"Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says the so-called "leakgate" case is really about President Bush's "dishonesty over the Iraq question."
Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning, Dean said, "This is not so much about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. This is about the fact that the president didn't tell us the truth when we went to Iraq, and all these guys involved in it -- it's a huge cover-up. That's what they're in trouble for."
It's thanks to former ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration's "dishonesty" has come to light, Dean indicated.
"Half the stuff the president told us about Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, the trip to Niger, the purchase of uranium -- we know it's not true," Dean said. He added that the 9/11 commission found "no evidence of a terror connection" between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and that Saddam "had nothing to do with 9/11."
Dean accused President Bush of "pushing that line nevertheless. We know the president wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq."
[President Bush has said that pre-war intelligence indicated that Saddam Hussein was a threat; that the U.S. Congress "looked at the intelligence, and they saw a threat," and even the United Nations saw a threat, Bush said in July 2004, a few months before he was re-elected.]
According to Dean, President Bush's top adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby are in trouble for "attacking somebody who criticized them and disagreed with them."
Although both Rove and Libby have appeared before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's name and CIA affiliation, neither man is in trouble yet.
However, the federal grand jury's term ends on Friday, and if indictments are forthcoming, they'll be issued this week. Speculation about who, if anyone, will be indicted has been swirling for weeks.
Dean was asked what would happen if the federal grand jury does not return indictments. "Will you accept that as the end of the matter?" Stephanopoulos asked the DNC chairman.
"No," Dean said. "Because I fundamentally don't think these are honest people running the government."
Election fraud?
On Sunday, Dean pointed to news reports indicating that the recent Iraqi election, where people went to the polls to vote on a constitution, wasn't "completely honest." Dean cited as proof an ABC News report saying that one Iraqi man had filled out seven ballots and stuck them all in the box.
"If that's what we're fighting for in Iraq, we don't belong there," Dean said. "If this election was corrupted, it's time to figure out how to get [the troops] out."
"This Week" host George Stephanopoulos reminded Dean that early indications show "there was no widespread fraud."
Dean responded, "All I know is an ABC correspondent saw it and talked about it on television. That's what I know. Let's find out more. When you have 99 percent of the people voting yes, that's always some indication that things may not quite be exactly as they seem."
The Republican National Committee criticized Dean's criticism of the Iraqi election, saying he "displayed a troubling unwillingness and inability to acknowledge the real progress occurring in Iraq.
"Chairman Dean's criticism of an election where Iraqis turned out in record numbers to approve a constitution illustrates that many in the Democrat party are still focused on pessimism and defeatism when it comes to advancing freedom in the Middle East and winning the war on terror," the RNC statement said.
"Continually explaining what you are against and tossing out negative attacks is not an agenda, despite Chairman Dean's claims."
On Sunday's show, Dean told Stephanopoulos that "Democrats are the party of moral values" and that most Americans agree with those values.
He said those values include "honesty in government": balancing the budget; restoring jobs; "a health care system that benefits everybody"; and a "decent public education system."
"We want ethics legislation and campaign finance reform and health care reform. We will be the party of change, and we're serious about this and Democrats will have to live by these changes just like Republicans. We want fundamental reform in the United States."
Dean said Democrats won't accept corruption in the Republican Party -- or among Democrats, either."-from the story on Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.COM).
Monday, October 24, 2005
''City Inside / Out''
You can watch recent tv programs here on the city's "Seattle Channel" featuring the candidates for City Council, Port Commission, School Board as well discussions of other issues, including the Monorail. Nothing on the mayor's race, go figure! (Real Player required)
Sunday, October 23, 2005
"Howard Dean in his own words"
"Some excerpts from Dean's appearance this morning on ABC News's 'This Week' --
On the Democratic Agenda:
"The truth is the Democrats are the party of moral values. We are altruists and believe we are all in it together and have a community to sustain. The President's attack on Social Security wasn't just about money and neoconservative nonsense. It was about a fundamental attack on the notion that America is one community and we have responsibility for each other. When we talk about moral values... 67% of America believes that it is a moral value that everybody has health insurance; 60% of Americans believe it's immoral for the federal government to tell families what to do in their personal decisions -- decisions that have to do with their personal lives. So, most Americans agree with Democratic moral values.
"...Honesty in government will be one of them; balancing the budget and restoring jobs another; a health care system that benefits everybody a third one. Strong education system to give opportunity to all Americans again....We believe that we ought to have a decent public education system and the president ought to stop taking money away from it...Balance the budget after the most fiscally imprudent Administration in my lifetime, then restore the social safety net for middle class Americans that is being shredded by an Administration who says one thing and does something else...We want ethics legislation and campaign finance reform and health care reform. We will be the party of change, and we're serious about this and Democrats will have to live by these changes just like Republicans. We want fundamental reform in the United States."
On the Republican Party's Culture of Corruption:
"We believe we ought to stop with the corruption scandals--one after another, the House, the Senate, the Vice President's office, all involved in some kind of corruption. [It has] spread to governors' offices all around the country: Ohio; California, the treasurer of the governor in Minnesota's campaign had to resign. There is a culture of corruption that the Republicans have brought to Washington and to statehouses all around the country. We can stop that. We will."
On President Bush's Failed Strategy in Iraq:
"We cannot have a permanent commitment to a failed strategy, and George Bush has a failed strategy for Iraq. When you don't tell the truth when you go into Iraq, it's unlikely it will be a successful program... The president has no plan. The third piece is we're clearly not going to stay there forever. The president seems to think the choices are only between cutting and running and staying forever. They're not."
On the White House Leak Case:
"This is not so much about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. This is about the fact that the President didn't tell us the truth when we went to Iraq, and all these guys involved in it, it's a huge cover-up. That's what they're in trouble for. The deed that led to it is an attack on the President's dishonesty over the Iraq question. This is all -- came to pass because of Joseph Wilson...
"...The evidence is clear. Half the stuff the president told us about Iraq--weapons of mass destruction, the trip to Niger, the purchase of uranium--we know its not true. It was in the 9/11 report. The 9/11 report--co-chaired by a Republican, Tom Kean of New Jersey--said there was no evidence of a terror connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The President has been pushing that line nonetheless ever since. We know the President wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq.
"The problem--what got Rove and Libby in trouble was because they were attacking--which the Republicans always do--attacking somebody who criticized them and disagreed with them... That is what they are investigating. A fundamental flaw in the Bush Administration is that they make personal attacks on people for meritorious arguments."
On Harriet Miers:
"Until you get her in front of a panel of senators asking her questions and see her more recent writings we don't know much about [Miers]. The president nominated her. He has an obligation to do what he can to get her confirmed, and we ought to know -- the American people should know what [Miers] believes. The only way to find that out, given the paucity of her legislative record, is have the president waive executive privilege."-from Joe Rospar's post on Kos, tipped by Howard-Empowered People.
On the Democratic Agenda:
"The truth is the Democrats are the party of moral values. We are altruists and believe we are all in it together and have a community to sustain. The President's attack on Social Security wasn't just about money and neoconservative nonsense. It was about a fundamental attack on the notion that America is one community and we have responsibility for each other. When we talk about moral values... 67% of America believes that it is a moral value that everybody has health insurance; 60% of Americans believe it's immoral for the federal government to tell families what to do in their personal decisions -- decisions that have to do with their personal lives. So, most Americans agree with Democratic moral values.
"...Honesty in government will be one of them; balancing the budget and restoring jobs another; a health care system that benefits everybody a third one. Strong education system to give opportunity to all Americans again....We believe that we ought to have a decent public education system and the president ought to stop taking money away from it...Balance the budget after the most fiscally imprudent Administration in my lifetime, then restore the social safety net for middle class Americans that is being shredded by an Administration who says one thing and does something else...We want ethics legislation and campaign finance reform and health care reform. We will be the party of change, and we're serious about this and Democrats will have to live by these changes just like Republicans. We want fundamental reform in the United States."
On the Republican Party's Culture of Corruption:
"We believe we ought to stop with the corruption scandals--one after another, the House, the Senate, the Vice President's office, all involved in some kind of corruption. [It has] spread to governors' offices all around the country: Ohio; California, the treasurer of the governor in Minnesota's campaign had to resign. There is a culture of corruption that the Republicans have brought to Washington and to statehouses all around the country. We can stop that. We will."
On President Bush's Failed Strategy in Iraq:
"We cannot have a permanent commitment to a failed strategy, and George Bush has a failed strategy for Iraq. When you don't tell the truth when you go into Iraq, it's unlikely it will be a successful program... The president has no plan. The third piece is we're clearly not going to stay there forever. The president seems to think the choices are only between cutting and running and staying forever. They're not."
On the White House Leak Case:
"This is not so much about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. This is about the fact that the President didn't tell us the truth when we went to Iraq, and all these guys involved in it, it's a huge cover-up. That's what they're in trouble for. The deed that led to it is an attack on the President's dishonesty over the Iraq question. This is all -- came to pass because of Joseph Wilson...
"...The evidence is clear. Half the stuff the president told us about Iraq--weapons of mass destruction, the trip to Niger, the purchase of uranium--we know its not true. It was in the 9/11 report. The 9/11 report--co-chaired by a Republican, Tom Kean of New Jersey--said there was no evidence of a terror connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The President has been pushing that line nonetheless ever since. We know the President wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq.
"The problem--what got Rove and Libby in trouble was because they were attacking--which the Republicans always do--attacking somebody who criticized them and disagreed with them... That is what they are investigating. A fundamental flaw in the Bush Administration is that they make personal attacks on people for meritorious arguments."
On Harriet Miers:
"Until you get her in front of a panel of senators asking her questions and see her more recent writings we don't know much about [Miers]. The president nominated her. He has an obligation to do what he can to get her confirmed, and we ought to know -- the American people should know what [Miers] believes. The only way to find that out, given the paucity of her legislative record, is have the president waive executive privilege."-from Joe Rospar's post on Kos, tipped by Howard-Empowered People.
Corrupt, Incompetent, 'Off Center'
"In a May survey published by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 65 percent of respondents said they favor providing health insurance to all Americans, even if it means raising taxes, and 86 percent said they favor raising the minimum wage. Seventy-seven percent said they believe the country "should do whatever it takes to protect the environment." A September Gallup Poll finds that 59 percent consider the Iraq War a mistake and 63 percent agree that U.S. forces should be partially or completely withdrawn. Nevertheless, extremist right-wingers, including a few apparent criminals, enjoy a stranglehold on our political system and media discourse. And so the majority views of the American people are treated with contempt by pundits and politicians alike. To give just a minor example, New York Times columnist David Brooks — the writer who best understands the dynamics of the contemporary Democratic Party, according to the smart boys at ABC's The Note — began a recent screed with the proclamation: "After a while, you get sick of the DeLays of the right and the Deans of the left." Note the implied equivalence between the corrupt and extreme Tom DeLay — who regularly compares the Environmental Protection Agency to the Nazis — and Howard Dean, a balanced-budget fiscal conservative and ally of the NRA whose "radical" position on Iraq now puts him to the right of most Americans."-from the commentary by Eric Alterman in The Nation, via CBS News.
Dean calls for end to 'culture of corruption'
"LEWISTON — The Bush White House is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history since President Warren G. Harding's, said Howard Dean during his first visit to Maine as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean's comments Saturday came as top White House advisers are being investigated for their roles in the outing of a CIA operative and Tom DeLay, the former second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, faces conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
"The first thing we're going to do is we're going to have ethics come back to Washington again," said Dean, the keynote speaker at Saturday night's annual fundraising dinner for the Maine Democratic Party at the Lewiston Armory.
To deal with the "culture of corruption," Dean said, there needs to be an ethics code in Congress and stronger campaign finance laws.
Dean, a former Vermont governor who was once a front-runner in the 2004 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, alluded to criticism that Democrats have been too timid and vague in their message and have not capitalized on Republicans' weaknesses.
Dean said that if Democrats don't stand up for themselves, voters won't have any reason to believe they would be well-represented.
"We have to stand up and say who we are and why we believe what we believe," he said.
Dean said if the Democrats were to regain power, the party would be strong on national defense. He said the party never would send troops abroad without telling them the truth about why they were going, and without adequately arming them.
Dean said that Democrats also would make sure every American has access to health insurance.
"If 40 industrial nations can do it and balance the budget at the same time, it's time to have somebody in the White House who can chew gum and think at the same time," he said.
More than 400 party loyalists listened as Dean described Democrats as a party of moral values, while criticizing Republicans as trying to divide Americans over race, sexual orientation and country of origin.
Dean said Republicans should not have interfered in the Terri Schiavo right-to-life case.
"I'm tired of the ayatollahs of the right wing," Dean said. "We're fighting for freedom in Iraq. We're going to fight for freedom in America."
Dean urged Maine Democrats to run for state office in 2006, and to maintain Democratic control of the State House that Gov. John Baldacci needs to push through his initiatives.
Maine is the 33rd state Dean has visited since taking over as chairman this year. He received several standing ovations during a program that also included Baldacci and Democratic U.S. Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud.
The purpose of the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner was to raise money and rally the party faithful, and the event often took a light-hearted tone. Allen made one of several DeLay jokes of the night when he said he heard there was a new television show called "Desperate House Leaders."-from the story in today's Portland Press Herald (ME), part of Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
"The first thing we're going to do is we're going to have ethics come back to Washington again," said Dean, the keynote speaker at Saturday night's annual fundraising dinner for the Maine Democratic Party at the Lewiston Armory.
To deal with the "culture of corruption," Dean said, there needs to be an ethics code in Congress and stronger campaign finance laws.
Dean, a former Vermont governor who was once a front-runner in the 2004 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, alluded to criticism that Democrats have been too timid and vague in their message and have not capitalized on Republicans' weaknesses.
Dean said that if Democrats don't stand up for themselves, voters won't have any reason to believe they would be well-represented.
"We have to stand up and say who we are and why we believe what we believe," he said.
Dean said if the Democrats were to regain power, the party would be strong on national defense. He said the party never would send troops abroad without telling them the truth about why they were going, and without adequately arming them.
Dean said that Democrats also would make sure every American has access to health insurance.
"If 40 industrial nations can do it and balance the budget at the same time, it's time to have somebody in the White House who can chew gum and think at the same time," he said.
More than 400 party loyalists listened as Dean described Democrats as a party of moral values, while criticizing Republicans as trying to divide Americans over race, sexual orientation and country of origin.
Dean said Republicans should not have interfered in the Terri Schiavo right-to-life case.
"I'm tired of the ayatollahs of the right wing," Dean said. "We're fighting for freedom in Iraq. We're going to fight for freedom in America."
Dean urged Maine Democrats to run for state office in 2006, and to maintain Democratic control of the State House that Gov. John Baldacci needs to push through his initiatives.
Maine is the 33rd state Dean has visited since taking over as chairman this year. He received several standing ovations during a program that also included Baldacci and Democratic U.S. Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud.
The purpose of the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner was to raise money and rally the party faithful, and the event often took a light-hearted tone. Allen made one of several DeLay jokes of the night when he said he heard there was a new television show called "Desperate House Leaders."-from the story in today's Portland Press Herald (ME), part of Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
''Leadership, not spin is needed now''
"If the Democrats blow 2006, not to mention 2008, the entire party needs to throw its collective hands up and dismiss itself. Just like the Whigs and the Federalists passed into the history books, Democrats too may be deemed completely irrelevant if they can’t get regain power in this debacle of leadership currently on display.
John Harwood, Wall Street Journal senior political reporter, and Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, were interviewed on national television Thursday about the growing “crisis” in the White House. Neither was reticent to call the current state of affairs what it is, a wide-scale mess.
Consider the litany of problems. The war in Iraq. Failed hurricane disaster efforts. An investigation into the CIA leak that has reached to the core of the administration. A floundering nomination of Harriet Miers. The Bush White House resembles more each day the 1998 Clinton White House. Second-term plans such as tax revisions and social security overhaul are lost in a bonfire of failed programs and inept leadership.
Unfortunately, the Democrats appear to be a ship capsized by a profound lack of leadership and charting a course to nowhere. Where is the counterpoint to the president’s turmoil? Where is the opposition to unending war, limitless debt and failed policies?
Democrats have spent so long being defined as “not Republicans” that they offer little genuine leadership. Read many of national commentators, and the anti-Bush rhetoric is spirited stuff. But pro-anything is flaccid and lifeless. It is easy to blast a president, but apparently it is very hard to create a comprehensive and sustainable plan for the future that a strong majority of Americans can enthusiastically support.
With the exception of one charismatic leader, Democrats have not won a significant election since Lyndon B. Johnson. Jimmy Carter was the anti-Nixon candidate. Clinton won without a majority the first time, largely thanks to Ross Perot’s splinter candidacy. During the same era, the failures of Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry define post-Kennedy Democrats more so than any significant success.
Camelot, where have you gone?
Democrats can’t help themselves from imploding. Rather than celebrate a cast of favorable candidates, they rush like mice behind whoever is deemed “the one.” All of Howard Dean’s early promise was wiped out in one state’s election as the entire power structure rushed to fall in behind Kerry. The entire primary was a washout as money flew to Kerry and Democrats lost a chance to let the best candidate fight it out and win. We are so determined to find a winner, we fail to wait for leadership to emerge. We build straw men for candidates.
So what’s happening now? The “Just Win baby” philosophy is already lining up behind Hillary Clinton, the hopeful reincarnation of Bill.
Read any Susan Estrich column and you’d think she is applying for the job as Hillary’s campaign manager rather than offering Democrats insightful commentary. She dismisses serious leaders like Virginia Gov. Mark Warner or even John Edwards (moderates who have won in Red States, rather than liberals from the northeast blue states) while encouraging all Democrats everywhere to line up behind Hillary.
That’s spin, not leadership. If Democrats hope to win back some of Congress in 2006 and win back the White House in ’08, they bigger figure out how to lead now, at a time when it appears the entire country is desperately lacking anything of the kind."-from the editorial in the Ashland Daily Times (OR). I don't buy the whole argument, but am posting this because there some parts I appreciate.
John Harwood, Wall Street Journal senior political reporter, and Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, were interviewed on national television Thursday about the growing “crisis” in the White House. Neither was reticent to call the current state of affairs what it is, a wide-scale mess.
Consider the litany of problems. The war in Iraq. Failed hurricane disaster efforts. An investigation into the CIA leak that has reached to the core of the administration. A floundering nomination of Harriet Miers. The Bush White House resembles more each day the 1998 Clinton White House. Second-term plans such as tax revisions and social security overhaul are lost in a bonfire of failed programs and inept leadership.
Unfortunately, the Democrats appear to be a ship capsized by a profound lack of leadership and charting a course to nowhere. Where is the counterpoint to the president’s turmoil? Where is the opposition to unending war, limitless debt and failed policies?
Democrats have spent so long being defined as “not Republicans” that they offer little genuine leadership. Read many of national commentators, and the anti-Bush rhetoric is spirited stuff. But pro-anything is flaccid and lifeless. It is easy to blast a president, but apparently it is very hard to create a comprehensive and sustainable plan for the future that a strong majority of Americans can enthusiastically support.
With the exception of one charismatic leader, Democrats have not won a significant election since Lyndon B. Johnson. Jimmy Carter was the anti-Nixon candidate. Clinton won without a majority the first time, largely thanks to Ross Perot’s splinter candidacy. During the same era, the failures of Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry define post-Kennedy Democrats more so than any significant success.
Camelot, where have you gone?
Democrats can’t help themselves from imploding. Rather than celebrate a cast of favorable candidates, they rush like mice behind whoever is deemed “the one.” All of Howard Dean’s early promise was wiped out in one state’s election as the entire power structure rushed to fall in behind Kerry. The entire primary was a washout as money flew to Kerry and Democrats lost a chance to let the best candidate fight it out and win. We are so determined to find a winner, we fail to wait for leadership to emerge. We build straw men for candidates.
So what’s happening now? The “Just Win baby” philosophy is already lining up behind Hillary Clinton, the hopeful reincarnation of Bill.
Read any Susan Estrich column and you’d think she is applying for the job as Hillary’s campaign manager rather than offering Democrats insightful commentary. She dismisses serious leaders like Virginia Gov. Mark Warner or even John Edwards (moderates who have won in Red States, rather than liberals from the northeast blue states) while encouraging all Democrats everywhere to line up behind Hillary.
That’s spin, not leadership. If Democrats hope to win back some of Congress in 2006 and win back the White House in ’08, they bigger figure out how to lead now, at a time when it appears the entire country is desperately lacking anything of the kind."-from the editorial in the Ashland Daily Times (OR). I don't buy the whole argument, but am posting this because there some parts I appreciate.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
''Edward R. Murrow: the burden of democracy''
"Democracy is not spontaneous. It requires a deliberate structure. If any part of that structure weakens, democracy shudders.
A new movie deftly deals with the importance of a free and independent press to American democracy. "Good Night, and Good Luck" depicts Edward R. Murrow's reporting that helped check communist-seeking Sen. Joseph McCarthy. George Clooney — who directed, co-wrote and plays CBS producer Fred Friendly — will not get rich from this black-and-white movie. Luckily for us, that was not Clooney's intention.
What audiences should understand while viewing this movie is that democracy is in greater peril today than it was when McCarthy was bringing people before Congress on trumped-up charges of communism. The threat now is not a fear-induced witch hunt, but one of democracy's cornerstones: the press.
Nearly 30 years of media consolidation is beginning to derail 229 years of democracy in America. Consolidation has left news organizations in the hands of public companies beholden to Wall Street, and the public with shallow journalism that does not challenge powerful institutions.
Imagine Murrow — whose name is on the school of communication at Washington State University, where he graduated — trying to probe the White House about the Patriot Act, Guantánamo and Iraq with a string of sound bites in a 30-second segment.
This nation needs a press that will not cower to an angry citizenry or acquiesce to elected officials. Murrow did not, and was not alone. In 1949, Ed Guthman of The Seattle Times wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series that exonerated a University of Washington professor of being a communist.
Where will that journalism come from today? The large conglomerates that own network news or the chain newspapers? Or will the few independent newspapers and broadcast stations left shoulder the burden of democracy?
A speech Murrow gave 47 years ago at the Radio Television News Directors Association convention sounds prophetic today and now applies to newspapers as well as TV news.
"We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. ... But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late."-from today's editorial in the Seattle Times.
A new movie deftly deals with the importance of a free and independent press to American democracy. "Good Night, and Good Luck" depicts Edward R. Murrow's reporting that helped check communist-seeking Sen. Joseph McCarthy. George Clooney — who directed, co-wrote and plays CBS producer Fred Friendly — will not get rich from this black-and-white movie. Luckily for us, that was not Clooney's intention.
What audiences should understand while viewing this movie is that democracy is in greater peril today than it was when McCarthy was bringing people before Congress on trumped-up charges of communism. The threat now is not a fear-induced witch hunt, but one of democracy's cornerstones: the press.
Nearly 30 years of media consolidation is beginning to derail 229 years of democracy in America. Consolidation has left news organizations in the hands of public companies beholden to Wall Street, and the public with shallow journalism that does not challenge powerful institutions.
Imagine Murrow — whose name is on the school of communication at Washington State University, where he graduated — trying to probe the White House about the Patriot Act, Guantánamo and Iraq with a string of sound bites in a 30-second segment.
This nation needs a press that will not cower to an angry citizenry or acquiesce to elected officials. Murrow did not, and was not alone. In 1949, Ed Guthman of The Seattle Times wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series that exonerated a University of Washington professor of being a communist.
Where will that journalism come from today? The large conglomerates that own network news or the chain newspapers? Or will the few independent newspapers and broadcast stations left shoulder the burden of democracy?
A speech Murrow gave 47 years ago at the Radio Television News Directors Association convention sounds prophetic today and now applies to newspapers as well as TV news.
"We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. ... But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late."-from today's editorial in the Seattle Times.
Friday, October 21, 2005
''INDN's List gives Dean crash course on issues''
"PRIOR LAKE, Minn. - Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former presidential candidate, gave a big boost to
INDN's (Indigenous Democratic Network) List, an effort to recruit Native political candidates, when he attended its inaugural Candidate's Camp at the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel Oct. 13. He also got a crash course in Indian issues.
Dean was following through on a promise he made to the Native American Caucus at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last summer. Speaking to a standing-room-only meeting, he urged the Native delegates to expand their political activity by running for office. He amplified the theme at the Candidate's Camp, devoted to training Indians to do just that.
''Instead of a place at the table,'' he said at a press conference, ''we want you to have a place on the ticket.''
But the message went both ways. Dean said he wanted to hear what concerned Indian country, and he heard more than he might have anticipated. He was plunged apparently out of his depth into the intricacies of Indian gaming law. He also faced the emotional issue of tribal recognition and defended his own opposition, as a former governor of Vermont, to state recognition for its Abenaki Indians.
Dean gave a firm pledge of support to the more than 100 potential Native candidates at the four-day training conference. ''The DNC is committed to empowering Indian country and to encouraging full participation in the political process,'' he said in his keynote address. ''We don't just want your vote; we want you on the ballot.''
He criticized some past Democratic Party approaches as one-sided. ''I know that some politicians look at Indian country as just a source of campaign cash and a swing vote in certain elections,'' he said. ''That must change. The Democratic Party is taking no voters for granted.
''It is not enough for candidates to come to your communities six weeks before an election and ask for your vote or to ask tribal leaders for money. We have to show up now, organize, fight for what we believe and encourage American Indian candidates across the country to run. You are the essence of that effort.''
He presented a traditional Democratic social agenda as ''shared values'' with the tribal outlook. ''For centuries, tribes have been committed to 'leaving no one behind,''' he said. ''The Democratic Party shares in that commitment, which is why we fight for all the things that Democrats across the country believe in: protecting families and communities; educating all our children, not just those born into wealth; providing our families with affordable, quality health care - especially the one-third of Native American families that lack health insurance; providing care and services for our children, our elderly, and the less fortunate.''
In a teleconference with Native media, however, Dean faced a less familiar set of issues. He confessed that he was unfamiliar with legislation that would cut back the types of machines allowed in Class II casinos. He said that as governor he opposed gambling, and he gave a more limited interpretation of the legal basis for Indian gaming than many would accept.
''I like the idea that whatever the states can do, the tribes can do,'' he said. ''If the state doesn't have any gambling, the tribes shouldn't have gambling.''
(The predominant reading of the Supreme Court's 1987 California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians decision, however, is that tribes are not limited to offering only the types of games that state law allows. If a state treats gaming as a matter of regulation, instead of a criminal activity, then it has no constitutional authority to impose its regulations on a sovereign tribal government.)
Dean also dodged a chance to attack the Bush administration for its reversal the day before of recognition for two Connecticut tribes. Although many American Indians in the region were deeply emotional about the reversal, Democratic officeholders had worked strenuously against the two tribes. Dean said that in some cases, previously recognized tribes had opposed federal acknowledgement of other tribes.
Reminded that while governor of Vermont he had vigorously opposed state recognition of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Missisquoi Abenaki Indians, he reaffirmed his position. ''They did not meet the criteria for recognition,'' he said. ''Also, I didn't want to introduce gambling in my state,'' he said.
Although Dean began his governorship on friendly terms with the state's Abenaki band, relations shortly deteriorated between him and its fiery leader, Homer St. Francis. Although Dean vigorously courted Indian support in his presidential campaign and was endorsed by some leading Native activists, the band circulated material about his positions as governor that John Kerry's campaign effectively used against him in the Southwestern presidential primaries. The band later endorsed Gen. Wesley Clark for the presidential nomination.
Dean said, however, that he wasn't following Indian affairs in his home state and wouldn't comment on an Abenaki recognition bill now before the Vermont Legislature.
He ended the press conference on firmer ground, however, when a representative of the National Congress of American Indians asked about improving access to the Education Department. The answer, he said, ''is to appoint Native Americans to high positions. If you do that, the access problem disappears.''
On home turf, he said he was committed to expanding the Native presence in the DNC, noting that he had just appointed Kalyn Free, founder of INDN's List, as committeeman. He said he wasn't sure how far short the number of Indians on the committee fell from the threshold that would create a formal Native caucus, since most appointments were done by state parties. Minorities with a minimum of nine members on the DNC are eligible to set up their own caucus. But he said the committee might consider revising the rules to make the Native caucus possible.
Whatever the controversies in his home state, Dean was warmly welcomed to the Candidate's Camp. Said Free, in announcing his attendance: ''We are honored and excited to have the chairman of the DNC fully supporting the mission of INDN's List, which is to change the face of color and power in America by electing Native Americans to public office.''-from the article on Indian Country.
INDN's (Indigenous Democratic Network) List, an effort to recruit Native political candidates, when he attended its inaugural Candidate's Camp at the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel Oct. 13. He also got a crash course in Indian issues.
Dean was following through on a promise he made to the Native American Caucus at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last summer. Speaking to a standing-room-only meeting, he urged the Native delegates to expand their political activity by running for office. He amplified the theme at the Candidate's Camp, devoted to training Indians to do just that.
''Instead of a place at the table,'' he said at a press conference, ''we want you to have a place on the ticket.''
But the message went both ways. Dean said he wanted to hear what concerned Indian country, and he heard more than he might have anticipated. He was plunged apparently out of his depth into the intricacies of Indian gaming law. He also faced the emotional issue of tribal recognition and defended his own opposition, as a former governor of Vermont, to state recognition for its Abenaki Indians.
Dean gave a firm pledge of support to the more than 100 potential Native candidates at the four-day training conference. ''The DNC is committed to empowering Indian country and to encouraging full participation in the political process,'' he said in his keynote address. ''We don't just want your vote; we want you on the ballot.''
He criticized some past Democratic Party approaches as one-sided. ''I know that some politicians look at Indian country as just a source of campaign cash and a swing vote in certain elections,'' he said. ''That must change. The Democratic Party is taking no voters for granted.
''It is not enough for candidates to come to your communities six weeks before an election and ask for your vote or to ask tribal leaders for money. We have to show up now, organize, fight for what we believe and encourage American Indian candidates across the country to run. You are the essence of that effort.''
He presented a traditional Democratic social agenda as ''shared values'' with the tribal outlook. ''For centuries, tribes have been committed to 'leaving no one behind,''' he said. ''The Democratic Party shares in that commitment, which is why we fight for all the things that Democrats across the country believe in: protecting families and communities; educating all our children, not just those born into wealth; providing our families with affordable, quality health care - especially the one-third of Native American families that lack health insurance; providing care and services for our children, our elderly, and the less fortunate.''
In a teleconference with Native media, however, Dean faced a less familiar set of issues. He confessed that he was unfamiliar with legislation that would cut back the types of machines allowed in Class II casinos. He said that as governor he opposed gambling, and he gave a more limited interpretation of the legal basis for Indian gaming than many would accept.
''I like the idea that whatever the states can do, the tribes can do,'' he said. ''If the state doesn't have any gambling, the tribes shouldn't have gambling.''
(The predominant reading of the Supreme Court's 1987 California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians decision, however, is that tribes are not limited to offering only the types of games that state law allows. If a state treats gaming as a matter of regulation, instead of a criminal activity, then it has no constitutional authority to impose its regulations on a sovereign tribal government.)
Dean also dodged a chance to attack the Bush administration for its reversal the day before of recognition for two Connecticut tribes. Although many American Indians in the region were deeply emotional about the reversal, Democratic officeholders had worked strenuously against the two tribes. Dean said that in some cases, previously recognized tribes had opposed federal acknowledgement of other tribes.
Reminded that while governor of Vermont he had vigorously opposed state recognition of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Missisquoi Abenaki Indians, he reaffirmed his position. ''They did not meet the criteria for recognition,'' he said. ''Also, I didn't want to introduce gambling in my state,'' he said.
Although Dean began his governorship on friendly terms with the state's Abenaki band, relations shortly deteriorated between him and its fiery leader, Homer St. Francis. Although Dean vigorously courted Indian support in his presidential campaign and was endorsed by some leading Native activists, the band circulated material about his positions as governor that John Kerry's campaign effectively used against him in the Southwestern presidential primaries. The band later endorsed Gen. Wesley Clark for the presidential nomination.
Dean said, however, that he wasn't following Indian affairs in his home state and wouldn't comment on an Abenaki recognition bill now before the Vermont Legislature.
He ended the press conference on firmer ground, however, when a representative of the National Congress of American Indians asked about improving access to the Education Department. The answer, he said, ''is to appoint Native Americans to high positions. If you do that, the access problem disappears.''
On home turf, he said he was committed to expanding the Native presence in the DNC, noting that he had just appointed Kalyn Free, founder of INDN's List, as committeeman. He said he wasn't sure how far short the number of Indians on the committee fell from the threshold that would create a formal Native caucus, since most appointments were done by state parties. Minorities with a minimum of nine members on the DNC are eligible to set up their own caucus. But he said the committee might consider revising the rules to make the Native caucus possible.
Whatever the controversies in his home state, Dean was warmly welcomed to the Candidate's Camp. Said Free, in announcing his attendance: ''We are honored and excited to have the chairman of the DNC fully supporting the mission of INDN's List, which is to change the face of color and power in America by electing Native Americans to public office.''-from the article on Indian Country.
''Gore wants his network on Comcast''
"Al Gore was in Philadelphia yesterday in an attempt to persuade Comcast Corp. to offer his youth-oriented television network, Current TV, throughout its system.
Gore hosted a free concert in Dilworth Plaza, directly under the Comcast Building at 1500 Market St. Performers at the event, titled "Take Back TV," included the Roots, Little Brother and Fishbone.
Current TV, co-founded by Gore and launched in August, is a 24-hour station that runs continuous short segments - three to seven minutes long. The segments are shot and sent in by viewers from around the country.
"The very first words that we, the American nation, spoke were right here in Philadelphia," Gore said. "You know those words: 'We the people.' It wasn't, 'We the conglomerates.' It wasn't, 'We the corporations.' It was, 'We the people.' "
So far, the station is available widely only on DirecTV, and to some Time Warner stations. Although Comcast plays the programs on about half of its systems, the Philadelphia-area system does not run Current TV.
More than 5,000 college-aged people attended the concert.
The former vice president encouraged them to submit their work to the station.
"Send us your stories," Gore said. "Send us your television. Let us tell your stories, and let us put it on television nationwide."
Comcast has been in talks with the network about reaching a deal that would run Current TV on all of the corporation's systems, though they have not yet reached an agreement.
"Current is available on Comcast systems, reaching 13 million homes today," Comcast said in a written statement.
"We are in discussions with the new channel about their plans to further develop its content and about their interest in additional distribution in Comcast markets," the statement said. "Current is one of dozens of channels vying for scarce bandwidth and viewership."
Gore told the crowd that with digital cameras and computer editing systems, anyone can produce television.
"America is a conversation, where we talk to one another," he said. "When the conversation shifted over to television, all of a sudden, when the people tried to say something, you couldn't hear it because... it's all coming one way."
Gore drew cheers as he ended his speech with a political slant.
"We have to take our country back," he said. "And we're going to start by taking television back, and you're the ones that can do it."-from the article in the Philadelphia Daily News.
Gore hosted a free concert in Dilworth Plaza, directly under the Comcast Building at 1500 Market St. Performers at the event, titled "Take Back TV," included the Roots, Little Brother and Fishbone.
Current TV, co-founded by Gore and launched in August, is a 24-hour station that runs continuous short segments - three to seven minutes long. The segments are shot and sent in by viewers from around the country.
"The very first words that we, the American nation, spoke were right here in Philadelphia," Gore said. "You know those words: 'We the people.' It wasn't, 'We the conglomerates.' It wasn't, 'We the corporations.' It was, 'We the people.' "
So far, the station is available widely only on DirecTV, and to some Time Warner stations. Although Comcast plays the programs on about half of its systems, the Philadelphia-area system does not run Current TV.
More than 5,000 college-aged people attended the concert.
The former vice president encouraged them to submit their work to the station.
"Send us your stories," Gore said. "Send us your television. Let us tell your stories, and let us put it on television nationwide."
Comcast has been in talks with the network about reaching a deal that would run Current TV on all of the corporation's systems, though they have not yet reached an agreement.
"Current is available on Comcast systems, reaching 13 million homes today," Comcast said in a written statement.
"We are in discussions with the new channel about their plans to further develop its content and about their interest in additional distribution in Comcast markets," the statement said. "Current is one of dozens of channels vying for scarce bandwidth and viewership."
Gore told the crowd that with digital cameras and computer editing systems, anyone can produce television.
"America is a conversation, where we talk to one another," he said. "When the conversation shifted over to television, all of a sudden, when the people tried to say something, you couldn't hear it because... it's all coming one way."
Gore drew cheers as he ended his speech with a political slant.
"We have to take our country back," he said. "And we're going to start by taking television back, and you're the ones that can do it."-from the article in the Philadelphia Daily News.
''Talking About Testicles and Toughness, Instead of Actually Having Those Things"
David Sirota stays on message: "Sometimes you have to just sit back and laugh when Washington elites bloviate about how brilliant they are - even though their behavior has landed their party in a permanent minority status. One of those times is today if you read the new Rolling Stone piece on Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL).
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Emanuel is billed as one of the key figures in the battle for control of Congress in 2006. The article repeatedly trumpets Emanuel's "toughness" and supposedly hard-nosed nature - with Emanuel's friends from the Clinton administration echoing that sentiment. "He's got this big old pair of brass balls, and you can just hear 'em clanking when he walks down the halls of Congress," says Paul Begala, as just one example.
It's certainly true, Emanuel and his pals talk the talk. "We're the party of change," Emanuel says. "We're the party of a new direction." The DLC's Bruce Reed - another guy who has made a long career driving Democrats into the ground - says Emanuel "understands how much ideas matter, he always knows his message, he takes no prisoners and he only plays to win."
Out here in Red America, we live in a place seemingly unknown to people like this in Washington: it's called reality. And we have a name for talk like that: it's called B.S. Because here's what Emanuel never seems to answer: how is someone "tough" if they are so wimpy as to refuse to push their party to take clear contrasting positions on the most important issues facing America? What "ideas" that matter is Emanuel proposing? What position on key issues shows Democrats really represent serious "change" from Republicans? And are Democrats like Emanuel so arrogant/elitist to think that the American public doesn't inherently understand that all this rhetoric hides the fact that the party still is afraid of its own shadow?
As I have written before, Democrats right now have no official position on Iraq, energy, bankruptcy, protecting citizens' legal rights, trade, repealing Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the Supreme Court...and the list goes on.
Many Democrats on these issues have largely taken the exact same position as Republicans - even though polls show that on each issue, the public would support a progressive Democratic position.
And let's be clear - Emanuel has been one of those that has tried to suppress those who know the party needs to take a stand on these issues in order to actually explain to voters why they are worthy of support on election day. Remember, it was Emanuel who issued a memo trying to hide the fact that Iraq played a major role in Paul Hackett's near-upset special election campaign. And it was Emanuel who recently went on Meet the Press and was publicly embarrassed when he couldn't give a straight answer about the party's position on Iraq.
And make no mistake about it - polls show that if the Democrats continue trying to avoid taking clear positions, it could pay a price at the polls, even with the GOP's corruption scandals. As one recent nationwide survey showed, Republicans negatives are going up, but that has equaled "no major shift in support for Democrats" as the public still has little clue what Democrats really stand for.
I'm the first to congratulate Democrats when they get up the guts to take clear positions (see here and here for a few examples). That's the real definition of toughness that can win elections - not some guy who runs around talking about how tough he is and getting his friends to line up to talk about how rock hard his testicles are - all while he does his best to make sure his party takes no positions at all; not some guy who stands on desks and screams and yells as if he's some great populist leader, all while leading the White House charge to organize business lobbyists to ram sellout corporate-written trade deals through Congress; not some guy who brags about sending dead fish to people who cross him, all while going out of his way to cross Democrats who courageously try to defend ordinary people against Corporate America's most abusive behavior.
All of this isn't called "tough" - it's called B.S. You know it, I know it, and as much as some progressives want to deny it, so do voters. And if the rest of the Democratic politicians in Washington don't wake up out of these self-congratulatory delusions and get a real handle on what toughness actually means, it could be yet again another depressing election day in 2006."-from his piece on The Huffington Post.
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Emanuel is billed as one of the key figures in the battle for control of Congress in 2006. The article repeatedly trumpets Emanuel's "toughness" and supposedly hard-nosed nature - with Emanuel's friends from the Clinton administration echoing that sentiment. "He's got this big old pair of brass balls, and you can just hear 'em clanking when he walks down the halls of Congress," says Paul Begala, as just one example.
It's certainly true, Emanuel and his pals talk the talk. "We're the party of change," Emanuel says. "We're the party of a new direction." The DLC's Bruce Reed - another guy who has made a long career driving Democrats into the ground - says Emanuel "understands how much ideas matter, he always knows his message, he takes no prisoners and he only plays to win."
Out here in Red America, we live in a place seemingly unknown to people like this in Washington: it's called reality. And we have a name for talk like that: it's called B.S. Because here's what Emanuel never seems to answer: how is someone "tough" if they are so wimpy as to refuse to push their party to take clear contrasting positions on the most important issues facing America? What "ideas" that matter is Emanuel proposing? What position on key issues shows Democrats really represent serious "change" from Republicans? And are Democrats like Emanuel so arrogant/elitist to think that the American public doesn't inherently understand that all this rhetoric hides the fact that the party still is afraid of its own shadow?
As I have written before, Democrats right now have no official position on Iraq, energy, bankruptcy, protecting citizens' legal rights, trade, repealing Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the Supreme Court...and the list goes on.
Many Democrats on these issues have largely taken the exact same position as Republicans - even though polls show that on each issue, the public would support a progressive Democratic position.
And let's be clear - Emanuel has been one of those that has tried to suppress those who know the party needs to take a stand on these issues in order to actually explain to voters why they are worthy of support on election day. Remember, it was Emanuel who issued a memo trying to hide the fact that Iraq played a major role in Paul Hackett's near-upset special election campaign. And it was Emanuel who recently went on Meet the Press and was publicly embarrassed when he couldn't give a straight answer about the party's position on Iraq.
And make no mistake about it - polls show that if the Democrats continue trying to avoid taking clear positions, it could pay a price at the polls, even with the GOP's corruption scandals. As one recent nationwide survey showed, Republicans negatives are going up, but that has equaled "no major shift in support for Democrats" as the public still has little clue what Democrats really stand for.
I'm the first to congratulate Democrats when they get up the guts to take clear positions (see here and here for a few examples). That's the real definition of toughness that can win elections - not some guy who runs around talking about how tough he is and getting his friends to line up to talk about how rock hard his testicles are - all while he does his best to make sure his party takes no positions at all; not some guy who stands on desks and screams and yells as if he's some great populist leader, all while leading the White House charge to organize business lobbyists to ram sellout corporate-written trade deals through Congress; not some guy who brags about sending dead fish to people who cross him, all while going out of his way to cross Democrats who courageously try to defend ordinary people against Corporate America's most abusive behavior.
All of this isn't called "tough" - it's called B.S. You know it, I know it, and as much as some progressives want to deny it, so do voters. And if the rest of the Democratic politicians in Washington don't wake up out of these self-congratulatory delusions and get a real handle on what toughness actually means, it could be yet again another depressing election day in 2006."-from his piece on The Huffington Post.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
''Lacey V. Murrow (1904-1966)''
(You may find this off-topic). "To many people Lacey Murrow seemed to stand in his older brother's shadow. He was the younger brother of Edward R. Murrow, the noted pioneer journalist, radio and television news commentator, and one-time head of the U. S. Information Agency. But, each man made his own unique contributions to society and received many accolades during his lifetime.
Born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1904, Murrow grew up with his brothers Dewey and Ed in Bellingham, Washington. The Murrow brothers attended Washington State College. Lacey graduated with a B. S. in Civil Engineering in 1923.
Murrow had worked for the State Highway Department intermittently beginning in 1919, then he moved steadily into positions of higher responsibility. In 1933 Murrow began an eight-year term as Director of the State Highway Department. It proved a turning point in his career, and in the history of bridges in Washington.
In 1937 Murrow served also as Chief Engineer for the State Toll Bridge Authority. He became a forceful advocate for a floating bridge across Lake Washington, which was completed in 1940. The same year, Murrow oversaw the department's completion of the first, and ill-fated Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
The United States entry into World War II in 1941 turned Murrow's professional life in a new direction. Before the war his favorite sport had been flying. In the war, it became his profession. From 1941-46 he served as a command pilot, winning military honors including a presidential citation with four cluster decorations, the Legion of Merit, the Order of the British Empire, and the Croix de Guerre. In 1951 Murrow became a Brigadier General in the Air Force. He served in Korea, Japan, and the United States before retirement.
From 1954 until his death, Murrow lived in Washington, D. C. and worked for Transportation Consultants, Inc., serving most of those years as the firm's President.
A life-long smoker, Lacy Murrow, like his brother Edward, began suffering from lung cancer in the early 1960s. He underwent an operation shortly before his brother's death from the disease in 1965. Little more than a year later, in December 1966 at the age of 62, Lacey was found shot to death in his room at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, a 12-gauge shotgun propped against the bed.
Soon after Murrow's suicide, the Washington State Legislature passed a resolution requesting that the State Highway Commission re-name the first Lake Washington Floating Bridge in his honor. The Commission agreed, and in March 1967 paid tribute to Murrow, declaring, "this notable engineering achievement received world-wide recognition for its pioneering of a new concept in over-water structures."-from the post on the Washington State Department of Transportation's site.
I recently saw George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck!" about Edward R. Murrow's encounters with Senator Joe McCarthy in the nineteen fifties and just learned of this local connection to the Murrow family. Seeing the film about Murrow made me want to see "Network" again, for a view of network news set in 1976.
Born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1904, Murrow grew up with his brothers Dewey and Ed in Bellingham, Washington. The Murrow brothers attended Washington State College. Lacey graduated with a B. S. in Civil Engineering in 1923.
Murrow had worked for the State Highway Department intermittently beginning in 1919, then he moved steadily into positions of higher responsibility. In 1933 Murrow began an eight-year term as Director of the State Highway Department. It proved a turning point in his career, and in the history of bridges in Washington.
In 1937 Murrow served also as Chief Engineer for the State Toll Bridge Authority. He became a forceful advocate for a floating bridge across Lake Washington, which was completed in 1940. The same year, Murrow oversaw the department's completion of the first, and ill-fated Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
The United States entry into World War II in 1941 turned Murrow's professional life in a new direction. Before the war his favorite sport had been flying. In the war, it became his profession. From 1941-46 he served as a command pilot, winning military honors including a presidential citation with four cluster decorations, the Legion of Merit, the Order of the British Empire, and the Croix de Guerre. In 1951 Murrow became a Brigadier General in the Air Force. He served in Korea, Japan, and the United States before retirement.
From 1954 until his death, Murrow lived in Washington, D. C. and worked for Transportation Consultants, Inc., serving most of those years as the firm's President.
A life-long smoker, Lacy Murrow, like his brother Edward, began suffering from lung cancer in the early 1960s. He underwent an operation shortly before his brother's death from the disease in 1965. Little more than a year later, in December 1966 at the age of 62, Lacey was found shot to death in his room at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, a 12-gauge shotgun propped against the bed.
Soon after Murrow's suicide, the Washington State Legislature passed a resolution requesting that the State Highway Commission re-name the first Lake Washington Floating Bridge in his honor. The Commission agreed, and in March 1967 paid tribute to Murrow, declaring, "this notable engineering achievement received world-wide recognition for its pioneering of a new concept in over-water structures."-from the post on the Washington State Department of Transportation's site.
I recently saw George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck!" about Edward R. Murrow's encounters with Senator Joe McCarthy in the nineteen fifties and just learned of this local connection to the Murrow family. Seeing the film about Murrow made me want to see "Network" again, for a view of network news set in 1976.
''Let's fix this mess''
Molly Ivins responds to the call for a positive Democratic agenda: "AUSTIN, Texas -- I have been collecting material for a series of columns on the peppy topic, "How Do We Fix This Mess?" The news is dandy in that there are a lot of a sound ideas being passed around. Really serious messes, like the one this country is in, do not, in my experience, have simple, definitive solutions. And if they do, such solutions are politically impossible. We are looking for progress, not perfection, so anyone who tells you the entire tax code should fit on a postcard is a bona fide, certified, chicken-fried moron.
But listening to the Democratic debate on what to do now, it seems to me some of the brethren and sistren are asking the wrong questions. The question is not, "How Do We Win?" That's a technical question that comes after, "What the Hell Can We Do About This Disaster?"
I personally think some good ideas and a plan should come first -- and to this end, let me chime in on a note of agreement with some Actual Moderates, William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, a couple of Clintonites still carrying on in that old Third Way that was good enough for Bill C.
They are opposed to putting too much stock in the political strategy of "reframing" issues as advised by the linguist George Lakoff. This seems to me merest common sense, and I'm not sure Lakoff himself wouldn't agree.
Frank Luntz, the focus-group king and message-meister who keeps the Republicans all chorusing the same carefully worded talking points, is indeed a large part of the R's win strategy. But I think the reason R's have been successful in selling rotten policies that really hurt people is not so much because of clever wording as because Democrats haven't stood up and pointed out what was happening.
Believe it or not, there is a certain charm to simply telling the truth, and even to telling the truth simply. This emperor isn't wearing any clothes, and the people who are pointing that out now that Bush's approval ratings are at 37 percent, but who were nowhere to be heard when he was at 60 and better, are maybe not the people we should be looking to now.
Which brings us to the Democratic Leadership Council and the Al From-Bruce Reed take on what we should do now. The DLC is regularly condemned as being Republican Lite, but it seems to me its problem is being Light Lite. The From-Reed proposal is security, values, opportunity and reform -- a perfect symphony of the obvious. I do like their Opportunity ideas:
Create high-wage jobs by making the United States the top exporter of energy-efficient products.
Cut $300 billion in subsidies, and invest it in innovation, education and growth.
Pass tax reform to replace 60 tax breaks with four: college, homes, kids, universal pensions.
The problem comes when you look at their reform initiatives -- lobbying reform to close the revolving door and a ban partisan gerrymandering. Uh, how about we address the problem that our entire political system is corrupt, that it has been corrupted by corporate money, and that we have government of corporate interests, by corporate interests and for corporate interests -- and that we really need to change that, instead of trying to raise more corporate money than Republicans?
David Sirota, a stout liberal attacking from the other side, decries Partisan War Syndrome, which he defines as beginning with the assumption that substance is irrelevant when it comes to winning elections and "far more damaging to actually building a serious, long-lasting political movement." I like people who think like that.
Bob Borosage, director of the Campaign for America's Future, offers a "Real Contract With America" in the current issue of the The Nation. He has some excellent ideas, and I'll discuss them more later. Like the others, Borosage emphasizes Making America Safe and Real Security for America. What you find across the Democratic spectrum is agreement that the Bushies are hopelessly inept at homeland security. Essentially nothing has been done to protect the ports, and almost no progress has been made on helping first responders and improving public health capacity, despite all that money spent on small towns in Wyoming. The chemical plants are obvious targets -- but heaven forfend that the Bushies should force their dear friends in the chemical industry to spend money on public safety.
For me, the most annoying suggestion being made is that Democrats somehow need to claim or reclaim patriotism or to do something to let folks know that we, too, love our country. I find that hideously offensive. I have always thought the only way to respond to Republican statements and implications questioning the patriotism of non-Republicans is with a good swift blast of venomous anger.
How dare they imply that opposing war in Iraq calls one's patriotism into question? Take the offensive. Anyone who would use that kind of slimy attack sullies America, where dissent is honored, respected and, Lord knows, needed.
The contemptible, petty, little would-be Joe McCarthys need to understand what love of country really means -- love of the highest and best in America. Never to be confused with "pre-emptive war" over nonexistent weapons and certainly not with using "democracy" to sell a rotten, failed war."-from Ivins' post on Working for Change.
But listening to the Democratic debate on what to do now, it seems to me some of the brethren and sistren are asking the wrong questions. The question is not, "How Do We Win?" That's a technical question that comes after, "What the Hell Can We Do About This Disaster?"
I personally think some good ideas and a plan should come first -- and to this end, let me chime in on a note of agreement with some Actual Moderates, William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, a couple of Clintonites still carrying on in that old Third Way that was good enough for Bill C.
They are opposed to putting too much stock in the political strategy of "reframing" issues as advised by the linguist George Lakoff. This seems to me merest common sense, and I'm not sure Lakoff himself wouldn't agree.
Frank Luntz, the focus-group king and message-meister who keeps the Republicans all chorusing the same carefully worded talking points, is indeed a large part of the R's win strategy. But I think the reason R's have been successful in selling rotten policies that really hurt people is not so much because of clever wording as because Democrats haven't stood up and pointed out what was happening.
Believe it or not, there is a certain charm to simply telling the truth, and even to telling the truth simply. This emperor isn't wearing any clothes, and the people who are pointing that out now that Bush's approval ratings are at 37 percent, but who were nowhere to be heard when he was at 60 and better, are maybe not the people we should be looking to now.
Which brings us to the Democratic Leadership Council and the Al From-Bruce Reed take on what we should do now. The DLC is regularly condemned as being Republican Lite, but it seems to me its problem is being Light Lite. The From-Reed proposal is security, values, opportunity and reform -- a perfect symphony of the obvious. I do like their Opportunity ideas:
Create high-wage jobs by making the United States the top exporter of energy-efficient products.
Cut $300 billion in subsidies, and invest it in innovation, education and growth.
Pass tax reform to replace 60 tax breaks with four: college, homes, kids, universal pensions.
The problem comes when you look at their reform initiatives -- lobbying reform to close the revolving door and a ban partisan gerrymandering. Uh, how about we address the problem that our entire political system is corrupt, that it has been corrupted by corporate money, and that we have government of corporate interests, by corporate interests and for corporate interests -- and that we really need to change that, instead of trying to raise more corporate money than Republicans?
David Sirota, a stout liberal attacking from the other side, decries Partisan War Syndrome, which he defines as beginning with the assumption that substance is irrelevant when it comes to winning elections and "far more damaging to actually building a serious, long-lasting political movement." I like people who think like that.
Bob Borosage, director of the Campaign for America's Future, offers a "Real Contract With America" in the current issue of the The Nation. He has some excellent ideas, and I'll discuss them more later. Like the others, Borosage emphasizes Making America Safe and Real Security for America. What you find across the Democratic spectrum is agreement that the Bushies are hopelessly inept at homeland security. Essentially nothing has been done to protect the ports, and almost no progress has been made on helping first responders and improving public health capacity, despite all that money spent on small towns in Wyoming. The chemical plants are obvious targets -- but heaven forfend that the Bushies should force their dear friends in the chemical industry to spend money on public safety.
For me, the most annoying suggestion being made is that Democrats somehow need to claim or reclaim patriotism or to do something to let folks know that we, too, love our country. I find that hideously offensive. I have always thought the only way to respond to Republican statements and implications questioning the patriotism of non-Republicans is with a good swift blast of venomous anger.
How dare they imply that opposing war in Iraq calls one's patriotism into question? Take the offensive. Anyone who would use that kind of slimy attack sullies America, where dissent is honored, respected and, Lord knows, needed.
The contemptible, petty, little would-be Joe McCarthys need to understand what love of country really means -- love of the highest and best in America. Never to be confused with "pre-emptive war" over nonexistent weapons and certainly not with using "democracy" to sell a rotten, failed war."-from Ivins' post on Working for Change.
"The Disgruntled Professor"
"Why Al Runte's Long-Shot Campaign to Be Mayor Makes Sense—to Al Runte and Dissident Seattle
I. A Most Unusual Document:
In the fall of 1998, more than 10 years after his career as a professional academic failed amid criticism of his intellect, and seven years before he decided he should be the mayor of Seattle, historian Alfred Runte sat down to type a rather strange letter.It was a letter of application for a job at the University of Washington, the same institution that, in 1986, had pushed Runte from his post as an assistant professor by denying him tenure, lamenting his "lack of intellectual growth." That experience would have been embarrassing for any academic, and it was particularly distressing for Runte. He had arrived at the UW at the age of 33, by his own account a promising trailblazer in the field of environmental history, but rather than speeding his upward momentum, Runte's seven years at the UW derailed it, sending him off to wander alone in the world of independent academics, tarred by the failure to achieve tenure.
At 51, inside the large basement study of his Wedgwood home, not far from the campus he had been previously forced to leave, Runte typed out the letter of application—which was really a letter of reapplication, since the open assistant professor position was essentially the job he'd lost. "I am still here," Runte wrote, "and still available, if the university can ever muster the resolve to recognize what going first truly means."
Runte was rejected, once again, by the UW, and over the course of the next year he became convinced the cause was age discrimination, and not his letter or his qualifications. He filed a lawsuit against the university, and as part of that lawsuit, his letter was sent off for examination by one of Runte's peers, University of Wisconsin Professor William Cronon, educated at Yale and Oxford, recipient of awards with names like Guggenheim and MacArthur and Rhodes. Cronon, a prominent environmental historian who considered Runte a friend at the time, nevertheless described his friend's letter as "a most unusual document."
In his written reply to lawyers for the UW, recently obtained by The Stranger, Cronon also described Runte's application letter (and his entire age-discrimination lawsuit) as yet another example of the current long-shot mayoral candidate's tendency to "be his own worst enemy"—unable to admit error or let go of anger, confrontational and abrasive in professional relationships. It was part of a problem, Cronon wrote, "that has bedeviled his professional career."
Cronon did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but his written appraisal of Runte is striking when considered in the context of Runte's current campaign to unseat Mayor Greg Nickels. With 22 percent of voters in the September primary picking Runte to run the city, it seems that the same impish intransigence Cronon identified in 2001 as hobbling Runte's candidacy for university employment is now, ironically, propelling Runte's underdog candidacy for mayor.
II. A Socratic Candidate
Runte's campaign is based on the assumption that, at a time when a certain segment of the city feels rankled by Nickels's strong-arm political tactics, many voters will be ready to rally around a stubborn challenger with a loud, articulate mouth and a proven track record of taking on authority figures. (Another piece of Runte's track record of stubbornness: When his age-discrimination lawsuit against the UW was dismissed in 2001, he appealed. When his appeal, too, was rejected, Runte filed another lawsuit against the UW, this time alleging a secret effort to deny him tenure that involved the sabotaging of his tenure file by the former chair of the UW history department. When that lawsuit was dismissed last year, Runte appealed—an appeal that is still pending.)
That Runte's major battles with authority figures have so far ended in failure only makes his current campaign all the more quixotic, and perhaps therefore all the more appealing to the sizable minority of Seattle voters who want to tilt at the windmill of the Nickels machine. In a sign of how palpable this appeal has become, informed observers now believe Runte may garner as much as 40 percent of the vote in the head-to-head general election in November. If he does that well, he will have emerged, through a string of upward failures, as a prominent civic figure well-positioned to run for, and quite possibly win, a city council seat. And if he wins a city council seat, he won't be the first American politician to have transformed the experience of professional failure into a formula for success as a public servant. Witness the career trajectory of President George W. Bush.
In the meantime, Runte is ready with a snappy answer for anyone who might question his political pedigree or his intellectual achievement.
Asked about his near total lack of political experience, Runte, using the Socratic method on himself, asked: "What is political experience?" Then he answered: "In a democracy, political experience is the process of being a citizen."
Asked about the criticism of his personality and academic accomplishment by professor Cronon, Runte dismissively replied: "That's his ego talking."
Which is what many people, not always unkindly, say about Runte's run for mayor.
III. Fault Zones
Last week, at a candidate forum held in a classroom at the Miller Community Center on Capitol Hill, Runte opened his remarks, as he often does, with a statement about how good it makes him feel to be lecturing again. "It's nice to see a more seminar-like atmosphere," he said of the cozy environs at Miller. Later, at the Mt. Baker Community Club, he said that the timekeepers telling him to curtail his remarks brought back fond memories of the bells that used to go off at the UW.
He still has a professorial tone and look about him—his suits never crisp, his tie sometimes a bit too long, and his face seemingly most comfortable in the unimpressed scowl of an academic. In fact, the corners of Runte's mouth have such a propensity to turn downward that even his smile comes in the shape of a frown; one knows it mainly by its contrast with the deeper frown he usually wears. He is almost exactly as tall as Nickels, and his paunch is almost exactly the same size as the mayor's. But there the similarities between the two men's appearances end. Runte tends to clasp his hands behind his back while listening, like a professor; Nickels tends to clasp his hands in front of his belly while listening, like a politician. Runte has a deeper voice. Nickels has better posture and more hair (and it always appears to be much better cared for than Runte's limp reddish arrangement).
The most striking difference, though, is in their presentations. Runte speaks in sound bites that range from the glib ("Time for city hall to listen to you") to the occasionally funny, as when he draws laughs by criticizing the proposed Lake Union Streetcar as "the streetcar named Desire of Paul Allen." Nickels has his sound bites too, but he fills them out with statistics, costs, and thoughts about funding sources, while Runte links his sound bites together with platitudes and generalities, and relishes the traditional challenger role of promising everything the incumbent might, for good economic reasons, deny. Runte says he wants more police than Nickels, more parks, even more trolleys—though when he said that at a candidate forum last week, shortly after getting laughs for his "streetcar named Desire" line, a fed-up Nickels pointed out that Runte was sounding rather John Kerryish.
"Al, you can't actually be against the streetcar in your last answer and for the streetcar in this answer," Nickels said.
And at another forum, Gene Harris, a Capitol Hill resident, said Runte's lack of financial specifics and vagueness about his plans had tripped her alarms. "He didn't give no solutions for the questions that were addressed to him," she told me.
Runte also sometimes gets important facts wrong at the forums, as when he criticized the Nickels administration, during the Miller forum, for having only one police patrol car on duty in Seattle's north precinct at night. In fact, a recent city council study of north precinct staffing indicates there are around 23 officers out in cars on any given evening shift. The study doesn't say how many cars the officers share between them, but surely all 23 couldn't fit into one.
As far as his campaign platform goes, Runte is casting himself as an advocate of neighborhoods that feel their power has waned under Nickels. He is therefore against, to pick the most prominent example, construction of a parking garage at the Woodland Park Zoo, something Nickels supports despite strong neighborhood opposition. He is also for the monorail. "I love trains," he told one of the forums.
But the issue that seems to get Runte most excited on the campaign trail is the question of what to do with the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct. Nickels supports replacing it with a tunnel, but Runte, fearful of the roadway's proximity to the Seattle Fault, opposes the idea. "Here's where the mayor and I are light-years apart," he said to a forum. "If we're going to prepare for earthquakes, let's not build tunnels right over fault zones." He says this at almost every chance he gets. His proposal is instead to rebuild or retrofit the existing viaduct, preserving a view he praises as the common man's entitlement and providing an opportunity, he says, to run light rail over the viaduct (an idea that sometimes draws quizzical looks). Asked at a forum why his proposal, which essentially involves keeping an elevated double-decker freeway on top of a fault zone, was better than the Nickels proposal to dig a tunnel on top of a fault zone, Runte answered, "At least you're above ground."
His list of endorsements is not long. The Seattle High School Young Democrats were early supporters of his candidacy, and the Democrats of Seattle's 36th District (Ballard, Magnolia, Queen Anne, Interbay, and Phinney Ridge) recently endorsed him. But the vote in the 36th seemed more out of anger at Nickels and the fate of the monorail than in wholehearted support of Runte. And most Seattle high schoolers don't vote.
Runte's confidence, however, is typically unflagging. He believes he will be a great politician, though his only real experience in political dealings, his campaign for tenure at the UW, showed he was not a masterful manipulator of politics there. He also believes he is the smartest man for the job (and made a point of mentioning to me that Nickels dropped out of college), although he never mentions that he himself was pushed out of the UW for "lack of intellectual growth." (Runte also made a point of finding out where I went to college, and when it impressed him he began speaking to me of "people like us," as opposed to people like Nickels. In college, Runte said, "You learn to respect and deal with smart people. He never had that experience.")
Oddly, Runte believes he is a populist, with his rhetoric about the viaduct being the people's roadway and his frequent paeans to working-class Seattle. In his heart, however, he seems to be an elitist. Whenever I pressed him for details about his agenda, his answer was always the same: a philosopher-king sort of vision of bringing in panels of smart people whenever there is a big civic problem, and then listening to them like one would listen to experts at an academic conference; something that, in Runte's mind, Nickels is presumably unable to do, since he never learned to respect and deal with smart people in college.
IV. A Love of Parks
Alfred Runte was born in 1947 in Binghamton, New York, a former industrial town that is now home to a large state university. His father, Paul, was a German soldier who came to America after World War I seeking work. His mother, Erika, was a farmer's daughter whose family had been driven off its land by the Great Depression. When he was 11, Al's father, whom he said drank heavily to forget the trauma of the war, died of a heart attack. The next year, in part for a change of scenery and in part to see the area where her father had homesteaded, Erika Runte piled Al and his older brother August into a station wagon and headed out west. They spent six weeks during the summer touring national parks—Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Crater Lake, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. It was Runte's first major tri p out of Binghamton and, he said, "It made an indelible impression on me."
He put himself through college at the state university in Binghamton, where he majored in history. When a broken ankle kept him out of the Vietnam War, Runte went on to graduate school at a state university in Illinois, where he did his master's thesis on the study of national parks. (Then, as now, when something made an indelible impression on him, he did not let it go.)
He received a PhD in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1976, and three years later was hired as an assistant professor of environmental studies at Baylor University in Texas. That same year his well-regarded book, National Parks: The American Experience, was published. It got him the notice of the more prestigious UW, which hired him away from Baylor in 1980.
V. A Lack of Intellectual Growth
Runte's confidence as an orator and good sense of humor made him quite popular among UW students. His wife, Christine, now the registrar at the Museum of Flight, first met Runte when she was one of those students, taking his class on Pacific Northwest history while working toward her master's degree in museum studies. She recalls him as "an excellent teacher. He's very... I don't know if the word is really 'entertaining,' but he's just one of those natural-born teachers. He makes people think." The two were married in 1984, the same year Runte was denied tenure for the first time.
The denial was the beginning of an ordeal that, Christine Runte told me, was quite trying. "We were both just so shocked about the whole thing," she said. In 1985, Runte was again denied tenure. While he may have been popular with students, and many members of the history department faculty, his supervisor, then history department Chair Wilton B. Fowler, had written a strongly negative recommendation to the college council, the ultimate arbiter of tenure matters.
"I have not observed Al Runte to be very teachable or very interested in widening his interests or developing new ones," Fowler wrote. "His involvement in community history (e.g., historical preservation) suffers from a high degree of amateurishness coupled with an unwarranted confidence in his own opinion."
The other major criticism of Runte was that he was coasting on the success of his book National Parks, which was being updated for a second edition, rather than working on a new book. At the behest of then UW President William Gerberding, who worried a mistake might have been made in twice denying Runte tenure, given the number of angry letters Gerberding was receiving about the decisions, the college council considered Runte's candidacy a third and final time in 1986. It did not change its opinion. Runte, the council said, has shown "lack of intellectual growth in the publication record" during his years as an assistant professor.
Runte would ultimately come to blame Fowler, rather than himself, for his failure to achieve tenure, casting Fowler as his academic nemesis and claiming Fowler falsified records in an effort to "substantially understate my qualifications" to the college council. But it took him almost 20 years to formally make these claims in a lawsuit against the UW. By then, a judge ruled, the statute of limitations on Runte's charges of fraud and breach of contract had long since expired.
Runte never did find full-time work in academia again, and now identifies himself as a "consulting environmental historian." When he's not campaigning he gives speeches, advises companies interested in his expertise, and is currently a consultant to an upcoming series on national parks that Ken Burns is producing for PBS. His book, National Parks, remains his signature accomplishment; it has now been in print for 26 years. "That's scholarship," he says. "The world says that Alfred Runte's scholarship is significant and lasting and I don't need to defend it."
VI. One of These Days
Runte says he decided to run for mayor in July when, listening to a radio show, he heard that the local political establishment perceived Nickels to be invincibly popular, and that because of this challengers were being scared out of the mayor's race. Runte thought: "C'mon, that's nonsense."
And, as his candidacy has proven, the myth of an invincible Nickels was nonsense, a chimera of power created by a political machine that has rarely shied away from projecting its prowess, be it real or, in this case, somewhat illusory. If a failed professor running in part on his "abiding, total commitment to parks" can be realistically expected to get 40 percent of the vote in November, imagine how well a more credible challenger could have done.
Last week a candidate forum at TOPS Elementary School provided an illustration of the free ride Nickels has been given by the lack of a serious challenger. In a break from the normal format, both mayoral candidates were allowed to ask each other one question, and Runte went first, asking the mayor: "What comes after the monorail?"
Nickels, without missing a beat, responded: "You bet, and one of these days we're going to get you, Al, to talk about that, too." The whole room laughed at Runte, who had been typically vague with his proposals that evening. Then the mayor spoke competently about light rail, the streetcar, perhaps installing rapid transit lanes for buses on Aurora Avenue, and finally, when it was his turn to ask Runte a question, he said: "Al, you can be at ease."
The whole room chuckled again. The format allowed Nickels to forgo asking Runte a question if he wished, and instead do a closing statement. In taking advantage of that option Nickels made the former assistant professor seem like an irrelevant annoyance on the way to his certain reelection. Runte scowled. And Nickels went on to confidently close the forum with a litany of the "great" gains Seattle has made under his tenure."-from Eli Sander's article in The Stranger. Full disclosure: I was a disgruntled professor myself back in the 20th century. I'm not sure Eli ever tells us why Runte's candidacy does make sense. Not surprisingly, they go on to endorse Nickels in a companion piece, along with "recent Deaniac" Dwight Pelz, who is running for the City Council.
I. A Most Unusual Document:
In the fall of 1998, more than 10 years after his career as a professional academic failed amid criticism of his intellect, and seven years before he decided he should be the mayor of Seattle, historian Alfred Runte sat down to type a rather strange letter.It was a letter of application for a job at the University of Washington, the same institution that, in 1986, had pushed Runte from his post as an assistant professor by denying him tenure, lamenting his "lack of intellectual growth." That experience would have been embarrassing for any academic, and it was particularly distressing for Runte. He had arrived at the UW at the age of 33, by his own account a promising trailblazer in the field of environmental history, but rather than speeding his upward momentum, Runte's seven years at the UW derailed it, sending him off to wander alone in the world of independent academics, tarred by the failure to achieve tenure.
At 51, inside the large basement study of his Wedgwood home, not far from the campus he had been previously forced to leave, Runte typed out the letter of application—which was really a letter of reapplication, since the open assistant professor position was essentially the job he'd lost. "I am still here," Runte wrote, "and still available, if the university can ever muster the resolve to recognize what going first truly means."
Runte was rejected, once again, by the UW, and over the course of the next year he became convinced the cause was age discrimination, and not his letter or his qualifications. He filed a lawsuit against the university, and as part of that lawsuit, his letter was sent off for examination by one of Runte's peers, University of Wisconsin Professor William Cronon, educated at Yale and Oxford, recipient of awards with names like Guggenheim and MacArthur and Rhodes. Cronon, a prominent environmental historian who considered Runte a friend at the time, nevertheless described his friend's letter as "a most unusual document."
In his written reply to lawyers for the UW, recently obtained by The Stranger, Cronon also described Runte's application letter (and his entire age-discrimination lawsuit) as yet another example of the current long-shot mayoral candidate's tendency to "be his own worst enemy"—unable to admit error or let go of anger, confrontational and abrasive in professional relationships. It was part of a problem, Cronon wrote, "that has bedeviled his professional career."
Cronon did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but his written appraisal of Runte is striking when considered in the context of Runte's current campaign to unseat Mayor Greg Nickels. With 22 percent of voters in the September primary picking Runte to run the city, it seems that the same impish intransigence Cronon identified in 2001 as hobbling Runte's candidacy for university employment is now, ironically, propelling Runte's underdog candidacy for mayor.
II. A Socratic Candidate
Runte's campaign is based on the assumption that, at a time when a certain segment of the city feels rankled by Nickels's strong-arm political tactics, many voters will be ready to rally around a stubborn challenger with a loud, articulate mouth and a proven track record of taking on authority figures. (Another piece of Runte's track record of stubbornness: When his age-discrimination lawsuit against the UW was dismissed in 2001, he appealed. When his appeal, too, was rejected, Runte filed another lawsuit against the UW, this time alleging a secret effort to deny him tenure that involved the sabotaging of his tenure file by the former chair of the UW history department. When that lawsuit was dismissed last year, Runte appealed—an appeal that is still pending.)
That Runte's major battles with authority figures have so far ended in failure only makes his current campaign all the more quixotic, and perhaps therefore all the more appealing to the sizable minority of Seattle voters who want to tilt at the windmill of the Nickels machine. In a sign of how palpable this appeal has become, informed observers now believe Runte may garner as much as 40 percent of the vote in the head-to-head general election in November. If he does that well, he will have emerged, through a string of upward failures, as a prominent civic figure well-positioned to run for, and quite possibly win, a city council seat. And if he wins a city council seat, he won't be the first American politician to have transformed the experience of professional failure into a formula for success as a public servant. Witness the career trajectory of President George W. Bush.
In the meantime, Runte is ready with a snappy answer for anyone who might question his political pedigree or his intellectual achievement.
Asked about his near total lack of political experience, Runte, using the Socratic method on himself, asked: "What is political experience?" Then he answered: "In a democracy, political experience is the process of being a citizen."
Asked about the criticism of his personality and academic accomplishment by professor Cronon, Runte dismissively replied: "That's his ego talking."
Which is what many people, not always unkindly, say about Runte's run for mayor.
III. Fault Zones
Last week, at a candidate forum held in a classroom at the Miller Community Center on Capitol Hill, Runte opened his remarks, as he often does, with a statement about how good it makes him feel to be lecturing again. "It's nice to see a more seminar-like atmosphere," he said of the cozy environs at Miller. Later, at the Mt. Baker Community Club, he said that the timekeepers telling him to curtail his remarks brought back fond memories of the bells that used to go off at the UW.
He still has a professorial tone and look about him—his suits never crisp, his tie sometimes a bit too long, and his face seemingly most comfortable in the unimpressed scowl of an academic. In fact, the corners of Runte's mouth have such a propensity to turn downward that even his smile comes in the shape of a frown; one knows it mainly by its contrast with the deeper frown he usually wears. He is almost exactly as tall as Nickels, and his paunch is almost exactly the same size as the mayor's. But there the similarities between the two men's appearances end. Runte tends to clasp his hands behind his back while listening, like a professor; Nickels tends to clasp his hands in front of his belly while listening, like a politician. Runte has a deeper voice. Nickels has better posture and more hair (and it always appears to be much better cared for than Runte's limp reddish arrangement).
The most striking difference, though, is in their presentations. Runte speaks in sound bites that range from the glib ("Time for city hall to listen to you") to the occasionally funny, as when he draws laughs by criticizing the proposed Lake Union Streetcar as "the streetcar named Desire of Paul Allen." Nickels has his sound bites too, but he fills them out with statistics, costs, and thoughts about funding sources, while Runte links his sound bites together with platitudes and generalities, and relishes the traditional challenger role of promising everything the incumbent might, for good economic reasons, deny. Runte says he wants more police than Nickels, more parks, even more trolleys—though when he said that at a candidate forum last week, shortly after getting laughs for his "streetcar named Desire" line, a fed-up Nickels pointed out that Runte was sounding rather John Kerryish.
"Al, you can't actually be against the streetcar in your last answer and for the streetcar in this answer," Nickels said.
And at another forum, Gene Harris, a Capitol Hill resident, said Runte's lack of financial specifics and vagueness about his plans had tripped her alarms. "He didn't give no solutions for the questions that were addressed to him," she told me.
Runte also sometimes gets important facts wrong at the forums, as when he criticized the Nickels administration, during the Miller forum, for having only one police patrol car on duty in Seattle's north precinct at night. In fact, a recent city council study of north precinct staffing indicates there are around 23 officers out in cars on any given evening shift. The study doesn't say how many cars the officers share between them, but surely all 23 couldn't fit into one.
As far as his campaign platform goes, Runte is casting himself as an advocate of neighborhoods that feel their power has waned under Nickels. He is therefore against, to pick the most prominent example, construction of a parking garage at the Woodland Park Zoo, something Nickels supports despite strong neighborhood opposition. He is also for the monorail. "I love trains," he told one of the forums.
But the issue that seems to get Runte most excited on the campaign trail is the question of what to do with the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct. Nickels supports replacing it with a tunnel, but Runte, fearful of the roadway's proximity to the Seattle Fault, opposes the idea. "Here's where the mayor and I are light-years apart," he said to a forum. "If we're going to prepare for earthquakes, let's not build tunnels right over fault zones." He says this at almost every chance he gets. His proposal is instead to rebuild or retrofit the existing viaduct, preserving a view he praises as the common man's entitlement and providing an opportunity, he says, to run light rail over the viaduct (an idea that sometimes draws quizzical looks). Asked at a forum why his proposal, which essentially involves keeping an elevated double-decker freeway on top of a fault zone, was better than the Nickels proposal to dig a tunnel on top of a fault zone, Runte answered, "At least you're above ground."
His list of endorsements is not long. The Seattle High School Young Democrats were early supporters of his candidacy, and the Democrats of Seattle's 36th District (Ballard, Magnolia, Queen Anne, Interbay, and Phinney Ridge) recently endorsed him. But the vote in the 36th seemed more out of anger at Nickels and the fate of the monorail than in wholehearted support of Runte. And most Seattle high schoolers don't vote.
Runte's confidence, however, is typically unflagging. He believes he will be a great politician, though his only real experience in political dealings, his campaign for tenure at the UW, showed he was not a masterful manipulator of politics there. He also believes he is the smartest man for the job (and made a point of mentioning to me that Nickels dropped out of college), although he never mentions that he himself was pushed out of the UW for "lack of intellectual growth." (Runte also made a point of finding out where I went to college, and when it impressed him he began speaking to me of "people like us," as opposed to people like Nickels. In college, Runte said, "You learn to respect and deal with smart people. He never had that experience.")
Oddly, Runte believes he is a populist, with his rhetoric about the viaduct being the people's roadway and his frequent paeans to working-class Seattle. In his heart, however, he seems to be an elitist. Whenever I pressed him for details about his agenda, his answer was always the same: a philosopher-king sort of vision of bringing in panels of smart people whenever there is a big civic problem, and then listening to them like one would listen to experts at an academic conference; something that, in Runte's mind, Nickels is presumably unable to do, since he never learned to respect and deal with smart people in college.
IV. A Love of Parks
Alfred Runte was born in 1947 in Binghamton, New York, a former industrial town that is now home to a large state university. His father, Paul, was a German soldier who came to America after World War I seeking work. His mother, Erika, was a farmer's daughter whose family had been driven off its land by the Great Depression. When he was 11, Al's father, whom he said drank heavily to forget the trauma of the war, died of a heart attack. The next year, in part for a change of scenery and in part to see the area where her father had homesteaded, Erika Runte piled Al and his older brother August into a station wagon and headed out west. They spent six weeks during the summer touring national parks—Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Crater Lake, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. It was Runte's first major tri p out of Binghamton and, he said, "It made an indelible impression on me."
He put himself through college at the state university in Binghamton, where he majored in history. When a broken ankle kept him out of the Vietnam War, Runte went on to graduate school at a state university in Illinois, where he did his master's thesis on the study of national parks. (Then, as now, when something made an indelible impression on him, he did not let it go.)
He received a PhD in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1976, and three years later was hired as an assistant professor of environmental studies at Baylor University in Texas. That same year his well-regarded book, National Parks: The American Experience, was published. It got him the notice of the more prestigious UW, which hired him away from Baylor in 1980.
V. A Lack of Intellectual Growth
Runte's confidence as an orator and good sense of humor made him quite popular among UW students. His wife, Christine, now the registrar at the Museum of Flight, first met Runte when she was one of those students, taking his class on Pacific Northwest history while working toward her master's degree in museum studies. She recalls him as "an excellent teacher. He's very... I don't know if the word is really 'entertaining,' but he's just one of those natural-born teachers. He makes people think." The two were married in 1984, the same year Runte was denied tenure for the first time.
The denial was the beginning of an ordeal that, Christine Runte told me, was quite trying. "We were both just so shocked about the whole thing," she said. In 1985, Runte was again denied tenure. While he may have been popular with students, and many members of the history department faculty, his supervisor, then history department Chair Wilton B. Fowler, had written a strongly negative recommendation to the college council, the ultimate arbiter of tenure matters.
"I have not observed Al Runte to be very teachable or very interested in widening his interests or developing new ones," Fowler wrote. "His involvement in community history (e.g., historical preservation) suffers from a high degree of amateurishness coupled with an unwarranted confidence in his own opinion."
The other major criticism of Runte was that he was coasting on the success of his book National Parks, which was being updated for a second edition, rather than working on a new book. At the behest of then UW President William Gerberding, who worried a mistake might have been made in twice denying Runte tenure, given the number of angry letters Gerberding was receiving about the decisions, the college council considered Runte's candidacy a third and final time in 1986. It did not change its opinion. Runte, the council said, has shown "lack of intellectual growth in the publication record" during his years as an assistant professor.
Runte would ultimately come to blame Fowler, rather than himself, for his failure to achieve tenure, casting Fowler as his academic nemesis and claiming Fowler falsified records in an effort to "substantially understate my qualifications" to the college council. But it took him almost 20 years to formally make these claims in a lawsuit against the UW. By then, a judge ruled, the statute of limitations on Runte's charges of fraud and breach of contract had long since expired.
Runte never did find full-time work in academia again, and now identifies himself as a "consulting environmental historian." When he's not campaigning he gives speeches, advises companies interested in his expertise, and is currently a consultant to an upcoming series on national parks that Ken Burns is producing for PBS. His book, National Parks, remains his signature accomplishment; it has now been in print for 26 years. "That's scholarship," he says. "The world says that Alfred Runte's scholarship is significant and lasting and I don't need to defend it."
VI. One of These Days
Runte says he decided to run for mayor in July when, listening to a radio show, he heard that the local political establishment perceived Nickels to be invincibly popular, and that because of this challengers were being scared out of the mayor's race. Runte thought: "C'mon, that's nonsense."
And, as his candidacy has proven, the myth of an invincible Nickels was nonsense, a chimera of power created by a political machine that has rarely shied away from projecting its prowess, be it real or, in this case, somewhat illusory. If a failed professor running in part on his "abiding, total commitment to parks" can be realistically expected to get 40 percent of the vote in November, imagine how well a more credible challenger could have done.
Last week a candidate forum at TOPS Elementary School provided an illustration of the free ride Nickels has been given by the lack of a serious challenger. In a break from the normal format, both mayoral candidates were allowed to ask each other one question, and Runte went first, asking the mayor: "What comes after the monorail?"
Nickels, without missing a beat, responded: "You bet, and one of these days we're going to get you, Al, to talk about that, too." The whole room laughed at Runte, who had been typically vague with his proposals that evening. Then the mayor spoke competently about light rail, the streetcar, perhaps installing rapid transit lanes for buses on Aurora Avenue, and finally, when it was his turn to ask Runte a question, he said: "Al, you can be at ease."
The whole room chuckled again. The format allowed Nickels to forgo asking Runte a question if he wished, and instead do a closing statement. In taking advantage of that option Nickels made the former assistant professor seem like an irrelevant annoyance on the way to his certain reelection. Runte scowled. And Nickels went on to confidently close the forum with a litany of the "great" gains Seattle has made under his tenure."-from Eli Sander's article in The Stranger. Full disclosure: I was a disgruntled professor myself back in the 20th century. I'm not sure Eli ever tells us why Runte's candidacy does make sense. Not surprisingly, they go on to endorse Nickels in a companion piece, along with "recent Deaniac" Dwight Pelz, who is running for the City Council.
''Cindy Sheehan Pledges Civil Disobedience Campaign''
"Peace mom plans more arrests in D.C. and Thanksgiving in Crawford--Cindy Sheehan made a return visit to the streets of New York Wednesday, joining the weekly vigil of Grandmothers Against the War outside Rockefeller Center.
In contrast to the scene in Union Square last month, when the police stormed the podium and cut off Sheehan’s mic, this time the NYPD went out of its way to be gracious to America’s leading peace mom.
Police politely urged the jostling camera crews and passing tourists to “please clear the sidewalk,” overseen by the NYPD’s top spokesperson Paul J. Browne, who said he was there to prevent any rush-hour snafus. “It’s the hometown of NBC, so it’s a big TV area,” Browne said, with a shrug.
But if the event was less a protest than a love fest between Sheehan and her elderly fans, who lined up for autographs and snapshots with the celebrity activist and plied her with heart-shaped sugar cookies, Sheehan still had plenty of fighting words for President Bush and New York’s pro-war senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, who’s widely said to be mulling a bid for the White House.
“I think that if anybody wants to run for president in 2008, then they have to come out against the war, and if they don’t then we don’t support them, whether it’s Hillary or whoever it is that’s going to run for president,” charged Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City last year.
“The last time I was here, Chuck Schumer’s aide stated to me that the senator thinks the war in Iraq was a great thing for America,” Sheehan alleged. “I don’t think the people of New York believe that. We the people have to start taking responsibility for our democracy and firing leaders who do not represent us.”
Sheehan’s challenge to Clinton and Schumer not to take their heavily antiwar base in New York for granted echoed a scathing message she posted Saturday on Michael Moore’s website, in which she termed Clinton a “political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys.”
Saying she “will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again,” Sheehan warned Clinton she would “resist your candidacy with every bit of my power and strength unless you show us the wisdom it takes to be a truly great leader.”
That got a rise out of
Rush Limbaugh, who termed Sheehan either “gutsy or stupid” for taking on the Democrats’ leading lady.
Sheehan was all smiles as she milled among the antiwar grannies, 18 of whom were arrested for trying to enlist at the Times Square Recruiting Station on Monday.
Her plans for this trip to New York are fairly low key. Besides doing press interviews, she’ll be guest hosting on Air America with Randi Rhodes on Friday at 6 p.m.(AM1090 in Seattle) and giving the keynote address at the Brooklyn Peace Fair this Saturday at 11 a.m.
But Sheehan vowed to turn up the heat by returning to the front gate of the White House as soon as the death toll of American soldiers hits 2,000 (as of Tuesday it was 1,968). “I’m going to deliver a speech and then I’m going to get arrested. And when I get out I’m going to go back and get arrested,” Sheehan told the Voice.
Sheehan said she now believes lobbying and marching in the streets is no longer enough and that “nonviolent civil disobedience is the way we have to go” to end the war.
“Hundreds of thousands of people were in D.C. on September 24 and the leaders still are not leading us,” Sheehan said of last month’s antiwar demo in Washington. “They’re still spouting the Republican talking points even if they’re Democrats. So what are we going to do? It’s going to have to be massive non-violent civil disobedience I believe.”
Sheehan said she and her fellow members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and Iraq Veterans Against the War plan to hit the road again for another speaking tour in November, caravanning from the West Coast to Crawford, Texas, where they will reprise their “Camp Casey” protest over Thanksgiving weekend and demand once again that the president meet with them to explain what noble cause their loved ones were dying for.
“We’re going to invite George and Laura—and tell Laura to bring the turkey, the peace mom quipped.”-from the Village Voice (NY).
In contrast to the scene in Union Square last month, when the police stormed the podium and cut off Sheehan’s mic, this time the NYPD went out of its way to be gracious to America’s leading peace mom.
Police politely urged the jostling camera crews and passing tourists to “please clear the sidewalk,” overseen by the NYPD’s top spokesperson Paul J. Browne, who said he was there to prevent any rush-hour snafus. “It’s the hometown of NBC, so it’s a big TV area,” Browne said, with a shrug.
But if the event was less a protest than a love fest between Sheehan and her elderly fans, who lined up for autographs and snapshots with the celebrity activist and plied her with heart-shaped sugar cookies, Sheehan still had plenty of fighting words for President Bush and New York’s pro-war senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, who’s widely said to be mulling a bid for the White House.
“I think that if anybody wants to run for president in 2008, then they have to come out against the war, and if they don’t then we don’t support them, whether it’s Hillary or whoever it is that’s going to run for president,” charged Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City last year.
“The last time I was here, Chuck Schumer’s aide stated to me that the senator thinks the war in Iraq was a great thing for America,” Sheehan alleged. “I don’t think the people of New York believe that. We the people have to start taking responsibility for our democracy and firing leaders who do not represent us.”
Sheehan’s challenge to Clinton and Schumer not to take their heavily antiwar base in New York for granted echoed a scathing message she posted Saturday on Michael Moore’s website, in which she termed Clinton a “political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys.”
Saying she “will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again,” Sheehan warned Clinton she would “resist your candidacy with every bit of my power and strength unless you show us the wisdom it takes to be a truly great leader.”
That got a rise out of
Rush Limbaugh, who termed Sheehan either “gutsy or stupid” for taking on the Democrats’ leading lady.
Sheehan was all smiles as she milled among the antiwar grannies, 18 of whom were arrested for trying to enlist at the Times Square Recruiting Station on Monday.
Her plans for this trip to New York are fairly low key. Besides doing press interviews, she’ll be guest hosting on Air America with Randi Rhodes on Friday at 6 p.m.(AM1090 in Seattle) and giving the keynote address at the Brooklyn Peace Fair this Saturday at 11 a.m.
But Sheehan vowed to turn up the heat by returning to the front gate of the White House as soon as the death toll of American soldiers hits 2,000 (as of Tuesday it was 1,968). “I’m going to deliver a speech and then I’m going to get arrested. And when I get out I’m going to go back and get arrested,” Sheehan told the Voice.
Sheehan said she now believes lobbying and marching in the streets is no longer enough and that “nonviolent civil disobedience is the way we have to go” to end the war.
“Hundreds of thousands of people were in D.C. on September 24 and the leaders still are not leading us,” Sheehan said of last month’s antiwar demo in Washington. “They’re still spouting the Republican talking points even if they’re Democrats. So what are we going to do? It’s going to have to be massive non-violent civil disobedience I believe.”
Sheehan said she and her fellow members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and Iraq Veterans Against the War plan to hit the road again for another speaking tour in November, caravanning from the West Coast to Crawford, Texas, where they will reprise their “Camp Casey” protest over Thanksgiving weekend and demand once again that the president meet with them to explain what noble cause their loved ones were dying for.
“We’re going to invite George and Laura—and tell Laura to bring the turkey, the peace mom quipped.”-from the Village Voice (NY).
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
''Seesaw In King County Executive Contest''
According to a new poll, Irons is leading Sims by 3 points with 7% going to the Green candidate. The man at HorsesAss is pissed. Scroll down to "Perfect is the enemy of good."
''Ex-doorman's crucial clout''
"A former doorman from Brooklyn now holds in his hands the fate of two of the most powerful men in America and possibly the future of the George W. Bush presidency.
This might be the heaviest door Patrick Fitzgerald Jr. from Flatbush ever held.
The son of two immigrants from County Clare, Ireland, Fitzgerald, 44, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, has come a long way since the days when he attended Our Lady Help of Christians grammar school on E. 29th St. (now defunct) and played accordion with his brother as his two sisters did Irish stepdancing.
While attending Regis High School, and later Amherst College, Fitzgerald worked summers and part-time "holding the door" at a luxury high-rise on E. 72nd St. At Amherst, he also took a campus maintenance job.
"He had numerous funny anecdotes about being treated shabbily by residents who didn't realize this was a Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst and later a Harvard Law student holding the door," corporate lawyer John Goggins, who's known Fitzgerald since high school, told The Washington Post in July.
Fitzgerald, who is considered an incorruptible workaholic in the U.S. attorney's office, has said he developed his work ethic at an early age from his father, Patrick Sr., also a doorman, who in all his years opening doors for the swells in a swanky building on E. 75th St. near Madison Avenue in Manhattan never took a single vacation.
"Pat," as Fitzgerald's friends call him, is not registered with any political party.
"You've met a hundred guys like Pat," says Tony Bouza, a Los Angeles lawyer who befriended Fitzgerald at Amherst. "Likable, low key, self-effacing, funny ina New York kind of way. But he hasthis amazing brain like no one you've ever known. He's smarter than 99.9% of the people you'll ever meet. ... He didn't like anyone who was pompous or stuck up. He was also an amazingly nonpolitical guy. He really has no hidden agenda except getting at the truth. Pat never liked BS."
In 1988, he became a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office in lower Manhattan, where over the next 13 years he put away mobsters named Gambino, indicted Osama Bin Laden and brought in convictions of the blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of the terrorists who bombed the U.S. embassies in Africa. After transferring to Chicago's U.S. attorney's office, Fitzgerald was labeled "Eliot Ness with a Harvard Law degree" when he indicted Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, and two aides to Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat.
In December 2003, he was appointed as special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame-CIA outing case, which has sent shock waves through Washington where leaking classified government information is considered a daily lunch special. In the world according to Patrick Fitzgerald, this is known as a crime.
"It's kind of odd watching Pat getting all this attention," says Bouza. "But I really can't think of anyone who is better suited for the job. ... Pat would never come after you because of your politics or forpersonal reasons. He could be making a fortune in the private sector doing half as much work. But he loves what he's doing. And he's a straight shooter. So if you come in front of him and you're innocent and tell the truth, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. But if youare in any way guilty of a federal crime, I'd be worried. Especially if you lieabout it. Because I don't care how smart you are, if you're guilty, Pat Fitzgerald's gonna get ya."
The former doorman from Brooklyn has since grilled President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to divulge her source, and had a dozen witnesses, including Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in front of his grand jury.
Now the Beltway soothsayers are forecasting a pair of indictments against Rove and Libby coming out of Fitzgerald's grand jury.
This former doorman from Brooklyn has until Oct. 28 to wrap up his work on this case. And the next door Patrick Fitzgerald holds open for rich and powerful men could lead to a jail cell."-from the story in the New York Daily News. Maybe Clooney could play him in the movie. There's a photo with the story. My New York roots are showing.
This might be the heaviest door Patrick Fitzgerald Jr. from Flatbush ever held.
The son of two immigrants from County Clare, Ireland, Fitzgerald, 44, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, has come a long way since the days when he attended Our Lady Help of Christians grammar school on E. 29th St. (now defunct) and played accordion with his brother as his two sisters did Irish stepdancing.
While attending Regis High School, and later Amherst College, Fitzgerald worked summers and part-time "holding the door" at a luxury high-rise on E. 72nd St. At Amherst, he also took a campus maintenance job.
"He had numerous funny anecdotes about being treated shabbily by residents who didn't realize this was a Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst and later a Harvard Law student holding the door," corporate lawyer John Goggins, who's known Fitzgerald since high school, told The Washington Post in July.
Fitzgerald, who is considered an incorruptible workaholic in the U.S. attorney's office, has said he developed his work ethic at an early age from his father, Patrick Sr., also a doorman, who in all his years opening doors for the swells in a swanky building on E. 75th St. near Madison Avenue in Manhattan never took a single vacation.
"Pat," as Fitzgerald's friends call him, is not registered with any political party.
"You've met a hundred guys like Pat," says Tony Bouza, a Los Angeles lawyer who befriended Fitzgerald at Amherst. "Likable, low key, self-effacing, funny ina New York kind of way. But he hasthis amazing brain like no one you've ever known. He's smarter than 99.9% of the people you'll ever meet. ... He didn't like anyone who was pompous or stuck up. He was also an amazingly nonpolitical guy. He really has no hidden agenda except getting at the truth. Pat never liked BS."
In 1988, he became a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office in lower Manhattan, where over the next 13 years he put away mobsters named Gambino, indicted Osama Bin Laden and brought in convictions of the blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of the terrorists who bombed the U.S. embassies in Africa. After transferring to Chicago's U.S. attorney's office, Fitzgerald was labeled "Eliot Ness with a Harvard Law degree" when he indicted Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, and two aides to Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat.
In December 2003, he was appointed as special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame-CIA outing case, which has sent shock waves through Washington where leaking classified government information is considered a daily lunch special. In the world according to Patrick Fitzgerald, this is known as a crime.
"It's kind of odd watching Pat getting all this attention," says Bouza. "But I really can't think of anyone who is better suited for the job. ... Pat would never come after you because of your politics or forpersonal reasons. He could be making a fortune in the private sector doing half as much work. But he loves what he's doing. And he's a straight shooter. So if you come in front of him and you're innocent and tell the truth, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. But if youare in any way guilty of a federal crime, I'd be worried. Especially if you lieabout it. Because I don't care how smart you are, if you're guilty, Pat Fitzgerald's gonna get ya."
The former doorman from Brooklyn has since grilled President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to divulge her source, and had a dozen witnesses, including Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in front of his grand jury.
Now the Beltway soothsayers are forecasting a pair of indictments against Rove and Libby coming out of Fitzgerald's grand jury.
This former doorman from Brooklyn has until Oct. 28 to wrap up his work on this case. And the next door Patrick Fitzgerald holds open for rich and powerful men could lead to a jail cell."-from the story in the New York Daily News. Maybe Clooney could play him in the movie. There's a photo with the story. My New York roots are showing.
Patty Rocks, Again
"When a bonus isn’t a bonus, Murray fires---WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has reneged on its offer to pay a $15,000 bonus to members of the National Guard and Army Reserve who agree to extend their enlistments by six years, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle).
The bonuses were offered in January to Active Guard and Reserve and military technician soldiers who were serving overseas. In April, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs ordered the bonuses stopped, Murray said.
“This is outrageous,” the senator said in a telephone interview. “It makes me angry that this administration has broken another promise to our troops.”
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed the bonuses had been canceled, saying they violated Pentagon policies because they duplicated other programs. She said Guard and Reserve members would be eligible for other bonuses.
Krenke said some soldiers had been paid the re-enlistment bonuses, but she was unsure how many or whether the money would have to be repaid. Murray’s office said that as far as it knew, no active Guard or Reserve members had received the bonuses.
A Murray spokeswoman, Alex Glass, said Krenke’s explanation was unacceptable.
“They can spin it anyway they want,” Glass said. “But this is a promise they are trying to explain away.”
The bonus offer was part of the Pentagon’s effort to retain Guard and Reserve members at a time of declining enlistments in the regular Army.
Army officials have said they face the toughest recruiting climate since 1973, when the draft was dropped and replaced with an all-volunteer military.
Roughly 3,400 members of the Washington National Guard’s 81st Armor Brigade were serving in Iraq at the time the bonuses were offered.
The bonuses were tax-free because they involved soldiers stationed overseas.
“As in the private sector, bonuses are quite effective in keeping talented people with high demand skills,” Krenke said in an e-mail response to questions.
Murray, a leading Capitol Hill critic of management of the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs, said she didn’t know why the bonuses were dropped but suspected it was connected to the tight federal budget.
“It feels like every day I wake up to something else gone wrong,” she said. “And it all goes back to this administration not planning adequately for the Iraq war.”
Krenke said the decision to end the bonus program had nothing to do with budgeting.
The senator said she first learned the bonus program had been canceled this summer from members of the Washington National Guard. In late August she wrote officials of the Pentagon’s National Guard Bureau demanding an immediate explanation.
The decision to cancel the bonuses had caused “tremendous uncertainty” among Guard members who had been counting on the money after they decided to re-enlist, Murray said in her August letter.
In a two-paragraph reply to Murray, Donna Warren, the National Guard Bureau’s congressional liaison, said the bonus program had been scrubbed by order of the Office of Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. Warren said it had been discovered that Defense Department regulations prohibited such bonuses, but she offered no elaboration.
Warren said the bonuses remained a “critical issue” and that officials of the Guard bureau were “aggressively engaged” in discussions with the defense secretary’s office.
Murray said Warren’s response was inadequate. Earlier this month she wrote Thomas Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs. Murray asked not only for a further explanation, but also asked Hall to reverse himself and reinstate the bonus program.
Krenke said the Pentagon would have no comment on Murray’s letter to Hall.
Murray said she expected a quick response and would pursue the matter further if Hall’s response were insufficient."-from Les Blumenthal's story in the Tacoma News Tribune. Thanks to Annie Robbins for the tip.
The bonuses were offered in January to Active Guard and Reserve and military technician soldiers who were serving overseas. In April, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs ordered the bonuses stopped, Murray said.
“This is outrageous,” the senator said in a telephone interview. “It makes me angry that this administration has broken another promise to our troops.”
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed the bonuses had been canceled, saying they violated Pentagon policies because they duplicated other programs. She said Guard and Reserve members would be eligible for other bonuses.
Krenke said some soldiers had been paid the re-enlistment bonuses, but she was unsure how many or whether the money would have to be repaid. Murray’s office said that as far as it knew, no active Guard or Reserve members had received the bonuses.
A Murray spokeswoman, Alex Glass, said Krenke’s explanation was unacceptable.
“They can spin it anyway they want,” Glass said. “But this is a promise they are trying to explain away.”
The bonus offer was part of the Pentagon’s effort to retain Guard and Reserve members at a time of declining enlistments in the regular Army.
Army officials have said they face the toughest recruiting climate since 1973, when the draft was dropped and replaced with an all-volunteer military.
Roughly 3,400 members of the Washington National Guard’s 81st Armor Brigade were serving in Iraq at the time the bonuses were offered.
The bonuses were tax-free because they involved soldiers stationed overseas.
“As in the private sector, bonuses are quite effective in keeping talented people with high demand skills,” Krenke said in an e-mail response to questions.
Murray, a leading Capitol Hill critic of management of the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs, said she didn’t know why the bonuses were dropped but suspected it was connected to the tight federal budget.
“It feels like every day I wake up to something else gone wrong,” she said. “And it all goes back to this administration not planning adequately for the Iraq war.”
Krenke said the decision to end the bonus program had nothing to do with budgeting.
The senator said she first learned the bonus program had been canceled this summer from members of the Washington National Guard. In late August she wrote officials of the Pentagon’s National Guard Bureau demanding an immediate explanation.
The decision to cancel the bonuses had caused “tremendous uncertainty” among Guard members who had been counting on the money after they decided to re-enlist, Murray said in her August letter.
In a two-paragraph reply to Murray, Donna Warren, the National Guard Bureau’s congressional liaison, said the bonus program had been scrubbed by order of the Office of Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. Warren said it had been discovered that Defense Department regulations prohibited such bonuses, but she offered no elaboration.
Warren said the bonuses remained a “critical issue” and that officials of the Guard bureau were “aggressively engaged” in discussions with the defense secretary’s office.
Murray said Warren’s response was inadequate. Earlier this month she wrote Thomas Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs. Murray asked not only for a further explanation, but also asked Hall to reverse himself and reinstate the bonus program.
Krenke said the Pentagon would have no comment on Murray’s letter to Hall.
Murray said she expected a quick response and would pursue the matter further if Hall’s response were insufficient."-from Les Blumenthal's story in the Tacoma News Tribune. Thanks to Annie Robbins for the tip.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
''Winning the House could stop the Iraq War and prevent more''
"I spent Saturday morning doorbelling in drizzle, so Saturday afternoon I embraced the chance to get warm and dry for a few hours listening to Congressman Jay Inslee answering questions from his constituents at a coffee just over the border between my district and his. (Congressman Inslee represents Washington's 1st Congressional District)
About two hundred people had shown up for the occasion - one of three such coffees he was doing in his district that day. He answered questions covering a broad spectrum of issues and viewpoints, but one question in particular stood out for me: "If President Bush decided to invade Iran, could Congress stop him?"
Could Congress, indeed? President Bush has amply demonstrated he believes there are no limits to his power. The current Republican-controlled House and the Senate have not stood in his way.
And the independence of the judicial branch, our last resort, is endangered with the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
The Constitution was set up with a system of checks and balances to keep power distributed; can we make those checks work?
Of course, we have to start by regaining control of some piece of the government.
Let's start with the comparatively low-hanging fruit: suppose we win the fifteen seats we need for a majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, and suppose that is all we gain. If we control only the House - but not the Senate or the Presidency - can we stop him?
The answer is yes, going back to the Constitution itself - but it's not straightforward.
The bad news is that the Constitution names the President the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, and a Supreme Court predisposed to find expansive executive power is likely to interpret the powers inherent in being the Commander in Chief very, very broadly.
The President might be able to deploy American troops over the objection of the Congress and the American people without any Congressional declaration of war - and President Bush will surely interpret it that way.
However, he'd have to pay them -- and the House controls the flow of federal money in general, and specifically with respect to the military. Grover Norquist has been trying to starve government for years; we could return the favor, carefully, if we controlled the House.
We could refuse to fund harebrained outlandish plans.
We could stop the President from going into Iran.
We could even force a conclusion to Iraq - because it all requires money, and that money must start from the House of Representatives.
That power is at the very least a blunt tool which gives the members of the House a strong position to bargain from.
If we control the House, we can demand a plan and a timeline for turning control of Iraq over to the Iraqis, forcing them to take responsibility for the future of their own country, and for bringing our troops home.
Mind you, control of the House wouldn't be enough by itself to accomplish all the things that we want, like increased investment in education, better regulations to protect the environment, or a more just tax structure.
Those require that we pass legislation, for which we need majorities in the House and Senate and a cooperative president, or 2/3 supermajorities in the House and Senate if we can't get the president on board. Control of only the House doesn't give us that.
But it would be enough to stop the corruption and abuse of power we're seeing.
Fifteen seats.
Other people have done some excellent analysis of which fifteen we might be able to take to win the House; all of those lists include WA-08, the seat for which I am running.
We can and will take WA-08 in 2006. I am working on my 1/15th of the problem, and I would encourage all of you to focus on what you can do to help us win the fifteen seats we need.
The race for this seat, representing Washington's 8th Congressional District, is heating up. My campaign has received coverage in local papers including the Seattle Times, the King County Journal, the Seattle P-I, the Olympian, and the Seattle Weekly (where I was described as a "blue-collar military brat turned soccer-mom geek," a description both funny and accurate). Additionally, a story about launching the campaign was picked up by the Associated Press.
In our first hundred days, we brought in more than a hundred thousand dollars from a growing army of hundreds of donors. I'm headed to the East Coast later this week for a series of New England fundraisers and meetings in Washington D.C.
I've spoken at length to over a thousand people these past few months at events such as the candidate forum Eastside Democracy for America hosted last week to introduce me to their members.
Eastside Democracy for America (with incredible work from one of their members, Andrew Tsao) also produced an amazing introductory video from that forum which will be available on the campaign website in the next day or two.
I am going non-stop, and I am fortunate to have an incredibly talented group of people working on this campaign.
We will win this seat in 2006. You can help with this one, and with some of the fourteen more we need across the country.
At this stage of the campaign, the things you can do that will have the most impact to help your candidates involve time, money, or buzz.
You can volunteer to help a campaign you believe in - and be specific about your skill set, as well as what you might be able to offer, so that it is more likely you'll have an opportunity to do something meaningful. Every campaign I know has a shortage of people as well as a problem with volunteers who don't follow through.
This means that if you offer to do something that you will drive to completion yourself, you will be far more appreciated than if you merely make a vague offer of help.
You can contribute money, or help raise money. Even if you can't personally contribute $1000 to a local campaign, you can still have a big impact.
For instance, if you can convince 20 of your friends to donate $50 each and you send those checks as a batch to the progressive candidate of your choice, you will have done tremendous good.
(If enough people did such bundling, progressive candidates could focus more attention on the parts of campaigning that aren't fundraising.)
You can host a coffee or house party, with or without the presence of the candidate you're supporting, to generate excitement and perhaps increase financial support from the grassroots.
And you can help create buzz by talking about the candidates you're passionate about. Talk to other local bloggers and activists, but also talk to your friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family. They'll trust you more than an ad or a stranger telling them what to think or how to vote.
Reach out by writing letters to the editor of the local paper, or by contacting your representatives in Congress or the Senate and ask them to support the candidate you believe in.
You have tremendous potential to make a difference, both individually and as a community.
Thank you for all the positive attention and encouragement you've given me. Last month was my first diary entry here, and I was gratified to see so many comments of support, constructive suggestions, and questions.
If you're interested in my candidacy, I invite you to visit my website regularly. As I mentioned earlier, we have a new video from the local Democracy for America forum which we'll be adding in a couple of days.
Thank you again for your support. Together we can take back the House - and take a step on the road to winning back our country."-Darcy Burner, posting on Kos. HorsesAss.org provided the tip.
About two hundred people had shown up for the occasion - one of three such coffees he was doing in his district that day. He answered questions covering a broad spectrum of issues and viewpoints, but one question in particular stood out for me: "If President Bush decided to invade Iran, could Congress stop him?"
Could Congress, indeed? President Bush has amply demonstrated he believes there are no limits to his power. The current Republican-controlled House and the Senate have not stood in his way.
And the independence of the judicial branch, our last resort, is endangered with the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
The Constitution was set up with a system of checks and balances to keep power distributed; can we make those checks work?
Of course, we have to start by regaining control of some piece of the government.
Let's start with the comparatively low-hanging fruit: suppose we win the fifteen seats we need for a majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, and suppose that is all we gain. If we control only the House - but not the Senate or the Presidency - can we stop him?
The answer is yes, going back to the Constitution itself - but it's not straightforward.
The bad news is that the Constitution names the President the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, and a Supreme Court predisposed to find expansive executive power is likely to interpret the powers inherent in being the Commander in Chief very, very broadly.
The President might be able to deploy American troops over the objection of the Congress and the American people without any Congressional declaration of war - and President Bush will surely interpret it that way.
However, he'd have to pay them -- and the House controls the flow of federal money in general, and specifically with respect to the military. Grover Norquist has been trying to starve government for years; we could return the favor, carefully, if we controlled the House.
We could refuse to fund harebrained outlandish plans.
We could stop the President from going into Iran.
We could even force a conclusion to Iraq - because it all requires money, and that money must start from the House of Representatives.
That power is at the very least a blunt tool which gives the members of the House a strong position to bargain from.
If we control the House, we can demand a plan and a timeline for turning control of Iraq over to the Iraqis, forcing them to take responsibility for the future of their own country, and for bringing our troops home.
Mind you, control of the House wouldn't be enough by itself to accomplish all the things that we want, like increased investment in education, better regulations to protect the environment, or a more just tax structure.
Those require that we pass legislation, for which we need majorities in the House and Senate and a cooperative president, or 2/3 supermajorities in the House and Senate if we can't get the president on board. Control of only the House doesn't give us that.
But it would be enough to stop the corruption and abuse of power we're seeing.
Fifteen seats.
Other people have done some excellent analysis of which fifteen we might be able to take to win the House; all of those lists include WA-08, the seat for which I am running.
We can and will take WA-08 in 2006. I am working on my 1/15th of the problem, and I would encourage all of you to focus on what you can do to help us win the fifteen seats we need.
The race for this seat, representing Washington's 8th Congressional District, is heating up. My campaign has received coverage in local papers including the Seattle Times, the King County Journal, the Seattle P-I, the Olympian, and the Seattle Weekly (where I was described as a "blue-collar military brat turned soccer-mom geek," a description both funny and accurate). Additionally, a story about launching the campaign was picked up by the Associated Press.
In our first hundred days, we brought in more than a hundred thousand dollars from a growing army of hundreds of donors. I'm headed to the East Coast later this week for a series of New England fundraisers and meetings in Washington D.C.
I've spoken at length to over a thousand people these past few months at events such as the candidate forum Eastside Democracy for America hosted last week to introduce me to their members.
Eastside Democracy for America (with incredible work from one of their members, Andrew Tsao) also produced an amazing introductory video from that forum which will be available on the campaign website in the next day or two.
I am going non-stop, and I am fortunate to have an incredibly talented group of people working on this campaign.
We will win this seat in 2006. You can help with this one, and with some of the fourteen more we need across the country.
At this stage of the campaign, the things you can do that will have the most impact to help your candidates involve time, money, or buzz.
You can volunteer to help a campaign you believe in - and be specific about your skill set, as well as what you might be able to offer, so that it is more likely you'll have an opportunity to do something meaningful. Every campaign I know has a shortage of people as well as a problem with volunteers who don't follow through.
This means that if you offer to do something that you will drive to completion yourself, you will be far more appreciated than if you merely make a vague offer of help.
You can contribute money, or help raise money. Even if you can't personally contribute $1000 to a local campaign, you can still have a big impact.
For instance, if you can convince 20 of your friends to donate $50 each and you send those checks as a batch to the progressive candidate of your choice, you will have done tremendous good.
(If enough people did such bundling, progressive candidates could focus more attention on the parts of campaigning that aren't fundraising.)
You can host a coffee or house party, with or without the presence of the candidate you're supporting, to generate excitement and perhaps increase financial support from the grassroots.
And you can help create buzz by talking about the candidates you're passionate about. Talk to other local bloggers and activists, but also talk to your friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family. They'll trust you more than an ad or a stranger telling them what to think or how to vote.
Reach out by writing letters to the editor of the local paper, or by contacting your representatives in Congress or the Senate and ask them to support the candidate you believe in.
You have tremendous potential to make a difference, both individually and as a community.
Thank you for all the positive attention and encouragement you've given me. Last month was my first diary entry here, and I was gratified to see so many comments of support, constructive suggestions, and questions.
If you're interested in my candidacy, I invite you to visit my website regularly. As I mentioned earlier, we have a new video from the local Democracy for America forum which we'll be adding in a couple of days.
Thank you again for your support. Together we can take back the House - and take a step on the road to winning back our country."-Darcy Burner, posting on Kos. HorsesAss.org provided the tip.
''Why can't the left face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?''
"If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.
Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.
As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen, and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.
That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the Republican and Democratic Parties run joint pickets against progressive candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.
And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party, there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now and forever.
Before we go into the sordid details, we have to ask: exactly what is it about Team Bush that makes people think they could not or would not steal an American election? Do they lack funds? Do they lack expertise? Is there something in the Machiavellian/mobster moral code of Karl Rove and the Bush Family that would prevent them from doing here what they've been doing throughout the Third World for so long?
CIA meister Poppy Bush long ago perfected the art and science of stealing elections. US manipulators have interfered with and tipped elections for decades. Why should Ohio be any different? Especially when all the world knew control of the most powerful office on earth would be decided right here.
Lets do the bookends: before the voting, Ohio's infamous Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell clearly and vehemently denied poll access to teams of international observers from the United Nations and other international election observers.
Since the election, he has effectively stonewalled and sabotaged all recount attempts, to the point that no credible accounting of the Ohio election has ever been done. To this day, at least 100,000 votes remain uncounted, electronic voting machines remain unaudited, key hardware and data files have been trashed, paper ballots have sat unguarded for anyone to pilfer and tallies in dozens of key counties remain filled with statistical impossibilities.
In our HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, we list more than 180 bullet points on how this theft was perpetrated. It was a brilliant, cynical and masterfully executed campaign of death by a thousand cuts.
In Florida 2000, the means of the crime were limited to a few instances of intimidation, butterfly ballots, computer manipulation and a corrupt Supreme Court. But four years after, in Ohio, dozens of sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant tricks were designed to steal a few thousand votes here, a few thousand more there, until victory was in GOP hands. Unless they are exposed and blocked, every one of these scams can and will be duplicated throughout the United States in 2006 and 2008. The question is: will the left follow mainstream Democrats with sheep-like acceptance as every election goes the same way from here on? And if so, why bother even staging more votes in this country at all?
Starting with Russ Baker at TomPaine.com, the indicators are grim. Last January, Baker penned an absurd, ill-reported piece of nonsense called "What Didn't Happen in Ohio." Baker traipsed into Columbus for a few days, interviewed the usual faux Democrats, and left with a Big Story: "The Election Was Fair."
If Baker had done any meaningful research he might have seen the dozens of other instances of intimidation, irregularities and fraud that went unmentioned in his glib paragraphs. Instead he relied on Bill Anthony, chair of the Franklin County Democrats and Board of Elections.
Bill is a pleasant, affable African-American with no commitment or fight for democracy or even the Democrats. He has appeared on Bob's local radio show and with Harvey on others. On one of them, Bill admitted that the Franklin County BOE knew there would be problems with voting machines, and asked Blackwell for paper ballots well before the 2004 election. Blackwell, Anthony said, turned them down. The result was the now infamous chaos at the polls, with inner city voters stuck in the rain for hours. Just what Blackwell wanted.
But did Bill Anthony fight Blackwell's absurd ruling? Did he make it a public issue prior to the election?
Not a chance.
For a quickie reporting job, Anthony is a dream. He's well-spoken, charming and convincing. As an African-American with union connections, he would seem the perfect liberal source.
In 2003, Anthony endorsed the Republican mayor's former press secretary for the Columbus School Board. He then supported two Republican candidates on a "Reform Slate" aimed at ousting the Board's only progressive Democrat, an African-American.
Bill Anthony is just one of a legion of what are known throughout the state as DINOs---Democrats in Name Only. The Ohio Democratic Party is a national embarrassment. Its chair, Denny White, was not long ago a Republican, and will soon be one again, once the party is fully disemboweled, a job very close to done. Throughout Ohio, DINOs piously cover this piece of fraud and that piece of theft with glib "I hate Bush" rhetoric. The pity is, out-of-state reporters actually take them seriously.
Mark Hertsgaard is a well respected author and reporter and a long-time friend of Harvey Wasserman, and of election critic Mark Crispen Miller. He has contributed some very valuable work over the years. But he's done himself---and the voting public---very wrong on "Recounting Ohio" in the new Mother Jones.
Mark is smart and thorough enough to leave open the possibility that Ohio's election was, indeed, stolen. But he also falls prey to the DINO trap, failing to cover far too much of what happened here while taking seriously centrist Democrats who are known locally to have no credibility.
So Mother Jones questions the significance of the firing of a Democratic election official who blew the whistle on computer manipulations by Triad, an obscure Republican voting machine company. But Triad was involved in counting the votes in nearly half of Ohio's 88 counties. Questions are still being raised about Triad, including: "How did they get all these contracts in the first place?"
Mother Jones correctly points out that seven times the number of votes by which Bush took Ohio were cast on Republican-controlled machines. But the magazine fails to follow up with mention that those votes have been tabulated on proprietary non-transparent software---a fact we pointed out in our own article in Motherjones.com many months prior to the election.
Mother Jones also discounts the fact that a phony Homeland Security alert in Warren County landed the vote count in an unauthorized warehouse rather than the official secure location, and that reporters were barred from the vote count. That count, which went hugely and suspiciously and very importantly for Bush, was observed by nominal Democrats. But so were other highly dubious vote counts around the state, as they had been in Florida 2000, which Mother Jones argues adamantly was indeed stolen.
The irony of this is that the same issue of Mother Jones leads off with a dead-on story about Ohio and national Democrats who are sabotaging the campaign of the aggressively electable Paul Hackett for a key US Senate seat. And another MoJo piece bemoans the fact that national Democrats seem adept only at losing.
Yet here the back of the book is a story discounting evidence compiled by a legion of independent, grassroots election rights advocates, while favoring phone interviews with the very Democrats being denounced in the front of the book.
Above all, the core of evidence that the election was stolen in Ohio 2004 comes from some 500 sworn statements and signed affidavits taken by people of all political parties, including two Republican hearings officers, in the weeks after the election. Anyone truly committed to finding out what happened here needs to start with that huge body of evidence.
As MoJo points out, none of this has been made easier by the "abandon ship" of the biggest DINO of all, John Kerry. Kerry had $7 million in the bank earmarked to "count every vote" and was apparently losing by just 136,000 Ohio votes with more than 250,000 still uncounted when he turned tail and conceded. Even Blackwell's corrupt, virtually meaningless first fake recount dropped Bush's official tally by 18,000 votes.
The Democrats have since attacked the election protection movement here through a lawyer named Daniel Hoffheimer who comes from none other than the stalwart Cincinnati Republican law firm of Taft, Stettinius et. al. MoJo quotes another Kerry/DINO lawyer Michael O'Grady, counsel to the state Democratic Party, who argues that for Ohio to have been stolen, the entire GOP would have had to be "conspiratorial," while the Democrats were "dumb as rocks."
In fact, that's an assessment many activists in Ohio heartily endorse, though you might add the word "inert" to the description of the Democrats.
O'Grady claims, for example, that an impossible vote count in three southern Ohio counties that gave Bush his entire margin of victory can be explained by a feminist outpouring for an African-American court candidate who ran zero campaign in those counties. But the presumption is that those same feminists somehow didn't bother to vote for Kerry over George W. Bush. No local student of that election could begin to take such an assessment seriously.
Or how about the quote from Chris Rakocy, a "tech specialist" about those notorious touchscreens in Mahoning County where voters who chose Kerry saw Bush light up. Rakocy says that problem was "only" on 18 of 1,148 machines, and that it was corrected early.
But Rakocy stands alone against dozens of sworn statements and affidavits confirming that the problem went on all day, and was never fixed, and may have involved far more machines than 18, and not only in Mahoning County but also in Franklin. Even at that, in heavily Democratic Youngstown (not to mention Columbus), just 18 machines could have accounted for switching thousands of votes. And, in fact, Kerry's margins in both Youngstown and Columbus were suspiciously light.
And what would Mother Jones herself do to machines that disenfranchised even one voter, no matter what the apparent impact on the ultimate vote count? Why is the magazine named for her discounting the you-couldn't-make-this-one-up reality of voters pushing one candidate's name on a touchscreen and seeing another's name light up, time after time after time? Or are we taking this---and her---all too seriously?
Then there's the song and dance from Warren Mitofsky. The father of exit polls saw his work used to overturn a stolen election in Ukraine just prior to the American vote. But when his poll-taking here showed John Kerry with a nationwide margin of 1.5 million votes, somehow Mitofsky jumped ship on his own decades of professionalism.
Exit polls funded by six major news organizations showed Kerry carrying Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada as late as 12:20 am on Wednesday morning, well after balloting stopped even in Alaska and Hawaii. These four "purple states" gave the election to the "blue" Democrats, then miraculously switched to "red" for Bush, giving him the White House once again.
Given all that's known about exit polls---and it's a lot---the odds on one state switching like that are about one in one hundred. For four, it's a virtual statistical impossibility. Add the fact that not one, not four, but TEN of eleven swing states showed drastic shifts from Kerry to Bush and you enter the realm of, well, a stolen election.
Add huge, unexplained shifts from pre-election polls to post-election vote counts in crucial 2002 Senatorial races in Georgia, Minnesota and Colorado, then remember what happened in Florida 2000, and examine the basic Bush attitude toward democracy itself, and you've got a pattern to say the least. And an obvious prescription for one-party rule as far as the eye can see.
Except when you are dealing with America's Democratic Party in 2004 and with reportage that relies on a few phone calls and a disheartening lack of grassroots perspective. If all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill well knew, then so are all vote counts.
Our first article predicting what would happen in Ohio 2004 was published many months before the election in, of all places, MotherJones.com. We warned that electronic voting machines deployed by the likes of Diebold could give Ohio and thus the nation to George W. Bush. Wally O'Dell, Diebold's infamous CEO, pledged to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004, and all evidence points to the fact that he at least helped.
What we missed in addition was the myriad clever tricks the GOP would bring to bear in pulling this off. Ohio has a long history as a test market. New products like white bread and spam are brought here first, to see how they'll fly with America at large.
In Ohio 2004, scores of tools for stealing an American election were tried and proven out. Outside reporters have come here again and again to pull at this one and tear at that one. Almost always, they get even that wrong. And almost always, they fail to see the bigger picture.
If we have a "know it all" attitude, as is sometimes charged, it's because we were (and are) here, we saw it happen, we witnessed the seven-hour waits and the denials of the absentee ballots, and we took the testimony of the hundreds who later went under oath.
And we see more unravel every day. Conspiracy theories happen sometimes when actual conspiracies occur. The stakes involved, the players on both sides and the events that are out there plain as day are all of a piece that's simply too obvious for anyone on the ground here to miss.
Hertsgaard has the good sense to mention indictments that have recently come down on election thieves in Cuyahoga County. We know that to be the tip of the iceberg.
What matters now is whether the GOP will be allowed to repeat nationwide in 2006 and 2008 what they saw they could get away with in Ohio 2004.
Election theft skeptics tend to conclude their put-downs by urging we forget about the vote-count stuff and concentrate on coming up with candidates so good that "the election won't be close enough to steal."
Having seen what we saw here, knowing what Mother Jones is reporting about the Democratic attacks on Paul Hackett, and about the loser instinct ingrained in the Dems' DLC/DNA, we must charitably describe such a conclusion as being profoundly wishful thinking.
Someday we may indeed have candidates far worthier than Al Gore and John Kerry. But they both won the presidency of the United States, however corruptible their margins of victory.
We need to guarantee that if someone worthwhile and willing to fight ever does come along, we will have a left that's prepared to make sure the votes are fairly counted.
As Rev. Jesse Jackson put it while speaking to election protection activists here, "We can afford to lose an election. We can't afford to lose our democracy."
Who would agree more strongly than Tom Paine and Mother Jones?"-from The Free Press (OH). I wonder if anyone will be looking at the recent "election" in Iraq.
Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.
As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen, and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.
That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the Republican and Democratic Parties run joint pickets against progressive candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.
And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party, there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now and forever.
Before we go into the sordid details, we have to ask: exactly what is it about Team Bush that makes people think they could not or would not steal an American election? Do they lack funds? Do they lack expertise? Is there something in the Machiavellian/mobster moral code of Karl Rove and the Bush Family that would prevent them from doing here what they've been doing throughout the Third World for so long?
CIA meister Poppy Bush long ago perfected the art and science of stealing elections. US manipulators have interfered with and tipped elections for decades. Why should Ohio be any different? Especially when all the world knew control of the most powerful office on earth would be decided right here.
Lets do the bookends: before the voting, Ohio's infamous Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell clearly and vehemently denied poll access to teams of international observers from the United Nations and other international election observers.
Since the election, he has effectively stonewalled and sabotaged all recount attempts, to the point that no credible accounting of the Ohio election has ever been done. To this day, at least 100,000 votes remain uncounted, electronic voting machines remain unaudited, key hardware and data files have been trashed, paper ballots have sat unguarded for anyone to pilfer and tallies in dozens of key counties remain filled with statistical impossibilities.
In our HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, we list more than 180 bullet points on how this theft was perpetrated. It was a brilliant, cynical and masterfully executed campaign of death by a thousand cuts.
In Florida 2000, the means of the crime were limited to a few instances of intimidation, butterfly ballots, computer manipulation and a corrupt Supreme Court. But four years after, in Ohio, dozens of sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant tricks were designed to steal a few thousand votes here, a few thousand more there, until victory was in GOP hands. Unless they are exposed and blocked, every one of these scams can and will be duplicated throughout the United States in 2006 and 2008. The question is: will the left follow mainstream Democrats with sheep-like acceptance as every election goes the same way from here on? And if so, why bother even staging more votes in this country at all?
Starting with Russ Baker at TomPaine.com, the indicators are grim. Last January, Baker penned an absurd, ill-reported piece of nonsense called "What Didn't Happen in Ohio." Baker traipsed into Columbus for a few days, interviewed the usual faux Democrats, and left with a Big Story: "The Election Was Fair."
If Baker had done any meaningful research he might have seen the dozens of other instances of intimidation, irregularities and fraud that went unmentioned in his glib paragraphs. Instead he relied on Bill Anthony, chair of the Franklin County Democrats and Board of Elections.
Bill is a pleasant, affable African-American with no commitment or fight for democracy or even the Democrats. He has appeared on Bob's local radio show and with Harvey on others. On one of them, Bill admitted that the Franklin County BOE knew there would be problems with voting machines, and asked Blackwell for paper ballots well before the 2004 election. Blackwell, Anthony said, turned them down. The result was the now infamous chaos at the polls, with inner city voters stuck in the rain for hours. Just what Blackwell wanted.
But did Bill Anthony fight Blackwell's absurd ruling? Did he make it a public issue prior to the election?
Not a chance.
For a quickie reporting job, Anthony is a dream. He's well-spoken, charming and convincing. As an African-American with union connections, he would seem the perfect liberal source.
In 2003, Anthony endorsed the Republican mayor's former press secretary for the Columbus School Board. He then supported two Republican candidates on a "Reform Slate" aimed at ousting the Board's only progressive Democrat, an African-American.
Bill Anthony is just one of a legion of what are known throughout the state as DINOs---Democrats in Name Only. The Ohio Democratic Party is a national embarrassment. Its chair, Denny White, was not long ago a Republican, and will soon be one again, once the party is fully disemboweled, a job very close to done. Throughout Ohio, DINOs piously cover this piece of fraud and that piece of theft with glib "I hate Bush" rhetoric. The pity is, out-of-state reporters actually take them seriously.
Mark Hertsgaard is a well respected author and reporter and a long-time friend of Harvey Wasserman, and of election critic Mark Crispen Miller. He has contributed some very valuable work over the years. But he's done himself---and the voting public---very wrong on "Recounting Ohio" in the new Mother Jones.
Mark is smart and thorough enough to leave open the possibility that Ohio's election was, indeed, stolen. But he also falls prey to the DINO trap, failing to cover far too much of what happened here while taking seriously centrist Democrats who are known locally to have no credibility.
So Mother Jones questions the significance of the firing of a Democratic election official who blew the whistle on computer manipulations by Triad, an obscure Republican voting machine company. But Triad was involved in counting the votes in nearly half of Ohio's 88 counties. Questions are still being raised about Triad, including: "How did they get all these contracts in the first place?"
Mother Jones correctly points out that seven times the number of votes by which Bush took Ohio were cast on Republican-controlled machines. But the magazine fails to follow up with mention that those votes have been tabulated on proprietary non-transparent software---a fact we pointed out in our own article in Motherjones.com many months prior to the election.
Mother Jones also discounts the fact that a phony Homeland Security alert in Warren County landed the vote count in an unauthorized warehouse rather than the official secure location, and that reporters were barred from the vote count. That count, which went hugely and suspiciously and very importantly for Bush, was observed by nominal Democrats. But so were other highly dubious vote counts around the state, as they had been in Florida 2000, which Mother Jones argues adamantly was indeed stolen.
The irony of this is that the same issue of Mother Jones leads off with a dead-on story about Ohio and national Democrats who are sabotaging the campaign of the aggressively electable Paul Hackett for a key US Senate seat. And another MoJo piece bemoans the fact that national Democrats seem adept only at losing.
Yet here the back of the book is a story discounting evidence compiled by a legion of independent, grassroots election rights advocates, while favoring phone interviews with the very Democrats being denounced in the front of the book.
Above all, the core of evidence that the election was stolen in Ohio 2004 comes from some 500 sworn statements and signed affidavits taken by people of all political parties, including two Republican hearings officers, in the weeks after the election. Anyone truly committed to finding out what happened here needs to start with that huge body of evidence.
As MoJo points out, none of this has been made easier by the "abandon ship" of the biggest DINO of all, John Kerry. Kerry had $7 million in the bank earmarked to "count every vote" and was apparently losing by just 136,000 Ohio votes with more than 250,000 still uncounted when he turned tail and conceded. Even Blackwell's corrupt, virtually meaningless first fake recount dropped Bush's official tally by 18,000 votes.
The Democrats have since attacked the election protection movement here through a lawyer named Daniel Hoffheimer who comes from none other than the stalwart Cincinnati Republican law firm of Taft, Stettinius et. al. MoJo quotes another Kerry/DINO lawyer Michael O'Grady, counsel to the state Democratic Party, who argues that for Ohio to have been stolen, the entire GOP would have had to be "conspiratorial," while the Democrats were "dumb as rocks."
In fact, that's an assessment many activists in Ohio heartily endorse, though you might add the word "inert" to the description of the Democrats.
O'Grady claims, for example, that an impossible vote count in three southern Ohio counties that gave Bush his entire margin of victory can be explained by a feminist outpouring for an African-American court candidate who ran zero campaign in those counties. But the presumption is that those same feminists somehow didn't bother to vote for Kerry over George W. Bush. No local student of that election could begin to take such an assessment seriously.
Or how about the quote from Chris Rakocy, a "tech specialist" about those notorious touchscreens in Mahoning County where voters who chose Kerry saw Bush light up. Rakocy says that problem was "only" on 18 of 1,148 machines, and that it was corrected early.
But Rakocy stands alone against dozens of sworn statements and affidavits confirming that the problem went on all day, and was never fixed, and may have involved far more machines than 18, and not only in Mahoning County but also in Franklin. Even at that, in heavily Democratic Youngstown (not to mention Columbus), just 18 machines could have accounted for switching thousands of votes. And, in fact, Kerry's margins in both Youngstown and Columbus were suspiciously light.
And what would Mother Jones herself do to machines that disenfranchised even one voter, no matter what the apparent impact on the ultimate vote count? Why is the magazine named for her discounting the you-couldn't-make-this-one-up reality of voters pushing one candidate's name on a touchscreen and seeing another's name light up, time after time after time? Or are we taking this---and her---all too seriously?
Then there's the song and dance from Warren Mitofsky. The father of exit polls saw his work used to overturn a stolen election in Ukraine just prior to the American vote. But when his poll-taking here showed John Kerry with a nationwide margin of 1.5 million votes, somehow Mitofsky jumped ship on his own decades of professionalism.
Exit polls funded by six major news organizations showed Kerry carrying Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada as late as 12:20 am on Wednesday morning, well after balloting stopped even in Alaska and Hawaii. These four "purple states" gave the election to the "blue" Democrats, then miraculously switched to "red" for Bush, giving him the White House once again.
Given all that's known about exit polls---and it's a lot---the odds on one state switching like that are about one in one hundred. For four, it's a virtual statistical impossibility. Add the fact that not one, not four, but TEN of eleven swing states showed drastic shifts from Kerry to Bush and you enter the realm of, well, a stolen election.
Add huge, unexplained shifts from pre-election polls to post-election vote counts in crucial 2002 Senatorial races in Georgia, Minnesota and Colorado, then remember what happened in Florida 2000, and examine the basic Bush attitude toward democracy itself, and you've got a pattern to say the least. And an obvious prescription for one-party rule as far as the eye can see.
Except when you are dealing with America's Democratic Party in 2004 and with reportage that relies on a few phone calls and a disheartening lack of grassroots perspective. If all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill well knew, then so are all vote counts.
Our first article predicting what would happen in Ohio 2004 was published many months before the election in, of all places, MotherJones.com. We warned that electronic voting machines deployed by the likes of Diebold could give Ohio and thus the nation to George W. Bush. Wally O'Dell, Diebold's infamous CEO, pledged to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004, and all evidence points to the fact that he at least helped.
What we missed in addition was the myriad clever tricks the GOP would bring to bear in pulling this off. Ohio has a long history as a test market. New products like white bread and spam are brought here first, to see how they'll fly with America at large.
In Ohio 2004, scores of tools for stealing an American election were tried and proven out. Outside reporters have come here again and again to pull at this one and tear at that one. Almost always, they get even that wrong. And almost always, they fail to see the bigger picture.
If we have a "know it all" attitude, as is sometimes charged, it's because we were (and are) here, we saw it happen, we witnessed the seven-hour waits and the denials of the absentee ballots, and we took the testimony of the hundreds who later went under oath.
And we see more unravel every day. Conspiracy theories happen sometimes when actual conspiracies occur. The stakes involved, the players on both sides and the events that are out there plain as day are all of a piece that's simply too obvious for anyone on the ground here to miss.
Hertsgaard has the good sense to mention indictments that have recently come down on election thieves in Cuyahoga County. We know that to be the tip of the iceberg.
What matters now is whether the GOP will be allowed to repeat nationwide in 2006 and 2008 what they saw they could get away with in Ohio 2004.
Election theft skeptics tend to conclude their put-downs by urging we forget about the vote-count stuff and concentrate on coming up with candidates so good that "the election won't be close enough to steal."
Having seen what we saw here, knowing what Mother Jones is reporting about the Democratic attacks on Paul Hackett, and about the loser instinct ingrained in the Dems' DLC/DNA, we must charitably describe such a conclusion as being profoundly wishful thinking.
Someday we may indeed have candidates far worthier than Al Gore and John Kerry. But they both won the presidency of the United States, however corruptible their margins of victory.
We need to guarantee that if someone worthwhile and willing to fight ever does come along, we will have a left that's prepared to make sure the votes are fairly counted.
As Rev. Jesse Jackson put it while speaking to election protection activists here, "We can afford to lose an election. We can't afford to lose our democracy."
Who would agree more strongly than Tom Paine and Mother Jones?"-from The Free Press (OH). I wonder if anyone will be looking at the recent "election" in Iraq.
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