With permission from CapitolHillCitizen.com

A friend posed a question — why so much focus on Israel when there are so many pressing crises around the world, like the Sudan, largely forgotten?

A worthy question, as dire straits expand from deadly political conflicts and authoritarian, corrupt governments to include climate impacts and crop failures.

Attention should be paid.

While US policies and actions have played undeniable roles in some disasters, like Libya and Somalia, Israel’s long occupation and brutal subjugation of Palestinians stands apart.

Here’s why.

No other country enjoys but a fraction of US patronage that Israel does. Yet it repays America by undermining our government and political processes. Could any other country get away with its lobbyists announcing a hundred million dollars and more to defeat critics in Congress — even offering $20 million to primary one and seeking, with alarming success, to nullify Americans’ 1st Amendment freedoms?

The latter is done with compliant federal and state legislators seeking to twist language and devise laws as draconian as they can get away with.

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) got that rolling. In 2017 he tried to pass fines up to a million dollars and prison sentences up to twenty years for advocating Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Attempting to crush Americans exercising their First Amendment, at the behest of a foreign power, is a stark betrayal. Censure? Expulsion? Senator Chuck Schumer made Cardin chair of Foreign Relations when Senator Bob Menendez, his Israeli lobby largess second only to Biden’s, flamed out.

On July 24th Cardin sat behind Bibi during his address to a joint session of Congress, joining bought and paid for know-nothings who rose and genuflected with each lie. Good God, what kind of moral cretins have we elected?

In lockstep are billionaire bullies, Grand Inquisitors incarnate, threatening to wreck educations and careers of students with strong moral beacons many of them American Jews because their views differ from the Israeli government’s narratives. Privileged people with the influence extreme wealth conveys seeking to hamstring young people starting out. Sociopaths or psychopaths, these bullies? A wavy line.

One marvels as Biden Administration spokespersons freely shred their reputations, speaking out of both sides of their mouths. Likely auditioning for the bullies, or those who service them, credibility need not apply.

It is heartening to march in protest, to see American Jews of all ages getting along famously with Palestinians and protestors of all backgrounds. Do political chumps calling them anti-semitic realize how comical they appear?

Much of the world sees America’s claimed ideals in bizarre refraction, twisted to undermine international law and to continue carte blanche support of a violent eight-decade-long land theft underpinned by supremacist, racist beliefs. Now the world sees us as complicit, not just in slow motion ethnic cleansing, but an undeniable genocide in high gear.

A quick but-for test. Could Israel do this but for the US? The whole world knows that answer.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently estimated the real Palestinian death toll, considering those mashed under rubble and indirect deaths from destruction of medical facilities and public infrastructure, might exceed 186,000, or 8 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

How does one count when two million have been displaced, their homes destroyed, with weaponry including US bombs each packing a ton of powerful explosives? Past conflicts, The Lancet‘s study noted, have had indirect deaths ranging from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths, so the real toll could skyrocket.

UN-backed experts recently estimated over a half-million Palestinians face imminent starvation. Ethnic cleansing is well-underway in the West Bank, from violent settlers backed by IDF and Israeli police, and children again among the targets.

The Fourth Estate is supposed to push back on such mayhem. But one example after another shows much of the mainstream compromised, finding ways to avoid reporting the full horror. Here again, the big money figures in, easily manipulating increasingly skittish journalists as journalism job prospects diminish.

The IDF confirmed there was a “death before capture” Hannibal Directive on October 7. Hear much of that, or of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, almost all without trial, kept in dire conditions, including torture, before the October 7th attack? Or that Netanyahu earlier addressed the UN while showing a map of greater Israel absent Palestinian Territories? Was Hamas, always cultivated and indirectly supported by Israel to avoid negotiating a two-state solution, baited as Israel sought an excuse to drive out Palestinians?

While the US supplies the vast majority of Israel’s weapons, Israel has itself become a major arms purveyor, its infernal creations demonstrated on unarmed civilians in Gaza.

Israel has also become a major force moving parts of the world into a surveillance state, selling technology to authoritarians around the world seeking to spy on dissidents, political opponents and journalists. One client was Saudi Arabia, using Israeli tech to spy on associates of Saudi critic and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, before dismembering him. It’s not for nothing Israel cozies up to far right governments. They have common aims.

The more extreme those in the US Congress are, the more Israel seeks them out. AIPAC backed scores of Republican Congressmen and candidates who opposed certifying the 2020 Presidential Election. Yet that lobby isn’t required to register as a foreign agent. Why no foreign influence alarms from agencies tasked with government integrity?

As a guest of Israel in 1999, I broke bread with Moshe Katsav, Netanyahu’s outgoing Minister of Tourism. Katsav told me Palestinians are their “N-words,” sneering at the actual word. He later became President of Israel. One top Israeli official after another has expressed supremacist viewpoints, using terms like cancers and cockroaches, denigrating Palestinians, making them “the other,” as relentless as propaganda penned by Goebbels.

Any persons of color in Congress-looking at you Hakeem Jeffries, one of the largest recipients of Israeli lobby largess-taking money while ignoring galloping racism aren’t worth their salt.

If this entire essay were an abbreviated list, it would only scratch the surface. No matter how damped down the full picture is in the mainstream media, no matter how many Palestinian journalists Israel slaughters to stop those bearing witness to atrocities, no matter how many UN employees and their family members are murdered-over 366-the depravities escape Israel’s grasp.

Israel does its damnedest to pull America into the abyss as its protector, one with nothing to lose by staying the hellish course. But the US has everything to lose as it earns pariah status in the eyes of much of the world.

America’s “brand” is in tatters.

In a 1973 meeting Biden described as “one of the most consequential” of his life, Prime Minister Golda Meir told him the “Palestinian nation” did not exist any more than the “Palestinian people.” Moreover, she could not “forgive the Palestinians for forcing (Israelis) to kill their children.”

Did that give Biden pause, Meir’s telegraphing what was to come, what was already served up? A smorgasbord of horrid indignities. Violent land grabs by lunatics waving real estate deeds from God. Restricting calorie counts so children lived but did not flourish to their potential. Periodic lethal “mowing the lawn” to terrorize civilians. Snipers greeting non-violent protests in Gaza with competitions to blow apart knees, crippling even children and medical personnel rushing to attend them.

Does it give Biden pause now, when Israel’s long-held intentions are laid bare? Children no longer just on minimized calories but starved to death by design? Destruction of water supplies and cultivation of conditions of disease, even the polio specter rising?

Does he consider the karma payback for forcing upon his countrymen complicity with child murderers? With child torturers? What torture is greater than forced starvation and infliction of disease?

Perhaps denying antibiotics and anesthesia to orphaned children having shrapnel removed from shattered eyes, having limbs amputated? Shaken brains from repeated shock waves of massive bombs?

All the while arresting, torturing, and murdering the brave surgeons and medical personnel struggling to alleviate children’s suffering. We know not just from doctors but from IDF soldiers that small children are also targets. As noted, the damnable acts would exceed this space.

Golda gave Biden a glance at the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians early on.

One cannot help but wonder if cognitive dissonance between good Catholic Joe and his alter-ego, a self-proclaimed proud Zionist, hastened the disconnects in his mind. Even after Biden helped waltz the country into the disastrous invasion of Iraq, could he have imagined he’d finish his long public career acquiring the moniker Genocide Joe? That would crumble many of even the most carefully constructed self-images. Take note, Kamala Harris.

And what of damage to Americans’ self-images, as the horror seeps through the blood-brain barrier?

Nothing would delight Netanyahu more than Trump’s return, beholden again to Adelson cash.

No other country has enjoyed anywhere near the US patronage that Israel has. Yet it repays America by undermining our government and political processes. Could any other country get away with announcing a hundred million dollars and more to defeat critics in Congress and seeking, with alarming success, to nullify Americans’ 1st Amendment freedoms?”

In his intriguing book SpyFail, James Bamford, long our foremost investigative journalist on intelligence agencies, and a writer for The Nation, credibly revealed that a foreign power conducted espionage to benefit the 2016 Trump campaign. And that the foreign power was Israel. One would expect a thunderclap across Washington. Instead, crickets. Perhaps it roughed up too many pet media and political narratives. Even Hillary kept mum. That’s a fright.

When the International Criminal Court indictments, which included Hamas leaders as well as Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, came down, the press releases from a number of members of Congress, both parties, decried the “equivalence” of it and condemned the ICC. Politicians from Adam Schiff to Tim Scott used almost identical phrasing and talking points. AIPAC’s puppet strings are everywhere, as visible as those on the satirical puppets of the 2004 film Team America: World Police.

Institutional memory in Washington, both of Congress and of media, apparently undergoes periodic lobotomies.

In 2002, Netanyahu gave testimony to a Congressional committee that if we didn’t invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein would supply nukes to terrorists around the world. Bibi also predicted an invasion would bring a flowering of democracy throughout the region, including in Iran.

Anyone thinking the invasion of Iraq was a grand idea should look up studies by the Watson Institute at Brown University. They can only shock and awe, and dismay. Four or five million dead from direct and indirect impacts, by any measure a rambling holocaust. Not over. We’re saddled with a federal price tag of, according to the Watson Institute, over $8 trillion for post 9/11 wars, which continues to limit our national priorities.

How many in Congress who clamored for Bibi’s wisdom and counsel are aware of a speech he gave in 2008 to Bar Ilan University? As reported by the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, Bibi said, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” According to the newspaper account, Netanyahu then said that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”

His speech continued a theme when Bibi, then the former Prime Minister, was asked right after the 9/11 attack what it meant for US-Israeli relations. As reported in The New York Times, Bibi’s first reply was “It’s very good.” A pal, his concern for his American benefactors always paramount.

Washington has become a company town. Our military/industrial complex—Eisenhower had originally added congressional—is our company. Those profiting, greased by America’s uniquely styled legalized bribery via campaign finance, were certainly capable of engineering the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, without Bibi’s assistance.

But in another but-for, it’s arguable it might not have happened without Bibi and his American cronies in high positions in the George W. Bush Defense Department, particularly Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith.

I recently spoke with Dennis Fritz, a retired Air Force command chief master sergeant and author of a remarkable book fresh off the press, Deadly Betrayal, The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq.

Short and to the point, with Pentagon redactions visible as intriguing puzzles, it’s one of those books one wishes would be assigned reading for Congress. Fritz wrote it for two reasons. First, that military men and women who paid a high price, often a terrible price, for participating in the invasion, and their families, could understand how the tragedy came about, devoid of the lies they were told at the time. And two, to sound an alarm that the same interests that pushed that invasion now want the US to go to war with Iran.

Fritz says that Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith were all both neo-cons and Zionists. A double whammy. They were already planning on going to war before 9/11. Fritz’s past work included reviewing and declassifying relevant documents in the Pentagon, ironically in part for a book by Feith, who is described as the architect of the rationale for going to war, including talking points and making the case to convince George Bush. Fritz believes the primary interest of this trio was always first and foremost Israel’s agenda. In Fritz’s view that was prioritized over the best interests of the US. Fritz says these three were part of a long-range plan to take down Iraq, Syria and Iran, ultimately forcing Palestinians to settle solely on Israel’s terms.

Though more Americans died in Vietnam, medical intervention improved considerably by the Forever Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, of the over 100,000 who were maimed, many who otherwise would have died survived with terrible and lasting wounds that require ongoing care and staggering expense.

Fritz believes all of that sadness, and the horrific collateral damage to those in other countries, might have been avoided but for the zealots driving the war. Those are among the reasons Israel deserves so much more attention now, with urgency. For most, Forever Wars don’t work out that well. In the shorter term, are Americans really on board with genocide? Can an apartheid foreign power really purchase our government so cheaply?

Here’s a recent interview by author: https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/riyad-mansour.

With permission from Capitol Hill Citizen, CapitolHillCitizen.com

The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of TravelingBoy.com or LA Progressive.

The post Why Israel? appeared first on Traveling Archive.

King of the Hill

Disclosure alone won’t topple campaign money as the ruler of Congress.

From Barron’s Other Voices, Jan. 13, 1997

Not Long ago the Clinton Administration crowed about agreements with a number of countries to curb bribery in business abroad. Wide implementation of measures such as tax-deductibility of bribes is still a long march away. Still, the laudable effort reflects the belief in U.S. charges that corrupt practices such as bribery in foreign procurement produce inefficiency, surprise derailments and social instability. The stock retort from parties resisting reform: There isn’t a dimes difference between bribery abroad and the U.S. campaign-finance system.

Plenty have professed to be shocked – shocked! – when the White House was caught Huanging it. Alas, many commentators conclude that stricter limits on donations and spending won’t work and that the only real solution is “absolute disclosure.”

Improvements in disclosure are needed, but by itself disclosure is woefully inadequate. Lip service for disclosure as the only route for reform is the fallback position of those in the lobbying world – givers, incumbent receivers and the growth industry between them. They’ll mumble anything to head off public anger at the low art of the thinly disguised bribe.

Reform is a tricky puzzle. Before accepting disclosure not as a tool but as a panacea, consider this: Most voters lack either the ability or the time to adequately decipher the true meaning of campaign contributions. Who figures the National Wetland Coalition for oil and land-development interests? Witness past parades of donors calling themselves housewives, large contributors’ most frequently listed occupation.

Some contributors, like the tobacco industry, have readily identified goals. But others aren’t so easy to figure. How many voters will sort out the quid pro quo of folks like Dwayne Andreas, who gives piles of money to everyone and has a long list of diverse objectives? How many will plumb the desires of a patent-law firm whose favored clients are foreign companies? What of domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies? Try tracking “soft money,” wonderfully malleable stuff that is laundered by the political parties themselves, often comes from equal-opportunity givers and goes wherever the parties want to put it.

Organizations and competitors already rush to filter the info for voters, but much of their messages turn to mush in the flood of interpretations. Voters must also decipher the political spin and agenda of groups offering to do the voters’ homework. Let the press do its job? Presumably it already tries in the limited space it’s allotted, but shining a light on all the shell games is a daunting task and anyway, would lead to information overload.

I once asked a top staffer for former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, the California Democrat, how the senator coped with the flood of cash. He deadpanned: “People think if they give you a lot of money, they’re buying influence. But all they really buy is access.” Charles Keating must have thought the fictional wall between influence and access a hoot.

Just as corruption abroad results in inefficiencies that harm American companies, many U.S. government inefficiencies, including bloat and waste, are traceable to our system of campaign finance. Political action committees and trade associations are dominated by members who are the most active because they seek the most. They are bidders in a political bazaar focused on the short term. A legislator’s response, “We’re looking closely at this,” is often code for, “It’s on the block, open your wallets.” Because so many politicians are unable to move for fear of alienating contributors, matters are often not taken up until a crisis arrives.

One example of legislative paralysis is in the arena of finance. According to the Center of Responsive Politics, interested parties seeking to influence the House and Senate banking committees spent nearly $60 million in campaign contributions in the first 18 months of the 1995-96 election cycle, exceeding all other industry and labor groupings, and totals are expected to rocket when the final five months are compiled. Did this advance a rational, comprehensive modernization of the financial-services world? No. Competing interests fought to a standstill. Finally, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, whose patience had run out, issued regulations that will accelerate modernization of the industry. Pros like William Seidman, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., praise Ludwig’s action as strengthening safety and soundness but Republican Alfonse D’Amato of New York, says he is “deeply troubled” by the comptroller’s action, and Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, a member of the House Banking Committee, says the regulations’ impact on bank safety “is far too serious to be left to the discretion of regulators (in other words, open your wallets and we’ll get up another game). (Note: before you jump on me for this example’s naive appraisal of modernization, see the “in the oops category” paragraph in the post intro above).

As for rifle-shot legislation that succeeds, take a peek at our tax code. And from airwaves to sugar beets, gasohol to guns, the correlation between votes and contributions is startling.

One often hears that, in our $6 trillion economy, soft-drink advertising eclipses what is spent on campaigns. But it isn’t the amount, it’s where it goes, who gives it and how many on Capitol Hill spend most of their time seeking it. Senators raise an average of 15 grand or so a week, every week. Leon Panetta, the departing White House chief of staff recently estimated that legislators spend 60%-80% of their time with their palms out. He figures the madness continues because politicians are too insecure to tackle the system they know and which got them into office. Do we really want the chief criterion for the performance of our leaders – and often their staffs – to be their ability to raise money?

Even more repugnant to democratic ideals is the flip side of politicians’ money-raising – the threat, not at all thinly veiled, of retaliation against companies that give money to the opposition.

Oddly, one proposed solution to this state of affairs is to simply take off all limits and let politicians glide with a few fat-cat backers, restrained only by full disclosure. Including soft money, the top 1% of income earners already provide the vast bulk of campaign cash, exceeding PACs. Politicians needn’t be rocket scientists to know the majority of people in the top 1% view many issues – such as uncapped interest deductions on loans for high-priced homes – pretty much the same way. Again, disclosure falls short of revelation.

If you think we have funny races now, turn all our candidates into horses owned by the biggest bettors. As they won’t differ much on real issues, we will be treated to demagoguery. Their strategies will center not on better ideas but on engineering the failure of the opposition.

Applaud any tightening of disclosure, but the only way to curb undue influence, from both international and domestic sources, is to curb undue influence. That means curbing money. Banning soft money and giving teeth to the Federal Election Commission would be a big start. Voluntary participation in a system with spending limits, meaningful media access and citizen financing – which would also free politicians – with tough limits on contributions from every source would be even better. The public cost would be a pittance compared with the savings from more government decisions based on the merits; consider just the cost of delayed oversight of the thrift industry.

Those who would limit reforms to disclosure cite the difficulty, both judicial and legislative, in keeping both foreign and domestic money from finding indirect routes. But that difficulty also applies to the proper disclosure of the routes money takes into one pocket and out the other. That’s why real contribution limits are necessary.

Until the Supreme Court wises up and admits that unlimited money isn’t unlimited speech, participation in a public financing system will have to be voluntary. But polling shows strong, consistent support for public financing. Access to meaningful media formats at reduced cost must be a component. As voters rebel against the cynicism expressed by turn-of-the-century writer Elbert Hubbard, “Government is a kind of legalized pillage,” big spenders who scoff at a serious reform system are likely to suffer backlash.

The confused message our system sends abroad, and perhaps at home, was made clear recently when the bureau chief of a South American TV network asked me: What is wrong with influence from foreign contributions? After all, we live in a global economy.” I answered that if nothing were wrong with it, folks like Lincoln couldn’t pen phrases like “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but I don’t think I was persuasive.

Conventional wisdom on the last campaign is that a wary public balanced a Democratic White House with a Republican Congress. But a nationwide agreement between voters to neutralize parties was less a factor then the money-raising power of incumbency.

That power is the enemy of reform. Vice President Gore, Rep. Dick Gephardt and others seeking the White House are already pulling levers on the fund-raising machinery, as are congressional incumbents. The desire for another day, another dollar won’t abate unless the public insists that this is a matter of national shame. Then real reforms may become an irresistible avenue for a White House mea culpa and political absolution. Restoring credibility to government will enhance elected officials ability to carry a tough sell, such as entitlement reform, to the public, without being handed their hands.

If the fallout from John Huang brings about real campaign-finance reforms – perhaps the greatest accomplishment the President and Congress might achieve – we should all take Mr. Huang to lunch. Campaign money, like rainwater, will always seek the leaks in our democratic roof, but that’s no reason not to keep plugging the holes. People who wait only for fixes that are absolutes will be waiting for Godot. Voters know our system of campaign finance attacks the concept of one person, one vote, and their sense of disenfranchisement just provided the lowest Election Day turnout since 1924.

The post Articles on Politics appeared first on Traveling Archive.

America is seeing the Salem Witchcraft re-enacted in Congress today. There’s a lot of over-reaction and raw emotion; bending of convenient rules and hypocrisy. I feel the need to speak on this today. Move on to the jokes if this bothers you.

In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, the Father sings a song about being a rich man and all the perks that come with it. One line that sticks out to me as unfortunately true is when he proclaims “when you’re rich, they think you really know.”

Let me extrapolate that a bit. When you’re rich, powerful, influential, etc., somehow people put a lot of weight on your opinions. Just because the rich have “arrived,” people want to be like them … think like them … so they can BE them.

Once you accept that there are fake authorities, look beyond that egotist with the microphone and start looking at the facts. When a basketball player tells you to buy a car, what makes his taste of cars any better than yours? When a Hollywood starlet shares her favorite recipe, are you compelled to try it out? When a politician who has never run a business makes laws that influence corporate budgets and personnel, do you feel it’s going to help the economy?

Peter’s Principle states that “a person is elevated to his level of incompetence.” When a government sucks, blame it on the clueless yet powerful monkeys who made it up in the food chain.

So now that you see the monkeys in your midst, accept them. No need to be exasperated that they don’t make logical sense. They’re monkeys! Move on.

I’m not here to endorse any political party. I trust you’re mature enough to figure this out. And your conclusion my be different than mine. And that’s fine. I may be a monkey too. But I would suggest that you take the Four-Way Test recited in every Rotary meeting (my addition is in blue):

• Is it the truth? Are the facts backed up by reliable witnesses and unbiased reporting?
• Is it fair for all concerned? If the tables were turned, would you accept the rules if it were imposed on you? Don’t be a hypocrite. Would you prosecute any of your political allies if they broke those same rules?
• Will it bring goodwill and better friendship? Is there any room for grace?
• Will it be beneficial to all concerned? Is this a win-win situation?

If your position misses any of these marks, think of the possibility that you’re listening to someone who has more opinion than actual wisdom and the possibility that you’re on the wrong side of the fence.

(Very sleepy now. No more energy to think straight. Be good. See you next week).

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

— James 3:17

TGIF people!

Danger: Millenials Traveling Unsupervised

Shared by Don of Kelowna. B.C.
Watch out! This is really long.

(Of course I couldn’t find any proof that this is a true compilation … unless you consider Huffington Post as legit so my apologies to all you Millennials for this stereotype.)

Abbot and Costello Math Trick
Sent by Art of Sierra Madre

These guys talk a mile a minute. Smoothless performance. At one point, it seemed like Costello actually made sense. Clean, intelligent, classy humor — the best kind!

WATCH VIDEO

Reality Check in “Crazy Rich Asians”
Sent by Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Some interesting trivia about the movie.

WATCH VIDEO

Don’s Puns

From Don’s collection of puns

Parting Shot

Thanks to Naomi of North Hollywood who shared this photo

The post Traveling Millennials appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Attending the National Press Club for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s impassioned speech on corruption, my mind drifted to a tequila-inspired phone call I made to Chris Matthews.

It was during the Mondale/Reagan campaign, when Matthews was chief of staff to House Speaker Tip “All politics is local” O’Neill.  Matthews was phenomenally gracious, given that he didn’t know me from Adam, I woke him at midnight and my lubricated exasperation fell short of diplomatic grace. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Matthews, but WHY the hell aren’t the Democrats hammering Reagan on corruption, all the scandals floating about his administration?” Matthews sighed and politely accepted my frustration. He explained that while corruption abounded, voters just didn’t care that much about the issue. There’s only so much time, so the Democrats focused elsewhere. I protested that if the arguments on corruption were properly articulated the public might care. Voter response might surprise. And what did the campaign have to lose? Matthews continued to patiently wrangle his unknown assailant, explaining it just wasn’t in the cards. It had been considered but it had been decided it wouldn’t bear fruit.

In addition to this belated apology for that marauding phone call, I will forever award Matthews a point for restraint for not telling me to go to hell and slamming down the phone, one of the vanishing pleasures of now-endangered land lines. We don’t need no stink’n emojis. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve never had a cell phone. It can’t properly communicate stellar indignation. Indignation of the type we should all feel at the culture of corruption Warren ably describes.

Perhaps part of the 1984 reticence on calling the Reagan Administration out for corruption was worry over the kettle calling the pot black. Plenty of corruption to go around, as Senator Warren acknowledged when asked to name offending Democrats. Mary Jo White, President Obama’s head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, quickly came to Warren’s mind. As might have Eric Holder, Obama’s Attorney General, one of the most grievous of the Obama Administration’s many denizens of the revolving door. I’m stunned Holder’s making noises about running for President. More likely he’ll be running from pitchforks and torches with the rest of the Wall Street horde after the next financial sector debacle that White, Holder and the other enablers methodically set the world up for as they profitably whittle away bank accountability.

For the not-so-guilty pleasure of hearing Warren rattle off the public servant disgrace that is Mary Jo White, you can watch the video of the Q.&A. and the rest of the preceding speech here.

Do a search on Mary Jo White at one of my favorite sites, Wall Street on Parade. Do the same for Eric Holder. The essays are short and succinct. It won’t take many to get the gist on how both put the fix in for banks and why it’s squarely in line with the corrupt culture Warren is calling out. While there, glance about the site for insights on how the next financial debacle is coming together. For Congressional duplicity and complicity, catch David Dayen’s piece in The Intercept on bipartisan bank deregulation. His most recent takes measure of Tom Carper’s forty years as a bank-captured Delaware Congressman, Governor and now Senator, and what that has wrought, including his major contributions to the 2008 financial debacle, and the dangers his actions as a bank operative continue to expose us to. Dayen makes the excellent point that although the credit card industry is big in Delaware, the economic gains to the state fall quite short of the serious damage deregulation and sweetheart bills for the credit card companies have inflicted on many Delaware citizens, as well as the rest of the country. His Senate primary is coming down the pike. Carper is proof we have the best Congress money can buy.

And not just Congress. It would be a terrible injustice to the many public servants serious about serving the public’s best interests to imply they are all looking for an opportune moment to sell out. But the reality behind Warren’s proposals is that Washington has become a magnet for people who will say and do anything for money. There are people who entered government, even run for Congress, with the main motive of drifting to more lucrative work in the private sector. They are easily manipulated by those who can purchase the levers of influence. A sort of appendage has been spliced off the military/industrial complex. A fundraising/lobbying/legal/public relations complex has evolved. Throw in some think tanks. This complex is not interested in backing candidates who aren’t about the business of feeding it.

Warren is correct when she speaks of corruption as a culture. It’s become so normalized that for some the revolving door is now regarded as a top drawer entitlement. Their sellout begins while they are supposedly serving the public, as pleasing those for whom they really wish to work is their ticket to ride. No matter how educated or clever they are, their main skill set is devoted to tilting the playing field for the upper crust.

And what is it the upper crust want when they fuel campaigns and spin the revolving door?

They want more. Here’s a snapshot of some hearts’ desires during the 2012 campaign for President.

Nothing fuels America’s wealth gap faster than the purchase of government at all levels. Warren is right to include the Judiciary in government’s vulnerability to what she refers to as a creeping cancer. As Warren’s focus is Federal, she doesn’t include state judiciaries, but in many of them, the big players are able to put the fix in. State courts are often the farm teams for the Federal judiciary. Read about it here, and consider what it means when the little guy loses confidence in our legal system.

Whether or not Matthews was right (probably) in 1984 about corruption not being a big issue for Americans, it is now. Indignation at corruption percolates like the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth. Alas, a con artist successfully presented himself as indignation’s purest expression. After he persuaded enough people to use him as their middle finger to Washington, he pays the country back riding roughshod over it with galloping venality. I bet more people would have preferred Bernie, an authentic reformer, as their middle finger to Washington. Despite Republican roadblocks in Congress, he would have shaken things up but spared us all the time bombs El Presidente continues to set ticking.

To my mind, corruption’s gold standard is Neil Gorsuch. When Senator Sheldon Whitehouse grilled him over who was behind the seven million in dark money keeping Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court and the same crowd spending ten million more pushing to land Gorsuch on it, and what it was these masked titans of influence wanted for such a big ticket item, Gorsuch played coy. “You’d have to ask them,” replied Gorsuch, under oath, adding that if Congress wanted such transparency, they should pass a law requiring it. We’re expected to put up with the fiction that a savvy pol like Gorsuch didn’t know who his covert benefactors were or what they seek. In a sane world, bipartisan Senate outrage would have bounced Gorsuch out the window. Instead, the normalization of corruption carried the day for him. Videos of Whitehouse’s questioning can be accessed here. The mantra for every Senator questioning Gorsuch should have been, “Judge Gorsuch, are you stating under oath that you have absolutely no idea of who is giving any of the dark money backing you. Do you understand the consequences if we find out that isn’t true?”

Naysayers are dismissing Warren’s proposals. Paul Miller of the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics, a trade group for lobbyists, told Politico “We are now entering election crazy time…most of this is going to be unconstitutional.”

So prepare to watch Washington insiders distort the constitutional right to petition the government into the right to purchase elected officials and their staffs.

I think much of Warren’s bill would pass legal muster. Meanwhile there is nothing unconstitutional about candidates for President pledging to abide by such reforms in their administrations and voters voting them in, and out if they don’t follow through. There’s nothing unconstitutional about candidates for Congress pledging likewise.

At the least, Warren’s proposals should prompt an overdue examination of what it means to be a public servant. Something short of a new priesthood or a vow of poverty. But Warren points out we could sweeten the pie for those toiling for the public. One thing is certain, it would be much cheaper than the price we pay for government actions and expenditures that happen not because they make sense but because the fix is in. Clean up government and government will better attract quality people.

There is no end of talented and ethical people in this country, from academia or wherever, we don’t need to run to the usual power players to staff top government positions. Arguments for bringing big shots from Wall Street and industry through the revolving door to run government and then allow them to return are second cousins to the argument for taxpayers needing to pay bonuses to Wall Street masters of the universe so the big banks can retain the geniuses who brought us the 2008 financial meltdown.

Cynicism is easy to come by. Almost 25 years ago I wrote an essay for the Christian Science Monitor, The Low Art of the Thinly Disguised Bribe. It was a pitch for public financing for campaigns, but most of the points I made could fit as the shadow to Senator Warren’s pitch for her bill. In Washington, the more things change the more they stay the same. Unless they get worse.

But before throwing Warren’s effort into the bin labeled Screaming Snowballs Running Through Hell, remember it took Bernie a while to knock off the rough edges and hit his stride. Bernie’s now changed the whole conversation over national priorities and what is doable. Voters who tune in are better able to voice their angst over the direction of the country, not just flail about in frustration. Bernie’s loosened the establishment death grip on the Democratic party enough that there’s real hope the most realistic shot at reform is not starting a party from scratch, but retooling the Democratic Party.

View Warren’s effort the same way. She is ably articulating the damage to the country and seeding serious discussion on solutions once dismissed by know-it-all insiders as pie in the sky. Not so much now, at least outside the vested Beltway crowd. Much of the country now understands we are up against it, from climate to health care to financial calamities to quagmires in the far flung, all to benefit those able pull levers of power the rest of us can’t until the rules change. It took time, but the NRA’s lethal tomfoolery beat the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment into nonsense. So why can’t Warren put a drumbeat to legitimate ideas that might rescue democracy from plutocracy? Thoughtful people understand that success for most measures won’t fly in with the morning sun. Choice reforms can still be taken up by progressive candidates and amplified so that the public comes to demand the most doable changes, dumping elected officials who only give lip service to reform.

The most important and biggest challenge in Warren’s proposals is dismantling the revolving door.

Warren’s common sense measures include a lifetime ban on lobbying by Presidents, Vice Presidents, Members of Congress, federal judges, and cabinet secretaries. It would impose multi-year bans on other federal employees from lobbying their former office, prohibit current  lobbyists from taking government jobs for two years after lobbying, six years for corporate lobbyists. Public waivers in the national interest are allowed for non-corporate lobbyists only. The bill would ban hiring of corporate leaders whose companies broke federal law in the prior six years. It blocks federal contractor employees from working at the agency that awarded them contracts or licenses for four years.

The bill would ban golden parachutes that provide corporate bonuses to executives for federal service. Warren points out that Goldman Sachs gave Gary Cohn over a quarter of a billion as he slid into the Trump administration, after which he engineered the time bomb of the massive tax cut mostly enjoyed by the rich. Such parachutes always beg the question of which comes first, the quid or the quo.

Congressional votes on banning members of Congress from becoming lobbyists will rapidly sort which members are keepers.

However, perhaps an adjustment is in order, maybe relaxing the life-time ban to just include corporate clients or groups representing corporations, with a several year cool-off before representing non-profits. I know, slippery slope. As Warren points out, salaries and benefits for members of Congress can be increased. And one hopes we send people to Congress capable of returning to other gainful employment than lobbying.

If you get to know some whistleblowers, that revolving door often comes up. Let’s go back to the SEC. After an admirable legal career Gary Aguirre determined to become a public servant at the SEC. He was the lead investigator on an insider trading case and sought to subpoena John Mack, a Wall Street giant. The agency told him Mack, a major contributor to George W. Bush, had too much political clout. Aguirre tried to pursue it. Aguirre was canned. Eventually vindicated and years later awarded a settlement from the SEC, Aguirre now specializes in representing SEC whistleblowers.

I used to write letters from Washington explaining our dysfunction to an international legal crowd. Attempting a column on the SEC, I asked Aguirre what might be done with the agency. He wrote me the following:

Skip:

In a nutshell, the SEC as one overarching flaw that prevents it from achieving its mission: “The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”

That flaw is the revolving door between the SEC’s leadership and Wall Street. It is the reason the SEC created the environment that delivered the financial crisis. It is the reason the SEC failed to prosecute those responsible for the financial crisis. It is the reason that the SEC has created a phony crackdown on Wall Street (the insider trading crackdown) rather than an authentic crackdown on the Wall Street elite responsible for the crisis.

After Ferdinand Pecora conducted an investigation of the causes of the 1929 crash and its aftermath, Congress enacted the Securities Exchange Act, which created the SEC. Pecora intended for the SEC to be the cop on the corner of Wall Street. That cop has been compromised for some time. It has been compromised by its leadership which look forward to the day when they leave their $200,000 year jobs with the SEC for their 5 million a year jobs with Wall Street banks or the law firms that represent them, e.g., former Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami.

The other issues with the SEC are minutiae.

Regards,

It’s worth another search at Wall Street on Parade, on Robert Khuzami, a master of the revolving door. A Deutsche Bank whistleblower I spoke with is something less than a fan and his story is quite an intrigue, but time grows short. You can read an account of Eric Ben-Artzi’s adventure with Khuzami here. In addition to being a partner in a law firm servicing Wall Street, Khuzami directed enforcement for the SEC, and became general counsel of Deutsche Bank AG. Spin and spin again, he’s now Deputy US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (Wall Street). Cue the Church Lady: How convenient!

My hat’s off to Senator Warren for any effort she makes taking on the infernal revolving door before it brings down the country. Again.

Howie’s earlier synopsis of and comment on Warren’s proposals

Prepared text of Senator Warren’s speech at the National Press Club

Text of the proposed Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act

One page version

Bill Summary

Endorsements

A bit more on the revolving door, with a Manafort angle

The post Will Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Tilt at Windmills Evolve to a Direct Hit? appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The Graham-Cassidy attempt to hamstring the health care of millions– the latest fruit of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s eternal gift to democracy, the Citizens United accelerant of bribery– has flamed out. But the donors to bought-and-paid for members of Congress will not go quietly, not when their congressional minions have their tin cups out. Increasingly desperate to fill campaign coffers, the minions seek to please their paymasters. Politico is reporting Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) vows to vote against a budget resolution that doesn’t resuscitate the health care battle. Noises are being made about reconciliation instructions for both health care and tax reform in the fiscal 2018 budget resolution. This might increase the odds of more happy flameouts, including of tax gifts to the very well-heeled. That would displease plenty of big donors. But even if taxes become the major focus, kicking the health care can down the road, Democrats shouldn’t let up on educating the public on the perils of mischief like Graham-Cassidy. And they need to make the case for real health care evolutions, explaining why significant improvement requires sidelining profits of the big donors fighting single-payer, primarily insurance and pharmaceutical interests.

Toward that end, perhaps a bit of spiritual guidance. Enclosed below is the September 25th letter to the Senate from the Interfaith Healthcare Coalition, with their message that “healhcare is an essential human right,” and detailing risks facing the most vulnerable among us.

September 25, 2017

Dear Senators:

We, the more than 3,000 undersigned faith leaders representing Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist traditions, believe that healthcare is an essential human right. We believe that individuals and families should not have to worry about the future of their healthcare coverage and whether or not it will be ripped away.

It was a tremendous relief that Congress was working in an open, bipartisan way to improve our healthcare system. But now, we are outraged that Congress would abandon these efforts for another partisan attempt that would take healthcare away from millions of our people. For the sake of our people, please oppose the Graham-Cassidy proposal and support the reauthorization of the vital Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) program.

The Graham-Cassidy proposal would cause millions to lose health coverage, and people experiencing vulnerability, sickness, and poverty would be hit the hardest. Over the next decade, ACA funding would be eliminated, Medicaid would be gutted, and critical protections, such as for people with preexisting conditions, could be eliminated in certain states. Graham-Cassidy would end Medicaid as we know it by instituting a per capita cap and shifting billions of dollars onto states. The result would be nothing short of reducing access to quality healthcare, raising premiums, and eliminating protections for millions of Americans. In 2027 alone, Graham-Cassidy would cut federal health care spending by $299 billion. More than 37 million children would be affected by cuts to Medicaid.

Graham-Cassidy not only threatens the health coverage of millions of children through cuts to Medicaid, but it also delays bipartisan congressional action to extend funding for programs like the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Since its creation in 1997, the uninsured rate of low- and middle-class children has decreased from 14% to just 5%. Without reauthorization, CHIP funding will expire at the end of September, and the nearly 9 million children on CHIP might begin to receive termination notices.

We also urge you to protect funding for DSH, which supports safety-net hospitals that provide health services to people without insurance. Without this funding, many hospitals will face difficult decisions to cut services or close entirely. In rural areas especially, lower-income Americans will face a crisis. The $43 billion in proposed funding cuts over the next eight years will cause job loss, a decrease in the quality and number of services hospitals provide, and create life-threatening gaps in healthcare service for many Americans.

To allow Graham-Cassidy to pass the Senate– and to allow the CHIP and DSH programs to lapse– is to allow the health of America’s most vulnerable people to face unnecessary and immoral obstacles. Jobs will be lost, local economies will be harmed, and access to healthcare will become a challenge for many. Therefore, we deplore this proposed legislation and these potential funding cuts and pray that you will work with your colleagues in Congress to prevent any disruption of healthcare for Americans.

As faith leaders, it is our duty to care for and minister to people in our communities. As Senators, you have a similar duty to care for your constituents. Please focus on bipartisanship rather than political posturing, oppose Graham-Cassidy, and extend CHIP and DSH funding.

Sincerely,
National Faith Leaders

Here’s a few comments that typify the unifying views of the religiously diverse signatories:

Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice:

Once again, a group of white, male Senators have crafted a plan that is out of touch with the realities of millions of ordinary families and fails the moral tests of our faith. The Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson proposal is immoral policy that would hurt millions of people, and their plan to rush it through without knowing the impact is reckless. This new repeal bill goes far beyond the BCRA by eliminating all ACA premium and copay supports, gutting Medicaid, and removing protections for people with pre-existing conditions. These policies target people struggling to get by, the sick, and the elderly—the very people Jesus teaches us to put first. Catholic sisters stand with our nation’s most vulnerable people and we must stand against this anti-health, anti-life legislation.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights:

Our insistence on the moral duty of the government to ensure health care for all comes from our grounding both in human rights, and in Jewish teachings. Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, one of the most important twentieth-century legal authorities, notes, “When poor people are ill and cannot afford medical expenses, the community sends a doctor to visit them, and the medicine is paid for by the communal fund.” (Tzitz Eliezer 5:4) And Rabbi Shlomo Goren, former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel declares, “the government may not excuse itself from responsibility toward the sick since the government is responsible for the health of the people.” (Assia journal 21:40) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights requires that all countries provide “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including … medical care.”

Colin Christopher, Islamic Society of North America:

We have a moral obligation in this country to care for those who are young, elderly, sick, or unable to fend for themselves. If we can build the mightiest defense system the world has ever known, we also have the ability to fund the best preventative health care system. The Graham-Cassidy bill would decimate patient protections, decrease care, and directly lead to thousands of preventable lives lost that are currently being saved by the affordability and coverage of the ACA.

Sr. Patricia McDermott, RSM, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas:

The Sisters of Mercy, who have been providing healthcare services for people who are poor and vulnerable for nearly 175 years in the U.S., believe that access to health care and adequate health insurance coverage is a fundamental human right. Rather than taking away health care for millions of Americans over the next several years, we should be finding ways to strengthen and expand health coverage and improve affordability.

Dr. Noel Castellanos, Christian Community Development Association:

As people of faith we lift our voices to declare to our lawmakers that eliminating healthcare for millions of vulnerable Americans is shameful and immoral. To do so is putting politics over the needs of people and cannot be justified. Fix ACA so more Americans can get coverage, don’t obliterate it at the expense of the poor.

Diane Randall, Friends Committee on National Legislation:

The Cassidy-Graham health care proposal violates the very values that lie at the core of Quaker morals. This bill would threaten the health and dignity of millions of Americans, especially low-income children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Cassidy-Graham includes extreme cuts to Medicaid, undermines critical protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions, shifts billions of dollars onto states, and will cause tens of millions of Americans to lose health coverage. Moreover, advancing this legislation will destroy the productive and bipartisan work currently taking place. Rather than trying to force through yet another rushed, ultra-partisan, dysfunctional health care proposal that causes millions of Americans to lose health coverage, Congress should refocus back on the bipartisan negotiations so desperately needed to stabilize the insurance markets and lower health care costs.

As good as members of Congress are at feigning religion, they might take heed of the moral imperatives expressed in such sentiments. Or at least the increasing number of voters embracing those ideals.

A quick plug, the most promising way out of a health care system fractured by special interests is the proposal by Bernie Sanders, as expressed in his NY Times essay. The more the public learns of it, the more it appears to warm to it, and to discount the special interest knives flashing across mainstream media. If there’s another economic crisis gifted by Wall Street, ramping up the bankruptcies, foreclosures and general miseries from family health crisis cost bombs, the public may warm up with torches and pitchforks, or at least take a sober look at what many of those claiming to represent them in Congress are really all about. Sure, the proposal is a work in progress. So progress. There is no other way out of our quagmire.

Don’t think there’s plenty of time because of the most recent failure to upend health care. When the big money– including insurance and pharmaceutical– sloshes about both parties, it has a hell of track record of making steady gains, fighting on a number of fronts. Here’s an informative piece from The Intercept on lobbyists cranking up to derail Single-Payer as it builds steam. Here’s another, on Republican efforts to pre-empt attempts by states to create their own single-payer programs, revealing the farce in claims that Graham-Cassidy repeal efforts aim to empower the states.

Allow a digression, a nod to Senator McCain, responding to his summer health care vote. It also revisits a long-haul look at the slide toward banana republic status greased by Washington’s campaign finance industry, a not-so-distant cousin to the vampire squid.

Thank you again, Senator McCain, and to Senator Collins and the others jumping that dark ship flying the Jolly Roger.

On health care, Congress should take the sweetest of oaths: do no harm.

From a translation of the line of the Hippocratic Oath, “I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.” Play doctor, Congress, but put your heart in it.

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