Letters to the Editor

Since I do not confine myself to writing for my blog, but write Letters to the Editor as well, I think it worthwhile to share these letters with you from time to time, whether or not they are published. Thus on January 5, 2010 I wrote to the New York Times in response to an editorial entitled: "Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal" as follows:

I am appalled at your Editorial, "Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal" (New York Times, January 10) not because there is any question in my mind that torture is abhorrent and illegal, but because your editorial is deliberately misleading. It would be nice if the Times would inform its readers what case they have reference to. Failing that, however, it is inexcusable for the Times to misrepresent the rationale of that case, Nowhere does the decision, handed down in April of 2009 (nine months ago), hold that, "it was not 'clearly established' that torture was illegal". What the decision holds, is that, "at the time of their detention, neither the Supreme Court nor this court had ever held that aliens captured on foreign soil and detained beyond sovereign U.S. territory had any constitutional rights."

You have every right to differ with the conclusion of the court, but you do a disservice to journalism and to your readers when you choose to misrepresent. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts".

The letter was not published.

On January 23, 2010 I wrote a letter to my local newspaper the Fort Lee Suburbanite as follows:

“It is ironic that during the same week that the Supreme Court decided that there may be no limits on the manner or amount that corporations can spend on American elections, I find that my voice in the Suburbanite is substantially stilled by a new requirement that letters be limited to 450 words.

“While I understand that this comes about by the space and cost pressures that all newspapers are facing, it nevertheless, shows the lack of balance between the speech of those endowed with control of great wealth, and those like me.

“Unions and corporations will now be spending money that does not belong to those who decide how to spend it, since in the case of unions, leaders, and in the case of corporations, Boards of Directors, make that decision. In anticipation of the court’s decision I wrote a letter to your paper, which was published on October 9, 2009 under the heading, “The Best Government Money Can Buy.” It appears on my blog as 'Money and Politics'

“I must say that with this Supreme Court decision we have come full circle. The Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, decided on who our next President should be, that President then chose members of the court, who in turn stacked the deck in favor of Bush’s party. While the ruling also applies to unions there is no comparison between the amount of money available to unions and to corporations.

"But the worst part is not even the partisan aspects; it is the ability, already great for corporations, to reward or intimidate lawmakers, for an Exxon, for example, can say to any lawmaker, ‘let us pollute, and we shall reward you with heaps of cash in support of your next election’, or the reverse, ‘oppose us and we shall spare no money in bringing about your defeat.’ Unions can bring similar rewards or threats. The people lose! Money reigns! “Let us not forget the truism spoken by the campaign manager for William McKinley, during the 1906 election where McKinley’s campaign was financed primarily by corporations, ‘There are two things that are important in politics. 'The first is money and I can't remember the second.’

"It was that election which prompted passage of the Tillman Act in 1907 that first put limitations on corporate spending in elections.”

The letter was published, but subsequently the limit on Letters to the Editor was reduced to 300 words. When I first started publishing in the Suburbanite there was no limit on length.

On January 25, 2010 I again wrote a letter to the New York Times in response to an editorial entitled "Avoiding a Japanese Decade."

I wrote:

“I congratulate the New York Times for endorsing the Administration’s effort to regulate banks. (New York Times January 2, 2010 editorial). Hopefully, Republicans will not block it in the Senate, as they have blocked almost every other initiative by invoking the filibuster.

“I suggest, however, that until we have a cap on usurious interest, no regulations will be adequate to stop their reckless behavior, or stop their rip-off of the American public. Banks now borrow from consumers at below 2%, and charge them for loans via credit cards at 20% or more. They then extrapolate a one-day loan into a month interest (which is what happens when a payment is late by one day) and add late and other fees, causing the actual interest to be well over 100%. In addition
because of the huge profits resulting, the banks are encouraged to lend recklessly. No regulation short of this will be effective.”

It was not published.

On January  31, 2010 I again wrote to the New York Times in response to an Op-Ed piece by Charles M. Blow entitled: "Lost in Translation."

I wrote:

"I find Mr. Blow’s Op-Ed piece “Lost in Translation” (New York Times, January 30) shocking.

"The ignorance of the American electorate is appalling.

"But what is even more appalling is that he blames this ignorance on our President, who it has been popular, lately, to blame for everything.

"Let Mr. Blow and his fellow journalists, pundits and the media in general look to themselves for the failure. Reading their many thousands of words, whether in print or by word of mouth, one would be hard put to find any attempt to educate the public on the most vital facts relating to the political landscape. The 'liberal' organizations with their innumerable e-mails have been no more informative.

In order to keep this post within a reasonable length, I will not set forth any more Letters to the Editor now, but instead will publish additional letters, in a future post.

Liberals Charged As Condescending!

In an article that appeared in the Washington Post entitled: “Why Are Liberals So Condescending?” Gerard Alexander sets forth a long list of images that he claims Liberals have of the Right. The article can be found here and I urge readers to read it, because not only do I plead guilty to having those views, but I assert that they are all true and much more besides. I think it is a perfect description of the Right (Republicans). I couldn't have described them better. It is not condescension. It is fact!

On economics they have only one prescription for everything--cut taxes.

Under Bush they turned the biggest surplus in history into the biggest deficit in history and gave us what could have been a depression to rival that of 1929, and while we have avoided the worst, we are still suffering from its after effects.

In well-researched writing on my blog entitled Lying Pays Off!!!!! Smears Succeed!!!! Obstructionism Is Rewarded!!!! I document the behavior of Republicans in the Congress and out.

In the face of this Mr. Alexander says:

"A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck." Well, I don't remember it being phrased as "liberals are always wrong" that would be far too mild for the minions of the Right. No they accuse liberals of far worse things and it clearly is not limited to "marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."

Thus we see such reputed moderate Republicans as Susan Collins engaging in fear mongering and lying when she says:

“The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism. . . . There’s no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab’s interrogation. There’s no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal. This charade must stop. Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such. The safety of the American people depends on it.”

 

The new "moderate" Senator from Massachusetts said similar things. It  is a charade indeed, but the charade goes the other way.

The New Yorker sums it up succinctly saying:

"According to Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, in Washington, the military can’t simply grab suspects inside the U.S. and hold them without charge or a hearing. 'It violates the Constitution, which extends to everyone inside the U.S.,' she said. 'You can’t be seized without probable cause. You have the right to due process, and to a trial by a jury of your peers—which a military commission is not.' Confusion on this point may derive from the Bush Administration’s controversial handling of two suspected terrorists, José Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Both men were arrested in the U.S. by law-enforcement officials, and indicted on criminal charges. But Bush declared Padilla and Marri to be 'enemy combatants,' which, he argued, meant that they could be transferred to military custody, for interrogation and detention without trial. (Neither suspect provided useful intelligence.) The cases provoked legal challenges, and in both instances appeals courts ruled that Bush had overstepped his power. The Administration, not willing to risk a Supreme Court defeat, returned the suspects to the civilian system."

John Brennan who is  a career CIA officer and has served in numerous Administrations in ever higher positions and was the  Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Bush said on Meet the Press that he is "tiring of politicians using national security issues as a political football" 

But this kind of libel is not new to the Republican Party. Richard Nixon accused his Democratic rival Helen Gahaghan Douglas of "being soft on Communism". Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason" which Ann Coulter decided to top this with “Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.” Indeed, “in my next book, [I’m] going through 50 years of treason by Democrats.”

When Clinton aide Vincent Foster committed suicide Rush Limbaugh "claim(ed) that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton."

Alexander writes with derision of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," charged by Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Administration as showing essentially a paranoid view. But was it? "Mr. Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder" and he certainly didn't work alone. They took a land deal the Clintons were involved in, that they had in fact lost money in, known as Whitewater, and made it look like the biggest fraud of a century. They pushed it until Clinton felt compelled to ask for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the affair. Now in all previous cases the court which was to choose the prosecutor under the then existing law, had always chosen one of the party of the person being investigated, so as to make sure that there would be no hint of partisanship. But here that tradition was violated when a partisan Republican panel appointed Kenneth Starr, who already had a reputation for a high level of partisanship. They then financed a suit by one, Paula Jones, thereby keeping the Clinton Administration off balance and unable to fully function. They eventually succeeded in catching the President in a lie in the Lewinsky affair, leading to Clinton's impeachment on a straight party line vote. It was obvious from day one that they, and it wasn't just Scaife, were determined to get Clinton by fair means or foul.

Let us move forward to the Health Care debate and the falsehoods told there. They have never engaged on the merits. they have used lie after lie, the claim of Death Panels being the most outrageous, but not alone. See: Health Insurance Reform - Lies and Damned Lies.

Well Mr. Alexander might say that was just Sarah Palin, but aside from the fact that Palin is a leading Republican light, not a single Republican disavowed these lies. But see also: Health Insurance Reform.

How can one have a serious policy discussion with a group that relies on so many falsehoods.

Whether it is the fault of the media, or the fault of the Administration, the lack of knowledge on the part of the public is appalling. According to the Pew Research Center's News just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the Health Care legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill. 

If we look back on the build up to the Iraq war and beyond we find again the total lack of accurate information that the American Public has. In 2005 a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that had long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay. 

Alexander talks about "The Republican War on Science" as though it were some kind of fiction. But the record of Bush Administration agencies ignoring the evidence of their own scientific staff, has been documented too often to require further discussion. Their refusal to acknowledge global warming in the face of an almost unanimous scientific consensus, speaks for itself.

He argues that evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda. That is simply not true. Of course there are costs to cap and trade. Nobody denies that. This is an example of their favorite tactic of setting up of a straw man. The point is not that there would be no costs, but that the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Not only does CO2 present a mortal threat from global warming, but it is causing untold health problems which are a burden on the economy and the Health Care system. But Alexander here illustrates exactly why it is so hard to have a real discussion. That straw man is a favorite tactic substituting for honest discussion.

Alexander says: "But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. I wouldn't say stupid, but as I have illustrated, the public is so ill informed and so consistently lied to, that the ability of Democracy to function becomes a sham. Voting does not Democracy make. An informed public is necessary to the process, and when we have a whole party that consistently misrepresents, fear-mongers, and appeals to prejudice, we as a society and as a democracy are in trouble.

Let us remember that the Nazis came to power by the vote of the people.

Says Alexander that "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." But that is absolutely true. What else is behind the birther movement against Obama. Why is his birth more in doubt than say McCain's (who in fact was not born in any of the 50 states) or any previous President.

It was not so long ago that then Republican majority leader Trent Lott said in praise of Strom Thurmond  that the country would have been better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.

In addition, while it is not widely known, since the Johnson civil rights legislation era, no Democrat for President ever achieved a majority of the white vote in the US. Obama got 43 percent of the white electorate which was more than any previous Democratic candidate got, but it hardly shows that the race issue is dead. 

As for anti-immigrant,  a few weeks ago I received an e-mail being widely circulated of a 1929 song that went something like, "If you don't like things here, go home, go home". Unfortunately the link is no longer active and so I can't reproduce it.

According to the Washington Post of February 11, 2010 "Former House member Tom Tancredo, famed for his attacks on illegal immigration, gave backers of the racial explanation all the ammunition they needed."

"In an astonishingly offensive speech, cheered by the Tea Party crowd, Tancredo declared that 'people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama....Even worse, if that's possible, Tancredo harkened back to the Jim Crow South that denied the right to vote to African Americans on the basis of  'literacy tests' that called for potential black registrants to answer questions that would have stumped PhDs. in political science...The reason we elected "Barack Hussein Obama," according to Tancredo, is "mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country."

As for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he was no neo-conservative. He was a liberal, and a Democrat, if ever there was one. Yes, it is not to the credit of other liberals that they discounted his concerns, but what does that prove? That liberals are not always right. Conceded gladly!!!

As for the Supreme Court Decision of Free Speech for corporations I addressed that at length here.

Mr Alexander suggests that we need to listen to the Tea partiers, but their message is incomprehensible. "Don't touch my Medicare - I am against government programs." and it tells us something about them as they cheer Tancredo and Palin and their hate-mongering.

All I can say is that Alexander indicts the movement by describing its character. The liberal impression is not one to apologize for, for it is accurate in describing the Republican Party. It was a vicious party during McCarthy and Nixon, it did great damage under Reagan, but nothing that went before, compares to what it has now become.

Liberals aren't always right, and I have severely criticized them on my blog, under the heading: Doesn't Anybody Really Care? where I also further documented the viciousness of the Republican party, but to read the Right even among its so called intellectuals like Krauthammer or Wills is not particularly elucidating.

I sincerely believe that what the Republicans and the Right in general seeks is a country of aristocrats, giving out of the goodness of their hearts and with condescension, a handout here or a job there. The old Russian model of serfdom seems to appeal to them. They have said that they believe that the only function of government is defense against external and internal foes. That means no public school system, no SS, no Medicare, etc., etc. Can no one hear them.