The Rich and Powerful are protected by the Rich and Powerful

Dear Friends,

Two items in the news yesterday, combined with the Republican presidential debate and the cold, rainy weather we are having, have left me feeling very sad about the state of my country and what we do compared to what we say we stand for, i.e. our hypocrisy.

I was dismayed by the assassination of Osama bin Laden when it occurred concluding in a blog post in May 2011 (here)

Justice was not done by assassinating Osama bin Laden. Revenge was taken, plain and simple. Justice is a critical and core value of a great society. Vengeance has no place in one.

So when The New York Times reported (here) on the legal justification for assassinating Osama bin Laden, it raised a painful memory for me.  At best the legal justification was a real stretch.  I found this sentence in the article particularly disturbing.

The legal analysis offered the administration wide flexibility to send ground forces onto Pakistani soil without the country’s consent, to explicitly authorize a lethal mission, to delay telling Congress until afterward, and to bury a wartime enemy at sea.

The lawyers said that the United States could violate the sovereignty of another country, explicitly authorize the killing of a person without due process, not tell Congress and violate the person's religion by burying him at sea.

Every one of those conclusions is doubtful.  The four lawyers even went to the extreme position that
the President was obligated to follow domestic law but not international law if a covert action were involved.

Consider another scenario.  Dick Cheney is a war criminal because he lead the planning and execution of an invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, causing the death of thousands of people and is continuing to espouse similar activities. So the Iraqi government decides to send its forces into the United States without asking permission from the United States to kill Cheney and dump his body at sea.  The only difference between the two scenarios is that the powerful get to write the rules and history.

The second item was the vote by the Parliament of the European Union to urge its member states to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, treat him as a “whistle-blower and international human rights defender” and shield him from extradition and rendition. While the message is important and powerful, it is not legally binding.  This courageous vote by the European Union stands in bright contrast to the hypocrisy of the Obama Administration.

The Obama Administration insists that Edward Snowden violated the law by disclosing the illegal activities that were being conducted by the Untied States government, and he probably did violate the law.  It is also clear that Vice President Cheney and President George W. Bush violated both domestic and international law in connection with torture, spying on US citizens and invading Iraq under knowingly false pretenses.  If President Obama insists on prosecuting Edward Snowden, then to be consistent, intellectually honest and moral, he must also prosecute Bush and Cheney.  Since it is very clear that he will never do that, he has no moral authority to prosecute Edward Snowden.

President Obama's lawyers can find legal justification for assassinating people, both American citizens (see my post from April 2010 here) and others without due process, violating the sovereignty of other nations, and spying on American citizens, but surprisingly cannot find any reason to prosecute the war crimes committed by the the highest members of the United States government.  We see the same rule applied when it comes to Wall Street crimes.  The big corporations get fines but none of the leaders are criminally prosecuted, just the occasional little guy.  

The rich and powerful are protected by the rich and powerful.  That should never be the rule in my country, the United States of America.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Hillary Clinton tries to rewrite history

Dear Friends,

Hillary Clinton was interviewed on The Rachel Maddow Show last week (here).  During that interview, she said that passing DOMA was a defensive move to stop a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I think what my husband believed -- and there was certainly evidence to support it -- is that there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution of the United States of America and that there had to be some way to stop that.  In a lot of ways, DOMA was a line that was drawn that was to prevent going further.

I think it is great that Bill and Hillary Clinton's views have changed on gay marriage over the years, and that they now recognize that DOMA was a big mistake.  What I do not understand is why Secretary Clinton refuses to simply say it was a mistake, and now I am a huge supporter of gay rights including the right to marry and the right to not be fired for being gay.

The Huffington Post has a great article on the subject (here), entitled, "Sorry, Hillary, Gay Rights Advocates Say Bernie Is Right On DOMA History, Bill Clinton signed the law primarily because of politics, the record shows."  The article includes the following paragraphs:

"It's ridiculous. There was no threat in the immediate vicinity of 1996 of a constitutional amendment. It came four years later," said Elizabeth Birch, who was executive director of the Human Rights Campaign from 1995 to 2004. "It may be that she needs to revisit the facts of what happened."
Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, said, "It is not accurate to explain DOMA as motivated by an attempt to forestall a constitutional amendment. There was no such serious effort in 1996." At the time, Wolfson was an attorney with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

I should note that there is a post on the Daily Kos (here), entitled "Sorry Bernie: DOMA Really Was A Defensive Action Against A Possible Constitutional Amendment".  This post uses statements from 2013 to support its contention.  Here is the response to this argument from the Huffington Post article.

The only material testimony HuffPost found that a constitutional amendment was the "greater damage" that some DOMA supporters feared came many years after President Clinton left office. In a March 2013 amicus brief arguing the illegality of DOMA, several senators referenced the vote as something that some lawmakers felt "would defuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more."

The Huffington Post article provides this comment from Hillary Clinton's campaign:

"Whatever the context that led to the passage of DOMA nearly two decades ago, Hillary Clinton believes the law was discriminatory and both she and President Clinton urged that it be overturned," said spokesman Brian Fallon. "As President, Hillary Clinton will continue to fight to secure full and equal rights for LGBT Americans who, despite all our progress, can still get married on a Saturday and fired on a Monday just because of who they are and who they love."

You will note that the statement does not actually say that Secretary Clinton was wrong when she said it was to stop a constitutional amendment, it simply says ignore what she said and focus on what she believes now.  It would be great if Secretary Clinton would just come right out and admit when she has made a mistake and when her views have evolved.  Unfortunately, instead of doing that she tries to rewrite history to make herself look good.  She would be much more trustworthy if she would just acknowledge her mistakes, she is, after all human like the rest of us.

At a fundraiser many years ago for Paul Wellstone, a young woman approached him and confronted him on his lack of support for gay marriage.  I remember his perfect response clearly today, "I am just not there.  Help me to understand."  He then listened and talked to her for several minutes with an obviously open and honest mind.  Paul Wellstone voted for DOMA and subsequently agonized about his vote.  By 2002, he had a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign.  He did not try to rewrite history, he listened, learned, evolved and acknowledged change.  We need more politicians like Paul Wellstone.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

The Questions that Hillary Clinton should answer

Dear Friends,

Hillary Clinton endured 11 hours of questioning on Benghazi yesterday, and absolutely nothing new was learned.  The salient facts have not changed.  The attack was a terrible tragedy.  We have made significant changes to reduce the risks of such a thing happening again.  It was not Hillary Clinton's fault.  In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Hillary Clinton and the United States government made statements about the cause of the attack that they knew to be false. Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration have never given a reasonable explanation for that lie.  It certainly does not disqualify Hillary Clinton from being President, but it does raise some concerns.

For me there are far more important concerns and more important questions for Secretary Clinton to answer.  Here are some.

We all know that in 2007 and 2008, the biggest banks were too big to fail and had to be bailed out.  Those banks are even bigger now and control even more of the assets of the industry.  Thus they are even more too big to fail.  Given those facts, why do you not support breaking them up now, before another financial crisis ruins regular Americans lives, jobs and finances?

Given the facts above about too big to fail, why do you continue to refuse to support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act?  Why do you say that instead we should focus on shadow banking?  The two are not mutually exclusive.  You can reinstate Glass-Steagall and regulate shadow banking at the same time.

Why did you call the pharmaceutical and insurance industries your enemies when you have taken millions of dollars from them in contributions?  If you have time read this article in US News (here) entitled, "Hillary Takes Millions in Campaign Cash From 'Enemies'".

Medicare is the most efficient and well liked healthcare plan in the country.  The United States spends  more and has worse results than other countries.  Here is the first paragraph from The Commonwealth  Fund's 2014 update on its healthcare study (here).

The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last or near last on dimensions of access, efficiency, and equity.

Given all this why do you refuse to support universal single payer healthcare (Medicare for all)?

The United States middle class was built in part on an educated population as a result of free universal public school education through high school.  We all know that a high school diploma is not sufficient today; that a college education is required to succeed.  Why do you refuse to support free public college education?

In 1960 the maximum United States tax bracket carried with it a 91% marginal rate.  We can afford to pay for universal single payer healthcare, free public education through college, rebuilding our infrastructure, providing for those among us in need of help and many more things if the richest among us pay their fair share.  How high are you willing to raise the federal income tax rates in order to make America great and rebuild the middle class?

There are more questions that Hillary Clinton should give clear answers to but they will have to wait for another day.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal