Month: December 1998

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Robbing the Poor

While Americans pour billions of dollars, through charities, into foreign aid, American banks rake back more than ten times as much, in interest payments on loans negotiated with illegitimate military dictatorships. Most of these loans were used to line the pockets of the generals and their cronies, or buy weapons from U.S. and European manufacturers. The weapons were used to put down rebellions by their own people. The people were rebelling against governments that squandered their money on weapons instead of schools, agricultural development, roads, and hospitals.

This is an unbelievable fact but it is absolutely true: the so-called “third world”, the poorest countries on the globe, pour billions of dollars into the economies of the rich West, while receiving barely a trickle back in foreign aid. Their schools, hospitals, and transportation systems are starving for funds. Their people are literally starving. Yet we shamelessly continue to demand that they pay us back every last penny of the money borrowed by scumbag generals who seized power illegally, ruled by force, and tortured and exploited their own people.

Any person with common sense can see that if a bank chooses to lend money to a dictator, they have no right to expect the oppressed victims of that dictator to repay the loans. First our banks raped these countries; now they demand that they make us dinner.

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Denmark: Copenhagen, City of Dreams

Copenhagen is a city of about 1.6 million people. It is the capital of Denmark. It is the capital of the country that gave us the charming women’s curling team that finished second at the Nagano Winter Olympics.

During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, you might have heard the following argument, in one form or another:

Liberal: “In Europe, an affair like this would been regarded as ridiculously unimportant.”
Conservative: “That’s because European morality is lower than ours. If we don’t impeach Clinton, it will show that we are just as perverted as the Dutch, or Danes, or French.”

Gee. Who’s right? Well, Danish women sometimes leave their offices at lunch time to sunbathe topless in the city parks. I guess that’s pretty bad behaviour.

On the other hand, Copenhagen has about seven murders a year. New York City has about 1500. Of course, New York is ten times the size of Copenhagen, so let’s make it a fair comparison. Copenhagen would have 60 murders a year, if it were the size of New York.

Which leaves you with a puzzle. If the Danes are so decadent, and so unchristian, why aren’t they out stabbing, robbing, shooting, raping, and bombing each other into oblivion, like all evil people do? And if America is the last bastion of Christian morality in the so-called civilized west, why are American cities so violent and lawless?

I’ll try to argue like a conservative for a minute.
1. Just because the Danes don’t rob, murder, rape, or beat each other doesn’t mean they’re not leading lives of pernicious debauchery, and, therefore, actually leading more sinful lives than Americans do. They probably have more illicit sex than we do.
2. The population of Denmark is fairly uniform ethnically and socially. They don’t have the class divisions that America has.
3. What do we care? We’re bigger and stronger, so we’re right.

Besides, we don’t believe you. You’re probably playing a statistical trick on us. We can’t prove you’re wrong, because we don’t know anything about Denmark and we’ll never care enough to know anything about Denmark, but we’re Americans, so we can be as stupid as we want to be.

Argument 1 implies, of course, that illicit sex is just as bad as robbery and murder, so can we dismiss that one as silly? The only argument that makes any sense, of course, is argument number 2. The trouble is, you have to ask yourself whether a nation that prides itself on its Christian heritage should go around bragging about it’s class divisions and its inability to resolve them. So when Americans say, “You Europeans— the reason you find our obsession with the Clinton scandal so laughable is because you are morally inferior to us!” the accusation rings a little hollow.

Conservative churches in the U.S. never tire of reminding us of how God blesses those who obey Him and follow His commandments. If America really is more faithful to Christian morality than continental Europe is, then why is its prison population bulging at the seams? Why does it have the highest infant mortality rate of the developed world? Why does it vote the same way on international treaties as China and Libya do? Why does it have so many more poor people, as a percentage of the population, than any other G7 nation?

Americans are generally a likeable people. They are generous, on a personal level, to a fault. They can be moved by compassion when disaster or misfortune strikes. They seem to have a strong sense of fair play.

And on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, they (the people, not the Republicans) consistently see things the way Europeans do. They don’t believe that what Clinton did is worth all the trouble of impeachment. And they’re right.

The funny thing is, if this really was an issue of Christian morality, why is it that Christian “leaders”, like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, are so utterly devoid of the quality of mercy? Why are they so unwilling to forgive? Why did Jerry Falwell sponsor a video “documentary” on Clinton that is filled with lies, exaggeration, half-truths, and distortions, including ridiculous allegations that Vince Foster was murdered? (You have to ask yourself what kind of resources Jerry Falwell would have that Kenneth Starr didn’t have?) Why are these leaders filled with so much hatred for the Clintons, especially Hillary?

 

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Telephobia

Can’t resist revisiting this for my usual annoying ideas– what’s so great about the blasted telephone? It hangs on your wall. It sits there. It makes an annoying noise. You run to answer it. You don’t know who it is. You can’t see the person you’re talking to. It’s probably a salesman or a wrong number or an annoying neighbor– but, it’s too late! You picked it up. You said “hello”.

I think we should change the rules. When you pick up the phone, you should just listen. The other person should say, “Hi, it’s Bill– is anybody there?” Then you can decide. You can say, “You again? Go away” or you could say, “Bill? I’m moving this weekend and I have 45 boxes of books and need help– you have to come over.”

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Pants on Fire: Analysis of a Scandal

Pants on Fire

After six months of debate, personal attacks, screaming, hollering, and fits of hysteria, there’s really nothing new to add the Clinton debate. The biggest, most flatulent paradox of the whole thing is when all these Republicans line up with their phony serious faces and insist that this is “painful” for them and they didn’t really want to do it but they have to impeach the leader of the free world for lying. They even claim– and this is an outrage– that Nixon had similarly high approval ratings on the day he was impeached.

Let’s get this straight. On the day of the Watergate break-in, Nixon’s approval ratings were, in fact, decent– around 60%. But as the Watergate scandal unfolded, and as testimony revealed more and more about the criminal activities (not merely immoral: criminal) of the White House, Nixon’s approval ratings plummeted, down to a low of 27% on the day he resigned.

So those Republicans who claim that Nixon’s approval ratings were the same as Clinton’s are, of course lying. They are also lying when they claim that they are paying a political price for their “principled” stand. Almost all of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee face no serious opposition for re-election in their own ridings. The truth is, they could go around wearing a dress and throwing custard pies at Vernon Jordan and still be re-elected in their solidly Republican districts. The truth is that they receive so much money from the corporations that benefit from their corrupt legislative agendas that they will be re-elected until, like Strom Thurmond, they are pretty well senile.

They give all these interviews where they say they have to see the evidence first, and they haven’t made up their minds. Then every last single one of them votes “guilty”, like we all thought they would.

There has never been so much lying in any single repository of political deliberation since the Nixon White House.

The bottom line is very simple. If Clinton had clearly committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”, as Nixon did, there would have been at least five or six Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voting for impeachment, and at least 30-45 Democrats in the House voting for impeachment. That’s all it would take to establish that there really are objective criteria at work here and that they are really being applied fairly, and that this is not a partisan political attack. Unless you seriously believe that every single member of the Democratic Party is a lying weasel.

Well, the Republicans want you to believe that every single Republican Representative is voting their conscience.. That is what they are saying. They ask you to believe this. Do you believe they believe it themselves? If they don’t believe it themselves, they are lying. If they do believe it themselves, they either fanatic or clinically insane or both. If they believed itself, there would be no backroom dealing, no arm-twisting, no secret meetings, no closed-door caucuses….. Come on… do you believe it?

What does this remind you of? The old Soviet Union? The Communist government would declare that this writer or that dissident was a threat to the state and must be expelled or imprisoned or whatever. And every single member of the government would vote for this measure. The vote would be something like 350-10. Just as the Republicans now vote 220-5 in favour of impeachment. Nobody doubted then that the vote was farce, just as no one should doubt it now.

The Republicans keep insisting that it’s up to the Democrats to break the partisan logjam. In other words, we can be bipartisan as long as you vote the way I tell you to.

That is the prosecution–and they clearly are the prosecution– insisting that the defense prove that their client is innocent. “If he really didn’t do it, prove it.” No such burden in law exists. It is the Republicans who want to impeach. It is their job to convince at least some Democrats and the majority of Americans that Clinton should be impeached. They have utterly failed. And if they had any respect for the democratic system of government, they would admit that they simply cannot carry out an impeachment along purely partisan lines, and therefore must stop.

But they don’t care. The most frightening thing about this debacle is the way it has laid bare the Republicans bald contempt for democratic values whenever it stands in the way of their partisan agenda. They literally do not care what anyone thinks. They have the muscle– just barely– to impeach, and a legal technicality to hang it on, and so they will. It is very troubling that so very few Republicans–about five–have the integrity to admit that, no matter what they believe personally, they simply cannot carry out such a momentous process without some bipartisan support. You simply can’t do it, without doing serious damage to the institution of government. No matter how convinced you are that you are right, if you have any integrity or respect for democracy, you can’t go forward. You admit that you failed. You say, “well, if the American people really want him, and we can’t persuade anybody else that he’s guilty, so be it.” Instead, the Republicans say, “what do we care what the voters want or whether the process is credible. Look at CNN? Analysis is about as deep as Tupperware. Everyone will forget this within six months.”

The moment of truth in this debate was the moment that Henry Hyde said, “You may disagree with us, but at least we believe in something.” In other words, this is really a religious battle. We are God’s chosen, and you are the apostates. We know we are right, because God told us the truth, and it is our duty to enlighten you. Why should we consider other points of view, when we’re right? Debate is utterly useless. This, spoken by a man who, when he was Clinton’s age, also had an adulterous affair.

Reagan got off very lightly with the Iran-Contra scandal, largely because most Democrats, as much as they disagreed with Reagan, respected the fact that he had commanding support (almost as good as Bill Clinton’s) from the voters. And they didn’t think it would be worth turning the government upside down just to shove their own views down the throat of the body politic. Unlike the Republicans, they realized they could not proceed without wide public consensus that the offenses committed were serious enough to warrant impeachment. The Republicans have no such compunction.

The extremism of the Republicans has forced moderates too far to the right. Not only were Clinton’s offenses not worthy of impeachment, they are not even worthy of censure. They are not worthy of a hiccup. Unlike Watergate and Iran-Contra, they had nothing to do with the exercise of power. The real question to ask yourself– and most American voters appear to have asked it– is what harm was done. The affair was consensual. Paula Jones’ case, by all credible accounts, would have died in any court room (she could never prove that she had suffered any harm, even if the incident in the hotel room really happened). The initial Paula Jones lawsuit, and the now-repudiated testimony of the state troopers, has well-documented links to multi-millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, an arch-foe of President Clinton. Jerry Falwell has links to the film company “Jerimiah Productions” which created “The Clinton Chronicles”, a farcical video that alleges murder and mayhem in the Clinton White House and gives new meaning to the word “paranoid”. Several “witnesses” who provided derogatory stories to the Financial Post and other newspapers were paid by “Citizens for Honest Government”, an anti-Clinton organization with links, again, to Falwell.

On the other hand, Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully traded weapons to an enemy of the U.S. (Iran) in return for the release of hostages in Lebanon. He broke the law. He showed poor judgement. And to any but the most gullible, he lied about it.

It looks like a big mess now. The country has been tied up for months with this insane investigation. Character assassination and invasion of privacy is now accepted as political stratagems. Perhaps the most cynical development in the whole scandal is the party line of the Republicans: “See what Bill Clinton hath wrought!” This is, without a doubt, what Kenneth Starr and the Republicans have wrought. It is only due to their incredibly stubborn and devious machinations that this affair continues to dominate the headlines.

The media have performed about as badly as Republicans, and continue to make the insane assertion that Clinton’s presidency is now permanently “tainted” with this scandal. CNN is the 24-hour Impeachment channel, with music and graphics that make it seem like a great sporting event, complete with colour commentators and sponsors.

I firmly believe that within five years, this scandal will be rightly regarded as one of the ugliest examples of partisan political muckraking in the history of the U.S., and the blame will be squarely laid on the shoulders of Newt Gingrich, Kenneth Starr, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde, and their fellow raving hypocrites.

Finally, I have to express my utter astonishment at the resilient good sense of the average American voter. I did not believe that public opinion would withstand the onslaught of six months of raving lunacy, by the Republicans, by CNN, by NBC, ABC, and CBS (who recalled Dan Rather from Cuba to cover the stained dress), and even so-called “liberal” papers, like the New York Times.

Why did the media treat the story the way they did, if Clinton’s actions did not justify impeachment? There are three basic reasons. (1) it was a cheap story: all talking heads and free interviews. Very few mobile-cams, travel expenses, research, or paid experts. The profit margin is enormous. (2) The Republicans made it a story by releasing all the scandalous details from Grand Jury testimony when they should not have, and holding press conferences, and calling for Clinton to resign. (3) because sex sells.

Consider, as an alternative, the cost of providing in-depth coverage of the Kosovo crisis: you have reporters travelling and staying in hotels. You have research into the history of the area and its peoples and culture. You have related developments at the U.N. and Moscow and European capitals. It takes longer than five seconds to explain.

But if people didn’t buy the story why did they tune in to CNN to watch it unfold? The outrage effect. Even people who hated the story probably tuned in regularly to see just how outrageous and contemptible it had become. It was, indeed, spectacular. It was ridiculous to the degree of absurdity. It was, at times, insane. But it was always a spectacle, and people will watch a spectacle, no matter how horrifying.

Have the Republicans done permanent damage to their party? Do the voters realize how utterly cynical and contemptuous of them this party is? The Republicans seriously believe that the voters will either change their minds about Clinton, eventually, or they will completely forget, in two years or less, that they did everything they could to obstruct, marginalize, and remove a popular president.

They may be right. Maybe not. The Republicans may have underestimated the effect that this debacle has had on the people who really do shape opinion. Once the vampires in the media have sucked all the blood out of this story, they will need a new one. The reporters and editors who help shape public opinion are always looking for an “angle” to a story. The primary angle of the Lewinsky scandal is Clinton’s immorality. The secondary angle is the intolerance and puritanical zeal of the Republicans.

Clinton will be gone in two years, at the latest. But the Republicans running for re-election in two years, are going to have the same pinched faces, and editors and reporters are going to remember the fanatic intolerance and hypocrisy they introduced into political discourse. Reporters may remember how immune the Republicans were to common sense, decency, and public will. They may be inclined to colour their coverage of Republican candidates with those factors. For example, if future presidential candidate (God help us) Dan Quayle attacks sex education programs for promoting promiscuity, reporters and editors may add a sly comment or two about how Republicans always seem concerned about personal sexual ethics.

Future generations will not remember this scandal for the disgrace it brought upon Bill Clinton. They know that Kennedy fooled around, and Rooseveldt fooled around, and Reagan was divorced and remarried (which means he probably fooled around), and even Dole and Gingrich were not faithful to their first wives. What’s the big deal? What was so different about this case?

They will remember that a fanatic corps of self-righteous Republicans use the flimsiest of pretexts to embark on a holy jihad to remove a popular president from office, and that they never succeeded in convincing anyone other than themselves that there was any reason for it.

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The Working Poor

Thirty percent of Americans earn less than $8.00 an hour. That is roughly $320.00 a week, about $1333.00 a month or $16,000.00 a year.

This is where the welfare mothers go. Remember the welfare mothers? They all got kicked off welfare, didn’t they? One of Bill Clinton’s real little moral compromises.

So while Congress spends tens of millions of dollars and all their waking consumptive hours contemplating impeaching the twerp for consensual groping, the welfare mothers and working poor continue to lead their desperate little lives wondering if the Kraft dinner might be on sale tonight, or if the kindly clerk at the Quickie mart will zap the hot dog for them.

Where do these people live? To rent a decent apartment…. well, no– to rent a grubby little pathetical hole in the wall somewhere, you need about $500 a month minimum. You also need first and last month’s rent. So they live in broken down trailer parks or dingy hovels or their cars. Health care? Out of reach. Dental care? You must be joking. But they smoke and they drink and they have parties. And the weirdest thing of all: these people, who have nothing, share with each other. They help each other out.

I experienced this first-hand when I was in college. I ran about $500 short one semester. I went to a number of people to ask if they could lend me some money. Who lent me money? Fellow students. An underpaid professor. An unemployed friend. Who refused? A car dealer. A friend who had all his money tied up in mutual funds. Someone else had to put a new liner in her pool.

It is one of the saddest statements on the morality of our civilization that the poor give a higher percentage of their incomes to charity than the rich do.

The latest Houghton Mifflin 5th Grade History books devotes a grand total of 332 words to the Depression. It devotes 339 words to the career of Cal Ripken Jr..

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The Wilder and Crazier Lawyers

New Approach to Gun Control

Since the lawyers have finally taken care of the evil tobacco industry, let’s think about some good things lawyers might do for us.

I have an idea. The lawyers sued the tobacco industry because the tobacco industry markets a product which has been proven to cause serious medical problems for the consumers that use it, and which costs our society billions of dollars to provide medical treatment for these consumers.

That line of reasoning sounds simple and logical enough. But the tobacco industry is just a start. Why not sue the companies like Browning Arms (Utah, makers of the Browning shotgun), or Smith & Wesson that make guns? Here again we have a product which is bad for the consumer, but which the consumer stupidly buys anyway, deluded into thinking the product enhances his manhood or femininity, and which causes death and untold suffering, and which costs us taxpayers billions of dollars every year to provide medical treatment for the casualties.

This is really not much of a stretch, folks. The government routinely analyzes products or activities that are harmful to the public and, if it is proven that the harm they produce exceeds their usefulness or value, they enact legislation to prohibit or restrict it. The government does this for pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, toxic chemicals, radiation, drugs, and so on. The government even assumes that anyone who buys a recordable CD might be thinking about duplicating a copyrighted piece of music. It doesn’t wait to see if you are actually going to do it or not. It ASSUMES you are, and taxes you for it. Gives the money to the recording industry so they can pay their lawyers.

Now, the government looked the tobacco industry and came to a weird conclusion. It said, well, you do a lot of damage to people’s health. You lie to them and deceive them. You probably put additives in that increase the users level of physical addiction. Pay us and we’ll let you continue to do these bad things.

If Mosanto corporation, for example, produced a fertilizer that caused cancer in the people who eat the food grown with it, would we accept a payment from Mosanto in exchange for letting them continue to sell it? Only if we were complete idiots.

Guns are dangerous. Only an idiot would believe they do more good than harm. Think about it. Would we be safer in a world where everybody had a gun, or where nobody had a gun?

Since the government has already made a bargain with the NRA to allow the continued sale of almost any kind of gun you can imagine, we have no alternative but to hire lawyers and sue the gun industry.

Of course, if the end result is an agreement similar to the one reached with the tobacco companies (Clinton had a much better proposal but the tobacco lobby bought off enough Republican Congressmen to get it killed) what we will end up with is this: the gun lobby acquires immunity from further prosecution in exchange for about $250 billion dollars, almost all of which goes to the lawyers anyway. The $250 billion dollars are earned back by the gun lobby mainly by applying surcharges to sales of weapons to the military and police departments. Not only does the taxpayer get to fund the legal challenge, they also get to pay the penalty. And the icing on the cake: we have the same problem as before, except that it’s worst, because the gun manufacturers will have immunity from prosecution.

We could do the same for weapons manufacturers. Sue them for hundreds of billions of dollars for all the suffering and death they contribute to people around the world. Give all the money to the lawyers. We get to continue providing weapons to every 2-bit revolutionary or reactionary government in every sad, pathetic little starving country in the Third World, while, once again, the lawyers make a killing.

Don’t look at me. You elected the fools.

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Those Wild and Crazy Lawyers

Quick– who made more money this year? Microsoft Corporation or a couple of lawyers in Texas?

Right. The lawyers. Well, almost. You see this group of lawyers represented the State of Texas in negotiating a settlement (read “sell-out”) with the tobacco companies. In exchange for lots of bucks, paid to the lawyers— ooops! Paid to the Plaintiffs! That’s you and me! —the tobacco companies get to continue marketing death and disease to American children. What a wonderful country!

So how much did the lawyers bill the State of Texas for their noble services, defending the innocent consumer against evil, ruthless, greedy corporations?

How much you say? Well, these are lawyers, after all. So the amount might be a little excessive. What d’ya think? Take a guess? How much should a lawyer be paid for a couple of years of work, doing research, bribing employees to turn over internal documents, and ordering health studies already paid for by the tax-payer through government funding of Universities and Research Organizations? How much?

$10 million?
$20 million?
$50 million?

Oh, come on now. These are REALLY SMART TALENTED LAWYERS. After all, the average lawyer would have tried to get tobacco companies out of the business altogether. But that would have made the tobacco companies very unhappy. So these superior lawyers actually found a way to make everybody happy. The government gets money. The tobacco companies get to stay in business. The taxpayer gets to continue smoking away.

$100 million?
$200 million?
$500 million?

Come on– don’t be shy! These the same intelligent, compassionate, competent professionals you see every day in the movies and on television, except that you never see the scene where they present their bills and take almost all of the settlement money they weaseled out of the greedy, amoral, unfeeling corporation. How can a lawyer live off of a measly $500 million dollars nowadays? Be reasonable! There are SO MANY expenses. Postage. Clerical work. Filing. Thinking. Reading. Subscriptions. Donuts. Get SERIOUS!

$1 billion?

A mere BILLION? When Michael Jackson makes almost a tenth of that? When Bill Gates makes ten times that much! And how much more important is a Texas lawyer than the owner of the greediest corporation on the face of the earth? Give me a break.

$5 billion?
$10 billion?

Now you’re getting reasonable! But not too reasonable.

$25 billion?

Right on! Yes, these Texas Lawyers are asking for $25 billion dollars for negotiating— GET THIS– a $17 billion dollar settlement. In other words, for recovering $17 billion dollars from the tobacco companies for the lucky tax payers of Texas, they ….. well, they want to keep all the money. Yes ALL of the money. YES, ALL OF THE MONEY. But that’s not all folks! The taxpayers of Texas, in compensation for all the medical costs of taking care of all of the victims of smoking addictions, get to PAY these Texas Lawyers an additional $8 BILLION! You lucky Texans! Not only do you get to have tail-gate parties at Huntsville State Prison where they execute completely worthless, disgusting, evil, unredeemable human beings almost every night— you also get to pay a bunch of lawyers $8 billion dollars for……. well….. for…..

Well, fortunately, the lawyers and the tobacco companies got together and decided that it wouldn’t be fair to hit the citizens of Texas with such a large bill. They said, “What? Are you crazy?” Well… And they decided that those Texas Lawyers should ONLY receive $3.3 billion.

Whew! Here I was all upset over nothing! A mere $3.3 billion! How many lawyers were involved? The New York Times doesn’t say, but several other states had teams of three or four leading lawyers and their staffs. But– get this– some lawyers represented as many as 30 states. Do they get paid once? Are you an idiot? Does Michael Jordan get paid once even though he plays in 30 different stadiums?

Well, yes he does. But that’s Michael Jordan. He’s not a lawyer.

One of the lawyers for Florida, Steven Yerid, said the costs are justified. Why? Because that’s how much lawyers should make? Because their work is so terrible, so risky, so dangerous, that even a $14.95 an hour coal miner wouldn’t take it on? Because they are so smart that they scare Stephen Hawkings?

No. He said the fees were justified because “the costs come from the industry”. In other words, we’re justified in taking any money we can lay our grubby hands on because we are lawyers. We just ARE.

Furthermore, he says, the lawyers might have ended up with nothing if they had lost the case. So, because these lawyers might not have won the case, they are entitled to demand as much money as they please.

Remember, this line of reasoning is coming from a lawyer, someone you might need to depend on for your life if you’re ever charged with a serious crime in Texas.

Pity me. I thought this case was about public health and liability. Instead, it is clearly some new kind of industry, in which clever entrepreneur can sue somebody out of the blue on the off chance they might collect a few billions. Who do they sue next?

What does the public have to do with it? Go suck a camel.

The industry will pay it? Ha ha ha. The industry?!!! Where does this idiot think the “industry” gets its money? From the smokers! So, not only will very little of this money from the tobacco companies actually find it’s way into the medical facilities of Texas (aren’t most of their medical facilities used to gas convicts anyway?), but the smokers will pay more for cigarettes in order to pay the lawyers who negotiated a deal in which tobacco companies can now market their disease- causing product with impunity.

There are some scandals that shock you. There are scandals that boggle the mind. There are scandals that baffle you, because the scale of the moral atrocity is so far beyond normal human experience that you can’t even begin to comprehend it. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The loans to 3rd World Dictatorships at usurious interest rates. Windows 95.

And then there is the king of all scandals, the mind-blowing, baffling, stunning, incomprehensible, MOTHER of all scandals. And this is it.

So while you’re sitting there eating your chips and watching the sanctimonious republicans try to impeach the president for consensual groping in the Oval Office— consider where your hard-earned tax dollars are really going.

And weep, wail, gnash your teeth, bash your head against the wall….. what else are you going to do?

Get yourself a lawyer?

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Those Wild and Crazy Lawyers

Quick– who made more money this year? Microsoft Corporation or a couple of lawyers in Texas?

Right. The lawyers. Well, almost. You see this group of lawyers represented the State of Texas in negotiating a settlement (read “sell-out”) with the tobacco companies. In exchange for lots of bucks, paid to the lawyers— ooops! Paid to the Plaintiffs! That’s you and me! —the tobacco companies get to continue marketing death and disease to American children. What a wonderful country!

So how much did the lawyers bill the State of Texas for their noble services, defending the innocent consumer against evil, ruthless, greedy corporations?

How much you say? Well, these are lawyers, after all. So the amount might be a little excessive. What d’ya think? Take a guess? How much should a lawyer be paid for a couple of years of work, doing research, bribing employees to turn over internal documents, and ordering health studies already paid for by the tax-payer through government funding of Universities and Research Organizations? How much?

$10 million?
$20 million?
$50 million?

Oh, come on now. These are REALLY SMART TALENTED LAWYERS. After all, the average lawyer would have tried to get tobacco companies out of the business altogether. But that would have made the tobacco companies very unhappy. So these superior lawyers actually found a way to make everybody happy. The government gets money. The tobacco companies get to stay in business. The taxpayer gets to continue smoking away.

$100 million?
$200 million?
$500 million?

Come on– don’t be shy! These the same intelligent, compassionate, competent professionals you see every day in the movies and on television, except that you never see the scene where they present their bills and take almost all of the settlement money they weaseled out of the greedy, amoral, unfeeling corporation. How can a lawyer live off of a measly $500 million dollars nowadays? Be reasonable! There are SO MANY expenses. Postage. Clerical work. Filing. Thinking. Reading. Subscriptions. Donuts. Get SERIOUS!

$1 billion?

A mere BILLION? When Michael Jackson makes almost a tenth of that? When Bill Gates makes ten times that much! And how much more important is a Texas lawyer than the owner of the greediest corporation on the face of the earth? Give me a break.

$5 billion?
$10 billion?

Now you’re getting reasonable! But not too reasonable.

$25 billion?

Right on! Yes, these Texas Lawyers are asking for $25 billion dollars for negotiating— GET THIS– a $17 billion dollar settlement. In other words, for recovering $17 billion dollars from the tobacco companies for the lucky tax payers of Texas, they ….. well, they want to keep all the money. Yes ALL of the money. YES, ALL OF THE MONEY. But that’s not all folks! The taxpayers of Texas, in compensation for all the medical costs of taking care of all of the victims of smoking addictions, get to PAY these Texas Lawyers an additional $8 BILLION! You lucky Texans! Not only do you get to have tail-gate parties at Huntsville State Prison where they execute completely worthless, disgusting, evil, unredeemable human beings almost every night— you also get to pay a bunch of lawyers $8 billion dollars for……. well….. for…..

Well, fortunately, the lawyers and the tobacco companies got together and decided that it wouldn’t be fair to hit the citizens of Texas with such a large bill. They said, “What? Are you crazy?” Well… And they decided that those Texas Lawyers should ONLY receive $3.3 billion.

Whew! Here I was all upset over nothing! A mere $3.3 billion! How many lawyers were involved? The New York Times doesn’t say, but several other states had teams of three or four leading lawyers and their staffs. But– get this– some lawyers represented as many as 30 states. Do they get paid once? Are you an idiot? Does Michael Jordan get paid once even though he plays in 30 different stadiums?

Well, yes he does. But that’s Michael Jordan. He’s not a lawyer.

One of the lawyers for Florida, Steven Yerid, said the costs are justified. Why? Because that’s how much lawyers should make? Because their work is so terrible, so risky, so dangerous, that even a $14.95 an hour coal miner wouldn’t take it on? Because they are so smart that they scare Stephen Hawkings?

No. He said the fees were justified because “the costs come from the industry”. In other words, we’re justified in taking any money we can lay our grubby hands on because we are lawyers. We just ARE.

Furthermore, he says, the lawyers might have ended up with nothing if they had lost the case. So, because these lawyers might not have won the case, they are entitled to demand as much money as they please.

Remember, this line of reasoning is coming from a lawyer, someone you might need to depend on for your life if you’re ever charged with a serious crime in Texas.

Pity me. I thought this case was about public health and liability. Instead, it is clearly some new kind of industry, in which clever entrepreneur can sue somebody out of the blue on the off chance they might collect a few billions. Who do they sue next?

What does the public have to do with it? Go suck a camel.

The industry will pay it? Ha ha ha. The industry?!!! Where does this idiot think the “industry” gets its money? From the smokers! So, not only will very little of this money from the tobacco companies actually find it’s way into the medical facilities of Texas (aren’t most of their medical facilities used to gas convicts anyway?), but the smokers will pay more for cigarettes in order to pay the lawyers who negotiated a deal in which tobacco companies can now market their disease- causing product with impunity.

Now, who was this lawsuit supposed to benefit?  Who were the victims of the corporation’s malfeasance?  Who was harmed by the evil practices of these public entities who profited from their misery?  That’s right: the smokers.  The same people who are paying for the settlement!

There are some scandals that shock you. There are scandals that boggle the mind. There are scandals that baffle you, because the scale of the moral atrocity is so far beyond normal human experience that you can’t even begin to comprehend it. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The loans to 3rd World Dictatorships at usurious interest rates. Windows 95.

And then there is the king of all scandals, the mind-blowing, baffling, stunning, incomprehensible, MOTHER of all scandals. And this is it.

So while you’re sitting there eating your chips and watching the sanctimonious republicans try to impeach the president for consensual groping in the Oval Office— consider where your hard-earned tax dollars are really going.

And weep, wail, gnash your teeth, bash your head against the wall….. what else are you going to do?

Get yourself a lawyer?

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Liars

You ever tell a lie? Me neither.

According to some theologians, the Bible itself does not condemn lying. The Good Lord knows that in some situations, lying is the correct thing to do.

“Does this dress make me look fat?”
“Are there any Jews in this house?”
“I’m slow and stupid and nobody will ever love me.”
“This won’t hurt a bit.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

With all the talk about impeachment, an astonishingly absurd myth is being foisted upon all of us: that there is an established standard of moral decency to which almost all politicians adhere and that whenever anyone departs from this standard, they must be impeached.

The discussion is so absurd, it is mind-boggling. We have those Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee with a collective straight-face, proclaiming that they are going to punish the politician who lied.

They will tell you, of course, that Mr. Clinton lied under oath. In other words, it’s one thing to lie in the course of your normal day-to-day activities as a congressional representative, but to lie under oath!

Egads!

Shriek!

Sob!

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Charity of the Third World

There are two kinds of countries in the world. The very rich and the very poor. On the one hand, you have North America, Europe, Japan, and some other Asian and South American countries. These nations have incredible wealth and an astonishing quality of life, including first-class health-care, transportation, education, and entertainment facilities. On the other hand you have the Sudan, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and other African and Asian and Central American nations. These nations can barely feed themselves, if they can feed themselves at all. They have mud roads instead of freeways. They have epidemics instead of hospitals.

Do you think we in the rich West are trying to help? We send them aid, right? We give them grants and loans, right? Wouldn’t it be incredibly absurd if those poverty-stricken nations were sending us more money than we send them! Preposterous! Unbelievable! And true.

Yes, indeed. Most of the world’s poorest nations are sending us money. Then we send a pittance back, to ease our consciences.

How could this happen? Very simple. In the 1960’s and 70’s, these countries, almost always ruled by dictators at the time, borrowed billions of dollars from banks in the West (like Citibank). What did they use this money for? To build roads? To build hospitals? To improve education? No. They used it to buy weapons. Why did they need weapons? Because their own starving people, perceiving that their dictatorial and illegitimate government cared nothing for their welfare, rose up in rebellion and tried to evict these vampires.

It only adds insult to injury that they had to buy these weapons from large Western corporations as part of the deal. So, in effect, these were loans to Boeing and McDonnel Douglas and other American and European arms manufacturers. Except that they didn’t have to repay them. Countries like Peru and Brazil and Rhodesia had to repay them, with, of course, compound interest.

The result is that more money flows from the poor nations of the world to the rich than the other way around. This is a scandal. It is an outrage. It is an outrage of a scandal of a disgrace.

You ask, why don’t these nations simply state the obvious: that they (the people) didn’t borrow this money– the dictators did. If you want your money back, go call on Idi Amin or Doc Duvalier or whomever, and leave us alone. Why don’t they do that?

Because the pimps for these banks, the Western governments who often helped arrange these deals, will destroy these nations if they refuse to pay.

You may ask, well, what about the countries that don’t have dictatorial governments, that just borrowed too much and can’t repay it?  I would argue that banks that go to poor countries and offer them fabulous amounts of money which they know will be spent unwisely on military equipment or vanity projects and then discover that those nations can’t repay those loans without doing terrible damage to their own economies should just suck it up: that’s the price of doing business.  No government should step in to enforce repayment of those loans, especially when they are made to an unelected government.   This, my friends, is NOT what happens: instead, the western governments step in to enforce repayment.

You don’t believe that Western governments have these kind of perverted priorities? Consider China. After the government of China massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands of students in Tiananmen Square, President Bush squawked a little but the U.S. continued to renew China’s “most favoured nation” trade status on an annual basis. Oh, but when it was discovered that factories in China were manufacturing pirated copies of software and music CD’s, the big guns came out blazing: cease and desist or else! And China complied.

What is really bizarre about this whole debacle is that Americans, as people, are among the most generous in the world. On a personal basis, they tend to give a lot to charities, including charities that help poor nations over-seas. So while the average American citizen is moved by compassion when he or she sees pictures of starving children, his/her own government and banks are pimping away on a grand scale undoing all of the good that those well-meaning gifts would do.

The Jubilee 2000 initiative is an attempt, by churches, charities, and human rights organizations, to persuade Western Banks and governments to stop profiting from the misery of millions of people. It asks Western governments and banks to forgive most if not all of the massive debts that prevent any of these nations from pulling themselves out of poverty. It deserves your financial and political support.