Bill Moyers's Blog, page 3

Capitol Crimes...Again

Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff is back on the big screen for the second time in a year in CASINO JACK, this time portrayed by Kevin Spacey. This spring he was the centerpiece in Alex Gibney's documentary CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY. Spacey has been nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy or musical...Abramoff is out of jail and in a half-way house.

The news isn't so good for Abramoff's friend former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- he's been convicted by a Texas jury of money laundering and is due to be sentenced on January 10, 2011.

Review the original case through Bill Moyers 2006 exploration of Abramoff and his Washington world. CAPITOL CRIMES delved deep into the dark side of American politics — bringing to light a web of relationships, secret deals and political manipulation. The DALLAS MORNING NEWS said: "If anyone can untangle a complicated new story and make it understandable, it's Bill Moyers. So if you're trying to figure out the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, he explains it all in CAPITOL CRIMES."

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Michael Winship: Censorship: Toys in the Nation's Attic

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

Censorship: Toys in the Nation's Attic

By Michael Winship

In the snows of yesteryear, far away from Don't Ask Don't Tell or START treaties or the War on Christmas, I see the movie house of my youth, the Playhouse Theater on Chapin Street, the only one in my small hometown -- except for a nearby drive-in that closed during the winter.

In the colder months, we'd get a short ride downtown to the Playhouse or crunch along the shoveled sidewalks, stepping over or through the deeper drifts, watching out for patches of ice. Sometimes during semester breaks in high school, I'd go to a double feature and, after it was over, walk down an icy silent Main Street late in the night to where my father was closing his store and preparing to drive home.

I've written of the Playhouse before; its history of vaudeville and minstrel shows, the smell of antique popcorn, the black velvet darkness inside while the movies ran, the theater illuminated only by the projector's beam and the soft neon light of a clock hanging to the right of the screen, courtesy of a local jeweler.

Because it was the only show in town, we saw some first-run films but mostly caught up with the big movies after they had played in the cities - if you wanted to be the first on your block, you had to travel to Rochester to see The Longest Day or Mary Poppins; it would be months before they came around to our theater.

But holding the town's movie monopoly had its bizarre advantages: unusual double features like The Three Stooges in Orbit - and Gigi. And because this was a small town, where everyone knew everyone else's business and the official motto could have been In loco parentis, if the mob of kids at a Saturday matinee got too unruly the manager would simply stop the movie, walk out on stage and threaten to call our mothers and fathers. I remember this failing only once: at a screening of a Disney movie called Tonka, the story of a wild horse tamed by a young Sioux brave named White Bull. Sal Mineo was hopelessly miscast as White Bull - who could blame us for going on the warpath?

One of the very first films I saw at the Playhouse was White Christmas. I have little memory of that initial viewing - there was a jeep in it, right? - but as the years go by I've grown to love its music and cozy holiday sentiment, not to mention the impossible legs of actress-dancer Vera-Ellen.

I went to see it with my mother that first time. She was a bigger movie fan than my father and her eye was critical in more ways than one. Once, the Playhouse's main attraction was accompanied by a short, French comedy film, much in the style of The Red Balloon, that classic story of a balloon that silently follows a little boy through the streets of Paris. Only in this film the balloon had been replaced by a soccer ball that bounced through the street of Paris.

At one point the ball bounced through a doctor's office. A woman in a hospital gown was lying face down on the examining table, her bare buttocks briefly exposed. My appalled mother went to the manager and had the offending three seconds snipped from the film.

Years later we laughed about it and agreed that times were different then. And yet they aren't, of course. Witness the current flap in Washington over the inclusion of an excerpt from a video by the artist and filmmaker David Wojnarowicz in a show at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. Made in 1987 and titled "A Fire in My Belly," the video is a poignant, fierce message of grief and anger arising from the news that Wojnarowicz's mentor and former lover Peter Hujar was dying of AIDS.

Eleven seconds of the piece depict a crucifix over which ants crawl, a metaphor evoking, as New York Times columnist Frank Rich described it, "frantic souls scurrying in panic as a seemingly impassive God looked on."

Outrage was expressed by William Donohue of the Catholic League, a right wing lay organization with no official ties to the Church that seems to exist primarily as a vehicle for Donohue, propelled by his own hot air. The drumbeat was then picked up by conservative Republicans, including the incoming majority leader, Eric Cantor, who threatened the Smithsonian's funding and described the video as "an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season." Speaker-elect John Boehner made similar threats. The Smithsonian caved instantly, and removed the offending video.

Now, first of all, the video was just part of a fascinating exhibit called Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. The whole thing opened on October 30, the day before Halloween, a month before the right discovered it, so if anyone is inclined toward taking offense maybe it should have been Wiccans, other pagans, assorted Satanists and trick-or-treaters.

I know this because, unlike I would guess virtually every one of its holier-than-thou critics, I have actually seen the exhibit. On October 30, in fact, because its opening coincided with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear." Taking a break from the masses filling the capital's mall, my girlfriend Pat and I sought sanctuary in the National Portrait Gallery and checked out Hide/Seek.

In the interest of full disclosure, I used to write a television series for the Smithsonian; the National Portrait Gallery is one of my favorites of all its museums. And Pat was friends with David Wojnarowicz, the artist in question, who himself was killed by AIDS in 1992.

Hide/Seek, according to the gallery's website, "considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art -- especially abstraction--were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society's evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment." Art talk, which translated means that the show not only demonstrates the major contributions of gay men and women to contemporary American art but just as important, how their work was affected by years of suppression and finally, liberation.

The Wojnarowicz video was just a tiny part of the overall exhibition - which flows from Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent to Jasper Johns, David Hockney and Andy Warhol - so small that Pat had to point it out to me. I hadn't noticed it amongst all the other works. But no matter. The Smithsonian was created in 1846, its purpose "the increase and diffusion of knowledge," yet once again it has allowed its intellectual spark to be snuffed by know-nothings and dunderheads. Such cowardice relegates the institution to the role the Smithsonian professes to hate -- "the nation's attic," the place where we throw history's knickknacks, toys and worn out ephemera, unguided by curiosity or unimpeded scholarship.

God knows, Christianity will carry on, despite this minuscule, alleged affront. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, if Christmas can survive the Roman Empire; it can certainly survive this. If it can't, we're in worse shape than I thought and I'd just as soon run back to my hometown and lose myself in the comforting darkness of the Playhouse Theater. Too bad the bastards tore it down.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: Mr. President, Put Up Your Dukes

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

Mr. President, Put Up Your Dukes

By Michael Winship

In a scene from the new movie, The Fighter, we watch welterweight Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, take a brutal pounding when he's thrown into the ring against a bigger boxer. Micky's been told the fight would be "an easy win," but he's driven into a corner, gloves in front of his face, bloodied and helpless as his opponent throws punch after punch.

With just a few days left in the life of the 111th Congress, Michigan's Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been urging President Obama to support keeping the Senate in session past Christmas, one last bid to pass legislation before the 112th convenes next month, Republicans dominating the House and increasing their numbers in the Senate.

"The way I think the President needs to fight is to say that he is going to use all of the power he has of a bully pulpit and urge the Senate to stay in, right up to New Year's," Levin said on C-SPAN's Newsmakers program Sunday. But, he continued, "I don't see that kind of a willingness to fight that hard, where he will take that kind of a position and that's what necessary."

Instead, the president's on the ropes like Micky Ward. But he could make a comeback, taking cues from his own past and the examples of two men - each an Obama supporter -- whose recent deaths remind us that there are people of actions and words whose very existence advances America and the cause of democracy in the face of seemingly implacable opposition, within and without.

Richard Holbrooke was arrogant, vaultingly ambitious and did not, as the saying goes, suffer fools gladly. But in his decades of public service and diplomacy he displayed, in the words of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, "the courage of his convictions, and his convictions were on the side of innocent people bludgeoned by the world's worst bullies and tyrants. His was a foreign policy pragmatic in its particulars but intensely moral in purpose and perspective."

I first crossed paths with Holbrooke in 1977, just after President Jimmy Carter had appointed him assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. He was only 35, but already had more than a decade's worth of work experience in world affairs, including his time in 1963 as an officer with the Agency for International Development in Vietnam and a stint on Averell Harriman's staff at the Paris Peace Talks in 1968. Just for starters.

His greatest success was as chief negotiator of the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended in the war in Bosnia, although, as John F. Harris and Bill Nichols recalled on the website Politico.com, "Colleagues joked at the time that Holbrooke succeeded... because the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia preferred to end a generations-old blood feud rather than endure another day sequestered with and being badgered by Holbrooke." He was the embodiment of Hollywood mogul Darryl Zanuck's credo," Don't say yes until I finish talking."

At his death, as President Obama's chief envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, he continued to struggle for answers, desperately hoping to find solutions that might bring to a peaceful end America's involvement in those two mutually desperate countries. He refused to relinquish his belief, as he told The New Yorker's George Packer, in "the possibility of the United States, with all its will and strength, and I don't just mean military, persevering against any challenge."

Holbrooke embraced the sentiment so beautifully expressed in John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate," words crafted by Kennedy with his friend, counselor and speechwriter Theodore Sorensen. Sorensen died October 31st, but a memorial for him was held last week here in Manhattan.

If you were one of those politicians and leaders fortunate to speak Ted Sorensen's prose, his words not only made you sound smart -- they actually made you smarter. That's because echoing through the resonance of his rhetoric there was learning to be had -- history and philosophy, eloquent and perceptive allusions from the Bible, Pericles and Jefferson, Shakespeare, Lincoln and Churchill. An historical or literary reference in one of his speeches, well honed and to the point, could not only inspire you to action but also send you running for an encyclopedia.

He came by that knowledge via a love of reading passed along to him by his mother, Annis Chaikin, who paid her way through the University of Nebraska working as a maid, and his father Charles, a lawyer who served as that state's attorney general. Writing of his childhood during the Depression in Lincoln, Nebraska, Ted Sorensen said reading allowed him to be "carried afar, on the wings of words."

Sorensen described himself as "a Danish Russian Jewish Unitarian... surely a member of the smallest minority among the many small minorities that made this country great." Although he was kidding, there was nonetheless within him a compassion and understanding that permanently embroidered his heart on his sleeve, whether it was integrating Lincoln's municipal swimming pool when he was in college or writing a Kennedy address on civil rights in the hours after Governor George Wallace was made to stand aside from the doorway of the University of Alabama and allow entrance to African American students. Sorensen was a man who sought justice; a man of peace, humanitarianism and idealism; a man of discretion, commitment, and loyalty not only to his colleagues but his country.

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." Those, too, are words from the 1961 inaugural address Sorensen and Kennedy wrote together, as true today while we're debating tax cuts and the estate tax.

Just words. But President Obama, as I know Ted Sorensen told you, just words are how a president operates, how a president engages a country. Put up your rhetorical dukes -- we know it's what you're good at when you want to be and the spirit moves you. At the end of The Fighter, Micky Ward triumphs and becomes light welterweight champion of the world. This fight is only over, sir, if you throw in the towel. Many fear you already have done so. Now's the time to start proving them wrong.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: The Heartbreak of Premature Capitulation

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

The Heartbreak of Premature Capitulation

By Michael Winship

There's this old joke about the French Revolution. A group of prisoners is lined up before the guillotine. One by one, their heads are lopped off. Then, the next man is put in place. The lever is pulled, but the blade stops just inches above his neck. This must be a sign of divine intervention, the judge in charge declares, and the man is freed.

The same thing happens to the next prisoner, and the next and the next. Finally, as the very last man is prepared for execution, he looks up at the mechanism and exclaims, "Wait! I think I see your problem!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you President Barack Obama, providing needless aid and comfort to those who would do him wrong, handing over his own head without a fight, afflicted with a curious syndrome we men of science have decided to call Premature Capitulation.

Backing away from myriad campaign promises, giving in to health care, economic stimulus and financial reform compromises -- in some ways these were par for the course, the unfortunate price of governing and politics in a polarized America. But in the few weeks since the midterm elections, the affliction of Premature Capitulation has become more and more endemic, whether it's dissembling on our policy in Afghanistan or backing away from a moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank, announcing a Federal workers' wage freeze (which would have been appropriate for the higher ranking civil servants but is pandering to the right and downright cruel to those government employees who barely make enough to live on) or the continued kowtow to the moneyed interests who, if they pat him on the back, do so only to find the place to insert their knives.

And now this deal to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, continuing breaks for the wealthiest Americans, as well as a similar extension of the capital gains top rate - 15% -- and a raise of the estate tax exemption to $5 million per person, with a maximum rate of 35%. In exchange, Obama is supposed to get a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits for the long term jobless, an expanded earned-income tax credit, equipment purchase write-offs for businesses, a reduction in the Social Security payroll tax and continuation of the college tuition tax credit.

Not so bad, you may think; in fact, many are viewing what Obama has gotten as a de facto second stimulus, but chances are Republicans would have yielded to public pressure on unemployment, especially during the holiday season, and as James Kwak points out on The Baseline Scenario website (which he founded with economist Simon Johnson), "The Bush tax cuts were always bad policy. After the last election, President Obama will be able to accomplish precious little. But he could easily have killed the Bush tax cuts and thereby done more good for our nation's fiscal situation than anyone will be in a position to do for many years to come. Killing the tax cuts would alone reduce the national debt by roughly as much as the deficit commission's entire proposal. And killing the tax cuts was the path of least resistance. Obama could have done it by doing nothing. Or he could have done it by taking a strong negotiating position and being willing to walk away from the table...

"Instead we got a two-year extension as part of an overall package that adds $900 billion to the debt... And Obama will no longer be able to say the tax cuts were a mistake made by President Bush that he was letting expire. Now he owns the mistake."

What's more, while the president's brief announcement of the deal Monday night was matter of fact, the press conference on Tuesday - calling out progressives as sanctimonious purists -- was a defensive display of petulance more appropriate to the sandbox than the White House.

Mr. President, up to now at least, progressives have been the loyal opposition. You're wasting ammo on the wrong guys. Stand up, aim in the right direction, and fight. Because if you think the tax breaks will lead to further logrolling or concessions from congressional Republicans you're wrong. Now that they've gotten what they want, for the next two years of your term they will not yield much of anything else. Their nihilistic, scorched earth brand of politics leaves nothing behind but ash.

And so this latest compromise may prove a Pyrrhic victory. Or is that being premature?

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: As Bees in Honey Drown: Bad Buzz from the Capital Hive

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

As Bees in Honey Drown: Bad Buzz from the Capital Hive

By Michael Winship

Bees in Brooklyn are producing honey that's bright red in color. Or, as The New York Times described it, "an alarming shade of Robitussin."

No, it's not a sign of the Apocalypse. Apparently, the insects have been sipping nectar on the wrong side of town. The theory is that they've been imbibing runoff filled with Red Dye No. 40 and corn syrup from a factory that processes maraschino cherries for desserts and mixed drinks. I'm not kidding.

Maraschino cherries could just be the start; soon the bees may be dining on cocktail onions and flying with those little paper umbrellas bartenders stick in mai-tai's. Or worse, drunkenly singing karaoke. Okay, now I'm kidding. But the real bottom line? Like so many other Americans, even though nearby farmland is filled with fresh fruit and vegetables, rich in nectar, pollen and other healthy stuff, the bees prefer junk food.

Coincidentally, news of this ruby-hued dietary phenomenon came on the same day that the United States Senate, that hive of rancid rhetoric and inertia, actually passed something nutritional -- the food safety bill. While far from perfect, the legislation represents the most sweeping overhaul of regulations in seven decades and will, as The Washington Post observed, "require food manufacturers and farmers to use scientific techniques to prevent contaminated food... delivering a revamped safety system that would confer vast new authority on the Food and Drug Administration, accelerate the government's response to outbreaks and set the first safety standards for imported food."

The vote was 73-25. "It's an unusual and shining example of how bipartisanship can work in Congress," said Erik Olson, director of the Pew Health Group food programs.

Bipartisanship? What a concept. But don't get used to it. The website Talking Points Memo reported on Wednesday that, "According to a letter delivered to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this morning, Republicans will block all debate on all legislation until the tax cut impasse is bridged and the federal government has been fully funded -- even if it means days tick by and the Senate misses its opportunity to pass DADT, an extension of unemployment insurance and other Dem items."

The letter, signed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and all the Republicans in the Senate, proclaims, "While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike."

Harry Reid's reply: "My Republican colleagues... know that the true effect of this letter is to prevent the Senate from acting on many important issues that have bipartisan support. With this letter, they have simply put in writing the political strategy that the Republicans pursued this entire Congress: Namely, obstruct, delay action on critical matters, and then blame the Democrats for not addressing the needs of American people. Very cynical, but very obvious. Very transparent."

Transparent when Republicans - and some conservative Democrats -- are determined to continue tax cuts to the wealthy, and if they can, make them permanent. Never mind that much bemoaned mega-deficit (not to mention those 2.5 million Americans whose jobless benefits end this month).

But here's another coincidence: The website Politico.com reports, "Nearly a quarter of the incoming class of 84 House Republicans have assets of at least $1 million, according to a Politico analysis of financial disclosure forms, a sign that this anti-Washington, anti-establishment crowd of congressional freshmen has been quite successful in the private sector...

"Nearly half the current Congress -- 261 lawmakers -- already have assets exceeding $1 million, according to a recent report from the Center for Responsive Politics [CRP], and that number appears to be growing. Last year, 237 lawmakers made the mint club."

In a moment of classic understatement, CRP spokesperson Dave Levinthal told Politico, "There's a possibility they could be out of touch with reality because they don't have to live it themselves."

You think? Because not only do we have the members of Congress with considerable earned or inherited wealth blindly ignoring the huddled masses. There are also, of course, the generous corporate benefactors of the elected - more bountiful than ever in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision -- eagerly anticipating the service they bought and paid for when they funneled vast amounts of cash, millions of it in anonymous contributions, to the candidates of their choice. Tax breaks, deregulation, stymied reforms - you name it. When you can afford to buy your own reality, everything is honey.

Nothing - NOTHING - will restore any semblance of representative democracy in this country until we mobilize and adopt a constitutional amendment that overturns that Supreme Court ruling. In his forward to an updated report from the progressive citizens' group People for the American Way, Jamie Raskin, American University professor of constitutional law (and a Maryland state legislator) writes, " Citizens United tore down the wall of separation between corporate wealth and public elections, a wall that has protected popular democracy against the tyranny of fat cats and plutocrats for a century at least. The 5-justice majority in the case overthrew decades of precedent to declare that billion-dollar corporations have the same political rights as citizens do, meaning that while all citizens can write campaign checks from the same personal accounts that we buy groceries and pay utility bills from, CEOs can spend tens of millions of dollars from their corporate treasuries to get pliant politicians elected to serve the corporate will."

Makes you see red, doesn't it? Time to sting back.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: Cranks Resist Security at Airports -- and in the Senate

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

Cranks Resist Security at Airports -- and in the Senate

By Michael Winship



To paraphrase that cult movie classic, Eating Raoul, frisk me, pat me down, make me write bad checks. If it keeps my flight from falling out of the sky, do what you must. Just don't expect breakfast in the morning and a thank you note.

Because let's face it, as onerous as you might think these new airport body scans are, not to mention the pat downs with benefits if you refuse the scan, they may be a necessary part of life in these United States circa 2010. Facebook already has wiped out most vestiges of your privacy; the Transportation Security Administration simply takes care of the rest.

Not that there aren't problems, bugs that have to be worked out as these systems go through their shakedown phase. Overly aggressive and handsy TSA inspectors, for one. And according to The Washington Post, a scientist claims there's a "cheap and simple fix" to the scanners that would "distort the images captured on full-body scanners so they look like reflections in a fun-house mirror, but any potentially dangerous objects would be clearly revealed," thus quelling the protests of those who object to real-time, nude outlines of the human body.

The former nuclear weapons designer, who helped develop the scanners at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says he offered the solution to Department of Homeland Security officials four years ago during the Bush administration but was "rebuffed."

There's also some concern about radiation, although the Associated Press reports the TSA claim that "radiation from one scan is about the same as a person would get from flying for about three minutes in an airplane at 30,000 feet, where atmospheric radiation levels are higher than on the ground. That amount is vastly lower than a single dental X-ray.

"You would have to go through scanners more than 1,000 times in one year to even meet the maximum recommended level -- and even pilots don't do that." (So why are pilots and flight attendants being allowed to duck the scanners? Just asking.)

And here's an interesting tidbit from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now website on November 23: "As the national debate over airport screening practices intensifies, little attention has been paid to the increasing lobbying power the manufacturers of full body scanning machines have in Washington. USA Today reports L3 Communications has spent $4.3 million on lobbying, up from $2.1 million in 2005. L3 has sold nearly $40 million worth of machines to the federal government. Lobbyists for L3 have included Linda Daschle, the wife of former US Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. Meanwhile, Rapiscan Systems has spent more than $270,000 on lobbying so far this year, compared with $80,000 five years earlier. The company made headlines last year when it hired former US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff who has become a prominent proponent of body scanners. The CEO of Rapiscan's parent company, Deepak Chopra, recently traveled with President Obama on his three-day trip to India."

(And no, not that Deepak Chopra. The New Age guru would determine your terrorist potential by evaluating your aura, no machines or strip searches necessary.)

In any case, if you're contemplating staging a protest while in line at an airport this holiday weekend, in the name of all that's holy, please don't. I'm not flying anywhere this week, but think of the 1.6 million Americans who are and show a little common sense and thoughtfulness. Also ask yourself, would I be doing this if George Bush were still in the White House urging me to be patriotic and patient? And to shop my terrors away at the mall?

Besides, when it comes to security, frankly, there are more important things to worry about than some anonymous, federal rent-a-cop scanning your privates for grenades.

Like North Korea. On Tuesday, it shelled the island of Yeonpyeong, killing two South Korean soldiers and wounding 18 military personnel and civilians. The attack occurred just days after Stanford University nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory was shown a secret North Korean uranium enrichment facility. The New York Times noted, "The development confronted the Obama administration with the prospect that North Korea country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb." Nuclear technology they've already demonstrated they're willing to sell to the right bidder.

Just one of the many good reasons that in its lame duck session the United States Senate should ratify the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction) Treaty with Russia: to maintain stability and strengthen the alliance with that former Cold War enemy that helps keep North Korea -- and Iran -- in line. And to restore on-site inspections of Russian missile sites and storage facilities to prevent nuclear weapons from disappearing into the hands of terrorists, state-sponsored or otherwise. And to limit the number of strategic warheads held by the two nations.

The treaty needs 67 votes for ratification, which means eight Republicans must support it along with all 59 members of the Democratic voting bloc. But some are trying to hold off the vote until the new Congress in January, when 14 Republican votes will be required for the necessary two-thirds majority. That doubtless would put a stop to START, and seriously undercut our worldwide credibility.

This is foolish, dangerous partisanship, plain and simple; Republicans denying President Obama even the most sensible initiative just to further undermine his chances for reelection without regard to the international consequences, which include a possible strengthening of Russian hardliners, an end to that nation's cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran, and a general destabilization of the balance of power.

This is a treaty endorsed, as Steven Benen of Washington Monthly has pointed out, not only by the leaders of NATO but by six former secretaries of state and five former secretaries of defense from both parties, seven former Strategic Command chiefs, national security advisers from both parties and nearly all former commanders of US nuclear forces. Not to mention Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who described START as "essential to our future security."

But to many hard line Republicans, like the cranky travelers who balk and rage at scans and searches, security may no longer be the priority it once was. Not when there's a presidency to destroy.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: Don't Ask, Don't Care

Keep in mind that not so long ago, at Fort Campbell in 1999, Private First Class Barry Winchell, who had been dating a male-to-female transgender performer he met at a club, was verbally and physically harassed and eventually murdered by another soldier. But just a short time later, the young men and women with whom I spoke seemed fully comfortable with their gay and lesbian friends and comrades-in-arms, far more concerned with the safety of colleagues and loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan than how they behaved when the lights were out. In fact, these students frequently hung out together in gay or straight or transgender bars in nearby Nashville, at ease with their own and each others' sexuality.

But now, despite wide public acceptance, the Senate may strip the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" from the defense appropriations bill to prevent a filibuster, just part of the continuing spirit of legislative negativity and resistance that denies the reality of everything from nuclear arms proliferation (the START Treaty) to climate change.

It's all so reminiscent of that old Groucho Marx song, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It." Because the man threatening to filibuster is the Groucho - er, Grouchy - of the United States Senate, the newly reelected John McCain.

As vividly and hilariously illustrated this week by both Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow, the Senior Senator from the State of Cantankerous has shown that he can play a childish game of "Step over that Line" until well past bedtime, even after the bugler blows "Taps." First, he said he'd consider backing repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell if the military's top brass recommended it. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen did just that (as did their commander-in-chief, Barack Obama).

Not good enough, said McCain back in February. Before he'd go along he needed to see a study thoroughly surveying the military point of view.

Questionnaires were sent this summer to 400,000 active and reserve troops and 150,000 military spouses. The results are officially due December 1 but word is out. The November 11 Washington Post reported, "More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, said two sources familiar with the document. The survey results led the report's authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them."

Still not good enough, McCain said on Sunday's Meet the Press. He wants hearings and another report - this one "to determine the effects of the repeal on battle effectiveness and morale" (despite the fact that the December 1 report apparently does just that).

"McCain has said he wanted to hear from rank-and-file troops," Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said. "He just heard loud and clear from them through the study. But he doesn't like the answer - and is stonewalling, trying to run out the clock on repeal by calling for congressional hearings."

An old Navy man like you should know when the boat has sailed, Senator McCain. Just this once, forget John Paul Jones and give up the ship. Remember the words of your conservative mentor, the man whose seat you inherited in the Senate, Barry Goldwater. In 1994, he wrote, "The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process."

Or, even more succinctly and famously, in a 1993 letter Goldwater wrote to The Washington Post: "You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight."

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: Riding the Rails, Looking for Work

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

Riding the Rails, Looking for Work

By Michael Winship

Now that an entire week or so has passed, it's possible to make a cool, complete and objective assessment of the meaning of the 2010 vote. Thus, ladies and gentlemen, it becomes clear what this election was all about: jobs.

I mean, just look at Monday's Washington Post: "The record-breaking campaign showered billions of dollars on a broad array of companies, including broadcast conglomerates, polling firms and small-town restaurants, according to a Washington Post analysis of expenditure reports. Candidates spent at least $50 million on catering and liquor, $3.2 million at country clubs and golf courses, and $500,000 on pizza, coffee and doughnuts, the records show...

"The spending came at a fortunate time for many businesses struggling with tepid growth and a national unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent. Experts predict that total spending for the congressional midterms will approach $4 billion, putting it on par with the $3 billion 'Cash for Clunkers' program in 2009 aimed at boosting auto sales."

Who says stimulus programs don't work? Or that all that insane corporate spending on the elections didn't do some good? Gosh darn it, if you're an aspiring barista, you'll be thrilled to learn that Democratic campaigns spent $24,000 at Starbucks, Republicans $17,000. And gym rats and personal trainers, be of good cheer. According to the Post, "The Democratic National Committee spent $41,000 for memberships at a Results gym about seven blocks from its Washington headquarters," keeping its candidates in physical trim if still flabby when it came to policy, decision making and vote getting.

Not unexpectedly, the largest amount of this free-flowing cash and whatever job creation accompanied it went to the broadcasters who sold airtime for that constant din of campaign ads that plagued us over the last weeks and months - an estimated $2.5 billion worth of revenues. Then there were the media buyers and campaign consultants, pollsters, direct mail and printing companies, caterers -- not to mention banks, credit card and check processing concerns, including Bank of America, American Express and ADP. Those financial heavyweights pulled in $140 million from the election cycle, as if they needed it.

Of course, the ones who do need it are the close to 15 million Americans still without employment, despite Friday's Labor Department report indicating that 151,000 jobs had been gained in October.

As Catherine Rampell explained in the November 5 New York Times, "The jobless rate has not fallen substantially this year, largely because employers have barely added enough workers to absorb the people just entering the labor force. And even if the economy suddenly expands and starts adding 208,000 jobs a month -- as it did in its best year this decade -- it would still take 12 years to close the gap between the growing number of American workers and the total available jobs, according to the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project" (Gentle readers may recall that the Hamilton Project was founded by former Clinton treasury secretary, Citigroup mogul and Obama economic advisor Robert Rubin as a haven for Wall Street Democrats dedicated to the Clintonian principle of growth tied to deficit reduction and free trade.).

"I am open to any idea, any proposal, any way we can get the economy growing faster so that people who need work can find it faster," President Obama said on Friday, but it's to be hoped that his openness doesn't extend to caving into the GOP and continuing permanently all of the Bush tax cuts - at a budget-bursting cost of almost $4 trillion over the next ten years.

Better to focus on infrastructure and more specifically a complete overhaul of the nation's transportation system, creating jobs and opportunities that can't be outsourced. But while the President is in full support of this - especially the expansion of high-speed rail service -- sadly, it seems Republicans are determined to undercut any such formula, scuttling programs in the name of a favorite mantra, slashing government spending.

Already we've seen New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie pull the rug out from years of planning and anticipated benefits by killing a proposed rail tunnel under the Hudson River that would have doubled commuter traffic in and out of Manhattan and created, according to its proponents, an estimated 6000 construction jobs. There's no denying that it was the most expensive public works project in the United States nor that the cost to the state would be in the billions, but the long term benefits would far exceed that initial cost.

Newly-elected Republican governors Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich in Ohio and Wisconsin's Scott Walker all campaigned on turning down Federal stimulus money for high-speed rail links in their states. But according to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, former Republican congressman from Illinois, "The bottom line is that high-speed rail is a national program that will connect the country, spur economic development and bring manufacturing jobs to the U.S. It will also transform transportation in America, much like the Interstate highway system did under President Eisenhower."

And as noted in a recently released report from the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, the result of a September 2009 conference co-chaired by Bush transportation secretaries Norman Mineta and Samuel Skinner, "The United States can't compete successfully in the 21st century with a 20th century transportation infrastructure -- especially when its chief trading partners, including not only the advanced economies of Western Europe and Southeast Asia but also rapidly developing countries like China, are making significant investments in cutting-edge transportation technologies and systems." This could lead, the report said, to "a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run."

Much of the Republican opposition points to maintenance and upkeep costs but as champion blogger John Cole notes, "Turning down a billion dollar train because you will have to pay 8 million a year in maintenance is like giving away a free car because you might have to one day buy windshield wiper fluid."

That, friends, is something else this year's election was all about: the triumph of shortsighted thinking over facing up to the long range difficult problems that threaten our future. Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy two years.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Michael Winship: Restore Sanity: A Report from Waaaay in the Back

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

Restore Sanity: A Report from Waaaay in the Back

By Michael Winship

Mistakes were made.

"Let's face it," a fellow rallygoer admitted. "We committed several tactical errors this morning."

As you may have heard, the worst part of Saturday's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, DC, was getting there.

We probably should have gotten up earlier. A lot earlier. Arriving at the Metro station nearest our hotel, my girlfriend Pat and I stood with dozens of others on the platform as train after train arrived, each so packed with rally attendees, their faces practically pressed to the window glass, it was impossible to get on board.

Finally, Pat suggested we take a train in the other direction, get off in the suburbs, then turn around, trying to get ahead of the mobs -- a good strategy that proved equally futile; there were just too many people. By 3 pm, the city's transit system reported that 350,000 passengers had ridden the system, the normal total for an entire Saturday. As yet another crammed train arrived, a nearby frustrated traveler sighed plaintively, "Is there anyone left in Maryland?"

Forsaking the subway for a bus ride, we finally got within walking distance, dropped off in Foggy Bottom near the State Department. So by the time we trudged over to the Mall to see Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert we were more than an hour and a half late for the big event and the crowd had reached perhaps a quarter million people. Meaning we saw the backs of a lot of heads and only occasionally, dimly could hear what was happening on the podium. Cat Stevens was there, right? (We caught up later, via C-SPAN.)

But it was worth it just to share in the overall exuberance of the crowd, although with Election Day glowering on the horizon sometimes it did feel a wee bit like On the Beach, with all those Australians boisterously singing "Waltzing Matilda" right before nuclear extinction.

And, as reported, the signs and banners were great. Good humored, they ranged from expressions of the silly and benign ("It's Very Nice to Be Here," "I Have a Sign") to the more pointed sentiment ("This Is a Democracy, Not an Auction," "Gay Nazi Mexicans Are Raising Our Taxes") to the intentional non sequitur (my personal favorite: "7-11 Was an Inside Job").

It was certainly the largest gathering I've seen at a DC rally since the anti-Vietnam protests of the late sixties and early seventies. And contrary to the predictions of some, it was not dominated by the young -- seniors were well-represented and stories abounded of planes and trains (including ours from New York) filled with older Americans on their way to Washington, exuberant fans of Stewart and Colbert sharing a message of rationality and wit triumphing over bellicosity and chaos.

But for all the laughs and congeniality on a sunny autumn day, for all the genuine rejection of right-wing cant and hypocrisy, there were a couple of things that seemed slightly askew. For while, as Stewart said of the media, "The 24-hour politico-pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder," unfortunately for us, neither do irony and jokes effect lasting solutions. Nor do they necessarily bridge the gap with those, as journalist James Maguire wrote, covering the rally for The Washington Monthly, "far more displaced by the long recession... Those folks don't want to 'restore sanity,' they want to restore their jobs."

What's more, Maguire asks, "Is this just a comedy skit writ large, a ginormous living diorama of a Daily Show 'live at the scene' report? Or is it, under cover of irony... an effort to influence the course of politics in the direction Stewart's humor so obviously leans?"

Comedians injecting themselves into the American political scene are nothing new. As David Bianculli points out in his book, Dangerously Funny, Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Gracie Allen, W.C. Fields, and even Howdy Doody staged mock presidential campaigns. In 1968, Pat Paulson of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS actually had a professional political consultant for his faux White House run ("I don't want to be any more than I am today," the candidate claimed. "A common, ordinary, simple savior of America's destiny.").

Jon Stewart and his superb writing team have claimed to be nothing more than the kids who make wisecracks from the back of the classroom, never to be taken seriously as newsmakers or opinion leaders. But that hasn't really been true for a long time and now Stewart's standing in front of the class, lecturing at the blackboard.

Is that appropriate? And does it matter? Whether or not you agree, he's still the funniest teacher in school. Maybe, as a sign at Saturday's rally declared, "We Should Do This More Often."

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City

Michael Winship: All They Ask for Is an Unfair Advantage

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship.

All They Ask for Is an Unfair Advantage

By Michael Winship

I attended a screening this week of Alex Gibney's new documentary, Client 9. It's the story of the rise and fall of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer, brought down by imperial hubris and a reckless penchant for ladies of the evening.

Gibney, an Oscar-winning filmmaker, creates a fascinating narrative. Both he and Spitzer readily concede that it was the former governor who did himself in; he haplessly provided the guns and ammo that polished him off. But there is a compelling case made suggesting that there were plenty of enemies, both in politics and business, with a motive to see him destroyed, plus the wherewithal and contacts to help grease the skids.

After all, it was Spitzer who, as state attorney general and self-appointed "Sheriff of Wall Street," went after corruption and greed in the finance industry, exposing investment bank stock inflation, securities fraud, predatory lending practices, exorbitant executive compensation and illegal late trading and market timing perpetrated by hedge funds and mutual fund companies. Some of these practices were, of course, major factors in the calamitous financial follies of 2008.

One of Spitzer's targets was Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, former chair and chief executive officer of the gigantic insurance company AIG. He was forced to resign by the AIG board in March 2005 after Spitzer charged Greenberg and the company with manipulative behaviors in violation of insurance and securities laws. Ultimately, criminal charges were dropped but when AIG collapsed during the '08 meltdown, ultimately receiving the largest of the Federal bailouts -- 182 billion taxpayer dollars - Greenberg said he was "bewildered" that things could have gone so wrong.

In Client 9, I was struck by a statement attributed to Greenberg, who in his AIG heyday supposedly was fond of joking, "All I ask for is an unfair advantage."

Just three days before the screening, The New York Times had reported that one of the largest donors to a foundation run by the US Chamber of Commerce is a charity run by Greenberg.

According to the Times, "The charity has made loans and grants [to the chamber's foundation] totaling $18 million since 2003. U.S. Chamber Watch, a union-backed group, filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service last month asserting that the chamber foundation violated tax laws by funneling the money into a chamber 'tort reform' campaign favored by AIG and Mr. Greenberg. The chamber denied any wrongdoing.

"The complaint, which the chamber calls entirely unfounded, raises the question of how the chamber picks its campaigns, and whether it accepts donations that are intended to be spent on specific issues or political races."

Other major contributors of at least $17 million to the foundation between 2004 and 2008 include Goldman Sachs, the investment company Edward Jones, Alpha Technologies, Chevron Texaco and Aegon, a Netherlands-based, multinational insurance company "which has American subsidiaries and whose former chief executive, Donald J. Shepard, served for a time as chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce's board."

Almost all of these donations would have remained anonymous, as allowed by law, if not for some intensive digging by the Times into corporate foundation tax filings and other public records as part of a larger investigation into how the US Chamber of Commerce "has increasingly relied on a relatively small collection of big corporate donors to finance much of its legislative and political agenda. The chamber makes no apologies for its policy of not identifying its donors. It has vigorously opposed legislation in Congress that would require groups like it to identify their biggest contributors when they spend money on campaign ads."

Times investigative reporters Eric Lipton, Mike McIntire and Don Van Natta Jr. write that "the chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.

"...While the chamber boasts of representing more than three million businesses, and having approximately 300,000 members, nearly half of its $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors. Many of those large donations coincided with lobbying or political campaigns that potentially affected the donors."

All they ask for is an unfair advantage. Open any newspaper, magazine or political website and the coverage of corporate campaign largesse, much of it anonymous, bedazzles the mind. There's $75 million from the chamber, plus another $50 million or more in undisclosed donations to major conservative organizations -- as reported by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation -- that include the American Action Network, Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, the American Future Fund and the 60 Plus Association.

The progressive Campaign for America's Future reports that "Americans for Prosperity brags that they'll spend at least $45 million on the 2010 elections, while FreedomWorks plans to throw in another $10 million." Both organizations, backed by right-wing billionaire David Koch, are major funders of "all things Tea Party."

And get this - 23 companies that received a billion dollars or more in taxpayer bailout money donated $1.4 million to candidates in September - most of it to Republicans, although, as The Washington Post reports, "the TARP program was approved primarily with Democratic support. President Obama expanded it to cover GM and other automakers."

Yes, organized labor is throwing millions at the elections, too, but we know where that money is coming from - union dues (and in the interest of full disclosure, I'm president of a small AFL-CIO affiliated union, but one that neither contributes to nor endorses candidates).

When all is said and done, the Post reported Tuesday, using data from the Federal Election Commission and the watchdog Public Campaign Action Fund, outside interest groups could spend $400 million or more by Election Day. What's more, "House and Senate candidates have already shattered fundraising record for a midterm election and are on their way to surpassing $2 billion in spending for the first time... To put it another way: That's the equivalent of about $4 million for every congressional seat up for grabs this year."

All the big donors ask for is an unfair advantage. You may recall the story, usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw, of how he propositioned a fellow dinner guest, asking if she would sleep with him for a million pounds.

She agreed, and then Shaw asked if she would do the same for ten shillings. "What do you take me for?" she angrily replied. "A prostitute?"

"We've established the principle," Shaw rejoined. "Now we're just haggling over the price."

With this election, Congress may establish once and for all that Shaw's is the only principle left that it still embraces, as long as the price is right.

By the way, Alex Gibney's Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer opens in New York November 5th and across the country on November 12th. Keep an eye out for it at a theater near you, as they say, or even on a TV near you - many cable systems are offering it on demand.





Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.