Commentary Update for December 16, 2003
1. This Week's Show: We will continue to run our interview with Dr. Jim Simmons this week on channel 66. Meanwhile, I'm in the process of trying to get some of our shows from this semester played on Oshkosh Cable Access channel 2. During the week of December 22 our interview with County Board Members Mike Norton and Claud Thompson will play on channel 2.
2. McCain-Feingold Win Victory: John McCain and Russ Feingold won a 5-4 victory in the Supreme Court last week for their campaign finance reform legislation. The court majority opinion and dissents can be found here. Justice Scalia does have a line in the last paragraph of his dissent that I agree with completely: "the federal election campaign laws, which are already (as today's opinions show) so voluminous, so detailed, so complex, that no ordinary citizen dare run for office, or even contribute a significant sum, without hiring an expert advisor in the field . . ."
3. Jim The New Democrat Doyle Misses Another Opportunity: Since the McCain-Feingold court decision upholds the principle that sham campaign "issue ads" can be regulated with presenting constitutional problems, state governments are now free to enforce such regulations in their own elections. In Wisconsin, campaign abuses go well beyond mere sham issue ads. Reform legislation has languished in the legislature for years, but now that the court has said yes on McCain-Feingold there are no more excuses for not acting. Now you would think that governor Jim The New Democrat Doyle, a man who thus far has allowed himself to be defined by the Republicans and who has not articulated a compelling agenda that average folks can rally around, would grab the mantle of campaign finance reform and use the McCain-Feingold decision as a tool to shame the Republicans into reforming the state's corrupt political system. Especially given the fact that Doyle campaigned as a supporter of Senate Bill 12 (the main campaign finance reform proposal), you'd think he would sense the golden opportunity to get it done. But no, Doyle last week announced that at this point he wants only to have passed legislation regulating the sham issue ads, using standards less stringent than McCain-Feingold allows. Jay Heck of Common Cause explains the situation here.
Is it possible that Doyle, in his zeal to turn Wisconsin into Las Vegas East (this does seem to be a key element of economic development in the state), is dragging his feet on campaign finance reform so as not to offend the Native American gaming interests that will probably contribute heavily to his reelection campaign? Common Cause Wisconsin reported last year that, "the $500,000 contribution made by the Ho-Chunk Nation last October to the Democratic National Committee is the single largest soft money contribution ever made by a Wisconsin-based entity to a national party committee in history." McCain-Feingold eliminates such "soft money" contributions at the federal level, but failure to act at the state level simply moves the action there absent action from the legislature to reform the campaign finance system.
4. How Public Policy Gets Made In Wisconsin: We just finished saying that campaign finance reform legislation has languished in the legislature for years, a victim of incumbents' addiction to special interest money. But notice how quickly the legislature moves when big interests push for a bill, in this case the "Job Creation Act":
Republicans held a public hearing before the powerful Joint Finance Committee the day after it was introduced - a Tuesday - and leaders were calling for passage of the 114-page bill by week's end.
"The bill was written in a vacuum by the regulated people who have a vendetta against the regulators," said Steve Hiniker, executive director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, an environmental organization.
Two environmental organizations also filed a complaint with the attorney general's office, saying some lobbyists were allowed to review the bill before it was made public.
Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau records show early drafts came from lobbyists representing Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Builders Association.(from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shows Jim The New Democrat Doyle and the majority Republicans in complete cahoots on the legislation, reaching a "compromise" that the bill's lobbyist writers find acceptable.
Meanwhile Curt Andersen calls the Job Creation Act "the worst piece of legislation in Wisconsin's history."
5. When Sinead Met John And George: Our fall semester at UW Oshkosh just ended. I had a very enjoyable experience teaching a senior seminar on "The Rhetoric of Popular Music." For a final essay, students had a few options, which included writing an imaginary conversation between at least two of their favorite pop stars. I like to do the homework assignments also (it helps demonstrate to the students that the assignment is really worth thinking about), and as it turned out I was the only one to select the conversation option. What I ended up with was a kind of third-rate Platonic dialogue, complete with a hackneyed theme of "think for yourself" and John Lennon in the Socrates role while Sinead O'Connor is a kind of Thrasymachus. George Harrison shows up too. Here it is: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/commentary/sinead.htm
6. Response To Saddamino Theory: My old friend Pete Pagano of Norfolk, VA had this to say about my Saddamino Theory--
Your Saddamino Theory speech makes some good points regarding our occupation
of Iraq but I disagree on certain issues. Regarding Saddam's possession of WMD,
the critics who now say Saddam has no weapons were only able to make that statement
after the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled that regime. Prior to our ability to
thoroughly root around that country there was no way to know for sure. The intelligence
was not definitive one way or the other. That goes not just for our intel but
other countries' intel as well. Given the potentially disastrous consequences
of Saddam possessing WMD, it was prudent to err on the side of caution. Better
that than to see an American city go up in a mushroom cloud and then have to
say to the American people - "well, the intel was unclear as to whether
Saddam had or was developing WMD but we decided to give him the benefit of the
doubt". Now, after invading Iraq and toppling the Saddam regime, we can
say fairly definitively that he had no WMD. No one could have made that claim
with surety before the invasion. As to the Iraqi people not greeting us as liberators,
I would say that is more to do with our poor planning for the post-hostilities
phase of the operation. I believe the Secretary of Defense needs to answer for
that. I think valuable goodwill with the Iraqi people was squandered as a result.
The other major point of disagreement I have with the Saddamino theory is what
the U.S. fears from direct elections. If what you are inferring is that the
U.S. fears direct elections because they will result in Islamic fundamentalist
states, then it is with good reason. The mullahs of Iran run a hardline Islamic
theocracy that even their own people no longer support. That Islamic state has
been the most significant state sponsor of terrorism against the U.S. and western
nations. Iran under the mullahs is arguably a more pressing threat to the U.S.
than Saddam posed. The other Islamic fundamentalist state was of course Afghanistan
under the Taliban. The haven that regime provided to Al Qaeda and the oppression
it imposed on the Afghan people, especially the women and girls says it all.
So, has the U.S. made mistakes in the occupation? Absolutely. Should we declare
victory and go home? Perhaps, but not before we can set conditions for success
for the Iraqi people. Otherwise the situation over there and the threat facing
the U.S. will be even worse than had we not invaded.
Regards,
Pete Pagano
Norfolk, VA
7. My Emmanuel Goldstein Moment: My freshmen (actually, the politically correct term is now "first year") students always look at me like I'm a dork or a pinhead when I say that George Orwell's 1984 changed my life when I first read it. As it turns out, the kind of totalitarian thuggery envisioned by Orwell probably exists more in academia than just about any other institution, but rarely have I had such an "Emmanuel Goldstein Moment" as when watching those pictures of Saddam Hussein this week. If you recall 1984, Emmanuel Goldstein was the "Enemy of the People" whose face would flash onto the television screens during the Two Minutes of Hate. Though Orwell implies in the book that Emmanuel Goldstein was a principled opponent of Big Brother (in other words, Saddam Hussein is no Emmanuel Goldstein), the point is that no one yelling at the screen during the Two Minutes of Hate really knew anything about Goldstein. They had merely been taught to obey their leaders' directives regarding who to love and who to hate. And THAT's the connection to Saddam. The average person looking at the pathetic images of Saddam is only supposed to know that this man is the embodiment of evil. The fact that his worst crimes were committed when he was a western ally shaking hands with American officials is now immaterial. This at the same time that stories about mass walkouts of Iraqi troops and Halliburton war profiteering have disappeared from the headlines. All we need to know is that Emmanuel Goldstein, the enemy of the people, has been captured.
As for Saddam's trial, don't look to Nuremberg or even the Milosevic tribunal for cues as to how it will be run. Look instead to the Manuel Noriega farce. Like Saddam, Noriega was a ruthless thug (albeit on a much smaller scale) whose major atrocities in Panama were committed while he was the US government's flunky. The rules of the trial were such that Noriega could not enter any evidence suggesting American complicity in his crimes, and I don't think it takes a rocket scientist (or a UN weapons inspector even) to see that the same thing will happen with Saddam. And I'm certain we will hear very little about the corporations that supplied Iraq's weapons program.
For a good example of what the psychologists call "wishful thinking," be sure to take in some of the television talking heads' discussion of the consequences of Saddam's capture. Against all evidence to the contrary, they insist the capture will result in a reduction in hostilities against the coalition. I think Tariq Ali (NOT to be confused with Tariq Aziz, Saddam's former henchman), author of Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, earlier this month posited a more realistic view: "if Saddam Hussein died a natural death or was captured and killed or whatever, the resistance far from dying down would actually increase, because many who are not coming out at the moment fearful that Saddam might come back, would then join the resistance. I have absolutely no doubt of that. So the notion if we just captured the headman, classic colonial talk, capture the head man, get rid of him and the natives will be on side." Ali's debate with Bush war policy supporter Chris Hitchens can be found here.
As for me, I'm thinking of digging a little spider hole for myself in the backyard. I'm rather surprised that the Department of Homeland Insecurity has not already advocated such holes in the event of an invasion of the body snatchers. I'm gonna call mine MOASH (Mother of All Spider Holes).
8. Simile of the Week: From an editorial in today's New York Times on "Painting Hussein's Portrait"--After the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it seemed that everyone might have given him too much credit. Pictures of the Hussein family's multiple palaces showed each one looking more like a bad Las Vegas hotel suite than the last.
9. FBI Fully Implements New Surveillance Rules: Just in case you thought the new (?) FBI wasn't serious about protecting us, check out the new "secret intelligence tribunal."
10. Barbie From Hell: I don't normally pass on spam ads, but this one is too good to pass up--http://www.conservativebookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6230&sour_cd=CBE017001
11. Happy Holidays!: This will be the last Commentary Update until January. I hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season!
-Tony