Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Preempting Hillary


By Bob Schildgen

Sure, I'll go along with those historians who have declared George W. Bush to be the worst president in our history. They've laid out some pretty persuasive evidence to rank him even lower than that remarkable Trinity of Failures, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren G. Harding.
(For more on this dismal topic, see
www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history )

But I'm sick and tired of watching Democrats who voted to unleash Bush in Iraq turn around and complain about how badly Bush has "handled" this disastrous war. Before making Bush into a scapegoat they ought to face up to their own responsibility and their own complicity in this war, and acknowledge their own bad judgment.

Instead, they conveniently ignore their role in this violence, or blame faulty intelligence reports, or claim it was an agonizing decision somehow forced on them by circumstances. My own senator Diane Feinstein, for example, sent me a letter in which she offloads her responsibility by saying that "The Senate vote on the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq was . . . difficult and consequential." Well, yes, but just because a decision is "difficult and consequential" doesn't justify making the wrong decision.

Feinstein also says that the vote was "based on trust" in the intelligence that was received.

But what was the CONTENT of this intelligence? Certainly the intelligence that was publicly presented was so transparently phony that any halfway informed person would question it. At times it was downright laughable, as with Colin Powell’s talk about aluminum tubes and mysterious trucks in the desert. His statement to the UN that "these are not toothpicks" was so feeble it actually telegraphed that he was not convinced any threat existed. (If not toothpicks, then what? Popsicle sticks? Railroad spikes?) If we always moved on such flimsy excuses, we’d be bombing deserts everywhere from the Mohave to the Kalahari

And if the evidence these war-supporting senators saw was different than the unconvincing nonsense that was publicly presented, we ought to be told exactly what it was that convinced them.

Hillary Clinton's justifications are even shabbier. In an interview with CNN in April 2004 she said: "No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." So she voted to go to war because of a "context"? I'll spare you the invocation of George Orwell and his masterful "Politics and the English Language." Read it if you haven't. Reread it if you have.

But what about that grave overpowering "context." Well, according to Hillary Clinton, it was the very same "context" Bill Clinton had, the difference being that Bill Clinton never demanded an all-out war over a "context."
"The consensus was the same from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," she said. "It was the same intelligence belief that our allies and friends around the world shared."

So what was the difference? Well, only that Bush "believed" in the "belief" and the "context" more strongly than Bill Clinton. Yes, we went to war because of a belief in a belief. After this revelation, which makes the most loopy fundamentalist a cold rationalist by comparison, Hillary Clinton doesn't just twist the language, she throttles it to death: "But I think that in the case of the [Bush] administration, they really believed it. They really thought they were right, but they didn't let enough sunlight into their thinking process to really have the kind of debate that needs to take place when a serious decision occurs like that."

Oh, so it was Bush who pulled down the shades? Only that Prince of Darkness Bush? But of course, because those bright beams of inquiring thought! Wondrous how they streamed down on Congress, shining in the minds of John Kerry and may other Democrats who vote for war.

Hillary Clinton continued: "You have to have a decision-making process that pushes a lot of information up and asks a lot of hard questions. You don't get that sense from this White House." Yeah right.

This focus on Bush's bad strategies and the tortured explanations of their vote only makes people wonder about the real motives Democrats who voted for war, and raises the question whether they were being opportunistic, trying to convince voters that they were not soft on terrorism or anti-military or weak on national security issues. It makes me want to say, "Come on, cut the crap about intelligence. What were your other motives? Were you listening to your conscience or you focus group? Give us a straight answer, and we might forgive you."

But even if there HAD been incontrovertible evidence that Iraq possessed WMDs, there was still no compelling reason to start a war, not with the following strong arguments against it

1) THE INSPECTION TEAM: the international inspection team was doing its work, finding nothing, and there was no reason not to allow it to continue until it completed its assessment. Hillary Clinton herself had the gall to criticize the Bush administration for not allowing the weapons inspectors "to finish whatever task they could have accomplished to demonstrate one way or the other what was there." She must have profound faith in the America's collective amnesia to call attention to this Bush failure, because the need to let the inspection team finish its job was a major argument against the invasion she voted for.

2) INSTABILITY AND OUTRAGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE MUSLIM WORLD: Various commentators and observers, especially on the left, warned that attacking Iraq would only provoke increased destabilization, greater hostility to the U.S., and serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists. All this has come to pass.

3) MORAL AND RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS: Numerous religious authorities from mainstream faiths condemned the invasion as immoral, warning that the argument for a preemptive strike was an invalid application of the just war theory that has been developed over the past thousand years. Secular ethicists raised parallel concerns. Yet Hillary Clinton and the Democrats who voted for war turned a deaf ear to them. They still do not admit to or even address this moral failure, a moral failure that is at the basis of a call for ADMISSION OF GUILT AND PAYMENT OF WAR REPARATIONS.

4) POOR PROSPECTS OF SUCCESS: Both the just war theory and realistic political strategy demand that there be a sound prospect of success before declaring war. Well-informed observers cautioned that victory would be difficult, given the history of Iraq, Iraqis’ suspicion of Americans, and sectarian and ethnic differences within the Iraq.

5) ECONOMIC COSTS: Many commentators also warned that the cost of the war was unjustified, given our own vast domestic needs. Now that we have squandered about $300 billion, it’s clear that these warnings were also correct.

6) GEORGE BUSH’S PSYCHOLOGY AND THE NATURE OF HIS ADMINISTRATION: Many of us have wondered--quite understandably--about George Bush’s sociopathic tendencies. Beyond that is the obvious bellicosity and secretiveness of the administration, especially in relation to oil, as frighteningly evident in Dick Cheney’s refusal to disclose discussions of his energy committee. Handing the power of war to such people was woefully imprudent at best.

Given all these compelling objections to the war on so many levels, it is astounding that anyone voted for it.

Although the Democrats blame the Bush administration for faulty intelligence and incompetent military planning, some of them continue to speak the same language as Bush. They view the “mission” as one that must be carried out in some way or another, while others now advocate abandoning the mission. Largely they consider its problems technical and military, rather than the profoundly moral issues they are. The disturbing Bushspeak in Feinstein's letter could have dripped from the sneering mug of Dick Cheney himself: “I recognize that setting a specific date for withdrawal of all American troops, WITHOUT COMPLETING THIS MISSION, [emphasis mine] carries with it the particular hazard that Iraq would deteriorate into chaos, civil war, and a terrorist state would evolve thereby destabilizing the Middle East.”

The term "terrorist state" is exactly language Bush used to justify the war. It is unlikely that a terrorist state will emerge. It is not even clear if there is such a thing as a"terrorist state"—although some critics label the USA as a terrorist state.

This is why we must move discussion of the war from a merely technical and military level to a moral one. We do not know how much worse an attempt at a "surge" or “completing the mission” might make the situation. It’s not even clear any more what the “mission” is, since the Bush administration has marketed it in so many ways, ranging from the “accomplished” mission of overwhelming bombardment to finding yellow cake uranium and anthrax to capturing Hussein to fighting terrorism to introducing democracy to building good will among Iraqis to stabilizing the Middle East.

The way out, then, is moral, rather than merely tactical, and quite possibly the moral way out is the only reasonable tactic left. This is why I reiterate a plea for ADMISSION OF WRONGDOING AND PAYMENT OF WAR REPARATIONS ON THE CONDITION THAT IRAQIS STOP ATTACKING EACH OTHER. We are more likely to regain the world's respect if we simply admit our horrendous mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and offer substantial reparations as a concrete act of repentance. The victims of our attack might then focus on obtaining compensation rather than on the violence now being unleashed. Repentance and reparation would also signal to the Muslim world that we are embarking on a new path and will be far less likely to engage in military attacks or meddle in their internal affairs. It would blunt the motives for terrorism that have been so intensified by the war. The essentially religious nature of an open and sincere act of repentance and restitution might also open the way for expanding discussions between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders that are already taking place and would surely help ease hostilities. (For my article on the need for war reparations, see www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ chronicle/archive/2005/11/06/EDGGJFJ1VA1.DTL)

Proponents of this war have constantly compared the threat from Iraq with that of Hitler’s Germany, and talked about the lessons of preemption learned from World War II. But in this cloud of false analogy they conveniently ignore the most striking lesson: Germans harbored many deep grievances and fears resulting from the treatment it was given after the First World War. Hitler played on these emotions, teaching the lesson that nothing drives a people to violence more easily than grievances not redressed. Many people in Iraq and the Middle East obviously have profound grievances, and unless we begin to redress them, talk of stability imposed by military force is mere wishful thinking.

The other lesson that can be learned from World War II is that when a nation admits it has done wrong, apologizes, and pays reparations, as Germany and Japan did, it can regain its respect among nations.

Meanwhile, now that Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy, we must ask for a straight answer to the question: "Would you ever again support a preemptive war?" If she waffles the slightest bit on this question, she must be tossed out of the running, pronto.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

IDENTURED SERVITUDE MADE IN USA


By Rob Ham

When shopping at the local “Big Box” store it is always nice to come across a garment or linen rocking the label “Made In America.”

“At last,” one might think as they purchase the item secure in the knowledge that it was made in a U.S. factory by a U.S. worker making the minimum wage, protected, albeit less and less these days, by U.S. labor laws. For many it gives them a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing they are supporting the economy and doing their bit to keep manufacturing jobs in the good old U.S.A.

After they get through a couple of choruses of “God Bless America,” perhaps they should give this notion some thought: that commodity may have been produced by an indentured Chinese or Bangladeshi laborer working for pennies in a foreign-owned sweatshop that has no obligation to pay U.S. import duties, or obey American labor laws (including minimum wage) yet can still use the label “Made In U.S.A.” Why? Because the factory where the commodity was produced is in the Northern Marianas Islands.

The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) is a group of islands about 3,500 miles from Hawaii. First conquered by Spain in 1688, the islands were sold to Germany in the nineteenth century. In 1919, Japan invaded and was subsequently awarded a “mandate” by the League of Nations.

The islanders, unhappy with Japanese rule, by-and-large collaborated with American forces during World War II. After a series of bloody battles the Marines seized the Northern Marianas Islands as well as other strategically important gems, such as Guam.

The United States administered CNMI as a “trust” until a plebiscite in 1975, when residents elected to become a US territory. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that much like things are done in the rest of the Empire, those elections were the result of collaboration between mainland and island ruling class interests.

Technically the Northern Marians are U.S. soil, but their territorial status allows them to create their own labor law and immigration regulations. The minimum wage there is currently $3.15 per hour. Local law also permits a “Guest Worker” program where laborers can be imported and work indefinitely without the opportunity to even begin the process of acquiring U.S. citizenship.

Much like the United States, immigrant workers without papers in CNMI are generally poor, exploited and cowed into silence by fear of deportation.

Tariff and tax advantages of the “Made in U.S.A.” label make it desirable for foreign companies (mostly from Asia) to set up manufacturing operations on Saipan and other locations within the territory. The Republican-led government conducts itself with great sympathy toward these firms. Workers live in company dormitories under squalid conditions, and are virtually cut off from the rest of the island’s inhabitants. Rape and forced prostitution are commonplace, as are cases where women workers who are forced to have abortions, according to Rebecca Clarren reporting in MS Magazine.

Immigrant Chinese, Pilipino and Bangladeshi workers must pay their employers for transportation and living expenses, and are not allowed to leave their jobs until they do, according to Clarren.

Workers pay a recruiter as much as $7,000 dollars to get a job and are then required to pay for room and board once they arrive on the island, Clarren reports. Most must work 12-hour days seven days a week, surviving in the most desperate conditions, immigrants getting the worst of it, paid barely half of what the minimum wage is in the United States.

It took a senator from Alaska to write a bill aimed at extending U.S. labor law protection to workers living in the CNMI. Former Sen. Frank Murkowski wrote such a bill only to have Tom Delay run interference for garment manufacturers operating in the island territory, according to Mark Shields, a reporter for CNN.

Delay and his pal Jack Abramoff successfully blocked any Congressional attempts at reform or oversight, according to James Park writing for the AFL-CIO Web log. Delay traveled to CNMI and praised the territory’s governor at a New Years Eve celebration on Saipan in 1998. He reportedly said:

“You are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America leading the world in the free market system.”

Abramoff is now a convicted felon and Delay has resigned from office in disgrace, awaiting prosecution. HR 2 --The Fair Minimum Wage Act Of 2007 -- passed through the House of Representatives and is on its way to the Senate. Thanks to the efforts of Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the bill includes an increase in the minimum wage for CNMI workers.

CNMI immigration law must be reformed so that a state of indentured servitude does not exist in the territories. Products from CNMI must be banned from bearing a “Made In U.S.A.” label until the territory lives up to the responsibilities inherent in using that tag.

If the byproducts of Delay’s unfettered “Free Market System” are rape, indentured servitude and exploitation, maybe we should ask: How much human misery is a low-cost designer blouse worth?

Monday, January 15, 2007

Bayonics -- San Francisco's Best Band




THERE ARE many bands that describe themselves by the term "fusion." Most play jazz with a half-assed funk baseline.

It's no accident that a fusion band in the TRUEST sense of the term hails from San Francisco, the city known around the world as a beacon to diversity, creative minds, big hearts.

The Bayonics are not just the best fusion band in the San Francisco Bay Area -- they are the best band, period. Combining salsa, funk, rap, R&B, soul, and jazz with an authentic edge and pulsating groove, the Bayonics are bound to return San Francisco to its glory days as the center of the cultural universe.

In the City's jam-packed clubs, the gritty fusion unleashed by the Bayonics will move you -- ladies bring an extra bra, gents, two shirts cause you're gonna dance your ass off.

Once you've seen a show you'll know this is the nation's next great band.

Check them out at: http://www.bayonics.com

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Bush and His Surge:


Beat Your Spears into Plowshares, and Your Hummers Into Surges

By Bob Schildgen

Surge. Bush's spinners hope this marketing device for the Iraq war will rank right up there with Desert Storm, Shock and Awe, and Iron Hammer. What better way to transmit a sense of power and invincibility, evoking a pounding surf, a jolting power spike, a menacing tsunami.

Me, I was sort of confused when I heard "surge" applied to war. In fact, it sounded almost blasphemous, because "surge" resonates differently in my admittedly addled brain than it does in Karl Rove's clean skull. You see, being a proud native of the dairy state of Wisconsin, I know "Surge" as the leading brand of milking machine. And a damn good, reliable machine it was, saving the dairy farmer a lot of labor, and making dairy products cheaper for the consumer. You just hooked up your Surge to the cow's teats, and it pulsated the milk through hoses into the shiny stainless steel Surge bucket, which was shaped more like a fat flying saucer than a bucket. Part of the genius of the Surge was that a strap slung over the cow's back held the bucket so that it hung up near her teats. "Only 4 inches from the teat to the pail," was one of Surge's advertising slogans. Since the bucket swayed naturally from the milk pouring in and the pulsations, it gave the teats a nice tug that duplicated a calf's pulling.

Surge hung there under the cow's belly with a pulsating declaration, "I suck therefore I am." Nobody in the Bush administration has yet made such a claim, though they have clearly earned the right.

Surge is a classic product of what I like best about our country: that we are a land of great genius-tinkerers and gadgeteers, from the famous inventions of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to the innovators who created computers and the Internet.

Franklin was our arch-tinkerer, with his stoves and lightening rods and bifocals and other gadgets, and you can be sure that he would have greatly admired the practicality of the milking machine, saluting it as a wonderful hallmark of our famous Yankee ingenuity. He did, as you may or may not recall, famously prefer the turkey to the eagle as the national bird. "For my own part," he wrote to his daughter, "I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. . . . the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

Note also that while turkey doesn't look as ferocious as the eagle and doesn't do spectacular aerial stunts, he'll give you a fight you tread on his turf.

Fortunately, we're still a land of brilliant gadgeteers, turkey folks, but for too long we've misplaced that ingenuity, channeling it to the rapacious eagles instead of the productive, dependable turkeys. The Iraq war is such a staggering example of this that it's amazing there hasn't been more of an outcry about this glaring aspect of its madness.

We've already spent more than $200 billion on the war in Iraq, and another $110 billion is projected for this year. (The ACTUAL cost will come in closer to $2 TRILLION, according to estimates by Nobel prize-winning economist and former World Bank vice president Joseph Stiglitz. This because we will be paying lifetime disability and medical care for at least 16,000 wounded soldiers, not to mention costs for reconstruction, rebuilding the depleted military, higher oil prices, and other losses to the economy.)

The ironies make your head spin. Remember how Donald Rumsfeld argued that with our unmatched military technology—our brilliant gadgeteering and Yankee ingenuity--we could win the Iraq war without relying on nearly the concentration of conventional troops as in past conflicts? His was more an efficient, technological war, won in Silicon Valley rather than the Valley of Armageddon, foreshadowed by the "smart bombs" of the first Iraq war. Yet this refreshingly less labor-intensive war will now cost us billions to repair the suffering laborers.

The most staggering irony of all is environmental. Starting in the 1970s, environmentalists begged and pleaded for the development of clean, sustainable alternative energy to replace fossil fuels. Yet here we are, 30 years later mired in a war whose principle motive is--oil.

Imagine for a moment what could be done with that $300 billion wasted in Iraq by the end of this year. Imagine the research and development of energy sources, the construction of alternatives from windmills to solar panels to mass transit systems to hyper-efficient cars to humbler but very effective energy-saving efforts like insulating houses and installing fluorescent light bulbs.

Did I say $300 billion? Well, that just happens to be the amount proposed by the Apollo Alliance to develop and build new energy sources over the next 10 years. Most people haven’t even heard of the Apollo Alliance (named after Project Apollo, the immense technological effort that enabled us to land on the moon), partly because we've been so preoccupied with war and war on terror and, of course, celebrities and gay marriage and sports hormones and whatever it was that Britney Spears recently didn't say.

The Apollo Alliance is a coalition of environmentalists and labor leaders, like the Sierra Club's gutsy leader, Carl Pope, and Leo Gerard, the head of the United Steelworkers of America who has fought hard to stop decline of our manufacturing sector.

It's a "blue-green" group (blue collar-greenies), one that disproves all the anti-enviro propaganda about how environmentalism takes away people's jobs. The Apollo Alliance has a clear (almost no-brainer) program showing how development of new energy sources can create millions of jobs. It would unleash our innovative powers and our work ethic on a project that would help everybody prosper. All Democrats, whose most stalwart backers are environmentalists and unions, ought to be rallying around the Apollo Alliance, legislating its proposals into action, and weaning us from oil.

Wean? Well, Bush's insane Surge won't get us off the oil teat, but a new Apollo project would be the moral equivalent of the good old Surge milking machine, creating instead of destroying, and giving us some good old-fashioned Ben Franklin kicks.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Gerald Ford Dances Around James Brown


By J. P. Bone

The news about Gerald Ford's passing eclipsed a far more important figure in U.S. history, and that of course is James Brown, who slipped away the day before the man whose greatest legacy was to pardon the arch criminal Richard M. Nixon.

James Brown created a new musical form, one performed with verve and inexhaustible energy as he drove fans to the brink of ecstasy. Gerald Ford sang karaoke versions of Nixon's greatest hits and rubbed elbows with the rich and powerful with the same guiltless pleasure as a man under the influence of a tab of ecstasy.

James Brown had guts, stamina, felt a debt of gratitude to his fans and never forgot where he came from. Gerald Ford was a putz, a living example of the Peter Principle. His greatest achievement was to withdraw U.S. troops from a horrific war of aggression that he supported in Vietnam.

James Brown served time in the joint for drug and alcohol abuse despite his generous contributions to poor neighborhoods and an endless commitment to community service. Gerald Ford's wife, Betty, was lauded as a shining example of honesty when she required treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. Betty Ford later used her social and political connections to develop an upscale clinic for individuals who, if not for their class privilege, would have done time for THEIR addictions and indiscretions.

We have James Brown to thank for introducing us to funk -- not to mention an incredible string of tremendous hits such as "Prisoner of Love," "Think," and "Mother Popcorn." We have Gerald Ford to thank for introducing us to the world of bunk, hit-men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, and the secret prisons they established, not to mention THEIR tour de force, "The Mother of All Wars."

Now the people must endure the depraved spectacle of politicians and their masters mourning a man touted as "the leader who gently led the United States out of the tumultuous Watergate era." In truth Ford set the stage for another generation of politicians who could get away with crimes that would send any poor or working person to prison or the gallows.

Fox News and other State Department journalists praise Ford for being the "same man" after leaving the presidency that he was when he took that office after Nixon's shameful resignation. He was indeed the same man, having perfected cover-ups and miscarriages of justice during his tenure on the Warren Commission -- the official "investigative board" that claimed only one man assassinated John F. Kennedy despite video proof to the contrary.

That heinous betrayal of justice provided reassurance for Johnson, Nixon, Ronald the Terrible, King George I, William the Fornicator, and King George II. In fact it was Ford's "courage" to pardon Nixon that assured Ronald Reagan, Oliver North and other drug dealers they could traffic cocaine in their efforts to fund the Contras in Nicaragua and even when caught "red handed" not pay a price for their crimes. Ultimately Ford's pardon of Nixon give George II the sense that no crime, no matter how grave, would be prosecuted by the U.S. Congress.

Let us all mourn the passing of James Brown, a great American hero, Soul Brother Number One, and dismiss all the hullabaloo about Gerald Ford, Nixon's lap dog and the Grandfather of Blow.

Monday, January 1, 2007

Gerald Ford's Legacy: Banality and Violence


By Bob Schildgen

He was a humble, simple, plain-spoken Midwesterner who courageously pardoned Richard Nixon and healed America's wounds in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.

Yes indeed, and this is precisely what was most horribly wrong with the man. What the "courageous" pardon of Nixon actually achieved was to amplify a cynicism about politics that proclaims "they're all crooks in cahoots, so why vote?" The Nixon pardon also paved the way for other questionable pardons, like George Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and others of their crimes in the Iran Contra scandal.

Healing and reconciliation were the last thing our country really needed after Watergate and Vietnam. We would've been better off allowing the wounds to fester awhile and engaging in sharper self-criticism and more vigorous debate about our military role. Instead, the forgiving and forgetting made it easier to remilitarize our culture, which led to Ronald Reagan's reckless military spending, renewed zeal for policing the world, and, ultimately, to the Iraq war.

As for Ford's plain-spoken Midwestern humility: We Americans are suckers for it, partly because of a populist suspicion of urban sophistication (which explains all those nasty campaign remarks about elitist cigar-smoking New England liberals and latté-sipping San Franciscans.) Also, simple plain-spokenness appeals to our anti-intellectualism and log-cabin myths about humble roots, while its bland tone comforts those who live in denial of real problems that are worth making noise about. Add all this up, and we find refuge in the very ordinariness of a man like Ford--infatuated with our own banality.

Yet this humble, simple, ordinariness can serve as a perfect cover for all sorts of complicated and wicked intentions. To understand how it works, recall the belief that Ford was both clumsy and stupid. Of course nothing could have been further from the truth. The man made the national college football all-stars and played on two national-championship teams, back in the days when men were men and did both offense and defense. After excelling in sports he went on to get a law degree from Yale--hardly legitimate credentials for a clumsy dolt, and unmatched by almost all presidents. Ford shrewdly played along with such popular nonsense, even dispatching his press secretary Ron Nessen to participate in a silly skit full of bumbling-Ford jokes on Saturday Night Live.

The real joke was on us. It helped us forget or ignore Ford's actual politics. He was a hawk who promoted the Vietnam war, advocating the waste of more lives and money on that adventure than Lyndon Johnson himself. Ford opposed federal aid to education, voted to weaken unions, and fought against minimum wage increases, while dutifully advanced big business interests. He did vote for the Civil Rights Act, only to waffle and back Nixon's attempts to weaken it. In other words, the humble plain-spoken populist did very little for humble plain-spoken people.

In addition to pardoning Nixon, he advanced the careers of numerous hardline militarists, including Dick Cheney his chief of staff and Donald Rumsfeld his secretary of defense. Some commentators have even noted that today's foreign policy is his legacy.

Ford wasn't just a pioneer in pardons. He also tinkered with the impeachment process, which reached its peak absurdity with the Republicans' politically motivated attack on Bill Clinton. While in Congress in 1970, Ford led an attempt to impeach liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, obviously motivated by political revenge. Indulging in the divisive partisan politics he's credited with avoiding, Ford went after Douglas to strike back at the Democrats for rejecting two of Nixon's Supreme Court nominees. He also wanted to whack Douglas because the justice had ruled against the Nixon administration on some key issues, most notably the right of the news media to release the Pentagon Papers, which played a major role in building opposition to the Vietnam war. (Some rather scary heirs of such tactics are conservatives like ex-Senator Rick Santorum and ex-House Majority Leader Tom Delay who openly advocate judicial impeachment, not to mention the influential Phyllis Schafly, who has found "good ground of impeachment" of Supreme Court judge Anthony Kennedy because of his ruling against capital punishment for juveniles.)

Now that Ford is dead, we're finding out more about how useful his mask was, and how Pentagon Papers weren't the only things the plain-spoken man was into concealing. In an interview with Bob Woodward in 2004, Ford said that the Bush administration had made a big mistake in justifying the war with Iraq. Unfortunately, Ford required suppression of his critical remarks until he was dead. The solid team player was only loyal enough to the team to refrain from criticizing it while he was alive, apparently not wanting to suffer through denouncement by Bush's people. The only other explanation for his restriction is that Ford thought he'd live forever, and thereby keep his heretical musings secret.

On top of this, it now looks like even the "courageous" pardon of Nixon was as much about doglike love and loyalty to Tricky Dick as it was about healing. "I didn't want my real friend to have the stigma," Ford explains as a motive for the pardon.

So it turns out that the guy was a whole lot more complicated than we thought, and not nearly as nice as we thought, or too nice, or nice for the wrong reasons. Maybe being abandoned by his father had some sort of profound traumatic effect, but let's leave this to the shrinks and psychohistorians to ponder.

Border Fence: An Environmental Disaster on Top of a $49 Billion Boondoggle


By Bob Schildgen

The 700-mile-long fence that a bunch of U.S. congressmen want to build along border with Mexico could be one of the biggest boondoggles in our history. New estimates by the Congressional Research Service put the actual cost at $49 billion.

We were first told that it would cost $3 million a mile, or $2.1 billion, already an outrageous waste of money. Well, it turns out that the original estimate didn't include the cost of buying up private lands along the border where it would be built, or the cost of maintaining it for 25 years, or the additional cost that could be incurred if private contractors build it. Aside from this, we all know how often these mega-projects have cost overruns. It turns out that a 14-mile stretch already being built near San Diego is already costing $9 million a mile.

The environmental impacts of the proposed fence are as dreadful as this shamelss the waste of money. The fence will do a huge amount off damage to habitat and block the natural migrations of many animals.

But, you might ask, surely such a structure would be subject to strict environmental standards, just like any major building project in our country? The answer is a resounding NO, thanks to the fact that Congress passed a law allows for a waiver of environmental protections in matters related to Homeland Security. Yes, it's the law: when it comes to decisions made by Homeland Security, the government does not have to follow its own rules. The Sierra Club and the Audubon Society learned this when they sued to stop just 3.5 miles of the barrier from being built near San Diego because of its serious threat to species in the region and possible damage to the Tijuana River estuary. (Since it was too difficult to construct a fence on this stretch, the "fence" would be created by moving massive amounts of earth to form a geographical obstacle) U.S. district court judge, Larry Burns ruled against the environmental groups, citing the exemption handed to Homeland Security by Congress.

So now, the economic and environmental cost should be made loud and clear--on top of the other compelling arguments against this stupefyingly ridiculous project: namely that it is racist and an insult to Mexico; that many individual citizens and businesses on the U.S. side of the border don't want it; that it won't work because there are so many other ways to enter the country. Any terrorist with brains enough to do serious damage can sneak in at thousands of other points, or like most of the terrorists who highjacked the planes in the 9/11 mass murders, get in legally with visas.

Of course, since everybody knows that the main purpose of the fence is to keep illegal immigrants out, one wonders why Homeland Security should even have a say in the matter. One also wonders many other projects will bulldozers drive through loopholes in environmental laws in the name Homeland Security? Almost anything, from a freeway through a wildlife refuge to a dam on a river do a Wal Mart parking lot can be spun into some sort of Homeland Security issue. Don't you laugh here: Parking lots should be more spacious so that customers can get the hell out quick in the event of a bomb threat.

But really, if we're going to spend $49 billion to keep Mexicans out, why not just buy Mexicans out. We could give each illegal $10,000 on the condition that he or she stays home, and pay off 5 MILLION people. Imagine too, what a shot in the arm that would be for the Mexican economy, which would automatically slow immigration, it being obvious that a major reason Mexicans migrate is their woebegotten economy.

Or maybe we should spend the money, and build the fence in a big circle in one of the most desolate parts of Texas, and pen in all the crooked right-wing politicians and civilian warmongers, give them all the weapons and military toys they want, and let them play war to their heart's content. This is such a viable proposal that I already have a name: Operation Sandbox.

America Remains Very Much the Same, and More so

By Bob Schildgen

"America will never be the same." Of all the stupid solemn remarks uttered after 9/11, this one was the most moronic—not to mention the most flat out wrong. In fact, America became MORE what it was. More paranoid, more militaristic, more racist, and more willing to meddle in the rest of the world--in the deplorable tradition of American imperialism.

Because we became more of what we were, with our cold-war-style paranoia rekindled, a new hatred of Arabs satisfying our appetite for bigotry, and militarist ambitions to carry a big stick rekindled, we tore into Iraq with shock and awe. Well, we no longer speak silently while wielding the proverbial big stick. We make a lot of noise, professional PR geniuses spin it, pundits blather endlessly about it, and officials howl "Mission Accomplished" at the top of their lungs before the dust is settled. The only thing the Bush government has been able to keep quiet about is torture, illegal imprisonment, and crooked contracts to pay its friends to "rebuild" Iraq.

The war is outward expression of our belligerent fear. The proposed project for a fence on the Mexican border (see "Border Fence) is its at-home equivalent.

There are so many symptoms of fear on so many levels I find it almost impossible to describe. But a friend of mine seems to have captured a frightening amount of fear in a recent poem. Not only is he an unheralded poet, but he wishes to remain unheralded, and, yes, anonymous because he still fears that he isn't as afraid as he should be. Despite the catalog of fearful threats in the poem, he still fears that Homeland Security might disapprove of his unpatriotic lack of fear. "These days," he says, "to be afraid is to be a loyal American. President Bush knows that without a reliable level of wholesome fear we would fail to go to war abroad and fail to protect our families at home. I know there's got to be more to be afraid of and to defend ourselves from than what I've written down in this poem," he says. "But this is the best I could do. Pray that it will help us wake up and defend ourselves."

Defend Defend Defend Defend

Defend defend defend defend
defend until the very end
defend your friend defend your foe.
defend your TV's right to know
defend your sweat-shop running-shoe
defend yourself from Dubya too
defend your right to bear your arm
defend your burglar alarm
defend your lawn defend its mower
defend your leaves defend their blower
defend your rocket's rocket science
defend your every last appliance
from terrorist attack and then
defend them staunchly once again
defend your fleet of SUVs
from serious contingencies
and while you're at it bold erect
defend defenses to protect
your FBI and CIA
defending the American way
defend your national anthem proud
defend it when you sing it loud,
defend your defensive linemen too
defend them till you're red white blue,
defend yourself and watch my back
you never know when they'll attack
defend from covert Arab bombs
conspiring with welfare moms
to deprive you of your hard-
earned platinum credit card
defend our telegenic war
defend the right to fight some more
defend our burgers and our fries
defend them without alibis
defend your sacred Christian right
to download God from Falwell's site
defend your temporary alliance
to secure permanent compliance
with covert interrogations done
by an agent with a loaded gun
there is no need to be afraid
of foreign or domestic raid
with weapons loaded, ready, aim
defend your honor and your name
defend Colombia and Peru
and Bangalore and Xanadu
defend our mountain majesty
from homeland insecurity
defend above our fruited plain
defend your bombs from crack cocaine
defend your holy war on drugs
from anthrax-breeding foreign thugs
defend your permanent war on terror
defend your testicles by the pair or
defend them boldly one by one
defend them with great fearful fun
defend collateral contraband
on damaged strips of holy land
if thoughts of nerve gas make you nervous
defend your right to armored service
defend from heroin from Iraq
smuggled in a sneak attack
inside weapons of mass destruction
defend your oil from foreign suction
defend your right to fight Iran
for pipelines through Georgebushistan
to North Korea and from there
to every country anywhere
defend us from that evil axis
defend from death defend from taxes
defend us from Eritrea
and foreign strains of gonnorhea
concocted deep in secret caves
by hidden nuclear warfare slaves
defend from germs covertly spreadin'
across the plain of Armageddon
defend defend defend defend
defend until the final end