Death of a childhood hero

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and I are taking a moment today to reflect on our growing-up years when we ate, drank and dreamed about “next year” and the Messrs. Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Duke Snider.

Those of us who remember the years of broken hearts and cursing the Damn Yankees are taking time today to mourn the passing of one of our childhood heroes:

“Duke Snider, Brookyn Dodgers Great, Dies at 84,” The New York Times, 27 February 2011 (LINK).

In Snider's words, "It was a great time for baseball." Heaven's center field is covered.

***

A second post follows.

Sex, lies and Ailes on tape

A former high school classmate, now living in NYC, sent me a copy of the New York Daily News front page with its blaring headline, “Deadly Voodoo Sex Romp.” The friend opined, “Voodoo candles sex ceremony sparks deadly Brooklyn fire. I can’t make this stuff up.”

The next article in my inbox queue, sent by another friend, falls in the “I can’t make this stuff up” category as well.

Turning back time to when Dubya named Rudy Giuliani’s buddy, former NYC police commissioner Bernard "Bernie" Kerik, to head homeland security - and the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan:

There was the matter of Kerik’s extramarital affair and the love tryst in an apartment donated for use by Ground Zero recovery and rescue workers. A lot of dirty little secrets came to light.

And now, a new one.

It is no secret that Fox News has no qualms about lying. “In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.” (LINK) Yep, Fox News' defense was lying is protected by the First Amendment because there is no specific law against it!

But, when the cable “news” network’s head honcho advises an employee to lie to federal investigators, he’s on tape, and his actions could constitute a federal crime, things are getting serious for Rupert Murdoch’s flagship money-maker. Well, actually, they would be serious for any other media outlet, but seemingly Fox News has a business-as-usual immunity.

Read on.

“Fox News Chief, Roger Ailes, Urged Employee to Lie, Records Show,” Russ Buettner, The New York Times, 24 February 2011 (LINK).

Since David Corn (biography) is a favorite journalist and author, I was particularly interested in his take – emailed by my friend – on all the dirty little secrets which have emerged from this story that won’t go away. Read his column, “Roger Ailes' Sex-and-Lies Tale: There Is Something Different About Fox.” (LINK)

Oh, what tangled webs ...

The lady is $10.75 million richer. A president, a presidential candidate and former NYC mayor, a former NYC police commissioner and, now, a powerful media executive ended up with pie on their faces.

Highwaymen, burglars and book abridgers

Viewing the Mona Lisa from La Gioconda’s nose up or stopping the music before Ravel’s “Bolero” reaches its fullest crescendo compares, in my opinion, to reading an abridged book.

Like Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail,” I get “lost in the language” of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” Imagine reading an abridged version of that book. There’s a reason such books becomes immortal. So, why take a chainsaw to them?

Katharine Hepburn’s memoir, “Me,” had long graced my bookshelves when a friend gave me an audio copy of the book. Since it is read by the actress herself I gave it a listen, only to find it ended before Miss Hepburn's heartfelt recollections of Spencer Tracy.

Abridged audiobooks are a natural progression from Illustrated Classics comic books, CliffsNotes and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

I chafe at the omission of skillfully drawn word pictures – none so breathtaking as Mr. Dickens' in my favorite, “Barnaby Rudge.” Take away the ghostly appartition in the burnt castle, the massacre at the roadside tavern or the fire at Newgate Prison, and you might as well read a gum wrapper or a cereal box.

Imagine some book editor whacking away at the psychological impact of a single footprint on a stranded Robinson Crusoe.

I found a comrade in Daniel Defoe’s Preface to “The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," part two of the trilogy:

“The just application of every incident; the religious and useful inferences drawn from every part are so many testimonies to the good design of making it public and must legitimate all the part that may be called invention or parable in the story.

“The second part, if the editor’s opinion may pass, is, contrary to the usage of second parts, every way as entertaining as the first, contains as strange and surprising incidents and as great a variety of them. Nor is the application less serious or suitable, and doubtless will to the sober or ingenious reader be every way as profitable and diverting, and this makes the abridging of this work as scandalous as it is knavish and ridiculous.

“Seeing, while to shorten the book, that they may seem to reduce the value, they strip it of all those reflections as well religious as moral which are not only the greatest beauties of the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader.

“By this, they leave the work naked of its brightest ornaments. And, if they would, at the time, pretend the author has supplied the story out of his invention, they take from it the improvement which alone recommends that invention to wise and good men.

“The injury these men do the proprietor of this work is a practice all honest men abhor, and he believes he may challenge them to show the difference between that and robbing on the highway or breaking open a house. If they can’t show any difference in the crime, they will find it hard to show why there should be any difference in the punishment, and he will answer for it, that nothing shall be wanting on his part to do them justice.”

***

Trust me:

In addition to pamphlets and poetry, Daniel Defoe wrote some 500 books on every conceivable subject. (My favorite is "Moll Flanders.") A tribute to his writing genius is that no editor has been tempted to clean up his grammar and spelling errors!

STAMP: Support this anti-violence mail project

As part of an ongoing effort to pressure Fox News into pulling the plug on the Glenn Beck Show, here is a standard petition letter addressed to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. Please feel free to copy the text of this letter and paste it into your letterhead - adjusting type size and font style as needed:

(Date)

Roger Ailes
Chairman and CEO, Fox News Channel
News Corporation
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036

Dear Mr. Ailes:

After the shooting rampage in Tucson that left six people dead and 13 injured, you offered this appeal for civility: “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast.”

Weeks after Tucson, nothing has changed. Glenn Beck has turned up the volume on partisan hate speech. The poisoned atmosphere unleashed by Glenn Beck means any citizen - Democrat, Independent or Republican - can be defamed in public and targeted for persecution. Beck’s messages provoke unstable persons to act on impulse, and news headlines have shown that violent rhetoric leads to violent acts:

Prison Term for Man Who Threatened Speaker Pelosi

Mother of Accused Man Blames Fox News

Renowned Professor Terrorized After Glenn Beck Broadcasts

League of Women Voters Targeted by Glenn Beck Fans

Two California Highway Patrolmen Shot by Glenn Beck Fan

Three Pittsburgh Policemen Killed by Glenn Beck Follower

There is no plausible deniability that can wipe the blood off Beck’s hands or absolve the Fox News Channel of responsibility for reckless incitement. Shooting sprees, murder, malicious defamations and infamous provocations: these have no place in a free society. When toxic television threatens public safety, all citizens of all persuasions have grounds for alarm.

Glenn Beck has crossed boundaries that should never be crossed. It is time to pull the plug on the Glenn Beck Show before more people are terrorized, injured and killed.

Sincerely,

(Name and Signature)

Just copy and paste the letter into your document format and print. Within a few days, please look for another petition letter addressed to Fox News advertisers (i.e. the boycott letter). A startup list of advertisers will be included with that post.

Five minutes and a STAMP can make a difference. Thanks!

Been grabbed on the breast lately?

Like Egypt, the United States has a lot of problems to be solved, but women here can walk down the street without the EXPECTATION of being grabbed on the breast.

DemWit, for the sole purpose of sharing information under the “Fair Use Notice” in my sidebar, calls readers’ attention to the following commentary:

Egypt's harassed women need their own revolution

By Mary Rogers, CNN
February 17, 2011 4:58 a.m. EST

CNN Editor's note: CNN producer and camerawoman Mary Rogers has lived and worked in Egypt since 1994. She joined CNN in 1981 and has covered conflicts in Somalia, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Iraq, Chechnya, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Recently she filmed the uprising in Tunisia.

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Several months before the revolution, I wrote a piece for CNN.com on the sexual harassment of women in Cairo.

News of the chilling attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan, as well as other sexual assaults against women during Egypt's uprising, show that attacks against women have not gone away.

I speak from experience. While most of my days covering Tahrir Square during the last few weeks were free from harassment, there was one day when I was groped. Another colleague almost had her pants ripped off by a gang of thugs.

According to a 2008 survey of 1,010 women conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed.

It happens on the streets, on crowded buses, in the workplace, in schools, and even in a doctor's office.

I was walking home from dinner recently when a carload of young men raced by me and screamed out "Sharmouta" (whore in Arabic.)

Before I could respond, they were gone, but I noticed policemen nearby bursting with laughter. I am old enough to be those boys' mother, I thought.

This incident was minor compared to what happened in 1994, shortly after I moved here. It was winter, and I was walking home from the office, dressed in a big, baggy sweater, and jacket. A man walked up to me, reached out, and casually grabbed my breast.

In a flash, I understood what the expression to "see red" meant. I grabbed him by the collar and punched him hard in the face. I held on to him, and let out a stream of expletives. His face grew pale, and he started to shake. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he whispered.

But the satisfaction of striking back quickly dissipated. By the time I walked away, I was feeling dirty and humiliated. After a couple of years enduring this kind of harassment, I pretty much stopped walking to and from work.

Of course, harassment comes in many forms. It can be nasty words, groping, being followed or stalked, lewd, lascivious looks, and indecent exposure.

At times it can be dangerous. This is what a friend told me happened to her: "I remember I was walking on the street, when a car came hurtling towards me. Aiming for me! At the last minute he swerved, then stopped, and finally laughed at me. I learned later that it was a form of flirting."

Why is sexual harassment in Egypt so rampant? There could be any number of reasons, but many point to disregard for human rights.

Before the uprising, Nehad Abu el Komsan, the Director for the Center for Women's Rights, told me that Egypt was more interested in political than public security. She said that often meant that officials focused more on preventing political unrest than addressing social ills.

Some also blame the spread of more conservative interpretations of Islam from the Gulf over the past 30 years. They say such interpretations demand more restrictive roles for women and condemn women who step outside of those prescribed roles.

***

“Perhaps it will be people power, the same people power that brought down a regime, that will successfully combat sexual harassment.”
- Mary Rogers

***

"Four million Egyptians went to the Gulf," el Komsan said. "They returned with oil money, and oil culture, which is not very open, related to the status of women. All of this changed the original culture of the Egyptian," she adds, "which included high respect for women."

Sara, a young Egyptian activist, told me that the concept of respect for some reason doesn't exist any more. "I think Egypt has lived a very long time in denial. Something happened in Egyptian society in the last 30 or 40 years. It feels like the whole social diagram has collapsed.

What is being done to raise awareness and combat such behavior? A law regarding sexual harassment will have to wait. The country has greater concerns now -- forming a new government; writing a new constitution; getting Egypt's economy going again and dealing massive unemployment, among other things.

The military is in charge now, and who knows when Egypt will get a new president, or parliament.

In the past, women who have been sexually harassed here have been too afraid or ashamed to speak up. That is changing slowly. In 2008, in a landmark court case, a man was sentenced to three years of hard labor for grabbing the breast of Noha Rushdi Saleh, a brave woman determined to seek justice.

The trial was covered extensively in the Egyptian press, and brought the problem of sexual harassment out in the open.

A group of young idealists are taking a personal initiative in trying to combat sexual harassment.

They are handing out pamphlets now saying: "Don't take bribes, don't drive the wrong way on a one way street, and don't sexually harass women." Perhaps it will be people power, the same people power that brought down a regime, that will successfully combat sexual harassment.

But the only real protection women can have is when the attitudes of men change.

BJ NOTE: CNN.com ran this at the end of the commentary:

"The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mary Rogers."

And maybe a whole lot of women.

UPDATE: I've been snowed under with inbox activity and wrote a friend last night that I had not checked news headlines in three days. That's why I missed the story sent by that same friend and read immediately AFTER publishing this post. I would be remiss not to include it here:

"Lawsuit Says Military Rife with Sexual Abuse," The New York Times, 15 February 2011

While I stand by my premise that most women can walk down the street here in the U.S. without expecting to be sexually molested, this lawsuit filed against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld claims the U.S. military created a climate of permissiveness by ignoring military rapes.

As my mother used to say, maybe we had better "clean up around our own doorstep."

Beck: Before hate turns to horror

To the chagrin of liberals and conservatives alike, the “yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” rhetoric of Fox News’ Glenn Beck, fully documented, is fanning flames of hate across our country. The Supreme Court of the United States takes exception to so-called “free speech” which has the potential to do great harm.

Glenn Beck's hate speech, therefore, should be no exception to SCOTUS’ exception.

DemWit today is joining a team of bloggers, organized by friend “Octopus” at The Swash Zone and invites readers and bloggers to participate in this and future efforts to tell Beck’s advertisers “enough is enough!” Octopus’ first entry, dated 2/14/11:

Help Pull the Plug on Glenn Beck

After the shooting rampage in Tucson that left six people dead and thirteen injured, including Congresswoman Giffords, Fox News President Roger Ailes appealed for civility:  “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast.”

Weeks after Tucson, nothing has changed.  If anything, Fox News has turned up the volume on partisan hate speech.  Fevered hysteria and conspiratorial fear mongering on national television are not harmless.

How quickly we forget the lessons of history. The bogeymen of 1930s anti-Semitism that morphed into the bogeymen of 1950s McCarthyism has morphed again into the mainstreaming of Glenn Beck Militia Theater. The message is clear: Glenn Beck wants to extort your silence, and anyone who refuses to capitulate will be targeted and stalked:

Glenn Beck, Self-Appointed "Progressive Hunter"

The poisoned atmosphere unleashed by Glenn Beck and Fox News means any citizen - Democrat, Centrist, or Republican - can be slandered in public and targeted for persecution.  Beck pitches his messages at unhinged misfits who are most likely to act on impulse, and events have shown that violent rhetoric leads to violent acts. There is no plausible deniability that can remove this blood from Beck’s hands:

Man Shoots Two California Highway Patrol Officers:

Accused Gunman Acknowledges Influence of Glenn Beck

Three Pittsburgh Police Officers Ambushed and Killed:

Gunman Posted Glenn Beck Video on White Supremacist Website

Federal Prison for Man Who Threatened Senator Murray:

Glenn Beck Cast Spell on Accused Man, Says Family

Federal Prison for Man Who Threatened House Speaker Pelosi

Mother of Accused Man Blames Fox News

Fans Issue Death Threats after Glenn Beck Targets Legendary Scholar

Death Threats Against League of Women Voters Linked to Glenn Beck

Murders, shooting sprees, domestic terrorism, private citizens hiding in fear, infamous intimidations and provocations broadcast on national television - all linked to Glenn Beck - enough is enough!  When toxic television threatens public safety, it concerns everyone.  Even prominent Republicans are becoming alarmed:

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum:

“[Glenn Beck] such people do terrible damage”

Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner: 

“the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality

National correspondent for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg:

“a classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling”

It is time to pull the plug on Glenn Beck and serve notice to Fox News that partisan hate speech has no place in a free society. The strongest message you can send is to vote your pocketbook. Write letters to Fox News advertisers; tell them you will no longer patronize their products and services; and keep boycotting sponsors of Fox News until these outrageous partisan witch-hunts have stopped. Removing Glenn Beck from the airwaves will save lives.

Resources:
Visit the Drop Fox Website Here
Visit the Stop Beck Website Here

Endorsements:
Captain Fogg, Sheria, BJ, Octopus, Squatlo, Sue, Nance, TnLib, TomCat, Truth 101, Maleeper, Green Eagle, Kay.

Agitated!

Access to the World Wide Web can:

1) Scare you senseless.
2) Make you sick.
3) Empower you.
4) All of the above.

I’m in the market for a new clothes washer and am getting an education. Caveat Emptor 101.

One can assume if a person buys a product which turns out to be a lemon, one way to vent is to hop on the WWW and write a product review.

But, when the best review you run across is from a woman who is overjoyed her clothes washer lasted six years before it conked out, you begin to get a picture of product quality today, and it’s not pretty.

According to the GE-certified repairman who paid a visit Wednesday, my GE washer was made in 1986. I bought it, second-hand, 11 years ago for $130. I’m told it looks brand new. After 25 years, it sprung a leak and cannot be repaired.

25 years!

I got my money’s worth. Which is more than today’s consumer can say if review after review is any sign.

Examining a number of washers in various price ranges - short of a king's ransom - one can expect, from reviews, a product life span of about two years.

Remember the one word of advice Benjamin gets in “The Graduate:” “Plastics.” Well, welcome to the world of washer tubs and gears made of plastic – instead of porcelain-coated metal. Imagine a load of clothes and 30 gallons of water being jostled by plastic parts!

I am a firm believer in the old axiom, "You get what you pay for." Essentially, you need to calculate the average per month of what is spent before a plastic gear tooth breaks, a motor burns out or your floor is flooded. Factor in the cost of a repair visit before learning your “new” washer can’t be fixed. Because, basically, your purchase is nothing more thn "Rent a Wreck."

Answer to the WWW question: all of the above.

I don’t drive, so laundromats are not an option.

Anyone got an old washer, halfway through its prime, for sale?

Deification of the Dead 2

“Facts are stupid things.” – President Ronald Reagan at the 1988 Republican National Convention, misquoting John Adams’ “Facts are stubborn things.”

During the full week of Ronald Reagan’s funeral on TV and the celebration of his Centennial, my objections have centered not on remembering a former U.S. president, but on the revisionist aspects of The Media Myth and the exploitation of the poor man for political purposes.

We will never forget “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” although communism had already begun to self-destruct, and Reagan did not singlehandedly bring it down as some now believe.

We will never forget a beautiful and frail Nancy Reagan rubbing her hand across the flag-draped coffin, then laying her cheek on it in a final gesture of love.

We must not, then, forget history or alter its facts.

I’ve pulled a couple of interesting items from my old computer files. The first is a brief 1998 article by David Corn of The Nation. When I dared, about three days into TV coverage of Reagan's death, to feature the article, I received the response shared here from a relatively young relative.

THE ARTICLE:

66 (Unflattering) Things About Ronald Reagan

Source Editor's Note: This list of "66 Things to Think about When Flying in to Reagan National Airport" appeared in The Nation on March 2, 1998 after the renaming of Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan. As David Corn says, "The piece remains relevant today – particularly as a cheat sheet for those who dare to point out the Reagan presidency was not all that glorious and was more nightmare in America than morning in America."

By David Corn
The Nation

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer.

Drug tests, lie detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the Savings and Loan scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig "in control," silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, "mistakes were made."

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment, Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"), Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights"), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.

"The bombing begins in five minutes," $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader's Digest, C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than 80 civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/contra. "Facts are stupid things," three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.

David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, is author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.

SOURCE: Information Clearinghouse

THE RESPONSE:

BJ - ENOUGH.

The man is dead. Whether you liked him or not is irrelevant. Whether ANYONE liked him is irrelevant.

Whatever harm or good he did for the country is sixteen years gone, and is also irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things. Not mentioning the "bad" things for one week out of the YEARS and YEARS of history is NOT going to do irreparable harm to the kids who don't pay attention in history class in the first place. Two hundred years from now, which will they mention in the history books? The Iran-contra affair or one state funeral of who knows how many?

Let the dead rest. Give the man his week of respect by keeping your mouth shut, if nothing else. And don't whine at me about censorship. It's called manners, which I thought we HAD in the South.

Don't discuss sex, religion or politics at the dinner table, and if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

***

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Sadly, this seems to be the media’s new approach to U.S. history. I refuse to condone it.

The Fox version

Words of inspiration spoken by the president of the United States at the recent National Prayer Breakfast received this comment on Fox News:

"President Obama misquoted a familiar Bible verse during a faith-based address at the National Prayer Breakfast."
- Fox Nation, 2/03/11

VERSUS

"Obama was quoting from the New International Version [of the Bible], while Fox Nation was pointing to the King James Version to 'debunk' him."
- Media Matters, 2/04/11

SOURCE: The Progress Report

***

Propaganda works: According to Gallup tracking, an average of only 13 percent of registered Republicans approved of the job President Obama did during his second year in office.

***

Vérité!

'Deification of the Dead'

I have an acquaintance who is a very talented organist and is very much in demand to play at weddings and funerals. What he doesn’t like about being engaged to play at funerals, he once told me, is the “deification of the dead.” He said the deceased could have been the worst sort of scoundrel, but is always elevated to sainthood in the service.

In thinking about the “deification of the dead,” I would like to reflect on my early days in the workplace when employees were treated as an integral and worthy part of what made a business successful. It was a time when esprit de corps existed and workers were very proud of the company’s delivered products or services.

All that changed, and one can pinpoint when the change occurred. The balance shifted, employees became replaceable “cogs in the wheel” of production and, being so marginalized, began to lose heart – no longer taking pride in being a part of the whole and working only in weary anticipation of payday.

The change came hard and fast. When I was in management in 1983, I was initiated into “Management by Objectives,” one feature of which was “Attrition by Absorption.” One goal of management, I was told, was to make an employee so miserable he or she would resign, resulting in reduction of personnel. Management was taught ways to achieve this. Then, another employee could “absorb” the departing worker’s duties, with no increase in pay. My conscience rejected such dirty tricks.

I lived it. I know when the change began. But, let me share a well-written disclosure of the moment. And, when you have read it, I want you to think a lot in the days ahead about my friend’s “deification of the dead.”

Ronald Reagan, Enemy of the American Worker

by Dick Meister, t r u t h o u t
Op-Ed (LINK), 2 February 2011

The 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth is coming up in February, and before the inevitable gushing over what a wonderful leader he was begins, let me get in a few words about what sort of a leader he really was.

Ronald Reagan was, above all, one of the most viciously anti-labor presidents in American history, one of the worst enemies the country's working people ever faced.

Republican presidents never have had much regard for unions, but until Reagan, no Republican president had dared challenge the firm legal standing labor gained through Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the mid-1930's.

Reagan's Republican predecessors treated union leaders much as they treated Democratic members of Congress - at times, as adversaries to be fought with, and, at others, as people to be bargained with. Reagan, however, engaged in precious little bargaining. He waged almost continuous war against organized labor and the country's workers from the time he assumed office in 1980 until leaving the presidency in 1988.

Reagan had little apparent reason to fear labor politically. Opinion polls at the time showed that unions were opposed by nearly half of all Americans, and that nearly half of those who belonged to unions had voted for Reagan in both of his presidential campaigns.

Reagan, at any rate, was a true ideologue of the anti-labor political right. Yes, he had been president of the Screen Actors Guild, but he was notoriously pro-management in that position. He led the way to a strike-ending agreement in 1959 that greatly weakened the union. Under heavy membership pressure, he finally resigned as union president before his term ended.

Reagan's war on labor as US president began in the summer of 1981, when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union.

As Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson noted in 2004, the firing was "an unambiguous signal that employers need feel little or no obligation to their workers, and employers got that message loud and clear - illegally firing workers who sought to unionize, replacing permanent employees who could collect benefits with temps who could not, shipping factories and jobs abroad."

Reagan gave dedicated union foes direct control of the federal agencies that were originally designed to protect and further the rights of workers and their unions. Most important was Reagan's appointment of three management representatives to the five- member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The appointees included NLRB Chairman Donald Dotson, who declared that "unionized labor relations have been the major contributors to the decline and failure of once healthy industries" and have caused "destruction of individual freedom."

A House committee found that under Dotson, the NLRB abandoned its legal obligation to promote collective bargaining, in what amounted to "a betrayal of American workers."

The NLRB settled only about half as many complaints about employers' illegal actions as it had during the previous administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter. Most of the complaints were against employers who responded to organizing drives by illegally firing union supporters. The employers were well aware that, under Reagan, the NLRB was taking an average of three years to rule on complaints - and that, in any case, the board did no more than order that discharged unionists be reinstated with back pay, which was much cheaper than operating under a union contract.

The board stalled equally as long before acting on petitions from workers seeking union representation elections and generally stalled for another year or two after such votes before certifying winning unions as the workers' bargaining agents. Also, under Reagan employers were allowed to permanently replace workers who dared exercise their legal right to strike.

Reagan's Labor Department was as one-sided as the NLRB. It became an anti-Labor Department, virtually ignoring, for example, the union-busting consultants that many employers hired to help them fend off unionization.

Very few consultants and very few of those who hired them were asked for the financial disclosure statements that the law demands, yet all unions were required to file the statements that the law required of them, and that imbalance could be used to advantage by their opponents. Although the Labor Department cut its overall budget by more than 10 percent, it increased the budget for such union-busting activities by almost 40 percent.

Among Reagan's many other outrages, there were his attempts to lower the minimum wage for younger workers, weaken the child labor and anti-sweatshop laws, tax fringe benefits and cut back programs to train unemployed workers for available jobs. He also tried to replace thousands of federal employees with temporary workers who would not have civil service or union protection.

Reagan all but dismantled programs that required affirmative action and other steps against discrimination by federal contractors, and he seriously undermined job safety programs. He closed one-third of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) field offices, trimmed the agency's staff by more than one-fourth and decreased the number of penalties assessed against offending employers by almost three-fourths.

Rather than enforce the laws, Reagan appointees sought "voluntary compliance" from employers on safety matters - and generally didn't get or expect it. Reagan had so tilted the safety laws in favor of employers that safety experts declared them virtually useless.

The same could have been said of all other labor laws in the Reagan era. A statement issued at the time by the leaders of several major unions concluded that it would have been more advantageous for those who worked for a living to ignore the laws and return to "the law of the jungle" that prevailed a half-century before.

The suggestion came a little late. Ronald Reagan had already plunged the nation's labor-management relations deep into the jungle.

Yet Reagan will nevertheless be honored in centennial celebrations throughout the United States, in Europe and elsewhere in coming days. He's become a much beloved mythical figure, and nothing will change that - certainly not the unheard or unacknowledged facts of his presidency and its disastrous effects on America's working people, many of whom, ironically, will be among the celebrants.

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based writer who has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. You can contact him through his website, http://www.dickmeister.com/.

***

POSTSCRIPT (EMPHASIS MINE)

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking in 1983 on the legacy of Ronald Reagan, noted (LINK):

“Perhaps the most important, and then highly controversial, domestic initiative was the firing of the air traffic controllers in August 1981. The president invoked the law that striking government employees forfeit their jobs, an action that unsettled those who cynically believed no president would ever uphold that law. President Reagan prevailed, as you know, but far more importantly his action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers.”

Postscript

This blog has been archived for research purposes. See “posts library” in the left sidebar to access archived post titles. All posts are original to the author, are documented and are copyrighted 2011. Thank you for visiting.

Blog Author

A charge against Hitler

Those of us who have never experienced combat are hard-pressed to understand the kill-or-be-killed necessity of eliminating the enemy. We do, however, understand democracy, for most of us have never lived under any other form of government.

The following is an excerpt transcribed from Stephen E. Ambrose’s “The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II.”

It is the story of one man’s stand against tyranny – one man’s charge against Adolph Hitler.

The setting: D-Day, Normandy, Utah Beach. Moving inland.

Excerpt:

Inland, by about a kilometer from Saint Martin de Vierville, there was a group of buildings holding a German coastal artillery barracks. Lt. Col. Patrick Cassidy, commanding the 1st Battalion of the 502nd, short of men and with a variety of missions to perform, sent Sgt. Harrison Summers with 15 men to capture the barracks. That was not much of a force to take on a full-strength German company, but it was all Cassidy could spare.

Summers set out immediately, not even taking the time to learn the names of the men he was leading, who were showing considerable reluctance to follow this unknown sergeant.

Summers told Sgt. Leland Baker, “Go up to the top of this rise and watch in that direction and don’t let anything come over that hill and get on my flank. Stay there until you’re told to come back.” Baker did as ordered.

Summers then went to work, charging the first farmhouse, hoping his hodgepodge squad would follow. It did not. But, he kicked in the door and sprayed the interior with his Tommy gun. Four Germans fell dead. Others ran out a back door to the next house.

Summers, still alone, charged that house. Again the Germans fled. His example inspired Pvt. William Burt to come out of the roadside ditch where the group was hiding, set up his light machine gun and begin laying down a suppressing fire against the third barracks building.

Once more, Summers dashed forward. The Germans were ready this time. They shot at him from loopholes, but what with Burt’s machine gun fire and Summers’ zigzag running, failed to hit him. Summers kicked in the door and sprayed the interior, killing six Germans and driving the remainder out of the building.

Summers dropped to the ground, exhausted and in emotional shock. He rested for half an hour. His squad came up and replenished his ammunition supply.

As he rose to go on, an unknown captain from the 101st, misdropped by miles, appeared at his side. “I’ll go with you,” said the captain. At that instant, he was shot through the heart, and Summers was again alone.

He charged another building, killing six more Germans. The rest threw up their hands. Summers turned the prisoners over to his men.

One of them, Pvt. John Camien, called out, “Why are you doing it?” “I can’t tell you,” Summers replied.

“What about the others?”

“They don’t seem to want to fight,” said Summers, “and I can’t make them, so I’ve gotta finish it.”

“OK,” said Camien, “I’m with you.”

Together, Summers and Camien moved from building to building, taking turns charging and giving covering fire. Burt, meanwhile, moved up with his machine gun.

There were two buildings to go. Summers charged the first and kicked the door open to see 15 German artillerymen, seated at mess tables eating breakfast. Summers never paused; he shot them down at the tables.

The last building was the largest. Beside it were a shed and a haystack. Burt used tracer bullets to set them ablaze. The shed, used for ammunition storage, quickly exploded, driving 30 Germans out into the open, where Summers, Camien and Burt shot some of them down as the others fled.

Another member of Summers’ makeshift squad came up. He had a bazooka, which he used to set the roof of the last building on fire. The Germans on the ground floor were firing a steady fusillade from loopholes in the walls, but as the flames began to build, they dashed out. Many died in the open. Thirty-one others emerged with raised hands to offer their surrender.

Summers collapsed, exhausted by his nearly five hours of combat. He lit a cigarette. One of the men asked him, “How do you feel?” “Not very good. It was all kinda crazy. I’m sure I’ll never do anything like that again.”

Summers got a battlefield commission and a Distinguished Service Cross. He was put in for the Medal of Honor, but the paperwork got lost.

D-Day was a smashing success for the 4th Division and its attached units. Nearly all objectives were attained, even though the plan had to be abandoned before the first assault waves hit the beach. Casualties were astonishingly light, thanks in large part to the paratroopers coming in on the German defenders from the rear. In 15 hours the Americans put ashore at Utah more than 20,000 troops and 1,700 motorized vehicles. By nightfall, the division was ready to move out at first light for its next mission, taking Montebourg, then moving on to Cherbourg.

***

BJ Postscript:

Harrison Summers was a 26-year-old West Virginian coal miner turned paratrooper that day on Utah Beach. He died of lung cancer in 1983. Friends’ efforts to have the Medal of Honor awarded posthumously failed. This was just the beginning of Summers’ WWII service. Read more about his outstanding record HERE.

Ambrose’s book is filled with heroes. One could argue that every foot that landed on Omaha, Utah, Sword and Gold beaches that fateful day belonged to a hero. But, the historian makes no attempt to romanticize war. “The Victors” captures the chaos and catastrophe of war. The overall theme of the book, which I highly recommend, is the perseverance of democracy over a totalitarian regime.

This was just one day in the history of that continuing struggle - and one man's bravery in the face of it.

The dark soul of Rwanda

“Prejudice is demonic because it turns people into objects of derision. It lessens them. It harms them. It dehumanizes them. And when small comments of derision about another race or group become more vociferous, these become policy, these become Nazi Germany, Bosnia . . . Rwanda.”
-Father Tim Farrell

***

My dear friend Father Tim Farrell and five women of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Farmington, New Mexico, spent the month of October on a mission trip to Africa. DemWit published Father Tim’s account of the mission work going on in Uganda, “Bringing hope to Uganda’s orphans,” on November 24.

Here are Father Tim’s reflections on their time in Rwanda:

Rwanda, on the surface, is a pleasant country of hills, mountains, forests, lakes, laughing children, markets of busy people, drummers, dancers, artisans and craftsmen.

Eight million people live in this tiny country. Rwanda has been home to this people for many centuries. They are one people who speak one language with one history.

But something is very broken in Rwanda. On one Spring day in 1994, the murder of one million people began. One million souls perished in three months. One million bodies littered the streets of Kigali, the countryside, the rivers.

I sat at a restaurant in Kigali in October 2010 with the five women who traveled with me from Sacred Heart (Becky Schritter, Rosie Gomez, Margaret Zamora, Katie Pettigrew and Jayme Childers) and we ate the delicious food in front of us. But something bothered me as I saw the hustle and bustle of this city. I looked around at the people walking by in the streets and I couldn't help but think, "Were you here when it happened? Are you a murderer? Were you a part of the genocide of the Tutsis?"

Our last stop in Rwanda before we went back to Uganda, our principal visit on this journey, was the Kigali Memorial Center, the genocide memorial to the one million souls who perished around Easter 1994. It was the most wrenching experience I believe I have ever had. As I walked through the museum I saw the film of the children and adults who had survived the torture of the Hutus. They had deep gashes in their heads and on other parts of their bodies. They were like the walking dead, having survived the carnage, but knowing that their families and friends lay dead and forgotten. I saw the skulls and bones of the thousands and thousands of children murdered. I saw the clothes of the massacred, hanging like ghosts of the martyrs. I read the testimonials of the survivors:

"We fought against them using stones. Some people died during battle . . . We were using stones, they had guns. They left because they couldn't handle us . . . [Then], there came a truck full of militia and soldiers." -- Emmauel Mugenzire

"I can't find the exact words to express how I feel about (Damas) Gisimba's actions. He protected more than 400 human lives. A love that sacrifices itself in that way is beyond my comprehension . . . I don't know if you'd call it an act of heroism or an act of love." -- Donatha Mukandayisenga speaking of Damas Gisimba who saved 400 orphans, refugees and employees from April to June of 1994 by taking them into his orphanage at Nyamirambo. He also rescued people who had been thrown into mass graves.

It literally took my breath away to read of the evil human beings could inflict on one another. Ten thousand people a day were murdered. Four hundred each hour. Seven each minute. Throughout the countryside. Tens of thousands had been tortured, mutilated and raped. Tens of thousands more suffered machete cuts, bullet wounds, infection and starvation.

Corpses littered the countryside. The country smelled of death. The genocideaires had been successful in their evil aims: Rwanda was dead.

Some of the most infamous stories came from massacres at churches, places of supposed sanctuary from the evil:

At Nyamata, around 10,000 people were murdered in the church and its surroundings. Fearful people crammed into the large church of St. Famille and its precincts. Father Wenceslas was supposed to be a figure of protection, yet is known to have openly collaborated with militia groups. This was in contrast to Father Celestin Hakizimana who made valiant attempts to save as many as he could.

The church, convent and school at Nyarubuye were turned into a killing center where around 20,000 people were murdered.

Two thousand congregants were sheltering in the church when Father Seromba gave the order to bulldoze the church building. He murdered his own congregants in his own church.

At Ntarama, while able-bodied males attempted to stop the genocide, women, children and elderly who had fled to the church had hand grenades thrown on them in the building. Stunned survivors were then hacked or shot to death. Thousands were murdered around the church.

The horrors seem endless. What could have caused this horror? Was it true, as one survivor noted, that "hell was unleased on Rwanda." Or was it evil in the hearts of human beings who hated for hatred's sake. I have often said that there is always a minority, a group "not good enough," someone we can pick on and laugh about and abuse because it makes us somehow feel better about ourselves.

Prejudice is demonic because it turns people into objects of derision. It lessens them. It harms them. It dehumanizes them. And when small comments of derision about another race or group become more vociferous, these can become policy, these can become Nazi Germany, Bosnia . . . Rwanda.

I had to leave the memorial building because I was simply overwhelmed and felt sick to my stomach. I sat on a bench in the sunlight, trying to breath the fresh air. It didn't help much. Beneath my feet lay the bodies of 250,000 souls who had perished in the genocide. This was not only a memorial, it was a graveyard for the unknown victims left rotting on the sides of roads or thrown into the rivers. Even the smell of the flowers in this beautiful place seemed somehow sickening to me. Becky Schritter found me sitting on the bench and joined me and we looked out at the bustling city of Kigali and we talked of the terrible loss of humanity.

The government of Rwanda in 1994 preached hate 24-hours-a-day. Their militia put the genocide into action. But it was the everyday people -- many now walking these streets, who allowed it not only to happen but took part in it. As Stephen Tabaruka, our Ugandan guide said, "there is a hiddeness to these people. They know what they have done. They know their sins and they can't live with themselves. They pretend life is going on, but it can't go on."

The corpses may be gone and the leaders may have been tried and convicted, but the heart of Rwanda, I believe, is dead. How can a country move on knowing that it has blood on its hands?

As we begin this new year, it is a good thing to be able to examine our own lives, to root out the prejudices, to be done with making fun of others or bullying the weaker among us.

If we do not believe that each human being is created in the image and likeness of God, we crucify our beliefs as Christians. If we have room for making snide remarks about another race or a group of people, or an individual, then we lessen our humanity, not theirs. We sin. They don't.

I tried to think of any positive thing I could find in Rwanda's genocide aftermath. My heart was troubled. My soul was deeply wounded by what I saw and felt. Then, as I sat on that bench in the sunshine of Kigali, on the top of this mass grave of hatred, I remembered the little boy. Our van had broken down on the side of the road heading for Kigali. The radiator in our van had sprung a leak and we were in desperate need of water. There was my hope . . . our hope. A smiling little boy offered to go and fill his two containers he was carrying with water so we could fill up our damaged radiator. Time and again he ran a long distance to get the water and bring it back. His smile stays with me. It was better than the sunshine and fresh air outside the memorial. It brought me hope -- at least a little hope -- in this broken and tortured country, this place of great hiddenness in the darkest place of the Dark Continent of Africa.

PHOTO: The smiling boy.

***

BJ’s postscript: I have just listened to an account in Stephen Ambrose’s “The Victors,” which left me with the same feelings about “man’s inhumanity to man.” As Allied forces began liberating the concentration camps, Nazis at Dachau herded 4,000 starving Jews who had barely survived into barracks, nailed down the doors and windows, dowsed the buildings with gasoline and burned them alive. I turned off the tape and sat and thought about Father Tim’s words, particularly the quote highlighted at the beginning of this post.

And now the threat of genocide and civil war looms in post-election chaos in Africa’s Ivory Coast.

Will the insanity ever end?

As long as there are smiling children and people devoted to ministering to others, there is hope.

Saluting 2010's' 'Most Admired'

Traditionally, I have closed out each blogging year by saluting the persons Americans most admire.

Gallup has released its 64th annual “Most Admired” lists:

MOST ADMIRED MAN OF 2010:

President Barack Obama, the runaway favorite, has topped the list for three consecutive years, as do most sitting presidents, who have been No. 1 for 52 out of 64 years.

Results shown in percentages:

1. Barack Obama 22
2. George W. Bush 5
3. Bill Clinton 4
4. Nelson Mandela 2
5. Bill Gates 2
6. (tie) Pope Benedict XVI 2
6. (tie) Rev. Billy Graham 2
8. (tie) Jimmy Carter 2
8. (tie) Glenn Beck 2
10. The Dalai Lama 1

MOST ADMIRED WOMAN OF 2010:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the No. 1 ranking for nine consecutive years and 15 times overall since 1992. The order of the top six women in 2010 is identical to 2009.

1. Hillary Clinton 17
2. Sarah Palin 12
3. Oprah Winfrey 11
4. Michelle Obama 5
5. Condoleezza Rice 2
6. Queen Elizabeth II 2
7. Angelina Jolie 1
8. Margaret Thatcher 1
9. (tie) Aung San Suu Kyi 1
9. (tie) Laura Bush 1
9. (tie) Barbara Bush 1

A FEW FACTS

• The Rev. Billy Graham has made 54 appearances in the top 10, nearly doubling Ronald Reagan’s 31. Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II tie for third place with 27 appearances each.

• Queen Elizabeth II holds the record for women with 43 years in the tpp 10. “Winfrey enjoys both high ranking and longevity on the list, ranking second or third each year since 1997 (although never No. 1), and placing in the top 10 every year since 1988.”

• Hillary Clinton “joins Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as first ladies whose strong popularity has extended well beyond her husband's presidency, although, given Clinton's post-White House political career, perhaps for different reasons.”

• First ladies do well on the list, typically appearing in the top three positions at some point during their White House years. First ladies who have achieved the top spot include Clinton, with six No. 1 rankings in Bill Clinton's two terms as president; Nancy Reagan, who achieved it three times in Ronald Reagan's two terms; Barbara Bush, who achieved it twice in her husband's single term; and Rosalynn Carter, who tied for or placed first in three years during her husband's single term.

• No first lady has won the top overall ranking since Laura Bush in 2001.

SOURCE: GALLUP

***

DemWit will return on 2 January 2011 with a special post by Father Tim Farrell, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Farmington, New Mexico.

Happy New Year!

Santa Claus came early!

At a time when we were all busy with Christmas cards and letters and last-minute shopping, Santa Claus came early for Americans.

What happened in our nation's capitol this last week will have a positive effect on every U.S. citizen.

Apparently some Republican lawmakers decided it didn’t look so good to continue voting “no” on every piece of legislation, and they are to be commended in helping to pass a strong and beneficial Democratic agenda.

Since you might have missed the full impact of the flurry of activity on Capitol Hill – which some have dubbed “a Christmas miracle” - DemWit presents this CNN recap of what was accomplished by a “not-so-lame duck Congress:”

THE DREAM ACT

In what President Obama called his “greatest disappointment,” the legislation failed a procedural vote in the Senate. The bill would have offered a path to citizenship to some illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as children.

THE TAX DEAL

Signed into law Friday, 17 December. The compromise worked out by Obama and Senate Republican leaders extended Bush-era tax cuts to everyone for two more years while also extending unemployment benefits for 13 months and reducing the payroll tax by 2 percentage points for a year, all intended to bolster the slow recovery from economic recession. Here's what's in the bill and what it means for you.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS EXTENSION

Signed into law Friday, 17 December. The unemployed will get a 13-month extension of the deadline to file for additional unemployment benefits – which go as high as 99 weeks in states hit hardest by job losses. The benefits were part of the brokered tax deal but don't affect everyone: Residents in at least five states won't have access to the same level of unemployment benefits as their peers nationwide because the unemployment rates there are improving. So, according to federal law, the jobless there can't receive checks for as long as those in harder-hit states. Unemployed? Will you benefit?

FOOD SAFETY ACT

Passed by Congress on Tuesday, 21 December, sent to Obama to sign. A major food safety bill that passed the House of Representatives and Senate earlier this year before stalling because of a procedural problem won final approval Tuesday and now goes to Obama to be signed into law. The bill, designed to increase government inspections of the food supply in the wake of recent deadly foodborne disease outbreaks, originally passed with wide support in both chambers after originating in the Senate. However, it needed approval again because it violated a constitutional requirement that bills raising revenue be initiated in the House. The Senate passed its version of the Food Safety Modernization Act on Sunday, and the House voted 215-144 for final approval.

‘DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL’ REPEALED

Signed into law Wednesday, 22 December. Obama signed a bill repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans openly gay and lesbian soldiers from the military. Obama promised to repeal the ban during the 2008 presidential election. However, it will take a series of actions to make the policy end, and no one at the Pentagon seems to know when that actual date might be. Over the next several weeks, military officials need to examine and rewrite a series of policies, regulations and directives related to the current law.

GOVERNMENT FUNDING

Signed into law Wednesday, 22 December. Obama signed a bill that will maintain most funding levels for the federal government for another 10 weeks, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. Both chambers of Congress agreed on a resolution authorizing government funding through March 4. The previous law funding the government – a so-called continuing resolution – expired at midnight Tuesday.

9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS HEALTH BILL

Passed by Congress on Wednesday, sent to Obama to sign. A compromise bill to provide free medical treatment and compensation to first responders of the September 11, 2001, attack won final approval Wednesday from the House and Senate. The bill has been sent to Obama to be signed into law. And it is one some first responders said they never expected to see enacted – one responder called the passage "bittersweet" and better than any other Christmas gift.

NEW START TREATY

Approved by Congress on Wednesday, 22 December, sent to Obama to sign. The Senate voted Wednesday to approve the new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, was cleared with the help of solid Democratic support as well as the backing of several Republican senators. The treaty would resume inspections of each country's nuclear arsenal while limiting both the United States and Russia to 1,550 warheads and 700 launchers. It still needs the Russian parliament's approval. Obama signed the treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April.

SOURCE: CNN. COM

***

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2011!

A call for civility

To paraphrase Ross on “Friends:” “I was on a break!” (See sidebar at left.)

Dropping back into the blogosphere to call attention to an exceptional discussion going on over at Parsley’s Pics.

Friend Leslie’s post, “How the Far-Left Mirrors the Right,” merits your attention as does the lively discussion in her comments zone.

I am certain DemWit's readers will want to add their two cents HERE.

Bad week for the little guy: a chronology

AND, SO IT BEGINS

Wednesday, December 1 (The New York Times 12/1/10): All 42 Republican senators sign a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada threatening to block any legislation until Bush-era tax cuts are extended for all Americans, including the wealthiest. The move came within 24 hours of President Obama’s meeting with senior Republican Congressional leaders, expressing hopes for “a new dialogue.”

HOUSE DEMS EXTEND TAX CUTS FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Thursday, December 2 (CNN 12/2/10): “The U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure 234-188 to allow tax cuts instituted under President George W. Bush to expire this December 31 for Americans' incomes above a quarter-million dollars annually. The tax cuts for incomes below that would continue, and the bill would also maintain the current Alternative Minimum Tax limit for two years. Most Democrats backed the legislation, while Republicans resoundingly opposed it.”

REPUBLICANS BLOCK TAX CUTS FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Saturday, December 4 (CNN 12/4/10): “Two Senate procedural votes on Democratic measures to extend George W. Bush-era tax cuts for people who are not super wealthy failed on Saturday, preventing the measures from moving forward. …. Both votes garnered the support of 53 senators, but the Democrats needed 60 votes to end debate.”

OBAMA PUTS 2012 ON THE LINE FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Monday, December 6 (The New York Times 12/6/10): “President Obama announced a tentative deal with Congressional Republicans on Monday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels for two years as part of a package that would also keep benefits flowing to the long-term unemployed, cut payroll taxes for all workers for a year and take other steps to bolster the economy.”

“I am not willing to let working families across this country become collateral damage for political warfare here in Washington.”
- President Barack Obama, 6 December 2010

WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE LITTLE GUY

What the lower- and middle-class workers would get in Obama’s deal: WHITE HOURSE FACT SHEET

OBAMA’S STRATEGY & MISSTEPS

Shaw Kenawe at “Progressive Eruptions” brilliantly explains Obama’s strategy and his missteps HERE.

KNEE-JERK REACTION: FIGHT AND FORGET THE LITTLE GUY

Monday, December 6: The left-wing blogosphere goes ballistic in knee-jerk reaction claiming Obama made a deal with the Devil and calling fellow Democrats and economists who are defending the president’s action “Obama apologists.”

CLARIFYING THE ESTATE TAX PROVISION

The sticky wicket in the Obama compromise is the estate tax. According to CNN: “The estate tax, which expired this year, is scheduled to be reinstated at a higher rate of 55 percent next year, with an exemption up to $1 million. A bill that passed in the House a year ago set the threshold for the exemption at $3.5 million and the tax rate at 45 percent, while the provision in the tax deal exempts estates up to $5 million and sets a lower rate at 35 percent.”

OBAMA STRONGLY DEFENDS COMPROMISE

Tuesday, December 7 (The Associated Press, 12/7/10): "With fellow Democrats balking, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that a compromise with Republicans on tax cuts was necessary to help the economy and protect recession-weary Americans. He passionately defended his record against Democrats who complain he's breaking campaign promises. … He staunchly defended his decision to deal with the GOP in order to extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.”

VOICE OF THE LEFT SLAMS OBAMA

Tuesday, December 7 (MSNBC 12/710): Keith Olbermann of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” a leading booster of Obama’s bid for the White House, excoriates the president on tax-cut compromise HERE.

EMPOWERED GOP BLOCKS $250 FOR SENIORS

Wednesday, December 8 (The Associated Press 12/8/10): “Bill to award seniors $250 is defeated by Republicans.”

HOUSE DEMS NIX OBAMA TAX PACKAGE

Thursday, December 9 (CNN 12/10/10): “House Democrats voted Thursday against considering the tax package that President Barack Obama negotiated with Republicans, raising questions over the president's influence in his own party. ..."

NEW HOPE FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Thursday, December 9, 2010 (CNN 12/10/10): “... Later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, released the first version of legislation to implement the negotiated deal and said the Senate would vote Monday to open debate on it. The Senate version made public by Reid was largely the same as the deal announced by Obama, but it added extensions of some tax breaks intended to spur green energy investment.”

GOP FILIBUSTER BLOCKS AID TO 9/11 RESPONDERS

Thursday, December 9 (CNN 12/10/10) : “A Senate bill to provide medical benefits and compensation for emergency workers who were first on the scene of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks failed to get past a Republican filibuster Thursday."

SANDERS’ MARATHON OPPOSITION

Friday, December 10 (CNN 12/10/10): Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) spoke out against Obama’s compromise in the Senate chamber for eight hours and 35 minutes – a speech cnn.com subjectively compared with Jimmy Stewart’s in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” According to Senate rules, the speech was not a filibuster.

BILL CLINTON, AS EVER, FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Friday, December 10 (The New York Times 12/10/10): President Obama meets with former President Bill Clinton for 90 minutes. In an impromptu news conference with a hastily assembled White House Press Corps, Mr. Clinton praised the president's willingness to compromise as "a principled decision" and defended the deal:

“I have reviewed this agreement that the president reached with the Republican leaders. The agreement taken as a whole is, I believe, the best bipartisan agreement we can reach to help the most Americans.

“In my opinion, this is a good bill, and I hope that my fellow Democrats will support it. We all see this differently. But I really believe this will be a significant net plus for the country.

“There are a lot of fights worth having, but this holds the promise that after the fights are over, we will be able to find principled compromise on those as well. To me, that’s worth doing.”

Read “Bill Clinton Holds Forth on Tax Plan, for Starters,” Michael D. Shear, The New York Times, December 10, 2010.

OBAMA: DEMS COMING AROUND ON PLAN

"I think it is inaccurate to characterize Democrats at large as feeling, quote unquote, betrayed, I think Democrats are looking at this bill and you've already had a whole bunch of them who've said this makes sense, and I think the more they look at it, the more of them are going to say this makes sense."
- President Barack Obama

A WORD FOR MY FELLOW AMERICANS

If nothing is done before December 31, 2010, your taxes will go up. This has been a week of hysteria, hyperbole, homily and harangue across the liberal/progressive blogosphere. Tax cuts for the wealthiest remain, as President Obama so aptly noted, the GOP’s “holy grail.” If you need a touchstone for Democratic philosophy, listen to these words:

“Democratic priorities remain clear: to provide a tax cut for working families, to create jobs and economic growth, to assist millions of our fellow Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and to do this in a fiscally sound way."
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

The Howard Beale in Olbermann

“I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE.”

Remember the meltdown?

I have read the transcripts of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments” for 14 months now, because I don’t have TV and cannot view videos online. I read these transcripts, because at some point before I gave up TV I realized that one day this MSNBC commentator might just self-implode much like Peter Finch’s character Howard Beale in “Network.”

I first became aware of Olbermann’s propensity for skewing truth during the 2008 presidential campaign when he was the head cheerleader for candidate Sen. Barack Obama and took every opportunity to vilify my choice, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This was a man who banned from his program his faithful nightly guest, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, for daring to state the obvious about Obama’s pre-election hubris.

Granted, there is some truth in Mr. Olbermann’s 10-minute program-closing diatribes, but quite often they are over-the-top, overtly emotional  showmanship. You know, kind of like Glenn Beck’s. Mr. Olbermann doesn't want you to know facts so much as he wants you to feel his words right down to your toes. He wants you to get up, open a window and start screamig.

Before the boob tube went blank, I heard Olbermann accuse a sitting president of the United States of America of being a “traitor.” There was a time in the not-too-distant past when that word would have prompted a duel or a hanging.

Even after detecting patterns in Olbermann’s teleprompter shock and awe, I was completely unprepared for, yea, stunned by his total excoriation of the man he so dedicatingly boosted into the Oval Office.

I was not so emotionally fired up, though, to fail to note his failure to cite a few facts.

DemWit is on the record, even back during the presidential campaign, defending Obama against lies and distortions. I have applauded his desire to be – unlike George W. Bush – president of all Americans. Over the last few days I’ve authored posts either attempting to cut through the BS surrounding the tax-cuts issue or defending the president’s unwillingness to let lower- and middle-class Americans become “collateral damage” in Washington warfare.

I am deeply interested in DemWit readers’ opinions - pro and con - on Mr. Olbermann’s latest comment, his words about our president. I am trying to keep my wits about me, and I need your input.

You may view a video of Countdown’s “Special Comment” HERE. The transcript follows:

Special Comment: Obama Turned His Back on His Base

by Keith Olbermann
"Countdown With Keith Olbermann"
MSNBC, 7 December 2010

With the tax-cut deal, the Democrats lost their chance to stop the GOP from taking unfair advantage of the middle class.

OLBERMANN: Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the tax compromise.

To paraphrase Churchill, again, let me begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing: "that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. We should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of American politics and policy have been deranged, and that the terrible words have, for the time being, been pronounced against this Administration: "thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.

In exchange for selling out a principle campaign pledge, and the people to whom and for whom it was made, in exchange for betraying the truth that the idle and corporate rich of this country have gotten unprecedented and wholly indefensible tax cuts for a decade, in exchange for giving the idle and corporate rich of this country two more years to accumulate still more and more vast piles of personal wealth with which they can buy and sell everybody else -- In exchange for extending what he spent the weeks before the midterms calling tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to people who have proven, without a scintilla of doubt, without even a fig leaf of phony effort to make it look like they would do otherwise, that they will keep the money for themselves -- In exchange for injecting new vigor into the infantile, moronic, disproved-for-a-decade three-card Monte game of an economic theory purveyed by these treacherous and ultimately traitorous Republicans, that tax cuts for the rich will somehow lead to job creation, even though if that had ever been true in the slightest, the economy would not be where it is today -- In exchange for giving tax cuts for the rich which the nation cannot afford, and extending their vintage through the next election and thus promising, at best, a reenactment of this whole sorry, amoral, degrading spectacle during the 2012 presidential campaign, when the sides will be climbing over each other to again extend these cuts -- In exchange for this searing and transcendent capitulation, the President got just thirteen months of extended benefits for those unemployed less than 100 weeks. And he got nothing, absolutely nothing for those unemployed for longer, the 99ers.

This the administration is celebrating, taking the victims of Republican economic policy, taking the living breathing proof that the Bush tax cuts for the rich do not create jobs, and putting economic bull’s-eyes on their backs as of next December. On the one hand, unaffordable tax breaks for the beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts, made ever more permanent as they threaten to suck four trillion dollars out of government revenues in the next decade.

On the other hand, an insufficient dead-end unemployment solution for Americans who would actually work for a living, a solution made ever more temporary. And we are hearing nothing about those 99ers, even though the numbers of them will balloon from two million to four million or more by next December even with this deal, even though just last Thursday, the President's own Council of Economic Advisers reiterated the reality that the easiest way to create jobs and keep jobs is to make sure that the unemployed continue to have money to spend. The unemployed, unlike the rich whom this president has just bowed to, are, in fact, the job creators. They do not have investment portfolios to expand. They do not have vast savings into which to stuff the government checks. They have to spend the money. And the Council reported last week that when someone becomes a 99er, his or her household loses at least one third of its income. And where the 99er was the sole breadwinner, that's four households out of 10, they lose nine-tenths of their income.

The economy is surprisingly simple. If business and the rich won't spend, and the middle class can't spend, the only factor left to keep pushing money into the insatiable maw of capitalism is the government. So, should the government give the money to the rich who keep it, or to the not rich, who spend it? Apparently this President does not know the answer to that question, even though he has his own Council of Economic Advisers.

Mr. President, for these meager crumbs, you have given up costly, insulting, divisive, destructive tax cuts for the rich, and you have given in to Republican blackmail, which will be followed by more Republican blackmail. Of course, it's not just tax cuts for the rich that you've given up. There is also your new temporary payroll tax holiday, establishing a precedent that the way money is pumped into Social Security should be negotiated and traded off, and making it just that much easier to gut Social Security later. And, oh, by the way, in the middle of a crisis over making temporary Republican tax cuts permanent, you give the Republicans another temporary Republican tax cut that they can come back later to blackmail you into making permanent. Well, sir, at least that's the end of it. Except, of course, for the estate tax, what Republicans so happily call "the death tax," which will be reduced from its 2009 levels.

Huh?

The money given by one dead rich person to some living rich persons will not be taxed up to $5 million. More than $5 million and it's 35 percent, which is less than it was under the tax laws of President Bush's last fiscal year. Sir, you have given undeserved tax breaks, and you have carved them a little more deeply into the stone of law, to rich people, living and dead.

And you want me to tell them which Democrat proposed this estate tax giveaway part?

Blanche Lincoln! Blanche Lincoln, repudiated by nearly half the Arkansans in her own party, and then repudiated by 63 percent of the voters in Arkansas. Mr. President, you're listening to Blanche Lincoln? What? Were Bob Beckel and Pat Caddell unavailable? This president negotiates down from a position of strength better than any politician in our recent history. It is too late now to go back and ask why the President, and why the wobbly Democratic leadership, whiffed on their chance to force John Boehner to put his money where his mouth was. In September, Boehner said if he had no other option, of course he would vote to extend tax breaks only for the middle class.

So, the President and the Democrats gave him another option, naturally.

But didn't extending the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy became necessary to get Republican support for extending the jobless benefits? Nonsense. Five times in the last two years, the Republicans have gone along with extending those jobless benefits, and they've done it without being bribed with tax cuts for the rich.

Even now, Boehner's September confession, and the GOP's unwillingness to take the blame for killing off jobless benefits offered an alternative blueprint for this President: Let the law expire as scheduled in 24 days. Let all the tax breaks go. And when the Republicans take over the House and try to pass them anew, if they somehow are not stopped in the Senate, veto anything that does not keep tax cuts for the middle class and unemployment benefits as the dog, and perks for the rich as the tail.

The GOP is still terrified of being blamed for cutting off the unemployed. You take that fact and you break them with it. There is only one possible rational explanation for this irrational and childish transaction. There are Republicans and Tea Partiers who are still intent on cutting off their noses to spite their faces, the "Blind Rage Conservatives" for whom any compromise is disaster, just as for this president apparently no compromise is disaster.

Maybe the reason the administration's numbers don't really add up in this deal is that the administration was too busy instead counting votes, and there really are enough on the far right to sink it, and the President winds up having his cake and eating it too. He proposed what he can call a "tax compromise" and then he can have it derailed publicly and embarrassingly by the Republicans. Maybe the political calculus here exceeds both in priority and quality the real calculus. But I deeply doubt it.

Yesterday, I had an exchange with a very senior member of this administration who wanted to sell me on this deal. I pointed out that that was fine, except that, as I phrased it to him, "frankly, the base has just vanished." "Well," he replied, "then they must not have read the details."

There, in a nutshell, is this Administration. They didn't make a bad deal. We just don't understand it. Just as it was our fault, Mr. President, for not understanding your refusal of even the most perfunctory of investigations of rendition or domestic spying or the other crimes of the Bush administration, or why you have now established for those future administrations who want to repeat those crimes, that the punishment for them will be nothing.

Just as it was our fault, Mr. President, for not understanding Afghanistan. Just as we didn't correctly perceive, sir, the necessity for the continuation of Gitmo. Or how we failed to intuit, President Obama, your pre-emptive abandonment of single payer and the public option.

Or how we could not have foreseen your foot-dragging on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Just as we shouldn't have gotten you angry at your news conference today and made all the moderate Democrats wonder why in the hell you get publicly angry so often at the liberals who campaigned for you, and whether you might save just a touch of that sarcasm and that self-martyrdom for the Republicans.

And, of course, Mr. President we totally betrayed your administration by not concluding our prayers every night by saying "thank you for preventing another Great Depression; you are entitled to skate along on your own wonderfulness indefinitely.

And if you get less than you could have on health care reform or taxes, well, that'll be OK; we're happy to pay 10,000 bucks for a $300 car because, hey, it could've been 20,000, right?

And because we only expect you to do one thing correctly during a presidency, and you know you had pretty much cleared that obligation when it proved that you were, indeed, not John McCain." We are very sorry.

In some sense, the senior member's remark about how we "did not read the details" is not utterly absurd. We have enabled this President, and his compromises spinning within compromises. And now there are, finally, those within his own party who have said "enough.”

In the Senate, the Independent, Mr. Sanders has threatened to filibuster this deal. He deserves the support of every American in doing so, as do Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Conyers and the others in the House. It is not disloyalty to the Democratic party to tell a Democratic president he is wrong. It is not disloyalty to tell him he is goddamned wrong. It is not disloyalty for the 99ers and the 99ers-to-be to rally in the streets of Washington. It is not disloyalty to remind the president that he was elected by people to whom he had given a clear outline of what he would do for them, and if he does not steer out of the skid of what he is doing to them, he will not only not be re-elected, he may not even be re-nominated. It is not disloyalty to remind him that we are not bound to an individual.

We are bound to principles. If the individual changes, or fails often and needlessly, then we get a new man. Or woman. None of that is disloyalty. It is self-defense. It is the acknowledgment that, as my hero Thurber wrote, you might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards. That is what the base is saying to this President about his presidency. "Well, then, we must not have read the details."

The Churchill quotation, as opposed to the quotation from that very senior member of your administration, Mr. President, is from October 5th, 1938.

I don't want to make any true comparison to the historical event to which it related. The viewer can go ahead and look it up if they wish. I will confess, I won't fight if anybody wants to draw a comparison between what you've done with our domestic politics of our day to what Neville Chamberlain did with the international politics of his. The rest of what Churchill said, paraphrased, but only slightly paraphrased, bears repeating again. The terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against this administration: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and political vigor, we arise again and take our stand for what is right.

Good night and good luck.

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Mr. Olbermann, it is apparent from your comments that this rage against the president has been building for some time now. Is it fair, sir, that you can change your mind while blasting Barack Obama for changing his?

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Elizabeth Edwards, 1949-2010

Her legacy, in her own words:

"You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces – my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times, and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined. The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human.

"But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful. It isn't possible to put into words the love and gratitude I feel to everyone who has and continues to support and inspire me every day. To you I simply say: you know."