Mechanical Failure

I was worried about my friend “Barry” who needed to get a new car battery. I was also watching some infuriating videos about the politicians in different parts of the country. I fell asleep. Then I woke up from a silly dream that was influenced by my friend and the videos; so I thought I’d share it with you. Honest! This situation really was in my dream. Hope you like it.

* * START of DREAM * * *

Barry’s car breaks down in the middle of the road and he calls out for help. Adang Sheet, the mechanic from Triple-Bypass A is the first to show up.

Barry: Thanks for coming! I’m glad I subscribed to your Free Car Assistance Program. But before you work your magic, I want you to know that I have a very tight budget. So knowing this, can you still get my car to start running?

Adang: Sure can pardner, they don’t call me “Adang Shifty Sheet” for nothin’.

Hearing that nickname, Barry gets very anxious about the idiot before him but he lets Adang figure out what’s wrong.

A few minutes later …

Adang: Well, looks like you have a dead battery, mister. I have a BRAND NEW one in my truck. I can sell it to you for $500.

Barry: $500?!? Batteries in Walmart only cost $300 at the most!

Adang: Sure they do. But they don’t sparkle as good as mine. I painted ‘em muhself.

Barry: I don’t really care for sparkles. I just want my car to run.

Adang: Tell you what, since you look like an honest feller, I can sell it to you for $350. It’ll save you a trip to Walmart.

Barry: Gee thanks for the offer but I can’t afford anything over $100 now. Do you have any other solution?

Realizing he’s dealing with a smart man, Adang says: Lesse now, I can sell you an OLD battery at the back. I’ll sell it for $100. It doesn’t charge anymore but I can exchange it and at least get your car running fer ya!

Barry: So you could get my car running if we use an old battery?

Adang: Sure can.

Barry: So why can’t you use MY old battery instead of YOUR old battery to get my car running?

Adang looks at Barry with disgust and, without another word, he jumps the car and Adang successfully starts Barry’s car.

Barry: Thanks for getting my car running again. Sorry you didn’t make any money this time.

Adang: Before you go, can I ask a little donation for the LMA, which is a non-profit organization I just started?

Barry: LMA? What does that stand for?

Adang: Lousy Mechanics of America — someone’s gotta stand up for people like me.

Barry laughs uncontrollably while Adamn wonders what’s so funny.

Barry: You aren’t very good at this, are you?

Adang: I guess not. That’s why I’m the president of the LMA.

Barry (laughing even more): Well, you’re a good mechanic but a lousy salesman … but you’re kinda honest, and you’ve got ambition … I’ve got connections in the government. How’d you like a change of career? How’d you like to run for the Senate?!?

Adang: Dang! Hot digity dawg! Let’s go pardner!

And that’s how Adang wound up in the Senate floor.

* * END of DREAM * * *

When you think of many politicians, do you wonder if they got their start as a member of the LMA? I certainly do … but that’s just me.

TGIF people!

Raoul

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” — Albert Einstein

“Stupidity is personal achievement which transcends national boundaries.” — Albert Einstein

“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.” — Simon Cameron

JOKE OF THE WEEK

Thanks to Butch of Amarillo, Texas

Original art by Raoul Pascual.

Video of the Week

Thanks to Butch of Amarillo, Texas

Parting Shots

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Thanks to Drew of Anaheim, CA

Thanks to Wyne of Manila, Philippines

Thanks to Maling of New Manila, Philippines

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

I found these:

My good friend (and jokester) Terry and I came up with this.

SUBSCRIBE

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Illustrations: Nancy Ohanian

There’s been much media commentary related to the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, widely regarded as one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in history. 

I’m going to go into the wayback machine for my take on it, below, a piece written in 2007 for the late Gatsby Magazine, one of the international magazines I wrote Letters from Washington columns for. It’s a stab at divining the self-righteous mentality that popped open Pandora’s Box with the March 20th, 2003 invasion of Iraq under the false pretenses of Saddam Hussein harboring weapons of mass destruction and being in league with Al-Qaeda. This was amplified by journalists and politicians who should have known better, some of whom likely did.

As some predicted, WMD’s were never found, something George W. Bush treated with hilarity at a Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner a year later.

Pandora’s lid has never closed. The ongoing staggering blows to humanity still cascading from the invasion of Iraq and related post-9/11 cultural mayhem can be examined via recent studies of the Watson Institute at Brown University, including this summary, about the Costs of War which can only shock and awe, and dismay. Don’t just glance at it, spend time with it. Four or five million dead from direct and indirect impacts, by any measure a rambling holocaust. A federal price tag over $8 trillion that reordered our national priorities. The harms inflicted on our soldiers.

Many of the journalists and pundits interpreting the world for us now were children or teens at the time of that invasion. A far larger number, including many contemporary politicians, weren’t even born at the time of the Vietnam War, and many aren’t likely sure of why Dan Ellsberg set the gold standard of moral nobility, as described by Patrick Lawrence. Anyone fortunate to know Dan, even if just through his deeds and words, is elevated by that lucky break.

Some of the discussions on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq were framed by what lessons have been learned, or as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it in this thoughtful March 7th seminar, Remembering and Misremembering the Iraq War. From the audience, I ventured the comment that we must not have learned much as we’re still trying to prosecute, imprison and destroy whistleblowers who try to enlighten us about the Forever Wars and other government deceptions. In particular, the disgraceful prosecution of journalist/publisher Julian Assange continues at this very moment. A nutshell on the Assange matter is here.

Want more detail on why a foreign journalist is being prosecuted by the US under the 1917 Espionage Act, the first such prosecution of any journalist, and why though never convicted of a crime Assange has been in London in solitary confinement for four years in a Belmarsh Prison dungeon? Here’s a number of excellent speakers at the Belmarsh Tribunal in DC, held at the National Press Club, of which there was not a peep in the mainstream press, including The Washington Post, despite luminaries including Jeremy Corbin, Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg.

A strong perspective on the invasion comes from Joe Lauria, editor of Consortium News, describing his experience reporting on the run-up to the invasion, the complicity of most of mainstream media and the undermining of those not joining in the cheerleading. Also insightful, Parker Molloy’s account of where some of those cheerleaders are now. One big lesson, if you’re going to screw up big, be sure it’s in tandem with the screw-ups of Washington’s elites.

I’d have bet big that George’s image was deservedly irreparable. I’d have lost. He’s been rehabilitated by Washington elites, first and foremost by Democrats. Go figure. Perhaps some fear raising the bar.

George whiles away his post-presidency with a paintbrush. Subjects include immigrants. Thus far, the number of war refugees and displaced persons after the invasion of Iraq is 38 million. I wonder if George’s canvases ever scream at him.

The Howdy Countdown: A Look Back

Iraq isn’t the only cliff George W. Bush ran America off. He has collapsed the moral high ground America
once stood on in the eyes of the world. Consider German citizen Khaled el-Masri: kidnapped while
vacationing in Macedonia, secretly imprisoned in Afghanistan and then tortured for months. Oops,
wrong guy. He can’t get compensation, can’t even get an apology. Everyone now knows what happened,
but the Bush administration trots out the State Secrets Doctrine, claiming Masri’s day in court
would strike a blow to American security. Bush’s minions on the Supreme Court denied hearing the
case, effectively giving el-Masri no legal recourse in the US. Specific evidence that might reveal real
secrets can be shielded from the public. Any leader worth his salt would say “Here’s your money, we’re
terribly sorry, and the people responsible will be called to account.” Protect the innocent, protect the
weak. Not with Bush in charge.

Masri isn’t alone in such grievances of kidnapping and torture of the innocent. Other draconian tales
are surfacing, as is the woeful reality that the Bush administration has long been talking out both sides
of its mouth about what constitutes torture and what will be refrained from. Moreover, the number of innocents in America’s Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, is anyone’s guess. For them, Bush crushed the concept
of habeas corpus – the right to challenge unlawful detention – the foundation of legal rights for the individual. He claims this bedrock of individual rights would clog the courts.

Watching America’s daily train wreck, observers beyond US borders still drift into shock at the re-election
of our dear leader. They are more understanding of the 2000 election, figuring it loosely defined. They
shouldn’t be. All Americans ever needed to know about Fearless Leader’s potential for rationalizing
mayhem was already known back in 2000 and is reduced to just a single number: 152. That’s the number
of executions Bush presided over as Governor of Texas. A nationwide record in the last century, it was
recently edged by the current Texas governor, Rick Perry. But Perry needed not just Texas bloodlust;
he also needed more years in office to best Bush’s grisly accomplishment.

To top the list of chilling details, lawyers who either had been or were later disbarred or sanctioned,
defended a third of those executed under Bush. In nearly another third of those executed, defence lawyers presented no evidence or merely a single witness during sentencing. Time and again, sleeping
through trial, showing up drunk, lack of preparation – no problem for these guardians of justice. When
some Texas counties sought even a limited public defender system to assist those who could not afford
counsel, Bush vetoed a bill that would do that. Is the Texas horror show that Bush presided over
coming into focus?

Studies indicate that only 5% of those predicted by experts to be violent in the future actually commit 
violent acts in prison. But Texas prosecutors frequently  used testimony from psychiatrists who never examined the defendants, yet claim with deadly certainty they would commit violent crimes in the future. Texas crime labs have had their fair share of scandals including faked autopsies, false lab tests and bungled DNA. A special prosecutor concluded that one popular expert witness for prosecutors, a doctor, had falsified evidence in at least thirty cases.

Racial bias? Of course. If you’re a minority accused of killing a non-Hispanic white, you’re far more likely
to die. Perhaps this descends from Texas traditions of lynching, and if that’s a cheap shot, so be it. But
there’s never been a groundswell of sympathy for those living on Texas death row, averaging over a
decade of 23 hours a day in a non-airconditioned cell measuring 1.5 x 2.7 meters. Sadism, some might
say, but never a consideration for clemency.

It speaks volumes that Alberto Gonzales was Bush’s pardon attorney for 57 of Bush’s 152 executions.
This practitioner of Gonzo law, you may recall, was recently Bush’s Attorney General of the US. At one
point, the White House floated trial balloons to see if he could be a viable contender to the US Supreme
Court. More recently he clutched the heart of a scandal involving the dismissal of US Attorneys
who were reluctant to engage in unjustifiable prosecutions aimed at helping Republican election
efforts. 

Shortly before Gonzo was shown the gate, Bush was pushing legal changes that would allow
Gonzales to expedite state executions across the nation. Alan Berlow, for “The Atlantic” magazine, did
journeyman work examining the briefings Gonzales gave before Texas executions. They reveal Gonzales
to be nothing more than a cog in Bush’s well-oiled state death machine. His abbreviated briefings left
out critical information and were usually presented in a half hour or less on the day of the execution.
The only person spared execution was an alleged serial killer who claimed credit for every murder
he could, and when even the prosecutors said he didn’t kill the person he was sentenced to death for,
Bush had no choice, claiming that in every trial, the state “adequately answered innocence or guilt” in a
“fair trial”.

Leaving that grim hilarity aside, I asked a death penalty appeals expert, Professor David Dow of the
University of Houston Law Center, if Bush fell short on his death penalty review duties. Dow says the only
question Bush asked was whether the condemned had gone through the courts, and that’s “ridiculous.”
There was never a thought to procedural barriers that prevented a fair hearing of the merits of a defendant’s claims. Moreover, says Dow, “The standard for considering clemency goes beyond what a court could examine in standard proceedings. It includes matters that have happened since the time of trial, including what the inmate has done with his life in prison.” There’s no evidence Bush ever considered such matters. He twisted the whole concept of clemency. The exception to this, of course, is the clemency he granted Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, ScooterLibby.”

Dow believes innocent people – not just of state of mind or circumstance, but of the actual
crime – were executed under Bush. For example, before Gary Graham was executed, two out of three
eyewitnesses had said he didn’t commit the murder. It’s sobering to consider that a fourth of all convictions shown to be false by DNA testing also involved false confessions. False confessions are not just made by the mentally ill or retarded, and one doesn’t even have to be tortured. It’s terrifying that some legal experts believe the number of innocent people on death row across the country may be as high as six in a hundred.

In 2000, as depressing as it was to know something of Bush’s execution fetish and watch him get the
Republican nomination, it was more dismaying to watch the Democratic Party. When that fellow who
had two out of three eyewitnesses claim he was innocent was executed, Vice President Al Gore – lately
of Nobel Peace Prize fame – took the opportunity to express his support for the death penalty despite
the inevitability of innocent people being executed. 

It reminded me of the sinking feeling I had when 1992 presidential primary candidate Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, demonstrated he was tough on crime by returning to his state for the execution of a man so brain damaged that, at his last meal, he put aside his pecan pie for later.

Just as Bush still cows many opponents by accusing them of being soft on terror, the mere fear of
being accused of being soft on crime was enough to prompt opponents to avert their gaze from the
abomination that Bush rode in on. They didn’t yell that we must at least consider his execution milestone
and with it, the prospect that George W. Bush – this born-again Christian, this compassionate conservative – was morally challenged. It is to their eternal shame that they lacked either the courage or the ability to articulate the obvious. He was reckless with life, caring nothing for justice or mercy – only political expediency – then why would Bush worry about the prospect of a collateral damage of a few hundred thousand innocent Iraqis?

So, now we are all prisoners of Fearless Leader. Every day, we make a mark on our collective cell
wall, knowing that we will get no time off for good behaviour. At least we know how long our sentence
will last. Meanwhile, the dreams of those less lucky – whether in Guantanamo or on a trip to the exotic
lands of extraordinary rendition – have nothing left but to compete with the worst nightmares of Orwell
and Kafka.

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Leaving the Gate Open

WARNING: Provoking Political Thought. Scroll down and skip if you are sensitive to these things. I mean it!

It’s been a long day and I am past my midnight deadline. So I will steal a provoking essay I got in the mail today. I edited a lot out of respect for people with opposing viewpoints but the kernel of the writer’s idea are quite provoking. What do you think of this?

IF YOU LEAVE THE GATE OPEN

If you leave the gate open, the cow will wander off. So if you intentionally leave the gate open, you want the cow to wander off. You can’t blame stupidity or laziness. It is intentional.

If you cut police budgets – you will get more crime on the streets. So if you intentionally cut police budgets — you want more crime on the streets.

If you cut back the supply of oil – gas prices will go up. So if you intentionally cut back the supply of oil — you want gas prices to go up.

If you print trillions of dollars without increasing the supply of goods inflation will hit hard. So if you intentionally print trillions of dollars without more goods — you want inflation to hit hard.

If you leave the southern border wide open — you get more drug trafficking and human trafficking. So if you intentionally leave the border wide open –you want more drug trafficking and human trafficking.

If you shut down 40% of the supply of baby formula –you’ll get a huge shortage. When you know a huge baby formula shortage is coming — because of the FDA’s actions — and you purposefully do nothing to prevent it — you INTENDED the crisis.

It is time to recognize there are people who want crisis, chaos, riots, conflicts in your town. These are not foolish or misguided people. Doesn’t matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican and it doesn’t matter who you voted for. As long as you are an American you should seriously consider this while you can still make a difference. They know what they are doing and they are headed somewhere you might not want to go.

It’s been a long day.
Just sharing a thought from someone else. TGIF people!

Raoul

JOKE OF THE WEEK

Thanks to Michael of Los Angeles, CA

Parting Shots

Thanks to Michael of LA, CA

Thanks to Naomi of N Hollywood, CA

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

These I found

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The View From My Cave

I feel a little better today. More tests are needed but my doctor thinks I’m gonna survive.

Since my illness, I have been hibernating inside my cave so I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up to a different world. Seems like I haven’t opened my email for weeks. I glimpse at the headlines and popular videos and here’s a random list of what I observe. See if you agree with me.

Media hasn’t changed. Biased reporting and omission are still the same in both sides of American politics. Now that Trump is no longer around, there’s not a lot of shouting (although I hear a little tweak from his small corner in the world). Late night talk is boring (although they try their best to be sensational). Some dare poke fun at Pres. Biden sleeping and falling down the stairs but I want to know how he is really doing. I heard he’s going to build a trillion dollar government infrastructure. That should be good, right? I wonder why VP Kamala is laughing a lot when she is confronted with some serious questions. Isn’t she supposed to be the border czar? Why do I see droves of illegals crossing the border (thousands everyday I heard) … many children in cages? Are they infected? Are they getting vaccinated before the American citizens? I notice gas price is a dollar more than last year. Weren’t we oil independent? Weren’t we even exporting oil? Is it at the expense of Climate Change? Didn’t everybody (from both sides) hate Governors Cuomo and Newsom? What’s the secret to their staying power?

I heard George Floyd’s killer (I could never remember his name) is declared guilty. Last year it was all about White violence against the Blacks. This year it’s about Asian violence … funny that they’re afraid to mention the race that is doing most of the violence. There’s a sale in Aldi’s — blueberries for 99 cents a pack! There are lots of toilet paper! Whoopie! Our butts are saved! The education system is finally holding in-person classes. My grand kids are happy. The restaurants are finally open. I wish I could say the same for other businesses. Many shops around me are bankrupt. The shopping malls are still empty. Local air travel is available. The stock market is in a roller coaster ride. Investment forecasters are contradicting each other. Where do you invest?

Covid in the US is dwindling down but not in Asia including the Philippines, India, Japan and more. There, life has gone from bad to worse as doctors and nurses are dying. The rest are scrambling for less effective vaccines — and they’re even paying good money for it! “It’s better than nothing,” they say. I’m praying for them. There’s a civil war in Myanmar — what a mess! China is extending its borders in the South China sea and about to swallow Taiwan. American battleships are floating close by. Russia is about to pounce on Ukraine. With no restriction, Iran is getting closer to developing their nuclear weapons. Israel has launched several attacks for their survival. Poor Prince Philip passed away but Queen Liz is still alive and kicking. Meanwhile in Hollywood … nah! … who cares about Hollywood?!

Are my perceptions accurate? Am I missing something? You guys decide if things are good or bad. I’m  crawling back to my cave to sleep. Wake me when the war’s over.

TGIF People!

Raoul

Joke of the Week

Rodney was one of my closest friends. He was very creative and he would make up his own jokes. Here is one of his jokes.

Video of the Week

Thanks to Don who shared this sad, sad video

Parting Shots

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Thanks to Mel of Washington D.C.

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

Thanks to Peter Paul of South Pasadena, CA

The post 5 Deadly Sins appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Are you mourning this year’s lack of Carnival’s spiritual cleanse, its satirical sorting of society’s woes to give us perspective? I am. And so I retreat now to past frolics. It’s hard to overstate how rotten the past year has been, in so many ways, or the dim prospects it left us, as we await whatever next escapes Pandora’s Box. The shakeups underpinned by carnivals around the world, with their myriad styles and cultural melting pot histories, would be damn welcome now. But as they’d be world class superspreaders, we must make do with echos, such as New Orleans refugees in my DC neighborhood paying homage by decorating their houses, and more robust statements throughout homes in New Orleans, where there’s no shortage of Mardi Gras artifacts and artisans.

Below is a past take that imparts a bit on the roots of Carnival, and reprises a musing on the potential of Washington, DC as a target-rich Carnival city. It ricochets off the 2012 election, which then seemed the heights of improbable political folly. Little did I know it was merely bedrock for the jaw-droppers to come. I thought of taking a stab at what an imaginary Washington Carnival would look like this year. My circuits quickly overloaded. But you can put your imagination to work. The 800-pound orange gorilla in the room, and his gang of grifters, presents a smorgasbord of choices. How to satirize a President so beyond the pale he ought to present a plausible Covid brain-fog defense? Picture him in a medieval plague mask. Or an executioner’s hood. Serial killers are where you find them. The real costs of breaking down government oversight in every way possible at the command of looney Koch-minded operatives. And the tragedy-tinged grand finale of the stop-the-steal con. Challenging, but I guarantee that when they are given the opportunity, Carnival satirists around the world will be skinning America alive, so perhaps we dodged a hail of Carnival bullets. The Biden Administration, already hamstringing itself by whittling down promised $2,000 relief/stimulus checks, looks ready to line up new themes. Ah, Joe. Designated OMB hitter Neera Tanden, a gift of the Clintons that keeps on giving, so deep in so many big-money pockets, emblematic of an influx of people into Washington willing to do anything, advocate anything, for money. And there is so much money. So much of it dark and well-laundered. The bundlers lining up at the revolving door. Legions of them as eager as Eric Holder to profitably insulate Wall Street from consequences as it sets the country up for another fall. Check out the art of Nancy Ohanian, for a wealth of float concepts.

Everything old is new again. Washington’s potential never runs dry. Tens of millions in dark money promoting Supreme Court Justices like Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, as if in a John Grisham plot. The collapsing pillars of media narratives that Putin dictates the results of multi-billion dollar elections. Relax, Putin remains a prime target as an underwear poisoner. Media scampering on to the QAnon freak show. And in Congress! Fascist Proud Boys as the Lost Boys. Guns, guns and guns. Missing foreign influence? Netanyahu and the Saudis, anyone? The world’s richest union buster unleashing his corporate opinion stylists on progressives like Bernie, undermining Medicare-for-All, even as the pandemic loomed. How will they pay for it? should be their epitaphs. The calculated media stovepipes thrashing about without their profitable Donald, the orange-hued goose who laid their golden eggs. The Kafkaesque plight of Julian Assange reaping the whirlwind after daring to expose the horrors of forever wars. And the tandem future of investigative journalism. National intelligence alumni morphing into cable media talking heads with undisclosed clients. Monopolies as far as the eye can see. Political correctness on crack. In newsrooms! The DNC and the Lincoln Project, bipartisan grifters together again. Mitch and Chuck. Nancy as a vendor — ice cream cake for the masses! Renegade cops as unaccountable Amokiteers. Compounding climate catastrophes. Oh, and our ham-handed handling of wild and free-roaming microbes. Bellwethers warning of other microbes to come knocking. So much to cleanse from our souls. Let your imaginations wonder, what Carnival might gift us when our Carnival world is finally released from pandemic hibernation. Let’s hope America can take a joke, because Carnival will be coming for us.

Read Skip Kaltenheuser’s Carnival Beckons: A Carnival Musing for 2013

The post Ode to Carnival Past and Future, Sadly Not Present. appeared first on Traveling Archive.

A New Day in America

First of all, thanks for your concern about my health last week. The short of it was my blood pressure went up and the meds took it down too fast for my body to adjust and got me nauseus. I was bed-ridden from Friday afternoon until Monday evening. Even now I still feel woozy. Not used to this because I rarely get sick. Anyway, getting better everyday.

The mood in the White House changed on Inauguration day. The smiles and grimaces in people’s mouths 4 years ago switched places. The mainstream media was filled with festivity while the alternative news outlets were relatively quiet and behaved.

I listened to the speeches with objectivity (at least I think I did). And I realized inaugural speeches have some things in common.

1. All incoming Presidents are in disbelief that they are actually going to control the world.
2. They have generous hearts and promise they will be the President of all people and not just the ones who voted for them. And they promise to unite the parties.
3. They promise complete transparency.
4. The whole family of the elected officials are there in attendance and sometimes we get to see the whole kaboodle for the first time and in all their fashion statements.
5. The first family’s dirty laundry are not usually displayed … yet. No one wants to spoil the party.
6. It’s mostly always cold and the sun only starts warming the place near the end of the ceremonies. I ask myself, why not choose a warmer season? Why does it have to be in the first month?
7. But above all, despite the hostility of the elections, there is awe that America’s constitution is still preserved. Few countries can say they have a peaceful coup d’etat.

I for one wish all the best for the new President. I think everyone should give him a chance. Whether one is in the winning or the losing side, we are all still Americans. I like to believe we love our country and want what’s best for future generations. Our facts and our approach to success is just different.

Some say a good egg is cooked “over easy” and some like it “sunny side up.”  If you’re the cook, you decide what’s for breakfast. And if you don’t eat the food, you starve.

I like the video Don shares below. It shows how one instrument and different skills can create beautiful music.

Be safe, be healthy, and remember: Cooperation is always more powerful than competition. TGIF people! God bless America!

Raoul

“If GRACE depends on our cooperation, then it is no longer GRACE.”
— Martin Luther

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Mel of Washington, DC  for sharing this joke.

Video: The Operation

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, BC

The memories this video invokes.

When I was lying on the gurney while being wheeled into the operating theater at 7 am for my quad bypass the anesthesiologist was standing at the door and stopped me to ask what my name was.  After I replied he said. “Good morning, Mr. Copeland.”  Then, looking down at his clipboard, he continued, “Ah, yes, you’re in for the sex change operation.”

I didn’t really laugh at that moment but have done so many times since.  And I’ve often wondered whether he was trying to gauge by my reaction just how much juice to put into my drip. –– Don

Video: Bolero On One Cello

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, BC

Never really cared for Ravel’s Bolero. It became so popular after it was featured in the movie “10” with Bo Derek that I cringed every time I heard it. I once read that it is being played somewhere in the world every 15 seconds.

So I was surprised that this clever single-instrument performance could capture my interest, but perhaps it’s because it’s a parody and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Hope you like it. –– Don

Parting Shots

Thanks to Rodney of Manitoba, B.C.

Thanks to Mel of Washington, DC

Thanks to Mel of Washington, D.C. for these last two jokes.

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1. They are terrified of Trump, his base, his threats, his violent followers, and afraid of being slammed with primary challenges from the far right Trumpian maniacs in their next election cycle.
2. They are cynical opportunists, cashing in on the fund raising frenzy, duping and gouging the pathetic, gullible and frightened conspiracy believing American subset, ramping up their own 2024 presidential campaigns by sucking up to the Trump base and entertaining the QAnon, OAN, Trumpian fantasies as, My God!, maybe…true?
3. They are deeply and perversely ignorant, racist, anti-democracy, neofascistic cretins who have been disgorged from the sewers and dumpsters of America, courtesy of their Enabler in Chief Donald Trump, and they are woefully unable to grasp the very basic essence of fact, integrity and decency.

But perhaps I am too hard on these fine people?

No, I don’t think so.

I’m not worried about America. Biden will become president on January 20th and the long hard road to healing and rebuilding and restoring our country, our democracy, and saving the lives of our people from Covid and climate change will begin.

The post Loyalty, the Cult and the Incompetent Authoritarian appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Tonka the Mighty Dog

When our corgi, Tonka, was a puppy, he was an excitable gnawing machine. He’d chew on the legs of the chairs, the walls, my slippers… but most of all he would strangle the necks of our 3 cats just to show them who was boss. This week I was pleasantly surprised to find all 3 cats lying in “Tonka” territory and King Tonka relaxing with them. Tonka has finally matured. They finally get along.

Wouldn’t it be nice if America matured? Instead of reacting to every news item, and stressing everyone out, can we just watch and observe? Don’t be a sucker to the news media’s little game.

Three weeks after the stormy US election day and still no official winner has been declared. Cries of foul play reverberate among the Republicans. The Democrats proceed as if they already won. Sure there are rants from both sides but I do notice “a relative” calm. Why? Campaigning is over. Convincing is over. We’re just waiting for the dust to settle. The political boxing match has transformed into the quiet excitement of a grand master chess tournament. I know we all can get passionate about our politics but no matter who wins, one thing is certain: America is truly divided; It means there are just as many people on the other side of your politics.

Be safe, be healthy, and remember: maturity isn’t based on years but based on experience. TGIF people!

Raoul

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Mel of Washington, D.C.  for sharing these jokes.

So many enjoyed the Jewish Jokes last week that I decided to share some more from clean jokes from the old-time Jewish comedians.

Video: Contagious Laughter

Thanks to Ed of Greater Manila, Philippines

Tom’s Puns

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA who sent this pun.

Parting Shots

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, B.C.

Thanks to Joji of Antipolo, Philippines

Thanks Naomi, the animal lover of North Hollywood, CA for this adorable gag

Thanks to Peter Paul of S Pasadena, CA. When you look in the mirror, does this thought ever cross your mind?

The post MORE Jewish Jokes appeared first on Traveling Archive.

You might already know Elliott Negin, whose writings I worked into with Dance with the One that Brought You — BERNIE! on NPR’s red-baiting of Bernie, and Scott Pruitt’s Doublespeak Clarifies Him, on yet another disastrous industrial strength Trump appointee hellbent on ransacking the environment. If not, it’s never too late. You can catch other writings by Elliott at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where Elliott is a senior writer, and at a number of other publications including The Huffington Post.

Elliott’s guest post below underscores that corporate behemoth Exon-Mobile, the world’s fourth-largest oil company and largest that is investor-owned, takes top honors among the world’s phonies. While its public relations people now fret about climate change and claim support for the Paris climate agreement, it continues to pour money into outfits that undermine public awareness of man’s role in global warming and that derail efforts to regulate energy and the environment. While claiming to support a carbon tax, it greases climate denying legislators who oppose it. Does Exxon-Mobil have any connections to the Dark Money sloshing about Washington? Who knows, but I’d bet on it. Recall that Exxon’s scientists warned its executives about the critical impacts of man-made climate change over forty years ago and that their scientists have since been cutting edge in climate science, their knowledge just not shared with the public.

No one is short on cynicism these days, but it’s worth considering such corporate phonies now, as Amy Coney Barrett is catapulted onto the Supreme Court with an irrevocable corporate fix. Her father was a lawyer for Shell Oil for decades and a major player in the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying entity for 600 oil and gas corporations. Why focus on a parent? Because when Barrett was asked about climate change her reply, given while swaths of the American West were aflame, was that she had “no firm views” and couldn’t “offer any kind of informed opinion” on the causes of global warming. Most fourth-graders could best that know-nothing answer. So it sounds like Barrett will be another oil and gas tentacle, at a time the API and affiliates, including Shell, have a lot of skin in the game in cases coming before the Supreme Court.

Elliott describes other tentacles below. — Skip Kaltenheuser

ExxonMobil Claims Shift on Climate But Continues to Fund Climate Science Deniers
Courtesy of Elliott Negin, senior writer

After decades of public denial, ExxonMobil now acknowledges that “the risk of climate change is real” and says it is “committed to being part of the solution,” at least according to the company’s website and statements. To that end, the largest investor-owned oil company in the world claims it supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement.

But the company’s recently released grantmaking report shows that it has not ended its two-decade-long campaign to stymie government efforts to address climate change. By ExxonMobil’s own accounting, it gave $690,000 to eight climate science denier groups in 2019, a 10 percent drop from 2018. In addition, it continued to fund federal lawmakers who oppose a carbon tax, despite its supposed longtime support for the idea. Forty percent of the nearly $1 million it has contributed so far to congressional incumbent campaigns during the 2019-20 election cycle has gone to 115 of the 150 climate science deniers still in office.

Sixty percent of ExxonMobil’s 2019 donations to climate obstructionist groups for “public information and policy research” went to the US Chamber of Commerce, while another 30 percent was split between the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, which have been receiving annual grants from the company since it began financing climate disinformation 22 years ago. All told, ExxonMobil has spent more than $37 million on climate science denier organizations from 1998 through 2019, more than any individual funder besides Charles Koch and his brother, the late David Koch, the billionaire owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries. Koch-controlled foundations spent more than $145 million on many of the same groups over roughly the same time period.

Did the top three recipients of ExxonMobil grants for climate science denier groups in 2019 toe the company’s publicly stated line on climate? The short answer is no. If actions speak louder than words, the donations call into question ExxonMobil’s commitment to seriously address the climate crisis and deserve a closer look.

The US Chamber still opposes carbon pollution standards

The US Chamber of Commerce has been a major player in blocking action on climate change going back to the 1990s, when the business lobby and Exxon were members of the Global Climate Coalition, a consortium of corporations and trade associations opposed to government policies that would cut carbon emissions.

But in 2009 — the same year ExxonMobil first announced its support for a carbon tax in a cynical attempt to derail cap-and-trade climate legislation — the Chamber’s united front began to crack. A handful of Fortune 500 companies — including Apple, Exelon Corporation and Pacific Gas & Electric — quit the Chamber over its opposition to the cap-and-trade bill while two other high-profile companies — Nike and Johnson & Johnson — retained their membership but rebuked the business lobby for the same reason. Since then, at least a dozen Chamber members, including Hewlett-Packard, General Mills, Mars, Nestlé and Unilever, have headed for the exits.

By contrast, ExxonMobil not only retained its Chamber membership, but it also pledged $5 million in annual installments to help pay for the Chamber’s $250-million renovation of its Washington, D.C., headquarters. In 2019, the company donated $400,000 for the building rehabilitation and another $15,000 to the Chamber’s Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total contributions since 2014 to $4.8 million.

What does ExxonMobil get for its money? Among other things, the business lobby goes to bat for it in court by filing lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and in the court of public opinion by funding misleading climate-related reports. A prime example is the Chamber’s widely debunked 2017 report that grossly exaggerated the cost to the US economy of complying with the Paris climate agreement. President Donald Trump cited that report as his primary rationale for ignoring the US commitment to the accord, and he has vowed to officially pull the United States out in early November.

However, in 2019, the Chamber seemed to take a 180-degree turn, declaring on its website: “Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option.” Although one could quibble with the assertion that human activity is merely contributing to climate change when in fact burning fossil fuels is the main cause, it was a far cry from when the organization maintained in comments submitted to the EPA in 2009 that “a warming of even 3 [degrees Celsius] in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans.”

But the Chamber’s turnabout was not complete. Although it now concedes the reality of human-caused climate change, it is still pushing private-sector innovation as the solution to the climate crisis rather than much-needed government regulation, which historically has driven technological advances.

So, while the Chamber supports government funding for research and development of advanced nuclear reactors, utility-scale batteries, and carbon capture and storage technology, it backed the Trump administration’s rollbacks of the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which would have reduced power plant carbon emissions, and its 2015 “Waters of the United States” rule, which would have protected small streams, wetlands and groundwater from toxic chemicals.

More recently, the Chamber supported the Trump administration’s weakening of the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act by limiting public input in the infrastructure project approval process and rescinding a requirement that federal agencies consider a proposed project’s impact on the climate.

Unlike ExxonMobil’s professed support for a carbon tax, the Chamber has no official position, but if carbon tax legislation ever made it to the Senate or House floor, it presumably would oppose it given its dim view of government regulation.

Likewise, the Chamber’s avowed support for US compliance with the Paris climate accord includes a major caveat. Dan Byers, vice president for policy at the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute, told Politico in August 2019 that it is “absolutely important for the US to remain in the Paris climate agreement” but added that the “Obama administration’s pledge was unrealistic, [and] was going to have a negative impact on our economy. And so we’d like to see that revisited.” In other words, the Chamber would like the United States to remain a party to the agreement so that it could lobby to weaken the US commitment to it.

American Enterprise Institute still downplays the climate threat

In 2019, ExxonMobil gave the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) $110,000, bringing its total since 1998 to $4.76 million — more than any other of its climate science denier grantees. The 82-year-old, free market think tank also receives generous funding from other climate disinformation network supporters, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation.

What does ExxonMobil get for its money from AEI? A cheerleader for fossil fuels, economist Benjamin Zycher, who — contrary to the company’s professed climate positions — argues that a carbon tax would be “ineffective” and has called the Paris agreement an “absurdity.”

In March, Zycher published a report arguing that “any plausible policy” to curb carbon emissions “would yield trivial effects while imposing large costs.” Instead, he recommended the federal government adopt a policy of “watchful waiting, adaptation over time, and ongoing investment in resilience against the future effects of climactic [sic] changes.”

How could Zycher recommend “watchful waiting” given the large costs climate change is already imposing right now? Granted, he published his report before this summer, when heat waves and wildfires burned up the West Coast and hurricanes slammed the Southeast. But last summer was not that different, and climate change-related disasters have been racking up considerable damage over the last few years. From 2017 through 2019, there were 44 unique extreme weather and climate-linked events across the country causing damages of $1 billion or more, collectively costing more than $460 billion.

Nevertheless, Zycher insists fossil fuels are indispensable. “Opposition to fossil fuels implies a reduction in policies — education, training, health care, and the like — that add to human capital and so increase incomes and the demand for conventional energy,” he wrote. “Therefore, opposition to fossil fuels is fundamentally antihuman.”

Zycher made the same argument in a May 7 column in the Financial Times, ranting that environmentalists who aim to deprive the world of fossil fuels “hate humanity, and the planet too.”

Putting aside Zycher’s ad hominem attack on the “environmental left,” he deliberately confuses the societal benefits of energy with how it is generated. At several junctures in history, humans switched from wood to coal to natural gas to warm their homes. Likewise, they switched from whale oil to kerosene to incandescents to LEDs to illuminate their homes.

Opposition to coal and kerosene in the past or fossil fuels today is not “fundamentally antihuman” when there are better, cleaner alternatives. And it turns out the alternatives — solar and wind, specifically — are now the cheapest sources of electricity, and they could have been more widely available years ago if ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies had not stood in the way.

The Manhattan Institute is still in love with fossil fuels

The Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based libertarian think tank, received $90,000 from ExxonMobil in 2019. Since 1998, the company has given the organization more than $1.4 million.

For the last decade, the institute’s go-to energy expert has been Robert Bryce, who, like AEI’s Zycher, is no fan of a carbon tax, ExxonMobil’s supposed pet climate solution. Before he left the think tank at the end of 2019, Bryce spent much of his time bashing renewable energy and extolling fossil fuels in reports and in the pages of the National Review, New York Post, Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Bryce routinely disparages renewables without providing context. In an August 2019 column on the conservative website RealClearEnergy, for example, he maintained that the wind industry is “facing increasing opposition” at least partly because of what he insists is the major threat it poses to eagles and other birds, an assertion he has been making ad nauseum for years. In fact, the top human-caused threats to birds are climate change, buildings, power lines, misapplied pesticides, communications towers, and oil and gas industry fluid waste pits — not wind turbines.

As for wind energy’s specific threat to eagles, Dan Ashe, a former director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, debunked Bryce’s fallacious claim in a December 2016 HuffPost column. “Public attention on eagle loss in recent years has focused almost exclusively on wind energy,” Ashe wrote. “In truth, wind turbine collisions comprise a fraction of human-caused eagle losses. Most result from intentional and accidental poisoning and purposeful shooting. The majority of non-intentional loss occurs when eagles collide with cars or ingest lead shot or bullet fragments in remains and gut piles left by hunters. Others collide with or are electrocuted on power lines. Disproportionately and solely focusing on wind energy distorts public perceptions at a time when we desperately need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Cutting carbon pollution is hardly a goal that Bryce or any of his Manhattan Institute colleagues would ever publicly endorse. Doing so would certainly not please their other climate science denier benefactors, which include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Charles Koch Foundation, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer’s Mercer Family Foundation, and Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, a Manhattan Institute trustee. All have donated considerably more money to the think tank than ExxonMobil in recent years and, unlike the oil company, do not pretend to care about the climate crisis.

Maintaining the status quo in Congress

The New York Times recently ran a story pointing out that European and US oil companies are heading in very different directions when it comes to climate change. While BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and other European-based companies are beginning to sell their oil fields and invest in renewable energy, their US counterparts Chevron and ExxonMobil are betting that oil and gas will continue to make up at least 50 percent of the energy market for at least the next 20 years.

Instead of transitioning to solar and wind, the two US oil giants are spending relatively trivial amounts on unproven technologies, such as modular fusion nuclear reactors (Chevron), algae-based biofuel (ExxonMobil), and carbon capture and storage schemes (both), which so far have been costly failures. If those pipe dreams were ever demonstrated to work at the necessary scale, it would still take decades to commercialize them.

The main reason European oil and gas companies are taking baby steps to embrace renewables? Government pressure. The European Union has set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and seven EU countries plan to phase out vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel over the next few decades. Austria, with the most aggressive timetable, will ban internal-combustion-engine vehicle sales after 2020.

Although California recently announced it would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and most diesel-powered trucks by 2045, the Trump administration has taken the opposite tack, gutting landmark Obama-era rules curbing vehicle and power plant carbon emissions, rolling back methane emission and coal ash storage regulations, and lifting bans on oil and gas drilling on public land. Congress, meanwhile, has declined to consider climate bills that have been introduced since the beginning of the 2019-20 session.

The September 21 New York Times story cited unnamed energy analysts who excused Chevron and ExxonMobil for not changing their business models. “US lawmakers,” the analysts told the Times, “have simply not given them enough incentives to make a radical break.”

A major reason Congress has not given the US oil industry enough incentives to change course is because oil and gas companies have been giving a critical mass of US lawmakers enough incentives to do nothing. As mentioned above, $401,198 of the $991,329 ExxonMobil has spent so far on congressional incumbent campaigns during the current election cycle has gone to 115 of the 150 climate science deniers on Capitol Hill. Likewise, Chevron has spent $936,489 on incumbent campaigns so far. A little more than $433,000 — 46 percent — has gone to 82 climate science deniers.

Besides making campaign contributions, oil companies spend a lot of money to keep tabs on their friends in Washington. So far, the top three oil and gas lobbyists during the 2019-20 cycle are Koch Industries, which has spent $30.72 million; Chevron, which has spent $28.54 million; and ExxonMobil, which has spent $28.36 million.

Why does ExxonMobil still support so many climate science deniers in Congress while contending to be so keen on a carbon tax? After all, just two years ago the company announced it would donate $1 million over two years to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a political action group created to promote a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Some lawmakers are bullish on a carbon tax, but ExxonMobil largely ignores them. Since January 2019, eight representatives, two Republicans and six Democrats — and nine senators, all Democrats — have introduced 10 carbon tax bills and one cap-and-trade bill. But only one of the eight representatives and four of the nine senators received a campaign contribution from ExxonMobil during this election cycle. The total amount the company donated to the five lawmakers was $15,000 — a measly 4 percent of what it gave climate science deniers.

To be sure, ExxonMobil’s spending on climate disinformation has shrunk dramatically in recent years. The company’s 2019 outlay was less than half of what it spent in 2017 and the lowest amount since 1999, when Exxon was going through its merger with Mobil. Likewise, its campaign contributions to climate science deniers in Congress dropped from $1.1 million during the 2017-18 election cycle to only $400,000, this cycle.

But the fact remains that, while the company is saying all the right things publicly about the need to address climate change, it is continuing to fund think tanks and lawmakers who dispute the science and oppose government action. That suggests that its professed support for a carbon tax is no more than a disingenuous public relations ploy to delay government action.

The tobacco industry used the very same tactic to hold off regulations for decades, and it worked well until it didn’t, when the industry lost in court and agreed to pay $246 billion in fines to states over 25 years.

Author’s note: Besides the US Chamber of Commerce ($415,000), American Enterprise Institute ($110,000) and Manhattan Institute ($90,000), ExxonMobil gave grants in 2019 to five other climate science denier groups: Center for American and International Law ($5,000), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000). For an overview of ExxonMobil’s grants from 1998 through 2019, click here.

This article, which was originally published by Truthout, was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post Washington’s Big League of Rank Hypocrisy appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Posted: Oct. 19, 2020

John Grisham, meister of legal thrillers, must look at the Dark Money flying about Supreme Court nominees and curse, “You stinking thieves, give me my book plots back!”

In a logical world, in a sane US Senate resistant to corruption, Senators would give the bum’s rush to nominees to the Supreme Court who are being promoted with millions, tens of millions, in dark money. Dark money, funding not readily traced to the actual donors, slithering through a labyrinth of shell corporations, donor trusts and 501(c)(4) organizations. And slithering around Senators voting on judicial nominee confirmations, not just for the Supreme Court but all Federal judges, whispering rewards and threats when they’re up for re-election. Dark Money groups like the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, flowing into groups like the Federalist Society, which Trump brags picks his judges, and the closely connected Judicial Crisis Network.

During Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings for the Supremes, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), asked Gorsuch who his angels were who provided seven million dollars to first deny Obama nominee Merrick Garland and then later drop ten million promoting Gorsuch to the bench. Gorsuch’s reply was that if Whitehouse wanted to know who they were, he should ask them. As if Gorsuch had no idea. And no idea of exactly what his hooded benefactors want from courts. In backing Brett Kavanaugh, one dark donation alone provided seventeen million. Many millions are now swirling to promote Amy Coney Barrett. Not to play down the importance of issues like reproductive rights, or the emphasis on preserving even the most meager opportunities for medical coverage, but it’s not hot-button issues that attract the incognito Big Money to such legal eagles of the Ayn Rand brotherhood. It’s their pro-corporate, anti-regulatory, anti-labor and anti-consumer histories. It’s their willingness to pay close attention to the Amicus briefs from the Big Money’s minions. It’s about suppressing the vote, rigging democracy with gerrymandering, etc…. It’s about insulating industries like fossil fuels, and their Wall Street investors, from accountability for the myriad pollution they knowingly cause. It’s about protecting the interests of those at the top.

And when the banks start making wholesale property grabs again, it’ll be about ushering them along as they ride roughshod over people, as the floodgates open for those tumbling into a fractured, pro-creditor bankruptcy system, peppered with self-serving “trustees.” Wait and see.

As Tom Neuburger recently detailed, Barrett has rung one alarm bell after another that she will be a grim reaper of the rights and protections of workers when they conflict with the Big Money, and injured consumers have little to rejoice about. In her brief time on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Barrett quickly joined the ilk of judges who are black-robed crowbars for prying wide the wealth gap via a legal assembly line of pro-corporate decisions.

David Sirota recently revealed an important case coming before the Supreme Court involving state and municipal government lawsuits against Shell Oil, for which Barrett’s father was a lawyer for decades. Oil companies want the Court to require climate cases be heard in the more corporate-friendly federal courts. Asked about climate change during her hearings, Barrett’s reply was that she does not have “firm views,” “…I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion on what I think causes global warming.” How convenient. Isn’t that special? Cue the Church Lady.

During Barrett’s confirmation hearings, Senator Whitehouse schooled the Senate with this riveting presentation. Some of it drew from this 29 page treatise he published in the Harvard Law School Journal on Legislation. Both are worth the time. Whitehouse revealed 80 cases at the Supreme Court involving an identifiable Republican donor. Astoundingly, damningly, all were decided in the right-wing’s favor in 5-4 decisions. Many whittle down the concept of civil juries. Because why would fat cats suffer standing before a jury not of their board members? Eighty five-four partisan decisions. People with track records of defying odds like that wouldn’t be allowed through the door of a casino. What the hell are they doing on the Supreme Court?

But Whitehouse is moving the right direction, pushing reforms such as disclosure of big donors to groups that run political advertisements supporting or opposing judicial nominations. He seeks to add a few teeth to the Federal Election Campaign Act to cover judicial nominations and to report spending to the Federal Election Commission, (which could use any dentures it can get).

More generally, Democrats are also having their rolls in the hay with Dark Money. If doing things for principled reasons, why should their benefactors be secret? It’s a gutless position, and chips away at the moral high ground smart Democrats should lay claim to. No reason to go down that road unless you’re a Washington grifter and/or peddler of influence, unless you don’t want your motivations for giving or collecting money laid bare. Don’t Democrats realize voters would take note if they made a point of eschewing money from the shadows? Probably. But that’s not the road to riches. Look at the establishment alarm at Bernie’s independence from the Big Money. Can’t have that. Society will crumble.

At the creation of the United States, elites were not in short supply but giant, powerful corporations weren’t a thing. Small corporations were created to develop infrastructure, but were tightly controlled by local political authorities. Now, corporate behemoths stride the land, including those connected to international corporations, often as US subsidiaries, even of foreign banks. Some are out of central casting for movies about dystopian futures. Much of political Washington floats on money these corporate interests pour in through ever more inventive ways to those addicted to it, tapping for fresh veins like junkies. Plenty of good people in Washington, but the city is increasingly a magnet for those who will do anything for money, for whom rationalization is an art form. Sooner or later they’re very well-connected. One doesn’t go up against one, on many issues one goes up against large swaths of them, including party leaders talking out of both sides of their mouths.

In 2010, Pam and Russ Martens, of the must-read site Wall Street on Parade, showed that Charles Koch of Koch Industries, for which fossil fuels are central, is joined at the hip with Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. The Martens explored the money behind a race-baiting, Islamophobic film on DVDs circulated through major newspapers and direct mail as the 2008 election approached. Back then they wrote, “…the far right has assembled a $6 billion interlinked machine of think-tanks, lobbyists, PACs, astroturf front groups, media sycophants, endowed professorships, state-based political fronts and now even their own centralized headhunter; all to throw us off the scent that the real threat to the poor and middle class in America is corporate domination.”

It’s impressive, how so few people could persist in causing so much harm, from the climate or to our judiciary.

“When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for the power in the shadows,” said Whitehouse. From his paper’s conclusion: “…Enormous effort has been put by large and powerful interests into a fifty-year project to capture the courts. These interests seek to maintain, and indeed further entrench, the corporate-friendly outcomes into which they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars…Dark money is a plague anywhere in ourpolitical system. Citizens deprived of knowing the identities of political forces are deprived of power, treated as pawns to be pushed around by anon-ymous money and message. Dark money encourages bad behavior, creatingthe “tsunami of slime” that has washed into our political discourse. Dark money corrupts and distorts politics. Bad as all that is, dark money around courts is even worse. The chances of corruption and scandal explode. The very notion that courts can be captured undercuts the credibility upon which courts depend. It is surprising that the Judiciary has not come to its own defense in these matters… As Justice Brandeis also said, ‘If we desire respect for the law we must first make the law respectable.’”

And the influence diseases run rampant in the States:

The purchase of the courts isn’t only about the Supremes or even the rest of the Federal judiciary. State courts are where the action is for the vast majority of Americans, and also where many Federal judges began. Citizens United revved up the ability to capture elected judges, or Governors who appoint them, by well-heeled business interests and their lawyers. Allow me to slip in this essay I did for Barron’s over six years ago. As with most tales of political influence, things only get worse.

June 30, 2014
Other Voices

Views from Beyond the Baron’s Staff by Skip Kaltenheuser

The Price of Justice

IN CITIZENS UNITED V. FEC, FIVE JUSTICES of the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment protection of free speech prohibited Congress from banning political advocacy by organizations, including pushing for the election or defeat of candidates. Tightly blindfolded, Justice Anthony Kennedy concluded, “Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Justice Kennedy should observe what’s happening to state courts.

Citizens United was a campaign finance accelerant, and not just in federal races. It threatens the integrity of state courts, which hear 95% of the nation’s cases.

At the state level, a majority of judges and justices stand in some form of election. These elections are the minor leagues of U.S. politics, even more vulnerable to the power of money than elections for Congress and state legislatures. Donors who try to buy laws and lawmakers are interested in buying the interpretation of the laws, as well.

A poll conducted by 20/20 Insight last year found that nine of 10 American voters believe both direct contributions and inde- pendent spending affect courtroom decisions. Earlier polls have consistently shown citizens losing confidence in the courts. Other polls show sizable cohorts of state judges and justices believing decisions are affected.

It’s not just past contributors calling the tunes. It’s anticipation of getting contributions in the future, perhaps in a run for a higher court, as well as the chilling fear of being attacked by well-financed opponents. Though big majorities of judges say they want fixes for the campaign finance arms race, more of them are playing the game. Influence mischief was under way long before Citizens United, but a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and Jus- tice at Stake shows the 2010 Citizens United ruling’s rising impact on judicial races.

There was a 50% rise over the prior record, of 2003-2004, in independent spending by interest groups in state Supreme Court races in 2011-2012. Spending that was not controlled by candidates or their campaign committees was 27% of total campaign spending, not counting spending by the political parties. More than a third of all funds spent on state supreme court races came from seven special-interest groups and three state political parties. Television ads backing candidates for high courts took a huge leap—over a quarter funded by special interests, much of it attack ads involving hot button issues and wild distortions of controversial rulings.

You might think that a judge should recuse himself if a party to a case contributed to the judge or spent money on supportive election materials, and 92% of the people responding to a Justice at Stake/Brennan Center for Justice poll would agree with you. But the grounds for a judge’s recusal are judged by the judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court took a half-step toward a higher standard in a case from the West Virginia Supreme Court. Anticipating an important case against A.T. Massey Coal Co., Massey’s CEO flooded money into ads attacking an incumbent justice, who lost the election. The winning beneficiary of the Massey money refused to recuse himself when the case reached the state Supreme Court. A majority opinion in 2009 by Justice Kennedy said that while not every litigant contribution requires recusal, “extreme facts” can create a “probability of bias” violating due process. On rehearing, the West Virginia court determined the case should have been filed in Virginia.

Throughout the land, significant campaign contributions haven’t generated many recusals. In some states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, half of the cases before the highest court involved litigants who contributed to justices. John Grisham needn’t fear running short of plots based on reality.

Joanna Shepherd, an economist and professor at Emory University School of Law, wrote a study for the American Constitution Society examining the relationship between campaign contributions and state Supreme Court decisions in 2010-12. After excluding cases in which two businesses squared off against each other, Shepherd found strong patterns: The more contributions justices garner from business interests, the more likely their decisions will favor those interests.

Donor disclosure offers little solace. Dark money often travels through layers of obscurity, including through Super PACs and through 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations that needn’t disclose their donors. Anyway, voters show limited interest or limited ability to sort out conflicts of campaign interest. There are over 50 judges on a ballot in Harris County (Houston), Texas; such elections tend to be straight partisan votes.

However one comes down on whether the First Amendment sanctions unlimited spending on campaigns, judicial elections are different. And if judicial elections aren’t different, judges ought to be. States should insist that judges recuse themselves in cases involving their contributors and their campaign supporters. That would ease the arms race.

To thwart independent expenditures and dark money, the states should move from elections toward merit-based appointments. Insulate the process from politics, using a diverse, professional selection committee.

A U.S. Supreme Court justice discussed the loss of confidence in the courts in a 1999 interview on Frontline: “We weren’t talking about this 30 years ago because we didn’t have money in elections. Money in elections presents us with a tremendous challenge, a tremendous problem, and we are remiss if we don’t at once address it and correct it…if an attorney gives money to a judge with the expectation that the judge will rule…in his client’s interest…. It’s corrosive of judicial independence.” Justice Anthony Kennedy might review these words before writing his next campaign-finance decision. They’re his.

Give judges gavels; take away their tin cups.

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