Last Thursday the LATimes published details on valuable gifts that our Supreme Court justices have accepted and are required by law to report. Before getting to the hair-raising extremes on this list, please first consider that justices Stephen Beyer and David Souter steadfastly refuse all gifts and club memberships, no matter how small or how lavish. They just don't take gifts. Which seems judicious somehow. Other justices, like Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, occasionally take money awards and speaking fees but donate them to charities.
Not so Justice Clarence Thomas. He's a regular entrepreneur of the gift trade, a grand pasha of baksheesh, reporting $47,745 in gifts accepted since joining the high court 13 years ago. Among his acquisitions:
1. $100 worth of cigars from talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh.
2. A $500 Stetson hat from the Houston Club.
3. $150 worth of cigars from Kansas City businessman Tim Trabon, "who said he had never met the justice."
4. A $375 "performance chip," a gift from a Corvette supplier Thomas met at a rally, for the computer on his Corvette.
5. An $800 Daytona 500 commemorative jacket, after Thomas served as grand marshal at the race in 1999.
6. $1,200 worth of tires from a businessman in Omaha in 2002.
7. $1,375 in cowboy boots, Stetson hats, rawhide coat and a silver buckle after engagements in Texas in 1995 and 1996.
8. A $5,000 check from Earl Dixon, a pest control company executive in Jacksonville, Fla., and former Republican state legislator, to defray the education costs for Thomas's grand-nephew.
9. A bust of Lincoln that the justice valued at $15,000, from the American Enterprise Institute.
10. The Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass, which Thomas valued at $19,000, from Texas millionaire and right-wing activist Harlan Crow, the son of well-known Dallas real estate executive Trammell Crow. (Harlan Crow also gave $25,000 last summer to help launch the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign deriding Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry, but let that go. His monetary lavishment on Justice Thomas is potentially far more wide-reaching.) According to the LATimes story, "In an interview, Crow said he met Thomas 10 years ago at a conference in Dallas .... Soon afterward, Crow invited Thomas to a family campground in East Texas ... [for an] all-male gathering. 'They were all smoking cigars. It was a very manly Texas thing,' [another guest reported] .... In 1997, Crow flew Thomas on his personal plane to the San Francisco area and sponsored him as his guest at the Bohemian Grove, a private organization that for more than 125 years has held all-male retreats in the redwoods of Northern California for government and business leaders." Crow also donated $175,000 for a new Clarence Thomas wing at the justice's childhood library in Pin Point, Ga.
All perfectly innocent? Male-bonding, camouflaged in cigar smoke.
But at the time of those gifts, Harlan Crow was a national board member of the Center for the Community Interest, "an advocacy group that filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court espousing conservative views on cases involving such issues as crime and pornography."
The federal rules under which Thomas reported these and other gifts say a judge "shall not accept a gift from anyone who is seeking official action from or doing business with the court." "If Harlan Crow is a member of the board of a group that files amicus briefs with the court, then I think he comes within that provision," says New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, a legal ethicist.
It smells, and not just the Harlan Crow pelf. It smells as foul as our Democratic leaders in the state legislature accepting the fancy hospitality of the Smithfield Corporation in Raleigh. All of it smells.
And adds to our considerable store of Republican Hypocrisy in High Places.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
The Coming Fiscal Crisis in North Carolina
According to this a.m.'s News & Observer, the state of North Carolina faces a $1 billion budget shortfall in the fiscal year beginning July 1st, a hole that Mike Easley's much touted state lottery could not begin to fill. A lottery, which could not be enacted and trotted out in time to help with fiscal 2005, is projected to bring in between $325-$425 million per annum, not even half of what's needed. And the quick fixes of the last budget cycle -- a half-cent rise in the state's sales tax and the half-percentage point increase on top income earners -- are set to expire this year.
The state legislature's options are severely limited, given the general gutlessness that runs like a virus through the political leaders of both parties. The Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature and the governor's mansion, which means they are in a roughly analogous situation to the national Republicans. They'll have no one to blame but themselves (not that they'll ever accept blame, not in a million moons!).
The News & Observer forecasts several possibilities for revenue-raising (other than Easley's lottery), some of which will have built-in sources of high dudgeon among large sectors of the state's population:
a. An increase in the cigarette tax. North Carolina's is the second-lowest at 5 cents per pack. If lawmakers were to match Virginia's rate of 30 cents a pack, the state could gain as much as $175 million a year.
b. Higher beer and wine taxes, currently a nickel for every 12 ounces. Each additional penny increase would bring in another $18.6 million.
c. Extend the half-penny sales and half percent income tax increases -- the ones set to expire this year -- and keep a state estate tax (which the Republicans are itching to kill): $500 million.
d. Cut the state budget by $1 billion, which means that education, health care, social services generally, etc. would take crippling hits.
Another unknown adding to the anxiety is just what other costs the Bush administration will successfully shove downward onto the states, while adding its own layer of new salt to the Great Red Sea of their deficit-loving form of less-government-is-better-except-when-it's-not logic.
The state legislature's options are severely limited, given the general gutlessness that runs like a virus through the political leaders of both parties. The Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature and the governor's mansion, which means they are in a roughly analogous situation to the national Republicans. They'll have no one to blame but themselves (not that they'll ever accept blame, not in a million moons!).
The News & Observer forecasts several possibilities for revenue-raising (other than Easley's lottery), some of which will have built-in sources of high dudgeon among large sectors of the state's population:
a. An increase in the cigarette tax. North Carolina's is the second-lowest at 5 cents per pack. If lawmakers were to match Virginia's rate of 30 cents a pack, the state could gain as much as $175 million a year.
b. Higher beer and wine taxes, currently a nickel for every 12 ounces. Each additional penny increase would bring in another $18.6 million.
c. Extend the half-penny sales and half percent income tax increases -- the ones set to expire this year -- and keep a state estate tax (which the Republicans are itching to kill): $500 million.
d. Cut the state budget by $1 billion, which means that education, health care, social services generally, etc. would take crippling hits.
Another unknown adding to the anxiety is just what other costs the Bush administration will successfully shove downward onto the states, while adding its own layer of new salt to the Great Red Sea of their deficit-loving form of less-government-is-better-except-when-it's-not logic.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Rev. James Dobson's Swelled Head
Focus on the Family and general all-round fundamentalist mullah James Dobson has announced that he can no longer resist the calling of God to direct the affairs of the United States of America. He has threatened six United States senators that if they should slip up and vote their consciences on El Presidente's judicial nominees, instead of voting the way Rev. Dobson wants them to vote, then OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
The six threatened senators: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, and Bill Nelson of Florida.
Not only did Rev. Dobson use the charming metaphor of assassination, saying the six senators are in his "bull's-eye." He also evoked a virual Armageddon across the American landscape: "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea."
To quote St. John, "Jeez!"
And Dobson isn't even trying to hide his arrogance any more: "In an interview in his office in Colorado Springs, Dr. Dobson acknowledged that his plunge into partisan politics had irrevocably changed his public image. 'I can't go back, nor do I want to,' he said. 'I will probably endorse more candidates. This is a new day. I just feel a real need to make use of this visibility.' "
The man's head is so big, he might well have trouble now getting it up his ass.
The six threatened senators: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, and Bill Nelson of Florida.
Not only did Rev. Dobson use the charming metaphor of assassination, saying the six senators are in his "bull's-eye." He also evoked a virual Armageddon across the American landscape: "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea."
To quote St. John, "Jeez!"
And Dobson isn't even trying to hide his arrogance any more: "In an interview in his office in Colorado Springs, Dr. Dobson acknowledged that his plunge into partisan politics had irrevocably changed his public image. 'I can't go back, nor do I want to,' he said. 'I will probably endorse more candidates. This is a new day. I just feel a real need to make use of this visibility.' "
The man's head is so big, he might well have trouble now getting it up his ass.
Bush, Shamed Into Upping Tsunami Aid
Evidently embarrassed, finally, by his niggardly pledge of support for the tsunami victims, El Presidente announced Friday that he was upping the amount to $350 million. Good! That's a considerable jump from the initial $15 million.
A woman on C-SPAN early this a.m. said that, well, it was perfectly reasonable for the Bush administration "to wait and see what was needed" before jumping in with a pledge of support. There are experts on natural disasters in this administration, and verily most of us normal human beings, who would know instantly that there are always three needs after a natural disaster: FOOD, MEDICINE, and TEMPORARY SHELTER. No amount of prudent, mega-Christian waiting will make those needs clearer.
El Presidente finally did the right thing. Now we wonder how he'll still justify the incredible expenditure on a rich-man's cake-and-champagne party on and around January 20th.
A woman on C-SPAN early this a.m. said that, well, it was perfectly reasonable for the Bush administration "to wait and see what was needed" before jumping in with a pledge of support. There are experts on natural disasters in this administration, and verily most of us normal human beings, who would know instantly that there are always three needs after a natural disaster: FOOD, MEDICINE, and TEMPORARY SHELTER. No amount of prudent, mega-Christian waiting will make those needs clearer.
El Presidente finally did the right thing. Now we wonder how he'll still justify the incredible expenditure on a rich-man's cake-and-champagne party on and around January 20th.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Of Alms & Hypocrites
Bible reading of the day -- Matthew 6:1-4:
"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Meanwhile, back on earth, the desire to glorify the most moral man ever to hold the presidency, with eating and drinking and making merry, will cause the following things to happen:
Four days of festivities will culminate January 20 with Bush's swearing in ceremony at the US Congress, his parade to the White House, and nine inauguration balls.
"The final bill for all the celebrations will be a cool 40 million dollars." Cool.
The most popular events will include the January 18th "Saluting Those Who Serve" gala honoring the US armed forces and the January 20th "Texas-Wyoming Ball," where country singer Lyle Lovett will perform, and a proper attire of tuxedo plus cowboy boots is recommended.
A more formal event, the "Commander-in-chief's ball" with about 2,000 guests, "will be a special celebration for active troops and their families focusing on those who have recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan or (who) will be soon deployed there."
"The sprawling lawn behind the White House will host on January 19th another service honoring US troops called 'celebrating freedom.' "
The most spectacular events will be fire works and a grand parade through Washington of 10,000 people, including musical bands from 50 US states and close to 300 horses.
Plenty of booze will be served at all events.
The richest and luckiest will have the run of a presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton costing $150,000 that includes a personal butler to tuck away the guests' belongings and a $20,000 gift-set of luggage.
The committee organizing the Bush inaugural established a sliding price scale for inauguration-event tickets, from the "basic" price of $2,500 per person, on up to $10,000 per person, depending on how much the ticket-seeker raised for El Presidente back during the campaign: Some 550 persons raised at least $100,000 each.
Meanwhile, back on earth, do we need more evidence of the moral superiority inherent in such conspicuous waste? Or see the inherent irony in today's forlorn headline, "Food Drops and Other Aid Trickle Toward Southern Asia." But then, trickle-down makes so many of these little hearts sing like freed birds, the ineffable noblesse oblige of the super-rich.
We want to see their pictures, we want to see them photographed in their furs and $3,000 suits and jewels, we want to see their glowing mugs side by side with Sri Lankan grief -- we insist on seeing them decked out, tricked out, glommed up in helmet hair alongside Indonesian devastation ... to get the full impact of rewards received on earth.
"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Meanwhile, back on earth, the desire to glorify the most moral man ever to hold the presidency, with eating and drinking and making merry, will cause the following things to happen:
Four days of festivities will culminate January 20 with Bush's swearing in ceremony at the US Congress, his parade to the White House, and nine inauguration balls.
"The final bill for all the celebrations will be a cool 40 million dollars." Cool.
The most popular events will include the January 18th "Saluting Those Who Serve" gala honoring the US armed forces and the January 20th "Texas-Wyoming Ball," where country singer Lyle Lovett will perform, and a proper attire of tuxedo plus cowboy boots is recommended.
A more formal event, the "Commander-in-chief's ball" with about 2,000 guests, "will be a special celebration for active troops and their families focusing on those who have recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan or (who) will be soon deployed there."
"The sprawling lawn behind the White House will host on January 19th another service honoring US troops called 'celebrating freedom.' "
The most spectacular events will be fire works and a grand parade through Washington of 10,000 people, including musical bands from 50 US states and close to 300 horses.
Plenty of booze will be served at all events.
The richest and luckiest will have the run of a presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton costing $150,000 that includes a personal butler to tuck away the guests' belongings and a $20,000 gift-set of luggage.
The committee organizing the Bush inaugural established a sliding price scale for inauguration-event tickets, from the "basic" price of $2,500 per person, on up to $10,000 per person, depending on how much the ticket-seeker raised for El Presidente back during the campaign: Some 550 persons raised at least $100,000 each.
Meanwhile, back on earth, do we need more evidence of the moral superiority inherent in such conspicuous waste? Or see the inherent irony in today's forlorn headline, "Food Drops and Other Aid Trickle Toward Southern Asia." But then, trickle-down makes so many of these little hearts sing like freed birds, the ineffable noblesse oblige of the super-rich.
We want to see their pictures, we want to see them photographed in their furs and $3,000 suits and jewels, we want to see their glowing mugs side by side with Sri Lankan grief -- we insist on seeing them decked out, tricked out, glommed up in helmet hair alongside Indonesian devastation ... to get the full impact of rewards received on earth.
A Camel, A Rich Man, and the Eye of the Needle
In less than a week, the death toll around the Indian Ocean has shot up exponentially. Remember how we thought at first it was 3,000 dead? How horrified Drudge seemed when he put up the screaming headline, "40,000 DEAD!" This morning, almost numb to statistics, we hear 120,000, with no end to the misery in sight.
It's bad enough that network and cable news seem always to focus on the blond-headed victims of the catastrophe, but our own leader has done anything but lead.
At first, El Presidente couldn't be bothered at all, bicycling and breaking twigs. Then he said, O, all right, $15 million, which was less than half what he was planning to spend on his Rich Man's Bash, a.k.a., his second inaugural party. So in the face of indignant criticism, he upped the amount of promised aid to $35 million, still less than he's spending on the big party, and now he's sending Colin Powell, a notorious bleeding heart, and his own brother other there in some sort of symbolic gesture of actually giving a good goddamn.
If El Presidente had a full half-ounce of the Christian charity which he claims to have coursing through his blood by the bucket, he'd donate that $40 million he's raised from other rich guys for his inauguration to the relief effort. (For the full measure of anxiety being suffered right now by upwardly mobile young Republicans who can't quite afford $10,000 to attend the "official inauguration events," and for a rueful laugh at the vanity of human wishes, read this in today's NYTimes.) How these great shining Christians can go forward with their frivolous celebration in the face of such loss and suffering is really quite beyond our powers to comprehend.
It's bad enough that network and cable news seem always to focus on the blond-headed victims of the catastrophe, but our own leader has done anything but lead.
At first, El Presidente couldn't be bothered at all, bicycling and breaking twigs. Then he said, O, all right, $15 million, which was less than half what he was planning to spend on his Rich Man's Bash, a.k.a., his second inaugural party. So in the face of indignant criticism, he upped the amount of promised aid to $35 million, still less than he's spending on the big party, and now he's sending Colin Powell, a notorious bleeding heart, and his own brother other there in some sort of symbolic gesture of actually giving a good goddamn.
If El Presidente had a full half-ounce of the Christian charity which he claims to have coursing through his blood by the bucket, he'd donate that $40 million he's raised from other rich guys for his inauguration to the relief effort. (For the full measure of anxiety being suffered right now by upwardly mobile young Republicans who can't quite afford $10,000 to attend the "official inauguration events," and for a rueful laugh at the vanity of human wishes, read this in today's NYTimes.) How these great shining Christians can go forward with their frivolous celebration in the face of such loss and suffering is really quite beyond our powers to comprehend.
State of Montana, On the Primrose Path
Yesterday, one day after a trial judge in Arkansas struck down a state regulation that barred gays from being foster parents, another notorious hot-bed of liberalism, the Montana Supreme Court, struck down a state policy that limited dependent health care coverage to an employee's children and to the spouses of married employees. The policy required employees and their spouses to prove they were married. One way they could do that was by signing a sworn statement that they were part of an informal arrangement known as a common-law marriage, which requires that the couple live together and be known in the community as husband and wife. Couples who signed the affidavit were required to swear that they had "mutually consented and contracted to become husband and wife" and assumed "all the responsibilities and duties which the law attached to such a relationship." The court's majority (in a split decision, 4-3) focused on this option, saying that making it available only to heterosexual couples violated the equal protection clause of the state's Constitution.
The three dissenters on the court whined that the majority was rewriting the definition of Montana marriage.
Not so, said Justice Jim Regnier, who wrote for the majority. "We have not been asked nor will we address the question of whether Montana's marriage statutes discriminate against same-sex couples by denying them the right to marry." One might reasonably wonder, however, how long it will take for plaintiffs in the state of Montana to ask precisely that question: "Do Montana's marriage statutes discriminate against same-sex couples?" The answer is likely to be yes.
In a concurring decision, Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson criticized the state's recent constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. "Sadly," Justice Nelson wrote, "many politicians and 'we the people' rarely pass up an opportunity to bash and condemn gays and lesbians despite the fact that these citizens are our neighbors and that they work, pay taxes, vote, hold public office, own businesses, provide professional services, worship, raise their families and serve their communities in the same manner as heterosexuals."
Clearly, Justice Nelson is a great big homo, along with Justice Regnier and the other two who made this decision, and they’re all going to hell. Meanwhile, bigots far and wide have another set of judges to hate, in addition to those in California.
The three dissenters on the court whined that the majority was rewriting the definition of Montana marriage.
Not so, said Justice Jim Regnier, who wrote for the majority. "We have not been asked nor will we address the question of whether Montana's marriage statutes discriminate against same-sex couples by denying them the right to marry." One might reasonably wonder, however, how long it will take for plaintiffs in the state of Montana to ask precisely that question: "Do Montana's marriage statutes discriminate against same-sex couples?" The answer is likely to be yes.
In a concurring decision, Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson criticized the state's recent constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. "Sadly," Justice Nelson wrote, "many politicians and 'we the people' rarely pass up an opportunity to bash and condemn gays and lesbians despite the fact that these citizens are our neighbors and that they work, pay taxes, vote, hold public office, own businesses, provide professional services, worship, raise their families and serve their communities in the same manner as heterosexuals."
Clearly, Justice Nelson is a great big homo, along with Justice Regnier and the other two who made this decision, and they’re all going to hell. Meanwhile, bigots far and wide have another set of judges to hate, in addition to those in California.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
The Morally Superior Party
According to an article in today's NYTimes, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives will move to make ethics charges against members more difficult to initiate. And they also plan to wrestle the current chair of the Ethics Committee into a toe-sack and drop him off the Key Bridge into the Potomac. Why? Representative Joel Hefley, Republican of Colorado, the current chairman of the ethics panel, twice presided over two slaps in the face for Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. So Hefley's about to be fish food.
Guess the lesson here is that you pass laws with the representatives you have and not with the representatives you wish you had.
Guess the lesson here is that you pass laws with the representatives you have and not with the representatives you wish you had.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
N.C. SBOE Orders New State-Wide Vote for Ag Secretary
Voting 3-2 along partisan lines, the N.C. State Board of Elections today ordered a new state-wide election for Secretary of Agriculture, arriving at the only legal decision for rectifying the loss of 4,400 votes in Carteret County in the November election. This was the decision urged on the Board by incumbent Ag Sec't'y Britt Cobb, following the Board's first attempt to fix the problem by throwing the vote to Carteret Co. citizens only, both the 4,400 whose votes were lost plus another 20,000 registered voters who did not turn out in November.
We say "the only legal decision," but that remains to be seen, as Republican challenger Steve Troxler, who was ahead in state-wide voting by 2,300 votes, has promised to take this decision to court.
If this "fix" stands up to court challenge, the new election will likely be in March or April.
So THIS is what you get with electronic touch-screen voting machines. At least PART of what you get.
We say "the only legal decision," but that remains to be seen, as Republican challenger Steve Troxler, who was ahead in state-wide voting by 2,300 votes, has promised to take this decision to court.
If this "fix" stands up to court challenge, the new election will likely be in March or April.
So THIS is what you get with electronic touch-screen voting machines. At least PART of what you get.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)