Fox in the Henhouse, Wolf at the Door

Sure, we're all sick to death reciting the tragic actions, bold and destructive deceptions and mind-boggling mistakes of Bush Corps, and sick to death of hearing them. But we aren't being inundated only by Bush-bashing as politics or as Internet sport. There is real damage being done. One by one, our public institutions are being dismantled, corrupted and destroyed.

Our ability to respond to the challenges of the future, which could become crucial at any moment, are being greviously wounded if not utterly demolished.

Think Katrina. Think FEMA. And if anyone believes that private corporations are up to the challenge, they've earned an all expenses paid vacation in Iraq, where the privatization of war and intelligence gathering has resulted in one disaster after another, even given that it was a fool's errand to begin with.

A lethal combination of ideological dogmatism, cronyism and corruption has led to psychotic priorities and actions. The evidence is hitting hard every single day.The worst is that it affects institutions and offices that even ideological, politically and economically corrupt and crony-prone leaders of the past have been sane enough to leave alone. Like public health. Transportation. The Army.

Iraq is the playground for psychotic priorities based on ideological dogmatism and a truly frightening ignoring of facts that contradict those priorities and assumptions when they conflict with the ideology. The tragic harm has been done to the people of Iraq, to American soldiers (and those of other countries) and families, to American prestige, and by creating new reasons for terrorism and a huge training ground for terrorists---all of this damages our present and our future.

We also saw what the Iraq war has done to our National Guard and its ability to do its historic job that Americans depend on the Guard to do, when its personnel and equipment were in Iraq instead of Louisiana and Arkansas in the aftermath of Katrina. Now there are fears for what it is doing to the armed forces.Bob Herbert wrote this in the NY Times: The Army, for example, has been stretched so taut since the Sept. 11 attacks, especially by the fiasco in Iraq, that it's become like a rubber band that may snap at any moment. ..Last December, the top general in the Army Reserve warned that his organization was "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force" because of the Pentagon's "dysfunctional" policies and demands placed on the Reserve by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. As one of my colleagues at The Times, David Unger of the editorial board, wrote, "The Army's commitments have dangerously and rapidly expanded, while recruitment has plunged."

What happens when psychotic priorities are wedded to this administration's penchant for cronyism? Again we saw that in Katrina, and now we're seeing it in the potentially greater challenge of avian flu.

As Jeremy Scahill reports in The Nation and on Democracy Now!, Bushcorps has "systematically de-funded" public health programs, specifically those that would prepare the nation for an avian flu threat, and provided massive funding for research into technologies to "fight a possible anthrax or smallpox attack, which almost no one in the public health or national security community was saying was an imminent threat, except people close to Dick Cheney." Specifically, Scooter Libby.

According to Dr. Irwin Redlener, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, also interviewed on the same DN program by Amy Goodman, we are completely unprepared for any sort of health emergency. Why not?

"... the influence of politics and ideology and strategies to promote a particular point of view, undermining something that should have been above and beyond any kind of political consideration...The problem there, of course, is that the whole health care system is so fragile and so eroded over this last couple of decades that we don't even have that capacity in place right now to make anybody feel very confident that we can handle the number of people who might be affected by a pandemic flu."

One reason for this now is that these efforts are being run by a Bushcorp crony, Stewart Simonson, who has no credentials other than being an ideological Republican. 'I mean, every single administration in American political history has put cronies and pals and donors into political positions," Dr. Redlener said. " But normally, typically, those people get – you know, they become the ambassador to Liechtenstein or the deputy undersecretary of commerce, where, in effect, it really doesn't matter who's in those positions. What's striking about this administration, since they got into power, is the placement of people into critical positions, where the national security or the public health is at stake."

Here as in all actions by Bushcorps the cronyism and neocon foreign policy is all in the service of the ideology that began reshaping America in the Reagan administration: the destruction of public institutions, to be replaced by "private" corporations, with the purpose of profit, not public service or the public good.

This is clear in Bush's new flu initiatives, and Republican backed legislation called Bioshield 2. It would, said Scahill, "remove all corporate accountability and liability for pharmaceutical companies that manufacturer vaccinations -- vaccines that hurt people or kill people, and secondly it creates a federal agency that would be the only agency exempt from the Freedom of Information Act."

"This whole thing has gotten so bizarre and Byzantine, "added Dr. Redlener," and permeated with this sort of electrifying high intensity politics and economics that the real goal of all of this, which is to literally make us safer in the event of a pandemic or any kind of major disaster, that gets lost in the shuffle. You can't even sort it out now. So even issues like the Bioshield bills, which are terrible bills, basically, for a variety of reasons..."

One of which is that this proposal does nothing to ensure there are mechanisms to produce vaccines and anti-viral medications when they are needed. In other words, the entire public purpose.

Bushcorps relentless push for privatization made news this week as well when the administration fired the president of Amtrak because he wasn't going along with their plans to break up and privatize pieces of the national railroad transportation system.

According to the New York Times, the man they fired, David Gunn, " is known as a rail-turnaround artist. He was brought in to fix the New York City subway system in the 1980's, and provided leadership in the construction of the subway system in Washington. "Just two months ago he was praised by the chairman of the same governing board that fired him: "Mr. Gunn has done, as far as I am concerned, a splendid job." He said Mr. Gunn had "righted a ship that was listing and about to spill over."

But Gunn wouldn't agree to their plans. "They want at least one transportation mode that is totally free market," Mr. Gunn said. But highways, airports and ports are all federally subsidized, he said, decrying "all this angst over an operating deficit of 500 million bucks for the whole country, and the bulk of money going into capital or infrastructure."

What's this relentless privatization about? "...the largest transfer of public wealth to private pockets in the history of this country," says Si Kahn, co-author of The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy, interviewed this week on Democracy Now!

He continued:"We're seeing this in Iraq, where the goal of this administration is to see how much of the money that should be going to all sorts of other issues and other causes can be put into private pockets. Think Halliburton. Think Lockheed Martin. This is what is going on, and it is the undermining of public space, of the public good, of public welfare, is a deliberate strategy to undermine the ground that belongs to all of us: the common wealth, the commons, those things that create public good, that create a humane society."

Added his co-author, Elizabeth Minnich: "The most important thing to emphasize over and over again is precisely that shift from the public, that which belongs to us, services, goods, values that we have held dear, that we have government established to protect and to provide for us, being opened up to for-profit exploitation, in which case two things key happen. One is, goods that are supposed to be for the people, that we set aside, that we established as rights for the people, which is democratic to the core, being taken over by for-profit corporations for private pockets, dispersed away from the people most directly affected. This is anti-democratic in the extreme. "

But it's been consistently sold as simply a more efficient way to provide services the public wants and needs, using the invisible hand of competition, the magic of the marketplace, instead of bureaucratic waste and abuse.

And it's all a lie. "The whole notion that gets repeated time and again is that the privatizing corporations can do a better job," Minnich said. "People ask us this every time: 'But aren't they more efficient?' No, they do not do a better job. "

"And efficiency," Kahn added, "in corporate terms, means efficiency in generating a profit. It means efficiency in returning the maximum amount of money to the corporate directors and executives and to the majority shareholders."

And the result is, as everyone who say The West Wing debate knows, that wasteful government delivers health care through Medicare with administration costs of under 2% of revenue, while private health care insurance corporations typically devote a third or more to administration, not to mention lobbying and advertising.

We have done worse than letting the fox guard the henhouse, these author say, we've invited them inside. Is there any wonder that our health care system is shambles, our privatized prisons and schools are a scandal, our privatized war is beset with expensive failure and lack of accountability for hired killers and torturers? Or that public institutions bled dry by ideologues of privatization can't meet their challenges?

Critics may claim that alarmists have been crying wolf over failures caused by ideologues, corporate greed and privatization, but we made it through the 80s and we're still here.They should be reminded that even in the cautionary tale about the boy who cried wolf prematurely, the story ends when his cries are ignored, but unfortunately for everyone, the wolf finally comes.

You Say You Want An Evolution

On the same day that the Kansas state school board passed a requirement that Intelligent Design must be considered as an alternative to Darwinian evolution in science classes, voters in Dover, Pennsylvania unseated the local school board members who mandated mention of Intelligent Design in its ninth grade science classes. Score one for each side?

Maybe. Except that the fight goes on in Kansas, while in Dover it’s over. There’s a good reason why.

I happen to know a teacher at the Dover high school, the wife of a close friend. They both live in a nearby town, also in the rural middle of Pennsylvania (my home state.) Like rural Kansas, Dover is very conservative. There were no polls to depend on for this school board election, so my friends were worried. They saw lots of campaign signs for the pro-ID candidates, and heard that several local churches were supporting them. The area had just been through a widely publicized trial on the issue that took place almost precisely 80 years after the famous Scopes trial on the teaching of evolution in Dayton, Tennessee.

Coincidentally, as the Dover trial was underway, L.A. Theatre Works was beginning its extensive national tour of “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial,” a staged version of the radio play adapted from the Tennessee court transcripts by Peter Goodchild. I caught the first performance here in Arcata, which starred Edward Asner as William Jennings Bryan and John de Lancie as Clarence Darrow. (It will eventually make its way to York, PA, down the road from Dover.) This play was chosen to tour because the audio version was the Theatre Works production most requested by public school teachers.

Goodchild’s text and historical background makes clear that there was a great deal more at issue in the Tennessee trial than Darwin versus the Biblical creation story. In 1925, Darwinism was seen as justifying an amoral and violent struggle for dominance that demeaned human and Christian values of compassion and community. More specifically, it was seen as a prime influence on Germany (through Nietzsche) and its belief in conquest and might makes right that resulted in the carnage and societal upheaval of the Great War. It was an attack on the human spirit by godless, animalistic and mechanistic science.

These ideas had evolved from those held by Darwin’s opponents in his own time, when self-proclaimed Darwinists themselves proposed several dubious inferences with social and political implications. As George Bernard Shaw said, “Darwin had the luck to please anybody with an ax to grind.” Depending on whose ax it was, Darwinian evolution proved that human progress is inevitable, that human failure is inevitable, that the rich have a duty to be selfish because they naturally deserve to inherit the earth, and all that distinguishes humans from other animals is ethical and unselfish behavior.

We have as rich a stew of projections, derivations and inspirations in our time, though we tend to simplify the storyline to an either/or. It’s an easier story to fit into soundbites and fundraising appeals. It’s also irresponsible. Any subject as complex as Darwinian evolution, as science or as insight into the human condition or the nature of life, that winds up being the center of conflict between two opposing and dogmatic sides, is being distorted and misused, eventually by all sides.

Which brings us back to Dover. Sometimes the complicated is oversimplified, and other times the cacophony quiets to a few simple considerations. According to what I’ve read and what my friends tell me, a lot of people there didn’t like being subjected to all the attention, particularly by school board members who had never been elected, but were appointed to fill vacancies. They especially didn’t like what the controversy was doing within the high school. Most teachers were furious with the rule and civil disobedience was a real possibility.

The successful candidates, who ran as a group, talked about the church/state, science/religion issues, but also about returning attention to the school and above all, the students. And this may be where the ID battle was lost: parental concerns for the education of their children trumped everything else. After all the posturing and theorizing, all the grand principles at issue, it likely came down to parents who want their children to get the best education they can, which means from good teachers in a well-ordered school. Regardless of what they believe about the origin of species, they likely know that the same science everyone in the world studies is something their children will need to know in the twenty-first century.

Nobody knew for sure that this is how it would turn out in Dover. But it did turn out that way, and in most places, it probably will.

Repudiation Day

It's been something like nine years since a Democrat could go to bed happy on election night. We like the feeling.

Tuesday was an "off-year" election day across the U.S., with mostly state and local offices involved. But there was a pretty clear pattern of repudiation for Republicans, and specifically of G.W. Bush.

Beginning at the end, it's about 1:30a. on the West Coast, and about 90% of California's precincts have reported their votes on the Special Election initatives sponsored by Governor Schwarzenegger. They all are on their way to resounding defeat. None even has 48% of the vote, and they are all trending even lower.

As an additional indication of voter mood, it's not just the Terminator's propositions---they are all being defeated: a clear sign of disgust with a special election that cost this strapped state something like $60 million, and may have resulted in some $300 million spent by everyone involved.

On the East Coast, two highly contested races for governor were both won by Democrats:New Jersey Sen. John Corzine and Virginia Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine. The defeat for Republicans in Virginia was particularly bitter, since the state voted Bush in 2004, and Bush campaigned with the Republican candidate for two days recently.

Another election repudiating Bush: In St. Paul, Minnesota, the Democratic Mayor Randy Kelly had endorsed G.W. Bush for president last year. This year his own party ran another candidate against him, former City Council member Chris Coleman.

On Tuesday, Coleman defeated the incumbent Kelly by more than a 2 to 1 margin. It was the first time in more than 30 years that an incumbent mayor lost reelection in St. Paul, and polls indicated the overwhelming reason was his support for Bush.

There was even a school board election of special significance. The Dover, PA school board made international news by voting to require that Intelligent Design be mentioned in connection with Darwinian evolution in high school biology classes, which led to a court case that concluded last week. The judge hasn't ruled yet, but the people of Dover have. Every contested seat on the school board was won by an opponent of the Intelligent Design decision.

There were some bright spots for Republicans---especially the New York mayoral race, where an unbelievable amount of money was spent to return Mayor Bloomberg to office. And election reform measures failed in Ohio, of all the places that need them.

But there was one more repudiation--a CBS poll which asked registered voters which of the 2004 presidential candidates they would vote for today. Although there were slightly more 04 Bush voters than Kerry voters in the survey, Kerry would win by a margin of 5%.

The West Wing: The Fake Debate

The President of Projection is what I used to call Bill Clinton, when I heard people getting mad at him for not pushing more of the liberal agenda, and this was at the beginning of his first term when he was trying, and getting smacked down in Washington for the effort.

In fact, the presidency is a job that an actual person has to perform, and the executive branch is a collection of lots of people who all have the same 24 hour day as the rest of us.But it can't be ignored that the presidency is symbolically much more than that. People will always project their hopes and dreams, their standards and expectations, however unrealistic, on the single figure who all Americans are eligible to vote for.

We need that symbol of our sense of ourselves.So to many people, including me, the real President for the last six years has been Jeb Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen on The West Wing. If for no other reason that he has better writers. He was able, through word and deed, to articulate what many of us would hope our President would be.

Now The West Wing is changing administrations. This season so far has been largely devoted to the campaign between Democrat Rep. Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) and Republican Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda.) To add the breathing room of fantasy to its "ripped from the headlines" topicality, it's Santos who is from Texas (a Latino liberal) and Vinick who is from California (conservative but not far right.)Sunday night was the Sweeps gimmick: a show almost entirely given over to a scripted candidate debate, done live twice (for eastern and western time zones) and shot much like a network presidential debate (although the director had an uncanny habit of knowing exactly which one was going to say something important, and having the camera on him as he said it.)

Monday the reviews started coming in. Tom Shales of the Washington Post and Doug Elfman of the Chicago Sun Times were underwhelmed. The Associated Press reported that the faux debate was seen by an estimated 9.6 million viewers, up from the 8.2 million that followed the show to its early Sunday night slot from its accustomed 9p Wednesday this season.

Several stories criticized the use of the NBC News logo, which was kept on the screen while TV newsman Forrest Sawyer acted the part of a TV newsman running the debate---and could get a supporting actor nomination, while demonstrating just how much the oncamera news role is acting rather than reporting.

As a piece of theatre, script author Lawrence O'Donnell (a Clinton White House vet who does political consulting when he's not producing TV) immediately opened the possibilities for real drama by having Senator Vinick suggest that the stifling rules of non-engagement be loosened and the candidates really debate. When Santos agreed, the participants were free to ramble, ask each other sharp questions, interupt and argue.

O'Donnell mixed in some reminicent moments---Santos explaining his "I voted for it before I voted against it" statement, Vinick pulling a fountain pen from his pocket to emphasize his intent to veto something, just as Bill Clinton during a State of the Union message, when he thought opponent might spoil his supposedly popular health care plan by making it less than universal. They did that, all right.

There were the West Wing moments we've come to know and love when we finally hear someone articulately and cogently express a position the way we've been waiting for, as when Santos defends the title of "liberal." People who watched the whole debate learned things from "both candidates," like the hyper-efficiency of Medicare compared to corporate health care, or the burden of heavy taxation in Africa.

But my overwhelming impression of the debate content was that it's Lawrence O'Donnell, a pragmatic middle of the road liberal, talking to himself. There was some edge to Santos and Vinick, but not much. I'll bet a social evening with O'Donnell would result in the same basic mix of sensible and provocative opinions.

In terms of performance (West Coast version), Alda seemed much more at ease with the live format, and he owned the stage. Smits had his moments, but he didn't seem at home in this form.

To further confuse realities, Zogby, the real polling firm, has been polling on voter/viewer preferences as if this is a real race, although the electorate is restricted to West Wing viewers. They even did a snap poll after the debate. As reported by MSNBC, Santos/Smits won it, 54 percent to 38 percent, but Vinick/Alda gained in overall preference: in the pre-debate poll, 59 percent favored Santos to 29% for Vinick.

It shouldn't be too surprising that West Wing fans favor the Democrat. While the producers are tempted by the dramatic possibilities of switching to a Republican administration, they would risk losing a chunk of the show's core viewers (including me. One Republican President at a time is more than enough.) Clues to a Santos victory are found less in the substance of debate issues than in the fact that supporting characters in the Vinick campaign are less well developed than among the Dems. Plus a Vinick victory would likely mean an instant and near total change in the cast, several of whom are involved enough in the Santos campaign to make the transition. TV dramas seldom replace a cast wholesale except as a last ditch effort to cut costs and win a new audience.

So President Bartlett will be gone, and that alone will be a tough change for this series to weather. Of course, there's the possibility that this is the show's last season, though that's not yet part of the buzz. I shudder to think what the next three years would be like with George Bush as the only President of the U.S.

Although if her show can weather its own creative storms and survive the season, there could be Geena Davis.

Catching Up on the DC Soap (Can This Administration Be Saved?)

So what happens next in the tragic soap opera of the Bush administration? Will Rove go aroving, will Scooter scoot to the prosecutor with the goods on Cheney? What's Fitzgerald up to anyway?

Not knowing, can't say, but if reading the pack journalism pressgeist, and between the lines of unsourced or unnamed sourced stories of recent vintage is the equivalent of reading tea leaves, here's some idea of what people who think they know are thinking.

You'll recall that the conventional wisdom way back when Scooter was indicted 10 days or so ago was that Karl Rove had dodged a bullet and would escape indictment. By the end of this past week, the feeling was building that Rove was likely to be indicted after all. Maybe this week, maybe next week.

After warning that Fitzgerald might not indict anyone, John Dean changed his tune. "Having read the indictment against Libby, I am inclined to believe more will be issued," he wrote. " In fact, I will be stunned if no one else is indicted."

The fickle finger of fate started pointing Rove's way with shadowy reports of vague prosecutorial activity in Rove's neighborhood. Then an inside story was leaked (apparently with press secretary Scott McClellan's fingerprints all over it) about growing opposition among White House staff to Rove sticking around.

Finally, Time wrote the obituary, in a story that looked to me to have Rove's pudgy digit tracks all over it, suggesting that Rove had accomplished what he set out to do, now he was tired and wanted to spend more time with his family. Time also predicted other personnel changes that last week everyone said Bush would never make. But they make sense covering for Rove's departure, like Lyndon Johnson eliminating his entire cabinet from consideration for vice president in 1964 so he wouldn't have to explain why he didn't pick Bobby Kennedy.

Scooter hobbled to court last week, his attorney loudly proclaiming his innocence. Some observers swear he will never go to trial, others think he'll just try to string it out long enough to get a pardon. But a name that kept appearing on every story of dastardly deeds last week was Dick Cheney.

John Dean wrote that "when one studies the indictment, and carefully reads the transcript of the press conference, it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney."

Cheney was also the chief target of some Republican attacks on the fake case for the Iraq war. He was the patsy in chief for spreading the lies of a known terrorist liar linking al Qeda and Iraq, even after the guy recanted, according to a New York Times story.

The Washington Post went after Cheney for creating and supporting US policies and practices using torture, and the lead story in today's Washington Post is: "Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials."

So does this mean Cheney is going to be indicted? Could be. But John Dean doesn't believe it will be because Libby falls for the alleged Fitzgerald strategy of big fish, bigger fish.

Dean wrote:Will Libby flip? Unlikely. Neither Cheney nor Libby (I believe) will be so foolish as to crack a deal. And Libby probably (and no doubt correctly) assumes that Cheney - a former boss with whom he has a close relationship - will (at the right time and place) help Libby out, either with a pardon or financially, if necessary.

Libby's goal, meanwhile, will be to stall going to trial as long as possible, so as not to hurt Republicans' showing in the 2006 elections. So if Libby can take the heat for a time, he and his former boss (and friend) may get through this. But should Republicans lose control of the Senate (where they are blocking all oversight of this administration), I predict Cheney will resign "for health reasons."

Perhaps the more interesting question at this point is why is Cheney suddenly so popular? Is he really the Satanic Machiavelli, or is there a campaign to give him up as the fall guy? (It wouldn't be a set up, exactly, since there's no doubt he's done all the awful things attributed to him, and more.)

By this past week only a few lonely voices were asking, where was Bush in all this? Did Rove really deceive him, or did he know all about the Plame outing? And what is his responsibility for lying us into war, and approving and defending torture?

Three polls came out last week, all with similiar and similiarly devastating numbers for Bushcorps. But two of them asked a couple of interesting questions, especially when you put them together. When asked if Congress should consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, about 53% said yes. And in another poll, when asked if they thought Bush did lie us into the Iraq war, about 53% said yes. You do the math.