Author Archive

Earth Day Re-Visited: A Tale Of Two Administrations

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The contrast in environmental and energy policy from Bush to Obama couldn’t be more stark. 

The objectives of the Bush/Cheney administration in the realm of energy policy was a secretive cabal of corporate interests determined to carve up the world amongst themselves right out of the gate– procuring thousands of domestic drilling permits during the Bush years for the Lee Raymond‘s of the world along the way, that to this day, many go undeveloped, stagnating in a sort purposefully hoarded limbo, or environmental purgatory.

It started early in the Bush administration, with Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force assembled at the White House in January 2001. What followed was massive energy shortages and blackouts in California on the backs of Enron market manipulation followed by the Northeast blackout of 2003. 

Moving forward, into the bombing and invasion of Iraq, Bush warned Iraqis in the pre-dawn Shock and Awe public address to the American people on March 17, 2003, in ominous baritone nonetheless, proceeded to say: “And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning: In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people.“ 

Ha. Yeah, sure it did. When Judicial Watch sued for documents under the Freedom Of Information Act in 2001 in regard to Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings, what they received in 2003 depicted a Bush/Cheney administration that was laser-focused on Iraqi oil fields and the eventual corporate divvying up, even listing “potential suitors” to the bounty of il-gotten gains of Iraqi sovereignty, with the privatization of Iraq’s natural resources achieved, saying nothing of the cultural genocide and WMD’s Bush dropped on millions of people in the process. Iraq’s constitution is based on blood for oil and the document drafters made sure to include what to do with the oil in Article 108 and 109.  

So, they got what they wanted from their Iraq adventure. 

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan,  finally said what many of us had claimed all along in the Fall of 2007 in his Memoir he said plainly– “Everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil”

Thanks for the honesty, Alan Greenspan.

$1.49 per gallon to $3.25 by the time the party was over. 

Dick Cheney was formerly accused of suppressing and manipulating climate science data, while the administration’s solutions to all of this involved some lip-service and pruning around the edges, like halting supplies to the U.S. Strategic reserve, but basically fell back on policies of even less environmental regulation, some slight adjustments in auto-fuel standards,  and complained about not drilling in ANWR. He also told us that “America is addicted to oil” and when asked in 2008 what he thought about gas prices reaching $4.00 a gallon, he replied, “that’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.” 

Oil companies like Exxon Mobil raked in record profits, historic profits, actually. As in, never-before-achieved annual profits by a U.S.-based corporation. Bush hailed the profit-making as a result of the marketplace. Exxon Mobil paid no Federal Income Tax in 2009.

But you knew that wasn’t enough, right?

In 2008, The Bush administration’s Department of the Interior, more specifically, top officials at the department of The Mineral’s Management Service, was discovered by the department’s Inspector General, Earl E. Devaney,  to have been engaging in “coke parties and orgies” with industry lobbyists and various energy representatives. Mr. Devaney called it “a culture of ethical failure.” According to reporting by The New York Times, two other investigative reports focused on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the department’s Royalty-In-Kind program– a part of the agency responsible for collecting about “$4 billion a year in oil and gas, rather than cash.”
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That’s some legacy. 

George W. Bush did get to keep Saddam’s pistol for the sacrifices the American people have made. It’s proudly displayed in his $300 million dollar Legacy Library. 

But let’s take a look at the here and now, shall we?
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At the EPA, there’s Lisa P. Jackson. 

At the Department of the Interior, there’s Ken Salazar.

At the Department Of Energy, we have Secretary Dr. Steven Chu– distinguished scientist and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for physics(1997). 

We do things differently now.

And in case you didn’t know, Vice President Biden is, thankfully, no Dick Cheney. 

I’ll let the Vice President tell you about some of the more detailed changes we’ve made as a country, and where we’re headed, under the leadership of President Barack Obama. 

Meanwhile, The Republican Party has made a mockery of 21st century energy and environmental policy and simply demanded, Drill, Baby, Drill!!!

It’s a little more complicated than that, kids.

Public Schools and Parents

Public Schools have been vilified, mocked, and targeted, as the cause for most of America’s shortcomings as a convenient whipping boy for all of society’s problems. 

“It’s the schools! It starts with the schools!”
“Just another victim of the public school system…”
I’ve always considered public schools to be supplemental, or a fail safe education, for over-worked and under-educated, or just un-involved parents for the benefit of their children. The cooperative guarantee between citizen and state of a basic foundation for knowledge as a minimal insurance policy for a better society.   
It’s the parents’ responsibility to expound and expand a child’s learning. To reinforce, with proper context, the teachings of public schools. To implement your own knowledge and experiences to better cultivate well-rounded individuals of the world community.
It’s one thing to blame the schools for a lack of an educated populace, but when do parents take responsibility? Simply paying your taxes doesn’t excuse you from being an uninvolved parent.
When are the parents held accountable for their lack of education, or their responsibility to their community and schools, to work with public schooling to broaden the child’s education?
It’s easy to blame the schools and the government. 
It’s difficult to look yourselves in the mirror and find actionable fault. To do so would be an admittance of culpability in your child’s lack of education, or understanding.
Dropping your kid off at school and telling the school and the community, “here, my child is in your hands”– is lazy and irresponsible. 
It really does take a village. Due diligence and constant reinforcement. 
That means cooperation. Public schools are an affirmation, and sometimes, a cruel reminder of who you are as a parent. If you think public schools are the primary source for the “dumbing down” of the country, you’re part of the false-narrative, and not as smart as you think you are, perhaps. 
There’s more to providing an education for your children than to just drop them off, pick them up, and do it all over again the next day, and blame the school when a child falls behind, acting as gravity for society’s knee-jerk condemnation of the rights to basic education the government established.  
It’s not easy to be a good parent. But it’s easy to place the blame elsewhere.
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Happy 90th Birthday, Justice Stevens!


Today is Justice John Paul Stevens’ 90th birthday!


My favorite Justice.

Holy Cow!

C’mon home, Justice Stevens. 

The beer is cold, sir.

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Stevens throws out the first pitch at Wrigley Field before a Chicago Cubs game against the Cincinnati Reds in September 2005.Photo by AP Photos/Jeff Robertson

Jon Stewart, Your Mets Give Us Nothing!

Jon Stewart seen here not doing his best to lose to the Cubs. 
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Alright, Stewart. 
This is go time! 
Cubs @ Mets. Tonight!
This past weekend, your NY Mets(4-8), flopped two out of three against the Central division-leading St. Louis Cardinals(8-4, no thanks to your Mets) falling three and a half games out in the East and negating a chance for my futile Cubs to not lose a game in the Central Division standings after our dismal showing against the lost and confused Houston Astros(3-9: you’re welcome, Houston).
So, it’s go time, Stewart! and by “Stewart,” I mean, Stewart! 

Nothing outside of a World Series appearance for my Cubs would give me more satisfaction than helping out your NY Mets on their inevitable journey to Washington Nationals’ whipping-boy status this year.
And don’t just think that just because I wasn’t even born in 1969, that I have forgotten baseball’s biggest overlooked scandal– this side of my worthless Pete Rose autographed baseball– that your Mets fiendishly co-opted the Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope and deployed a poor, defenseless, black cat to the Cubs’ on-deck circle to cement your Mets’ historically self-evident cheating ways( I really have no evidence to back this up) sneaking their way into a National League Pennant, besting my Cubs in the last weeks of the season– denying us yet again, a shot at glory. Glory that has eluded us while we’ve been forced to observe, in excruciatingly, teeth-gnashing, shockingly horrific development– the Chicago White Sox surging to a World Series title and the ensuing World Series ring fight they partook in after the fallout had seemingly, and mercifully, subsided. I know a guy that knows a guy who knows a guy that knows on a hunch that the grounds-keeper and his distant cousins all received World Series rings.
I will be watching re-runs of Glenn Beck to see if his chalkboard connects the dots between the 1919 ‘Black Sox’,  the 2005 Chicago White Sox World Series, and your  69′ Mets.
Scared, yet?
So, I know it’s early, yet. There’s about a hundred and fifty of these days to go. 
But the road to ruin begins Tonight-eh!

Bundle up because it’s going to be a chilly week at El Estadio De Los Mets.
The Cubs are coming, you hear that?! The Cubs are coming… 
and hell-freezing-over is coming with them!

Three Cheers For Taxpayers!

Where else are you going to get such bang for your buck? 
The greatest nation in the history of the world, or as we know it, wouldn’t be possible without tax-paying Americans.
It’s worth celebrating if you think about it.
Good job taxpayers! 
Keep up the good work!
You make it all possible.
Three cheers for taxpayers!

#42

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So, it was Jackie Robinson day. 
Everybody was wearing #42 jerseys.
Seeing #42 gives me a little sentimental chill when I see it in play, plainly displayed on a baseball uniform. 
Like a game-long moment of silence making it’s presence felt through the noise of the crowd, the calls,  and competitive chatter of the in-game familiarities. 
Jackie Robinson is here. Sitting on the bench. Manicuring his bat and taking notes on the match ups. Who’s on the mound? 
OBP, OPS, ERA, K’s, E’s, SLG, HR’s, CG’s, and my favorite, HBP’s.
Lots of numbers involved with those letters– Historical and contemporary facts and figures. Legendary accolades and quiet obscurity. Magnitudes of victorious grandeur and tearful disappointment.  
Hot shot Wallstreet pit traders with their yelling and numbers and hand signaling at each other– don’t have anything on the baseball score and record keeper. 
I’m actually surprised Wall Streeters haven’t figured out complex financial schemes to capitalize on ERA’s and AVG’s derivatives. 
Sidebar: We use hand signals, too!  Study them and mimic like monkeys. As… a way of catching the suicide squeeze bunt sign coming from the third base coach, hit and run, or the straight steal from vets like Dusty Baker, or Mike Scioscia,  just to maybe, possibly, although highly unlikely and naive maybe– in the slimmest of chances– in a game of inches and human error, that “those bums over there are tipping their hands!” —  just to gain any advantage, imaginary or otherwise, over our bitterest rivals and inter-league strangers. 
Baseball encourages you to be mindful of the numbers and visibly woven patterns of geometrical relativity, recollecting the precise statistic to be referenced like a social security number.
When I see the #42 on the field, it’s naturally, instinctively, to a baseball fan, a different kind of day, for me at least. 
Numerically, statistically, and emotionally.
That’s part of the reason why it seems like a different day, a little out of sorts, when 42 is introduced and applied to the mathematical tapestry of say, a day game at Wrigley.
I wonder if it has an effect on players.
Like,  do lots of players put it on trying, with determined tongue-wagging-concentration-faces,  to live up to the legend…? 
Do players who carry typical superstitions, or JOBU freak outs– have a rough day if they’re not wearing their own number?
Or more to wonder, if there are racist players in the league, or even racist fans, do they feel reluctant and weird, or resentful and hostile–  seeing and wearing Jackie Robinson’s #42?
The numbers don’t always speak for themselves, and the number isn’t just a number, and so it seems with the number forty-two.
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A Radical Right Wing Court: Caperton v. Massey Re-Visited

  

   With the timing of Justice John Paul Stevens‘s announced retirement coinciding with the Massey coal mine disaster, i’m surprised we’re not hearing more about the “Originalist” view of something so “mundane” as Due Process whilst the Tea Party, er, Republican party– demands! that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee must not be a “radical” and needs to be adequately “mainstreamy” — for their very apple pie conservatism and not-at-all-unmainstream world view that everybody knows is mystical and prudent and Jesus and Reagan. 


  Consider– Caperton V. Massey for further evidence that the prototypical conservatives on the court, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts are the very definition of radical and activist; all the while conservatives continue asserting their ideas of a minimalist approach to the constitution is thee “mainstream.” 

That couldn’t really be further from the objective truth.

  Chief Justice Roberts said in his confirmation hearings, and in several interviews, that his job is simply to call “balls and strikes” as an “originalist minimalist,” or some such parallel variation of judicial philosophy.


  Roberts begins: “I, of course, share the majority’s sincere concerns about the need to maintain a fair, independent, and impartial judiciary–and one that appears to be such. But I fear that the Court’s decision will undermine rather than promote these values.”

  He begins in bad faith with what can only be described as judicial snark, but deeply-rooted and well-documented character flaws aside, according to the Chief Justice, Due Process, Supreme Court precedent, the unambiguous appearance of the probability of bias, state laws for recusal, and just basic ethical standards– were too flimsy for the Conservative 4 to rule with the majority.

  His opinion hinges on vague unforeseen cases in the future– using strawman arguments bordering on clairvoyant jurisprudence.

  In Roberts’s words, he proceeds to ask 40 questions, in what again qualifies as snark in judicial vernacular, all 40 are similarly fundamental in nature.

  Chief Justice Roberts’s words: 

But there are other fundamental questions as well.With little help from the majority, courts will now have to determine:

1. How much money is too much money? What level of contribution or expenditure gives rise to a “probabilityof bias”?
2. How do we determine whether a given expenditure is”disproportionate”? Disproportionate to what?
3. Are independent, non-coordinated expenditures treated the same as direct contributions to a candidate’s campaign? What about contributions to independent out side groups supporting a candidate?
4. Does it matter whether the litigant has contributed toother candidates or made large expenditures in connection with other elections?
5. Does the amount at issue in the case matter? What if this case were an employment dispute with only$10,000 at stake? What if the plaintiffs only sought non-monetary relief such as an injunction or declaratory judgment?
6. Does the analysis change depending on whether the judge whose disqualification is sought sits on a trial court, appeals court, or state supreme court?

It goes on and on like that in all it’s overly-unimaginative intellectual dishonesty with Roberts adding, ”These are only a few uncertainties that quickly come to mind.”

  It’s a Due Process case! Equal Protection! Balls and strikes stuff, if there ever was such an approach. Only an intellectually smirking Bush appointee would ask these types of questions in a case inarguably pertaining to due process. He’s calling balls and strikes like Leslie Nielson in The Naked Gun playing Frank Drebin playing Enrico Pallazzo playing a home plate umpire defending the new Monarchies– Corporations..

Or Like Jay Bybee and John Woo trying to figure out how to best retro-actively legalize torture on the opinion that the Law Of The Land against torture is “quaint.”

On March 9, 2009, The WSJ-online accurately described the case as such:  

The case has its roots in a complicated tale of political and corporate intrigue between two coal companies, leading eventually to a jury verdict of $50 million in favor of Hugh Caperton, owner of Harman Mining Co., against Massey Coal Co. for fraud and breach of contract. As Massey’s appeal worked its way through the West Virginia court system, Massey CEO Don Blankenship spent $3 million of his personal funds in 2004 on hard-hitting advertisements attacking incumbent state Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw, who was seeking re-election. 

Mr. McGraw’s opponent, Brent Benjamin, won that election and later joined the 3-to-2 majority that threw out the verdict against Massey. The argument before the Supreme Court is that Justice Benjamin should have recused himself from the case because of Mr. Blankenship’s campaign expenditures.

  You don’t need a FOIA petition to figure out the conservative justices are not only the types of “activist judges” conservatives verbally project onto so called “Liberal” justices, but they greatly misrepresent their judicial philosophy in public, either to themselves, to the American people, the spirit of founding intent, or all of the above. Essentially, they’re unfit.

  I can only wonder how their views of the constitution, interpretation of the spirit of founding intent, as self-proclaimed Originalists, or Federalists– or Whateveralists– how those views would have been inserted, and how they would have shaped Dredd Scott, or the 11th – 24th Amendments that  movement conservatism openly diminishes and resents.

  If their views on cases so simple and self-explanatory as Due Process and Equal Protection are so compromised that they allow Judges on state and local levels to be openly bought and paid for, they really have no business deciding that the court has no business in determining whether an innocent man should be put to death, or deciding a minor should be subjected to strip search based on he
arsay, or subverting democracy with Bush v. Gore’s unprecedented nature or the blatant conflicts of political and ethical interest, or the ridiculously prevailing determination in the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case.   

  The dissent in Caperton v. Massey says more about the dangers of the Federalist society ideologues on the court, and does more damage to the credibility of democracy and rule of law than perhaps even the Citizen’s United decision. Because if judges are for sale, justice is smothered and subverted in its basic function at the core of Equal Protection and Due Process. Politicians for sale is one thing. 

Justice is supposed to be blind. But according to the Conservative 4, Justice gets a peek at its highest bidder.

  In the courts’ minority decision to take the side of Don Blankenship and Massey Coal and their judge-for-hire, Judge Benjamin($), as recent developments have revealed, the Conservative judges on the highest court in the world have traces of human anguish– and blood– on their culpable hands and tinyish heads.

  It’s become self-evident that their decisions are quite literally hurting democracy, rule of law, and killing people. I worry that the right wing conservative justices on the court could be clinically defined as “sociopaths.”

I hereby decree, with the research at hand, rudimentary objective case study, precedent and political context, and analysis as my guide,  Right Wing men are out of order on the highest court in the land. 



“Long Live The Confederacy!”

So, there’s something in the air.


The Republican party is coming right out and distinguishing themselves as the party that identifies more loyally to the idea of the Old South, or the days before “the Great War of Yankee aggression,” as Congressman Paul Broun(R-Georgia) put it on the floor of the U. S. House Of Representatives on March 18th in describing the passing of one of President Obama’s key domestic initiatives– Health care insurance regulation. 

But now it’s getting serious. Newly elected Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, has declared April to be “Confederate History Month!”  

This is the same Bob McDonnell that the Republican party used for the purpose of appearing,  as Stephen Colbert satirically referred to as– “our alternate universe white President,” in a speech representing the Republican party’s theatrical civil-war/Jefferson Davis re-enactment, or “rebuttal,” to President Obama’s historically significant first State Of The Union Address.  

Governor Bob McDonnell gave the party’s rebuttal from Richmond, Virginia– once declared the Capital Of The Confederacy. 

April is also the month Virginia officially seceded from the Union- April 17, 1861. 

So, Governor Bob, the Republican party, President Barack Obama…

Hmmm…

Are the Republicans stipulating that President Obama is the President Abraham Lincoln in this open re-enactment of “the Great War Of Yankee Aggression…?” 

I would be happy to agree with that. 

Go right ahead, Republican party. 

“Long Live The Confederate States Of America!”



Free Lil’ Wayne!

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That is all.

The Legality Of The Healthcare Insurance Mandate



On the subject of the leaglity of the healthcare mandate and the Constitutional powers of government to enact healthcare reform in general:


Simply speaking, uninsured Americans are a social and financial liability on the state. 



Constitutionally speaking, I contend that It’s contrary to the General Welfare to allow such disastrous practices in areas of life and death Commerce to go un-remedied.


In the context of the Commerce clause, the general Welfare in the preamble is the qualifying companion.


“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense,  promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”



This is the spirit of America. This is the preamble to the law of the land.

Uninsured Americans are a legal liability to the health and stability and security of the country and communities.

There are wide ranging implications for a system, financially and socially, that spends far too much for rank 37th in the world in delivery while excluding so many. Infant mortality and life expectancy rates are statistically shameful. Private practice of rescission and pre-existing condition discrimination is unacceptable.

Healthcare delivery in America has been a violation of civil liberties and a burden on the government trying to fill the huge void left behind by a for-profit model.

These legally outweigh the personal choice to be a drunk driving liability on the system we all pay in to to maintain.



 

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