After the Debate? Angry & Frustrated.

Posted on 10/03/2008 by Jane Devin

I’ve studiously avoided the topic of politics since my feckless peers threw Hillary Clinton out with the bath water. I’ve bitten my tongue against denigrating phrases like “the bubba factor” to describe the working class. I’ve sat on my hands to prevent myself from writing diatribes against poisonous but persistent Republicans, and vaporous, elitist liberals.

I’ve tried to get behind the Democratic nominee, even though he was not my first choice. Maybe, I think, Obama’s two year campaign for the nomination while in the Senate wasn’t as calculated as it seems. Perhaps he was right when he said he couldn’t accomplish what he wanted politically while in Congress. Maybe his lack of national and international experience isn’t such a bad thing. In any case, as a lower class, gay, liberty-loving, pro-choice, pro-peace, uninsured Democrat who is swimming upstream in this corrupt, leaden economy – and who doesn’t want her government, courts, and schools ruled by religious dogma – Barack Obama became the only choice I could make, regardless of my reservations.

I knew that, so I un-bookmarked my favorite news sites, determining that outside of casting my vote there was not much else for me to do. The professional pundits would have their say a million times over, darts would be thrown and re-thrown, minds would be made-up fairly early, but barring another voting disaster like the one that was created in 2000, we would know who our future President was in November. I had, and still have, confidence that it will be Barack Obama.

Then again, I remember the polls which had Gore leading significantly, and I will never forget that we ended up with a President who did not win the popular vote. There was corruption at some polling places, problems with machines, and disputes over absentee ballots. The hanging chad debacle in Florida brought us televised images of Republican thugs, looming over vote counters like second-rate Mario Puzo characters. In the end, it was an “activist court” – the same kind of court Republicans say they despise – that handed George his imperialist crown, and allowed him to bring this country to where it is now – on the brink of a major meltdown across every board. Still, the vote was close enough to be in dispute. It was close enough to leave delegates and the courts breathing room.

As I drive around the wealthy suburbs in the heartland of Minnesota, I see the McCain-Palin signs that those living closer to the city don’t see in any appreciable number. It worries me, but more than that, it leaves me feeling angry in a way that maybe only someone else who has really struggled in the past eight years can understand.

I watched Sarah Palin and Joe Biden politely dance with each other last night. Her folksy charm, his bleached smile. Her giddy smile, his gentlemanly charm. Her soccer moms and “Joe Six Packs” to his Scranton coffee shops and gas stations. It was an easy debate, mellow and slowly paced, and from where I sit – in the living room of my rented apartment (where I’m a month behind on rent since my hours got cut) – passionless. Neither candidate exhibited a sense of urgency over any of the issues facing us today, and both seemed out of touch with a large portion of middle America – who aren’t just worried about sending Billy and Suzy to college, but about being able to provide them with essential basics, like food and shelter.

Yet the increasingly poor working and middle classes weren’t really addressed in the debate – except that Palin wants to make sure that they can’t declare bankruptcy. Here in Minnesota, bankruptcy reform included a provision stating that attorneys must be paid their fees up-front before the paperwork is filed, at an average cost of $1600. It’s a law that allows wealthier filers immediate relief, and that prevents those who are living in poverty from filing at all. That was the Republican solution to what they perceived as massive bankruptcy fraud – to give richer Americans an out while further crippling the poor, whose jobs are the first to go, who are the least likely to have medical or disability insurance, and who cannot afford to stop judgments and wage and tax garnishments against them.

Palin said there were some “good lessons” to be found in these corrupt, predatory, pro-wealthy, anti-poor times. People, she said, shouldn’t live above their means. They shouldn’t buy a $300,000 house when they can only afford a $100,000 house. Which might be good advice, if a $100,000 house truly existed as anywhere near the average anymore. Instead, a vastly inflated real estate market has left Minnesotans with $230,000 “starter homes”, and in some new developments, the tiny tract of land those homes are on aren’t even included, but are to be bought after the home mortgage is paid off. This was one of tactics used in order to create the appearance of “affordable” housing, which, in actuality, has ceased to exist. A two-bedroom rental apartment in the Twin Cities metro runs about $1200 without utilities. My daughter’s first mortgage, on a three bedroom town home, is $1600 and that doesn’t include the association fees.

In the meantime, the minimum wage is still less than $7 in most states, Target employees are still starting off at $8.00-$10.00 per hour, and bus drivers make $10-$12. The starting pay for a public school teacher in Minnesota averages $29,907. Factoring in 30% for taxes, and the cost of health insurance (if available) it is easy to see how and why so many Americans are living “above their means”. It’s the economy, stupid, and buying a cheaper brand of toilet paper and clipping coupons isn’t going to get the average working class American out of the downward spiral of debt.

The myopic Palin, though, doesn’t wish to “point the finger of blame” or “look back”. Which is odd, considering the blunders and transgressions of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the level of corporate corruption and political underhandedness during their reign. An unwillingness to admit these issues even exist doesn’t exactly bode well for a future of tackling them head-on. (Where are those missing Halliburton millions by the way?)

Someone will, I’m sure, take the time to count the number of times Palin said the word “maverick”. I lost count. McCain may have once had some maverick ideas, but his ideas today, on everything from health insurance to troop withdrawal, are ineffectual and stale, promising nothing more to the working and middle classes of this country than more of the same, for longer.

Then again, what we have from Barack Obama and Joe Biden is hope, and I feel scant little of that, particularly after Obama (and McCain and Clinton) voted yes on a (now) $800B bailout, filled with pork barrel spending, that EXCLUDED consumer protections that were part of original bill. Taxpayers will now not only be helping some of the most corrupt and predatory lenders on Wall Street, but they’ll also be shelling out $478M to the film industry for making movies in America, and $192M in rebates to rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

“It is completely unacceptable for any kind of earmarks to be included in this bill,” said McCain the week before he voted on the bill. Later, he said he “had to” support the plan because the country is “on the brink of economic disaster.” Eschewing Palin’s advice, McCain looked back and pointed a congratulatory finger at himself. “There were plenty of other bills that I fought against, voted against” because of pork, he said. This one, though, which takes corporate welfare to a whole new level, and which is the most massive gamble in U.S. economic history, McCain helped pass.

And Barack Obama voted right along with him, as did the majority of Congress, even while the public’s phone calls to Senate offices were running about 100-1 against. What can be said about politicians who ignore the will of their constituents, and who refuse to rise above the din of political panic to fight for what’s right, just, and proper? Even if one was to believe a bailout was the solution, there was no logical reason for the pork barrel earmarks, or the exclusion of consumer protections. I find it ironic that the two men who are promising to bring change to Washington – to end “business as usual”– have failed to do this as Senators. Instead, lesser known mavericks from both parties, willing to risk Wall Street’s disfavor and unpopularity among their peers, were the ones who stood up against the tide and said no.

There were no mavericks in last night’s debate and sadly it appears there are none on the horizon. There’s Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin – some hope for change, or more of the same. There are all the usual cliches from both sides, a disconcerting lack of substance, an unwillingness to fight the good fight, and there’s been no sense of urgency about anything other than Wall Street’s financial institutions.

As for the war, and spending for the war, I am amazed by the misleading rhetoric. Funding for the military has not just gone towards armor and equipment for the troops, it has gone to enormously expensive contracts for giant private entities like Halliburton. Voting against “funding the troops” isn’t always about the troops, but about who we’re choosing to rebuild parts of countries we have demolished, how much we’re willing to pay, and how accountable we wish to hold them.

Patriotically baiting one-liners such as “brave men and women who have died for our freedom” continue to be used to chill dissent. The awful truth is that many of our dead soldiers did not to save our freedom. Our freedom was not in danger of being taken away. While 9-11 was an unparalleled disaster on American soil, it was not an attack from another country, but from a group of Muslim extremists, most of whom hailed from our government’s ally, Saudi Arabia. Our freedom from terrorist attacks since that event can be attributed more to tightened security at our own borders than waging war abroad. Very few of the major extremists, including Bin-Laden, have been caught and even if they were, the destructive bane of radical Islam would not stop with their capture. Further, even if America and her allies could force democracy on Islamic states, there is no guarantee – and more than a strong likelihood – that it would be temporary. Islam does not separate the political from the religious, and Sharia law, which Muslims subscribe to as part of their faith, is at odds with American-style democracy.

Our want (and greed) of oil from these regions has, in so many ways, hampered the evolution of the Middle East. We have propped up dictators and made multi-billionaires out of royal families. We have funded madrassas, educated their scientists, and given technology and weaponry to oppressive armies. Our worries that the religious extremists in the Middle East will go nuclear are not without basis – yet we continue to pour money and other resources into the region for the sake of oil. At the same time, we have failed miserably in developing, producing, and promoting other forms of energy.

I am angry. Disgusted. Disappointed.

But I’ll vote for hope, even if scant and waning, because the alternative is just too frightening to consider.

Marion Jones, Meet Halliburton

Posted on 01/12/2008 by Jane Devin

Olympic medalist Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in jail yesterday on two counts of perjury, after admitting to lying to federal investigators about her steroid use. Following the serving of her sentence, Jones will be on probation for two years and serve 800 hours of community service.

Somehow, I am reminded of Martha Stewart. Perhaps because in both cases, the judges wanted to impress on their defendants and the public the seriousness of lying.

“I want people to think twice before lying,” Judge Karas said to Marion Jones. “I want to make them realize no one is above the law.”

“Lying to government agencies during the course of an investigation is a very serious matter,” said Judge Miriam Cedarbaum at Martha Stewart’s sentencing. “A term of incarceration is justified and appropriate in this case.”

Lying to investigators and obstruction of justice are, it goes without saying, against the law. Jones pled guilty, and a jury convicted Stewart. Both begged for mercy from their respective judges and some would argue that their sentences were lenient. I won’t argue that point. (I won’t even talk about the dozens of (male) athletes who consistently denied steroid use, and who received only suspensions or a slap on the wrist, although I’m sure someone will – and should). Instead, what I’d like to talk about is Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and middle-class outrage.

One dead giveaway of a middle-class person is obvious sticker shock. When we see the prices at a high-end restaurant, or a brand name clothing store, our eyebrows raise and our mouths fall open in disbelief. We can’t help it. Our middle class sensibilities began when we first heard the word ‘no’ and realized that it applied to us. In prepubescence we learned that work is hard, money doesn’t grow on trees and that one day we, too, would appreciate generic cans of surprise fruit and “slightly-off” bargain basement jeans, even if we did have to hem two inches from one leg, or cover a cigarette burn on the calf with a Peace patch.

When we got our first minimum wage paycheck from that summer job we needed “in order to learn what responsibility means”, we began to understand that there’s no such thing as easy money. We began to look at price tags in terms of labor hours: a two-hour T-shirt, an eight-hour concert, a 40 hour leather jacket.

Now, as hard-working adults, we budget even our spontaneity. We faithfully add $10 a week to our Christmas Club accounts, and keep a cookie jar of “mad money” that rarely goes past two digits. Our impulse to buy the latest gadget is tempered by knowing we’ll have to pack our lunches for the next six months. And anytime we have to write a check that has more zeroes before the decimal point than after, we feel a little faint.

While it’s true that many of us are stunned by the $9,000,000,000,000.00 (nine TRILLION) dollar debt of our Bush-plundered nation, we understand democracy in action. When the majority of our peers (or the U.S. Supreme Court) hands us a President, he belongs to all of us, come prosperity and good times — or scandal, corruption, and war. We understand the give-and-take of taxes and government budgets, and know that eventually, even if it takes decades ( and it will), we’ll work together to ease this astounding debt.

It’s the obvious pillaging of our communal coffers by private corporations that really throws us into apocalyptic shock, and topping the list of thieving, ink-stained hands are those belonging to Dick Cheney’s pals at Halliburton.

Even though Halliburton moved their base of operations out of the U.S. in March, 2007 and into the friendlier country of Dubai so that they could save paying taxes on the billions of dollars of profit they enjoyed through their no-bid U.S. contracts – and even though they divested themselves of their most controversial subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), last April – Halliburton continues to be a source of angst for many Americans, particularly those who don’t like being gouged, exploited, lied to, railroaded, evaded, and shut out.

The list of Halliburton’s crimes and misdeeds against America is staggering. Billions of dollars are missing, billions more were wasted. Among the charges spelled out in Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) hearings held from 2003-2006:

* Halliburton billed taxpayers $1.4 billion in questionable and undocumented charges under its contract to supply troops in Iraq, as documented by the Pentagon’s own auditors.

* Halliburton charged taxpayers for services that it never provided and tens of thousands of meals that it never served.

* Halliburton employees burned new trucks on the side of the road because they didn’t have the right wrench to change a tire — and knew that the trucks could be replaced on a profitable “cost-plus” basis, at taxpayer expense.

* Halliburton chose a subcontractor to build an ice factory in the desert even though its bid was 800 percent higher than an equally qualified bidder.

* Halliburton actively discouraged cooperation with U.S. government auditors, sent one whistleblower into a combat zone to keep him away from auditors, and put another whistleblower under armed guard before kicking her out of the country.

* Under its no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure contract, Halliburton overcharged by over 600 percent for the delivery of fuel from Kuwait.

Before he became Vice President, Cheney sold his stock in Halliburton to the tune of $20 million, and assigned any future profit to an irrevocable charitable trust. The question is not whether Cheney is now profiting from government contracts – the answer would appear to be no – the question is how Halliburton became the beneficiary of such wealth in the first place.

It can hardly be denied that Halliburton has a long history of corruption and war profiteering. Under Cheney’s guidance, the company engaged in fraudulent accounting practices, which added $89 million dollars in revenue to their bottom line. Halliburton paid 7.5 million as a settlement to the Securities Exchange Commission to avoid a lawsuit, even as former employees stepped forward to indicate the problem was much deeper and more pervasive than the SEC originally thought.

While Cheney was leading Halliburton, millions in allegedly illegal payments were made to Nigerian officials by Halliburton’s subsidiary, KBR, for the construction of a natural-gas plant in Nigeria. There’s also the $73 million dollars that Halliburton is accused of making when, again, under Cheney’s reign, they defied U.S. sanctions and did business with Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Then there’s the $7 billion dollar no-bid contract awarded to KBR, and more – so much more that we, the wide-eyed, mouth-agape middle class have to wonder — who’s going to jail?

While judges are busy making big public examples out of small-time crime mavens like Marion Jones and Martha Stewart, the wheels of justice in Washington seem to have skipped off the wagon .

In 2005, Senate Republicans defeated a measure that would have established a special committee to investigate Halliburton, but promised that hearings would be held by a subcomittee of the Armed Services Committee, led by John Ensign, R-NV. They also stated that Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction would conduct an investigation. Two years and two months later, the American public is still waiting.

Bunnatine H. Greenhouse is waiting, too. Greenhouse, you probably (don’t) recall, was the chief civilian procurement executive for the Army Corps or Engineers, who was removed from her job after criticizing the no-bid contract the U.S. signed with Halliburton-KBR. “I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed,” said Greenhouse during the DPC hearings. Those strong words, coming from a twenty-year government veteran, have faded into the background of diversionary politics, including overall debate about the Middle East and Senate tub-thumping during an election year.

Those of us who remember Whitewater – the Republican-led witch hunt against the Clintons which took 12 years and cost taxpayers $70M (and which Ken Starr, lacking sufficient evidence, gleefully turned into a sex scandal) – have to wonder at the hypocrisy. The Clintons lost money on the Whitewater venture, and it was their own money, not the U.S. taxpayers. In the end, fourteen people were convicted on various charges, many not related to Whitewater. There was no evidence of financial or ethical wrong-doing by either Bill or Hillary Clinton.

Where’s the call to investigative arms with Halliburton and KBR? Where’s the fiery outrage of the conservative moralists now? How is it possible that those who claim to hold taxpayer money in higher regard than their “tax and spend” liberal counterparts have turned a blind eye to the outrageous thefts perpetrated by Halliburton and company?

The same right-wing politicians who screamed impeachment over one President’s private sexual activity, have stood in vocal and voting solidarity with a President and Vice-President who have lied to the American people, thrown our military into an unjust war, brought the country to the brink of financial ruin, usurped the U.S. Constitution with the Patriot Act, arrogantly defied the Geneva Convention, ignored the United Nations, advocated torture, and broken both promises and treaties.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the demagogues of the right-wing have turned blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to the abuses of Halliburton and Company, but we are. We’re surprised that the issue of anabolic steroid use received more Congressional attention in 2003, 2004 and 2005 than the issue of billions of missing dollars and Halliburton’s war profiteering. But what really throws us for a loop is the spinelessness of the Democrat-majority Congress we elected in 2006, which has not stood up to the Bush administration as we expected it to, or taken the type of swift, immediate action we wanted to stop the hemorrhaging of U.S. tax dollars.

Election year or not, divided or not, our nation owes its taxpayers a strict accounting, and it’s the job of Congress to ensure that we get one, and to see to it that those who are responsible for perhaps the largest and most collusive theft in the history of the United States are brought to bear.

That would be an example worth setting.

Limbaugh: A $250M Fraud*

Posted on 10/04/2007 by Jane Devin

In the early eighties, before he was cleaned up and suited up, Rush Limbaugh worked for the same company I did, McClatchy Broadcasting. Back then, before Limbaugh’s show was picked up for syndication, his pants hung too low and there were buttons missing from his stained shirt. He was a typical not-ready-for-TV radio personality and his arrogance was palpable, but nowhere near the bombastic proportions he displays today.

Talk radio loves the outrageous, and Limbaugh’s show, which preceded a groundswell of right-wing programs delivered after the FCC’s 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, delivered heftily. His “dittoheads”, those unthinking, knee-jerk dogmatists of political Christianity (not to be confused with actual Christianity) knighted Limbaugh their authoritative godhead. A popular personality was born, sharply dressed and looking dapper in colorful, now-signature ties.

Buoyed by a band of thick-skulled conservatives, who conveniently ignored their own stated sociopoltical agendas to wave their hero through two additional divorces and a drug scandal, Limbaugh has thrived by finely polishing the muck of conservatism to a we-can-do-no-wrong shine. It’s the kind of anemic but hyperbolic gloss that appeals to the same type of blind-faith crowd that followed Oral Roberts and really believed he would die if they didn’t send him eight million dollars. Roberts received 9.1 million. Limbaugh signed an eight-year $250 million dollar contract in 2001 and received a $35 million dollar hiring bonus. The blind faith of the dittoheads and the corporate world that panders to them is staggering.

On September 26, 2007 Limbaugh blasted soldiers who want American forces out of Iraq as “phony soldiers“. Limbaugh, who dropped out of college after less than three semesters due to failing grades, avoided serving his country by being 4-F’ed for a pilonidal cyst – otherwise known as an often-hairy boil just above or inside the butt crack.

A man who never served his country, and who has no children in the war zone, or children whose futures he has to worry about, daring to call any soldier “phony” is a hypocrite of the worst kind. A man who never withstood the 110 degree heat of Iraq while lugging around seventy pounds of gear, waiting for the next order or the next assault, never knowing if today would be his last day of life, is not a man who should be referring to anyone in the military as “phony.”

The picture in the header for this story is my daughter, Staff Sergeant Elisabeth Devin, a flight medic and reservist, who volunteered to go to Iraq – not because she wanted to kill people, not because she believes Bush’s war is just – but because she wanted to help her fellow soldiers who were wounded at war. She wanted to help bring them to hospitals so that those who lived could eventually come home.

Phony? Ask Elisabeth the story of the critically wounded African man fighting for American forces, who couldn’t get into a German hospital due to red tape. Ask her about the brave and limbless young men she carried on stretchers and comforted as they realized that the future they planned was not going to be the future they lived. Ask her about the flags they flew, and the tears they cried, and the sheets they pulled over the faces of the young men who didn’t survive.

Ask me, or any parent or loved one of a soldier, about the sleepless nights, the fear, and the anxious wait for letters and calls. I was very fortunate. My wait ended with my daughter safe and at home. Thousands of parents, spouses, partners, children and other loved ones were not as lucky.

As usual, Limbaugh spins the story and creates a scenario in which he did no wrong and meant no offense – he was taken out of context, he cries – it’s all a smear job by MSNBC, the “liberal media”, and those shadowy leftists who are always out to get him. However, his own words – the unedited version that he denied his own listeners access to while launching his weak defense – tell the truth.

Rush Limbaugh should be ashamed, but shame is not a part of his gig. And $250M can’t buy a conscience where none exists.

*Fraud:
intentional deception resulting in injury to another person
imposter: a person who makes deceitful pretenses
something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage