P.A. MacLean, October 25, 2007
While popular media may be tying every heat wave, caving glacier, drought and severe storm to global warming, the true effects may be far more incremental.Still, we should know the potential health risks of a warming planet to allow the years it may take to prepare for them. But that’s not what America’s disease monitoring entity, the Centers for Disease Control, was allowed to do. Instead, it’s report on the health effects of global warming was “evicerated." The report had been intended to show how global warming might affect the spread of highly contagious diseases. Couple this with another health issue, like rationing flu vaccines to some groups of people in times of severe flu pandemic, and you can see the need for broad public discussion of how to respond to much more serious health risks tagged to global warming.
P.A. MacLean, October 9, 2007
Remember the teach-ins of the 1960s? They became a means for people to educate themselves about the Vietnam War with information that wasn’t making it through the mainstream media. It comes to mind after learning about the new torture memos in which the Bush Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a legal opinion authorizing extreme methods to get information out of prisoners. These memos were issued in 2005, one year after the administration withdrew earlier opinions from the same office that approved tactics many consider torture. Yet, how did the three major network news programs respond? For NBC, it was the second story after the latest on Sen. Larry Craig’s sex scandal. ABC didn’t mention it at all. On CBS, Katie Couric ran with the price of airline tickets for the coming holidays as the top story. (Memo to Katie: It’s the CBS Nightly News, not the morning entertainment show.) On a relatively slow news day, what would it take to get a story about torture on the evening news?
Tom Murphy, October 5, 2007
As recent polls show, Americans think Bush and the Congress are heading in the wrong directions. Either they know something we don’t know – which is less than ideal in a democracy – or they’re ignoring the will of the people. The Democrats say they want to end the war, but when faced with the threat of a veto, they fall into line and OK enormous funds for defense and the war, fearing they’ll look weak if they don’t. The President refuses to back off his position to extend the war into the next presidency. Meanwhile, Iraqis and Americans continue to die in battle, cholera has spread to more than half of Iraq due to unsafe drinking water, and a third of the Iraqi population lives on the edge under American occupation. This is not what Bush described when he started this war, and it is clearly not what the American public wants.
Tom Murphy, September 23, 2007
When we look back at the US presence in Vietnam, it’s good to remember the half-million Americans there included not just foot soldiers, but cooks, construction workers, supply staff, administrators and all the other personnel needed to support a fighting force. As we talk about the 168,000 troops in Iraq, we are looking at a different picture entirely. Much of the military has been privatized over the past four decades. US troops in Iraq are largely supported by the 136,500 contractors who work in Iraq for firms hired by the US government. Unlike the president, we’re reluctant to compare Vietnam to Iraq. But if comparisons are made, the combined presence of 304,500 personnel in Iraq is a better number, even though it includes 69,000 Iraqi nationals and 45,100 foreign nationals, according to the US Central Command. It does not include the Iraqi army or the national police that is being trained by, and walking in lockstep with, the US-led forces. Nor does it include troops from the remaining US allies in Iraq. If Congress is truly looking for a way to draw down the American shadow on Iraq, it might consider limiting the activities of these contractors, something the Iraqi government now seems eager to do with or without US help.
Tom Murphy, September 18, 2007
During months of hearings, Democrats took a lot of cheap shots from the president and other Republicans over their criticisms of Alberto Gonzales. Yet, now that Bush has nominated another conservative to succeed Gonzales, Democrats have demonstrated their fairness. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid complimented Judge Mukasey’s "strong professional credentials." Hillary Clinton spoke of his "years of able public service." Sen. Chuck Schumer called the nomination "a step forward." Indeed, Judge Mukasey seems to be headed for what Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy promised would be "fair and thorough" confirmation hearings. We can only hope the Republicans will show the same spirit of fairness in a debate on whether to continue funding the Iraq war.
John McGowan, September 1, 2007
Alberto Gonzales is gone and will soon be forgotten, though his legal troubles aren’t. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration seeks to extend its policy of sidestepping the law to include the telecoms that aided and abetted its illegal surveillance of American citizens. This raises the question of who will be picked to head up the Justice Department. One early favorite is Michael Chertoff, current head of Homeland Security. Chertoff, who has presided over the disastrous Katrina aftermath, would be an in-your-face choice by the White House, one certain to run into stiff Democratic resistance and pretty unlikely to secure Senate consent. Still, the Bushies may go for a “controversial†nominee. Nothing they like better than to stir up a fight in which the Republicans can portray themselves as warriors willing to do what’s necessary to combat those evil terrorists. It’s a game the Republicans have played and won too many times to abandon it now. Nothing like a stirring confirmation battle to distract the nation’s attention from losses in the Middle East.
Tom Murphy, August 27, 2007
It had to happen. Alberto Gonzales had become so dysfunctional as Attorney General that the effectiveness of the Justice Department itself had been compromised. Perhaps the issue that drove him out of office stemmed from his frequent efforts to politicize law enforcement in the United States. But the real reason he had to leave was because he was the top cop in a country where security has become a critical issue and several members of Congress are under investigation for ethics violations. The people who serve as attorney general – whatever their personal politics – must be above reproach. Instead, Gonzales had slogged through months of investigations, often contradicting his own testimony or that of his current and former associates in government. After this and the resignation of Karl Rove earlier this month, we have hope the Bush Administration will commit itself to a new policy of honesty and open government.
John McGowan, August 26, 2007
The Bush Administration’s three-point response to the intelligence report on Iraq? Obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate. And, if that won’t work, lie. The president and his team are stressing how the “surge†has improved security. In fact, violent deaths have doubled. We don’t have enough troops there to pacify the whole country and we never will. But the main point of the surge was to stabilize Iraq enough for the establishment of a government that Iraqis of all stripes, parties, and divisions could support. It turns out that the political situation has been going backward during the surge. Once again, no progress. Yet it’s already clear that nothing will change administration policy. The Bushies will stagger from one fake deadline to the next in order to string out our troops’ presence. The humiliation (but also the sanity) of admitting defeat will be left for the next president. And if that president is a Democrat, we can expect to hear for the next 50 years about how he or she “lost†Iraq.
Tom Murphy, August 25, 2007
As Bush makes a case for extending the surge of US troops in Iraq, it’s becoming painfully clear he’s heading the wrong way. Our own intelligence community reports Iraq’s government is threatened and its military cannot stand on its own. A second, draft report says Iran’s government is strong and in no danger of regime change. Bush’s strong ally in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf, is under attack from two former prime ministers who aim to end his dictatorial rule. And Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki have both been cozying-up to Iran’s Mamoud Ahmadinijad, who has pledged his resources to ending violence in both their countries (and, coincidentally, to destroying Israel). All this has happened despite 3,800 American deaths, 4-1/2 years of terror, tens of thousands of deaths of ordinary Iraqis and Afghanis, the destruction of most of the Iraqi infrastructure and turning 4 million Iraqis – a sixth of the country’s population – into refugees. It’s no wonder that even Bush’s closest partners in the GOP, like Sen. John Warner, have admitted it’s time to bring our troops home. If we leave them much longer, we may face a new alliance of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Tom Murphy, August 18, 2007
The radicals who founded America insisted on certain principles in government that are now eroding. Tired of tyrant kings, they sought a balance of power between the president, Congress and the courts. They believed in open government, so the people will know what’s going on. And they believed a well-informed populace was in the best interest of democracy. Today, we’re seeing President Bush trying to get around Congress through sneaky executive orders, so that he alone can decide policy. We see a hidden clause in the Patriot Act that would allow Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speed-up the death penalty for capital crimes by circumventing the courts in some appeals. We see our own government spying on citizens despite the protests of the American Bar Association and most civil liberties groups – never mind the open-ended detentions of foreigners in what has become America’s Devil’s Island. We find out the White House intends to write its own report card on the progress in Iraq, just as it wrote about the dangers of WMD’s before this horrific war. And we see Bush forbidding his aides to testify before Congress about possible violations of laws. We see most of this done in the name of preventing terrorism, although the effect is to erode the liberties for all citizens. These are the actions you’d expect in a country ruled by ruthless dictators, the people who we accuse of terrorizing their own citizens. It is what our radical founders fought against. It is, quite simply, un-American.
Tom Murphy, August 14, 2007
It would be too easy to think of the resignation of Karl Rove as just another rat deserting the president’s sinking political ship. And it might be tempting to think this sly fox is trying to avoid Congressional probes by stepping aside, but that’s not the case. Simply put: Rove’s best days at the White House are behind him. Labor Day will mark the official start of the Lame Duck Presidency. Rove doesn’t need to be part of the bitter end. Instead, he’s likely to do what he’s always done – help to elect conservative republicans. Any man who can help put Bush in the White House twice would be welcome in most GOP presidential campaigns. And with Fred Thompson getting ready to jump into the race full time, it’s likely Rove has already lined up his next mission.
Tom Murphy, August 13, 2007
President Bush and his allies in Congress have taken advantage of a slow news month to argue that the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are showing signs of success. They measure that success in terms of the number of people killed by US troops. It might be better to measure quality of life and other issues. Several international agencies reported recently that 8 million Iraqis – about a third of the population – live in dire need of emergency assistance. About 4 million are refugees of whom 2 million have fled the country. That is hardly success. As far as Afghanistan goes, there has been a steady increase in violence over the past two years as a result of the Taliban and al-Qaida rebuilding their forces with impunity. The only success these days in Afghanistan is for opium farmers, who now grow about 95 percent of the world’s supply. We cannot kill for peace in either country. We must change the way we measure "success."
John McGowan, August 7, 2007
Where’s Tammy Wynette when you need her? D-I-V-O-R-C-E is in the air. The Sunnis have quit the Iraqi governing coalition, the Kurds long ago washed their hands of the whole mess, and the Democrats every week unveil a new plan for getting the troops home. Even the Bush Administration is talking to Iranian marriage counselors about the irreconcilable differences in Iraq. It’s no longer a question of if America is going to abandon Iraq to a squalid fate, but how and when. What unimagined levels of suffering will our withdrawal spawn? Will it – can it – be worse than the suffering we unleashed by invading in the first place? Will it be more suffering than that created everyday by our continued presence? Exactly the kinds of questions asked in a deteriorating marriage. Will the pain of the divorce be worse than muddling through? Can anything turn this ship around? And when will we finally have the nerve to admit the end is here and actually walk away? I’ve known many couples who have hung together for years, delaying the inevitable for countless good and bad reasons, not least of which is fear of the unknown. Our nation is stuck right now in that same position, unable to tolerate current conditions, but unable to imagine any decisive response to them that doesn’t carry a large risk of making things worse.
John McGowan, August 5, 2007
Your Congress at work. No wonder Congress gets lower approval ratings than the lame duck in the White House. Even when the legislators do the right thing – like defy the drug companies and open the door to cheaper imported drugs – they only manage the feat by including it in a pork-laden bill and among various voting shenanigans. Outright bribery is about the only thing that works with these guys. Send them all home on vacation. And tell them to stay there. It’s “time out†until they learn to behave themselves.Plus if they go home now, they just might do nothing on the spy bill, which would be, by far, the best outcome. Giving the Bush Administration a blank check to spy – even if it is only for four or six months is like giving the village idiot your MasterCard. Oh, wait, we’ve already done that.
John McGowan, July 28, 2007
Another Congress, another bad farm bill. The same inertia that makes healthcare reform so difficult keeps the country chained to agricultural subsidies that hurt the vast majority. One trouble is that only those who collect the subsidies vote on that issue. Another problem is that many people organized their lives around these payments. Of course, they are going to cry foul when you try to change the rules. Unfortunately, their reasonable protest becomes a reason to never change anything, no matter how detrimental it is to the rest of us. The cost of reform shouldn’t over-burden those who must bear them. On the other hand, too often the government is held hostage by this thinking. The tobacco buy-out was the last instance of blackmail on these grounds—with absurdly generous payments to tobacco farmers, many of whom hadn’t planted the crop for years. The only solution is political courage to fix the dysfunctional status quo. Unfortunately, just as anti-tax Republicans create massive federal deficits with foreign policy adventures, the cowardly Democrats won’t confront an aggrieved constituency, no matter how much it should be told to stuff it.
John McGowan, July 22, 2007
The rule of law is based on three simple principles: you can’t judge your own conduct; the law treats everyone the same) and all decisions are open to scrutiny – that is, all rulings are to be guided by public rules, so that there are no arbitrary, secret, or ex post facto actions by entrenched power. It’s never been clear to me whether the Bush administration simply doesn’t know what the rule of law means or if they just think it’s an obstacle to be brushed aside in the name of getting things done, of securing power, and of waging war. The latest executive order in the ongoing effort to enshrine torture as governmental policy is of a piece with everything else the administration has done in its “war on terror.†It would ignore the Geneva Conventions although the Constitution says that signed international treaties are the law of the land; you can’t just decide to ignore such treaties. It would defy the Supreme Court. It would declare that our actual policy and practices are secret. And, most consistently of all, it would claim that the executive branch, unchecked by Congress or the courts, has the absolute right to do what it deems necessary. The president wouldn’t have to tell anyone what it is doing, or limit its actions in relation to any outside judgments. That’s a formula for tyranny, nothing more or less. And that the tyranny is currently being applied selectively does not make it any more acceptable under the rule of law.
John McGowan, July 19, 2007
In the latest poll on presidential candidates, almost a quarter of Republicans and almost 15 percent of Democrats don’t find any of the candidates appealing. Usually these early polls don’t mean a thing; at this stage is 2004, Joe Lieberman was running strong. But things could be different this time. John Kerry had the Democratic nomination sewed up by March 2004. Once the voting started with the late January caucuses in Iowa, the outcome was decided fast. Every indication is that the decision will be made even more quickly this time, maybe in as little as six weeks. The candidates are taking this jockeying seriously because there will be no time after January 1. We are enjoying our first virtual nomination. Yes, the voters going to the polls will make the actual decision. But compressing the process into such a short time span means most of the important work will have been before primaries in January and February. The shorter the primary season, the longer the preliminaries. The time-shifting has once again tilted the game in ways that give big money and die-hard partisans the most influence. No wonder so many of us are saying “none of the above.â€
John McGowan, July 15, 2007
The American people want the troops home. The Iraqi people want the Americans to leave. The House of Representatives has passed a plan mandating withdrawal. Now Iraq’s prime minister says we can leave anytime, although an aide tried to soften his words after they echoed around the world. What are we waiting for? Forty-five Republican senators and the president to see the light. There’s nothing left of our war aims. We are only in Iraq to save face at this point, to avoid admitting that we have not accomplished a single thing there, that all those lives have been lost in vain. The only respectable reason to remain is that leaving would cause even more suffering to an Iraqi people who have suffered greatly first at Saddam’s hands, then at ours. But that reason falls apart once it is admitted that we are going to leave sometime. Even if our withdrawal is delayed for a year or two, it’s inevitable at this point. No one wants the troops there, and we haven’t got the troops to sustain the surge even if it actually accomplishes anything. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and get on with things.
Tom Murphy, July 12, 2007
A few days ago, Iraq officials said that 140,000 Turkish troops were poised on the Iraq border, prepared to pounce on Kurdish rebels in the northern part of the country. That would be bad news for US troops in Iraq, who number about 158,000. Turkey is a major regional ally of the US, and is fighting as a NATO member in Afghanistan. The US maintains a major air base in Turkey. So, it is stunning to hear Turkish officials now complaining about the Kurdish rebels carrying US-made weapons who are attacking inside Turkey. You’ll recall how American officials complained that insurgents in Iraq were carrying Iranian weapons. Well, now the table is turned. And our ally wants to know how those arms got into the hands of people attacking Turkey. It’s a fair question. But more important, it’s another sign of how the US involvement in Iraq has complicated our relationship with friends and foes in the region. No wonder even Republican senators are now turning on the Bush plan for open-ended warfare in Iraq.
John McGowan, July 8, 2007
Sometimes, when you are really ill and have been going from doctor to doctor in search of the cause, a grim, but definitive, diagnosis comes as a relief. At least you know what you are up against. That’s the only good spin I can place on Friday’s court ruling in Cincinnati. It’s official. Americans live in a police state. The government can violate our civil liberties and we have no legal recourse. The state’s surveillance powers have no check. Secrecy reigns. Citizens have no access to the government’s actions and, thus, “no standing†to challenge those actions in court. We are way past a “constitutional crisis†at this point. Crisis implies the constitution is imperiled. But the constitution is not in danger; it has been abrogated. Or, we can hope, only “suspended.†How long that suspension lasts is now up to the citizenry itself because neither the politicians nor the judges are going to act on the constitution’s behalf. That’s been pretty clear for some time now, but is another grim fact that yesterday’s ruling crystallized.
John McGowan, July 7, 2007
Economic inequality? You bet. Of the thirty industrial nations, the United States is by far the worst in economic inequality as measured by the World Bank. In the US, the lowest 20% gets 5.2% of the national income, as compared to 10.6% in Japan, 10.1% in Finland, 7.2% in France, 5.9% in China, 5.4% in Ecuador, and 2.2% in Brazil (2003 figures). The ratio of executive pay to the income of the average worker is 475:1 in the US, compared to 22:1 in Britain, 20:1 in Canada, and 11:1 in Japan, according to The Wall Street Journal. Economic inequality is currently greater in this country than at any time since 1929. So it’s good to see that the majority of Americans, even the ones doing quite well, think something is out of whack. What to do about it, or even how to think about it, is much less clear. Obviously, there is no consensus out there—or even much in the way of actual proposals. That’s bad news at a time when money speaks louder in our politics than at any time since the Gilded Age. When you look at the obscene salaries now commanded by CEOs in this country and the endless lobbying for ever more government handouts and tax breaks, the shamelessness of the very rich takes the breath away.
John McGowan, July 4, 2007
Jefferson’s words at the origin of this collective dream we call America—“that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are possessed of inalienable rightsâ€â€”remain the most radical ever spoken in our history. Radical not only in their insistence on equality, but also in their presumption of a “we,†of a people dedicated to making those truths palpable and lived realities. From the beginning, the contradiction between Jefferson’s words and the sordid facts of slavery, of economic inequality, and gender differences was evident to many. Six colonies outlawed slavery between 1776 and 1789, the year the Constitution was ratified. Perhaps even more telling is the fact, rarely acknowledged today, that the Fourth of July was mostly an African-American holiday after the Civil War. It was the day blacks celebrated their emancipation and, thus, a day that, well into the 1950s, was not a holiday for white Southerners. Equality has always had its enemies. “We†are still in the process of creating the full-blown “we†that will make equality the birthright of every American.
Tom Murphy, July 3, 2007
There’s a lot to think about this Independence Day. There are the brave and the unlucky who are dying daily, supposedly to help support the freedom and justice we relish here in America – a system that is supposed to be blind to race, color, creed and privilege. That system took a major hit this week, not from the car bombers of Baghdad and London, but from our own White House, as Bush commuted the 30-month prison sentence for a long-time personal friend and the former Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice as the FBI tried to find out who revealed the indentity of undercover CIA Agent Valerie Plame. It is hard to imagine a crime more befitting of a long prison sentence than that. Yet Mr. Bush chose to protect this convicted felon, insulting our heritage just as Americans ponder the price of our freedom. Bush may excuse Libby, but who could ever excuse Bush?
John McGowan, June 30, 2007
I’ve never believed that everything, in America is about race. But much in American history and the American present is about race, even while John Roberts tries to wish that history away. Are we going to accept into our midst the 12 million brown-skinned illegals whom we are all too happy to exploit and on whom we have become utterly dependent? No way! And are we going to continue down the slow, painful path of attaining an integrated society? No way! If blacks choose to live in neighborhoods that are mostly black, let them go to mostly black schools as well. It has nothing to do with us white folks, or with American history, or with American economic realities, or with American racial prejudice. Robert’s position would be sublime if it were not so deeply dangerous. Our ideal, he says, is a color-blind society, so we cannot use “race†when making school assignment decisions. Act as if we have solved the problem of race—and it will be solved. Asked if the French Revolution was a good thing, Chou En-Lai supposedly responded, “It’s too early to tell yet.†Integration has hardly been perfect since 1954, but it’s the best chance America has of becoming a functioning and just society. Reaching that better society—toward which progress has been fitful—became much harder after yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.Â
John McGowan, June 28, 2007
Apparently, Dick Cheney has been impersonating a legal vice-president for the past six years. But he only snuck into his office because security was lax and the so-called law enforcers looked the other way. Plus, he kept getting advance warning of those FBI raids. Now the guy wants amnesty – not only a fat pension, but approval for continuing to act as vice-president while ignoring the legal responsibilities of office. The Republican right in Congress has declared enough is enough, and are trying to decide between shipping him back to from whence he came or building a security fence around the Capitol. They will never, never be soft on crime.
Tom Murphy, June 27, 2007
The reality is that life will go on in America no matter what happens with any proposal to change immigration rules. The president’s proposal has good and bad points for conservatives, liberals, the 12 million immigrants who are supposedly in the US illegally, and the millions of other people who want to follow the rules on a path toward citizenship. But one thing is certain: this country cannot survive without immigrants. First, almost all Americans descended from immigrants; the country was founded by immigrants. Second, immigrant work forces are the fuel of the nation’s economy. (My Irish cousins help build the railways from the east while Chinese workers laid rail from the west.) In a very American way, most immigrant groups have worked their way into the middle class, paying taxes that pay for schools, roads, public services and, yes, social security and Medicare. In recent years, we’ve lost manufacturing jobs to other countries because they had workers anxious to do the at lower wages. We’re not advocating sub-standard wages here; Toyota and Honda manage to build cars in the US, paying good wages and still make a fine profit. The question should not be how to restrict immigration, but how to facilitate it and how to accelerate the inclusion of those people who risk everything to come here in quest of a better life. Life will go on in America, but it will be a better life for all if we remain on the path that brought us this far.
Tom Murphy, June 20, 2007
It seems like the 2008 presidential campaign has already been going on too long, and we have almost another 17 months ago before the polls even open. Yikes! The funny thing is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem too excited about their combined 21 candidates. There are a lot of people hoping that some big name like Newt Gingrich or Al Gore would hop into the campaign. And now there’s talk Mike Bloomberg might run as an independent. Speaking strictly from personal experience, the country could do a lot worse. The speculation followed his decision to stop calling himself a Republican. Good move. He was a lousy Republican. As it happens, I worked for Mike for four years at Bloomberg News, and he earned my deep respect as a determined man who has proven repeatedly that anything is possible. After I left the company, he graciously agreed to be interviewed for my book "Web Rules." He spoke eloquently and candidly about technology and the financial markets – he’s a genius at both. He’s well-versed to make decisions about, say, deficit spending or computer-controlled missile systems. I know the man as a leader, and an inspiration. That’s not to say he’s without his flaws, but as long as we elect human to the White House that’s going to be a constant. He’s fair, but demanding. He’s generous, but expects a lot in return. And above all, he works hard. The people who work for Mike work hard, too. Really hard. That’s how he became a billionaire. That’s how he became mayor of New York. And, if he wants to, that’s how he’ll become president. Of course, he hasn’t decided to run yet. But this will be a much better election – perhaps a better nation – if he does.
Tom Murphy, June 17, 2007
Millions of students have been taking final exams across the US recently, so it seems like a good time to grade the US foreign policy efforts of the Bush Administration based on recent headlines. Hamas takes control of the Gaza: Grade D. About 60 percent of Bagdhad is still out of control: Grade F. Tehran expects to have thousands of centrifuges making enriched uranium for bombs this year: Grade D. The Taliban is retaking parts of Afghanistan: Grade D. The US holds back efforts to ease global warming: Grade D. Hundreds die every day in continuing bloodshed in Darfur:: Grade D. Relations between the US and Russsia are at the lowest point in 25 years because of US plans to put missiles near Russia’s border: Grade D. Let’s see….that’s six D’s and an F. And we graded mercifully. Sounds like Mr. Bush will have to spend the summer getting his grades up before making any plans for vacation in Crawford. The policy of this country ought to be no crisis left behind.
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