Commentary Update for August 5th, 2003: Iron Triangle, Dems on C-Span, Cabinet $ecretaries Bushwack WI, The New Democrat Responds, Gandhi in Waupaca, Northeast WI Republicans, Simile of the Week, Sierra Club, Your Tax Dollars at Work, Another Hollywood Liberal?, Oh those Executive Orders

Last week Jim Mather and I taped interviews with Winnebago County Board Chair Joe Maehl and Circuit Court Judge Robert Haase. The tapes will not be ready for viewing until the week of the 12th. Until then, we will continue to broadcast our interview with the anti-FTAA activists. People interested in trade issues should know that activists from around the world are planning to protest the next World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico from September 10-14. Information can be found here.

In Other News:

Northeast Wisconsin's Iron Triangle: My latest Valley Scene column takes a look at the government, big business, big media nexus at work in northeast Wisconsin (substitute your own region's name for northeast Wisconsin and the same argument holds). The Scene now has an active reader forum. If you're in northeast WI be sure to pick up a FREE copy of the Scene at these fine locations.

Dems on C-Span Tonight: Tuesday Aug. 5, the nine Democratic presidential candidates will appear together at the AFL-CIO's Working Families Presidential Forum in Chicago. The forum will be broadcast LIVE on C-SPAN beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Here's a sample of the kinds of questions organized (?) labor is asking the candidates. Meanwhile, the Teamsters announced last week that they are endorsing Dick Gephardt. The Dems could do much worse than Gephardt (who is not liked by the "New Democrats" and opposes these zany "free trade" scams) as nominee, and in this age of candidates being vetted and selected by Wall St., they almost certainly will.

The TV networks (which are supposed to be operating in the Public Interest--yeah, right) would of course never give free coverage to such an event. Mike McCabe's "Battle of the Network Pimps" helps explain why and what can be done about it.

Cabinet $ecretaries Bushwhack Wisconsin: Well waddaya' know, we done had us some Bush Administration Cabinet $ecretaries come visit us in little 'ole Wisconsin last week. My my, I can't think of three people more in tune with the working stiffs of the Badger State than Commerce $ecretary Don Evans (a man with one of those Wink Martindale game show host permanent smiles), Labor $ecretary Elaine Chao (spouse of fierce anti-campaign finance reform Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky), and Treasury $ecretary John Snow. Press reports indicate that some workers (most notably the "Citizens Truth Squad" following the $ecretaries from Milwaukee to Green Bay) saw these three as a regular Axis Of Heave-il, with the worker protesters carrying signs saying, "Read Bush's Lips - - No New Jobs."

I am not someone who believes it impossible for the well-heeled to identify with the lower classes, but these particular $ecretaries are so completely in the Washington big-money insider loop that one has to wonder what the Administration was thinking when it sent them into the heartland. Let's take a brief look at each $ecretary:

Don Evans is known as Dubya's "Money Man." Serving as Bush's campaign chair in 2000, Evans founded the "Pioneers Program" which required a minimum $100,000 donation from participants.

Elaine Chao sat on five corporate boards before becoming labor secretary and was also an executive at Bank of America. About the best thing labor organizations can be compelled to say about Chao is that she is not Linda Chavez, the president's first choice for the labor secretary position. Chavez, who opposed virtually every position taken by the nation's largest unions, withdrew her nomination in 2001 when it was revealed that she had a "Zoe Baird" problem. (Zoe Baird, you may recall, was Bill Clinton's first nominee for attorney general who was withdrawn from consideration when she admitted to breaking the law by hiring undocumented immigrants to care for her children. Bubba's second nominee, Kimba Wood, withdrew for the same reason even though hiring undocumented workers was not illegal in the year she did it. So instead we got 8 years of Janet Reno, about whom the best civil libertarians could say was that she wasn't John Ashcroft. Can you imagine what so-called liberals in this country would say if Ashcroft ordered a Reno-esque Waco style raid? Or how they conveniently forget that Ashcroft's proposal to extract DNA samples from anyone arrested for anything was actually an idea initiated by Reno?)

John Snow, who became Treasury Secretary after the firing of Paul O'Neil last year, is the real winner among the $ecretaries. As former CEO of railroad freight giant CSX, Snow used his insider connections to see to it that the company and he personally profited handsomely. According to a 2002 statement from nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, "Over the past four years of John Snow's leadership, the railroad giant CSX paid nothing in federal income taxes on its $934 billion in U.S. profits. Snow did even better than that; his companies accounting practices enabled CSX to receive tax rebate checks from the Treasury totaling $164 billion. Paid no federal incomes taxes yet received tax rebates. Understand that?"

The LA Times said, "Over the same four-year period, the company gave Snow $36 million in salary, bonuses, stock and options, and forgave a $24-million loan so he wouldn't lose money along with other shareholders as the company's stock price declined . . . Although CSX's tax and compensation practices appear to be legal, these and other aspects of Snow's career suggest the man President Bush has chosen to head his revamped economic team may have a lot of explaining to do before he takes the oath of office."

Snow and CSX know how to grease the right palms, as reported by Fox News:

"The new nominee contributed $1,000 to Bush's 2000 presidential primary campaign, and also gave $1,000 to Bush's principle GOP rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain. . . . In all, Snow gave at least $12,000 to campaigns in the 1999-2000 election cycle and at least $23,000 in 2001-02, all to Republicans, figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics show. . . Two other CSX executives and a CSX lobbyist were among Bush's top donors, each raising at least $100,000 for Bush's 2000 primary campaign. . . CSX itself has been a faithful Republican donor. The company and its employees contributed at least $840,000 to campaigns in the 2001-02 election cycle, with roughly $8 of every $10 going to Republicans."

CSX doesn't take kindly to criticism, either, going to federal court in an effort to shut down the CSX-sucks web site. That site maintains an archive of stories about CSX safety hazards.

In short, if the Bush Administration believes that $ecretaries Evans, Chao, and Snow are going to connect with America's working class, I think they are sadly mistaken. Patronal bushwhacking from the caviar class neither comforts nor consoles unemployed factory workers.

The New Democrat Responds: Imagine you were a Democrat governor in a Midwestern state being hit particularly hard during the latest economic downturn. Imagine that the Republican president sent three riff raff cabinet $ecretaries to your state to milk some PR points. Imagine that the PR bus tour was met with derision and mockery, not just by labor activists, but by everyday working people and even corporate toady editorial boards. Don't you think that any sensible Democrat governor, especially in an era when Dems are demoralized and on the defensive just about everywhere, would take advantage of this golden opportunity to embrace traditional Democratic values, perhaps visit an abandoned factory or two, and give a few speeches warning of the negative effects that the Bush team economic policy will have on the state?

Not Wisconsin's Jim The New Democrat Doyle, a man who is proving to be as politically astute as Gray The New Democrat Davis out in Cali. What did Doyle choose to do during the week that the cabinet $ecretaries visited Wisconsin? Visit with local labor councils? Maybe send Lt. Governor Lawton out to meet with the lumpen proles? No, Doyle uses the opportunity to announce the signing of the "single sales factor" legislation that will milk another $45 million from the treasury by 2006, a bill that legislators from Doyle's own party are trying to repeal. What's disturbing about this is not only that Jim The New Democrat Doyle is marching to the tune played by Wisconsin's Manufacturers and Commerce (we expect no less from the New Democrats), but that according to the Madison Cap Times, "The governor, when asked about the loophole recently, seemed not to understand how it would work."

Wisconsin's tax burden has been shifted dramatically onto the back of residential property tax payers in the last 30 years, as reported most recently by our friend Steve Walters down at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The single sales factor legislation comes with only a "possibility" of job creation, but a guarantee that even more of the tax burden will be shifted on to middle class taxpayers. And let's not forget that the state is losing millions each year in shady corporate tax sheltering schemes. Doyle should have signed the single factor legislation on the Bush PR bus with Evans, Chao, and Snow; it's certainly a bill the $ecretaries would approve of strongly.

Doyle even responded to a request to intervene in the Tyson Food strike, now in its sixth month, in classic New Democrat form. According to the Wisconsin State Journal:

"[Mayor Arnold] Brawders, a retired 39-year veteran of the plant himself, said the long strike is draining the entire community, not just strikers. Businesses are suffering because workers aren't spending money and the strike is creating tensions between workers inside the plant and their neighbors who are strikers or supporters of the strikers.

Brawders wrote Gov. Jim Doyle asking him to intervene.

'It greatly disturbs me that the community is being torn apart, both emotionally and economically by this standoff,' he wrote.

In his reply Doyle said he is concerned about the situation and is 'reviewing options for discontinuing purchases of Tyson products by the State of Wisconsin for the duration of the strike.' But he refused to intervene without a request to do so from both Tyson and the workers." The full story can be found here.

Classic New Democrat: "greatly disturbed," "reviewing options," but won't do anything until the bosses (in this case Tyson management) give the okay.

Gandhi in Waupaca: He ain't no cabinet $ecretary, but Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Arun will be in Waupaca on Sunday, August 10th. Full announcement:

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence will speak on Nonviolent conflict resolution (no admission cost) Sunday, August 10th at 3 PM at the Waupaca Middle School (east of Churchill St. on Shoemaker Dr.).

5:30 PM potluck
7 PM. and lantern construction at South Park (south end of Main Street)
8 PM Music on the beach and peace lanterns float on the lake

Directions:

To get to Waupaca Middle School
Take Hwy 10 west to exit 22/54/49. This is Churchill St. Turn right on
Shoemaker Rd. To get to South Park
Take Hwy 10 west to exit 225/Hwy K (it's the 2nd Waupaca exit) . Turn
right and come into town.

For more information, contact Bob Poeschl at carpepax@riseup.net

What's up with the northeast Wisconsin Republicans?: Commentary has been aware of infighting within the local Republican Party at least since Charlene Lowe challenged Jane Van De Hey for County Executive two years ago. But recently it has become painfully clear that these folks have bigger problems than infighting on their hands throughout northeast Wisconsin. First, former Republican district attorney of Outagamie Vince Biskupic is found to have been engaged in allowing people to buy their way out of prosecution on a scale larger than anyone could have imagined when the allegations first surfaced in October of 2002. (Biskupic is a close friend of former Winnebago County Republican DA Joe Paulus, who has faced his own troubles.). Then Neenah Republican Senator Mike Ellis gets convicted of drunken driving. (Ellis is heralded as the leading campaign finance reform advocate in the Senate, even though he sits with over $200,000 in a war chest, making it virtually impossible to challenge him; see the latest Wisconsin Democracy Campaign tabulation of campaign finance data). Then a racist poem appears on the Winnebago County Republican Party web site.

Meanwhile, Neenah Republican state representative Dean Kaufert claims to be against advisory referenda, but wants one for the death penalty (Wisconsin has not had a death penalty in 150 years). Kaufert, CO-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, has been playing hardball partisan politics on the Doyle property tax freeze veto, a veto that even the Neenah Common Council supports.

Then of course there's Representative Carol Owens. She wants to overturn the state's Smart Growth law, ban cell phones while driving, wants pharmacists to be able to refuse to fill prescriptions, wants president Bush involved in the Doyle Indian gaming rights issue, wants state sanctioned covenant marriages, wants to force school kids to address teachers with courtesy titles, and in 2001 went on a rant about Milwaukee's "colored" population. Stories about each can be found here.

You'd think that if Democrats, Greens, and other parties/independents were going to make some gains in northeast Wisconsin, now would be the time to do it. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Simile of the Week: From Jim Kunstler, "It is within the realm of possibility that Saddam Hussein will be captured alive. If that happens, the world will get a juridical circus that will make the OJ Simpson trial look like a day in traffic court."

What's Up With The Sierra Club?: Northeast Wisconsin's activist MVP Becky Katers is fed up with the Sierra Club's constant undercutting of grassroots environmental activists. Katers' Clean Water Action Council colleague Curt Andersen recently wrote a two part essay on "fascism regained" in the United States.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Okay, so the Milwaukee Brewers have been an embarrassment for more than 10 years now and play in a stadium that was the result of the iron triangle type extortion that goes on all over the country these days. But at least they now have a corporate mission statement (I'm not making this up): "The Milwaukee Brewers are committed to fielding a competitive team both on and off the field that exemplifies a strong work ethic, respect for the game and loyalty to our fans. We deliver an affordable fan friendly, high quality entertainment experience in a world-class facility. As a fiscally responsible organization, our employees are dedicated to enhancing our relationships with the diverse business, communities and citizens of the city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin."

Another Hollywood Liberal? "You can line 'em up and put an 88-millimeter shell through both their foreheads as far as I'm concerned. And I'd be happy to pull the trigger. Who wouldn't?" -- Actor JAMES WOODS discussing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein on www.salon.com.

Oh Those Executive Orders: Since World War II, a major way representative democracy has been subverted in this country is by the proliferation of presidential "executive orders." Such orders get no public hearing, are not studied or voted on by representatives, and frequently are not even seen by key congressional leaders before being signed into law. Earth Rights International recently put out this release, "Outrageous Bush Executive Order on Iraq Oil Must Be Investigated." (my thanks to the great Jeff Ryan for forwarding this on to me):

President Bush has issued an Executive Order, so far completely unreported, that purports to grant broad legal immunity to oil companies operating in Iraq. The Order is, on its face, outrageous, and should be investigated.

Executive Order 13303, issued on May 22, 2003, claims to be essential to Iraqi reconstruction efforts. A cursory reading of the Order indicates that its real purpose is to protect oil companies by giving virtual impunity for any activities undertaken relating to Iraqi oil.

This Order, with broad language that seems to sweep aside federal statutes, including the Alien Tort Claims Act, has received no public attention. It has been brought to light by a researcher with the Sustainable Energy and Environment Network (SEEN).

Under this Order, an oil company complicit in human rights violations, or one that causes environmental damage, would be immune from lawsuits. The language of the Executive Order is so broad that it might as well have been written by lawyers for Halliburton, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco.

In 13303, President Bush declares a national emergency as the basis for protecting the Development Fund for Iraq (an entity intended to fund reconstruction efforts with oil proceeds, overseen by an international board including World Bank officials) as well as all Iraqi petroleum, petroleum products, interests , proceeds, and contracts related to Iraqi petroleum. Claiming that interference with Iraqi petroleum, petroleum products, and interests therein jeopardizes reconstruction efforts in Iraq, EO 13303 offers a wide range of protections to certain persons, entities and assets associated with the Iraqi oil industry. The document is apparently intended as a sweeping grant of immunity to individuals, corporations, agencies and others involved in Iraqi oil sales, marketing, or other oil-related activities.

The Order provides protection at both the front end the activities that generate the oil as well as the back the profits and proceeds that ensue. U.S. companies engaged in petroleum-related work in Iraq are purportedly given broad immunity from suits for environmental damage, workplace harms, contractual disputes, and numerous other wrongs. For example, a U.S. oil company benefiting from human rights abuses, no matter how egregious, apparently falls within the Order s immunity from suit. Similarly, the Order purports to protect any assets derived from Iraqi oil from judgment, garnishment, or any other seizure in U.S. courts. For example, if a corporate entity or an individual engages in criminal activity in the U.S., its assets traceable to Iraqi oil are protected by this order. The list of situations in which a person or corporation could get away with, if not murder, then at least millions, is endless.

The title of the EO, Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest, is a sham. This EO may be about Iraq, but it s also about the oil industry exclusively. (Remember the Administration has claimed that the Iraq war had nothing to do with oil?) There is nothing at all about protecting humanitarian organizations, communications, computer or electrical companies, or other industries that are critical to Iraq s reconstruction.

EarthRights International is joining SEEN and the Government Accountability Project in investigating the legitimacy of this Order. We call on Congress to investigate EO 13303 immediately.

All the best,

-Tony