independents can’t vote in some state primaries, in Florida for instance; I get it, people should be a member of a party before being allowed to vote, just as they should be a female to play girl’s hockey, or be a beagle to have a shot at winning the Westminster dog show. At a typical caucus, as I have learned, votes are taken and delegates are chosen after some debate on issues and candidates. Then a delegate nomination and election process begins. I also learned that people voted and then left thinking that the majority they helped assure with their vote, didn't guarantee them the majority of delegates. Apparently, some of the delegates in certain states are not obligated to deliver their state’s support to the candidate the voters in the collective caucus sites selected on a district by district basis, for those states that divvy up the delegates. This makes less sense than being told by a neighbor that his two children are five months apart in age, yet never shared a womb and were conceived in different fertile periods. The XXIVth Amendment, ratified in 1962, gives the people the right to vote in a primary election. Having just read it, I don’t see anything at all about political parties being justified in restricting how, or whether, a citizen might cast their vote. One other thing, Section 2 of the XXIVth Amendment reads: “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” And when will that happen?
Freedom to vote II, Super Delegates: I recently learned of something called super delegates, which comprise “20 percent or so of convention voters, usually party insiders, who are not obligated to support the candidate chosen in the primary or caucus.” What?! “or so”? See, Hady Amr’s Star Tribune Opinion Exchange article from February 3, 2008- “Let’s Make it Easy: By the People, for the People.” Somehow, that doesn’t sound so super to me, that sounds like the Aqua-man of super heroes; that must be a bizzaro super hero, come from the land of oligarchy. I may be completely out of touch, but that strikes me as an election process that is earily similar to how parties brought forth candidates in the old days- as Amr indicates in her column and as historically considered by Reicheley in the book I summarized last column. For more on super delegates see www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23147072. In fact, the XXIVth amendment doesn’t say anything about not so “super” delegates, (all 796 of them, constituting 40% of the total delegate count for the democrats) being able to sway an election after record numbers of citizens have cast their votes. The idea of super delegates is disgusting. Think of the participation of super delegates, even the governor of the state of Maryland refers to as people capable of proceeding over a “brokered convention.” He favors Clinton, though “60 percent of Maryland’s Democratic voters cast their ballots for Obama.”
A story last week surfaced that Obama had given $698k to super delegates to Clinton's $205k. An "expert," who appeared on one of the cable news channels was asked whether this would influence a super delegate's vote. He didn't indicate that it would. Then why do it? To borrow the conceit of a popular advertising campaign used by a credit card company: An electric can opener cozy . . . $10, over the counter medication for the problem of post nasal drip . . . $6.50, fiberous snacks for your pet Guinea pig suffering from diptheria . . . $15, deciding to give thousands of dollars to people who could swing the election your way- priceless.
Constitutional Violation (5)- Freedom of the press: Given the G. W. Bush administration- it wouldn’t surprise me if this component of the first amendment had also been violated, but I could find nothing in twenty minutes of Google searching that was . . . fit to print. Not sure if the USA Today Life section article I quoted from in part 12 about the stifling of the scientist’s views that contradicted what the government wanted them to contend on issues as diverse as global warming, stem-cell research and species extinction would be more of a freedom of speech issue or freedom of the press violation. (see Science vs. Politics Gets Down and Dirty- USA Today, August 6, 2007). The article also refers to the story of the “Manhattan Project chief Robert Oppenheimer, who opposed the development of more powerful bombs,” who “lost his security clearance after dramatic congressional hearings in 1954.” Ok, even I admit what I have written is a lot of rhetoric, but I am just demonstrating to what lengths people will go to to defame two conscientious politicians (in John McCain and Russ Feingold) who are just trying to make themselves, their colleagues, and those who turn their colleagues into political puppets for any of thousands of special interest group regimes, more accounatable for the funding of their candidacies. There, I defended a democrat and a republican in one sentence . . . if I could find a way to wash my brain, I would. The conservative republicans speak of McCain-Feingold with horror and speak as if the very thought of a republican working with a democrat to hold a politician accountable for anything is Unconstitutional. Those who sermonize against the issue of campaign finance reform, and consider its supposed Unconstitutionality are like soldiers who enter into a slap-fest up on a hill far away from the firing while all of the real combatants are dying on the battlefield. Don’t we elect politicians for their ability to get the right things done, even some things of which objective conscientious people approve? Some politicians treat that sort of compromise like it is their prom queen befriending the audio-visual nerd at some lame high school party we’ve seen in all kinds of iterations of feel-good teen movies- (“Can’t Buy Me Love” “She’s All That,” etc.)
Huh, if there were a government violation of this aspect of the Constitution, how would I know it?
Constitutional Violation (6)- IRS (the collecting of taxes was written into Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution): Aren’t we supposed to disclose any and all types of income to the federal government so that our earned income can be taxed? I believe it is against the law not to do such a thing, (though I imagine that PLENTY of people don’t report some earned income), with very few exceptions- retirement accounts aren’t considered “earnings” for the purposes of taxation. So, if the IRS can require us to report our earnings, shouldn’t those that give money to produce and deliver advertisements that benefit a candidate in a political race be forced to reveal themselves if they spend more than $10k a year? If they spend a penny aiding a candidate in an election they should be forced to report it—even soft money (an unlimited amount of money directed towards particular candidates for “party-building” activities). If I made a penny that I didn’t report to the federal or state government, they might mind. I believe we should be made aware of a special interest group producing commercials for candidates so we can better track whether the Save the Skunk from Hereditary Rheumatism Foundation was able to buy a politician’s vote. We should hold accountable a politician that supports a West Virginia zoologist who is now in possession of $2.5 million in funding, earmarked from the federal budget, studying the undeniable cross-species erotic attraction of pronghorn for seals. Also it would be nice to know that sometimes we contribute the money, for which we have worked, to “A wise and frugal government, which . . . shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.” – Thomas Jefferson
Constitutional violation (7)- Petition for the redress of grievances: This is a lesser known component of the first amendment that gets lost with all of the attention heaped upon free speech, religion, press, and assembly. A portion of the blame for this violation has to be assumed by the citizens who likely have not formally petitioned the government all that often. I gave money last month to be a member of the non-profit organization Common Cause and I now receive at least two emails a week asking that I email or call my senator, the governor, or district house member to request any number of things- from desiring to push through the Holt bill, which would back up electronic polling booths with paper records, so as not to jeapordize election results. I also requested that state and/or district justices not be able to affiliate themselves in word or deed with a political party, thereby gaining financial support and actively campaigning as challengers or incumbents for state, district, or circuit judicial seats. The reasons for this are fairly obvious, given the nature of this overall subtopic. Common Cause provided me with a ready-made email form which I populated with my own words in both cases. Unfortunately, I don’t think that any more than 10% of the population would feel comfortable, qualified, or interested in lending their name to a good cause. But if they did, I would find it unlikely that the government would actually remedy the ills communicated by the citizens making known the various grievances. As I’ve indicated, with so many different types of people in the country, with so many different desires, all proactive language that would objectively assist the majority gets lost in arguments about semantics, importance valuations, power, timetables, urgency, pride, and esteem of the populace for the people vying to compile a concise, logical grievance, (i.e. show-pony status). The politicians rarely ask for a list of grievances to redress, (though my district house member did send a mailer asking for citizen's opinions on how to spend state budget money), and the people rarely give a list to the politicians and if and when they have, the powers that be in government have been all too capable and all too often interested in circumventing the will of the people. Have I mentioned complicity and plausible deniability yet?
Right to bear arms: A conservative most hates a liberal because conservatives contend that liberals just want to redistribute everyone else’s wealth but their own. That isn’t a lie. Perhaps the reason for that fear could be due in part to the idea that if the conservative’s money is taken from him, he won’t be able to buy guns or financially support the National Rifle Association. The right to keep and bear arms is the second amendment. The reason I included this Constitutional Amendment among these others is not because the conservatives are in violation of it, but because they so strongly support this one, though so much in the intervening years, since its inclusion in the Constitution, has changed. See, the amendment was added back when muskets could fire three bullets a minute. The founding fathers could not have foreseen the possibility of assault rifles that could fire 30, or more, rounds a minute. We regulate everything else, the pasteurization of milk, dietary supplements, the safety of workplace environments, automobile safety standards, the number of terms the president can hold office. Are these all regulations that a conservative is against? The founders probably could not have predicted that political candidates would routinely be spending in excess of $100 million in order to gain political office. This is an apples to apples comparison. If conservatives object to campaign finance reform legislation because they feel it is Unconstitutional, though much of the document is over 200 years old, and the first amendment only states that they have the right to free speech and the fourth amendment, the most beloved by conservatives only states that they can own and carry guns, then can't the same argument be used? See, so their whining about gun control laws is just another negative indicator touchstone of inconsistent, outdated thought on how not to think. It is what the Constitution does not contain that gets us into such ridiculous debates about our freedoms, unfortunately it does not have this in common with the bible. Sometimes I think that if a building were on fire and there were proof that the house contained no innocent potential victims to save and no possible way to save the house or its contents from being destroyed, the conservatives would shut themselves up in it and hope that it would stop burning, so they could have the opportunity to light it on fire again- so combustible is their narrow-minded interpretation of the bible . . . er, the Constitution.
Gun Control supporting arguments: I found three pretty decent locations for information to support this portion of my argument:
1) http://kstp.com/article/stories/s342724.shtml?cat=5 which reveals a case where a person with a stalking conviction was charged with felony possession of a firearm, which is a charge that can land someone in prison for ten years. The offending party in this case is due to get out after a year because the prosecutor dropped the firearm charge because of a loophole in the gun law which allows people to buy antique/collector guns without having to register them. (I would bet my milk money that the prosecuting attorney is a republican, proud of himself for having found a gun ownership loophole, and that the defense attorney was a democrat. Democrats often protect the criminal who fires the weapon that the republicans were all too anxious for him to own. Sounds like another instance of political synthesis with political parties playing oddsmaker- see parts 13 and 14);
2) an old article from May of 1994, proposing a bill to ban the manufacture and importation of 19 weapons thought by democratic senator Chuck Schumer to be assault rifles (B. Drummond Ayres Jr. “In Gun Debate, Gun Definitions Matter.”) In the article, the bill’s proponents contend that “the only way to stop gun deaths is to control criminals.” (The Eyewitness News story I provide above is just one case that proves that controlling criminals is not possible, and it is far from the only case of its kind); Ayres’ story addresses how the technical definition of “assault weapons” is different for proponents and opponents of any bill proposing the ban of firearms. I am a complete tenderfoot on the subject of guns. But a rifle, as distinguished from a hand gun/revolver, that fires one bullet right after the other, while not technically an automatic weapon (which seem to be defined by how many bullets can be fired with one pull of the trigger) is an assault rifle. No private citizen should be allowed to own a gun that can fire more than 6-10 bullets in 30 seconds. If a person desires to own a gun that fires more than 6-10 bullets in that span then they are either a criminal, thinking of becoming a criminal, or are otherwise outside of the protections afforded in the second amendment (right to own a firearm). The argument that a person wants to own a gun, which would be classified as an assault rifle based on principle, should adopt better principles. If a person can’t hit a target or two in self defense with 6-10 bullets, then perhaps some money should be spent on shooting lessons and not so much on guns);
3) I would largely accept most of what the person voicing his opinions on this site- http://hematite.com/dragon/gcviewpoint.html might have to say about the misconceptions of firearms, excepting what I just wrote about gun law loopholes, sentencing guidelines, and loose conservative interpretations of what is and is not an assault rifle. Liberal judges and attorneys err on the side of thinking that they are always defending the innocence of jesus christ, when their client’s actions are often much more reprehensible from a type, frequency, intensity, and malice aforethought standpoint. I liked the line included in the link directly above about blaming the spoon as the reason why Rosie O’Donnell is fat. See, the fair author of the hematite.com column doesn't see a causal connection between guns and death. If guns were banned, surely people would find other weapons of choice is his point- quite so. Unfortunately, in the chicken v. egg debate about what kills people, the gun or the people . . . one question- if there weren’t guns, would guns kill people? I didn't get a 600 on my SATs for nothin'. I don't want to ban any and all guns, or not allow future criminals or some guy who compares himself to Rambo to carry them, just some of them.
Can’t bear those arms: So, if a conservative would favor the right to own and carry a gun that would shock a founding father with its capacity to kill, then the harm in passing legislation that barely alters a politicians right and ability to spend money is . . . ? Remember- no candidate for president has spent less than $7 million and five have spent more than $36 million (through February 11, 2008). Here is that link again: (http://www.cnn.com/election/2008/money/gop.html%20or%20dems.html). Question a conservative on the direction of the country and indicate that things are not quite as great as they could be, nor as bad as they think you think they are, and they will offer up some rather inflammatory, though misguided “facts” about how all is well while the house you saw them set on fire is burning before your eyes. Conservatives are not firemen, they are arsonists. Don’t take that literally. One more thing- they will seek to label you mockingly as a victim. Not so. No victim has ever been so empowered with the truth who has a high-speed internet connection.
Trump card: The Constitution- was written, ratified and business has been conducted under its pronouncements for the benefit of the people firstly, and for how the business of government is to be conducted secondarily. Anyone who wishes to doubt this should read it- see the Bill of Rights. The first seven articles which precede the Bill of Rights, which address the business of government, have rarely been superceded by a Constitutional Amendment in 219 years, and when they have, they haven’t been in a legendary conflict with the twenty-seven amendments that follow. 18 of the 27 amendments are either included for the benefit of the people, and one more, the 16th Amendment, addresses the needs of the one- government, to the detriment of the other- the individual. This is the Amendment that made the collection of taxes Constitutional (though many think this was addressed in Article 1, Section 8). Both parties are over-eager to spend more and more of the taxpayer's money, but I never hear about how it is Unconstitutional to take as much as they do. Nevada’s Constitution Article 1, Section 2 reads: “All political power is inherent in the people[.] Government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people . . .” Should Lincoln’s government of, by, and for the people go completely unheeded? From Ralph Nader’s “The Good Fight" (pg. 33)- “From whom should the Republican and Democratic parties take instruction? From artificial commercial entities that subjugate the public interest, or from human beings who possess inalienable rights?”
Trump card II: Amendments have been added granting blacks and women the right to vote, prohibiting people from drinking alcoholic beverages and later allowing them to, protecting them from illegal searches and seizures, protecting accused criminal perpetrators against excessive bail and fines, even a protection where a person can abstain from incriminating themselves at their own criminal trial. If a politician wants to object against campaign finance reform on the grounds that it is Unconstitutional . . . they are way out of their league. The fortune of individuals and a group of individuals is a protection written into the Constitution which trumps a politician’s right to accept gross amounts of money from potentially questionable sources without the public being made aware of the amount or the contributing special interest group, corporation, or well-compensated individual. The fact that the public might be saved from hearing or seeing mundane advertisements within 60 days of a general election (see #3 of McCain-Feingold above), and that restrictions on “issue ads” are in place which might fall under the heading of #2 above is just a bonus. A Dodo with episodic cluster headaches grows weary of the redundant, nonsensical, cliched, abridged,* inaccurate ads that air incessantly for months prior to an election, and they have been extinct since the late 17th century.
Will-ful disregard: Normally I agree wholeheartedly with George Will, esteemed columnist of the Washington Post. However, he was amiss in his January 20, 2008 offering “This Would be . . . Straight Talk?” when dissecting the merits and errors of John McCain, whom true conservatives can’t stand to support, Will writes: 1) McCain is “quick to denigrate the motives, and hence the characters of those who oppose him;” (if those people are many of his fellow politicians the problem with this would be?) 2) McCain would nominate conservative supreme court justices, and as Will believes, as they are conservative justices, they would “consider his signature achievement constitutionally dubious.” (his signature achievement Will believes is McCain-Feingold); 3) he cites McCain’s feistiness against pharmaceutical companies 4) calls him a moralizer and his thought too simplistic (and possibly for fairly good reason); 5) proposes that conservatives have the political copyright on being the only party able to understand the nuances of government; 6) and nails McCain for working with Joe Lieberman on legislation that would empower congress to “prevent catastrophic global warming.” Lieberman and McCain also coauthored a column which included the phrase “ ‘the debate has ended’ ” concerning global warming’s effect on the planet. (Nonsense, the debate hasn’t ended, so Will is justified in giving McCain hell, and I believe that man is responsible for PLENTY of climate change); Will’s last paragraph is concluded with this sentence 7) “People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.” (Quite right, so let us still have debate, and resolve to do nothing about global warming, and nothing about pharmaceutical company practices, the war in Iraq, health care prices, education, or political corruption in regards to “Unconstitutional” campaign finance reform legislation that so far has done little to curb corporate or individual donors, campaign expenditures, or pathetic excuses for issue ads where rhetoric is still the most expensive commodity the voters are expected to buy). I am all for further debate on the important issue of campaign finance reform, for people who oppose it will only look more ignorant, just as the donkey/ass looks more and more like it just won’t fly the further it is removed from the cliff from which it has jumped.
Free speech: Tell a man over 230 years ago that he doesn’t have the right to speak up against an English king that is economically and spiritually bankrupting him, while his neighbors are in shackles for fighting against the crown, and then tell the same man, after ten years of military service, who was successfully reelected to his third term in office that he will not be able to accept unreported funding from certain constituencies, or have proponents slam his competitors two months before an election in a television advertisement, but he can still gather all kinds of unlimited funding from dozens of solicitors, that he is secure in the knowledge that the pension he will collect at retirement will ensure his continued standard of living, and that a year after he leaves office, he can make even more as a lobbyist . . . and ask him what he thinks might be a greater violation against his First Amendment Constitutional right of free speech. Hardly a wash Mr. Will, hardly a wash.
*- if you consider the hubbub of who voted for what when. There are all kinds of reasons someone would vote against a law restricting the presence of a brothel within four blocks of a middle school- one of those reasons would be a rider attached to that bill which proposed a 10% tax increase of the middle class for military funding to fight the influx of ferrets deliberately contracting contagious gout who like to vacation in the District of Columbia. Not all of those issue ads are without their own issues. Let us have the unabridged version of someone’s voting specifics and tendencies.
The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States (the first Amendment in the Bill of Rights) [Item A]:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grieveances.”
McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform [Item B]: Courtesy of http://www.opensecrets.org/news/campaignfinance/index.asp the major benefits of having campaign finance reform legislation passed are: 1) a ban on unlimited contributions to the national political parties for “party-building” activities; 2) restrictions on the airing of “issue ads” sponsored by outside groups that “tout or criticize a candidate’s position on an issue;” 3) bans ads “within 60 days of a general election that are paid for by outside groups and identify a particular candidate;” 4) groups spending more than $10k a year on TV ads have to disclose who pays for them. (FYI- McCain is a republican and Feingold is a democrat)
The Unconstituionality of Campaign Finance Reform: I introduced the two previous paragraphs immediately above as items A and B so that I could address them in concert. Those that seem to find the McCain-Feingold bill so reprehensible constitutionally are the republicans, so I’ll deal with the democrats first.
The democrats, so far as I’ve heard, have not come out attacking such a law (McCain-Feingold) on Constitutional grounds (think free speech violations), but I am hardly a Washington insider. The democrats gathered far more financial contributions from hedge-fund companies, lobbyists, unions, and investment companies combined compared to the republicans in the 2004 election cycle and so far in 2008. See the Charles Lewis book I quoted from and the CNN link I included last time. I would contend that the democrats would have more to lose and thus be more vocal in expressing their disgust with campaign finance reform. The democrats often prefer the garden variety mute mandate where they attempt to silence any critics of illegal immigration or violators of the less formal, just as annoying, passive-aggressively-instituted, generally understood, political-correctness decree. Meaning, say anything against a minority, or immigrant, or against someone’s sex, religion, race, sexual preference, question their talent as a singer, comment on the hubris professional athletes habitually display, or dump on an animal kingdom species in a way that offends them and you will rue your European ancestry; you will be brought to account, by a well-meaning liberal whose sense of justice is just a bit askew. (I’d reference a column where I addressed this specifically, but that would pretty much be all of them to date). See my Sneetches and Racism part II column for more particulars.
Lou Dobbs welcomed Janet Murguia, Executive Director for the National Council of La Raza and now associated with a group identified as “We Can Stop the Hate” onto the set of CNN, Lou Dobbs Tonight (February 3, 2008) [www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND76uPySDKY]. She constantly accused him of participating in hate-speech because of his consistent stance against illegal immigration. Murguia’s attitude, that of talking over Dobbs while attempting to demonize him, without relenting (i.e. shutting up) is the type of free speech that is most dangerous- the hypocritical type, squawking at those with a legitimate bone to pick who think that the accusers law-breaking ways are less than angelic. Murguia looked and sounded like the demon, shouting Dobbs down for having the nerve to question her motives and the actions of her group and council. Proponents of illegal immigration want to be able to say anything they want about this country, its laws and its culture, etc., but cannot stand when a well-meaning, experienced journalist, tired of politics as usual, speaks out against something that politicians won’t adequately address, with facts, or instances of immigration policy related failures (see pages 105-189 of Dobbs’ book “War on the Middle Class”). Dobbs consistently ferrets out self-righteous hypocrites and is consistently an enemy of liberals.
Ok, now for the republicans. Noting the complete text of the first amendment, let us consider how many times one might take offense at the more aggregious violations of the republican party concerning the constitutional rights of Americans:
Constitutional Violation (1)- Freedom of/from religion: There is no reason to evoke the name of god following or preceding any speech where the business of the state (the nation) is at hand. Bush concludes about every speech with “God bless America.” The separation of church and state is a principle long ago valued by the founders, but somehow that principle seems to have been forgotten by every state’s constitution into which I looked. Without exception, among the twenty-five state constitutional preambles I reviewed, a sentence similar to this one is included as the text of the preamble introducing each state’s constitution: “WE, THE PEOPLE of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION.” Apparently, they really mean it, thus the capitalization. I was a little surprised that of all the state’s I looked into, a sentence of that type preceeded one like this from the Michigan and Texas Constitutions, among others: “All political power is inherent in the people, Government is instituted for their equal benefit, security and protection.” I am surprised because the rights of the individual, divested of allusions to faith, are far preferred in the U.S. Constitution. Section 4 of the Texas Constitution asks that potential government office holders “acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.” I am uncomfortable with the idea that patriotism should be considered synonymous with religious piety.
Middle Class: What does all of that have to do with the middle class? I am showing how powerful people attempt to control and manipulate the rhetoric used in political discussion to subject the people without power to further economic servitude; it is all done because campaign finance legislation and the typical conservative’s charge that it is Unconstitutional is directly related to the economic future of the middle class. Powerful corporations give money to candidates expecting a reciprocated vote in return, there is absolutely no reason to deny this, and no reason to contend that the rich giving money to the political surrogate of their choice benefits the middle class (60-70% of the voting public economically and socially defined). I will further address this in part 21.
Supreme Deity: The founding fathers went out of their way to leave any references to a specific god or general religion out of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, using more deistic words such as “Divine Providence” and “Nature’s God.” I object to the use of religion in politics today for that reason, though I am far from being deeply offended or wringing my hands in horror at this juxtaposition of civic vs. faith-based verbiage. There is no doubt that conservatives are more authoritarian and demonstrative about their faith. We know that Romney is a Mormon and Huckabee an Evangelical, but both were fairly low-key about the media’s interest in drawing attention to their faith. I make this point because the U.S. Constitution has been subjected to the more prevalent and consistent leanings of the state constitutions as far as god is concerned.
god in civil society: Mindful of the conservative’s charge against campaign finance legislation as being unconstitutional, if conservatives seek to call to account those who check a fellow politician’s level of oligarchy by passing legislation that tempers their candidacy income, then a secularist can object to the ways in which politicians can assign duties, make responsible for protections, and generally assume auspices to an entity they haven’t proven exists. I have no problem with christmas trees, wreaths, or Easter bunnies being allowed into government buildings as symbols of a religious holiday, (those symbols in reality don’t mean what they once did anyway) because this country has an ambiguous relationship with religion and the heritage and culture of this country is undeniably one that wishes to acknowledge a god. We coin money with the words- “In God we trust,” the president takes the oath of office, and we hold witnesses in civil and criminal trials accountable to their consciences, by asking them to swear on the bible, etc (and do so without asking whether their conscience is obligated to consider the contents of that book with reverence). Unfortunately, I haven’t found politicians to be morally irreproachable enough to hide behind the sanctity of a supreme being of goodness, not in name, nor apocryphal deeds that gathered for the “Supreme Judge,” a reputation he has not earned, especially when those politicians set about conducting the business of government. Saying “god bless America” is not a political panacea in the same way that touching one’s forehead with “holy” water is not a religious one.
Constitutional Violation (2)- Unreasonable Searches and Seizure: Two words- Bush and wiretapping. (See the Fourth Amendment).
Constitutional Violation (3)- Declaration of War: Ron Paul brought this up during the California republican primary debate after a heated, ridiculous exchange between McCain and Romney about timing, troop withdrawal, the equivalent of foreign policy semantics, etc. and the nature of the U.S.’s continued involvement in the Iraq war. He said we never should have gone to war and that usually such interaction is only justified when Congress has issued a formal declaration of war. To be honest, I was in support of going into Iraq and removing Hussein, but I was in favor of an offensive, not a war, and given the cost of the war (an estimated $3.5 trillion shared between the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through 2017, see part 12), I’d be in favor of a troop withdrawal and maintaining a military presence in the Middle East. I was pretty sure that the Constitutional right to declare war is in the hands of congress, but just to make sure, I checked . . . yep, there it is in Article 1, Section 8.
Constitutional Violation (4)- Freedom to vote I: Independents can’t vote in some state primaries, in Florida for instance; I get it, people should be a member of a party before being allowed to vote, just as they should be a female to play girl’s hockey, or be a beagle to have a shot at winning the Westminster dog show. At a typical caucus, as I have learned, votes are taken and delegates are chosen after some debate on issues and candidates. Then a delegate nomination and election process begins. I also learned that people voted and then left thinking that the majority they helped assure with their vote, didn't guarantee them the majority of delegates. Apparently, some of the delegates in certain states are not obligated to deliver their state’s support to the candidate the voters in the collective caucus sites selected on a district by district basis, for those states that divvy up the delegates. This makes less sense than being told by a neighbor that his two children are five months apart in age, yet never shared a womb and were conceived in different fertile periods. The XXIVth Amendment, ratified in 1962, gives the people the right to vote in a primary election. Having just read it, I don’t see anything at all about political parties being justified in restricting how, or whether, a citizen might cast their vote. One other thing, Section 2 of the XXIVth Amendment reads: “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” And when will that happen?
Freedom to vote II, Super Delegates: I recently learned of something called super delegates, which comprise “20 percent or so of convention voters, usually party insiders, who are not obligated to support the candidate chosen in the primary or caucus.” What?! “or so”? See, Hady Amr’s Star Tribune Opinion Exchange article from February 3, 2008- “Let’s Make it Easy: By the People, for the People.” Somehow, that doesn’t sound so super to me, that sounds like the Aqua-man of super heroes; that must be a bizzaro super hero, come from the land of oligarchy. I may be completely out of touch, but that strikes me as an election process that is earily similar to how parties brought forth candidates in the old days- as Amr indicates in her column and as historically considered by Reicheley in the book I summarized last column. For more on super delegates see www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23147072. In fact, the XXIVth amendment doesn’t say anything about not so “super” delegates, (all 796 of them, constituting 40% of the total delegate count for the democrats) being able to sway an election after record numbers of citizens have cast their votes. The idea of super delegates is disgusting. Think of the participation of super delegates, even the governor of the state of Maryland refers to as people capable of proceeding over a “brokered convention.” He favors Clinton, though “60 percent of Maryland’s Democratic voters cast their ballots for Obama.”
A story last week surfaced that Obama had given $698k to super delegates to Clinton's $205k. An "expert," who appeared on one of the cable news channels was asked whether this would influence a super delegate's vote. He didn't indicate that it would. Then why do it? To borrow the conceit of a popular advertising campaign used by a credit card company: An electric can opener cozy . . . $10, over the counter medication for the problem of post nasal drip . . . $6.50, fiberous snacks for your pet Guinea pig suffering from diptheria . . . $15, deciding to give thousands of dollars to people who could swing the election your way- priceless.
Constitutional Violation (5)- Freedom of the press: Given the G. W. Bush administration- it wouldn’t surprise me if this component of the first amendment had also been violated, but I could find nothing in twenty minutes of Google searching that was . . . fit to print. Not sure if the USA Today Life section article I quoted from in part 12 about the stifling of the scientist’s views that contradicted what the government wanted them to contend on issues as diverse as global warming, stem-cell research and species extinction would be more of a freedom of speech issue or freedom of the press violation. (see Science vs. Politics Gets Down and Dirty- USA Today, August 6, 2007). The article also refers to the story of the “Manhattan Project chief Robert Oppenheimer, who opposed the development of more powerful bombs,” who “lost his security clearance after dramatic congressional hearings in 1954.” Ok, even I admit what I have written is a lot of rhetoric, but I am just demonstrating to what lengths people will go to to defame two conscientious politicians (in John McCain and Russ Feingold) who are just trying to make themselves, their colleagues, and those who turn their colleagues into political puppets for any of thousands of special interest group regimes, more accounatable for the funding of their candidacies. There, I defended a democrat and a republican in one sentence . . . if I could find a way to wash my brain, I would. The conservative republicans speak of McCain-Feingold with horror and speak as if the very thought of a republican working with a democrat to hold a politician accountable for anything is Unconstitutional. Those who sermonize against the issue of campaign finance reform, and consider its supposed Unconstitutionality are like soldiers who enter into a slap-fest up on a hill far away from the firing while all of the real combatants are dying on the battlefield. Don’t we elect politicians for their ability to get the right things done, even some things of which objective conscientious people approve? Some politicians treat that sort of compromise like it is their prom queen befriending the audio-visual nerd at some lame high school party we’ve seen in all kinds of iterations of feel-good teen movies- (“Can’t Buy Me Love” “She’s All That,” etc.)
Huh, if there were a government violation of this aspect of the Constitution, how would I know it?
Constitutional Violation (6)- IRS (the collecting of taxes was written into Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution): Aren’t we supposed to disclose any and all types of income to the federal government so that our earned income can be taxed? I believe it is against the law not to do such a thing, (though I imagine that PLENTY of people don’t report some earned income), with very few exceptions- retirement accounts aren’t considered “earnings” for the purposes of taxation. So, if the IRS can require us to report our earnings, shouldn’t those that give money to produce and deliver advertisements that benefit a candidate in a political race be forced to reveal themselves if they spend more than $10k a year? If they spend a penny aiding a candidate in an election they should be forced to report it—even soft money (an unlimited amount of money directed towards particular candidates for “party-building” activities). If I made a penny that I didn’t report to the federal or state government, they might mind. I believe we should be made aware of a special interest group producing commercials for candidates so we can better track whether the Save the Skunk from Hereditary Rheumatism Foundation was able to buy a politician’s vote. We should hold accountable a politician that supports a West Virginia zoologist who is now in possession of $2.5 million in funding, earmarked from the federal budget, studying the undeniable cross-species erotic attraction of pronghorn for seals. Also it would be nice to know that sometimes we contribute the money, for which we have worked, to “A wise and frugal government, which . . . shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.” – Thomas Jefferson
Constitutional violation (7)- Petition for the redress of grievances: This is a lesser known component of the first amendment that gets lost with all of the attention heaped upon free speech, religion, press, and assembly. A portion of the blame for this violation has to be assumed by the citizens who likely have not formally petitioned the government all that often. I gave money last month to be a member of the non-profit organization Common Cause and I now receive at least two emails a week asking that I email or call my senator, the governor, or district house member to request any number of things- from desiring to push through the Holt bill, which would back up electronic polling booths with paper records, so as not to jeapordize election results. I also requested that state and/or district justices not be able to affiliate themselves in word or deed with a political party, thereby gaining financial support and actively campaigning as challengers or incumbents for state, district, or circuit judicial seats. The reasons for this are fairly obvious, given the nature of this overall subtopic. Common Cause provided me with a ready-made email form which I populated with my own words in both cases. Unfortunately, I don’t think that any more than 10% of the population would feel comfortable, qualified, or interested in lending their name to a good cause. But if they did, I would find it unlikely that the government would actually remedy the ills communicated by the citizens making known the various grievances. As I’ve indicated, with so many different types of people in the country, with so many different desires, all proactive language that would objectively assist the majority gets lost in arguments about semantics, importance valuations, power, timetables, urgency, pride, and esteem of the populace for the people vying to compile a concise, logical grievance, (i.e. show-pony status). The politicians rarely ask for a list of grievances to redress, (though my district house member did send a mailer asking for citizen's opinions on how to spend state budget money), and the people rarely give a list to the politicians and if and when they have, the powers that be in government have been all too capable and all too often interested in circumventing the will of the people. Have I mentioned complicity and plausible deniability yet?
Right to bear arms: A conservative most hates a liberal because conservatives contend that liberals just want to redistribute everyone else’s wealth but their own. That isn’t a lie. Perhaps the reason for that fear could be due in part to the idea that if the conservative’s money is taken from him, he won’t be able to buy guns or financially support the National Rifle Association. The right to keep and bear arms is the second amendment. The reason I included this Constitutional Amendment among these others is not because the conservatives are in violation of it, but because they so strongly support this one, though so much in the intervening years, since its inclusion in the Constitution, has changed. See, the amendment was added back when muskets could fire three bullets a minute. The founding fathers could not have foreseen the possibility of assault rifles that could fire 30, or more, rounds a minute. We regulate everything else, the pasteurization of milk, dietary supplements, the safety of workplace environments, automobile safety standards, the number of terms the president can hold office. Are these all regulations that a conservative is against? The founders probably could not have predicted that political candidates would routinely be spending in excess of $100 million in order to gain political office. This is an apples to apples comparison. If conservatives object to campaign finance reform legislation because they feel it is Unconstitutional, though much of the document is over 200 years old, and the first amendment only states that they have the right to free speech and the fourth amendment, the most beloved by conservatives only states that they can own and carry guns, then can't the same argument be used? See, so their whining about gun control laws is just another negative indicator touchstone of inconsistent, outdated thought on how not to think. It is what the Constitution does not contain that gets us into such ridiculous debates about our freedoms, unfortunately it does not have this in common with the bible. Sometimes I think that if a building were on fire and there were proof that the house contained no innocent potential victims to save and no possible way to save the house or its contents from being destroyed, the conservatives would shut themselves up in it and hope that it would stop burning, so they could have the opportunity to light it on fire again- so combustible is their narrow-minded interpretation of the bible . . . er, the Constitution.
Gun Control supporting arguments: I found three pretty decent locations for information to support this portion of my argument:
1) http://kstp.com/article/stories/s342724.shtml?cat=5 which reveals a case where a person with a stalking conviction was charged with felony possession of a firearm, which is a charge that can land someone in prison for ten years. The offending party in this case is due to get out after a year because the prosecutor dropped the firearm charge because of a loophole in the gun law which allows people to buy antique/collector guns without having to register them. (I would bet my milk money that the prosecuting attorney is a republican, proud of himself for having found a gun ownership loophole, and that the defense attorney was a democrat. Democrats often protect the criminal who fires the weapon that the republicans were all too anxious for him to own. Sounds like another instance of political synthesis with political parties playing oddsmaker- see parts 13 and 14);
2) an old article from May of 1994, proposing a bill to ban the manufacture and importation of 19 weapons thought by democratic senator Chuck Schumer to be assault rifles (B. Drummond Ayres Jr. “In Gun Debate, Gun Definitions Matter.”) In the article, the bill’s proponents contend that “the only way to stop gun deaths is to control criminals.” (The Eyewitness News story I provide above is just one case that proves that controlling criminals is not possible, and it is far from the only case of its kind); Ayres’ story addresses how the technical definition of “assault weapons” is different for proponents and opponents of any bill proposing the ban of firearms. I am a complete tenderfoot on the subject of guns. But a rifle, as distinguished from a hand gun/revolver, that fires one bullet right after the other, while not technically an automatic weapon (which seem to be defined by how many bullets can be fired with one pull of the trigger) is an assault rifle. No private citizen should be allowed to own a gun that can fire more than 6-10 bullets in 30 seconds. If a person desires to own a gun that fires more than 6-10 bullets in that span then they are either a criminal, thinking of becoming a criminal, or are otherwise outside of the protections afforded in the second amendment (right to own a firearm). The argument that a person wants to own a gun, which would be classified as an assault rifle based on principle, should adopt better principles. If a person can’t hit a target or two in self defense with 6-10 bullets, then perhaps some money should be spent on shooting lessons and not so much on guns);
3) I would largely accept most of what the person voicing his opinions on this site- http://hematite.com/dragon/gcviewpoint.html might have to say about the misconceptions of firearms, excepting what I just wrote about gun law loopholes, sentencing guidelines, and loose conservative interpretations of what is and is not an assault rifle. Liberal judges and attorneys err on the side of thinking that they are always defending the innocence of jesus christ, when their client’s actions are often much more reprehensible from a type, frequency, intensity, and malice aforethought standpoint. I liked the line included in the link directly above about blaming the spoon as the reason why Rosie O’Donnell is fat. See, the fair author of the hematite.com column doesn't see a causal connection between guns and death. If guns were banned, surely people would find other weapons of choice is his point- quite so. Unfortunately, in the chicken v. egg debate about what kills people, the gun or the people . . . one question- if there weren’t guns, would guns kill people? I didn't get a 600 on my SATs for nothin'. I don't want to ban any and all guns, or not allow future criminals or some guy who compares himself to Rambo to carry them, just some of them.
Can’t bear those arms: So, if a conservative would favor the right to own and carry a gun that would shock a founding father with its capacity to kill, then the harm in passing legislation that barely alters a politicians right and ability to spend money is . . . ? Remember- no candidate for president has spent less than $7 million and five have spent more than $36 million (through February 11, 2008). Here is that link again: (http://www.cnn.com/election/2008/money/gop.html%20or%20dems.html). Question a conservative on the direction of the country and indicate that things are not quite as great as they could be, nor as bad as they think you think they are, and they will offer up some rather inflammatory, though misguided “facts” about how all is well while the house you saw them set on fire is burning before your eyes. Conservatives are not firemen, they are arsonists. Don’t take that literally. One more thing- they will seek to label you mockingly as a victim. Not so. No victim has ever been so empowered with the truth who has a high-speed internet connection.
Trump card: The Constitution- was written, ratified and business has been conducted under its pronouncements for the benefit of the people firstly, and for how the business of government is to be conducted secondarily. Anyone who wishes to doubt this should read it- see the Bill of Rights. The first seven articles which precede the Bill of Rights, which address the business of government, have rarely been superceded by a Constitutional Amendment in 219 years, and when they have, they haven’t been in a legendary conflict with the twenty-seven amendments that follow. 18 of the 27 amendments are either included for the benefit of the people, and one more, the 16th Amendment, addresses the needs of the one- government, to the detriment of the other- the individual. This is the Amendment that made the collection of taxes Constitutional (though many think this was addressed in Article 1, Section 8). Both parties are over-eager to spend more and more of the taxpayer's money, but I never hear about how it is Unconstitutional to take as much as they do. Nevada’s Constitution Article 1, Section 2 reads: “All political power is inherent in the people[.] Government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people . . .” Should Lincoln’s government of, by, and for the people go completely unheeded? From Ralph Nader’s “The Good Fight" (pg. 33)- “From whom should the Republican and Democratic parties take instruction? From artificial commercial entities that subjugate the public interest, or from human beings who possess inalienable rights?”
Trump card II: Amendments have been added granting blacks and women the right to vote, prohibiting people from drinking alcoholic beverages and later allowing them to, protecting them from illegal searches and seizures, protecting accused criminal perpetrators against excessive bail and fines, even a protection where a person can abstain from incriminating themselves at their own criminal trial. If a politician wants to object against campaign finance reform on the grounds that it is Unconstitutional . . . they are way out of their league. The fortune of individuals and a group of individuals is a protection written into the Constitution which trumps a politician’s right to accept gross amounts of money from potentially questionable sources without the public being made aware of the amount or the contributing special interest group, corporation, or well-compensated individual. The fact that the public might be saved from hearing or seeing mundane advertisements within 60 days of a general election (see #3 of McCain-Feingold above), and that restrictions on “issue ads” are in place which might fall under the heading of #2 above is just a bonus. A Dodo with episodic cluster headaches grows weary of the redundant, nonsensical, cliched, abridged,* inaccurate ads that air incessantly for months prior to an election, and they have been extinct since the late 17th century.
Will-ful disregard: Normally I agree wholeheartedly with George Will, esteemed columnist of the Washington Post. However, he was amiss in his January 20, 2008 offering “This Would be . . . Straight Talk?” when dissecting the merits and errors of John McCain, whom true conservatives can’t stand to support, Will writes: 1) McCain is “quick to denigrate the motives, and hence the characters of those who oppose him;” (if those people are many of his fellow politicians the problem with this would be?) 2) McCain would nominate conservative supreme court justices, and as Will believes, as they are conservative justices, they would “consider his signature achievement constitutionally dubious.” (his signature achievement Will believes is McCain-Feingold); 3) he cites McCain’s feistiness against pharmaceutical companies 4) calls him a moralizer and his thought too simplistic (and possibly for fairly good reason); 5) proposes that conservatives have the political copyright on being the only party able to understand the nuances of government; 6) and nails McCain for working with Joe Lieberman on legislation that would empower congress to “prevent catastrophic global warming.” Lieberman and McCain also coauthored a column which included the phrase “ ‘the debate has ended’ ” concerning global warming’s effect on the planet. (Nonsense, the debate hasn’t ended, so Will is justified in giving McCain hell, and I believe that man is responsible for PLENTY of climate change); Will’s last paragraph is concluded with this sentence 7) “People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.” (Quite right, so let us still have debate, and resolve to do nothing about global warming, and nothing about pharmaceutical company practices, the war in Iraq, health care prices, education, or political corruption in regards to “Unconstitutional” campaign finance reform legislation that so far has done little to curb corporate or individual donors, campaign expenditures, or pathetic excuses for issue ads where rhetoric is still the most expensive commodity the voters are expected to buy). I am all for further debate on the important issue of campaign finance reform, for people who oppose it will only look more ignorant, just as the donkey/ass looks more and more like it just won’t fly the further it is removed from the cliff from which it has jumped.
Free speech: Tell a man over 230 years ago that he doesn’t have the right to speak up against an English king that is economically and spiritually bankrupting him, while his neighbors are in shackles for fighting against the crown, and then tell the same man, after ten years of military service, who was successfully reelected to his third term in office that he will not be able to accept unreported funding from certain constituencies, or have proponents slam his competitors two months before an election in a television advertisement, but he can still gather all kinds of unlimited funding from dozens of solicitors, that he is secure in the knowledge that the pension he will collect at retirement will ensure his continued standard of living, and that a year after he leaves office, he can make even more as a lobbyist . . . and ask him what he thinks might be a greater violation against his First Amendment Constitutional right of free speech. Hardly a wash Mr. Will, hardly a wash.
*- if you consider the hubbub of who voted for what when. There are all kinds of reasons someone would vote against a law restricting the presence of a brothel within four blocks of a middle school- one of those reasons would be a rider attached to that bill which proposed a 10% tax increase of the middle class for military funding to fight the influx of ferrets deliberately contracting contagious gout who like to vacation in the District of Columbia. Not all of those issue ads are without their own issues. Let us have the unabridged version of someone’s voting specifics and tendencies.
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