Category: Politics

Comments on recent political activities and developments primarily in the U.S. and Canada.

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Ontario Hydro Tarts

Ontario Hydro Tarts Up

I don’t know about you, but I have to work for my wages. I actually have to show up at an office and do something useful. It is very clear to me that if I don’t produce anything of value to my employer, I will be fired.

On the other hand, there is Paul Rhodes. Paul Rhodes is a consultant to Ontario Hydro. Ontario Hydro was worried that people might think that just because hydro costs have increased every year since time immemorial, and just because our nuclear power plants break down occasionally, people might think that Ontario Hydro doesn’t care about the environment.

Well, what’s the solution? Ontario Hydro could actually care about the environment. Ontario Hydro could develop some internal policies about preventing damage to the environment. They could allocate a few million dollars to a department responsible for ensuring compliance with environmental protection laws. They could even work on new ways of running cables that would be less disruptive to the migratory habits of the creatures the live in the forests of Ontario.

But, hey, consultants don’t get big bucks for stating the obvious!

Or, they could just spend a few million dollars on an advertising campaign.

“If Ontario Hydro is to successfully present a more proactive positioning on environmental protection it should be prepared to commit adequate resources to a paid media/advertising campaign.” Wow! That’s what Paul Rhodes recommended. Gee. How did Ontario Hydro manage find a great thinker like Paul Rhodes? Well, it turns out that Paul Rhodes is a friend of Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

Paul Rhodes was paid $255,000 for a 10-page report. The report recommended that Ontario Hydro spend more money on advertising to convince the public that they care about the environment.

I wish I had a job like that. I wish Mike Harris would be my friend. Mike Harris wants to cut taxes and save the Ontario taxpayer lots of money. Here I am, Mike: I would have been quite willing to work for a mere $100,000, to create a report of the same breath-taking simplicity, elegance, and intelligence. Here it is: spend more money on advertising. Done. You can pay me now. Not only did I give you good advice, but I saved you the trouble of reading through the entire 10 pages of Paul Rhodes’ report.

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Thatcher Hatchet

See the nice picture? The happy, elegant man is Augusto Pinochet, dictator, murderer, torturer, and heart patient. The woman on the right, so solemn and supportive, is former British Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher. About the time this picture was taken, the government of Spain was requesting that Britain extradite Mr. Pinochet so that he could be tried for the torture and murder of a Spanish student in Chile in 1973.

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Does Maggie Thatcher have any children? I don’t know. It’s hard to picture her reading “Winnie the Pooh” to a cuddly little child, and then going off to have dinner with a man who believes that no one has the right to tell him not to have students tortured and murdered.

Margaret Thatcher is the former prime-minister of Great Britain, a nation which tirelessly brags of itself as the birthplace of the Magna Carta, a document which ensured that the subsequent rulers of England could not govern without the consent of at least some of the governed. Thatcher is a good friend of Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Pinochet was a general in the Chilean national army in 1973 when, with the help of the CIA, he decided to put an end to Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected socialist government. Allende was murdered in the presidential palace and Pinochet took control of the government.

After seizing power, Mr. Pinochet decided to destroy any possible opposition to his new government by arresting anyone who was ever likely to have supported Mr. Allende and socialism, or democracy, or unions, or free speech, or human rights. Once they were arrested, the army tortured many of them to try to get the names of more people to arrest. They used electric shock, torches, rubber hoses, and lots of other devices. Then thousands of them were cold-bloodedly murdered. All of this was done at the direction of General Pinochet.

Mrs. Thatcher happens to like Mr. Pinochet and thinks it is an awful shame and a travesty that the British House of Lords has ruled that Mr. Pinochet can be extradited to Spain to face charges of murder and torture. Why, it’s as if he were just an ordinary man, like you and me! What is the world coming to when dictators are arrested and held accountable for all the people they murdered!

Chile was an object lesson in the real meaning of democracy in the Western hemisphere: people are free to elect any government they want, so long as it is the “right” government. The Americans like to portray Cuba as a dictatorship because they don’t have free and open elections and Castro likes to put dissidents in prison. Of course Nicaragua and the Honduras and El Salvador also had un-elected governments that were far more repressive than Castro during the 1970’s, but the U.S. didn’t call them “dictatorships”. The U.S. called them “democracies” and proceeded to introduce their leaders to our own banana and coffee growers.

So what they really mean when they say that Cuba is a dictatorship is that they have the “wrong” government, and that is why so many conservatives go crazy at the very mention of Fidel Castro.

What does it mean that Margaret Thatcher, the former prime-minister of Great Britain, poses for a picture with the former dictator of Chile? Doesn’t it bother you? Isn’t it strange that the leader of a “free” country considers herself a good friend of an enemy of freedom? How would you feel if you saw a similar picture of Reverend Billy Graham standing beside Gypsy Rose Lee? Would Billy Graham say something like, “Yes, in an ideal world, I prefer virtuous women, but sometimes you just have to have a slut around.”

So, for all the blather in the U.S. and the U.K. about freedom and democracy and rights, the truth is that those principles don’t seem to matter very much when it comes to foreign policy.

And that is why Kissinger and Nixon and the CIA went crazy when Chile elected socialist Salvador Allende. And that is why they helped Pinochet over-throw the government. And that is why Margaret Thatcher proudly poses for pictures with a torturer and murderer today.

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It’s pretty easy to make a list of all the important American politicians I have admired over the years. Here it is:

John Kennedy
Bobby Kennedy
Eugene McCarthy

There. That was easy. In spite of the fact that I think the Lewinsky scandal is a partisan farce, I really don’t like Clinton. I don’t think he really does have any principles. And just to make sure we don’t have a misunderstanding here: neither does Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or James Dobson or the entire heavenly host of impeachers, prevaricators, big-spending tax-cutting welfare-reforming conservatives.

Conventional wisdom suggests that John Kennedy remains one of the most admired presidents ever because he didn’t really have a chance to screw things up too badly. He died while he was still young and beautiful. He died before Viet Nam became a festering sore. He died before the 1960’s turned ugly with confrontation and riots and inflation and drugs. He died before Watergate revealed just how ugly government had become. Kennedy, it was observed, was quite capable of the brutal back-stabbing politics practiced by all politicians of his era, including the powerful Senate leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson. So, had he remained in office long enough, some scandal or another would have tarnished his luster.

I don’t agree. John Kennedy had one thing going for him that no other politician of the modern era has had going for him: he was a rationalist.

Let me clarify. Eisenhower was a conservative manager. He had no vision, no grand scheme, no particular passion for where the country was headed. Everything was hunky-dory. Let’s just make sure the bills get paid on time and stay out of trouble. Let’s assassinate or overthrow those pesky dictators in Latin America before they get a chance to destabilize the region. Let’s let the corporations ravish our natural resources, but increase the minimum wage occasionally, so people have enough money to buy their products. Race problems? What’s that?

Nixon, of course, was a megalomaniacal crook. The man was so delusional and Machiavellian that it boggles the mind. The scary thing is that he was, in some ways, like Kennedy. Few people are aware of the fact that Nixon took on the CIA and the FBI. It was such a strange battle that, to this day, nobody knows who won. A DC-10 carrying Howard Hunt’s wife with an attaché case full of documents crashed as it was trying to land at O’Hare airport in Chicago, and scores of FBI agents just happened to have been hanging around together nearby and rushed to the scene to poke through the wreckage. Top officials “committed suicide” or were killed in “hunting accidents”. Nixon was impeached. J. Edgar Hoover died.

Ford was a caretaker bimbo who never belonged in the Oval Office and clearly had no idea of how to manage the machinery of the executive branch. Did you know he served on the Warren Commission? Maybe he wasn’t that dumb after all. Maybe he didn’t mind people thinking he was a bit dumb. By the way, his wife was a stunning beauty in her youth, and was a divorced ex-dancer when he married her on October 15, 1948

Carter was a failure. He was genuinely virtuous, the type of politician electors turn to after a major scandal (Watergate), and he was disadvantaged by the inflationary pressures left by Nixon and the Viet Nam War. He made a fatal mistake: he was elected for his virtue, but tried to be re-elected for his vice. He allowed the Shah of Iran to fall, which was probably the right thing to do, but then he welcomed the Shah to the U.S. for medical treatment– a major blunder. You have to give some of the blame to American intelligence here– were they really that stupid? Or was this another example of the intelligence services wagging the dog? He was also apparently guilty of trying to micro-manage the presidency, at one point even personally approving schedules for the White House tennis courts. I think he was a decent man who was elected, partly, by accident.

Reagan was not very bright. He simply brought in his ideological allies and let them run things and then covered for them. He is sometimes credited with bringing the Soviet Empire down by threatening to outspend them to death on military hardware, but this argument is given as if Democratic presidents have been any less hawkish on defense than Republican presidents. If Clinton or Carter are examples (and they are the only ones), this is obviously untrue. Furthermore, Gorbachaev is obviously the man who really brought down the Soviet Empire. Reagan’s supporters always act as if Reagan talked him into it.

Bush never did get a grasp on leadership. What did he stand for in the end? Pragmatism, with a hall-pass to the right-wingers.

So we’re back to Kennedy. Kennedy used his devious political skills and his father’s money to get into office. Once he was elected, however, he seemed to rise above partisan political measures more than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. His progression on Viet Nam is fascinating, because we all know about the disaster that followed. He initially supported U.S. involvement, but as it became more and more clear that South Viet Nam was not politically stable, nor organized on sound cultural or economic foundations, he expressed growing skepticism. It was clear that he was contemplating a significant change in policy in the weeks leading up to his assassination.

Perhaps his boldest stroke was the controversial appointment of his brother, Bobby Kennedy, as attorney-general. Bobby didn’t want it. The New York Times lambasted the move as nepotism. Jack insisted because, he said, he wanted someone in his cabinet who would not be afraid to give him the unvarnished truth about any issue. Then he joked about giving Bobby some experience before he goes into private practice.

Bobby Kennedy, whatever you think of his politics or personality, was, without a doubt, the most incorruptible politician of the 1960’s. This became clear almost immediately when he set about indicting, prosecuting, and convicting a family friend with connections to the mob. John wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but did not interfere, which tells you a wealth of things about John’s character as well.

Bobby Kennedy found out that Sam Giancalana, a known mobster, was being recruited by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro. He was so outraged, he personally undertook the prosecution and conviction of Giancalana for offenses connected with his casino operations in Las Vegas. Then he cancelled Jack’s visit to Frank Sinatra’s spread because Sinatra had hosted another mob associate just a few months before the scheduled visit. He personally broke the back of organized crime in the U.S., while J. Edgar Hoover sat in his little pleasure palace in Washington and solemnly declared that there was no organized crime in the U.S., while tapping Martin Luther King Jr.’s telephones.

In fairness, some critics believe that Bobby initially approved of the plans to assassinate Castro. I’m not sure that’s not true, but almost everybody agrees that he and John both had misgivings about the idea.

I’m not a conspiracy “buff” in reference to John Kennedy’s assassination. Too many of the books on the subject start to sound hysterically paranoid after a while. The ones that propose that the conspirators somehow altered the body before the autopsy, or that four, five, or more shooters were present in Dealy Plaza, or that there was a duplicate Oswald, and so on and so on, evoke the term “crackpot”.

But I find it really difficult to believe that the complex web of relationships between Oswald and various CIA, Cuban, and underworld figures was merely coincidental.

Defenders of the Warren Report want it both ways. They want to argue that Oswald was a “lone nut” who just happened to have the inclination and opportunity at the same time. Then they want you to believe that this particular “lone nut”– this random confluence of willfulness, egotism, and psychosis– just happened to be be acquainted with David Ferrie and George de Mohrenschildt.

And is it a coincidence that the wounding of George Wallace during another assassination attempt benefited Nixon enormously? I doubt that Nixon himself was involved in any kind of murder plot, but he didn’t have to be. He merely had to make clear his pro-military, pro-intelligence community, pro-business political views.

It is also hard to believe that the Warren Commission had any purpose other than to convince Americans that everything in Washington was hunky-dory now and you can all just calm down and go back to sleep for another ten years. When their explanation of a single, lone, “crazed” gunman ran into a minor obstacle– the physical evidence pointed to at least one other gunman– they simply revised the evidence. They weren’t investigating the facts. They were constructing a case for a pre-ordained conclusion.

Anyone aware of Bobby Kennedy’s tenure as Attorney General would have reason to think that President Robert Kennedy would have represented a grave threat to various powerful, vested interests in Washington, including the intelligence communities and organized crime. His assassination did not, as it appears on the surface, merely guarantee the election of Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic candidate for president in 1968. It guaranteed the election of Richard Nixon as President, for Kennedy, or possibly Eugene McCarthy, were the only Democrats who could have beat him.

Look who followed: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton. A pretty pathetic lot, all of them.

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Clinton’s Welfare Mothers

If you have read some of my rants on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, you would quickly realize that I don’t like most of the Republican leaders. You might even think that I do like President Clinton. Well, I don’t. Much. Never have and never will.

Bill Clinton is a gutless pragmatist who got himself elected by out-flanking the Republicans on issues like welfare reform and balanced budgets. I don’t think he is a bad president. He may well be regarded, some day, as a successful administrator who was bitterly harassed by a bunch of Lilliputian partisans. He is certainly a better president than Reagan was: he is more competent, more astute, and a better leader. But he is also in favour of capital punishment, and he signed legislation dumping hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients into the dustbin of economic Darwinism.

Whatever happened to those welfare mothers? They all found jobs, right? Well, some of them probably did, but not because of welfare reform. Has anybody noticed that this problem is waiting for the next recession to explode? And it will explode. If (or when) the economy finally does go into even a minor recession, and unemployment rises, we will see poverty on a scale unimagined since the Great Depression. And Clinton, and the Republicans who drafted the legislation, won’t even get blamed. You know who will get blamed? President Dole or President Quayle or President Gore, or whomever.

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Soma

A man writes Ann Landers:
“I am a 60-year-old man who doesn’t have any interest in anything or anyone. I’m bored with everybody I meet. I am bored with my job and bored with my life.”

Ann solves his problem: “You aren’t bored; you are depressed. But you don’t have to stay that way the rest of your life. See a doctor; and ask for an anti-depressant that will help you.”

Was there ever a better illustration of the rampant hypocrisy of our society’s stand on drug abuse? We spend billions of dollars a year trying to stamp out the recreational use of drugs by teenagers and the inner-city poor, and then turn around and, through that paragon of bourgeois values, Ann Landers, advocate that we go running for a quick hit whenever we feel a little depressed with the world.

In the meantime, a woman in Illinois has just been released after serving 20 years in prison for merely being in the same car as a drug dealer. I am not making this up. The drug dealer– classy guy, I guess– freely and immediately admitted that the three pounds of heroin were his and his alone, and that the woman didn’t even know about it.

The courts said, “We don’t care.” Those new “get tough on crimes laws” made it possible for the prosecution to convict her anyway.

While she was in prison, she acquired some legal skills and now plans to work as a paralegal. Ann Landers, however, is still on the loose.

What, really, is the difference between the Lithium this man’s doctor will probably recommend, and the cocaine sold on the street corners? They are both addictive. They are both escape hatches from the pressures of life.

The difference is, the class of people who use them.

* * *

Judy Sgro, who dared to challenge some behaviours by the police during her tenure on the Toronto Police Services Board, has been pushed out of the position of vice-chairperson. Somehow this really reassures me that the police are out there to make sure our civil liberties are well-protected.

November 1999: Once again, even though the crime rate is going down, the police in Waterloo County, Ontario, are requesting more money and more officers. So while Mike Harris keeps telling the rest of us to tighten our belts and make sacrifices for the good of the economy, the police get to go on fattening their budgets and payrolls and throwing their weight around as never before.

When the crime rate went up, the police said they needed more officers because there were more criminals. Now that the crime rate is going down…. well, I guess it’s too much to expect. Just as it might be too much to expect that the police, when the crime rate goes up, might admit that they’re not doing a good job, instead of asking for more money.

Sometimes, I’m not totally opposed to the conservative agenda. It’s the rank hypocrisy that bothers me. If Mike Harris had declared that all of Ontario, teachers, the poor, the rich, industry– everyone– is going to have to tighten their belts, I could have seen some benefit to that. But inevitably, with the Republicans in the U.S. and the Conservatives in Canada, the real agenda is not to reduce taxes, but to shift the burden from the rich to the poor. When Harris talks about reducing taxes, he’s not talking about you and me. He’s talking about those people who inhabit the private boxes at the Skydome, and with whom he’d rather spend his off-hours anyway.

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Cry Me a River

I just watched Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address. Coming as it does, in the middle of impeachment hearings, it was extraordinary. It may well be the best political speech I have seen in the past ten years. You could not have guessed that the man delivering it was living his life under a cloud.

The Republicans are playing a peculiar game. The State of the Union Address was a no-win situation for them. Sit and growl and you look like sore losers. Stand and applaud, and you have to answer the question: why are you trying to impeach him? Conservatives say that the Republicans are showing a lot of principle here– they are willing to buck a year’s worth of polls that show, with uncanny consistency, that the voters utterly reject impeachment.

Is this really “principle”? I don’t believe it. Remember, we’re talking about politicians here who routinely accept large donations from big corporations in exchange for altering or creating legislation that favours their interests. Remember, we’re talking about politicians who want to rely on chemical companies to tell us if they think some of their products might be doing harm to the environment. Remember, we’re talking about politicians who not only give away our forests to the lumber companies, but also charge the taxpayers for the cost of building logging roads, and who think that “global warming” is a left-wing hoax. Remember, we’re talking Jesse Helms, and Bob Barr, and Henry Hyde here. They ask us to believe that nothing matters more to them than “principle”.

I suspect that many of the hardcore conservatives in the Republican Party have come to believe that polls reflect the effects of some kind of magical spell woven by the Clinton administration and the media, which will evaporate like moon-dust the minute Clinton is actually removed from office. They firmly believe that in two years, the voters will not care who impeached whom, and will once again vote for the “righteous” party, the party of self-interest, the party of guns, the party of big military bands, the party of Star Wars, the party of Kenneth Starr.

* * *

If anyone needed any further convincing that Kenneth Starr is a modern day Grand Inquisitor, consider the case of Julie Hiatt Steele. (If you haven’t already been convinced by his treatment–harassment, rather– of Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougall).

Julie Hiatt Steele got a phone call from Kathleen Wiley one day. Kathleen Wiley was going to tell the media that President Clinton had groped her on a visit to the Oval Office. She didn’t want anyone to think she had made up this story after hearing about all the other scandals involving Bill Clinton so she asked Julie Hiatt Steele to tell a reporter that Wiley had told her about the groping long before the headlines about Monica Lewinsky. Long before the book deal.

Julie Hiatt Steele agreed to do so. She called a reporter and confirmed the story.

A few days later, she called the reporter for whom she had confirmed Wiley’s story and told him that she had lied, and that Wiley had asked her to lie. The story wasn’t true.

I don’t think any of us will ever know why exactly.

Julie Hiatt Steele has now been charged, by Grand Inquisitor Kenneth Starr, with perjury and obstruction of justice. Her tax, bank and telephone records have been seized by Starr’s office. Her brother, accountant, and former attorney have been called in to testify. She could receive up to 54 years in jail. Julie Hiatt Steele has no other involvement in this case. She has never been to the White House. She has never had any contact with any person from the White House. She has recently adopted a Romanian orphan. She is a single mother. Her sin was to dispute Kathleen Wiley’s account of what happened after her meeting with President Clinton, testimony that Starr wanted very badly in order to persuade the Senate to impeach Clinton.

Kenneth Starr, beneath that smug, pious exterior, is a fanatic with unlimited power who is out of control. If the Republicans really believe that he has been impartial, they should sign a pledge that they will renew the Independent Prosecutor’s position when it comes up again even if there is a Republican President.

Kenneth Starr believes that Julie Hiatt Steele conspired with the Clinton White House to sabotage Kathleen Wiley’s allegations. This is kind of a strange idea, because, until the reporter called on Ms. Steele, nobody even knew who she was. It’s hard to imagine how the White House could have gotten to her before anybody in the media knew her name.

It is also hard to imagine an act more cynical, unscrupulous, and devious, than to indict this woman for perjury on the day of the State of the Union Address.

If you get a chance, watch Julie Steele in interviews. She seems like a very bright, articulate, decent person. She answers questions directly, quickly, with apparent candor. She is frightened and astounded that this indictment could happen to her in the United States of America, under the statute that gives Kenneth Starr almost unlimited power. We’re talking about a single mother here who has never committed a crime in her life being threatened with 54 years in prison. Even Marlin Fitzwater, the press secretary for George Bush, said he was appalled.

It appears that Kenneth Starr is punishing Ms. Steele for failing to collaborate his increasingly hysterical views of the Clinton White House.

Remember we all laughed when Hillary Clinton alleged a right wing conspiracy. Well, I sort of laughed. I thought it was a cheap shot, a political statement, not meant to be taken seriously. It’s smart to be skeptical of both sides on this issue.

Now I’m beginning to wonder. You have to keep in mind that the Jones case itself only survived judicial scorn through the efforts of wealthy Clinton foe Richard Scaife.

I suppose it is possible that Ms. Steele is an amazing liar. Either that, or Kenneth Starr is one amazing little fascist.

* * *

If the Senate does call witnesses, as everyone says they will, it becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend the Republican “strategy”. It is said that they favour calling Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and Betty Currie.

I can’t imagine what they expect to gain. Monica is likely to repeat her statement that nobody promised her a job in exchange for her silence, or asked her to lie. If the managers from the House hope to intimidate her or shake her testimony, they will have to resort to some rather ham-fisted tactics, which don’t play very well on tv. I would expect the Republicans will try to have these hearings closed to the public, but, like I said, Republican strategy here is baffling.

How will it look on TV, to have frisky little Monica Lewinsky testify in front of 91 white men who are all old enough to be her father, and 9 women?

Betty Currie is another dangerous witness for the Republicans. Picture the svelte, sensitive Bob Barr, or Henry Hyde questioning this middle-age black secretary about who really arranged for the gifts to Monica Lewinsky to be returned. If she says, “I don’t really remember”, will one of the Inquisitors really go, “Come now, Mrs. Currie!” In front of the nation? Will William McCollum crack his whip or his wit? Will Trent Lott offer her a smoke, courtesy of the Tobacco Industry he has served so well in exchange for generous contributions, or invite her to a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist group to which he has given fawning keynote addresses?

How many people, besides myself, will glance around the Senate at that moment to determine who many black members are sitting? Take a guess.

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Trent Lott (2nd from left) with CCC members.

Then there is Vernon Jordan, the real bogey-man for the Falwell-inspired conspiracy buffs. Who is this mysterious man, operating in the shadows, elusive and silent in the face of all this cacophony? Well, by all accounts, he is a very shrewd, very intelligent man, who might just slice the Republican inquisitors to ribbons with his replies. The Republicans want to play with this witness?

And what if the Democrats call Linda Tripp? What if they call that slime-ball book agent from New York who first advised Linda to tape her conversations with Monica Lewinsky– Lucianne Goldberg? One could not imagine more appealing witnesses favourable to the prosecution other than Dracula and Frankenstein. What if they highlight Linda Tripps’ perjury, when she declared that she had no interest in writing a book on the subject to a Grand Jury— while tapes show that she was discussing with Ms. Goldberg how much information to hold back from Newsweek so she would still be able to command big bucks for an exclusive book contract?

* * *

Perhaps one of the most hysterically absurd myths about the Clinton scandal is that the media is in cahoots with the Democrats. I am in cahoots with the Democrats, and I have never been as infuriated with the media as I have been for the past year. I have watched endless hours of CNN– the 24-hour impeachment channel– and ABC and NBC and CBS. I’ve seen Dan Rather summoned back from Cuba to analyze the profound social and political implications of a semen-stained dress. I’ve seen reporters stare into a camera with a straight face and tell the world about the gravity of a situation which I found utterly hysterical and ridiculous. I’ve seen Larry King–divorced and re-married five times himself– solemnly pronounce that the entire nation was disgraced by Clinton’s sexual behavior.

And these are Clinton’s allies?

Well, lately, maybe they are. CNN has taken a more sober perspective. Jeff Greenfield now finds the impeachment somewhat bizarre. Greta Vansusteran now concedes that no reputable prosecutor would have proceeded with the case. Larry King arches his eyebrows and frowns while interviewing the indicted Julie Hiatt Steele. Bernard Shaw appears to grimace just a little while interviewing Bob Barr.

But Sam Donaldson still looks pretty solemn as he interviews Larry Flynt.

For the record, I would defy these people to name a single commentator in a major American television news department or news magazine who has given a “liberal” view of things, which is, that this has never been and never will be anything else but a desperate attempt by the Republicans to sabotage and destroy a Democratic administration. Yes, some of them may genuinely believe that Clinton’s offenses were serious. Most of them have simply been absorbed into the hysteria. They have no idea of what is up or down, left or right, rational or hysterical. They are simply in the middle of a political vortex that continues to spin out of control.

The real truth was accidentally revealed by Henry Hyde on Saturday. He said, “you may disagree with us, but at least we believe in something”. In other words, we arch-conservatives can’t believe that we are wrong. We refuse to accept. We can not admit it. We can’t tolerate those who disagree with us because their values are not real. We are the only arbiters of truth and justice. If we only had an army….

* * *

What made Clinton’s “State of the Union” speech so good? He struck a tone of non-partisanship. He showed no sour grapes. He touched upon all of the current hot-button issues for voters and took the “correct” position. He pre-empted the Republicans on every issue except tax cuts. He laid out a clear, specific agenda, with realistic goals and achievable results. He reminded America that times are very good, indeed, knowing that most Americans will identify the current levels of prosperity and growth with his administration.

The Republicans keep parroting that history will remember Clinton as the first President, since Andrew Johnson, to be tried for impeachment. To the contrary, I believe history will remember this era as “the good old days”, and exciting period of change and innovation–and prosperity– and it may well become known as the Clinton era.

On the other hand, some politicians may be remembered for voting to impeach the most popular president of the past fifty years. Or they may be forgotten as voters cast them aside.

When people look back today to assess presidents, what do they remember? Who is currently the most popular?

John F. Kennedy, who really accomplished very little, but looked like he had a lot of potential. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who carried on an affair for many years. Why is Roosevelt remembered so fondly? Because he communicated very well. He led the country through a decade of prosperity and continued growth. He made sane, rational decisions that seem, in retrospect, to have been the right ones to make.

Ronald Reagan? He was liked on a personal basis, but a lot of people have not forgotten that, thanks to his fantastical “trickle down” economic theory, he took the budget from a $45 billion deficit to a $540 billion deficit. I’m not kidding. You can look it up. How is it that the Republicans continue to pass themselves off as the “fiscally responsible” party?

Clinton has taken the budget from hundreds of billions in the red to about $80 billion in the black. The Republicans like to say they did it, all by themselves. But they also want you to believe that Ronald Reagan was a great president. But he couldn’t have done without the Democratic Congress. I guess we remember what we want to remember.

Think about it. This is a fact, confirmed by the most extensive scientific polling ever conducted– and the November elections: Bill Clinton is the most popular president in forty years.

The bottom line, for many Americans, is really quite intuitive. Two ships are in the harbour. Both are going to the same destination. One of them is captained by Kenneth Starr, and he introduces his officers to you: Bob Barr, Lindsey Graham, Asa Hutchinson, Newt Gingrich (hey– he got this ball rolling), and the rest of the gang. They explain that there is going to be lots of rules and they will be enforced strictly. Homosexuals are not allowed on board. No smoking or drinking, or rock’n’roll. Rich people get all the big cabins. They have to pay more for them, but only rich people get to dine with captain or use the pool. Religious services are held every Sunday and attendance is obligatory. Let’s pray first. And you’all be sure and have lots of fun.

The other ship is captained by Bill Clinton. He introduces his officers. Vernon Jordan, Betty Currie, William Cohen, Al Gore, and Hillary. You notice there are lots of buxom maids with big teeth. Can’t afford a ticket? You can work your way across the ocean in the kitchen.

Which ship will you choose?

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Republicans of Virtue

Who are these noble men who seek to purify the government by removing that festering pustule of delinquency, Bill Jefferson Clinton, from the sacred repository of all that is noble and good? Let’s meet some of them:

Bob Barr – when he is not busy addressing the John Birch Society or White Supremacist rallies, Bob likes to commit a little adultery himself. In all fairness, Bob claims that he doesn’t really understand what those white hoods are for.

Sonny Bono – died, before he could win a single Grammy for song-writing. But that’s okay: in democratic, freedom-loving America, his wife can have his job, ruling the country and impeaching presidents.

Zach Wamp of Tennessee opposes all government spending, unless it goes to his district.

Henry Hyde had a little fling on the side himself back he was Clinton’s age, but don’t let that fool you: he believes in something, not like those atheist, pagan Democrats!

Helen Chenoweth thinks all people who commit adultery and lie about it should be removed from office. Oops. Seems she committed adultery. I guess she didn’t lie about it. “Hi there. I’m Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth and I’m having sex with your husband.”

Steve Stockman of Texas likes to hang around with those militia groups that stockpile arms for the day of reckoning, when blacks and Jews try to take over America.

Enid Green Waldholtz, Utah, got elected with a little help from her father: $2 million worth of illegal campaign contributions. Oops. Let’s not investigate that.

Wes Cooley slightly exaggerated his war record. Seems he wasn’t part of that patriotic special operations unit in Korea after all.

Newt Gingrich. Aside from a few dozen ethics violations, such as trying to hide the income from his best-selling books, and the fact that he, like Dan Quayle, avoided military service, and the fact that he is the most ego-centric and unpopular politician in the country…. oh yes. Don’t forget that he engineered a complete shutdown of the federal government in November 1995, one of the most colossal political blunders of all time, because he was still in a snit over not being invited to exit the front door of Air Force One when it arrived in Israel for the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin.

Governor George Bush Jr. Well, let’s just hope Kenneth Starr isn’t still looking into lifestyles of the rich and elected by 2000…. but then again, Starr doesn’t investigate Republicans. That’s what we mean by “independent”. Let’s just say that George enjoyed his youth and leave it at that, shall we?

Fred Heineman of North Carolina thinks most middle class families earn around $700K.

Dan Burton… oh dear… that adultery thing again. He also raised the art of political discourse to a new high with his formal description of the president as “a scumbag”. Can you spell “statesmanship”?

Bob Dole. Let’s not speculate too much here about Mr. Family Values, but merely note, with dignity and restraint, that Mr. Dole’s first wife’s name is not Elizabeth.

Dan Quayle. War record, Dan? You weren’t one of those despicable draft dodgers were you? Chicken-hawk. Indiana National Guard? Oooo. Did you get a chance to lob a few grenades at Birch Bayh?

Robert Livingston. A good decent man who happened to have committed adultery too. What a shame. Good, decent men like Bob Barr forced him to resign.

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Dutch Treat

Everybody knows that the Dutch are crazy. While we North Americans spend billions of dollars every year fighting marijuana use, the Dutch have virtually legalized it. What a crazy country! Amsterdam, with its numerous legal hash joints, is known as the “dope capital of Europe”. Here, we call that place “Washington DC”.

But, well, life is strange. According to a recent study by the Amsterdam University and Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, only about 16% of the Dutch population, over the age of 12, have ever tried cannabis. The equivalent percentage for North America is 33%.

Zowie! That is really weird. Can anybody explain this?

Maybe it can be explained with the old “forbidden fruit” theory. Because it is illegal in the U.S. and Canada, our teenagers want to try it, to prove that they’re not sissies who listen to their mommies and daddies. In Holland, it’s the mommies and daddies (the politicians) that are saying, “Here, try it”, and the kids are saying, “What? Are you nuts?”

Maybe it’s like when your kid threatens to run away from home. One day, you hand her a suitcase and say, “Okay.” That usually stops them dead in their tracks. Maybe it’s the same with marijuana. Now that Dutch society says, “go ahead, use it if you like.” And the kids are going, “Why? Maybe I don’t want to.”

Well, I think we owe it to common sense to give it a try here. If it reduces drug use to legalize drugs, I’m all for it.

But why hasn’t it worked for guns?

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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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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.