GARVEYBLOG
January 6, 2009
Evacuate your neighborhoods! Now!
By Ed Garvey
With bombs dropping, soldiers shooting in all directions, food and water in short supply, hospitals full of injured, electricity out, the NYT reports loudspeakers shout at residents of Gaza, "evacuate your neighborhoods" because Israel is going to punish Hamas. What would you do? Leave and take your kids into the dark night? C'mon! The story continues, "Israeli troops are expelling residents from their apartments and shooting militants in the streets." Do you think the children, witnesses to this carnage will remember?
Whoa! Shooting "militants" in the streets? And we thought Gitmo was unacceptable. Obviously they don't know if the person being killed is involved or not. Shoot first and ask questions later.
The only "news" person making critical comments about this mayhem, other than Amy Goodman of course, is Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. The corporate media appears incapable of even a hint of objectivity. Israel is right, Israel had to do it, Israel will win. Would it be impertinent to ask how this invasion will bring stability? And was this timed to force Obama to follow AIPAC's lead?
Barack Obama's silence is deafening and disappointing. Women and Children are being killed and wounded while the focus here is on the Obama kids going to school. School--a safe haven here--not in Gaza. Obama hints that his hawks are as tough as Bush's hawks. Will he just pick up where Bush left off? C'mon folks. This is a long-term disaster. Obama promised change. Well...here's your chance.
Wisconsin Legislature: The Speaker and 98 other members of the Assembly were sworn in yesterday before anyone can be sworn at. They all got $88 to show up and raise right hand, say the Pledge "under God" and go to lunch. What's the deal? The new Speaker kept the old Chief Clerk. Why? Is this part of the "let's be kind to our opponents" month?
How proud are we? The new American embassy in the Green Zone is operational. How big is the world's biggest embassy? Six times larger than the U.N. in NYC. Do you think the opposition knows where it is?
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ARTICLE
January 6, 2009
The thing we must destroy
By Nancy C. Unger
What Would Fighting Bob Do...about corporate bailouts?
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GARVEYBLOG
January 5, 2009
2009 is out of the blocks
By Ed Garvey
Let's see, probably Obama's best cabinet nominee, Bill Richardson, has withdrawn because he is a target of a federal investigation; Al Franken is the winner in Minnesota over the man we would most love to escort out of politics; Harry Reid says he and 57 other Caucasian Senators will stand in the door of the Senate to stop Roland Burris from taking his seat; Burris, who would be (or already is) the only African-American in the Senate has the law on his side, but that isn't all. Harry Reid does not have a plan if they do turn him away.
Congressman Bobby Rush from Chicago threw down the challenge: "The Senate is the last bastion of plantation politics." And in New York...the winner is? A Kennedy; a Cuomo; a Clinton. Stay tuned, the games are about to begin.
Almost forgot. Harry Reid said Burris should reject the appointment because it is "tainted." I guess when a candidate buys a seat with millions of family dollars that is not "tainted" it is democracy. Reid's problem? First, the governor can appoint and he did. Second, Reid has no alternative candidate and it is hard to beat someone with no one. Third, Bobby Rush and Maxine Waters are ready for the fight. On Reid's team--all the black Senators. Oops!
DPI: Good News--five candidates filed for the February 17 primary. That should get lots of voters out to vote.
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GARVEYBLOG
January 4, 2009
If you can make it there you can make it anywhere...
By Ed Garvey
The words to "New York, New York" came to mind when a familiar Wisconsin name made it into The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" segment. Yes, Nicholas Peter Hurtgen, former key corporate fundraiser for Tommy Thompson's money machine, former managing director of the Chicago office of (the late) Bear Stearns, the guy who was indicted in connection with the scheme to select a "friendly" contractor to build a hospital in Illinois. Yes--that guy.
The CEO of Edward Hospital called the FBI, the FBI placed a bug in her bra, and she talked to Hurtgen. Bingo! An indictment.
He or his fellow corrupter said, on tape, "If you don't hire us, you will never get this (hospital) project approved." Other names involved? Oh, Blagojevich, Tony Rezko, and Levine. Needless to say, the lawyer for Hurtgen disputes the allegations.
Quite a guy--Nick. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Steve Schultz and Dan Bice put Nick under the light in a four-part series on favoritism in the Thompson administration. Despite lots of good stuff, the paper fell into an ethical coma and nothing further was investigated--until the Chicago Sun Times broke the story about the hold-up of an Illinois hospital deal.
Hurtgen was a Bush Pioneer, he worked with the Carlyle Group, and is the man given credit for the Milwaukee Stadium Board's decision to hire Bear Stearns--"a deal that earned the company nearly $2 million in commissions and fees." And, the JS reported, his firm was "selected" to do the Milwaukee convention center (estimated fees: $600,000).
Relax. Wisconsin is pure. Wisconsin does not tolerate pay-offs. Wisconsin is, well, how to say it? Innocent. But now you might follow the bouncing indictment of the governor of Illinois with a tad of sadness that corruption does not stop at the border.
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ARTICLE
January 4, 2009
The Shoe Index
By Joel McNally
Assessing the Bush legacy has forced people to get creative.
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GUESTBLOG
January 3, 2009
What remains of New Orleans
By Bill Kraus
Everybody knows that half the people have left along with most of the business headquarters.
The remaining economic engines are tourism and the port. If John McPhee’s prediction that the Mississippi, which doesn’t want to go to New Orleans anymore, gets its way and moves to Texas, New Orleans will become sort of a Disneyworld on steriods.
The French Quarter is the main tourist attraction. It was charming once. It now is Las Vegasy. Lots of neon and blatant porn. The streets are full of non-drinking tire kickers who do not crowd the joints that line Bourbon and the other famous streets of the district.
Katrina’s visit left empty spaces and boarded up buildings in its wake. There is restoration activity by a lot of energitic developers and contributors including Brad Pitt. Their efforts are impressive, but seem to be spitting into the wind. There will be three restored homes on a block next door to five that are still boarded up and carry the post-storm markings which indicate, among other things, the numbers of dead bodies found inside.
Most of the infamous 9th Ward is an open field with unpaved roads and very occasional buildings. This is where Pitt has put his dough. Half a dozen imaginative, very non New Orleans, structures sitting in the middle of nowhere.
All of this is very bad.
What is infinitely worse is that the people who are doing the restoration know it’s a lost cause. They will do what can be done, take their winnings, and go elsewhere when the fed’s money runs out and the city subsides into what it seems destined to become.
What they know is that New Orleans is paying the price of being a failed city. People would rather buy new shocks for their cars than fix the potholes, send their children to private schools than to the wretched public system, hire their own security to protect themselves against the brigands and from their own corrupt police force (it is worth noting that on a recent Friday night there were four car jackings in the French Quarter; public safety is both more important to the city’s future and less evident than ever). This is what they have always done. There is no sign they or the city will change.
It is hard to blame people who have never known a government that works for being anti-government, even when the government, any government, is their last, best, and only hope.
The only thing that seems to have survived Katrina intact is the anarchistic, anti-government culture which is the curse of failed nations around the world and of this failed city.
Lester Brown, the prescient author of Plan B 3.0, says that failing states are a threat to our earth’s civilization. New Orleans has all the symptoms of all those failed states in the third world.
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GARVEYBLOG
January 3, 2009
While you sleep
By Ed Garvey
Ah, January 20, noon, out with Bush, in with Obama, Huzzah! As Jim Doyle said years ago, "Its a new day!" (Perhaps not as new as we would have it but new is good.)
Will the new president succumb to the "Washington Way," condemned by candidate Obama, or will he choose the road less traveled?
Take the selection of the new U.S. Attorneys in Milwaukee and Madison as a little test. In a sense, the selection process is the Wisconsin State Journal's dream. Yes, indeed, merit selection. (WSJ tells us to take our judicial election process and jam it.) Merit--not small "d" democracy, will inexplicably give us better and more independent justices than publicly funded elections would.
I can imagine the WSJ editors' dream of an appointive system with transparency. An open system that will give us the best and the brightest! Solid academic credentials will trump 30-second spots. The people will participate in an open forum sponsored by WMC and WSJ, and they will find out who is appointed and why. (The Tooth Fairy is ex officio)
Here is the reality of the Washington Way process now in place. I am not making this up. There is an 11-member Federal Nomination Commission (FNC) that will decide who gets on the list for these two highly paid and nice jobs. Plums, if you please.
You may never learn how the FNC members got appointed in the first place but, hey!, democracy is messy business. You can't have it all! Shut-up!
These 11 wise people, through a secret process, will give Obama a couple of choices. Who is on the FNC? Our two Senators appoint eight members; the Main Depot Bar appoints two members; the Dean of the UW Law School appoints one. (Just kidding. The State Bar not the Main Depot appoints 2.)
Would we be asking too much if we suggest to Herb and Russ to tell us the names and credentials of their eight nominees to the 11-member Commission?
If the new president rejects the status quo and goes his own way, buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
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GARVEYBLOG
January 2, 2009
Is it over yet?
By Ed Garvey
CNN carried a story yesterday showing the U.S. turning over the Green Zone to the Iraqi army. The band looked like something in a Peter Sellers comedy but they played and marched while American brass, looking even sillier, sat on a makeshift reviewing stand. (Kurt Vonnegut would have loved it--perhaps Robin Williams could have played a part.) I'm not sure, but I thought the band played Auld Lang Syn--"Should auld acquaintance be forgot?"
But farce or tragedy, the show goes on. We will be, appropriately, the last of the Coalition of The Willing to leave, but last or not, it is time to go!
(The so-called Coalition was always a joke. Take a look: Moldova--24 troops, gone; Albania--240 troops, gone; Czech Republic--24 troops, gone; Latvi--136 gone; Poland...gone...Brits...leaving soon.)
The cost of Bush's folly to Wisconsin: $10.5 billion; $584 billion to the entire country. Two trillion dollars before it is all counted. With that money, we could have built 5.1 million housing units or handed out millions of scholarships, but instead we are broke with nothing positive to show for our six years of death, destruction, smart bombs, and idiotic claims that we brought democracy to a nation.
It will not be easy, but we should push every button to convince the new administration that it is time.
Fifty years: People often say they remember exactly where they were when they heard that JFK, RFK and MLK were assassinated. Here is a new one. Where were you 50 years ago when Fidel Castro led the successful revolution in Cuba? Fifty years of blockades and politicians' promises to end communism 90 miles off our shores later, who is in charge? The envelope please. Still in power? Whoa Nelly.
Time for peace in the Middle East. Can Israel defeat Hamas militarily? Sure. Then what?
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GARVEYBLOG
January 1, 2009
Happy New Year!
By Ed Garvey
Difficult to offend anyone with that short superficial greeting, so Happy New Year. Dave Zweifel got us off to a good start with his list of goals for 2009, now it's our turn. But first some hot news. Winfried Bischoff, Chair of Citigroup, will forgo a year-end bonus. Huzzah! CEO Pantel, apparently concerned that Citi could lose key personnel if no bonus went out, explained, "Our bonus pool is dramatically lower this year than last." Guess so!
Citigroup, guided by an alert group of officers, lost more than $10 billion this year, so one might ask, "Bonus?" I thought a bonus was a reward, not a punishment. Bonus 'me arse. But you have to hand it to them. We, the taxpayers, bonus-less knaves all, gave Citigroup $45 billion in the bailout to help out Winifried and Patel. Don't you wonder what they did with our money? What? No caviar at the party?
Senator Burris: What did Fitzgerald and the Democrats think Blagojevich would do? Resign? Agree to an uncontested impeachment? Agree to share a room with former governor Ryan? Ask Barack for guidance? Wishes instead of thoughts. The governor is not happy. How could he shift the focus? Wonder no longer. He did it! Now Harry Reed and the other Dems are in a pickle. They have no plan of action. Instead of taking decisive action they relied on the prosecutor. And the prosecutor who was in such a hurry now wants more time to indict the Governor? Whoa Nelly! Dumb and dumber.
The Democrats have, over the years, welcomed Joe Lieberman back into the fold. Can they deny Roland Burris? They treated Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms with respect. Can they now stand in the Senate door to block entry to the only African-American in the group of 100?
They turned down a special election on the specious ground that it would be too expensive; turned their collective back on the governor and now cry Foul? They can't say no to Burris unless they have a better idea. Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year.
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ARTICLE
January 1, 2009
Optimism for a change
By Dave Zweifel
No matter the difficulties, 2009 offers the best chance for meaningful social and economic change in decades.
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