"Emergency" Fatigue

Congress (and that means the American People) has been asked to save the financial speculators from their own follies, with the warning that if we don’t do something NOW, the sky will fall. When it was families getting caught up in the pursuit of the American dream, the chorus was "They should have known better." But now, after years of denial, the financial Wunderkind of Wall Street are getting buried in their own collapsing house of cards, and we’re all being told that they couldn’t possibly have seen it coming, and now we have an full-scale emergency on our hands.

Well, regardless of the cause, the "cure," as currently proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson, is downright toxic. The proposed bailout bill being pondered by Congress includes the following statement, known as "Section 8":

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" (emphasis mine).

What they are saying is that this is such a dire emergency that there’s no time to think about it, just trust us, pass the bill, give us unlimited power, write the check, and don't worry, because we'll do the right thing. They are screaming that there’s a Mac truck drifting into our lane, and we need to SWERVE SHARPLY NOW to the right in order to avoid it.

The only problem is that on the right, there is a 750 billion-foot cliff, with no shoulder, no guard rail, and no way but down. And I have a serious problem with the person at the wheel. Let’s take a look at his "driving record."

The Bush Administration did not heed the warning of the August 6, 2001, PDB, and a month later we were all stunned by 9/11. In response, Bush demanded "emergency" action, giving him broad "emergency" powers, and said that this had to be done in an "emergency" time frame. No time to ask questions, or to ponder the Constitutional questions and the long term consequences - just trust us, and pass the damned bill! So we had the PATRIOT Act rammed through Congress, giving tremendous, and likely unConstitutional, powers to the Executive Branch. In retrospect, however, it appears that this attack could likely have prevented, or at least mitigated, using intelligence and law that existed at the time - if the Administration had been paying attention. But never mind that. In the heat of the moment, we handed over the keys to the Constitution, and now that the dust has settled we have imprisonment without charges, extraordinary renditions, surveillance on US citizens, and God knows what else, because we also have an unprecedented level of government secrecy.

Then the Bush Administration assured us that their intelligence showed that Saddam Hussain posed an imminent threat to the US, and they needed "emergency" powers to launch an attack on Iraq - just trust us, we know what we're doing. We now know (and many of us knew at the time) that this was either a lie or incompetence. ("Nope, no weapons under here....") But again, the damage had been done.

The Bush Administration has funded this "Oops" war largely with "emergency" spending measures. It’s been over five years now. Any guise of "emergency" should be well-penetrated by now. I guess the emergency is that the war did not pay for itself with oil revenues, as they assured us it would. Again, "oops."

Now the same gang that has gotten it wrong on these other occasions is saying that the economy will collapse without an "emergency" bailout of Wall Street. It is way past time for cooler heads to prevail. These people have consistently screwed up on national security and military matters, and then they have screwed up the "emergency" responses. Now that they have put the economy in the dumper by enacting their dream of deregulation, they are asking us one more time to trust them as to what "emergency" measures will fix it. The message is by now a familiar one: No time to build in oversight. No time to think about it. Just pass the damn bill!

Been there, done that. It’s time to stop responding to their hysteria. Tell your congressional delegation to say "Thanks, but no thanks" on Paulson’s bailout plan. Tell them you’re tired of picking up the pieces of this Administration’s "emergencies." Tell them that after failure upon failure, they have not earned the blind, unquestioning, no-oversight trust they are again asking for. It’s time for Congress to think of consequences, for us and for our great-great-grandchildren. We need oversight if we are going to hand over $750 Billion (and I say "if" because I’m not convinced yet that we should give them a single dime).

Let’s calm down, take a deep breath, and while we’re trying to figure a way out of this hole let’s at least STOP DIGGING!

September 11, 2008 - what's really at stake today?

Seven years ago, in the blinding bright light of a beautiful autumn morning in New York, our lives changed. In days that followed, I wrote an essay that I was particularly proud of. I sent it around to family and friends, and I’m hoping someone kept a copy, because I cannot find it today. But watch for it to appear in the near future - I hope. But here are my thoughts today - and a warning that we are losing our democracy, and those freedoms for which our President tells us "they" attacked us.

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Another anniversary. Another day of solemn remembrances, talk of patriotism, solidarity, and our struggle in the "War on Terror."

We cite 9/11 as a line of demarcation between the world as we knew it and the world as it has become. We have heard that we were blissfully unaware of the dangers that were stalking us, and on 9/11 our eyes were opened. But I wonder if our eyes weren’t so much opened as was our gaze diverted. Even if we are now safer from crashing planes and falling buildings than we were on 9/10/01, are we safer? Are we safer from crime? Are we safer from losing our homes? Are we safer from ill health, or the poverty that can come from a single diagnosis? Are we safer from contaminated food? From ineffective drugs? From all of those things besides terrorist attacks that might strike us, kill us, or make our lives less worth living?

Are we really safer?

As a nation, the hijacking of planes on 9/11 did not change our lives as much as did the subsequent hijacking of our democracy. The people in power took the opportunity to exploit the most stunning moment in many of our lives, in order to carry out plans that by then had been in place for at least 10 years (PNAC, anyone?). And they had accomplices, either willing or unwitting, in the loyal opposition which failed to stop them. Terrorists in planes will not be what brings this country down. We are doing their work for them by allowing our "leaders" to lead us into surrendering our freedoms.

My outrage has not dimmed over the past seven years. Sen. Obama’s simple refrain of “Enough!” speaks for me. But even with all the hope generated by his historic campaign, nothing will change unless we take control. And we can’t take control unless we can vote.

And whether most of us know it or not, we can’t vote.

Make some time to sit and Google (or Yahoo, or whatever) the following phrases. I've made it easy for you. Just use cut and paste:

• Premier Voting Systems Ohio
• Diebold Ohio deliver
• Diebold Jeff Dean
• Don Siegelman Rove Leura Canary

Don’t stop yet! It gets worse:

• unsolicited absentee ballot democrat McCain
• foreclosure voter purge McComb County

If after this, your hair does not stand on end, you are using too much “product.”

Never mind planes flying into buildings. Never mind Valerie Plame. Never mind being lied into war. Never mind Katrina. Never mind foreclosures, the banks failing, and all the other headlines we have suffered throughout this past seven-plus years of occupation by the Bush administration. This is IT! This is the BIG ENCHILADA! If we lose our vote, we lose everything. And whether we know it or not, we have lost our vote, and it happened long before 9/11.

We have been blinded for so long, by so many other scandals, that it takes horrific events on the scale of 9/11 to make us feel anything anymore. But it’s time to wake up. What do we do? Write to your representatives and demand investigations of this issue. Then call their offices and demand it again. Call the media and demand they cover these stories. Contact their advertisers if they don’t cover it, and tell them how upset you are. Contact their advertisers if they DO cover it, and tell them you’ll be in their store tomorrow. Check your voter registration at least a month before the election, and then again in two weeks. Yes, I have done all these things, and nothing has really changed - yet. But any revolution comes from the steady trickle of individual efforts, which finally turns into a tidal wave. Read your history. I dare you.

9/11 was awful. But it took our eyes off the ball. We don’t have much time left to change that.

Game on.

Sarah, Sarah, how far have we really come?

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We’re having a garage sale today. In one box was my Ms. magazine collection, many from the 1980s, which my husband thought he’d finally talked me out of. But this morning I sat down on the futon (also for sale), and reached over and pulled out a random issue to look at for old times’s sake. Mistake. What I read inside, rather than being a trip backwards through times, was eerily reminiscent of things I might read in today’s paper.

From the 1980s:

• A story about female attorneys in court, having to tolerate comments about their dress or their looks, or having to put up with “terms of endearment.” But the female attorneys had their clients to think about, and therefore did not make any show of objection.

• An Orwellian piece of fiction that foresees a time when women’s periods would be monitored, to ensure that any pregnancy is detected and carried to term, under penalty of law, miscarriages being only slightly less criminal than abortion (analogous to manslaughter being slightly less criminal than first-degree murder).

• A 1984 feature by Donna Shalala, future Secretary of Health and Human Services, lamenting that women in the labor force got only 60% of the pay received by their male coworkers. She added that while some of this was a lack of equal pay for equal work, it was also due in part to the fact that traditionally “female” work was underpaid compared to equally demanding “male” work. She asked “Is a registered nurse really worth less than a tree trimmer?” (As a registered nurse who is married to a tree trimmer, I’m tempted to say that we’re both underpaid, but that would hardly be objective.)

• A clipping from 1983, about the first all-female crew in a C-1A from Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30 (VRC-30), conducting an operational mission terminating in a carrier-arrested landing - a feat considerably more difficult than parallel parking, and therefore worthy of respect in my book.

Jump to the 21st century:

• In 1999 (ok, technically the eve of the 21st century), Judge Jeanette Burrage of Des Moines, WA, threatened to sanction female lawyers who dared to wear pantsuits in her courtroom. Judge Burrage said she had never seen such a thing before - something that anyone with a working television set the following year - the year of Hillary’s basic black pantsuit - would be hard pressed to claim with any credibility.

• “Personhood” Initiative 48, on the ballot this fall in Colorado, endows legal “personhood” on a fertilized egg. So eat your veggies, ladies, because unhealthy behavior on your pregnant part could be murder.

• Women have made advances in the wage gap - kind of the same way that a glacier makes advances down a mountainside. As of 2006, we ladies were closing in on 77% of what the menfolk bring home. Whahoo! That ought to keep the girls happy until they find Mr. Right!

• Upon making the news for being selected as the first US female astronaut in 1983, Sally Ride was asked if women had finally “arrived.” She answered that women will have “arrived” when a female astronaut was no longer news. By that yardstick, I guess we’ve come a ways since Ms. Ride’s blast-off through that particular glass ceiling. But 25 years after the first all-female VRC-30 crew mentioned above, I’m still waiting for that first all-female shuttle to take off. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 7, 8, 9....

I did not go looking only for those 1980s stories that had a modern-day counterpart. I just looked at the magazines, found what I thought to be examples of sexism in the bygone days, and then Googled for similar examples from the past 10 years (the lifespan of my granddaughter). And I found an updated equivalent for each and every one. That’s how far we’ve come - not.

But now we are in the midst of an historic presidential campaign. A well-qualified and experienced woman took on the task of winning the Democratic nomination, and although she fell short of that goal, she fell only very slightly short of it. My own decision not to support her was not based on her gender, but on some of her positions, and her missteps as a candidate. Friends of mine, male and female, have expressed their own views on the subject, and not one of them has said that they couldn’t support her because they couldn’t trust a finely manicured finger on The Button. As part of achieving true equality, we have to learn that occasionally we will lose a fight based solely on our merits.

Now here’s the flip side.

John McCain, the other major political party’s apparent Presidential Pick, has decided who will fill his Vice Presidential slot. Here were some of the top candidates for that position, their political and executive experience, and their conservative “cred”:

Candidate #1: Resume includes running for U.S. President; CEO of a management consulting firm; CEO of the 2002 Olympic Games; served as Governor of an eastern seaboard state with 12 electoral votes; native son of a Midwest rust belt state with 17 electoral votes, as well as son of one of that state’s former governors.

Candidate # 2: Currently in his second term as governor of a Midwest state with 10 electoral votes; has a degree in Political Science; former Vice President of an internet consulting firm; experience as a labor attorney; former six-term member of the state legislature, where he was a fierce advocate of tax cuts, and did a turn as House Majority Leader; co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign.

Candidate # 3: Currently Governor of a key state with 27 electoral votes; was previously that same state’s attorney general; longtime advocate of capital punishment, reinstating the death penalty after lifting a moratorium by that state’s former governor; upheld his state’s prohibition on gays and lesbians adopting children, making his state the only one with such a ban; early career included serving as counsel to the minor league division of the Baseball Commissioner's Office, and as a staffer for U.S. Senator Connie Mack III.

Candidate #4: Less than two years into first term as governor of a remote, rural state with only 3 electoral votes; previous political post was mayor of a town of less than 5,000 souls; in a recent interview, when asked about being the possible pick for McCain’s running mate, asked “what is it exactly that the VP does every day”; anti-choice; pro-death penalty; lifetime NRA member; currently under an ethics investigation for abuse of power.

Oh, and she’s a girl.

The winner? Candidate #4!

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that the Good Old Boys picked her strictly for her appeal to women as a woman? Not that she’s completely unqualified. She is 35, a natural born citizen, and has some political experience beyond winning Homecoming Queen. But I find it hard to believe that she rose to the top of the pile, over other well-heeled contenders, based solely on her merits. I have to conclude (perhaps cynically, but no less legitimately) that the G.O.B. party (no, that’s not a typo) thinks I’ll be swayed by the “Girl Factor.” Well, if the G-Factor works, then after 88 years, maybe we really can’t be trusted with the vote.

Sarah Palin is an interesting public figure. She has a movie-screen bio: basketball star and beauty queen, “hockey mom” to five kids, a son shipping off to a war zone, and the moxie to take on the big boys at their own game. She might do well, although I have my doubts, and I’m passionately rooting for the other side. Other than significant political disagreements, it’s not really her that I have a gripe with. I can't blame her for taking the gig when it was offered to her. My bigger problem is with her party, and those handlers who picked her for the VP slot for what appear to be gender-based reasons. Sure, it would be historic to have the first female Vice President within my lifetime. (And OK, I do have a secret fantasy about Sarah giving ‘em Hell if they ask her to make the coffee at the first cabinet meeting.) But knowing that she attained that position because of her gender sort of takes the spring out of what would otherwise be one giant leap for womankind.

So I’m saving my Ms. collection. I plan to sit down someday with my granddaughter and my niece, and go through these snapshots of the late 20th century, to give them a perspective on what has - and hasn’t - changed. And how, just a generation or two ago, things they might take for granted - things that for them have always been - weren’t. And how all the discussion of the reversal of our advances is not just the hysteria of antique feminists trying to remain relevant. I’ll tell them that my own birth certificate has a space for “Father,” “Father’s Occupation,” and “Mother” - period. I’ll tell them that I was once told I didn’t need to make as much money as a less-qualified male nurse, because he had a family to support, and I’d probably get married to my own bread winner some day - and that at the time, that made sense to me. I’ll tell them these things, and show them these magazines, in the hopes that their jaws will drop and their hackles will raise, and they will guard these gains with the vigilance of a mother bear.

Then, only then, will I put these magazines back on the garage sale pile.

_______________________________________________

Funeral for a Fourth Amendement

I sent the rants below to Congress today. You should do the same.

____________________

Sent to Nancy Pelosi:

I am a native Californian, and constituent of yours due to your tremendous power over my life, and the future of my country, as Speaker. You control what gets to the floor, etc. PLEASE DERAIL THIS TELECOM BILL going through the House today. I'm angry enough that Impeachment - or even investigation - is "off the table," but don't shred the Constitution on top of it. You are the "check" in "check and balance," and I haven't seen much checking going on. Fine, compromise on some things, but NOT THE FOURTH AMENDMENT, PLEASE!

- - - - -

And to Jay Inslee, short and sweet, because I trust him to do the right thing:

NO on the Telco Bill, including immunity!!! This bill leaves oversight and enforcement almost EXCLUSIVELY in the hands of the very people who we can count on to abuse it: the Executive Branch.

____________________

.

But don't take my word on it. Read it for yourself:
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_080619_fisapromise.htm

And then let your representatives hear your rage! Call AND write.

The Senate takes this up next week, so get those dialing fingers ready!

I should know better

Scott McClellan testifies before Congress tomorrow. And, fool that I am, I find myself being just a little, teensy, tiny bit hopeful. I should know better. When it became apparent after the 2000 election that there were serious irregularities in the Florida election, and Bev Harris was sounding the alarm with her Black Box Voting organization, I thought “Well, this will get straightened out.” But it didn’t. Then we had 9/11, and after the dust had cleared, we started hearing about ignored PDBs, and I thought “This group will now be exposed for the incompetents that they are!” But we were too collectively traumatized to absorb it. When the facts started coming out after the invasion of Iraq (well, the facts were there before the invasion, but eventually people starting talking about them), I thought “OK, maybe people will finally start to catch on.” But there was never any real traction to it. Then there was the Valerie Plame affair. And I thought “This is clearly a matter of treason. Now the American people will be outraged enough and demand some answers!” Nope.

We passed milestones of 1000 dead Americans in Iraq. Two thousand dead. And the big three-oh-oh-oh, a tie with the unrelated but often cited number of people killed on 9/11. But the death toll only served to justify shutting our eyes, stopping our ears, and plunging ahead, to honor those who had died by sending in some more.

There was the 2004 election, and the obvious problems in Ohio. Surely, if there is a tipping point for outrage, this was it!.. But it wasn’t. Then there were the fired US attorneys. The stolen election in Alabama. The political prosecution and imprisonment of Governor Don Siegelman. Muzzling of government officials. Contractor fraud and waste in Iraq. Illegal wiretaps (and denials, followed by “Yeah, we did that. So what?”). Abu Ghraib. Katrina. Secret prisons. Extraordinary renditions. Torture. Just Google “Bush administration scandals” and you will have no shortage of lists. Just don’t do it before bedtime, though.

We’ve had testimony and tell-all from Paul O’Niell, Richard Clark, Richard Carmona, David Iglesias, John McKay, James Comey - again, there are lists aplenty to be had on line.

And now Scott McClellan. From what I have heard about his book, his testimony should be enough to sink any administration in a democratic society with a free and independent press... Oops! Forgot where I was.

Still, I’m hoping there will be that moment. That Watergate “What recordings?” moment. Call me foolish, but I remember a time when we impeached a president for a lie in a civil deposition. His detractors certainly accused him of much more, but that was the one thing they felt they could actually indict him on, and they had to dig for years to get just that. The Bush crimes are not even buried, but the press and our elected officials keep stumbling over them like so much clutter, and moving on to matters apparently far more important than defending the foundations of our liberty. Although they don’t say it, Congress’s actions - or inactions - reflect Bush’s own assessment of the Constitution as a “Goddamn piece of paper.”

But I’m hoping there will be that one question, and that one answer, that one piece of clutter that, despite their worst intentions, Congress will no longer be able to ignore. Yes, I should know better, but I keep hoping the obvious will finally be obvious enough. Call me a romantic, but if I don't keep hoping - and speaking and writing and voting - then it's over. And I rather like the country I grew up in. I want it back.

Dear Rep. Conyers: Protect and Defend, Please!

To Representative Conyers of Michigan:

On June 5th, you had a meeting with Code Pink, and laid out five reasons why you felt impeachment was not possible. What I hear in these reasons, as summarized in a number of sources, is “we’re too scared.” But we have men and women dodging bullets right now, because of what many of us believe to be impeachable offenses committed by this President. Those men and women took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Kinda’ like the oath you took. If our fighting forces in Iraq can take that oath and look death in the face, you can certainly look into the news camera and fulfill your own oath.

So here are my reasons against your reasons against impeachment:

• Reason one: While the majority of people in this country want Bush gone, they don't want impeachment.

Response: Polls don’t excuse you from your constitutional duty. Again, that pesky oath thing. And even though we don't all live in Michigan, every American is your constituent, because the Judiciary Committee, which you chair, is the People’s sole instrument for controlling potential tyranny from the Executive Branch. We cannot hold a recall election. We cannot put up an initiative for vote. We cannot knock on the door of the West Wing and execute a citizen's arrest. But if the President orders me snatched off the street and locked up because he takes exception to what I’ve written here, you and your committee are my only hope. That hasn’t happened to me yet, but the day is young. President Bush has said he has the power to declare me, or anyone within our borders, an enemy combatant. In Presidential Directive 51, he has also said he can declare martial law if he perceives a threat to the homeland - and he gets to define “threat.” It could be anything from another crime like 9/11 to a hurricane. And then he alone gets to decide when, or if, we get our Constitution back. That level of power should not be trusted in any one person, regardless of how popular the polls say he or she is.

Terrorists can blow up buildings, they can murder people, they can burn down our capitol, but that will not destroy the nation. The erosion of our rights and freedoms, however, will destroy us. There may still be a land mass dubbed “USA,” but the nation born in 1776 is slowly disappearing. At this point in time you, and you alone, could stop it.

Please stop it.

• Reason two: The corporate media will slay us.

Response: Once the facts start coming out, the media will be like a dog with a meaty, juicy bone. If it sells cars, computers or video games, they will pounce on the hearings, and the salacious facts coming out of testimony, like flies on honey. A jilted press secretary pouring his heart out over deceptions, lies, and the outing of a spy? If it means higher ratings, the corporate media will eat it up and ask for more.

• Reason three: Not enough time.

Response: Just what is the statute of limitation on mass murder?

• Reason four: Not enough votes.

Response: You’re a lawyer, Mr. Conyers. You know that we don’t decide whether or not to hold a trial by polling the jury before presenting evidence. Until you have hearings, how do you know how many votes there will be? Have hearings, uncover information, and see how many votes you get. Plus, even if you don’t convict anyone, you’d at least get the truth on the record, and maybe prevent this from happening again.

• Reason five: It could cost the Democrats the election if we pursue impeachment.

Response: It could cost my grandchildren their lives if we don’t. Failure to call them out on their offenses leaves the door open to more wars, not to mention more renditions, more secret prisons, more domestic spying, and a constant drumbeat of "be afraid, be afraid."

And historically, though there isn’t that much precident, elections have not always been the price of impeachment. After Nixon, Democrats won new seats. The hearings alone shocked the American public, and Nixon’s crimes were shoplifting compared to Bush’s. And although the Republicans lost seats after they impeached Clinton, consider the fact that Clinton was enormously popular at the time. The majority of the American people saw through the Republican’s sham. (We'll skip the trip in the WABAC Machine to the impeachment of Democrat Andrew Johnson, although that one didn't turn out to badly for the Republicans, either.)

So just have hearings, please? Have a hearing, maybe? Ask some questions. See where the momentum goes. Is that too much to ask to protect and defend our Constitution? PULEEEEEZE?

An open letter to my Democratic sisters: You're missing the point!

An open letter to Harriet, Koryne, and all my other sisters who would rather vote for John McCain than for the "spoiler" Barack Obama:

I am a woman "of a certain age." I have not forgotten the struggles of feminists during my life time. But in case you have forgotten: the whole point of the feminist movement was to make gender a non-issue. I remember the bad old days. I was told by my boss that while I could marry for money, my less-qualified coworker had his family to support and needed the higher salary. I have been told that my highly technical profession, because it is primarily a female workforce, should be content to take home "pin money." I have suffered the slings and arrows of sexism, and I apologize to no one for my feminist creds.

Hillary was the first woman in history to win a presidential primary, in any state. She had the first real chance at making it all the way. But under the Democratic primary process, that we have carried out for decades, the other candidate won. Not because Obama was a man and Hillary was a woman, but because the necessary number of people, in the necessary states, voted for Obama. The victory was that for the first time in history, a woman was taken seriously as a candidate.

So I have this to say to you: If you want to vote for McCain because you think he would do a better job than Obama of addressing those issues that inspired you to support Hillary, then God bless you (and God help you, while she’s at it!). But if you want to insist that, because Hillary is a she, either Hillary has the nomination or you will vote for Bush’s heir apparent, regardless of how many more wars result, how many more children go to bed hungry, or how many women die because of reproductive rights eroded by McCain-appointed judges, then you are as sexist as any of the men who have patted us on our pretty little heads throughout history. This is not about our "tribe." This is about the Supreme Court. This is about our tenuous national security. This is about our crumbling infrastructure, our unequal health care, our children’s education, and the next generation’s very survival.

Barack Obama won the nomination. He would have won even with Florida and Michigan counted at 100%. We followed the process, Hillary had an honest shot at it, and she nearly made it. That’s progress. Now please don’t disenfranchise the rest of us who want an end to this right-wing insanity before we lose more of our children, whether in the Green Zone or the inner city. Voting for McCain to spite the rest of us is not going to get you any closer to what you say you want: a woman in the White House. Because if you are holding gender over all other qualities, then you have truly missed the point of the feminist movement.