Category Archives: Politics

The Nation’s Toughest Sheriff?

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In my opinion, it would be more accurate to call Joe Arpaio the nation’s most corrupt sheriff.

I’m not saying Joe’s not tough. He’s plenty tough on Latinos, other minorities and anyone who dares to question his actions.

For example, Arpaio has repeatedly conducted “crime” sweeps in Latino neighborhoods, hoping to latch onto an undocumented immigrant. But don’t call this obvious harassment racial profiling. Joe simply won’t stand for that characterization of his law enforcement techniques! According to Joe, there are plenty of Latinos he hasn’t arrested…yet.

But Joe’s toughness extends beyond his surly demeanor and questionable arrests. He’s been particularly tough on the finances of Maricopa County taxpayers. His actions have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in court settlements and legal fees. He has also misspent millions of county funds.

Arpaio even tried to arrest county officials on trumped-up charges when they refused to cooperate with him. I’m not yet certain what those actions are going to cost taxpayers.

Of course, Joe is most famous for Tent City, the prison in the desert with no heating or air conditioning. At this canvas hell hole, inmates are forced to eat the same helping of green baloney meal after meal, day after day. Arpaio is responsible for creating an atmosphere in which prisoners have been neglected, beaten and allowed to die while in custody. But the national media never report those stories. Instead, they play footage of the tough talkin’ sheriff with his infamous posse that includes washed-up action star, Steven Seagal.

Most recently, Arpaio’s department was accused of ignoring hundreds of sex crimes, prompting an internal investigation which eventually supported the allegations. Yet no one was disciplined. And although the investigation was completed in late 2011, the results were not released until 2013.

Why the delay?

Well, Joe was facing re-election in 2012. Even with millions in Tea Party contributions from across the country and his bat-crap crazy supporters, it would have been difficult for Arpaio to beat the truth, the accompanying bad publicity and a highly qualified opponent in a close election.

Is The Tea Party A Political Party? Or Not?

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Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, there were two rebuttals: One from Republicans and one from the Tea Party. This begs the question: What is the Tea Party? Is it a real political party competing with Democrats and Republicans? Or is it just a more angry, more mean-spirited faction of political Neanderthals within the Republican Party?

If it’s the former, it should operate like the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Socialist Party, etc. That means raising money and generating enough votes to be placed on the ballot.

If it’s the latter, it should drop the word “Party” from its name and continue to operate within the Republican Party as a caucus in the same way progressives and African-Americans operate within the Democratic Party. Moreover, the media should treat it as such. No more free air time on cable networks in order to promote its backward agenda as a rebuttal to the State of the Union address.

Or, if the Teabaggers continue to demand special treatment, the Progressives, Socialists and other factions should be afforded the same amount of time to push their agendas.  

The American people have a right to know the status of this caucus or faction or club or group or militia or party or whatever the hell it is. It’s time for an end to its Fox News-fueled free ride.

A Heartless Dick Who Won’t Go Away.

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On the day of President Obama’s State of the Union address, Richard “The Dick” Cheney crawled out of his hidey hole to show off his new black heart.  He used the opportunity to criticize the president’s choices for Secretary of Defense and CIA Director as “second rate.”

Even if The Dick were to be believed, no one would be more familiar with second-rate leaders than Cheney.

At the risk of being whisked away to another country to be tortured by The Dick’s extraordinary rendition crew, I’ll remind you that Cheney was a supporter of Condoleeza Rice, the former National Security Adviser who ignored numerous warnings of a possible attack on US soil using hijacked airplanes.

Cheney supported the elevation of Rice to Secretary of Sate.  He supported other incompetents such as Donald Rumsfeld and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Cheney ordered the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, thereby endangering the life of Plame, her husband and everyone associated with her. Even worse, Cheney orchestrated the charge to invade Iraq by claiming Saddam Hussein not only had built a nuclear arsenal, but collaborated with al Qaeda prior to the attacks of 9/11.

The Dick’s actions led to the deaths of approximately 5,000 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan along with civilian casualties so numerous that no one has been able to accurately count them.

If that’s what The Dick considers first-rate foreign policy leadership, I’ll take second-rate leaders any day.

Vatican Exposed!

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John Dalberg-Acton, a British Catholic historian, politician and writer, once wrote of the Vatican and the Catholic Church, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

No statement could better describe the Vatican’s actions (or should I say inactions?) which were exposed like a priest caught with his pants down in Alex Gibney’s documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.  As you will see, the description of the Church as the House of God is most certainly in question. Did God teach priests to be sexual predators? Did God tell the bishops, archbishops, cardinals and Pope to cover up pedophilia?

Gibney’s film not only documents an extensive number of child abuse cases involving the clergy. It tracks the cover-up of these crimes all the way to Pope John Paul II and to the current Pope Benedict XVI. Indeed, as Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which was responsible for tracking all indiscretions such as child molestation.

According to the documentary, the “Holy See” saw all of the files documenting abuse yet did nothing to help the victims or discipline the offenders.

It’s not surprising.

Should we expect anything different from an organization that still refuses to admit that the torture and murder of thousands during the Inquisition was wrong? Or that the slaughter of Cathars and Huguenots was wrong? Should this behavior surprise us coming from an organization that enslaved indigenous populations around the globe in order to “save” them?

Should we expect more from a Church that officially accepted Mussolini’s fascist government in 1929 in exchange for being declared a separate nation? Should we expect better from a Church that helped Nazis escape prosecution by providing them with new identities and guidance from Europe following WWII?

The documentary also gave us a fascinating look at the Catholic clergy’s beliefs and behavior. For example, a former Benedictine monk and therapist conducted a 25-year study on sexuality in the clergy. He found that, at any one time, no more than 50 percent of Catholic priests were practicing celibacy.

You might say it’s hypocrisy of the highest order.

But the faithful are becoming less accepting of the clergy’s hypocrisy.  Following the exposure of massive abuse of Irish children and a Church cover-up, the percentage of Irish citizens who were practicing Catholics dropped from nearly 95 percent to just 4 percent!

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe that the institution, its clergy and its followers have also done a great deal of good. But given the Vatican’s on-going history of institutional crimes, should anyone give credence to the Vatican’s position on gay marriage? On abortion? On contraception? On the role of women in society? On politics? On anything?

I think not.

It’s time for the Vatican to live up to the best behavior of its followers. It’s time for the Vatican to repeal its archaic demand of celibacy for its clergy. It’s time for the Vatican to open its files, admit its crimes and beg for forgiveness.

Let’s Have A Real Debate About Drone Strikes And Torture.

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Over the past decade, our “war on terror” has led to two highly contentious policies. Extraordinary rendition (AKA torture) involving the US and 50 nations which acted in defiance of the Geneva Conventions’ ban on torture, and unmanned drone strikes (AKA assassination by remote control). These two policies were created and undertaken by the CIA and the US military without open debate.

It’s long past time for that debate to take place.

Today, Congress will have what promises to be a highly partisan circus of self-righteous statements by both parties during the confirmation hearing for the position of CIA Director. But it’s unlikely that we’ll learn anything from the hyperbolic statements of partisanship.

What we need is a series of non-partisan Congressional hearings and a public debate on both policies at the same time. After all, torture was authorized by the Bush administration and drone strikes by the Obama administration.

By addressing both policies simultaneously, we might see an honest debate without the usual posturing for the media that accompanies most Congressional hearings these days.

Admittedly, it’s unlikely that anything will actually be accomplished by such a debate other than focusing public attention on the issues. But at least voters would be informed and could make their opinions known to our elected representatives. Then, and only then, our elected officials might arrive at workable constraints that control these policies.

Better yet, they might prohibit the policies entirely. There simply must be better methods of pursuing terrorists and stopping them before they strike.

Torture and assassinations without due process have no place in modern society.

We Not Only Have A Gun Problem. We Have An Anger Problem.

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Sometime in the mid-1980s, I heard a report on the radio of a road rage incident. I later found out that a friend had been involved. While my friend was stopped at a traffic light, another driver inexplicably attacked him. My friend got out of the car, picked him up, and deposited the attacker in the ditch.

Although it was the first road rage incident I heard reported on the news. It certainly wasn’t the last. Today road rage incidents are common events. And, unlike the one involving my friend, they often involve guns. (It seems there’s a road rage killing weekly in the Phoenix area.)

I believe such incidents are a glaring measure of the anger index in our nation. Likely caused by underlying anger and triggered by stress, it seems many of our citizens are one incident away from going “postal.” (For those of you who are too young to remember, the term originated following a number of workplace shootings in Post Offices around the country.)

Today, much of our anger is politically based. Following the housing crash, those affected were angry at the government for allowing it to happen. Worse yet, they were furious that the federal government bailed out the banks responsible. When a black president then bailed out the auto industry as I believe was necessary, old white men went ballistic. Egged on by Republican strategists who wanted to block any initiatives by President Obama, they created the Tea Party.

Their anger and the anger of those who oppose them has grown ever since.

As the Tea Party types have decried every step of the Obama administration, many have stockpiled food, guns and ammunition preparing for what they consider the inevitable battle against a tyrannical government.

Of course, much of the violence is the result of gang-on-gang turf disputes and the illegal drug industry. But since the Me Party, Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh and his equally venomous wannabes have ratcheted up their angry rhetoric, they must take responsibility for creating a rage that’s ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

Guns make that anger even more dangerous. And the most lethal kinds of military-style weapons allow the violence to create more victims.

The only real solution is for everyone to chill out. For the Mean Party to tone down its rhetoric. For the media to stop reporting manufactured controversies and to end the “if it bleeds, it leads” style of journalism. And for the government to treat us all like tantrum-throwing kids by taking away our most dangerous toys.

Absolutism And The 2nd Amendment.

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The National Rifle Association, right wing conservatives and gun collectors like to consider the rights granted by the 2nd Amendment as absolute. Even during testimony by a parent of one of the children slaughtered in Newtown, a heckler shouted “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Of course, people like this (and, unfortunately, there are many of them) neglect to mention the first clause of the amendment which states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”

They also overlook the fact that none of the constitutional amendments are absolute.

For example, it’s illegal to slander, libel or defame others despite the 1st amendment’s guarantee of free speech. And, as I’ve previously mentioned, it is also illegal to falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

Our nation has also placed some restrictions on our right to free assembly.

Moreover, in recent years, we have created exceptions to the constitutional limits on search and seizure. The Bush administration played fast and loose with the limits on imprisonment. And we’ve modified the Constitution in many ways to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to expand civil rights, to ban poll taxes, and to prohibit then later legalize the sale of alcohol.

It’s clear the Founders never intended the Constitution to be absolute. Supreme Court rulings have acknowledged that fact. So if other constitutional guarantees are not absolute, why should the guarantee of the 2nd amendment be any different?

We can and should place limits on military-style weapons of mass destruction. We should limit the size of magazines. We really should prohibit the sale of all semi-automatic firearms. We most certainly should conduct thorough background checks before the transfer of any firearm. We should place limits on the sale of ammunition. And we should require safety courses for everyone who purchases a gun.

Without changes in our gun laws, we can expect more mass shootings, more murders of children, and more random violence. Isn’t continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result a definition of insanity?

America’s Gun Culture.

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At halftime of an NFL game, Bob Costas incurred the wrath of gun nuts by raising the issue of this nation’s out of control gun culture. His comments followed a tragic murder/suicide committed by an NFL player. And he recently expanded on those comments during a guest appearance on The Daily Show.

Although Costas was much more eloquent in addressing the issue than I am, I will try my best to summarize it here.

Unlike those who blame gun violence on the availability of specific types of firearms, on the lack of gun registration, on mental illness, on movies and on video games, Costas points to a culture that glorifies guns; a culture of paranoia that causes ordinary citizens to carry guns; a culture that too quickly resorts to gunfire in order to settle disputes.

So how did we get here? How did we get from Mayberry RFD to Newtown?

Our gun culture is even older than our nation. We stole the land from Native Americans with the gun. We won our independence with guns. We conquered the continent with guns. And we’ve used guns to impose our will on the rest of the world.

Of course, our gun culture has evolved. In years past, every farmer and rancher had guns. But they were merely tools for hunting or for shooting predators that preyed on their livestock. Men…especially those who returned from World War II and Korea…viewed guns as tools only for hunting. They never considered using them to shoot another American.

Since movies tend to chronicle our culture, it’s easy to see how the role of guns has changed. In old-time movies the guns were primarily six-shooters, heroes were slow to anger and they only shot in self-defense. More important, the early movie and television plots used violence to teach lessons in ethics and morality. There was no gratuitous violence merely to whet the reptilian appetites of rebellious boys and frustrated, angry men.

But the movies of recent years feature ever larger and more lethal weapons. Violent scenes have become more bloody and more senseless. Our most popular video games focus on warfare and crime. Decades of war in which soldiers have been ordered to shoot first and ask questions later have impacted our psyche. So have poverty and social injustice.

Hip-hop music screams of violence and anger. Angry old white men carry firearms to fulfill their self-image of modern-day cowboy, Rambo or Dirty Harry. “Preppers” egged on by right wing radio hosts and politicians stockpile large caches of weapons and ammo so they’ll be ready to fight our government or their neighbors following what they consider an inevitable government coup or natural disaster.

Even churches foment paranoia by quoting the Book of Revelations and warning members of the “end times.” 

If we’re serious about ending mass shootings and reducing gun violence, we must accept that it won’t happen overnight. Gun registration, limits on ammunition clips and bans of military-style weapons will help. But these measures are only a start. Real change will only come from changing our entire culture.

No Such Thing As Partial Equality.

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Although I’m not excited at the prospects of young women being involved in combat (I’m actually not fond of anyone being involved in combat), I applaud the decision. It means that our government is finally addressing inequality.

We have a long way to go. There’s still discrimination with regard to women’s salaries, GLBT rights, economic inequality for racial minorities, even inequality with regard to religion.

Many women are paid less for doing the same job as a man. Our laws still do not recognize gay and lesbian marriage. After centuries of slavery and discrimination, racial minorities often begin their lives with fewer opportunities for a good education, economic advancement and personal security. Religions try to impose their beliefs on our laws and individual behavior. And those who do not participate in organized religion are forced to subsidize those who do through tax exemptions for church property.

It has taken far too long for our nation to achieve true equality. It took nearly a century to end slavery. It took far longer to grant suffrage to women. It took longer still to end Jim Crow laws. And after more than 200 years, it would seem that many Americans do not yet understand the meaning of Democracy; of equality and of freedom with responsibility.

If, one day, all American citizens are to be equal, we must recognize the inequalities that still exist. And we must do everything in our collective power to address inequality whenever and wherever we encounter it. Equality is, after all, absolute. Our citizens are either equal in every regard. Or they’re not. There is no middle ground.

Another Chickensh*t Decision By A Democrat.

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Last week, Sen. Harry Reid had an opportunity for real filibuster reform.

With the beginning of each new Congress, the Senate can determine its rules by a simple majority vote. Given the opportunity, many Democrats wanted to return to a voice filibuster like that of the past. In other words, the minority would still be able to filibuster. But they would no longer be able to do it anonymously, and they would have to continue debate on the Senate floor until they were exhausted or collected the 60 votes necessary to end debate on the measure.

Unfortunately, Reid chose to negotiate with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, winning a few very minor concessions.

It was an opportunity lost.

During the last three Democrat-controlled sessions, Teapublicans set an all-time record with more than 400 filibusters. They filibustered everything from President Obama’s cabinet nominations and judicial appointments to the repeal of Big Oil subsidies and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Now, as a result of Reid’s timidity, the obstructionist Teapublican minority can continue to block legislation by requiring a super-majority of 60 votes to allow debate on virtually any measure.

As Senator Tom Harkin warned prior to Reid’s failure, without filibuster reform it will be virtually impossible for President Obama to carry out his vision for his second term. He noted that the compromise will allow Senators to literally phone it in. “It still will provide a system where people can filibuster and they don’t even have to come here,” said Harkin. As a result, he said, President Obama “might as well take a 4-year vacation.”