More at stake than presidency

By Don Klein

I don’t suppose anyone is still wondering why during this period of terrible economic consequences the very rich are still being allowed to benefit from the unjust Bush tax cuts. That’s because just about half the men and women we send to Congress are themselves millionaires.

Yes, the people of the United States are victimized in a double-barreled assault by the financially privileged. First, corporate funds have purchased the deportment of Congress which slips every benefit it can muster from tax breaks to economic exemptions and fiscal waivers, into legislation governing the rest of us in the country.

And secondly, when you are a rich man or woman with sworn authority to make law such as a legislator, you take lots of care to keep as much of your loot as possible by discouraging acts of fiscal fairness even at the disadvantage of the rest of the nation. It’s called greed, and that is the real political party most Congresspersons belong to.

As we recently learned the median income for members of the House of Representatives and the Senate now stands at $913,000 – more than five times their base government pay of $174,000. Some of them were rich before they were elected and others made their millions after taking office.

Even among the least wealthy, the members who are living on their base salary alone (and there are not too many of them), cannot relate to the 99 percent of the citizens in the country who are struggling from paycheck to paycheck if they are lucky to be working. To say Congress is out of synch with the rest of us on, say, unemployment benefits, food stamps and health costs is obvious.

Take Congressman Ed Pastor, as The New York Times reported. When he was elected to Congress he was like most of the rest of us with no more than $100,000 in the bank. The former high school teacher and miner’s son was locked firmly into the middle class, owing almost as much as he had in his bank balance

After two decades in Congress, Rep. Pastor is now a millionaire and sees nothing unusual about it. The Arizona congressman said he never relied on fancy stock investments to make money. He said the key to his good fortune was watching what he spends, paying off debts and, at age 68, collecting Social Security and a pension from his days as a county supervisor, The Times reported.

There are a number of conclusions that his story begs. First of all I like to see the math that can prove that by being frugal and paying off debts you can accumulate over a million dollars at his base salary, especially while maintaining two homes in Washington and Arizona.

I’d also like to know why a fully-active and fully-paid Congressman qualifies for Social Security when his base salary is more than four times that of the average American. It is a ripoff for person earning $174,000 a year to receive a government retirement safety net meant for needy citizens. Add to that the abomination that this influential person is also collecting a pension from his home county, while he is still sucking on the public teat in Washington.

Then he has the nerve to tell The Times, "I don’t see myself as a man of great wealth," he said. "To say that I’m enjoying a millionaire’s lifestyle — well, I can tell you, I guess a millionaire’s income doesn’t go very far these days."

If that is not astonishing gall it is only because that is the mind set of too many public servants who believe their first duty is not to their country or their constituents, but to their own pocketbooks. Too many run for public office not to do the public any good but to do themselves the best they can.

From the very early days of the republic, Congressmen were never drawn in large numbers from the poor. They cannot afford to run for office when their every waking moment is devoted to earning income for their families.

But in the early days there were rich, or at lest financially comfortable men, who had principles and public interest at heart. Rich or poor, in colonial days life was a struggle for all and the common good was easy to recognize. Not so today.

The millionaires and would-be millionaires of Congress are governed by their own avarice or the ability to be swayed by the money of others – usually large corporations – not to do the public good at all.

I can recall the shock of one Congressman just a year or so ago who apologized to British Petroleum for being so "badly treated" by regulatory agencies and the president after BP dumped millions of gallons of raw crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico to despoil the US coastal seashore.

We all know that many members of the House and Senate would dance on their toes like an awkward ballerina for the amusement of their corporate masters. Almost all end up as alleged "non-lobbyists," like former speaker Newt Gingrich for Fannie Mae at a fee of $1.6 million after he left office.

It is a conspiracy against the people that will never be punished because of the influence of money. There are too few men and women of principle left in Congress these days to affect real change.

So remember that when you go to the polls this November. It is not inconsequential who you send to Congress as your representative or your Senator. The election has a lot more to do with than just the presidency.

Yellow journalism revisited

By Don Klein

The Murdock hacking scandal in Britain is an example of the  worst journalistic behavior the world has witnessed in modern times. It is tantamount to the yellow journalism spree engaged in more than a hundred years ago by the Hearst newspapers.

Back then William Randolph Hearst was blamed by many for getting the United States into the war with Spain over its then Cuban colony after the battleship Maine blew up while moored in Havana harbor.

Frederick Remington was an artist for Hearst’s New York Journal at a time when newspaper artists were the photo journalists of that era. The Maine was in Cuba as the American response to alleged Spanish atrocities against Cuba civilians.  The reports proved wrong.

 But that was not good news for Hearst in a circulation war with the then dominant New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. Newspapers were the prime source of information in 1898 and a war heightened circulation figures.

 Most of the atrocities reported by Hearst papers were concocted by rebels and disseminated by Hearst and the source of the Maine’s destruction was never pinned down. Spanish conspiracy for the attack was never proven. This was not satisfactory for Hearst, edged on by the lure of circulation enhancement.

Remington in Cuba cabled Hearst in New York, “There is no war. Request to be recalled,” he said. Like all journalists, if there was no story he wanted return to his home base. Hearst shot back: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”

We all know what happened. The US went to war with Spain. Cuba and the Philippines were liberated and history was altered, partially in an ugly drive to improve newspaper circulation.

The Murdoch case was not as provocative as the Spanish-American War after the sinking of the Maine, nor did it end with blood on anyone’s hands, but it was driven by the same repugnant motives – to enhance newspaper circulation by underhanded and illegal means.

In the Murdock hacking case, James Murdock, son of the patriarch of the New Corporation which runs the Murdock news empire told a committee of the British Parliament that the hacking was carried out by rogue reporters and that he and other Murdock corporate heads knew nothing of the practice.

Of course everyone who knows how news organizations operate knew that this defense was hogwash, especially since the publishing company paid out heavy settlements over the years to victims of the hacking. Editors seldom, if ever, engage in unprofessional behavior without the exhorting and enthusiasm of  owners. Furthermore editors I worked for,and others I knew, would never  last very long if they were not forthright.

 News gathering organizations do not settle claims of irresponsible behavior without fully examining the facts in each case since a news company’s most important stock and trade with the public is its trustworthiness. If the public loses faith in the organization’s  believability they cannot survive for long.

 James and his father, Rupert, who claimed the day he was brought up before the legislative committee was “the worst day of his life” testified they were innocent victims of this despicable tradition of hacking by members of their newspapers. This is equivalent to New England  Patriots head coach Bill Belichick being shocked to learn that his minions were filming opponents practice sessions.

As an old newspaper man I could attest to the fact that never is a controversial story ever printed without the writer explaining to the bosses how the crucial information was gathered. One of the key words in journalism, especially when the information is sensitive, is “sources.” All reporters have to disclose to their editors the source of the information before the story is used.

The simple conclusion is that the reporters on the now defunct News of the World, the Murdock paper that is accused of the hacking, were not working on their own. They acted with the full knowledge of their editors and the editors had approval to employ such tactics from the owners. That is a given.

When Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, slipped the infamous Pentagon Papers concerning the false government claims on the Viet Nam War in 1971 to The New York Times, the newspaper published the sensitive documents only after The Times top management authorized it. That is how it works.

Something as crucial as government secret papers would never have been published without the bosses knowing about it and approving. The same procedure occurs with all types of important information that comes to a newspaper, especially through illegal methods like hacking.  Actually most newspapers will not use hacked information.

The Murdoch’s knew and encouraged their underlings to practice hacking to get exclusive stories in order to increase circulation and boost advertising sales and it is ridiculous for anyone to believe otherwise.

Parliament's investigation into the hacking scandal now revealed new documents which appear to confirm these conclusions. The Murdochs knew about the hacking years ago and did not stop it. The information has severely damaged the reputation of the News Corporation and the Murdochs’ leadership, both in Britain and the United States.

 The evidence is a series of  2008 e-mail messages confirming the accounts of two of James Murdoch’s former senior executives, an in-house lawyer and an editor, who said they had told him of the illegal telephone hacking messages to gather news and gossip went beyond a single “rogue reporter.”

Everyone in the business knew that eventually the truth would come out and we can conclude that the Murdochs are the worst kind of people to operate news organizations in an ethical society. Their operational behavior is  contemptuous and their sworn testimony before Parliament was a farce.

The American autumn

By Don Klein

 

There is an interesting movement afoot that just might make a difference in the American political environment. Just might, I say, because nowadays we can’t be sure of any positive force in politics. First we had a disastrous Svengali-Trilby relationship in the White House for eight years and now we have a faltering lamb running the show when we need a lion.

 

The movement I speak of is the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd, an assemblage of seemingly unrelated dissidents who have one thing in common – they all believe the government no longer represents their best interests. Sounds like the Arab Spring uprisings and some are even calling it the "American Autumn." No question that on taxes Washington has not been friendly to the people.

 

The country has become a plutocracy thanks to the stranglehold of the Republican Party by virtue of its control of the House of Representatives and the incompetence of Democratic leadership. The GOP stance, fired by noisy Tea Party intransigence, is to repel any attempt to equalize the tax burden.

 

That permits the one percent of the wealthiest Americans to pay less taxes than the remaining 99 percent who pay taxes. It also is terribly irksome that some very profitable corporations don’t pay taxes at all and other prosperous firms receive billions of dollars in subsidies.

 

All this while the country struggles in severe economic times and the middle class is withering as they watch their benefits being reduced in government austerity programs. To many, it is amazing that it took this long for protesters to take to the streets over this clear disparity.

 

The Wall Street occupation received little attention until some strong-armed tactics by a police commander to pepper spray a defenseless group of non-threatening, non-violent young women corralled by other cops. That unjustifiable behavior by a bullying police officer brought the protesters’ issue onto the front pages.

 

Now there are pickets across the nation in most large cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and Baltimore demanding a change in the way corrupt Washington does business to favor the wealthy at the disadvantage to everyone else. The issue is not necessarily police brutality, which served to bring the issue to the attention of millions, but economic inequality.

 

The 99 percent movement, named for the people who are not millionaires, is not made up only of a ragtag bunch of kids who cant find jobs even though it might seem that way. The majority of Americans feel the same way and although the body politic has not yet thrown its total weight behind the movement anyone can see that the issue has touched a nerve.

 

An NBC-Wall Street Journal survey resulted in finding that 81 percent of the people nationwide support higher taxes for the rich and only 17 percent oppose. That is an enormous majority. Imagine, if you stopped five people on the street, four of them would agree to higher taxes for the rich.

 

When this fact sinks into Republicans like John Boehner and Eric Cantor they have to conclude that the 2012 election is in jeopardy if they continue to protect their rich friends at the expense of others. This will become even more apparent when Boehner-Cantor realize that a majority of the Tea Party also agrees that millionaires should pay their fair share.

 

By a 52 to 29 percent margin of those who identify themselves as Tea Party adherents they indorsed the Buffet Rule, which calls for plutocrats to pay a higher tax rate than a plumber.

 

And here is the biggest surprise of all. An American Express survey exclusively directed at those earning six figure salaries or more discovered that 65 percent of them favored higher taxation. Further, those people who claim they are Republican Party members support the higher tax for the rich by 66 to 17 percent opposed.

 

George W. where are you now?

 

It is clear that the 99 percent are utterly tired of playing chump for the privileged one percent. It is a revolution of sorts, but fortunately at this point is nonviolent. It is no longer comfortable for the Boehner-Cantor wing of the Republican Party to ignore this trend. If they don’t act, imagine the country’s future with people suffering and being dispossessed from their homes, jobless and their children going hungry. Anything might happen.

 

You don’t have to be a professor of history to know that the root of all revolutions is an injustice of one sort or another. Marie Antoinette got her just desserts, so did Louis XVI and George III and Czar Nicholas. Boehner and Cantor are placing their heads on top of political spikes, figuratively speaking, if they continue to block tax equality.

 

The fact that there are thousands now, and perhaps millions later, protesting on the streets against the corruption in Washington will not mean it is a sure thing that the Democrats will benefit from the movement. It is time for them and for President Obama to show some gumption and leadership to carry this issue to fruition.

 

People want the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes as the rest of us do, they want giant corporations to pay taxes, they want the government to close tax loopholes and end unessential subsides. That’s not too much to demand and if the people don’t get it, expect to see many new faces in Washington very soon.

Irene and the family

By Don Klein

I’ve never been evacuated before. There I was sitting in my daughter’s kitchen in Salisbury a week ago with the wind and rain pounding on the window behind me and wondering about the future.

We’ve be warned over and over again about the serious nature of Hurricane Irene and there is no reason not to believe the counseling. The storm served to remind us all that we are mere inconsequential human beings with limited power despite our delusions of invulnerability.

It also brings to the forefront the fact that we really care about each other when faced with the threat to life and limb. My daughter, Rachel, and her husband, Billy, opened their house to us without  so much of a second thought. Besides everyone seemed to be phoning each other to make sure all is well this friends and family.

Interestingly the hurricane takes priority over everything else. It dominates all minds.  Category one, or two, or three?  News of the direction of the thrust and the impact of the surge inundate our grey matter. We all become experts on hurricanes, overnight. What to do? Where to go? What to take with you? And so on.

Cancellation of planned events clutter the list of what’s happening – or better still, what’s not happening -- that weekend.  But for the most part all of this is just things to fill the mind while we all do the only thing people can do in a hurricane. Hunker down and wait it out, read a good book or watch television as long as you have electrical power.

Or just snooze in a comfortable chair and nibble on snacks between meals. Some fidgety people are inclined to take out their laptops and write essays about the storm. In the end the storm turned out to be less harmful than we expected, at least in our neck of the woods.

Others did not fair as well. Up and down the coast the damage was mostly from the rain than from the wind which is the ultimate threat from a hurricane. Floods ruined homes and businesses from North Carolina to Vermont, but we were spared along the Maryland-Delaware coast.

The two-day displacement to the relative safety of Salisbury, however, was in a way a pleasant divergence from the ordinary – if you can call the threat of a vicious storm a mere divergence. We arrived at Rachel and Billy’s house in late morning after an uneventful trip from Ocean City, about 40 miles to the east.  

We expected the main roads to be jammed with coastal exiles like us so like clever locals we made the trip along all the back roads we had explored over 17 years of life on the Eastern Shore only to discover when we needed to go on the main highway for the last few final miles of the journey, it was wide open.

Where was everyone? we asked. They either left before us or after us but had the thoughtfulness to leave the roads open during our time of travel. That should have been an omen that the impending storm was not up to expectations. It was Friday, still a beautiful day and would not start raining until later.

This unscheduled visit had its benefits. My wife and I spent the afternoon with my daughter and two granddaughters shopping for school supplies, something I have not done for at least three decades or more. We went to a book store and had lunch together. When my son-in-law came home later  he started battening down everything that was loose in the yard with the help of a few neighbors.

The best part of the weekend was that we had meals as a family on sequential days for the first time in years. It gave me a new feeling of kinship that seems to get lost when your children grow up, marry and move into there own homes. We have had occasional dinners at each other’s homes over the years, but never for two days or more in a row. We can thank Irene for rekindling that familial feeling.

On Sunday, after the storm had whizzed by overnight we watched on television as the mayor of our town announce that residents were welcome back almost immediately. Visitors had to wait a few hours longer. We packed the few belonging we had brought with us and left for home with smiles and hugs and kisses.

The journey back was an uneventful as the evacuation trip two days earlier and in less than an hour we could see the Ocean City skyline in the distance as we traversed one of the two bridges leading back home. Then a strange thing happened.

There was a police barricade on the road and we had to show identification to continue on the bridge. It reminded me of when I was first in Europe back some 60-plus years ago after World War II. Everyone, except GIs, had to carry ID cards with their name, address and picture wherever they went and had to show them whenever demanded by a police officer. To me that was as un-American as eating octopus.

In our case I could understand the security measure. The city didn’t want a bunch of looters entering town and causing residual mischief to home owners who just miraculously escaped the wrath of nature. Our home came through the episode without any severe damage and although it was great to spend two days with our children and grandchildren, it was, as it always is, great to be back in our own home again