Date posted: March 21, 2008 - Friday
Title: TW3 03/21/08
Current mood: satisfied
Is There Something In The Water?
The news out of the upper east of the country this week was revealing, if nothing else. I can’t call it political news even though it involved politicians because most of it was about things happening far away from official offices.
First the governor of New York is found to be among the customers of a call girl service. He paid one lady of the evening $4,300 for sex.
Then the former governor of New Jersey, who admitted he was gay some time ago, gets into a he-said-she-said argument with his former wife about a three-way with a staff aide.
And finally the new governor of New York (since the first guy resigned over the hooker incident) confesses to extra marital affairs during his marriage. Not to be outdone, his wife owns up to cheating as well.
OK, I can see why the governor, Eliot Spitzer, had to quit. Since he had been elected on this clean-up-corruption program it came back to bite him on the butt when he got discovered patronizing hookers. But for the rest of the news -- so what?
Why should anyone care if the gay governor of a state swings both ways? Or if the new governor of New York played fast and loose with his marriage?
Who says you can’t govern with your pants around your ankles? It’s called multi-tasking. (Alright, that was a tasteless joke.)
My point is we can’t seem to separate what a politician does away from the office with what he does behind his desk while governing. In reality I’m not sure one has much to do with the other. Why do we obsess so much about the sex lives of politicians and not about some of the other people of importance in our lives? Do you require a sexual history from your doctor, your banker or your auto mechanic? And before we start shaking our heads and wagging our fingers maybe we ought to make sure our own closets are damn clean.
It is almost a given we have an extremely provincial attitude in this country regarding sex and what is and isn’t proper. And we spend far too much time worrying about what other people are doing in their bedrooms and with whom.
Now I may not agree with the conduct of these people, but as long as I’m not one of the parties involved in the activity I don’t think it’s my place to condemn them and display a prurient interest in the details of whatever they did.
Just remember the more time a politician has to spend explaining his life away from the office and defending himself against accusations levied by over zealous people is less time he can spend actually conducting the business of government he was elected to do. Maybe that’s why we can’t get decent health care, are spending way too much for gasoline and can’t seem to make progress on correcting the economy.
Take The Money And Shut Up!
The verdict is in on the Paul McCartney divorce settlement.
Heather Mills, his estranged wife, was awarded 23.7 million pounds ($47.4 million) by a British judge. It was a little less than half of the $100 million she had been seeking for her time being married to the ex-Beatle. Early reports said McCartney had been offering her $50 million as a settlement, but she claimed his offer was ’only’ $31.6 million.
I think that’s a hell of a lot of money, but apparently Mills thinks otherwise. She spent 11 minutes on the court house steps bitching about how she was screwed by the court system.
Ignoring the old adage a person who represents themselves in court has a fool for a client, Mills was her own advocate in the divorce proceedings. In England that is called being "a litigant in person." She claims the court was against her at every turn. "These people are in a club. It’s like they want to stay together and don’t want to see a litigant in person doing well."
Her bone of contention was the judge did not agree with her on important details of the case. The judge would not agree to the amount of time she said the couple lived together or the amount of McCartney’s personal wealth.
The judge included 35,000 pounds ($70,000) for the couple’s daughter, but Mills said that was not enough for school tuition, private security or first-class airfare. She said McCartney likes his daughter to fly about five times a year and each flight costs 17,000 pounds for first class. It was sad, she said, her daughter wouldn’t be able to fly as often.
I don’t know what the hell kind of flights this kid is taking, but that seems a little excessive to me.
Mills spoke out last year in a television interview calling her time with McCartney "18 months of abuse, worse than a murderer or a pedophile." If it was all that terrible being married to McCartney, why the hell did she stick around that long? I can only believe if she left earlier she might not have been to be able to tap the Bank of McCartney for so many dollars.
I think she should just take her money and shut up. It seems to me a reasonable person should be able to live fairly comfortably on $47 million. There are words for the kind of woman Mills is demonstrating herself to be, but I don’t think it’s proper for me to write them here.
200 Years Plus And We Can’t Get It Right Yet
The news coming out of Florida wasn’t good for democracy.
After researching "every potential alternative process" the Democratic party there concluded there was no way to hold a second primary election.
Florida and Michigan held primaries early in January against the wishes of the Democratic National Committee and now are threatened with being un-represented at the nomination convention later this year.
The DNC has been acting like a petulant 10-year-old in this whole matter. Since Florida and Michigan didn’t play by their rules, the DNC is going to take its’ football and go home. Both those states held early primaries in violation of the rules set down by the DNC and now may pay the penalty of having to fight to have any delegates seated at the convention.
Michigan Democrats have proposed holding a second primary election in early June. It would be run by the state, but paid for privately. But that plan isn’t assured of going forward because both the remaining candidates would have to agree to it, the state legislature would have to approve the plan and the state Democratic party would have to come up with $10 million to pay for it. And there has been no word on whether or not the DNC would honor any new results from the state even though it has tentatively approved the plan.
This mess is just the latest episode in screwed up elections in this country. You remember, of course, the disaster that was the Florida Presidential election a while back. There were also reported irregularities in other states in that election. There have been problems with electronic voting machines a number of times. They apparently are not tamper proof and in some cases don’t produce a paper backup that can be used to verify results.
So with this history, the current problems and the approaching general election this Fall, can we logically expect things to get any better?
I doubt it.
We have been participating in this democracy for over 200 years now and we can’t seem to get our elections right. We foul up the process, we elect idiots and crooks, we can’t seem to make the changes necessary to straighten things out and we spend an inordinate amount of money on elections.
It shouldn’t be that hard, people. Just get it right.
Take A Deep Breath
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced what was termed a "modest" tightening of the smog standards last week. Knowing the propensity of the Bush administration when it comes to actually doing something about the environment his butt cheeks must have been really puckered when he made the announcement.
An independent EPA advisory board had recommended lowering the standard for ozone in the atmosphere to between 60 and 70 parts per billion. The White House and a number of industry representatives had argued against making any change in the current standard of 84 parts per billion.
Johnson, in typical bravado fashion that has marked the current administration, took major credit for the decision to lower the standard. "I’ve made the most health-protective eight-hour ozone decision in the nation’s history," he said. John H. Balbus, a physician and the chief health scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund didn’t agree with Johnson. "Clearly at some point you get at a level where additional benefits just aren’t worth it, but I don’t think we’re there at 75,” Balbus said. “The EPA’s own risk estimates show that between 75 and 70, there will be hundreds more deaths and thousands more visits to emergency rooms, and hundreds of thousands of more lost school days."
The standard hasn’t been updated since 1997 and the Clean Air Act requires periodic updates. The act also says a decision cannot take into account the economic impact of revising the standards.
In his statement, Johnson urged Congress to change the act so economic impact can be taken into account. That, of course, would probably mean the standards would never get changed if someone could claim it costs too much. But how can you say clean, breathable air is too expensive?
And there are expected to be a lot of questions on why Johnson chose a figure that is outside of the recommendations of the EPA’s 23-member scientific panel. One Congressman has already called for an explanation saying the ruling seemed to indicate it was made without science being the primary consideration.
Tens of millions of people already live in counties that don’t meet the current standard of 84. There are about 345 counties that will not meet the new standard of 75. It is estimated it will take decades to meet the new standard and cost $8.8 billion per year. These cost figures do not take into account the saving in heath costs which will occur with cleaner air. But, of course, one power industry spokesman said the health benefits were still open to debate since the link between ozone and human health was still under debate.
Debate? Does it seem to anyone besides me we spend far too much time studying things in this country without taking any real action? Look, just go outside on a smoggy day and take a deep breath. Feel that tightening in your chest? Now do you want to debate about health effects?
We’ve had the Clean Air Act for a while now and we still don’t seem to be making adequate progress in protecting ourselves from pollution in the air. Guess we need to generate more hot air in debate instead of clean air we can breathe.
It’s Going To Get Ugly
The Supreme Court has decided to rule on gun ownership.
I can foresee a really ugly battle on this one. Oh, the debate in the Supreme Court may be calm and proper, but the debate it will generate outside the court is probably going to be nasty.
At issue is a Washington D.C. law which restricts the ownership of hand guns. It is the first time the court has tackled a Second Amendment issue as to whether or not the right to bear arms is an individual or collective one since 1939.
Only the law in the District of Columbia and one in Chicago are restrictive on owning hand guns and maintaining them in the home. The court in the past has upheld the right of states cities to craft gun-control laws and limit ownership of semi-automatic weapons and shotguns.
Groups supporting the D.C. gun law and those opposing it have both expressed concern over how the court will rule. It isn’t clear if the court’s eventual ruling will be narrow or broad in scope and apply to nearly all state and local firearms restrictions. Some 64 different briefs representing more that 80 groups were filed in this case. Surprisingly thirty-one states, along with groups like the NRA, are in support of gun owners. And recent polls show 65% of people still believe the Constitution gives an individual the right to gun ownership.
A ruling on the case from the court isn’t expected till late June. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and view the tenor of the debate in the meantime.
Quickies
A recent poll showed 71% of the population think the expense of the Iraq war has had an effect on our economy.
Gee, ya think?
The Bush administration estimated the war would cost between $50 billion and $60 billion when it started. Latest figures put the tab at $600 billion and rising. How could spending that amount of money not effect the economy? And President Bush saying it hasn’t hurt the economy because it has created jobs connected with war support is just another of his disingenuous statements.
The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq was has sparked a frenzy in polltakers. With the topic of the war also being one of the prominent subjects of the presidential campaign aspects of the war are being surveyed.
President Bush hammered away at the necessity to not abandon the ’gains’ we’ve made in Iraq in an anniversary speech, but he seems to be speaking to less and less of the faithful.
A poll this week showed Bush’s approval rating hit an all-time low. Just 31% of the people surveyed approve of his job performance. That’s a 40 point drop since the start of the Iraq war five years ago. But he can take heart in the fact his rating still is ahead of his father’s lowest rating in office; 29%.
It came out in the press this week that Barack Obama’s passport records had been improperly accessed by contract employees working for the State Department. There were three separate instances of Obama’s records being reviewed. Two contractors were fired and a third disciplined for the breach of department regulations.
The records contain such information as name, age, place of residence and social security number. Most of it fairly innocuous, but the SSAN could be used as the key for accessing things like bank and credit card records.
A day later it was confirmed the records of both Hilary Clinton and John McCain had also been accessed. Some of the same people were involved in accessing all the candidates records.
So here we have a government agency with safeguards supposedly in place to prevent unauthorized and improper access to records and they can’t keep employees from breaching those safeguards. Is it any wonder people are skeptical about allowing unfettered government access without a warrant to their records as the Bush administration wants?
The McCain campaign "suspended" an employee this week for sending out a video linking Barack Obama with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The video intercuts incendiary remarks by Wright with snippets of Obama speeches and makes the candidate appear to be sputtering and unpatriotic.
McCain’s spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, condemned the actions of the low-level staffer and characterized them as being a violation of the campaign’s policy. There was no announcement on how long the ’suspension’ was to last for the employee.
It all sounds on the up and up, but the damage had been done no matter what the corrective action. And how easy is it to ’condemn’ something after the fact, but reap the benefits of negative campaigning while maintaining the appearance of a positive campaign.
But to me it does stretch credulity that a major political campaign that plans everything down to the last detail would have such little control over a “low level” campaign worker it would allow him to violate policy
