Facing the Political Future: a Sadly Personal Perspective

ICKES
Harold Ickes

I’ve been hiding from the news, which is weird since I spent most of my life as a journalist.  I’m not sure though, that after 8 agonizing years of W and then 6 frustrating ones with President Obama (much of it not his fault) I can face what the next congress will do.

Do you remember the various, endless Clinton hearings?  Even more than the impeachment battle, the moment that I keep remembering was deeply personal: Sen. Alphonse D’Amato questioning Deputy Chief of Staff (and my longtime friend) Harold Ickes, whose father, also Harold, had been Secretary of the Interior in the Roosevelt Administration, and credited with implementation of much of the New Deal.

His father, D’Amato told Harold, would have been ashamed of him.

I had worked with Harold when we were all young, so along with political anger came real pain that, beyond the issues, he had faced such very cruel personal grandstanding.

That’s not important in policy terms and is probably mild compared to the harshness that any witnesses at the pending, inevitable deluge of hearings under a Republican congress will face: two years of destructive power escalating the politics of obstruction to that of destruction.  Beyond what that will mean to our country, poor people, women, immigrants, ACA users, voting rights, Supreme Court nominations,  and the jeopardy we face around the world, none of which will receive much attention except as political weapons, it’s just not something that will be easy to watch, especially for an unrepentant dreamer like me.

Mo(u)rning in America: 2014

sad capitol   I  spent W’s eight years in political despair. It was hard to watch the news or read the paper, harder still to think of all our fellow Americans without resources who would, and did, suffer on  a very concrete level.  Our kids were educated, our mortgage getting paid; we had work and health insurance and political and religious freedom but for many the pain of those years was personal.

Barack Obama’s election felt like the turning of a corner. This morning, as we face the unremitting and successful (and un-American and cruel and racist) assault on voting rights, the prospect of Joe McCarthy-like hearings in both bodies about almost everything that this president has been able to accomplish despite unprecedented, treasonous opposition, certain continued and brutal safety net cuts, violation of workers rights, a terrifying, determined erosion of the rights of women, a near-caliphate level of fundamentalism among even some of our newly elected members of Congress, the now-certain, veto-proof approval of the Keystone Pipeline, obscene power grabs by wealthy oligarchs and their ALEC, Americans for Prosperity operations not only nationally but state-by-state and unimaginable foreign policy attitudes, it’s a grim day.

Friends of mine have posted look-ahead messages and I admire them for it.  For me, it’s going to take a little longer.

 

Congress, AIG, Bonuses and Mob Rule

I can't stand this.  As usual, and I covered politics most of my life and still write about it, our cheesy Congress, instead of being moral and sane leaders, are going off in vicious, reflexive and pandering responses to the AIG bonus mess.  If you saw today's papers you know that AIG employees, even those with NO relationship to the unit that lost all the money, are being harassed in their offices and driveways.  Kids run into crowds when they go home from school.  Listen to this from the New York Times:

The A.I.G.
executive who was nicknamed “Jackpot Jimmy” by a New York tabloid
walked up the driveway toward his bay-windowed house in Fairfield,
Conn., on Thursday afternoon. "How do I feel?” said the executive,
James Haas, repeating the question he had just been asked. “I feel
horrible. This has been a complete invasion of privacy."

Mr. Haas walked on, his pink
shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came
haltingly. "You have to understand,” he said, “there are kids involved, there have been death threats. …" His voice trailed off. It looked as if he was fighting back tears.

"I didn’t have anything to do with those credit problems,” said Mr. Haas, 47. “I told Mr. Liddy” — Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., the insurance giant — “I would rescind my retention contract.”

He ended the conversation with a request: “Leave my neighbors alone.”

Too
late. Jean Wieson, who has lived down the block for 24 years, had
stopped her car in front of Mr. Haas’s house before he arrived home.
She was angry about the millions of dollars in bonuses paid to its
executives, the credit-default swaps that brought American International Group
to its knees, the $170 billion the federal government has spent to prop
it up. "It makes me absolutely sick," she said. "It’s despicable. It’s
disgusting what these people have done. They should be forced to give
every cent back."

Those bonuses in years past helped make A.I.G.
executives into prominent local citizens. They own big houses like Mr.
Haas’s, with its three chimneys and its views of Southport Harbor and
Long Island Sound in the distance. Some are well-known contributors to
arts groups and private schools in Connecticut communities not far from
the office park in Wilton that is the workplace of many of the
employees in A.I.G.’s Financial Products division, which is at the
center of the storm over bonus payments.

Now these executives are
toxic, and those communities are rattled and divided. Private security
guards have been stationed outside their houses, and sometimes the
local police drive by. A.I.G. employees at the company’s office tower
in Lower Manhattan were told to avoid leaving the building while a
demonstration was going on outside. The memo also advised them to avoid
displaying company-issued ID cards when they left the office and to
abandon tote bags or other items with the A.I.G. logo.

One A.I.G.
executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared
the consequences of identifying himself, said many workers felt
demonized and betrayed. “It is as bad if not worse than McCarthyism,”
he said. Everyone has sacrificed the employees of A.I.G.’s financial
products division, he said, “for their own political agenda.”

The
public’s anger, he said, “is coming from bad facts as a result of
someone else’s agenda — or just bad facts period.” Instead, he said,
the so-called bonuses were in fact just payments that had been promised
long ago to workers, including technical and administrative assistants.

A.I.G. employees are not the only ones seeking protection: An executive at Merrill Lynch,
where bonuses have also come under fire, said that some employees had
asked whether the firm would cover the cost of private security for
them.

We all know how much more there is to this thing. We all know that bonuses are a tiny part of the money spent and that only a tiny part of those working on Wall Street even got them. Instead of reminding people of that and preventing the frenzy that will affect both bonus recipients and the future of the country, as politicians slam dumb laws into being to satisfy instead of lead their constituents, they should be showing some guts and discernment. They haven't so far though, so I guess we just have to ride it out and hope that their pandering to their voters doesn't take us all farther over the edge than we already are.

Women’s Health Care Takes the Stage on the Hill

Women's health report
It makes sense.  On the heels of the announcement of a new committee (H/T Writes LIke She Talks and Punditmom) to oversee protection of women's rights, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and
Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues
, Rep. Jan  Schakowsky (D-IL), U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) have introduced the “Health Care for Women Resolution.”  The resolution outlines a "new framework
for women’s health" and ensure that women’s needs are a key part of the
national health reform debate.  At a newsconference today, where they announced the resolution, members of the Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health released a report that makes it clear why such a resolution is necessary.

The report, “Women’s Health and Health Care Reform: The Key Role of
Comprehensive Reproductive Care,”
explores the importance or reproductive health in women’s overall health
and urges that the promotion of reproductive
health be part of any national health plan. Thirty-eight of fifty deans of
schools of public health have endorsed the recommendations in
the report. 

At a news conference announcing the resolutions, Rep. Schakowsky said:

"Any debate on national healthcare reform must address the healthcare
needs of women who are often the primary caregivers and decision makers
for their families," said Representative Schakowsky. "We know that
women face exceptional challenges and have a very personal stake in
fixing our broken health care system — they know we need to act now.
The current economic crisis is not an excuse for delay; it is a
persuasive argument for an immediate response.

With new leadership on the Hill and in the White House, let's hope these are the first of many positive developments.