“Never trust a barber who says you need a haircut", Anonymous
The wisdom offered in that quote seems pretty obvious. The referenced barber isn’t thinking about what you need. He’s thinking about what he needs.
I recalled this recently while watching a couple government officials on television tell each other how much America needs that nebulously defined Health Care Reform bill or what-ever-it-is that’s in those 1,114 pages. Notice, by the way, they keep telling us how much we need it, but they don’t tell us what’s in it. We have to depend on other sources for that.
A little hint came just the other day. An insurance industry group hired one of the Big-Four accounting firms, Price Waterhouse - Coopers, to work up some numbers on how much the plan will potentially cost individuals in additional annual health care expense – that is, money on top of what people already pay. On Monday morning, October 12th, they released their report: $1,700 – $4,000 per year was the range of numbers I heard. By 10:00am, the White House was firing back. Without refuting the claim, spokesperson Linda Douglas called the report “self-serving”.
“It comes on the eve of a vote that will reduce the industry’s profits,” she said.
The Administration was eager to shoot the messenger, but it didn’t sound like anyone had read the report and double-checked the figures, just to be sure.
Consequently, while the insurance business got bashed around some more, their numbers, $1,700 - $4,000 remained standing. If the problem with health care is the expense, why is fixing the problem going to result in even more expense? Again, no answer.
In Washington, in the back rooms where the deals are made, the word “haircut” is a euphemism. A fly on the wall during recent Senate Finance Committee meetings might have heard the word used in a sentence like “In order to pay for all of this we’re going to have to give Joe Public a ‘haircut’” or, “We need to carve out a 'doughnut' for Nevada because the Senate Majority leader will not allow the people of his state to take a ‘haircut’”.
No, “haircut” is not a happy word. Nor does it imply that Joe Public will have any say in the matter. That’s the distressing part.
Examples of the “haircut” can take various forms and are found at all levels of government. Basically, it is the legal deal elected officials concoct that trims, even scalps, one individual or group in order to pay for some program or project that benefits some other. Invariably, that “other” is connected to the politicians doing the barbering.
While the scale of operation changes to suit the level of government involved, the step-by-step procedure involved is generally the same.
So, to illustrate in a way that puts the meaning of the word in our own backyards, let us suppose that within recent memory you’ve received a “haircut” from your local municipal government.
If you were paying close attention to the play-by-play, perhaps events transpired something like this: The majority on your Town Council got cozy with a developer. They let a choice piece of property slip away to become part of the developer’s proposed strip mall or apartment complex. People in your community got wind of what was in store and began attending Council meetings and asking questions, much like those who attended the “Town Hall” meetings and Tea Parties of recent months. You joined neighbors and wrote letters, signed petitions, and hosted meetings of your own, all to no avail. In effect, you spoke, but were not heard. You found yourselves on the receiving end of some bad publicly in your local Gazette. You were vilified as a mob of selfish, no-growth NIMBYs who want local schools to crumble. Council clearly had their minds made up from the start. It was a done- deal. When the official vote was taken you and your community were on the losing end.
“It was a tough vote,” you were all told in consolation. “But there were just too many benefits to turn down.”
Then, a year or so later, after things had progressed, you learned that it was worse than you imagined: Yes, trees were cut down, and there was increased noise and congestion, and the promised tax benefits never quite materialized – just as you and other residents had predicted. But you had no idea how much worse it was going to be. It turned out State Law mandates that you and other taxpayers are going to have to pony up for new fire engine in order to service that new development. Not only will traffic lights will have to be added to accommodate the increased traffic, but the main street through town will have to be widened. And, now, due to all the construction, every time it rains back yards flood.
Yes, this is a small-scale hypothetical case, but events exactly like this happen in communities every day. This is an illustration of the classic “haircut”. Somebody with connections gets the gold mine, and the general public gets the shaft.
But, when we talk about health care reform we are not talking about some ill-conceived comb-over that leads to traffic snarls and a bump in property taxes. We are talking about a big-government imposed “fix” that, once enacted, will pretty much be set in bureaucratic stone. The “haircut” we need to be concerned with is the Big Haircut that is barreling through both houses of Congress, headed for a rubber-stamp vote by Thanksgiving and a nice signing ceremony by Christmas.
It is impossible for anything as massive as comprehensive health care reform to be properly planned in this kind of hurry. If we’re going to fix America’s health care problems, we need to do it right. Congress needs to post all information and answer all the questions. This is one haircut where the old physician’s rule should apply: First, do no harm.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Congress Goes from 0-60 in One Day
On Wednesday, September 16th, House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, D. San Francisco, claimed to know nothing of the ACORN/prostitution/housing scandal as well as efforts by opponents in the Senate to de-fund the organization. “I don’t even know what they passed. What did they do?” she said.
On Thursday, 24 hours later, her House of Representatives voted, 345-75 to totally de-fund ACORN. Granted, this was not a stand-alone bill, but an amendment to another bill.
Still, that’s quite a rate of acceleration. Considering the snail’s pace at which government usually works and the fact that they’ve given ACORN $7 Billion Dollars in public stimulus money this year alone it's enough to give them whiplash.
They cut them off like that -snap- with no public hearings, no special prosecutor, no witnesses, no sworn testimony, no windy speeches from the floor; what happened?
Simple. Congress, the Senate, and the White House – click HERE for an interesting tid-bit – have known about ACORN all along.
Leaders know full well the calibre of people they’ve been dealing with in ACORN. The media knows, too. They had a cozy relationship. One hand was washing the other. As long as Congress could suppress those pesky calls for an ACORN investigation everything was fine. But then the O’Keefe – Giles tapes were shown on Glen Beck’s middle-of-the-afternoon FOX News show and the lid blew off.
But, there is one fact that Congressional leaders truly don’t know: what else is out there on other tapes? Holding public hearings would be like shoveling manure into a fan. The smell of corruption in Washington is thick enough already.
The vote to de-fund ACORN is an attempt to make the issue go away, so that Congress can get back to passing government health care reform and calling Tea Partiers “Nazis”.
On Thursday, 24 hours later, her House of Representatives voted, 345-75 to totally de-fund ACORN. Granted, this was not a stand-alone bill, but an amendment to another bill.
Still, that’s quite a rate of acceleration. Considering the snail’s pace at which government usually works and the fact that they’ve given ACORN $7 Billion Dollars in public stimulus money this year alone it's enough to give them whiplash.
They cut them off like that -snap- with no public hearings, no special prosecutor, no witnesses, no sworn testimony, no windy speeches from the floor; what happened?
Simple. Congress, the Senate, and the White House – click HERE for an interesting tid-bit – have known about ACORN all along.
Leaders know full well the calibre of people they’ve been dealing with in ACORN. The media knows, too. They had a cozy relationship. One hand was washing the other. As long as Congress could suppress those pesky calls for an ACORN investigation everything was fine. But then the O’Keefe – Giles tapes were shown on Glen Beck’s middle-of-the-afternoon FOX News show and the lid blew off.
But, there is one fact that Congressional leaders truly don’t know: what else is out there on other tapes? Holding public hearings would be like shoveling manure into a fan. The smell of corruption in Washington is thick enough already.
The vote to de-fund ACORN is an attempt to make the issue go away, so that Congress can get back to passing government health care reform and calling Tea Partiers “Nazis”.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
TV NEWS and the ACORN Scandal
"What we have here...is a failure to communicate." actor Strother Martin in the movie Cool Hand Luke.
If events of the last couple weeks have shown anything, it is that the mainstream media is not up to the job of keeping the American public informed. Neither is it capable of digging into a story to get the facts. The traditional media leaves the profound impression that they will first seek permission or await instructions concerning which stories to cover and what to say about them.
In quick fashion we’ve seen the Van Jones story missed, the Tea Party march on Washington ignored, and now we’ve had a week of silence on the ACORN sex-sting tapes. What are we to make of this?
As someone who used to work in media I’ll give you my conclusion right up front:
TV news is to news, what a TV dinner is to dinner.
Both are conveniently packaged, pre-digested, bland, and shot-full of additives. They are an insult to both the stomach and the brain.
About a week ago Fox News covered a story, broken earlier in the morning by a web site, Big Government. I happened to catch 30 seconds of the initial Fox coverage on my way out the door to work.
A hidden camera-sting inside the Baltimore office of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) showed a young woman talking across a desk with a couple other women who were representatives of ACORN. The young woman was dressed like the hookers who used to work the streets near my old neighborhood in Venice, California.
Closed-captioning clarified what was being said on camera while the Fox newscasters commented on the footage. As I bagged up my lunch for work I formed the impression that the prostitute had been caught on hidden camera, along with her slime-ball pimp-lawyer-boyfriend, negotiating with ACORN representatives. The plan was to use tax money to buy a house to use as a brothel. The brothel would feature a dozen young girls, age 13-15, which the pimp had already arranged to be shipped in from El Salvador. Banks won’t lend money for this kind of enterprise. No problem with ACORN. They are open for business and they have lots of money.
That’s all I saw or heard of that first report. It was grim and it reminded me of the movie Taxi Driver, of the social rot that movie depicted, and the feeling that everything is for sale, and at not too high a price, either.
My immediate reaction was a wave of melancholy. I felt sorry for the girl and for any family members she might have who would surely see this footage, if not now, in all the re-runs. The ACORN people were seen on camera conferring with other staffers on how to fudge the nature of the business on the paperwork, how to hide the profits, even offering suggestions how to get a couple of those underage El Salvador working girls listed as “dependents” on the tax rolls. ACORN clearly offered One-Stop Shopping. I bought the ruse just like the ACORN people did.
When I got in my car I found that talk radio was blazing with the story. Details that I had misunderstood were clarified. The prostitute, it turned out, is really a college journalism student, Hannah Giles. The guy posing as the young pimp/lawyer is a 25 year-old filmmaker named James O’Keefe. The whole thing was a sting designed to document the rampant corruption within ACORN. It was a 100% gutsy move and it succeeded brilliantly.
The Wall Street Journal, the go-to paper I read, has been covering ACORN’s shady activities for years. In fact you can go to WSJ.com today and read John Fund’s article “Acorn Runs Off the Rails” if you want to get a brief overview of some of the group’s activities. For example, ACORN is currently under investigation for voter fraud California, Missouri, Nevada, Arizona and in a number of other states. It worked hard on behalf of Al Franken in his narrow, 200 hundred vote “win” in the Minnesota US Senate race last fall, registering non-existent voters by the thousands. And, the man who made “community organizer” a household word, President Obama himself, used to work for ACORN and has surrounded his administration with ACORN staffers and sympathizers. Up until a few days ago ACORN was going to be a key contractor in taking the 2010 US Census.
So there they are on camera, tax-funded ACORN employees, telling a hooker how to deal with the issue of the underage girls transported across the border to be sexually abused for money. They do not discuss how to educate the girls or give them a good home or get them started in happy productive lives, but, rather, how to exploit them and keep the profits away from the taxman.
Given the very recent news-context of the eleven year-old girl in California who was kidnapped and held as a sex slave for 15 years you’d think this story would be news --- Big News. You have sex, money, and corruption all under an oily cloud of sleazy politics. What’s there for any newsman not to like? You’d think reporters would be wrestling each other for dibs on being the first to ask the President what he thinks about all of this.
But, alas, nothing but silence. And such a silent silence it is. You can hear a pin drop.
After that first report, last week, other tapes were released every couple days. Now, along with the ACORN office in Baltimore there is footage from inside offices in New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles. Are there more?
The tape from LA is a doozy. An ACORN worker literally brags on-camera how she killed a man and got away with it. Here. Like some low-life bottom feeder you'd see in Pulp Fiction, she casually discusses with the pimp how he can make a lot more money if he goes for the rough-trade. This ACORN representative then reveals that she “talks to Congressmen, Senators and Assembly people everyday”. She even names a few -- Oops -- in case investigators need a road map, or California voters want to know who not to vote for. This is bad stuff.
Still... not even a whisper in the establishment press.
This brings us up to September 15th, a week into the ACORN/prostitutes story, when ABC News anchor, Charlie Gibson opened his mouth in front of a microphone and out came an amazing statement.
Gibson is a weekly call-in guest on the “Mornings with Don Wade and Roma Show” on WLS-890 in Chicago. He engages in light weight chit-chat and plugs his quote-unquote evening “news” show. Only this time I’m sure he spilled his coffee when host, Don Wade, veered away from “happy talk” and asked Gibson this question:
Don: “We got the embarrassing video of ACORN staff giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel with 13 year old hookers. It has everything you could want; corruption and sleazy action at tax funded organizations that’s got government ties. But nobody’s covering that story. Why?
Charlie Gibson: (laugh) I don’t even know about it. Uh, so you got me at a loss, I don’t know.”
Think about that statement for just a moment…A story concerning underage hookers and political corruption is all over competing news media and the main anchor at ABC doesn’t “even know about it”?
That’s not just hard to believe, it's impossible to believe. It is Charlie Gibson’s job “to know”. He has staff who's job it is to know. I’ve worked in a few TV stations over the years and every one of them had banks of monitors tuned to the other channels in order to keep an eye on their competitors. How could he not know?
How could he not report a week’s worth of breaking-news regarding a
major cog in the Washington wheel? Unless he didn't want to know...Unless this is a rigged game staring back at us from our TV screens. (Refer to my PlumwoodRoad essay, The Confidence Men, from August 26th)
You can rest assured that not only does the establishment media know about this story, but it knows other things as well. It is all their jobs to know. They know who in Congress benefits from relations with ACORN. They know that just this past April Democrats in the US Senate over-powered opposition objections and inserted a $7 Billion Dollar "ear mark" for ACORN into that $847 Billion Dollar Stimulus Bill. And, they know that miles of video footage exists of the President speaking glowingly of ACORN and other marginally savory organizations.
The mainstream media also knows that in order to push through the President's bloated, intrusive Health Care plan, they have to tamp down public concerns about governmental competency, corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility. Then along came a couple of self-appointed journalists who kicked over a rotten log and then took pictures of all the taxpayer-supported cockroaches they found crawling around. It couldn't have happened at a worse time.
Here is the media's Plan-B:
Right now the networks are trying to remain silent. That's proving hard to do; Charlie Gibson's comment, for example, or Jimmy Carter's even worse comment last night. The longer this thing drags on, the more likely someone else will say something stupid. Networks are scrambling behind the scenes to write the “spin” they need to contain the damage. That’s a tall order. Aiding the sexual abuse of young girls is going to be hard to mitigate, even in today's anything-goes culture.
And though they may not know it yet, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles are under a microscope. Right now State bureaucrats are fingering through their files and school records, somebody is busy hacking into their computers, investigators are tracking down every date they ever kissed, and their parents are being checked for embarrassing information, too. Remember "Joe the Plumber" last year?
By remaining silent the media hopes to get past the shock-value of the story and prevent it from resonating into the broader public consciousness. But, they must maintain the black out until all the the tapes are released and all the information is out. Like a slick legal defense attorney, once they have all the information they will know exactly how to tailor their message. The mainstream press can then step forward and take control of the story. They can then launch a cleaned up version with a plausible exculpatory angle. But they have to wait until they're certain the shoes have stopped dropping. No surprises.
This is what press agents and publicists do all the time. Books have been written on the subject. It's called "managing the news". But it is not what a healthy, free press does. It is what propagandists and apparatchiks in The Ministry of Information do. And, that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the most disturbing element of the ACORN story.
If events of the last couple weeks have shown anything, it is that the mainstream media is not up to the job of keeping the American public informed. Neither is it capable of digging into a story to get the facts. The traditional media leaves the profound impression that they will first seek permission or await instructions concerning which stories to cover and what to say about them.
In quick fashion we’ve seen the Van Jones story missed, the Tea Party march on Washington ignored, and now we’ve had a week of silence on the ACORN sex-sting tapes. What are we to make of this?
As someone who used to work in media I’ll give you my conclusion right up front:
TV news is to news, what a TV dinner is to dinner.
Both are conveniently packaged, pre-digested, bland, and shot-full of additives. They are an insult to both the stomach and the brain.
About a week ago Fox News covered a story, broken earlier in the morning by a web site, Big Government. I happened to catch 30 seconds of the initial Fox coverage on my way out the door to work.
A hidden camera-sting inside the Baltimore office of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) showed a young woman talking across a desk with a couple other women who were representatives of ACORN. The young woman was dressed like the hookers who used to work the streets near my old neighborhood in Venice, California.
Closed-captioning clarified what was being said on camera while the Fox newscasters commented on the footage. As I bagged up my lunch for work I formed the impression that the prostitute had been caught on hidden camera, along with her slime-ball pimp-lawyer-boyfriend, negotiating with ACORN representatives. The plan was to use tax money to buy a house to use as a brothel. The brothel would feature a dozen young girls, age 13-15, which the pimp had already arranged to be shipped in from El Salvador. Banks won’t lend money for this kind of enterprise. No problem with ACORN. They are open for business and they have lots of money.
That’s all I saw or heard of that first report. It was grim and it reminded me of the movie Taxi Driver, of the social rot that movie depicted, and the feeling that everything is for sale, and at not too high a price, either.
My immediate reaction was a wave of melancholy. I felt sorry for the girl and for any family members she might have who would surely see this footage, if not now, in all the re-runs. The ACORN people were seen on camera conferring with other staffers on how to fudge the nature of the business on the paperwork, how to hide the profits, even offering suggestions how to get a couple of those underage El Salvador working girls listed as “dependents” on the tax rolls. ACORN clearly offered One-Stop Shopping. I bought the ruse just like the ACORN people did.
When I got in my car I found that talk radio was blazing with the story. Details that I had misunderstood were clarified. The prostitute, it turned out, is really a college journalism student, Hannah Giles. The guy posing as the young pimp/lawyer is a 25 year-old filmmaker named James O’Keefe. The whole thing was a sting designed to document the rampant corruption within ACORN. It was a 100% gutsy move and it succeeded brilliantly.
The Wall Street Journal, the go-to paper I read, has been covering ACORN’s shady activities for years. In fact you can go to WSJ.com today and read John Fund’s article “Acorn Runs Off the Rails” if you want to get a brief overview of some of the group’s activities. For example, ACORN is currently under investigation for voter fraud California, Missouri, Nevada, Arizona and in a number of other states. It worked hard on behalf of Al Franken in his narrow, 200 hundred vote “win” in the Minnesota US Senate race last fall, registering non-existent voters by the thousands. And, the man who made “community organizer” a household word, President Obama himself, used to work for ACORN and has surrounded his administration with ACORN staffers and sympathizers. Up until a few days ago ACORN was going to be a key contractor in taking the 2010 US Census.
So there they are on camera, tax-funded ACORN employees, telling a hooker how to deal with the issue of the underage girls transported across the border to be sexually abused for money. They do not discuss how to educate the girls or give them a good home or get them started in happy productive lives, but, rather, how to exploit them and keep the profits away from the taxman.
Given the very recent news-context of the eleven year-old girl in California who was kidnapped and held as a sex slave for 15 years you’d think this story would be news --- Big News. You have sex, money, and corruption all under an oily cloud of sleazy politics. What’s there for any newsman not to like? You’d think reporters would be wrestling each other for dibs on being the first to ask the President what he thinks about all of this.
But, alas, nothing but silence. And such a silent silence it is. You can hear a pin drop.
After that first report, last week, other tapes were released every couple days. Now, along with the ACORN office in Baltimore there is footage from inside offices in New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles. Are there more?
The tape from LA is a doozy. An ACORN worker literally brags on-camera how she killed a man and got away with it. Here. Like some low-life bottom feeder you'd see in Pulp Fiction, she casually discusses with the pimp how he can make a lot more money if he goes for the rough-trade. This ACORN representative then reveals that she “talks to Congressmen, Senators and Assembly people everyday”. She even names a few -- Oops -- in case investigators need a road map, or California voters want to know who not to vote for. This is bad stuff.
Still... not even a whisper in the establishment press.
This brings us up to September 15th, a week into the ACORN/prostitutes story, when ABC News anchor, Charlie Gibson opened his mouth in front of a microphone and out came an amazing statement.
Gibson is a weekly call-in guest on the “Mornings with Don Wade and Roma Show” on WLS-890 in Chicago. He engages in light weight chit-chat and plugs his quote-unquote evening “news” show. Only this time I’m sure he spilled his coffee when host, Don Wade, veered away from “happy talk” and asked Gibson this question:
Don: “We got the embarrassing video of ACORN staff giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel with 13 year old hookers. It has everything you could want; corruption and sleazy action at tax funded organizations that’s got government ties. But nobody’s covering that story. Why?
Charlie Gibson: (laugh) I don’t even know about it. Uh, so you got me at a loss, I don’t know.”
Think about that statement for just a moment…A story concerning underage hookers and political corruption is all over competing news media and the main anchor at ABC doesn’t “even know about it”?
That’s not just hard to believe, it's impossible to believe. It is Charlie Gibson’s job “to know”. He has staff who's job it is to know. I’ve worked in a few TV stations over the years and every one of them had banks of monitors tuned to the other channels in order to keep an eye on their competitors. How could he not know?
How could he not report a week’s worth of breaking-news regarding a
major cog in the Washington wheel? Unless he didn't want to know...Unless this is a rigged game staring back at us from our TV screens. (Refer to my PlumwoodRoad essay, The Confidence Men, from August 26th)
You can rest assured that not only does the establishment media know about this story, but it knows other things as well. It is all their jobs to know. They know who in Congress benefits from relations with ACORN. They know that just this past April Democrats in the US Senate over-powered opposition objections and inserted a $7 Billion Dollar "ear mark" for ACORN into that $847 Billion Dollar Stimulus Bill. And, they know that miles of video footage exists of the President speaking glowingly of ACORN and other marginally savory organizations.
The mainstream media also knows that in order to push through the President's bloated, intrusive Health Care plan, they have to tamp down public concerns about governmental competency, corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility. Then along came a couple of self-appointed journalists who kicked over a rotten log and then took pictures of all the taxpayer-supported cockroaches they found crawling around. It couldn't have happened at a worse time.
Here is the media's Plan-B:
Right now the networks are trying to remain silent. That's proving hard to do; Charlie Gibson's comment, for example, or Jimmy Carter's even worse comment last night. The longer this thing drags on, the more likely someone else will say something stupid. Networks are scrambling behind the scenes to write the “spin” they need to contain the damage. That’s a tall order. Aiding the sexual abuse of young girls is going to be hard to mitigate, even in today's anything-goes culture.
And though they may not know it yet, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles are under a microscope. Right now State bureaucrats are fingering through their files and school records, somebody is busy hacking into their computers, investigators are tracking down every date they ever kissed, and their parents are being checked for embarrassing information, too. Remember "Joe the Plumber" last year?
By remaining silent the media hopes to get past the shock-value of the story and prevent it from resonating into the broader public consciousness. But, they must maintain the black out until all the the tapes are released and all the information is out. Like a slick legal defense attorney, once they have all the information they will know exactly how to tailor their message. The mainstream press can then step forward and take control of the story. They can then launch a cleaned up version with a plausible exculpatory angle. But they have to wait until they're certain the shoes have stopped dropping. No surprises.
This is what press agents and publicists do all the time. Books have been written on the subject. It's called "managing the news". But it is not what a healthy, free press does. It is what propagandists and apparatchiks in The Ministry of Information do. And, that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the most disturbing element of the ACORN story.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Report from the Washington, DC Patriot's Rally
Hi Everyone:
If you don't have cable and get Fox News or if your AM radio is broken you may not know about the HUGE rally in Washington that took place on Saturday, Sept. 12th. The whole thing was a massive event that grew out of all the Tea Parties and town hall meetings that have been occurring this summer.
"Why bother protesting?" some wonder. "We're doomed," others say. Yes, things do look bleak: The "Cash for Clunkers" program cost taxpayers $3 Billion and the auto dealers were left waiting for their money. ACORN is doing business with pimps and prostitutes using our money. Zillions in TARP dollars have disappeared. "Cap and Trade" is a shellgame that is going to bleed more money out of the economy, And Obama is rallying the Democrat base to ram through a 1,000 page health care bill that few in Congress have bothered to read. Shouldn't we all just give up and shove the country down the driveway and leave it for curbside pickup?
I don't know about you, but I feel revved up.
And, here is an on-the-spot report from the Rally, by Plumwood Road reader and correspondent, Jane Sheridan.
http://plumwoodroad.blogspot.com/
Jane and her husband Flip, who live not far from the real Plumwood Road, have their kids married or in college. Ma and Pa Sheridan dusted off their protest marcher shoes and went to Washington for the Patriot's Rally on Saturday, September 12th. Here, Jane gives her perspective from inside the crowd, where all you can see is up. And that's not a bad perspective.
Jed
Here is Jane's report.
On Friday Flip and I flew to Washington to be part of the march on Saturday the 12th.
Washington is always a thrill and it was great to be back there no matter who is in the White House!
We checked into our hotel and then did some wandering. Had dinner and got up the next morning to overcast skies but no rain!
We took off in our sensible shoes,patriotic t shirts, while holding our handmade signs and schlepping our chairs and backpack... we were ready for anything! (Our children would NOT have been proud of the way we looked) We originally were going to meet at the Freedom Plaza at 11 but when we made it to Pennsylvania Ave. the march had already started and there were THRONGS of people parading down the street! They were cheering and chanting and carrying some great signs. We watched for a few minutes and then decided just to dive in and join the crowd!
WOW! what a rush to be in a throng of like minded, happy people ! Some had bull horns to start chants or encourage the crowd, others were in period costume or in some very creative outfits. There were babies and children marching with their parents, there were dogs and people on canes or in wheelchairs. Veterans proudly carried flags.... beside bikers who were said to have ridden from California to be part of this! One man walked along with a trash bag to pick up every little bit of paper so that we did not leave a trace.
The route was lined with others holding signs and calling out encouragement! We were contacted by cell phone by our friends who had taken the train in from Maryland... since they were just behind us in the parade we stood on the side awhile to wait for them to pass by and we were able to get lots of great photos and take our TURN cheering for the "Angry Mob" We were soon joined by our friends and we marched together to the Capitol.
On arrival at the Capitol we were then separated by yellow police line tape and sent in different directions. Many police officers were there and this "funneling' of the group into a small passage and then dividing up had a very negative feeling and immediately impacted the groups overall mood. Several of us wondered if we were going to be going through a metal detector, We were all then dispersed around the pond at the Capitol.... some grassy areas were actually roped off leaving not nearly enough room for people to stand or sit and hear.... the effect of putting the water between us and the steps and speakers was not a positive one.
I called our Son Jeff in Ohio and Daughter Stacy in GA. and asked them to e-mail Fox news to find out what was going on if possible. People continued to mill around trying to find a way to get closer . Later I walked back the way we had come and found that someone had pushed down a section of the cordoned off fencing and now the grassy areas were covered wall to wall with people while back as far as I could see marchers were still coming down Penn. Ave!
A person in a designated" Volunteer" shirt informed us that our group had applied for a permit to assemble on the mall but that it was denied. However a permit was granted to ACORN and at the far end of the mall by the Washington Monuement there were tents and loud music for a group with a sign that said "Black Family Reunion" This was understood to be the Collective Black Family not a family named Black.
We were also told that we were not welcomed on the mall because "THEY" (the administration) did not want anyone to be able to compare the crowd with the group size that assembled for Obamas inauguration ! And that if anyone went there we would not be allowed to have signs.
As you can imagine this did not go over very well with Flip and I ... so I immediately started telling the people who were just arriving and being herded into the crowded spaces that they should go to the MALL! Stacy reported by phone that there WERE protesters on the mall and they had signs! Flip and I then got our chairs and headed for the mall! We could actually hear better from this area.... and people continued to move around and parade along the walk that surrounded the grass in the center. Here we also found that many areas to the sides had been fenced off and again people had "adjusted" a section for access.
There was room for blankets and picnics, a juggler, some football, and a few people took naps. Most of us people watched!
We later broke camp again and moved up past the Conservatory until we wormed our way to the front just below the steps where the speakers were. We saw more costumes, a parade of workers in hard hats and many more creative signs.
There were numerous moments of loud cheering, some spontaneous "USA" chants , very little booing and we did not witness any negative confrontations. Actually only saw one group that opposed us and that was about 6 or 8 young adults in Formal attire....standing at the Navy Memorial. Very well mannered and respectful but stating their view through satire.
Litter was non existent. But trash cans were overflowing. When asked about this the security people explained that no trash cans were allowed within a certain distance of the Capital or other major building due to the possibility of bombs/explosives being concealed in them. Much later as the speeches were ending we made our way back to our hotel in a Sea of Patriots who all felt that the day had been worthwhile and vowed to each other to keep up the fight back home.
After a late night stroll around the historic monuments the Whitehouse we had to agree that there is much in Washington AND the United States that is worth fighting for. JS
If you don't have cable and get Fox News or if your AM radio is broken you may not know about the HUGE rally in Washington that took place on Saturday, Sept. 12th. The whole thing was a massive event that grew out of all the Tea Parties and town hall meetings that have been occurring this summer.
"Why bother protesting?" some wonder. "We're doomed," others say. Yes, things do look bleak: The "Cash for Clunkers" program cost taxpayers $3 Billion and the auto dealers were left waiting for their money. ACORN is doing business with pimps and prostitutes using our money. Zillions in TARP dollars have disappeared. "Cap and Trade" is a shellgame that is going to bleed more money out of the economy, And Obama is rallying the Democrat base to ram through a 1,000 page health care bill that few in Congress have bothered to read. Shouldn't we all just give up and shove the country down the driveway and leave it for curbside pickup?
I don't know about you, but I feel revved up.
And, here is an on-the-spot report from the Rally, by Plumwood Road reader and correspondent, Jane Sheridan.
http://plumwoodroad.blogspot.com/
Jane and her husband Flip, who live not far from the real Plumwood Road, have their kids married or in college. Ma and Pa Sheridan dusted off their protest marcher shoes and went to Washington for the Patriot's Rally on Saturday, September 12th. Here, Jane gives her perspective from inside the crowd, where all you can see is up. And that's not a bad perspective.
Jed
Here is Jane's report.
On Friday Flip and I flew to Washington to be part of the march on Saturday the 12th.
Washington is always a thrill and it was great to be back there no matter who is in the White House!
We checked into our hotel and then did some wandering. Had dinner and got up the next morning to overcast skies but no rain!
We took off in our sensible shoes,patriotic t shirts, while holding our handmade signs and schlepping our chairs and backpack... we were ready for anything! (Our children would NOT have been proud of the way we looked) We originally were going to meet at the Freedom Plaza at 11 but when we made it to Pennsylvania Ave. the march had already started and there were THRONGS of people parading down the street! They were cheering and chanting and carrying some great signs. We watched for a few minutes and then decided just to dive in and join the crowd!
WOW! what a rush to be in a throng of like minded, happy people ! Some had bull horns to start chants or encourage the crowd, others were in period costume or in some very creative outfits. There were babies and children marching with their parents, there were dogs and people on canes or in wheelchairs. Veterans proudly carried flags.... beside bikers who were said to have ridden from California to be part of this! One man walked along with a trash bag to pick up every little bit of paper so that we did not leave a trace.
The route was lined with others holding signs and calling out encouragement! We were contacted by cell phone by our friends who had taken the train in from Maryland... since they were just behind us in the parade we stood on the side awhile to wait for them to pass by and we were able to get lots of great photos and take our TURN cheering for the "Angry Mob" We were soon joined by our friends and we marched together to the Capitol.
On arrival at the Capitol we were then separated by yellow police line tape and sent in different directions. Many police officers were there and this "funneling' of the group into a small passage and then dividing up had a very negative feeling and immediately impacted the groups overall mood. Several of us wondered if we were going to be going through a metal detector, We were all then dispersed around the pond at the Capitol.... some grassy areas were actually roped off leaving not nearly enough room for people to stand or sit and hear.... the effect of putting the water between us and the steps and speakers was not a positive one.
I called our Son Jeff in Ohio and Daughter Stacy in GA. and asked them to e-mail Fox news to find out what was going on if possible. People continued to mill around trying to find a way to get closer . Later I walked back the way we had come and found that someone had pushed down a section of the cordoned off fencing and now the grassy areas were covered wall to wall with people while back as far as I could see marchers were still coming down Penn. Ave!
A person in a designated" Volunteer" shirt informed us that our group had applied for a permit to assemble on the mall but that it was denied. However a permit was granted to ACORN and at the far end of the mall by the Washington Monuement there were tents and loud music for a group with a sign that said "Black Family Reunion" This was understood to be the Collective Black Family not a family named Black.
We were also told that we were not welcomed on the mall because "THEY" (the administration) did not want anyone to be able to compare the crowd with the group size that assembled for Obamas inauguration ! And that if anyone went there we would not be allowed to have signs.
As you can imagine this did not go over very well with Flip and I ... so I immediately started telling the people who were just arriving and being herded into the crowded spaces that they should go to the MALL! Stacy reported by phone that there WERE protesters on the mall and they had signs! Flip and I then got our chairs and headed for the mall! We could actually hear better from this area.... and people continued to move around and parade along the walk that surrounded the grass in the center. Here we also found that many areas to the sides had been fenced off and again people had "adjusted" a section for access.
There was room for blankets and picnics, a juggler, some football, and a few people took naps. Most of us people watched!
We later broke camp again and moved up past the Conservatory until we wormed our way to the front just below the steps where the speakers were. We saw more costumes, a parade of workers in hard hats and many more creative signs.
There were numerous moments of loud cheering, some spontaneous "USA" chants , very little booing and we did not witness any negative confrontations. Actually only saw one group that opposed us and that was about 6 or 8 young adults in Formal attire....standing at the Navy Memorial. Very well mannered and respectful but stating their view through satire.
Litter was non existent. But trash cans were overflowing. When asked about this the security people explained that no trash cans were allowed within a certain distance of the Capital or other major building due to the possibility of bombs/explosives being concealed in them. Much later as the speeches were ending we made our way back to our hotel in a Sea of Patriots who all felt that the day had been worthwhile and vowed to each other to keep up the fight back home.
After a late night stroll around the historic monuments the Whitehouse we had to agree that there is much in Washington AND the United States that is worth fighting for. JS
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Confidence Men
"A proposed victim is known as a "sucker," to the confidence men."
-- H. L. Mencken
I came across that quote a couple weeks ago and I think about it every time I watch the current Administration try to slick that Health Care plan of theirs past us; that grandiose, ill-defined, 1,000+ pages of wonderfulness that just cries out to be called “too good to be true”. Only I don’t hear any one calling it “too good to be true”. Do you?
Take just a moment to stand back and watch them; the President, Congressional leaders, the majority of our elected representatives, news commentators, whomever… Do you get the idea that any of them are on the level as they try to push this thing through? Not quite as on the level as one of those nimble carnival sharpsters moving a pea around under the shells. The hand is always quicker than the eye.
Both the carnival operator and the big time con-man are generally charming, jovial fast-talkers. The suckers can sense they are dealing with a rogue, but he seems so likeable. They know he’s playing fast and loose, too. But, whether he is enticing suckers to put up dollar bills in hopes of finding the pea, or invest millions in the hope of getting rich, he makes them all feel that he’s their pal; that he’s only stealing from the other guy.
The bunch in Washington hasn’t quite pulled that off. The President and his staff are on television all the time. We see them; we size them up. There is something about them. Their charm is a little too surface, a little too phony. With all those tax-cheats in the Administration we know one thing for certain; they’re not just stealing from the other guy. By definition they’re stealing from the rest of us. Why would we think otherwise?
In fact, the Administration is starting to look grim and just a little bit angry at us for not buying the line they are selling. We keep asking too many questions. Before long, they are going to resort to low-end used car salesman tricks.
It is not that their Plan, so-called, just needs a little work here and there, but rather there are so many holes in it that need to be filled, so many internal contradictions that can’t be explained in plain English that the whole thing looks like a disaster ready to happen. Even the pie-in-the-sky promise of “look at all the money you’ll save” was swept away when the Congressional Budget Office published a report showing that instead of savings, we’ll end up with another Trillion dollars tacked onto the deficit in the next few years, maybe more. What the Administration is trying to sell is the is the medical version of the “free lunch”.
Worse, the plan fails to address the real problems. There’s no simplification, no tax relief for the self-insured, no market-oriented thinking at all: just the promise of cost cutting and Government efficiency, which means – let’s face it – “rationing”. In these economic times, if you work for a company that scrimps on pencils and booklets of Post-It notes, that defers fixing a toilet or changing light bulbs, you know what I mean.
As politicians and media acolytes yammer on about the plan’s promised benefits, more people see a health care-future of long lines in government-green waiting rooms with Federal Employees offering a choice between “the red pill and the blue pill”.
Doctors are already trying to get ahead of this thing by advising patients not to get sick.
About the only thing in the plan carved in stone is Government control. That part is for sure. Whatever shape your health care takes in the future, whatever the wording of the final bill the President signs – Washington will control it. Every thing else is up for grabs.
Well, not quite everything. Meaningful medical malpractice lawsuit reform is not on the table. Lawyers have an important lobby. But, the Public option? One day it’s in, the next it’s out, and then it’s back in again. Euthanasia, the so-called “Death Panels”? Absolutely not, except in special cases. Funding for abortion? Abortion was guaranteed by our Founding Fathers, sort of, so Federal Courts will no doubt insist. The same reasoning will require paying for the insurance of the 12-20 million Illegals already in the country. Once this plan is law these details will be out of our hands.
To fix the problems with health care, Congress needs to approach the problem like a Doctor. Faced with a problem here’s what a real Doctor would do, before even getting out his stethoscope: First, listen to the patient, then, Second, project confidence. The Administration has done neither. They have handled the health care debate like a third-rate confidence man trying to sell mining stock to a widow.
How badly have they handled things? For about a month, now, You Tube has been filled with clips from Town Hall meetings showing politicians being questioned about the Health Care bill by voters. At first some pols openly stated they hadn’t read the bill, had no idea what was in it but were prepared to vote in favor of it. The fewer questions the politicians could answer the angrier the voters got. Before long, things understandably turned confrontational. The video clips, while fine as entertainment, are actually pretty redundant. How many clueless politicians do we have to see? The public has already got the picture: Our elected officials are a bunch of quacks. And what is a quack? He is a confidence man who practices medicine without a license.
The politicians eventually realized they were not coming off well, so what did they do? First, they engaged in name-calling. They called citizens – their own voters – obstructionists, un-American, Nazis, stooges of Big Pharma. Next they tried bullying. They brought in members of public employee unions to “counter” the citizens, to shove them around a little.
When that didn’t work politicians went into hiding. They moved meetings to secret locations, inviting only favored constituents by special invitation. They held “electronic Town Halls” via video or by conference call. Or, they cancelled them altogether; anything to avoid contact with voters.
Recently they’ve begun “astro turfing”, bussing in crowds of the party faithful in order to show support for the plan. Hey, we don't want Republicans or independents to "win" on this issue, do we?
So, now that public support has fallen below 50% should we chalk up the score as American Citizens – 1, Government Bureaucrats – 0? Not on your life. Don’t open any champagne.
Government controlled health care has been a goal of Big Government types since the 1920s. There is a lot of money and a lot of power at stake and right now they believe it is all in the wrong hands. They will not give up just because of a few rowdy protests or bad polling results. They started this fight and they can’t just walk away. So, what will they do next?
Well, there’s another quote that we might want to keep in mind.
“Never give a sucker an even chance.” -- W. C. Fields
If those words are any indication, we can expect them to sharpen their game and come at us again. To them, we’re still “suckers,” and we still have money in our pockets.
-- H. L. Mencken
I came across that quote a couple weeks ago and I think about it every time I watch the current Administration try to slick that Health Care plan of theirs past us; that grandiose, ill-defined, 1,000+ pages of wonderfulness that just cries out to be called “too good to be true”. Only I don’t hear any one calling it “too good to be true”. Do you?
Take just a moment to stand back and watch them; the President, Congressional leaders, the majority of our elected representatives, news commentators, whomever… Do you get the idea that any of them are on the level as they try to push this thing through? Not quite as on the level as one of those nimble carnival sharpsters moving a pea around under the shells. The hand is always quicker than the eye.
Both the carnival operator and the big time con-man are generally charming, jovial fast-talkers. The suckers can sense they are dealing with a rogue, but he seems so likeable. They know he’s playing fast and loose, too. But, whether he is enticing suckers to put up dollar bills in hopes of finding the pea, or invest millions in the hope of getting rich, he makes them all feel that he’s their pal; that he’s only stealing from the other guy.
The bunch in Washington hasn’t quite pulled that off. The President and his staff are on television all the time. We see them; we size them up. There is something about them. Their charm is a little too surface, a little too phony. With all those tax-cheats in the Administration we know one thing for certain; they’re not just stealing from the other guy. By definition they’re stealing from the rest of us. Why would we think otherwise?
In fact, the Administration is starting to look grim and just a little bit angry at us for not buying the line they are selling. We keep asking too many questions. Before long, they are going to resort to low-end used car salesman tricks.
It is not that their Plan, so-called, just needs a little work here and there, but rather there are so many holes in it that need to be filled, so many internal contradictions that can’t be explained in plain English that the whole thing looks like a disaster ready to happen. Even the pie-in-the-sky promise of “look at all the money you’ll save” was swept away when the Congressional Budget Office published a report showing that instead of savings, we’ll end up with another Trillion dollars tacked onto the deficit in the next few years, maybe more. What the Administration is trying to sell is the is the medical version of the “free lunch”.
Worse, the plan fails to address the real problems. There’s no simplification, no tax relief for the self-insured, no market-oriented thinking at all: just the promise of cost cutting and Government efficiency, which means – let’s face it – “rationing”. In these economic times, if you work for a company that scrimps on pencils and booklets of Post-It notes, that defers fixing a toilet or changing light bulbs, you know what I mean.
As politicians and media acolytes yammer on about the plan’s promised benefits, more people see a health care-future of long lines in government-green waiting rooms with Federal Employees offering a choice between “the red pill and the blue pill”.
Doctors are already trying to get ahead of this thing by advising patients not to get sick.
About the only thing in the plan carved in stone is Government control. That part is for sure. Whatever shape your health care takes in the future, whatever the wording of the final bill the President signs – Washington will control it. Every thing else is up for grabs.
Well, not quite everything. Meaningful medical malpractice lawsuit reform is not on the table. Lawyers have an important lobby. But, the Public option? One day it’s in, the next it’s out, and then it’s back in again. Euthanasia, the so-called “Death Panels”? Absolutely not, except in special cases. Funding for abortion? Abortion was guaranteed by our Founding Fathers, sort of, so Federal Courts will no doubt insist. The same reasoning will require paying for the insurance of the 12-20 million Illegals already in the country. Once this plan is law these details will be out of our hands.
To fix the problems with health care, Congress needs to approach the problem like a Doctor. Faced with a problem here’s what a real Doctor would do, before even getting out his stethoscope: First, listen to the patient, then, Second, project confidence. The Administration has done neither. They have handled the health care debate like a third-rate confidence man trying to sell mining stock to a widow.
How badly have they handled things? For about a month, now, You Tube has been filled with clips from Town Hall meetings showing politicians being questioned about the Health Care bill by voters. At first some pols openly stated they hadn’t read the bill, had no idea what was in it but were prepared to vote in favor of it. The fewer questions the politicians could answer the angrier the voters got. Before long, things understandably turned confrontational. The video clips, while fine as entertainment, are actually pretty redundant. How many clueless politicians do we have to see? The public has already got the picture: Our elected officials are a bunch of quacks. And what is a quack? He is a confidence man who practices medicine without a license.
The politicians eventually realized they were not coming off well, so what did they do? First, they engaged in name-calling. They called citizens – their own voters – obstructionists, un-American, Nazis, stooges of Big Pharma. Next they tried bullying. They brought in members of public employee unions to “counter” the citizens, to shove them around a little.
When that didn’t work politicians went into hiding. They moved meetings to secret locations, inviting only favored constituents by special invitation. They held “electronic Town Halls” via video or by conference call. Or, they cancelled them altogether; anything to avoid contact with voters.
Recently they’ve begun “astro turfing”, bussing in crowds of the party faithful in order to show support for the plan. Hey, we don't want Republicans or independents to "win" on this issue, do we?
So, now that public support has fallen below 50% should we chalk up the score as American Citizens – 1, Government Bureaucrats – 0? Not on your life. Don’t open any champagne.
Government controlled health care has been a goal of Big Government types since the 1920s. There is a lot of money and a lot of power at stake and right now they believe it is all in the wrong hands. They will not give up just because of a few rowdy protests or bad polling results. They started this fight and they can’t just walk away. So, what will they do next?
Well, there’s another quote that we might want to keep in mind.
“Never give a sucker an even chance.” -- W. C. Fields
If those words are any indication, we can expect them to sharpen their game and come at us again. To them, we’re still “suckers,” and we still have money in our pockets.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
A Review of a Book I Haven't Read
Did you happen to notice last year, while plane loads of reporters were roaming over the tundra in Alaska trying to dig up a scandal they could connect to Sarah Palin, there didn’t seem to be any interest in sniffing around Barack Obama’s home town? Unless you're interested in moose hunting, seems like Chicago is where the action is.
Well, it looks like somebody has finally done some sniffing.
Michelle Malkin’s book, Culture of Corruption maps the murky waters of Chicago politics in which President Barack Obama swam during his formative years as local organizer and politician. Evidently, there exists a lot of curiosity among many in the reading public, because within days of its release Culture of Corruption became #1 on the non-fiction best seller lists.
I’d like to read the book myself. I work in a book store but have been so busy lately that I haven’t even had time to pick the thing up and flip through it to see if my favorite Chicago Stories made it into print. My wife and I have lived in the area for 21 years and from the day of our arrival we have been amazed at the political messes that the natives step around – and pay for – without even seeming to noticing.
"An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. From that standpoint alone it is easy to understand the book’s appeal to those who live in other parts of the country. We have a new president and a lot of people are curious about his Political Family Tree. A lot of people are watching the new administration's conduct in the current Health Care debate. Without reading the book, I can divulge the secret: his method of operating is Pure Chicago: avoid substance, pit constituencies against each other and take names.
On a lighter level, Chicago politics has a novel cachet in the rest of the country. People out there in Kansas or Texas or Georgia or where-ever voters feel is a safe distance from which to watch, wonder: “How do those people in Illinois put up with all of that?” It's like watching a three-ring circus complete with freak show, only in this circus it’s the monkeys who are throwing the peanuts at the people, and the people don’t seem to mind all that much.
Like I said, we’ve lived here for over twenty years and we still can’t figure it out. Every few weeks another miscellaneous official, from building code Safety Inspector all the way up to Governor – you name it – gets caught in some low intrigue or other. Not long ago we heard on the radio that "Fast Eddie" admitted to taking over a Million Dollars of public money. Admitted. He got off with a wrist-slap. No mention of whether he had to return the money.
Some of these shenanigans are laughable in their audacity. I hope Michelle Malkin included a couple of the goofier scams, just for laughs. A few weeks ago Alderman Issac “Ike” Carothers got popped for accepting $40, 000 worth of home remodeling in exchange for greasing through a $3 Million Dollar land deal. I know. I wondered the same thing: the developer gets 3 Mil and Ike gets a measly 40K? Never the less, that’s the case.
Other goings-on are less funny: In ’03 there was an early morning panic stampede in an illegal after hours joint, the E2 Nightclub, in which 21 people were trampled to death and another 50 were injured. The fact that the story disappeared from the news so fast – you’d have thought it was a fender-bender involving a yellow cab and a garbage truck – lends credence to the rumor that a big political family had a financial interest in the club. Twenty people dead and the story just went away? What about lawsuits? Was everything really cleared up quietly out of court?
A couple months later there was another disaster in which six County employees were killed in an arson fire that started in the Cook County Office Building evidence room. Another Keystone Cops investigation went nowhere. In 2006, US Senator Barack Obama endorsed the man in charge of the investigation, John Stroger for re-election as County Board President.
So here is what I suspect the net effect of Culture of Corruption will be: people will read the book from cover to cover. They will put the book on the coffee table, or pass it along to a friend, and they will sit back and reflect on The Chicago Way of doing things.
As it sinks in, they’ll begin to reflect on what the country can expect now that this same bunch has “gone national”. People from this soup, trained in these ethics are now filling Federal posts, tweaking the budget, fiddling with healthcare, and otherwise not looking out for the common good – just like they were back home in Chicago.
And, I have a point here…
Take for instance this story from last Friday’s Chicago Tribune(8/7/09), headlined “Daley Insider Corners Olympic Spots”. This may be illustrative of where we are headed.
The Tribune report is markedly "passive" in it's tone. So, allow me to put it into a nutshell for you:
Michael Scott is a member of Mayor Daley’s Chicago Olympic Committee, and he's a real operator. At the same time he's been working to bring the Olympics here he has been busy buying up land where the Games would be held should Chicago be named Host City. If that happens, Scott will be in a position to resell the land to the IOC.
$$$$$$$$
Before you say “that’s just smart business”, consider that the City of Chicago controls many of the lots and is selling them at distressed prices of $1.00 apiece. I know, that doesn't sound right to me either. Chicago, like most other cities, is in sad financial condition. Why does not the City of Chicago sell the lots to the IOC themselves and let the profits give taxpayers a break? Why take what could be valuable land and treat it as the real estate equivalent of the Cash For Clunkers program, letting someone with political connections pocket the money?
And there’s more. Michael Scott is also President of the Chicago Public School Board. The previous CPS President is now Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, in case you were wondering.
Pop Quiz -- What do you think of when you think of Chicago Public Schools? Yeah. You bet you do: Bullets, drugs, gangs, and chaos, along with low achievement and high drop-out rate.
But, in Chicago there are, effectively, two school systems; the so-called Magnet School Program for the City's best-and-brightest and the regular public system for everyone else.
If you are hip to the way government tends to operate, the minute you learn that there are two systems set up for anything you know that one system is for “us" and the other for “them”. "Them" being people with political clout, people who need to be attended to. Got it? Now hold that thought.
Students are required to test into the better schools. However, true to Chicago form, a phone call and a little curried favor will improve admission chances. There seems to be plenty of opportunity to sneak politically connected kids into elite public schools. Yet, for every under achieving student who gets in on Dad's clout, there is another, truly deserving student, who is denied.
This kind of thing goes on all the time. In fact, right now, there is a similar scandal going on at the Illinois State University level.
The easy question would be to ask, Is this fair? Of course it is not fair.
But there is a more important question we need to consider: What will happen when these people, these oily politicians and malleable bureaucrats, control our health care? I suspect, although I haven't read it, that that is the question left by Culture of Corruption.
What’s going to happen when you have to apply to a governmental body to get a knee replacement or a valve job or an MRI? While everyone knows there are problems with our current delivery system, I have never heard of anyone offering to “tip” the nurse in order to get the sheets changed, or donate to Congressman X’s campaign in order to get moved to the front of the line for a hernia repair. But that is how things are done in Chicago. And we should be considering the likelihood that this is how things will be done once the health care system is taken over by politicians and bureaucrats.
Well, it looks like somebody has finally done some sniffing.
Michelle Malkin’s book, Culture of Corruption maps the murky waters of Chicago politics in which President Barack Obama swam during his formative years as local organizer and politician. Evidently, there exists a lot of curiosity among many in the reading public, because within days of its release Culture of Corruption became #1 on the non-fiction best seller lists.
I’d like to read the book myself. I work in a book store but have been so busy lately that I haven’t even had time to pick the thing up and flip through it to see if my favorite Chicago Stories made it into print. My wife and I have lived in the area for 21 years and from the day of our arrival we have been amazed at the political messes that the natives step around – and pay for – without even seeming to noticing.
"An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. From that standpoint alone it is easy to understand the book’s appeal to those who live in other parts of the country. We have a new president and a lot of people are curious about his Political Family Tree. A lot of people are watching the new administration's conduct in the current Health Care debate. Without reading the book, I can divulge the secret: his method of operating is Pure Chicago: avoid substance, pit constituencies against each other and take names.
On a lighter level, Chicago politics has a novel cachet in the rest of the country. People out there in Kansas or Texas or Georgia or where-ever voters feel is a safe distance from which to watch, wonder: “How do those people in Illinois put up with all of that?” It's like watching a three-ring circus complete with freak show, only in this circus it’s the monkeys who are throwing the peanuts at the people, and the people don’t seem to mind all that much.
Like I said, we’ve lived here for over twenty years and we still can’t figure it out. Every few weeks another miscellaneous official, from building code Safety Inspector all the way up to Governor – you name it – gets caught in some low intrigue or other. Not long ago we heard on the radio that "Fast Eddie" admitted to taking over a Million Dollars of public money. Admitted. He got off with a wrist-slap. No mention of whether he had to return the money.
Some of these shenanigans are laughable in their audacity. I hope Michelle Malkin included a couple of the goofier scams, just for laughs. A few weeks ago Alderman Issac “Ike” Carothers got popped for accepting $40, 000 worth of home remodeling in exchange for greasing through a $3 Million Dollar land deal. I know. I wondered the same thing: the developer gets 3 Mil and Ike gets a measly 40K? Never the less, that’s the case.
Other goings-on are less funny: In ’03 there was an early morning panic stampede in an illegal after hours joint, the E2 Nightclub, in which 21 people were trampled to death and another 50 were injured. The fact that the story disappeared from the news so fast – you’d have thought it was a fender-bender involving a yellow cab and a garbage truck – lends credence to the rumor that a big political family had a financial interest in the club. Twenty people dead and the story just went away? What about lawsuits? Was everything really cleared up quietly out of court?
A couple months later there was another disaster in which six County employees were killed in an arson fire that started in the Cook County Office Building evidence room. Another Keystone Cops investigation went nowhere. In 2006, US Senator Barack Obama endorsed the man in charge of the investigation, John Stroger for re-election as County Board President.
So here is what I suspect the net effect of Culture of Corruption will be: people will read the book from cover to cover. They will put the book on the coffee table, or pass it along to a friend, and they will sit back and reflect on The Chicago Way of doing things.
As it sinks in, they’ll begin to reflect on what the country can expect now that this same bunch has “gone national”. People from this soup, trained in these ethics are now filling Federal posts, tweaking the budget, fiddling with healthcare, and otherwise not looking out for the common good – just like they were back home in Chicago.
And, I have a point here…
Take for instance this story from last Friday’s Chicago Tribune(8/7/09), headlined “Daley Insider Corners Olympic Spots”. This may be illustrative of where we are headed.
The Tribune report is markedly "passive" in it's tone. So, allow me to put it into a nutshell for you:
Michael Scott is a member of Mayor Daley’s Chicago Olympic Committee, and he's a real operator. At the same time he's been working to bring the Olympics here he has been busy buying up land where the Games would be held should Chicago be named Host City. If that happens, Scott will be in a position to resell the land to the IOC.
$$$$$$$$
Before you say “that’s just smart business”, consider that the City of Chicago controls many of the lots and is selling them at distressed prices of $1.00 apiece. I know, that doesn't sound right to me either. Chicago, like most other cities, is in sad financial condition. Why does not the City of Chicago sell the lots to the IOC themselves and let the profits give taxpayers a break? Why take what could be valuable land and treat it as the real estate equivalent of the Cash For Clunkers program, letting someone with political connections pocket the money?
And there’s more. Michael Scott is also President of the Chicago Public School Board. The previous CPS President is now Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, in case you were wondering.
Pop Quiz -- What do you think of when you think of Chicago Public Schools? Yeah. You bet you do: Bullets, drugs, gangs, and chaos, along with low achievement and high drop-out rate.
But, in Chicago there are, effectively, two school systems; the so-called Magnet School Program for the City's best-and-brightest and the regular public system for everyone else.
If you are hip to the way government tends to operate, the minute you learn that there are two systems set up for anything you know that one system is for “us" and the other for “them”. "Them" being people with political clout, people who need to be attended to. Got it? Now hold that thought.
Students are required to test into the better schools. However, true to Chicago form, a phone call and a little curried favor will improve admission chances. There seems to be plenty of opportunity to sneak politically connected kids into elite public schools. Yet, for every under achieving student who gets in on Dad's clout, there is another, truly deserving student, who is denied.
This kind of thing goes on all the time. In fact, right now, there is a similar scandal going on at the Illinois State University level.
The easy question would be to ask, Is this fair? Of course it is not fair.
But there is a more important question we need to consider: What will happen when these people, these oily politicians and malleable bureaucrats, control our health care? I suspect, although I haven't read it, that that is the question left by Culture of Corruption.
What’s going to happen when you have to apply to a governmental body to get a knee replacement or a valve job or an MRI? While everyone knows there are problems with our current delivery system, I have never heard of anyone offering to “tip” the nurse in order to get the sheets changed, or donate to Congressman X’s campaign in order to get moved to the front of the line for a hernia repair. But that is how things are done in Chicago. And we should be considering the likelihood that this is how things will be done once the health care system is taken over by politicians and bureaucrats.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Budd Schulberg dies
On my way home from work last night I heard on the news that writer Budd Schulberg had died at age 95.
Budd Schulberg was the son of silent movie-era chief of Paramount Pictures, B.P. Schulberg. He was raised on studio back lots around the rich and famous of the day. It is said that his Dad, in order to show him what life is really like, made him sell newspapers on a corner. On the other hand, young Schulberg received an Ivy League educated.
For a while he was a member of the Communist Party but became peeved when the Party tried to tell him how to write his book, What Makes Sammy Run? He left the movement and banged heads with party activists the rest of his life.
I read What Makes Sammy Run? a few years ago with that little tid-bit of information in mind. I enjoyed it. As a Hollywood expose it works similarly to Billy Wilder’s movie, Sunset Boulevard, only it’s not nearly as operatic; there’s no dead monkey, no writer floating face down in the swimming pool, but, yes, there is a girl who wants to be a writer. Schulberg’s book is a darkly humorous story of the rise of an ambitious no-talent, Sammy Glick, and the people he tramples over on his way to the top. It serves as a Heads-Up to the rest of us: no matter where we live there are Sammy Glicks out there, in Hollywood, in Washington, or where you work and they will run right over you if you happen to be standing between them and what they want. It’s worth a read.
Budd Schulberg is most famous, of course, for writing On the Waterfront, which won him the Oscar in 1954. TCM ran the movie a few weeks ago when Karl Malden died. I stood right there in the kitchen and watched most of it on our little 11”. It is a beautiful work. Most film fans view the picture as an explanation of Schulberg’s decision (and director Elia Kazan’s as well) to testify about Communist influence in the film industry. Okay. But, beyond that, Waterfront is the story one brother who sells out another to the mob; a depiction of the betrayal by someone in a position of trust. He talks him into taking the short-end money and throwing a prize fight.
That scene in the back of the taxi between Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando is one of the single greatest scenes in movies. You can watch it on You Tube. You don’t even have to see it in context with the rest of the film to get the punch: “You’re my brother, Charlie. You should have looked out for me a little bit.”
But we all know what to really expect when we make a bargain like that: “A one-way ticket to Palookaville".
Budd Schulberg was the son of silent movie-era chief of Paramount Pictures, B.P. Schulberg. He was raised on studio back lots around the rich and famous of the day. It is said that his Dad, in order to show him what life is really like, made him sell newspapers on a corner. On the other hand, young Schulberg received an Ivy League educated.
For a while he was a member of the Communist Party but became peeved when the Party tried to tell him how to write his book, What Makes Sammy Run? He left the movement and banged heads with party activists the rest of his life.
I read What Makes Sammy Run? a few years ago with that little tid-bit of information in mind. I enjoyed it. As a Hollywood expose it works similarly to Billy Wilder’s movie, Sunset Boulevard, only it’s not nearly as operatic; there’s no dead monkey, no writer floating face down in the swimming pool, but, yes, there is a girl who wants to be a writer. Schulberg’s book is a darkly humorous story of the rise of an ambitious no-talent, Sammy Glick, and the people he tramples over on his way to the top. It serves as a Heads-Up to the rest of us: no matter where we live there are Sammy Glicks out there, in Hollywood, in Washington, or where you work and they will run right over you if you happen to be standing between them and what they want. It’s worth a read.
Budd Schulberg is most famous, of course, for writing On the Waterfront, which won him the Oscar in 1954. TCM ran the movie a few weeks ago when Karl Malden died. I stood right there in the kitchen and watched most of it on our little 11”. It is a beautiful work. Most film fans view the picture as an explanation of Schulberg’s decision (and director Elia Kazan’s as well) to testify about Communist influence in the film industry. Okay. But, beyond that, Waterfront is the story one brother who sells out another to the mob; a depiction of the betrayal by someone in a position of trust. He talks him into taking the short-end money and throwing a prize fight.
That scene in the back of the taxi between Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando is one of the single greatest scenes in movies. You can watch it on You Tube. You don’t even have to see it in context with the rest of the film to get the punch: “You’re my brother, Charlie. You should have looked out for me a little bit.”
But we all know what to really expect when we make a bargain like that: “A one-way ticket to Palookaville".
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