May 2015 Archives

Dear America,

Denny Hastert is a Republican political hack.  He has profited personally from his political career in the traditional sense, and as a Republican, he has fit the mold of the party pol to a tee.  He toes the line and mouths the platitudes that mean little in the scheme of things, but that act as a shibboleth for Republicans by which they identify themselves as the "good guys."  He is despicable in a tame sort of way, but who in Washington isn't.  But he has never been caught up in a major political scandal as far as I can tell...until now.  Yesterday, he was indicted for taking money out of his bank account.  That's right.  He was indicted because he took his own money out of his own bank account in major denominations--$50,000 per withdrawal--and then lied to the FBI or to the bank officers who asked about it when they were completing a reporting form for the federal government that is required whenever an amount in excess of $10,000 is withdrawn in cash.  It's against the law to lie to the FBI when they are investigating something apparently, and like most politicians, he didn't seem to know that since he didn't want to tell the truth, he could have just kept his mouth shut...claiming his constitutional right if he felt it necessary, but saying nothing in the end.  Instead, he told them that he was just using the cash himself when in reality, he was paying someone hush money because of something he had done in the past but didn't really want to talk about.  I have my suspicions about what it was, but they are based on almost nothing, so I won't go into them.  But regardless of what he did, the fact that he was in politics doesn't seem to me to be sufficient cause to drag his peccadilloes out into the sunlight for purposes of publicly humiliating him, though Hastert, being a poster boy for Republican sanctimony, false piety and Calvinistic callousness would be an apt candidate if it were.

So Hastert was paying someone off to keep him or her quiet about something that Hastert had done.  Apparently, the person who was requiring the payments of Hastert was someone who was from the same town in which Hastert had been the coach of the high school wrestling team and a teacher, but other than that, the indictment doesn't say much...at least as reported by the news media.  However, you can count on there being revelations from the media unless Hastert pleads guilty immediately...like tonight.  And maybe that is the course he should take although he is exposed to a penalty that includes jail time and big fines.  Chances are that he won't get anything he can't handle fairly easily, either when he confesses or is convicted, and one or the other is a near certainty it seems, so why not just shut everyone's mouth and take the fall.  You may be able to glean from my tone that I really don't like the guy, and that I wish him anything but well in the bargain, but even so, this whole public pillorying seems to me to be unfair...even when it happens to a Republican...even when it happens to a former Republican Speaker of the House.  The guy is embarrassed about something he did in the past, probably some sexual indiscretion I'm thinking.  And because it is scandalous, he was willing to pay through the nose to keep it quiet.  But then, he did something stupid by lying about it rather than just stifling himself, as Archie Bunker--of whom Hastert reminds me by the way--might have put it, but it seems to me that all this amounts to is a hill of beans, and for that, jail time seems excessive.  Mind you, he probably deserves it for some of the things he has done in the name of politics, but the thing to do is to expose him for those.  Not for this.

Of course, the justice department is part of a Democratic administration, and it is to be expected that it's going to take some coup from the opposition.  The Republicans do the same thing, and usually on the highest level, like when Henry Hyde, a Republican leader of a moral majority contingent in the Republican Party who had been exposed for having an affair of his own years earlier, presided over the impeachment of Bill Clinton for...having an affair, just like Hyde had.  But like a true Republican, when Democratic operatives pointed that out, Hyde had the nerve to castigate them for bringing it up.  Of course, Clinton made the same mistake that Hastert did.  He talked when he should have just stayed mum.  That's what happens when politicians pay high priced lawyers.  They either get bad advice or refuse to follow good advice.  Just deserts, I guess, but still this Hastert thing doesn't seem right to me.

Don't get me wrong.  He broke a legitimate law aimed at discovering people who are trying to do covert things with money, like buying drugs for sale or committing acts of terror.  In fact, when the Patriot Act was passed, from which the provision by which he is now being pursued comes, he was all in favor...of both the act as a whole and this provision in particular, so he has no beef with regard to the nature of the law itself.  But still, I don't care who he slept with or solicited.  He agreed to pay $3.5 million to keep it quiet, and as long as his victim prefers money to criminal vindication, I say let the rattle snakes keep biting each other...let them do it in private.

Your friend,

Mike

This is the kind of thing that bothers me about Barack Obama.  He is dead set on enacting this Trans-Pacific Pact, the TPP, which he says that he intends to use to control the course of commerce in the Pacific Rim region for the foreseeable future...all for the purpose of thwarting Chinese ambitions to do the same.  Of course, the first question is why should we be in control of trade in the Pacific region rather than China or any other country, but there is a more important and immediate issue.  He was recently quoted as saying, "We are better off writing those rules for what is going to be the largest, fastest-growing market in the world.  And if we don't, China will, and other countries will.  And our businesses will be disadvantaged, and our workers will ultimately suffer."  How?  How will our businesses be disadvantaged, and how will that cause our workers to suffer?  Those on the left agree that business will be denied an advantage if the TPP isn't negotiated, but they think such a failure would redound to benefit of workers...buy keeping those businesses from exporting their jobs to virtually indentured third world children and disenfranchised adults...rather than causing them to suffer.  Why would that  be a bad thing?  Such exportation of American jobs has been the byproduct of every other trade pact in recent years as business squeezes costs out of labor so as to increase profit and executive compensation in the name of the new supply-side holy Grail, globalization--read holy grail as a euphemism for exploitation--so why should this trade deal be different.  Why are working people always the sacrificial lambs when "prosperity"--read prosperity as a euphemism for more money in the hands of the few--is being pursued?  And why is that alright with our supposedly-populist president?  And there are other areas in which the President seems inclined to favor business demands despite their illogical bases.

Now, for example, the administration has granted a conditional drilling permit to Shell Oil for an area known as the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Arctic Alaska.  Drilling in such frigid waters presents problems of its own, but the obstacles to cleaning up spills during such drilling are ominous, making the cleanup of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago look like a piece of cake.  Environmentalists are in despair over the decision, and it makes the administration's record on environmental issues cloudy and arbitrary, especially in light of the present rise  in oil prices and the price of gasoline at the pump.  The petroleum industry now professes that there are disincentives to drilling further wells in the Bakken oil fields because of what is tantamount to a glut of American crude oil that is depressing the price of all oil, and hence profits.  So what is the impetus for drilling more wells anywhere, much less in a hazardous area like the Arctic Ocean...and this just after opening a large swath of the Atlantic coast of the United States to exploration...all to supply oil companies with the raw materials needed to produce more oil than we need, telling us all the while that because there is too much oil being produced in this country, the price has to rise if we expect them to give us more.  It is hard to understand a free market in which shortage produces price increases, and glut does too, so trusting the industry that tells us that such is so seems folly at best, so what are we to think of our president's decision to abet their efforts to line their pockets come what may, and at great environmental risk besides.  Let me be clear.  I voted for The President twice, and I still think he is far preferable to the Republican alternative offered on those two occasions, but he certainly doesn't seem like the man I voted for, and he doesn't look like the Obama we heard during his campaigns.

Once again, it is the voter who is paying the price for political expediency, and it is the wealthiest of corporations and their executives who, by virtue of their sway over those politicians, stand to profit from the apostasy that gets their shills elected.  While President Obama may not be such a shill, he becomes harder to distinguish from them the longer he is in office.  Woe is me.  Woe is all of us.

Your friend,

Mike