Jim Brown Blog

Birth Control vs Freedom of Religion?

2012-02-16T13:38:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 16th, 2012
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM!

I’m confused about the controversy surrounding the debate over the President’s new birth control rule. Some religious leaders, especially U.S. Catholic Bishops, as well as a litany of republican politicians, have criticized the White House proposal that all health insurance plans have to offer birth control options. But is it the birth control requirement that has engendered so much animosity, or is really more an issue of government interference in church related policy? Is it pelvic politics or religious freedom?

The White House has offered a birth control alternative that allows a religious employer to decline contraception options, but requires that the employer’s insurance company make these same options available directly to the employee. If any employee of such an institution desires the birth control option, the insurance company has to supply it free of charge to the employee. But no service is free. Somebody has to pay for it. If the insurance provider cannot charge additional cost to the religious based plan, the new charges will end up being paid by the other policyholders buying health insurance. Like you and me. There’s no free lunch.

To say that a religious institution is not supplying contraceptives to their employees under such a plan is nothing more than an accounting gimmick. If you’re the boss and you make arrangements for your employees to be covered by some outside source, you’re the one making the decision. Call the process what you will, but under this new plan, religious institutions are not really exempt from the new federal rule.

So should any institution be exempt from the birth control rules? It may be reasonable, as a guideline for any future legal challenge, to consider the purpose of the institution. The mission of a church is to teach religion. Therefore, any employee of a church would come to work knowing that the focus of such a religious entity is to teach religious doctrine. And part of that doctrine may be the prohibition of contraception.

But the primary purpose of a hospital is healthcare. In my hometown of Baton Rouge, we are fortunate to have a first rate catholic hospital called, The Lady of the Lake. It is an outreach commitment of the Franciscan Missionaries. The medical care is excellent. I’ve visited The Lady of the Lake Hospital numerous times, and never once have I gotten the impression that there is an effort to spread catholic doctrine. The mission of Lady of the Lake and other religious affiliated hospitals I have visited is to provide healthcare.

Remember that these religious affiliated hospitals operate on more than just insurance and patient proceeds. In addition, Medicare, Medicaid, as well as federal, state and community grants, provide funds and are all from public resources. So with so much public money involved, how do you justify giving certain institutions exemptions from the rules? Shouldn’t there be uniformity where tax dollars are involved? If the rules are unfair, throw out the politicians who voted for and implemented such rules, and then lobby to change the rules for all.

Offering birth control to employees by any business, church related or not, is certainly not a new precept. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that, “Contraception is the single most prescribed medicine for women between 18 and 44 years old, and nine out of ten insurers and employers already cover it.” Twenty-eight states already have mandated the same contraception availability healthcare coverage that is proposed in the new federal plan.

The Guttmacher Institute, a non partisan research organization, released a study last year that concluded 98% of American Catholic Women have used artificial birth control. The Public Religion Research Institute reported last week that 52 % of Catholics back the new plan and believe that birth control should be part of any insurance option offered by Catholic universities and hospitals. So it would seem that a majority of Catholics oppose the special exemption from the new plan being demanded by Catholic institutions.

So now we continue down this “slippery slope.” I would doubt that Catholic bishops believe they alone are entitled to exemptions when their beliefs are at odds with public policy in regard to health care. So what about Christian Scientists who traditionally oppose medical procedures? And the Jehovah Witnesses who believe human blood transfusions are wrong.

Can Jewish orthodox businesses restrict what medical procedures their employees can receive? Can ultraconservative Muslim businesses demand that medical clinics be segregated by gender? Can certain treatments be banned from being offered to employees of exempted special groups? Does religious freedom mean that religious institutions have the right to restrict or interfere with public policy, in this case regarding healthcare?

The founders of our country felt quite strongly about the importance of the separation of the church and state. The government should not choose favorites, and allow religion to practice outside the constraints of public authority. But this separation works both ways. George Washington clarified this distinction by saying: “The United States should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.”

Thomas Jefferson continued Washington’s dialogue by pointing out that there are obligations on both church and state to maintain responsible separation. “The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked.” What Jefferson is saying is that there are freedoms to believe and freedoms to act. There must be a fine, but firm line between supporting religious beliefs and protecting all citizens in an equal manner. According to our founders, it should be
a hard line to cross.

******

“The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.” Humorist Dave Berry

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. . You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Why The Reluctance to Endorse?

2012-02-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

WHICH REPUBLICANS ARE NOT ENDORSING
IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE?

Endorsements are coming right and left from major party officials in the Republican primary presidential race. Even so, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion page column last week that concluded endorsements don’t make all that much difference in the final outcome. Nevertheless, the three current major Republican candidates continue to seek out anyone they can get to join their campaigns.

A number of evangelical Christian ministers have endorsed former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich has picked up recent support from Herman Cain, who dropped out of the presidential race last month. Sarah Palin has given a wink and a nod to Gingrich. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has garnered the most endorsements and continues to be the front runner and gather momentum. But just as interesting is the list of major Republican heavyweights who are sitting on the sidelines.

Florida’s U.S. Senator Marco Rubio has close ties to both Romney and Gingrich, and finds himself in a political triangle. Going back as far as 2006, Gingrich has shared suggestions for Rubio’s book, 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s future. Romney perceptively endorsed Rubio for Senator in the early stages of his campaign when few gave the then Florida Speaker much of a chance. And though Rubio says he has no interest, both candidates have put him on their candidate for Vice President short list. So Rubio is playing it coy to shore up his options in this current campaign.

One of the most sought after endorsements is that of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. His father, the former president, has endorsed Romney, while his brother, also a former president, is officially staying neutral. Governor Bush may now be more inclined to endorse Romney following his big victory in Florida this week. However, Bush seems more interested in promoting his educational initiatives rather than in becoming involved in someone else’s presidential race.

Governor Bush rolled into my hometown of Baton Rouge this past Monday to speak at a conference on educational reform. But he didn’t just show up. An advance team was sent in three days ahead to plan the Governor’s itinerary. VIP receptions were arranged, with photo opportunities for the party faithful. A private jet delivered Bush and his traveling staff to Baton Rouge, and a contingent of security guards were in attendance as the Governor arrived and made his way to the podium. The only thing missing was Air Force One.

Until recently, many republicans were hoping that Bush would jump into the race for President. Some were even dreaming of a brokered convention, where no consensus occurs, and Bush would become the go to guy. Not likely. To many of the party faithful, there still is the stigma of the Bush name being associated with the failing economy and the Iraq War. But time passes and people forgive and forget. Four years from now, if President Obama is re elected, the timing could be just right for a third Bush to emerge. Jeb Bush would be just 62 when the next presidential election rolls around. I pressed the Governor on his future plans when we visited here in Baton Rouge, but he just smiled and talked about his education initiatives.

The Sarasota Tribune says Former first lady Laura Bush wishes there were one more candidate in the Republican presidential primary. Speaking to a sold-out audience in Sarasota on Wednesday, when asked if Jeb Bush will run for president someday, Laura Bush said, “George and I wish he would, we wanted him to this time.”

And then there is Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal. Many political prognosticators thought the second term Louisiana Governor made a big mistake when he early on endorsed Texas Governor Rick Perry for President. Perry quickly crashed and burned. But was Jindal also a loser? Hardly. He told any who inquired that Perry was a close friend, from a neighboring state that shares numerous issues along the gulf coast. Allies of the Louisiana Governor also point out that he built up some major IOUs in the second largest state in the nation, a state that generates big-time campaign contributions for someone who, say, might have an interest in a future presidential bid.

With Perry out of the race, Jindal, just like the Florida Governor, is withholding any endorsement. Interestingly, Jindal’s top adviser, former chief of Staff Timmy Teepell told a gathering of reporters that President Obama is well positioned for re election. “It’s going to be a much tougher battle than most people think for Republicans to beat Obama.”

So if Obama is reelected, the present bunch of candidates, most of whom are in there mid 60s or older, will be fading away. Jindal needs to chalk up some major state legislative successes to build a better campaign resume. But no close observer will be a bit surprised to see Bobby Jindal emerging early on as a top tier candidate in the next campaign. And guess what? That next presidential election is only 1730 days away.

*****

“When I was a boy, I was told that anybody could be elected President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.” Clarence Darrow

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

And tune in to Jim’s NEW weeknight radio program, from 7:00 PM until 9:00 PM central time, Monday through Friday, on flagship station 1150-WJBO. You can listen live on the worldwide web at www.WJBO.com. Jim will also host a special three hour show this Friday evening, February 3rd, from 5:00 PM until 8:00 PM central time, filling in for nationally renowned talk show host Jason Lewis over the Genesis Communications Network.

Supreme Court Takes a Small Steps for Privacy and Feeedom!

2012-01-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

SOME OCCASIONAL COMMON SENSE FROM THE SUPREME COURT

Is privacy dead in America? Many of us thought it was after a disastrous year of almost total usurpation of both freedom and privacy by the federal government. Since the founding of our country more than 200 hundred years ago, Americans have enjoyed the core rights and liberties that have made our country not just unique, but exceptional in protecting basic freedoms. But no more! Under the guise of protecting Americans from terrorism, congress and the past two presidents have stripped away many of the protections guaranteed to American citizens under the Bill of Rights.

Recently, Republicans and Democrats, alike have ignored Benjamin Franklin’s admonition made over 200 years ago when he said, “Security and freedom are not the same thing….in fact just the opposite. The more security you seek, the less freedom you have. The people with the most security are in jail. That’s why they call it maximum, security.”

First came the Patriot Act. Simply put, the Patriot Act is one of the most egregious acts against rights and liberties that we have witnessed in our lifetimes. The President and many members of Congress will argue that their primary job is to keep America safe. But that’s not the starting point. Their primary job is to see that the Constitution is enforced, and that means keeping us free.

As Judge Andrew Napolitano said on his Fox News program recently, the job of these federal officials is to keep us “Free from tyrants who sought and claimed power from thin air; free from prince-like federal agents who could behave without constitutional or legal restraint; free to live with a government that obeys its own laws. Any president who keeps us safe but unfree is ignoring his oath to the American people.” And doesn’t keeping us safe include keeping us safe from the tyranny of our own government?

The abuses under the so called Patriot Act began almost immediately. Two U.S. Senators have sent out early warnings. Senator Mark Udall from Colorado, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned: “Americans would be alarmed if they knew how this law is being carried out.” His concerns were echoed by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, also a member of the Intelligence Committee, who charged: “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.”

Then, during an unwatched hour on New Year’s Eve, when most Americans were focused on revelry and football, President Obama signed the latest assault on our freedoms. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 gives the President the authority to have American citizens arrested and detained indefinitely, without due process. We fought the British for our freedom, and as Judge Napolitano points out, even King George did not have the power to indefinitely detain any citizen. I gotta say it again. American citizens can be arrested on American soil and imprisoned indefinitely on the basis of accusations alone.

There is little good news, but every now and then, there’s a glimmer. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court, often notoriously blind to the cause of individual rights, unanimously decreed that a search warrant is necessary before law enforcement officers can use a GPS device to track and follow a criminal suspect. The Court used a little common sense for a change in ruling that despite advances in surveillance technology, the Fourth Amendment still applies.

But what if the police can track an individual without installing equipment? Many new cars have GPS devices factory installed. Do the same privacy rules apply?
How about the fact that current technology allows the government to track the locations of millions of cell phones at will? The court “punted” on any clarification here, and said they would consider these issues at a later time. Is your cell phone activity and location being tracked right now?

The basic freedoms and protections of American citizens under the Bill of Rights have never before been under such assault. The stripping of these freedoms began following 9/11 under the Bush Administration. Under the Obama Administration, civil liberties have been further cut to the bone. Lenin summed up the direction our nation is heading, well, when he said, “It is true that liberty is precious, so precious that it must be carefully rationed.”

There was a small step towards the protection of privacy in the Supreme Court decision this week. But if the call for security smothers the rights of privacy, and the right to be free, then the terrorists do win. How can America issue a call for freedom in other countries, while deserting it here at home? Our freedom train is off the track. We have some adjusting to do. Before the essential principles on which our country was founded disappear right before our eyes. Edmund Burke said it this way, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

*****

“Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.” Benjamin Franklin

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the country. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Who's To Blame for Rising Insurance Rates?

2012-01-18T19:33:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

FEDS AND STATE REGULATION CAUSE HIGH INSURANCE RATES!

A headline in several regional newspapers caught my eye. “Homeowners Insurance Rate Increases Have Slowed,” said one front page banner. I guess that’s supposed to be good news. But in my home state of Louisiana, rates have skyrocketed since 2005 -- by an astounding 40%. No other state in the country has experienced such dramatic increases. And we continue to read that it’s all the fault of Katrina. There have been no major weather related losses in a number of years, but the rates continue to go up. There must be something rotten in Denmark. Hmmm – make that Louisiana.

Bob Hunter, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America, pulls no punches in laying the blame right at the feet of insurance regulators. He points out that insurance companies are using a number of tricks to eliminate their risk while the homeowner takes it on the chin with rates that continue to climb, hand over fist. “It simply requires regulation,” says Hunter. “Why haven’t rates gone down? Are they (insurance companies) gouging?” Ya’ think?

A significant factor in rates staying high is the continuing problems of AIG. This mammoth insurance conglomerate, that has a huge presence in Louisiana, was the first major insurance company to be bailed out as the recent Wall Street crisis evolved. Congress authorized an injection of more than $130 billion in taxpayer funds to AIG and its numerous subsidiaries. Not only were billions injected to pay off debts, the federal treasury plowed some $40 million of taxpayer dollars to take a partial stake in the ownership of AIG. As of today, the government owns 77% of AIG. So how’s your investment doing? The Wall Street Journal reported last week that AIG shares have declined 50% in this year alone.

Here’s why major international insurance groups like AIG are important to small states like Louisiana. T It’s not the population that matters. It’s where the risks are located. And there are a number of major companies operating in Louisiana that have significant exposure for insurance purposes. Just imagine the cost of insuring the offshore oil industry operating along Louisiana’s coastline. How about the nation’s largest chemical industry located up and down the Mississippi River? And there are major risks to insure in the first, third, and fifth largest ports in this country all located in Louisiana. In short, Louisiana is in the top five of states that have the highest industrial insurance risks. That means Louisiana is a major customer for many insurance companies both nationally and worldwide. Other large industrial states throughout the country share similar major industrial risks and need large national and international insurance companies to offer needed insurance protection, but none of them have had the excessive increases in insurance rates that Louisiana has.

There have been numerous press reports of widespread misspending at AIG using taxpayer funding. One investigation outlines a plush retreat by AIG executives at the St. Regis resort in California, including golf, massages, manicures, pedicures -- the works. These folks sure know how to show their gratitude. You can imagine the criticism the company received for this junket. But after getting roasted for the taxpayer – funded week-long retreat, far from learning a lesson, these same top executives keep thumbing their noses at taxpayers and continue to spend your money for their personal pleasure.

The question many people are asking is who is supposed to be watching out for these shenanigans? Who regulates companies like AIG? And why have these companies been allowed to get away with such outrageous and irresponsible behavior? But wait! In states all over the country, this is the era of little or no regulation. Keep government off the backs of the private sector. Don’t bog down insurance companies with all these regulations. You can trust them with your money…right? Let the free market reign.

And Louisiana, has been in the forefront of this laissez-faire approach to insurance regulation. In most states, companies selling automobile and property insurance have to apply for approval of any rate increase to the insurance department in any state where they want to sell insurance. Not in Louisiana. The Insurance Rating Commission, once a stronghold of watchdogs for taxpayers, was abolished a few years back, leaving insurance companies free to raise their rates on a regular basis.
In virtually every other state, there is a consumer protection office, often located under the office of the Governor or the Attorney General. The mandate of consumer protection office is to independently check and audit regulated companies to be sure that they are following the law. This mandate applies not only to insurance companies, but also to utility companies that have a monopoly operating in certain areas of the state. But in Louisiana, there are no independent checks and balances. And the loser, of course, is the policy holder, the ratepayer, the consumer.

Although the company has a major presence in Louisiana, insurance officials have chosen not to audit AIG’s activities. In years past, no insurance group was immune from being audited, particularly as financial problems began to occur. In 1993, Louisiana joined Texas in doing the first major audit of Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance company. But since the deregulation mode has obtained a firm grip on Louisiana, major companies like AIG have become free from state oversight.

New York state officials have undertaken what the Governor of New York says will be a “major investigation” of AIG mismanagement and abuses. Former Attorney General and present Governor Andrew Cuomo said in announcing his financial review of the company, “AIG’s belief is that they can have the party, and the taxpayers will have a hangover.”
The concern for Louisiana policy holders should be: why does it take an official in another state to initiate an investigation of potential mismanagement and misuse of funds that come out of the Bayou State? In Louisiana, there is no pre-approval limitation of increasing your insurance rates that are now the highest in the nation. So there is no more Insurance Rating Commission. And Louisiana law specifically prohibits giving its citizens separate insurance consumer protection by the Attorney General or any other official office.

So the bottom line is: thanks to the legislature, the Louisiana insurance policy holder has less protection than policy holders in just about any other state in America. And while the AIG shenanigans continue to be ignored in Louisiana, the politicians in Washington keep telling us that companies like AIG, for the good of the country, have to be saved no matter what, regardless of the huge burden on the taxpayers. The way the politicians see it, these companies are too big to fail. And the fleecing of you and me, the taxpayers? Well, that’s just collateral damage.

*******
“A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.”
Amos Bronson Alcott
Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Presidential Elections and the Bayou State!

2012-01-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 5th, 2012
New Orleans, Louisiana

LOUISIANA AND PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Governor Mitt Romney’s Iowa caucus victory this week drew nothing more than a few yawns down in Louisiana. For several reasons. First, presidential politics is not a front burner issue right now. For many Louisianans, there are more important priorities. LSU is playing for the national championship down in New Orleans, and the Saints are making a viable run toward another Super Bowl. It’s still duck and deer season, and Mardi Gras is just around the corner. But the main reason that folks in the Bayou State can’t get excited over Romney is because, as far as they know, he has not stepped a foot in the state. Romney seems to be well on his way to winning the Republican presidential nomination, and once again, Louisiana will be left on the side of the road.

Neighboring governor Rick Perry initially looked like “the man” to Louisiana politicos who gave any early attention to the presidential race. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal jumped into the Perry campaign with both feet, making a number of stops alongside the Texas governor. On paper, Perry looked pretty good to a number of Louisiana voters. The state has become more conservative in recent years, and is a cinch to stay in the republican column. Perry has been strongly supportive on the oil and gas issues that ring so well in Louisiana, where similar interests are shared. His positions on social issues make Tea Partiers and evangelicals jump for joy. But then his “oops” moment came, and he seemed to dig that hole deeper every time he opened his mouth. As a national candidate, Perry’s toast. He’s crashed and burned, and he’ll soon be out of the race.

Louisiana had a chance to be every bit as relevant in the presidential mix as was Iowa. It was the only state to have a major statewide election less than two months before the Iowa caucus. A few creative minds in the state suggested a “beauty contest.” Why not allow any of the presidential candidates to file and put their name on the Louisiana gubernatorial ballot, to give voters a chance to express their initial choice for president? The vote would be non-binding as far as picking delegates. But any serious presidential candidate could not afford to ignore the state. There would have been numerous campaign stops and media buys that would have been a boon to Louisiana. Perry particularly would have benefited, and Governor Jindal could have scored points for Perry and himself as they traveled the Bayou State campaigning. But Louisiana has never been on the cutting edge of looking out for itself, and true to form, the idea was ignored by legislators.

Some local political observers are saying that Jindal made a big mistake endorsing Perry, and that he’s hurt his chances for a national political move. But there just might be a method to Jindal’s perceived madness. Jindal knew well he was not the strongest candidate for joining the eventual nominee as a vice presidential candidate. Louisiana brings nothing politically to a national ticket. It’s not a “swing state” like either Florida or Ohio. And if Jindal’s heritage is a consideration, Hispanics far outweigh Indian Americans. That’s why we hear names like Sen. Marco Rubio, a Hispanic from Florida, and Governor Bob Portman from Ohio. Both are fairly new to office, and considered lightweights in the arena of governing, but you’ve got to get elected before you can run the country. And if Romney does get the nomination, as it seems he will, South Carolina’s popular Governor Nikki Haley would be a possible VP choice. She’s also an Indian American and she’s endorsed Romney, giving his campaign a big boost for the all important South Carolina republican primary in two weeks. So Jindal is realistically out of the picture as a serious candidate as part of a republican ticket.

Jindal has two future political choices, and his decision will no doubt be made based on who is elected president. If President Obama is re-elected, then there is a wide open opportunity for a Jindal presidential bid in four years. The Romneys, Pauls and Gingrichs of this campaign season will be older, and the party will be yearning for younger blood. In four years, Jindal will be winding down his second term as governor as the new campaign season approaches. The timing could not work better for him. And that’s where the Perry endorsement brings big dividends. The big bucks for national office are in Texas. Perry owes Jindal big-time, and is certain to return the favor by helping to raise big campaign bucks. So Jindal’s presidential bid, who some in Louisiana feel is his obsession, will receive bountiful benefits from the timing, and Jindal’s ability to “cash in” on all his campaign stops on behalf of number of other republican office holders around the country.

But what happens if Romney defeats Obama, which is certainly a strong possibility? Jindal won’t just wait around for four years without a base. We all know how quickly voters forget. He needs a platform. And he can gain such by taking on Louisiana incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu, whose term is up for renewal in 2014. Jindal will still be governor in a strong republican state and will be running against a democrat who has a good bit of baggage. It’s a lousy time to be a longtime serving incumbent, particularly in a red state when you are a mainstream democrat. Obama care, not returning home all that often, and a poor record of nominating federal judges, just for beginners, will be a few of the many issues that will be thrown back at Landrieu. When the Republicans smell the blood, Jindal will have the first right of refusal to take on the lady. So Louisiana voters won’t have to wait long. Jindal’s future plans will no doubt be decided in the election this November.
v. Rick Perry, Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Politics, Pres
Back to Mitt Romney. He barely won in Iowa, nudging Rick Sanatorium by a mere 8 votes. As my friend Andy Borowitz observed, the last time so few people decided a Presidential race they were all on the Supreme Court. But Romney wasn’t supposed to do all that well in Iowa. He now has solid momentum moving into New Hampshire for next week’s primary where he should win big. And the campaign contributions just keep rolling in at a pace far ahead of the all the other candidates combined. I was in New York several weeks ago where a friend invited me to be his guest at a Romney fundraiser. The former Massachusetts governor raised $10.5 million at that event, and this was just one of a series of such events Romney had scheduled on that day alone.

So we’re talking about a barn burner of a presidential race, a Louisiana governor anxious to move on to what he perceives to be bigger and better offices, and possible BCS and Super Bowl championships. Add to this gumbo a hint of “throw me somethin’ mister,” soon to be in the air and you have to ask -- Is 2012 going to be a great year or what?
*****
“When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it” ~Clarence Darrow

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

2011-12-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

December 29, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

NEW YEAR THOUGHTS FROM THE BAYOU STATE

Did you make a New Year’s resolution yet? I always do. Hope and foreboding are at the top of my list and have been these past few years. The New Year always brings a promise of uncertainty. More so for most of us in the coming year. I would rather be absorbed with the more mundane things in life. But that won’t happen in the busy lives that most of us lead.

One resolution I make each year is to maintain my curiosity. It does not matter how limited your perspective or the scope of your surroundings, there is (or should be) something to whet your interest and strike your fancy. I discovered early on that there are two kinds of people; those who are curious about the world around them, and those whose shallow attentions are generally limited to those things that pertain to their own personal well-being. I just hope all those I care about fall into the former category.

And a resolution of hope. Successful and fulfilling endeavors for my children, happiness and contentment for family and friends, the fortitude to handle both the highs and lows of daily living with dignity.

I ask my children each year to give me two gifts for Christmas. First, to make a donation to a charity that will help needy families in their community. And second, to read and re-read the unforgettable holocaust novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace laureate who survived the Nazi death camps. I have a Wiesel quote framed on my office desk.

To defeat injustice and misfortune,
if only for one instant, for a single victim,
is to invent a new reason to hope.

Just like many of you, our family welcomes in the New Year with “Auld Lang Syne.” It’s an old Scotch tune, with words passed down orally, and recorded by my favorite historical poet, Robert Burns, back n the 1700’s. (I’m Scottish, so there’s a bond here.) “Auld Lang Syne” literally means “old long ago,” or simply, “the good old days.”

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

Did you know this song is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the New Year?

I can look back over many years of memorable New Year’s Eve celebrations. In recent years, my wife and I have joined a gathering of family and friends in New Orleans at Antoine’s Restaurant in the French Quarter. Our private party normally clusters in the Rex Room for a complete dinner including an array of seafood appetizers (oysters, shrimp and crabmeat) and flaming Baked Alaska for dessert. Yes, a number of champagne-filled toasts with an occasional family member dancing on the dinner table. Then off to join the masses for the New Year’s countdown to midnight in Jackson Square. We often finish the evening (or early morning) at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville on Decatur Street.

When my daughters were quite young, we spent a number of New Years at a family camp on Davis Island, in the middle of the Mississippi River some 30 miles below Vicksburg. On several occasions, the only people there were my family and Bishop Charles P. Greco, who was the Catholic Bishop for central and north Louisiana. Bishop Greco had baptized all three of my daughters, and had been a family friend for years. And he did love to deer hunt.

On many a cold and rainy morning, the handful of us at the camp would rise before dawn for the Bishop to conduct a New Year’s Mass. After the service, most of the family went back to bed. I would crank up my old jeep, and take the Bishop out in the worst weather with hopes of putting him on a stand where a large buck would pass. No matter what the weather, he would stay all morning with his shotgun and thermos of coffee. He rarely got a deer, but oh how he loved to be there in the woods. Now I’m not a Catholic, but he treated me as one of his own.

One of the most fulfilling and rewarding projects I undertook in my Louisiana state senate days was to help Bishop Greco fund and build the St. Mary’s Residential and Training School for retarded children in Alexandria. He was, for me, a great mentor and friend who touched the lives of so many. He died in 1987, and I will always think of him on New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Day means lots of football, but I also put on my chef’s apron. I’m well regarded in the kitchen around my household, if I say so myself, for cooking up black-eyed peas as well as cabbage and corn bread. And don’t bet I won’t find the dime in the peas. After all, I’m going to put it there.

I’ll be back next week with my views that are cantankerous, opinionated, inflammatory, slanted, and always full of vim and vigor. Sometimes, to a few, even a bit fun to read. In the meantime, Happy New Year to you, your friends and all of your family. See you next year.
*****

“May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions. “
Joey Adams

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Huge Insurance Problems in Louisiana!

2011-12-21T19:23:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

LOUISIANA PROPERTY OWNERS FACE
ANOTHER STATE CREATED FINANCIAL DISASTER!

Merry Christmas Louisiana. Here’s your present from the public officials you sent to the state capitol. A big boost in your property insurance premiums! All from the same folks who have been sticking you with higher rates for years because of their poor oversight and downright incompetence. So get out your checkbook and enjoy your holidays. More increases are on the way.

Just two weeks ago, State Farm policy holders were blindsided with a whopping rate increase of as much as 14% in some parts of the state. Many customers are wondering why there was such a rate increase was implemented. The economy has stagnated, there is little inflation, and prices across the board are down. Insurance rates are dropping in many other states, but Louisiana continues to have the highest premium costs in the nation. There have been no recent serious weather related damages throughout the state. So how can an insurance company justify a rate increase during this troubling economic climate? Simply put, they did it because they can.

In the majority of states throughout the U.S., insurance companies have to file a request to raise rates before the insurance department. Actuaries and other insurance officials scrutinize these requests to be sure the rate request is justified. But not in Louisiana!

The insurance industry did some heavy lobbying a few years back and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of willing legislators and insurance regulators. And Voila! No more prior approval to raise rates required. Such “sweetheart deals” do not exist in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and in virtually no other state throughout the south. And guess what? Property insurance rates are much lower outside Louisiana.

So that was the bad news two weeks ago. But now, if you own a home, here’s your New Year’s present. Every property owner in the state is about to be stuck with yet another assessment on their property because of the incompetence and outright fraud on the part of those who both formed and have run the state created Citizens Property Insurance Company.

Just last week, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that Citizens will be stuck with a judgment approaching $100 million for failing to pay claims to property owners following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in a timely manner. Private sector companies followed the law and paid the money owed for damages appropriately. But the incompetence and tardiness of the public officials in charge rose to the level of mismanagement. The requirements that other companies complied with were ignored by Citizens.

Following the court’s ruling, Fred Herman, the New Orleans attorney for a large number of unpaid homeowners, blasted the public officials in charge by saying, “It demonstrates the utter and abject failure of Citizens to perform their statutory and contractual obligations to their insureds… Those are the types of things that people need to understand when they’re re-electing them.”

And the bad news for Louisiana homeowners could get much worse. There is a separate claim of incompetence against Citizens by 10,000 more homeowners that could cost property owners an additional $50 million. And this money, that could exceed $150 million, does not come out of the state treasury. It will come from an assessment on every Louisiana property owner, regardless of who his insurance company might be.

Citizens Insurance Company was a disaster waiting to happen from its very inception. Created by the Louisiana Legislature at the behest of the Insurance Department, Citizens had to be one of the most poorly constructed business operations ever conceived by a state legislature. The company was broke from day one, with no capital and no surplus available to get Citizens started on a sound financial footing. It became obvious early on that no one at Citizens had any idea of how to run an insurance company.

In addition, a mother’s mantra of any successful insurance company is that there must be adequate reinsurance. There must be a safety net in case a storm like Katrina comes along. The legislature and the insurance department failed to require that Citizens have sufficient reinsurance, and that single negligent decision stuck every policy holder in the state for a bill that will far exceed $1 billion. By virtually every standard that any private insurance company must measure up to, Citizens has failed miserably.

Citizens was a inauspicious cataclysm from day one. With these massive new assessments now being saddled on the backs of Louisiana property owners, the Citizens debacle continues to get even worse. The best solution would be to shut the company down completely. At a minimum, Citizens needs major restructuring with more requirements for both legislative and auditor oversight.

Unfortunately for those stuck with the bill, there seems to be little concern at the state capitol to straighten out this publically created disaster that continues to fester and grow.
*****
“It’s not hurricanes that are causing high insurance rates, but bad government policy,”
Policy analyst Michelle Minton

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

No freedom of Choice in What We Eat?

2011-12-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 8th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

IN LOUISIANA, NO MORE HORSEMEAT
IN MY GUMBO?

Louisiana has been called the culinary Mecca of America. Folks in this part of the country can take just about anything edible and make it, not just good, but quite exceptional. And when we say anything, we mean anything. There is virtually no limit to what a Cajun will put in a gumbo. So when one of our own politicians starts talking about banning anything we want to eat, “them’s fightin’ words.” But that’s what one of Louisiana’s U.S. senators wants to do.

Democrat Mary Landrieu has for years led a national fight to ban the sale of horsemeat for consumption in the U.S. Now I’ll admit that most of us do not regularly run down to our local supermarket to check on whether a fresh shipment of horsemeat has arrived. But I’m not all that enamored by eating nutria, a large rat, that is regularly publicized as a tasty dish by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. So, to each his own.

Landrieu is pushing for an outright ban on both the slaughter and the export of slaughter horses. She was on the forefront of the initial fight in 2006, when congress banned the use of federal funds by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to inspect the slaughter of horses at any meat processing plant in the country. Under the law, any plant that is not inspected by this federal agency is prohibited from shipping horsemeat across state lines. So, no inspection, no sales, and the horse slaughter market was shut down.

Is there a market for U.S. horsemeat? Yes, and it’s big time in a number of countries. “Carne di Cavallo,” can be bought in most butcher shops in Italy. In Sweden, horsemeat is so popular that it outsells lamb and mutton combined. In every European country you will find horsemeat to be quite popular. In France, the mother lode of food delicacies, they even have a horsemeat butcher’s organization called Federation de la Boucherie Hippophagique. It’s estimated that 700,000 tons of horsemeat are consumed annually worldwide. And for good reason.

As Gary Picariello writes in Yahoo News, “a typical filet of horsemeat is similar to that of beef. The meat is leaner, slightly sweeter in taste, with a flavor somewhat between that of beef and venison. Good horsemeat is very tender, but it can also be slightly tougher than comparable cuts of beef. Horsemeat is higher in protein and lower in fat. The most popular cuts of horsemeat come from the hindquarters: tenderloin, sirloin, fillet steak, rump steak and rib. Less tender cuts are ground.”

Here’s what restaurateur Jonathan Birdsall told me about possible horsemeat demand in the U.S. “I’ll bet I could name half a dozen American chefs chomping at the bit to do things to horse back fat or loins that’d show off a delicacy few of us probably never suspected Mr. Ed to be capable of. Braised on a nice bed of hay, maybe, with a few roasted finger-length carrots.” Hmmm. Think it’s worth a try?

Like I said, we eat about anything down here in Bayou Country. I wrote a cook book some years ago (available at www.the LisburnPress.com) that includes such delicacies as my “world famous” squirrel stew, venison goulash, possum and chestnuts, rabbit in sour cream, and Louisiana Governor Jimmy Davis’s favorite, fried coon file’.

I was traveling through Cajun country a few years ago, and stopped at a rural general store for a cup of coffee. An old fellow was on the porch cooking up a pot of something that smelled good. “Whatcha’ cookin’?” I asked. “Got me a gumbo,” he replied. I asked what kind of gumbo, and he told me, “an owl gumbo.” When I asked him what an owl gumbo tasted like, he smiled and said, “Oh, about like a hawk gumbo.”

Seeing that our locals regularly eat alligator sauce picquante, and add to a stew or gumbo just about anything else that flies or crawls, it’s hard for many of us to get too worked up over a little horsemeat. I know that many have a special affection for the majestic horse. But all horses eventually have to be disposed of. And the same horses that would be slaughtered in the U.S. under strict guidelines are now being shipped to other countries and both treated and killed in far more cruel ways.

It’s hard to figure why a Louisiana senator has such a beef with letting someone chose to eat horsemeat. Isn’t it really a freedom of choice issue? She apparently has no problem with eating Porky Pig, Donald Duck, and Bambi. So what’s the big deal about eating Trigger and Mr. Ed?

Since we have a French background here in Louisiana, could the politicians in Washington be dangerously close to inciting another revolution by telling what we can or cannot eat? Instead a big fuss being made over, “Let us eat cake,” the new battle cry could well be, “Let us eat horse.”

*****

“Food shortages in the United States are so acute that in some states we are already eating horsemeat, and in Oklahoma a state official urges that we eat crows, which he says, taste like roast duck.”

Clarence Birdseye, American Magazine (July 1943)

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

How Bad Are Healthcare Mandates?

2011-12-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

REPUBLICANS FLIP, DEMOCRATS FLOP
ON HEALTHCARE!

Here’s our plot line. You’ve been in a coma for the past four years and just regained consciousness. You are concerned about your medical expenses, so you check to see what the President and congress have done to make healthcare more affordable. What you find is that both republicans and democrats are deadlocked in a bitter debate on just what needs to be done. The healthcare mandate is a major bone of contention and you remember this same controversial issue raging four years ago. You recall how each side split up. Democrats opposed the mandate and republicans were all for it. Right? Hey friend. You will soon find out that both parties did major flip-flops when it comes to mandating healthcare coverage.

Is there a conservative case to be made for an individual healthcare mandate? There is. Here’s why. Responsible individuals are going to buy health insurance knowing full well that they run the risk of financial disaster if they don’t have proper insurance coverage. The irresponsible person, even if he or she can afford it, takes the attitude that if they face a health emergency, they can always go get free care at the hospital emergency room. Your premiums go up to cover their medical costs. So the present system penalizes those who are responsible, and rewards those who are irresponsible.

So one would assume that conservative republicans would be in support of such a mandate. Before you were forced to hibernate a few years back, that assumption was well founded. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had made the conservative republican case back in 2007 when he said: “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it.” An “individual mandate” should be applied. Gingrich was taking the party line of most republicans going back a number of years as a way of offering an alternative to Hillarycare.

In 2008, Tommy Thompson, The Secretary of Health and Humans Services under President George W. Bush, said, “Just like people are required to have car insurance, they should be required to have health insurance.” Add to that list of supporters former Senate majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist of Tennessee, and all the Senators who co-sponsored legislation with an individual mandate — Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Senator Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa), Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

Here’s what Senator Grassley said just two years ago on Fox News: “There isn’t anything wrong with an individual mandate, except some people look at it as an infringement on individual freedom. But when it comes to states requiring it for automobile insurance, the principal then ought to lie [be] the same for health insurance. Because everybody has some health insurance costs, and if you aren’t insured, there’s no free lunch. Somebody else has to pay for it….I believe there is bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”

Where are President Obama and the democrats in this debate? If you go back to the presidential campaign of 2008, Obama made no bones about his strong opposition to forcing Americans to buy health insurance. The President said then that “If things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.” There’s no support here from the president for the individual healthcare mandate.

So now you are wondering, what happened? How can President Obama now endorse and defend the very program he once strongly rejected? And what happened to the pro individual mandate position of Newt and his fellow conservative republicans?
Obama and the democrats bit off too much to chew. They paid faint attention to the Hillarycare debacle back in the early 1990s. Not only were there way too many changes in the proposed system, the timing was wrong. As the country sunk deeper into a recession, republicans were having a field day accusing the president of letting the dwindling economy slip off the front burner. He used too many green stamps on healthcare, and got stuck in the debate over economic recovery as the republicans gained traction by attacking Obama’s failure to prioritize the needs of the country.
Republicans smelled blood early on, and choose to let the president go it alone on healthcare reform. The earlier GOP support for the individual mandate fell by the wayside as republicans, particularly those strong conservatives who hollered so much about personal responsibility completely flip-flopped.

The healthcare law is now planted at the feet of the U.S. Supreme Court. All or part of it could be declared unconstitutional. There is a provision that does away with the pre-existing condition clause, but both sides are in agreement that this requirement is constitutional and necessary. If the court does away with the individual mandate, the whole law is put in jeopardy. Such a fragmented law would allow a person to not buy health insurance, get sick, and then rush off to purchase a policy to cover their needs forward. Under such a scenario, insurance premiums would skyrocket.
So should the government compel us to buy something, whether we want to or not? Hey, it happens all the time. You are mandated by law to do a number of things. You must buy auto insurance if you drive a car and purchase flood insurance to get a home loan in areas that flood. The government mandates that you pay taxes, and that you send your kids to school. Isn’t health insurance just another mandate?

The whole issue now sits firmly before the U.S. Supreme Court. And just like the case in Bush v. Gore, politics will play a role in how a final decision is reached. A ruling declaring Obamacare unconstitutional will strike a major blow to the President’s reelection chances. The conservative block of republican appointed justices that include Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy know that. And they just may find such a scenario too tempting to pass up.

*****

“There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.”
Alexis de Tocqueville

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the country. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Widespread Prosecutorial Misconduct in the U.S.?

2011-11-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 24th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

PROSECUTORS GONE WILD!

Over the past few months, there has been a rash of reports and charges of widespread and intentional withholding of evidence on the part of federal prosecutors in a number of high profile criminal cases. Intentional is the key word here. Mistakes can be made when prosecutors work under heavy case loads and the pressure of meeting deadlines. But in way too many cases, prosecutors hiding evidence that is favorable to the defense has proven to be deliberate, and in direct violation of the law.

Even though such miscarriage of justice often leads to the conviction of an innocent defendant, rogue prosecutors who violate the law in this way are rarely prosecuted, or even sanctioned. This is a blight on the American justice system, today.
It takes a courageous and determined judge to weed out the abuse of prosecutors who willfully violate the law. In too many instances, there is a mere slap on the wrist, or even the ignoring of the abuse altogether. But every now and then, a tenacious judge comes forth and shows his mettle and demands full accountability from the cadre of rogue prosecutors. One such judge is Emmet G. Sullivan, of Federal District Court in Washington.

Judge Sullivan presided over the Senator Ted Stephens case, where a whistleblower provided information of the widespread hiding of evidence. Upon learning of the extensive improprieties of the Justice Department officials in the case, Judge Sullivan appointed a special investigator, who, just this week, issued a scathing report. The 500 page document concluded that the Stephens case was “permeated by the prosecutors’ serious, widespread, and at times intentional and illegal concealment of evidence,” -- evidence that would have been extremely helpful to Stephens’ defense.

The judge lashed out at the prosecutors, who deliberately withheld information favorable to the defense, and quoted from the report that the case was “permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Stephens’s defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness.” The Judge is now considering making a strong recommendation for obstruction of justice charges against the prosecutors in the case.

My home state of Louisiana is certainly not immune from wayward prosecutors who withhold information helpful to a defendant. Just two weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court again heard a New Orleans case where key evidence was withheld from a defendant who was convicted of murder. Defense attorneys in Louisiana have said for years that the standard modus operandi for prosecutors in New Orleans when it comes to handing over key evidence helpful to the defendant is, “When in doubt, don’t give it up.”

As quoted in the New York Times, a former U.S. Attorney from New Orleans said that the office policy was “keeping away as much information as possible from the defense attorney.” Defense lawyers in New Orleans confirm that there have been 28 convictions, many that put defendants on death row, where later it was determined that prosecutors had withheld key evidence that would have supported the innocence of the accused.

In the notorious case of Dan Bright, convicted and put on death row for a murder he did not commit, evidence came out years after his conviction that the FBI, thanks to a credible informant, had been in possession of the name of the actual killer all along. Luckily for Dan Bright, because of the unconstitutional withholding of key evidence by the prosecution and the FBI, his conviction was thrown out, and he now is a free man.

The Forman of White’s jury, who recommended he be put to death, was Kathleen Norman, who was a guest on my radio show on several occasions before her untimely death last year. She was so incensed over White’s wrongful conviction and the hiding of evidence that would have cleared him by the FBI, that she became head of the Louisiana Innocence project, helping others like White mount a credible defense.
Unfortunately, a calculating prosecutor who intentionally hides evidence that could find a defendant innocent runs only a slight risk of sanctions. There are few judges like Judge Sullivan, who demand an accounting for violating the law. A recent examination of prosecutorial misconduct by The Yale Law Journal concludes that “prosecutors gone wild” by intentionally violating the law, and even sending innocent defendants to the gas chamber are rarely sanctioned. Their conclusions stated:

“Given the Supreme Court’s repeated endorsement of professional discipline as the appropriate vehicle for addressing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, one might suppose that state bar agencies frequently sanction prosecutors. In fact, prosecutors are rarely held accountable for violating ethics rules. A Chicago Tribune study identified 381 homicide cases nationally in which Brady violations (withholding evidence) produced conviction reversals. Yet prosecutors faced disciplinary action in only forty-four of those cases, and seven of these actions were eventually dismissed.

As these studies indicate, infrequent punishment of prosecutors cannot be blamed on a paucity of discoverable violations. Even when judicial findings of misconduct result in conviction reversals, disciplinary sanctions are almost never imposed against the offending prosecutor.”

Conduct by rogue prosecutors of withholding information that could prove an accused innocent is far too prevalent. A segment of ambitious prosecutors are looking for another notch on their gun to add to their resume for advancement. The higher the rate of convictions, the more likely they can parley their actions into becoming an elected district attorney or perhaps a judge. The only way to reign in their efforts to convict at any price is through sanctions, disbarment and criminal prosecution. We need a lot more Judge Emmet Sullivans on the bench to both uphold justice, and to make certain that those who compromise justice are held fully accountable.
*****

“The only thing that assures fairness in the courtroom are judges with courage to keep their eyes open, watch what is happening, keep an open mind and make fair decisions fair to both sides.”
Brandon Sullivan

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Should Voting be Mandatory?

2011-11-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 17th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

YOU ARE GOING TO VOTE -- OR ELSE!

Why don’t more people show up to vote on Election Day? In elections all over America, fewer voters are turning out at the polls than ever before. The New York Times ran an op-ed piece last week decrying this national trend, and suggesting that voting be mandatory, just like jury duty. So how big is the problem, and how important is it to force citizens to vote?

My home state of Louisiana recently held what traditionally is the largest election in any four year period, to pick most of the statewide and local public offices. Turnout was a miserable 35%. In some precincts, fewer than 10 voters showed up to cast their ballots. There have been recent elections where the only people to show up were the five required voting commissioners. And low turnout is not unique to Louisiana. The downward trend is prevalent all across the country.

Of course we should encourage all Americans to vote. Participatory democracy is a hall mark of our system of government. There have been hard fought battles in the past century to give voting rights to women and to protect the voting rights for a cross section of minorities. The Voting Rights Act was necessary in 1965, but it’s outlived its usefulness and discriminates against a hand full of mostly southern states. The problem today is not to stop voter discrimination, but how to encourage more people to show up on Election Day.

In his recent op-ed article, William Galston with the Brookings Institution argues what he feels to be a number of advantages to mandatory voting. He points out that thirty-one countries have some form of mandatory voting, including two thirds of Latin American nations and a cross section of other democracies that include Australia. Here’s what he sees as the benefits of a legal obligation to vote:
“Imagine our politics with laws and civic norms that yield near-universal voting. Campaigns could devote far less money to costly, labor-intensive get-out-the-vote efforts. Media gurus wouldn’t have the same incentive to drive down turnout with negative advertising. Candidates would know that they must do more than mobilize their bases with red-meat rhetoric on hot-button issues. Such a system would improve not only electoral politics but also the legislative process. Rather than focusing on symbolic gestures whose major purpose is to agitate partisans, Congress might actually roll up its sleeves and tackle the serious, complex issues it ignores. “
All well and good, and few would argue with the advantages of lessening the tension of governing and creating an atmosphere for more political compromise, and less of the present “in your face” way of governing.

But what price is paid for such results? Does the government have to hold a stick over your head with financial sanctions to force you to vote? Australia, for example, fines any eligible voter who fails to show up at the polls. A small fine to begin with, about the amount of a traffic ticket, with escalating amounts for repeated failures. Yes, turnout is around 95 %, and Australians tend to see voting as a personal obligation, something not nearly as ingrained in the U.S.

One reason, particularly here in Louisiana, that voting percentages are way down, is the changing patterns of “getting out the vote.” Retail politics in the past meant well oiled political machines that spent considerable resources on Election Day. Both political parties developed aggressive get out the vote campaigns with transportation being provided to voting locations for voters who requested it. Numerous political rallies, beginning months before Election Day, was standard campaign procedure in years past. Now it’s primarily television, direct mail and robo calls. The election “street money” and the retail politics of the past have gone by the wayside, resulting in less reinforcement and fewer voters making their way to the polls.

Another reason voting percentages are way down is the fact that in many states, way too many elections are held. School boards and local taxing districts often pick an “off election” date, with few other items on the ballot. They look to get their particularly constituency to the polls with the hopes that those who oppose their particular proposition will not take the time to vote. In many European countries, where voting participation is always quite high, one annual Election Day is held on a Sunday. Families go to church and then take the time to vote, knowing that they will only have to vote once a year. In my home state of Louisiana, voters are often asked to vote six times or more per year, frequently with only one or two local issues on the ballot. Generally, U.S. voters face too many elections of little interest to them, resulting in extremely low voter turnout.

Is democracy served by telling citizens that they have to show up and vote, regardless of their interest and/or ignorance of the candidates and the local issues? Can a registered voter be told by the government: “Regardless of your interest in this election, we are requiring you to show up, and if you don’t, you will be fined.”

And finally, how about the argument that not voting is actually a vote? If all votes are your opinions, then by not voting, are you not expressing your opposition to all those candidates and items on the ballot? I remember back in the 1970’s as a Louisiana State Senator I introduced a proposed law to include “none of the above,” on the ballot. Isn’t that what you’re indicating when you fail to vote? And if so, isn’t this your constitutional right?

If the country is going to have a system of government that is responsive to a majority of its citizens at all levels, then high election turnouts is a key ingredient for such a goal. There are a number of ways for elections officials to encourage going to the polls on Election Day, but it begins with education at the grade school level.

But making voting mandatory takes away the right of a citizen to choose. Freedom means the right to express your views as you see fit. Voting is one of those options. So is non-voting. It’s all about your freedom of choice, isn’t it? To vote, or not to vote -- that is your decision. But living with the consequences is not.

*****

“I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.” W.C. Fields

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

A Day to Remember!

2011-11-09T17:53:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 11th, 2011 (11/11/11)
New Orleans, Louisiana

VETERANS HONORED AROUND THE WORLD!

Many soothsayers are excited about what may happen on 11/11/11. They consider the number 11 to be a Master Number. According to those believers, on this special day, you can use mind power to actualize what you want in your life. For them, it is a day to look forward. But there are those, like yours truly, who acknowledge that this is a special day, but for a totally different reason. For us, November 11 is a day to look back, to remember -- the special day to honor the millions of veterans who served and fought throughout this century to protect our right to be free.
November 11th is Veterans Day. Few Americans know the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day, which is celebrated in May.

Veterans Day honors all those who served in any military capacity. Memorial Day commemorates those who gave their lives in service to America. And there are countries worldwide that have adopted this day to remember and honor those who served in the many wars of the 20th century. Services and ceremonies will take place on Friday in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, France, Belgium, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, just to name a few.

For many Americans, Veterans Day is just another holiday to get off work. There is quite a contrast to this attitude in Great Britain. The military celebration there is called Remembrance Day, and it is held on the Sunday closest to November 11. There are church services throughout the country, and there are parades of ex servicemen and women in towns and villages from north to south. In both world wars, London was under heavy attack from the Germans with nightly air raids, and the Brits were much more personally touched than we were. I witnessed the emotion of this special day on a trip to London a few years back.

I had landed at Gatwick Airport on Remembrance Day, and took a cab from Victoria Station to my hotel, dropped off my bags, and had the driver take me to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Designed by Christopher Wren, with its great dome that stood defiant to the blitz of German planes night after night, this has always been one of my favorite churches. Princess Diana was married here, and this famous cathedral has witnessed the burials of so many who impacted history, from Lord Nelson to Winston Churchill.

It seems as if everyone in the city wears a poppy to commemorate the huge British losses during World War I. More than 59,000 British soldiers are buried among the poppies in Flanders Fields in Belgium. Every school child learns of Major John McCrae, a Canadian doctor who tended to the dying on the battlefield and wrote the memorable war poem “In Flanders Fields.”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Being able to be a part of the service at St. Paul’s is a special honor for anyone in the city. The Lord Mayor of London is always in attendance, along with numerous other public officials. Following a traditional ceremony full of pomp and circumstance, a parade winds through the business district, with most of those who attend the service joining in. A large contingent of World War I veterans make their way through the streets of London. It’s a moving sight to see.
When I arrived at St. Paul’s for the 10:00 A.M. service, the church was already full. People milled around outside the church, hoping to find a place to sit. An elderly female usher pointed at me and told me it would be very difficult to find a seat. I was dressed in a British-cut suit and needed a haircut, so perhaps she mistook me for a Londoner. She asked if by chance I was a member of the St. Paul’s Society.

The society has a building fund to maintain the church. A few years before, I had made a ten-pound donation (about sixteen dollars) to join the society. When I acknowledged that I was a member, she checked her membership book to confirm my donation, then led me down the center aisle to the front pews and sat me right behind the Lord Mayor. That was certainly one of the most farsighted donations I ever made.

On this special Friday, I will join what I hope to be a large group of fellow veterans and their families in my hometown of Baton Rouge at a special ceremony to be held at Louisiana’s Old State Capitol. The ceremony is being sponsored by the USS Kidd Foundation, which supports a battleship that is permanently located there.
So on this Friday, November 11th, I won’t be concerned about any mystical meaning of 11/11/11. I’ll pin a poppy on my jacket, join the families at our special Veteran’s Day celebration, and give thanks to the many who served and died, so that I would have the freedom to write each week about whatever I wish. I hope in some small way, you, too, will remember.

*****

“But this Veterans Day, I believe we should do more than sing the praises of the bravery and patriotism that our veterans have embodied in the past. We should take this opportunity to re-evaluate how we are treating our veterans in the present.”
Nick Lampson

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the country. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Political Musical Chairs in Louisiana?

2011-11-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana

MAJOR POLITICAL SHAKEUP ON THE LOUISIANA HORIZON?

In my home state of Louisiana, voters are about to witness a high stakes political game of musical chairs on both the state and national level. This could lead to new faces in the top three Louisiana political offices. We just could be talking about U.S. Senator Bobby Jindal, Governor David Vitter, as well as new Washington lobbyist, Mary Landrieu. The political posturing for these future offices is already underway.

Louisiana’s current governor, Bobby Jindal, continues to stay coy about his plans, and insists he will finish his current four year term. But once a politician experiences the national limelight, the lure of “moving on up” by seeking a U.S. Senate seat or a cabinet position is hard to pass up. Jindal will be half way through his second term as governor when the 2014 election for the Senate seat, presently held by Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, comes up. And even though Jindal says he won’t run, many think he “protests a bit too much.” Just look at his recent campaign spending.

Jindal had a handful of no names running against him for governor, who spent virtually nothing in their campaign efforts. The Governor could well have received the same final vote total (64%), if he had not spent a penny. Yet he poured millions of dollars into his reelection effort. Jindal donated campaign funds in 193 separate legislative races, including 49 races where the candidate had no opposition. That’s $2,500 per candidate who was unopposed. Numerous robo calls, and door to door solicitations by Jindal campaign staffers were the norm throughout the state.

So why all the effort for an election where the incumbent was a cinch? Jindal has raised over $10 million for his reelection efforts. But under federal campaign laws, he cannot spend any of these funds in a campaign for a federal office. He has cleverly (and legally) used his state funds to build up major IOUs for his future political endeavors. If this includes a U.S. Senate race, so be it. The state money is legally used to lay a major foundation for what could well be a future federal race.

There has been talk of Jindal angling for a cabinet position in a new Republican administration, or even a Vice Presidential slot. But his ill advised endorsement of Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose presidential campaign seems to flounder more as each week goes by, has limited Jindal’s future choices. His options would seem to be either head back to the private sector, or go for the U.S. Senate seat.

What about the current incumbent, Mary Landrieu? She is serving her fourth term. But if she is making plans for a reelection effort, any close political observer would hardly know it. Her current campaign disclosure statement shows a little over $800,000 on hand for a 2014 race. That’s weekend walking around money for the Jindal campaign. She rarely comes home to Louisiana. And her actions in Washington are troubling to a number of Louisiana democrats.

Landrieu had the chance recently to hand pick a new 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judge. This was the first opportunity to make such a choice, since the present opening was the first with a sitting democratic president in office. Obama, as with past presidents from both parties, adheres to the wishes of the home state senator from the same party. One can imagine the number of democratic state and federal judges salivating over the opportunity for such an appointment. But Landrieu turned her back on a fellow democratic appointee, and adhered to a campaign supporter of Republican Senator David Vitter.

An obscure assistant prosecutor, Stephen Higginson, who had given Vitter multiple campaign contributions, was Vitter’s pick. Higginson might show up for work as a judge, but he had rarely bothered to vote in local and state elections. Since 2007, Higginson passed on voting numerous times, including in a number of judicial elections. And even though Higginson is not even a democrat, Landrieu apparently decided it was to her advantage, perhaps as a future Washington lobbyist, just to go along with Vitter.

I was in Washington a few weeks ago, and the consensus from a number of capitol political observers is that Landrieu isn’t looking much like a candidate for 2014. With Louisiana becoming a solid red state, and her chances for reelection questionable, Landrieu seems more focused on firming up her Washington relationships in both parties to set the stage to pass on reelection, and do what retired members of congress generally do -- stay in Washington and build a lucrative lobbying career.

This brings us to the final member of the triumvirate. Current Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter seems eager to come back home. He spent enormous resources in the recent gubernatorial election in support of two statewide losers. But both candidates were running against incumbents and were underdogs to begin with. Vitter’s effort tightened up the margins of victory, and allowed him to crisscross the state talking about others, and not be on the defensive as he has been in the past few years. He has raised money for a number of legislative candidates, and like Jindal, seems to be building up political statewide IOUs for the future.

Is it the Governor’s mansion for Vitter in 2015? The Senator enjoyed the political give and take when he was in the state house of representatives. But Washington is more disjointed, and Vitter’s current aggressive confrontations generally take place through press releases. In Baton Rouge, he can relish the infighting and be much more politically relevant again. So even though he has five years left on his current term, look for him to be back in Louisiana often in the months to come, submitting to the allure that enticed Huey Long, Edwin Edwards, Dave Treen, Buddy Roemer and Bobby Jindal, to come back home from Washington to the Governor’s mansion.
And then there is present Lt. Governor (and heir apparent if Jindal leaves office for Washington) Jay Dardenne. How does he respond to a Vitter candidacy? Remember that Vitter pummeled Dardenne during the recent Lt. Governor campaign. Dardenne had the audacity to consider running against Vitter in 2010, and Vitter neither forgets nor forgives. These guys could, along with popular state treasurer John Kennedy, create a real barnburner in a 2015 gubernatorial election. And if Dardenne is not successful in being elected governor? Well, there would be a special election for U.S. Senator just a short time later. Senator Dardenne? Governor Dardenne? There’s a nice ring to both.

So don’t despair, you enthusiastic Louisiana political devotees. Yes, 2011 was, with a few exceptions, a rather dull political year. But we’re just a few years away from what well could be one of the nastiest, most vicious, no holds barred political shootouts in many a year. I can hardly wait.

*****

“Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason.” ~José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, translated from Portuguese
Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the country. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com

Major U.S. Health Problems

2011-10-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

THE COST OF BEING UNHEALTHY!

Americans continue to become less healthy and less productive, mainly because of lifestyle. That’s the conclusion of a new Gallup study released this week. More than 30% of American workers are overweight and have one or more chronic health problems. And the economic cost is staggering. The American economy now suffers annual lost productivity costs of more than $153 billion. In addition, the Gallup survey says that U.S. workers with weight and health issues miss more than 450 million days of work each year. So is there a national outcry? Not really.

With such staggering and detrimental figures continuing to grow, one would think that this current campaign season would offer ample opportunities for a robust debate for encouraging a healthier work force that would lead to a healthier economy. My home state of Louisiana is in the final days of a statewide election. Health issues haven’t even scratched in the local rhetoric. Nor have health related economic concerns been mentioned in the current presidential debates.

Republican presidential candidates flocked to Sin City this week, for another debate at the lush Venetian Hotel. Las Vegas was the site for the Western Republican Leadership Conference, and all presidential aspirants were in attendance with the exception of former Utah Governor John Huntsman. Finding a fix to make workers healthier would seem to be a good step towards greater American productivity, and a way to strengthen the current lagging economy. But there was nary a mention of the issue by any Republican presidential wanna be.

Not only is the health of American workers a major drag on the economy, there is a direct correlation to the increase costs of Medicare. Yes, we are living longer. In the past, someone obese just didn’t live as long. But new technologies and drugs allow even the less healthy to live a much longer life. Yet the medical costs of those more obese is 42% greater than for the average Medicare recipient because of their greater susceptibility to a number of life threatening diseases, including cancer, dementia, diabetes and heart disease. As columnist David Stipp recently wrote: “From the economist’s point of view, tens of millions of pot-bellied boomers entering their Medicare years is not a pretty sight. If our society is serious about trimming future budget deficits, we’ll first have to trim our swelling waistlines.”

But don’t look to Hollywood for good and healthy role models. About the last thing one would expect from Stage 4 throat cancer survivor Michael Douglas is to see him smoking. But he was spotted during a recent family vacation on a yacht off the coast of Italy -- that’s right -- lighting up! Remember a few years back when his wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, was photographed smoking when she was pregnant with one of their kids?

It appears that the U.S is on a direct path to being a country that is inactive, overweight, over-stimulated, and sallow-skinned. The dramatic increase in the number of obese Americans is, or should be, alarming. A new study just out by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports that Colorado has the lowest obesity percentage at 19.8 %. But get this -- just 16 years ago, with this same percentage, Colorado would have been the most obese state in America! In my home state of Louisiana, one third of the population is now obese, and the numbers continue to grow.

New studies have found that the old adage of eating in moderation and exercising more has proven to be a bust when it comes to curbing weight gain. A new Harvard study, that followed healthcare professionals for 20 years, zeroed in on the dangers of what you eat. One of the studies’ authors, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, warned: “The notion that it’s O.K. to eat everything in moderation is just an excuse to eat whatever you want.”

What’s the bad stuff? Dr. Mozaffarian lists the obvious culprits. At the top of the list? French fries. According to the study, French fries, alone, on any regular basis, led to an average weight gain of 3.4 pounds in each four year period. Also on the pound laden list were potato chips (1.7 pounds), red meats and processed meats (.95 pounds) all forms of potatoes (.57 pounds), sugar-sweetened drinks (1 pound) fried foods (.32 pounds), refined grains (.39 pounds), sweets and desserts (.41 pounds), and butter (.3 pounds).

Yogurt and nuts lead the top weight loss list, and the study reinforced the age old adage of eating fruits, vegetables and whole grains. My basic rule is stay away from anything white -- white rice, white bread, sugar, etc.

Of course, to increase your odds of a longer, healthier life, you can take the whole food choice option scenario to an extreme. Former President Bill Clinton was on the David Letterman show last week, and talked about how healthy he is, and how good he feels following a vegan diet. (For the interview, go to http://www.jimbrownusa.com.) Basically, Clinton sticks to all fruit and veggies, with no dairy, or meats from any living creature, which includes fish, chicken and meat. Talk about a commitment! But it works, if you can learn to live with tofu. Remember that Clinton has had two heart operations, so he has a lot more reason and motivation to stick to an extreme diet for a longer life. Nevertheless, for a man who has enjoyed many a Big Macs in his day, his discipline is admirable.

Recent proposals to deal with the growing obesity problem include a “fat tax” on foods with questionable nutritional value. Some have also suggested that those who are obese, yet make no effort to deal with their problem, should pay higher Medicare costs. But the naysayers to such ideas say government should have no such invasive role, and any taxes on unhealthy food products is an invasion of one’s personal freedom of choice.

The counter argument is that when you and I have to pay the medical costs of others who are irresponsible in their eating choices, are they not are infringing on our freedoms to be left alone and not have to foot their bill? The public cost of obesity continues to rise and is projected to hit $344 billion by 2018. And 60% of this cost, dear reader, is born by taxpayers. Make no mistake, that’s you and me.

Obesity in America is not a new problem, but its continuing increase makes it a more urgent problem by the day. A major disappointment is that here is no focus or leadership on this critical issue coming from either political party or any presidential candidate. And when the campaigns are over and gone, you and I will be the losers -- we’ll be stuck with the bill.

*****

“In this time of financial crisis, it’s now clear that Americans can improve the economy as well as their own health prospects by giving up a few pounds.”
Dr. Jonathon Lord

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

When Can the Government Kill Americans?

2011-10-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

CAN THE GOVERNMENT LEGALLY KILL YOU
WITHOUT A TRIAL?

By any measure, Anwar Awlaki was a bad apple. In speeches, and over the internet, he preached hate and violence against his country, the United States. He was a well know terrorist who, for years, has been accused of scheming to kill Americans. He wasn’t indicted or convicted in a court of law, but the justice department gave the green light to have him assassinated. The U.S. has a long history assassinating foreign nationals. But Awlaki was an American citizen. So was his killing legal? And if so, are we headed down a new slippery slope that goes way beyond the law enforcement practices of a free nation?

Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but was living in Yemen at the time of his killing. From press reports, we can assume this was the first instance when a U.S. president has given the OK for the killing of an American citizen abroad. The justice department supposedly prepared a secret memorandum justifying the assassination, and put Awlaki, on a “targeted list.” Another American citizen, Samir Khan, who was not on the list, was also killed. Collateral damage?
There is a whole host of constitutional issues that such an assassination raises. As an American citizen, was Awlaki entitled to the Fifth Amendment guarantee of not depriving an accused of life, “without due process of law?” And there are a number of federal statutes prohibiting the assassination of an American abroad. Any proper analysis goes to both sides of the argument.

Constitutional scholar Justin Raimondo writes that America has now given up the moral high ground. “In targeting and killing an American citizen, without going to the bother of indicting and convicting him in a court of law, we have stripped all Americans of what little protection they have left against the depredations of a tyrannical government. The authorities can read our emails, listen to our phone calls, and rifle through our garbage – all in the name of our endless “war on terrorism” – and now they can kill us, too, without even a nod to legality. Nor do they have to reveal the reasons for our summary execution: it’s all “secret,” because, after all, they have to protect their “sources and methods.” Their methods, though, are coming to resemble those of the Gestapo and the KGB, as opposed to the law enforcement practices of a free people.”

But his strong assertions are dismissed by well known foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead, writing in The American Interest. Mead says the whole complicated issue is reduced to one basic argument: “Al-Awlaki and his buds are at war with the people of the United States and that in war, people not only die: it is sometimes your duty to kill them. That the Al-Qaeda groupies are levying war against the United States without benefit of a government does not make them less legitimate targets for missiles, bullets and any other instruments of execution we may have lying around: the irresponsibility, the contempt for all legal norms, the chaotic and anarchic nature of the danger they pose and the sheer wickedness of waging private war make them even more legitimate targets with even fewer rights than combatants fighting under legal governments that observe the laws of war.”

I am inclined to side with Mead in this one particular case. The evidence, at least that slim amount available to the public, paints Awlaki as an embattled warrior at war with the United States on a foreign battlefield. But there are some questions that should be answered by the justice department.

First of all, what was the process used to justify this killing of an American citizen? Apparently, there was a secret memo by two justice department lawyers prepared to specifically justify the assassination of Awlaki. But what was the basis of the memo? What are the legal principles on which it was based? Did the president personally authorize the killing? Press reports point only to the two justice department lawyers. Is this enough to justify the killing of an American citizen? And what are the checks and balances?

If the justice department wants to put a wiretap on your home, they are supposed to obtain judicial approval. Should not a process at least equally protective be applied to the taking of the life of a U. S. citizen?

I was in the nation’s capitol last week participating in a seminar on ideas for the country’s future, and listened to Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia talk about the uniqueness of America. He said most people feel the bill of rights makes us special. But what really sets our democratic system apart, Scalia noted, are this three branches of government that are unique and that serve as a check and balance on any abuse of an individual’s rights and freedoms. So the question is, should the justice department have the power to make a unilateral decision to kill an American citizen? Should another branch, in this case the judiciary, have to sign off on such a life and death decision? Should not the President himself be involved?

Secondly, what precedent has the U.S. set by using drones to kill Americans on foreign soil? The attack didn’t take place in Iraq or Afghanistan where we are in continuing warfare. It was launched and exploded in Yemen, a friendly country. So where are lines drawn? If a Mexican citizen is a murderer wanted in Mexico, but hiding out in Arizona, is the Mexican military justified in sending a drone missile over the border and into U.S. territory to kill the accused? This is not all that farfetched. Just last December, a drone was launched by Mexican police, and ended up crashing in an El Paso neighborhood.

As The New York Times recently reported, “American defense analysts count more than 50 countries that have built or bought unmanned aerial vehicles, or U.A.V.’s, and the number is rising every month. Most are designed for surveillance, but as the United States has found, adding missiles or bombs is hardly a technical challenge.” Again, what is the process? We have set precedents that other countries will point to in the use of drones for what they will argue is in their own defense.

In the case of Awlaki, maybe there was justification to take him out. But when government takes a life, even in times of war, there should be rules of engagement. There should be a process under which any attack, particularly on an American citizen, should be spelled out. It was all too secret. Americans need and deserve a better explanation.

*****

“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.” Lord Action

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

College Athletes Being Short Changed!

2011-09-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 29th, 20011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

THERE ARE BIG BUCKS IN COLLEGE SPORTS!
BUT WHO’S GETTING THEM?

With TV income at an all time high, and with attendance breaking records nationwide, the college football season is off to the most successful start in its history. Football in my home state of Louisiana is the major subject of discussion as the LSU Tigers were ranked number one in the nation by the Associated Press poll for this week. But out of the euphoria and excitement, scandals seem to be breaking out at new schools weekly, with top players being accused of selling memorabilia, and taking cash from adoring fans for a little spending money. Is there something wrong with the present system?

There certainly is a rapidly growing pot of money throughout the college system. Fans pay through the nose to attend major college athletic events. As an LSU football season ticket holder, I personally pay $840 just for the right to buy my season tickets. The seat ticket, itself, is $54 per game. Similar surcharges are also applied to basketball tickets. So there are big bucks coming into major college programs all over the country. Top-level college sports are big business. LSU, for example, receives some $100 million in revenue each year from ticket sales, television rights, concessions, parking, and logo sales, which is about five times what the school receives from tuition.

In a recent edition of The New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks, who generally is on the mark with his observations, yearns for a return of what was portrayed as “the golden age of the amateur ideal.” According to Brooks, “The amateur ideal was a restraining code that emphasized fair play and honor. It held that those blessed with special gifts have a special responsibility to hew to a chivalric code. The idea was to make sport a part of the nation’s moral education.”

Well and good, as long as the athlete who is trying to pay for honor, and is also the sole producer of the huge college athletic income, can pay the bills. All this income comes from one source…the athletes. Yet these young men and women are paid only enough to cover the basic college expenses — room, food, tuition and books. No pocket money to go to the movies, no gas money, no extras whatsoever. So we have college athletic programs raking in millions on the backs of talented, disciplined, hardworking athletes, without sharing the revenue with those responsible for generating it. Such a system is ill-defined at best and hypocritical at worst. The universities, administrators, and coaches are reaping great value — even luxury — provided by their recruits, and the players, themselves, are given only a Spartan subsistence.

In this month’s Atlantic Magazine cover story, Taylor Branch writes superbly of “The Shame of College Sports.” He refers to the Knight Commission, an unsympathetic group set up by the NCAA to review possible compensation ideas for college athletes. “Scholarship athletes are already paid,” declared the skeptical Knight Commission members, “in the most meaningful way possible: with a free education.” Branch bemoans their attitude, writing that “this evasion by prominent educators severed my last reluctant, emotional tie with imposed amateurism. I found it worse than self-serving. It echoes masters who once claimed that heavenly salvation would outweigh earthly injustice to slaves. In the era when our college sports first arose, colonial powers were turning the whole world upside down to define their own interests as all-inclusive and benevolent. Just so, the NCAA calls it heinous exploitation to pay college athletes a fair portion of what they earn.”

Branch goes on to conclude that it should be a no brainer to go ahead and pay some stipend to college athletics. But like Hamlet, Brooks’ New York Times article struggles with imposing questions that trouble him. “How would you pay the athletes? Would the stars get millions while the rest get hardly nothing?” He then surmises that “The lingering vestiges of the amateur ideal are worth preserving.” So he is OK with everyone in the system profiting but the athletes. Me thinks Brooks doth protest too much. Most of the reasonable advocates of athlete compensation are talking about merely some additional spending money.

It was a little better than 40 years ago when I was lucky enough to attend the University of North Carolina on an athletic scholarship. I was given a housing and food allowance that exceeded my costs, as well as “laundry money” that allowed for weekend dates, gas, and a few frills above the basic scholarship costs. What I received then was equivalent to some $250 in pocket money if the same were allowed today.

But the NCAA tightened up the rules, and college athletes get less today than athletes like me received some years back. Most college athletes live off campus, and are given a monthly stipend for their room and board. I’m merely suggesting upping the ante and increasing this monthly amount by a couple of hundred bucks. Is that really going to corrupt the system? Or are we merely going to allow a little breathing room for an athlete to buy a few essentials and maybe fill up their car with gas. Would such a small compensation really “corrupt the world of amateur athletics” as Brooks concludes?

Supporters of the present system will argue that there is the opportunity for these athletes to move on to the pros and make big financial returns. But we all know that very few make it to that level. They may not even end up with the basic skills necessary to succeed in other workplaces, since only a minority of student-athletes in major sports even graduate. LSU football and basketball players generally graduate at a rate of less than 40%.

The system in place now allows our young college athletes to be exploited, and the exploitation is being committed by their adult mentors. What a deal — your body in exchange for a pittance of basic expenses. A little monthly expense money is not about to corrupt the system. Providing $300 a month to all athletes on full athletic scholarship seems reasonable. March Madness, as is always the case, turned out to be a financial bonanza — but not for the kids that many of us paid to watch. They deserve a better shake and a small piece of this huge financial pie.

*****

“Look I get it, there are tickets, jerseys, video games, souvenirs, and concessions being sold largely because of the players on the field. “Everyone,” so to speak, is making money except the players.
Sports writer Donnie Blackhawk

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. (F)

Looking Back and Lessons Learned!

2011-09-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 16th, 2011
Perdido Key, Florida

ARE WE BETTER OFF 10 YEARS LATER
POST 9/11?

The world around us has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. When the 9/11 attacks blindsided America, two billion people -- one third of the world’s population -- were glued to television and computer screens, watching the attacks unfold. There was no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube to update the tragic events of that historic day. Since then, the country has modified how it communicates. But is America’s world view any different? Are we better prepared for future terrorist attacks, and if so, at what price? How much are we willing to compromise our civil liberties for greater security? And who in our government is asking these critical questions or trying to develop reasonable answers to them?

Our country bounced from reacting to a few Saudis who brought down four planes with box cutters to an all out war in Iraq. Looking back and with the knowledge we have now, was it a disastrous mistake to invade Iraq. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, who brutalized and killed his own people. These atrocities are still happening in other Arab nations, and in a number of African countries as well. But is it America’s role to be the world’s peacekeeper at whatever cost?

Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” is about humanitarian intervention. Power strongly supported America’s armed involvement in both Bosnia and Rwanda, but she says that the U.S. made a mistake by invading Iraq. “My criterion for military intervention with a strong preference for multilateral intervention is an immediate threat of large-scale loss of life.” She concluded that such a threat was not met to justify the Iraq invasion. Power will be a guest on my radio show in the weeks to come.

Perhaps an assassination attempt of Hussein and his top leadership was warranted. But a 10 year war at a cost approaching a trillion dollars has left 4500 Americans dead, and 32,000 wounded. And over one million Iraqis, most of them civilians, have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business.

As Bill Keller wrote in The New York Times this week, “The world is well rid of Saddam Hussein. But knowing as we now do the exaggeration of Hussein’s threat, the cost in Iraqi and American lives, and the fact that none of this great splurge has brought us confidence in Iraq’s future or advanced the cause of freedom elsewhere, Operation Iraqi Freedom was a monumental failure.”

But we are Monday morning quarterbacking here, and it is easy to second guess in hindsight. But nonetheless, our military leadership too quickly embraced the rhetoric of Ahmed Chalabi, who was then the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and former Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. Chalabi was a real charlatan in convincing the U.S. that they had a winning strategy and should play ball with him. I had the opportunity to talk with Chalabi in Washington last year, and I quickly found him to be a charmer and quite convincing. But he led the U.S. down a primrose path that now seems to have no end in sight.

With so much false information floating out of the Bush administration, it is little wonder why there was such a strong support base for invading Iraq. If I had been in congress, I too would have mistakenly supported the war effort. But we now find ourselves having been sucked into supporting freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan while America is more at risk here at home from the slide of our own economics. Simply put, with no additional revenue, and some members of congress even hollering for tax cuts, how much more worldwide spending can the U.S. sustain?

Sociologist Charles Kurzman, who asks the question: “Why are there so few Muslim terrorists?” In his new book, “The Missing Martyrs,” Kurzman writes: “If terrorist methods are as widely available as automobiles, why are there so few Islamist terrorists? In light of the death and devastation that terrorists have wrought, the question may seem absurd. But if there are more than a billion Muslims in the world, many of whom supposedly hate the West and desire martyrdom, why don’t we see terrorist attacks everywhere, every day?” He concludes that Al Qaeda has failed to successfully recruit by any significant numbers. So how much more do we feel needs to be spent in America’s efforts to be free and safe?

Of course America should have a major world presence. Jefferson began the precedent when he sent Navy ships to attack the Barbary pirates back in 1802. The U.S. needs to be bold and aggressive in supporting and defending American interests abroad. But it also needs to be selective.

Afghanistan emits many of the same issues that need to be addressed in Iraq. And history tells us we could be engaging in a lost “nation building” cause, there as well. Many have tried to invade or “work their will” in Afghanistan, and all have failed. Failure drove away the Mongols, Alexander the Great, the British, and the Russians who lost 25,000 soldiers and saw the Soviet Union collapse. Considering the limited and undefined gains, can the U.S. afford to continue to wage such a fight?

Finally, how many tradeoffs are the American people willing to make when it comes to giving up basic freedoms? Government often overreacts in time of emergency by stripping away civil rights. Look at what Lincoln did by suspending habeas corpus at the outbreak of the civil war. This week’s USA TODAY/Gallup poll finds that fewer Americans are willing to trade their civil rights for more security. After 9/11, in 2002, 47% of the population was willing to let government violate “basic civil liberties” in an effort to fight terrorism. That number has now dropped to 25%. More Americans are realizing and accepting Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

On my radio show next weekend, I’ll be talking with Thom Shanker, a Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times, who has written a new best seller, “Counterstrike, The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.” He concludes that the Arab war effort, though prohibitively expensive, was worth the price. A twenty-first century war on a decentralized multinational network of terrorists could not be fought using conventional methods. It was imperative for the U.S. Military to develop new approaches and techniques. And it looks like that search for new approaches and techniques must continue for years.

So there is an ongoing learning process and the questions remain: How much cost in dollars and lives can Americans endure to fight seemingly fruitless wars? And what is the cost to liberty that we are we willing to sacrifice to fight terrorism? These are important questions that have yet to be answered!

*****

"The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both." -- Christopher Hitchens
Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

A Nation Still Struggling Ten Years Later!

2011-09-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 9th, 2001
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

OUR LIVES WERE CHANGED BY 9/11

I have watched through a window a world that has fallen.
W. H. Auden

This Sunday’s date, 9/11, turned into the frantic dialing of 911 ten years ago. . A surreal feeling of shock and helplessness enveloped all Americans as we watched that day’s events unfold. In hindsight, we should ask many questions. Is America a safer place today? Maybe. But we also have witnessed a fundamental shift in our culture, where liberty and freedom have been compromised so that we supposedly feel “more safe.”

Ten years ago on that horrific day, I was at home, when a family friend called, a little after 8:00 A.M. central time to tell me about the first plane’s crashing into the World Trade Center. Like millions of Americans, I turned on my television just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower.

I was home alone, so I immediately felt the need to call the people closest to me. I was able to reach my mother, my brother Jack, and two of my daughters. I told them all to turn on their TV sets. I reached my son on his cell phone as he was entering the LSU Lab School. But, what about my oldest daughter, Campbell? I knew she had flown back to Washington late the night before, from California, where she was doing a story on the retirement of the president’s plane, a former Air Force One. Perhaps she was still home. I called her apartment, but got no answer. Then the third plane hit the Pentagon in Washington. Thoughts raced through my head. Was there a fourth plane -- or more? Wasn’t the White House a likely target? Was my oldest daughter sitting in her NBC office in the White House?

She didn’t answer her cell phone. I called the White House switchboard, which is noted for being efficient. There was a brief recording saying to hold on for an operator, then the line went dead. For a moment I feared the worst: a plane crashing into the White House, my daughter inside. Then I heard Matt Lauer on the “Today Show” say, “Now let’s go to Campbell Brown for an update across the street from the White House.” Campbell told a national audience that the White House had been evacuated and that she was broadcasting from a nearby hotel. She gave hourly reports throughout the day and late into the evening.

Like millions of Americans, I stayed glued to the TV all day. That night, my wife and I kept a long-standing dinner date with friends at Chris’s steakhouse, close to our home in Baton Rouge. Halfway through dinner, around 9:00 o’clock, my cell phone rang. It was my son James. “Dad, I’m still watching everything on television,” he said. “I just need to do something. Do we have an American flag here at home?” I told him we had one stored in our “flag box,” where we keep banners for the various seasons, as well as holiday flags for Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. When we drove into our driveway that night, a large American flag was hanging from the front porch, waving in the wind.

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

It was still not possible to reach offices and homes in New York City by phone, but I was able to contact several friends on their cell phones. Many of them work in the Wall Street district, and we had often gathered at the top of the World Trade Center for lunch for insurance meetings. My friend, Attorney Kevin Salter was caught in the deluge just outside the World Trade Center, and had crawled for blocks without being able to see his hands in front of his face because of the smoke and soot. He will be a guest on my Sunday radio show this week.

The news was not good concerning my friend Neil Levin, who until recently was New York’s insurance commissioner. Several months earlier, he took a new job as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is the landlord for the World Trade Center complex. His office was on the 53rd floor of the North Tower, the first tower to be hit. Neil’s body was never found in the wreckage. A lengthy obituary, which paid tribute to his many accomplishments, appeared in the New York Times on September 22, 2001.

Ten years later, we have a lot of questions to ask, and a lot of consoling to do. How is it possible that there is such intense hatred for our country? Who is our enemy, and how do we do battle with them? Before 9/11, life was so normal and ordinary. Now we live under the so-called Patriot Act that has stripped all Americans of basic constitutional freedoms. We live with body scanners, “enhanced” pat-downs and “fusion” centers. For all of us, life will never be the same.

*****
Down here in my home state of Louisiana this week, we lost an outstanding civic leader, who was known as a crusader nationwide for his commitment to improving the basic quality of life for the working American family. Victor Bussie is a Louisiana legend who had as much, or even more, political influence in his home state than did most Governors in his lifetime. He lived the great American dream of success, but his focus was what he could do for the average Joe. And he had the respect and friendship of presidents going back to John F. Kennedy.

Vic Bussie began his public career as a fireman in Shreveport, Louisiana. He grew through the ranks to become head of the labor movement in Louisiana as president of the state AFL-CIO, a job he held for 41 years. He led the charge for major reforms in Louisiana, including a strong code of ethics, equal rights for women, a minimum wage, workplace safety requirements, and stronger civil rights, to name just a few.

He became a respected national figure serving on the Federal Reserve Board, and his counsel was sought by a cross section of public and private sector leaders throughout America. Vic Bussie, ever the gentleman, lived a full life of 91 years. He will be deeply missed.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Did You Get Away this Summer?

2011-08-31T17:23:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 1st, 2011
Dallas, Texas

WHAT HAPPENED TO LONG VACATIONS?

Does anyone take a real vacation anymore? In the good old days, school didn’t start again until the Monday after Labor Day. The last two weeks in August used to be a popular time for families to get away to the beach for a final summer fling. But not anymore. The American family vacation seems to be dying.

In days of old, I always joined in our family excursions at summer’s end. There was no electronic requiem involved. No cell phone rings, no BlackBerry buzzes, and no laptop beeps. It was Lake Michigan in my early years, Lake George, New York in my college days, and from my twenty’s on, it was annual summer vacations in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Back in the 60’s and 70s, there were no high rises on the Gulf Coast, and no water parks. Just a few local seafood restaurants and a lot of single story beach houses with long porches facing the Gulf. There was no local phone service back then, and you had to bring your own drinking water. We brought our sheets and towels from home, because the well water was full of iron and made the wash gray and stiff. No TV and no air conditioning.

And you know what? The whole family thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks we stayed. We talked to one another, went crabbing and fishing off the shoreline, read, took afternoon naps, and long evening walks looking for the new shells that washed up on the shore earlier that day. Maybe a trip into Pensacola once or twice for a movie. And when our two weeks were up, no one wanted to go home.

Expedia.com’s annual vacation survey found that only 14% of Americans go away for two weeks or more at one time. And now, school begins in the middle of August. Middle of August? Why? Aren’t air conditioning bills for schools much higher then? So what happened to the June 1st to August 1st summer schedule? No more school days were added. And kids have to cut their summer resort jobs short. Why the change?

Now, if you can get away to the beach for a few days at all, you cram into one of the high rises that line the Gulf Coast beaches for miles on end. Since you stay in an air conditioned condo, your body adapts, and it seems way too hot to go out to the beach. The kids head for the mall or the game room. Dad, and mom, if she works, carry their PEDs and cell phones wherever they go, and check into the office several times a day. Electronic devices and games surround the whole family.

But I have resolved to go back to the true vacation. As I start my trip, I look in the mirror and tell the face there that my name is Jim, and I’m a techno-addict. But on this journey, I’ve committed to unplug, and try to be more connected to myself rather than to my computer. No electronic communication tools this time. Just a few books (fiction -- nothing heavy), some comfortable hiking boots, fresh fruit from highway stands along the way, a few bottles of wine from home, and my 20 year old banjo that I swear I’m going to learn to play well some day.

My one major vice during my August get-a-way is to splurge each morning by eating a Krispy Kreme donut. Yes, I’m a health nut, but it’s hard to turn down a hot, fresh made donut. Now I’ve been a Krispy Kreme fan for years. Those just out of the oven flavors melt in your mouth. And let me tell you this. I know a lot about Krispy Kremes. Like the fact that an anonymous New Orleans Frenchman sold his secret yeast-raised doughnut recipe to Krispy Kreme's founder Vernon Rudolph and his uncle, Ishmael Armstrong, both of Paducah, Kentucky, back in 1933. (Folks in Paducah listen to my weekend radio show on WTHQ-750 AM) The first Krispy Kreme retail store was opened in July of 1937 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

And there are so many Krispy Kreme choices. Of course original glazed, then chocolate iced, custard filled, raspberry filled, lemon filled, maple glazed, sugar coated, cinnamon bun, cinnamon twist, powdered blueberry, glazed cream filled, strawberry filled, cake, powdered cake, glazed devil’s food, glazed blueberry, glazed sour cream, glazed cruller, chocolate iced cake, and cinnamon apple filled. Have I worn you out? Don’t tell me I don’t know about Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Rick Bragg once wrote that trying to explain how good Krispy Kremes are to someone who has never had one is like telling a celibate priest about young love. He knew what he was talking about.

Just getting away does not, in itself, guarantee relaxation. It takes several days just to unwind. And isn’t life too short not to appreciate every moment, and not to have the tune out time with family and friends? Maybe this longer special time has passed a lot of folks by. But I hope for me and my family, it never does.
******
“ Vacation: When you spend thousands of dollars to see what rain looks like in different parts of the world.”
--Robert Orben
Peace and Justice.
Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Gov. Rick Perry-All Hat and No Cattle?

2011-08-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 23nd, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

RUNNING FOR THE WHITE HOUSE-
IS IT “GOVERNOR IN CHIEF?”

How much more bleak can the mood of the country get? Several new polls out this week show that only 15% of likely voters in next year’s presidential election say the U.S. is heading in the right direction. According to the Rasmussen Reports national survey, that’s down 10 points from a month ago, and 20 points from just a year ago. You would assume Washington would be abuzz with a consuming congress and White House trying to find some way out of a hole that continues to deepen each month.

Yet the President seems a bit less than concerned, spending 10 days on Martha’s Vineyard with the rich and famous. Oh, he’s supposedly on a “working vacation,” and it may be “perception,” but it looks bad. In politics, perception quickly becomes reality. Congress, too, is on a break. With Democrats and Republicans in a stalemate, the urgency for a solution to the economic stagnation continues to grow as mindful action on the country’s financial health is nowhere to be found.

The Wall Street Journal, certainly a strong Republican mouthpiece, commented that Republicans are “desperate” for a candidate to emerge with practical economic solutions, and, according to the Journal’s editorial page, if “the current field isn’t up to that, perhaps someone still off the field will step in and run.” As E.J. Dionne wrote in a Washington Post column last week, “having the Journal’s editorial page criticize the Republican presidential crop is like having Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, fret over the quality of cardinals who want to be the next pope.”

Enter Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the new flavor of the month, and our neighbor next to my home state of Louisiana. Perry is the perfect fit for the Texas cowboy gunslinger who “shoots first” and delves into the details later. And give the guy credit. He says he shot a coyote that was attacking his dog as he was out for a morning jog. No photos of the coyote though, and some folks say it was really a rat. By the way, where do you carry you six gun when you are in jogging shorts?

Perry brags, with some justification, that 37% of all jobs created in the U.S. during the past 2 ½ years were created in Texas. But he’s fuzzy on the details of just what policies he had in place to create these new jobs.

A major source of the new jobs was the increase in the price of oil. Higher prices mean more jobs in production and distribution. Oil prices are five times higher today than when Perry first took office. But government has no say in the economics of this job source. A major increase in military spending throughout numerous military installations in Texas is another source of the new jobs that Perry claims for himself. From Lyndon Johnson to George Bush and Dick Cheney (remember Halliburton?), Texas has been treated quite well out of Washington, re military spending.

And how about drug money? Middle and upper class Mexicans, reports the New York Magazine, are flooding into Texas, bringing their savings and businesses with them. According to the DEA, the magazine reports, “drug traffickers are cleaning up their proceeds by buying businesses in South Texas. They also spend on guns, warehouses, security guards, luxury cars and houses. In San Antonio, a high-dollar drug trafficker can buy a $2 million or $3 million place and exist for a long time.” Lots of jobs coming to Texas this way?

Low taxes? Texas does not have a state income tax. But at what price? Texas has a less than a mediocre school system, and the lowest percentage of citizens who have health insurance in the nation. Many of the new jobs are for unskilled labor, and often, these jobs are merely diverted from another state. So this does little for higher national job growth. Texas is presently a little below the national average in unemployment, but Hispanic unemployment at 9.4% in Texas, is higher than the U.S figure of 9.2%. Texas, in fact, ties Mississippi for having the highest percentage of its population receiving minimum wages.

When it comes to injustice in the judicial system, don’t count on Gov. Rick to be a champion for the wrongly convicted. Texas is a hotbed for innocent citizens being falsely accused and convicted under Perry’s reign. One of the worst cases was that of Cameron Todd Willingham convicted of burning up his family. Following his conviction, mounting evidence surfaced that led any number of investigators to conclude that Willingham was in fact, innocent.

The Governor was unmoved and refused to halt his execution. Later, the Texas Forensic Science Commission hired investigators to review the case, who determined that "a finding of arson could not be sustained.” When the Commission agreed to reopen the Willingham case after the execution, Perry conveniently removed the Chairman and two other members to stop any further state investigation. The morbid joke around those closely following the case was that “it took nerve to execute an innocent man.”

Perry has spent his first week of his new campaign saying that “it’s time to get America back to work again. Great governor! But tell us how? What’s your plan? We are hoping that you are not all hat with no cattle.

So far, Perry seems to be running for Governor in Chief, not Commander in Chief. The nation is presently fighting three wars. Libya has drawn out to six months when it was supposed to be just weeks. There is no end in sight for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, although our primary foes there, Hussein and Bin Laden, are both long dead. Iran continues on a path of acquiring nuclear weapons, but not one word on these dangerous and volatile national defense issues.

The bottom line is this. The Governor of Texas is entitled to a little bit of time to lay out his plans for revitalizing the country. But whether he likes it or not, he will spend a great deal of time on the campaign trail answering for what he did, and what he failed to do as the state’s chief executive. And ole’ Ranger Rick has a lot of explaining to do.

*****
Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés the first prize. ~Saul Bellow

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Tearing Down the Berlin Wall!

2011-08-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 14th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

THE BERLIN WALL STOPPED ME COLD
FIFTY YEARS AGO!

Fifty years ago his weekend, the Berlin Wall was erected by the puppet soviet state of East Germany. Unless you are over sixty five or are a history buff, you may not understand the tensions that existed then that had many observers feel we could be on the brink of war with the Soviet Union. Just a year later, that concern almost became a reality as then President John Kennedy faced down Russians Premier Nakita Khrushchev over the Cuban missile crisis.

East German and Russian soldiers scurried throughout the night on Autos 14th and 15th of 1961 to erect a 25 mile long barbed wire fence, forcing some 2000 East Germans to flee their homes. In the months that followed, the “wire wall” became concrete with guards aloof that sot anyone trying to climb the wall and make their way into West Berlin. For the next 26 years, German citizens were not allowed to cross the wall. Americans could enter into East Berlin at ‘Checkpoint Charlie,” if you could establish some business purpose for crossing the border.

At the time, I was a politically naïve graduate student at Cambridge University in England. I had the privilege of being a member of the US Track Team that had run track meets throughout Europe. And strangely enough, my track career led to the first significant political crisis I ever faced. After competing for a month, we had a two-week break in the schedule, and the American team was going to vacation in various parts of Europe, then regroup in Bremerhaven, Germany, for our next official competition.

A meet promoter approached me to compete at a majhor track meet in East Berlin during the break. The promoter assured me that I would receive full expenses and appropriate prizes. There was no professional track in the 1960s, but the better runners could negotiate for their prize – a clock radio, a T.V. set, maybe a refrigerator, all of which could be cashed in after the meet. I had never been to East Germany, and I figured if the promoter was willing to cover the expenses of a struggling student runner, why not go for it.

I would have to cross the Berlin Wall and compete at the Olympic stadium in East Berlin. Now at this time, America did not recognize East Germany as a legitimate country. It was considered a Russian puppet state, and the U.S. maintained no diplomatic relations with them. Once you crossed to the other side of the wall, you were on your own.

On the afternoon of the track meet, I crossed the border from West Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie, along with the agent who had arranged for me to run in the meet. (He also served as my interpreter.) It was an evening meet, and I was scheduled to compete in the high hurdles against an East German who was world ranked. The East Germans had built up the competition as a grudge match between our two countries and made it a point of honor for their national pride.

Our team had been competing several times a week, but the break had given me a lengthy rest from the grind of competition. I felt extra spring in my legs and anticipated a good run and victory over the East German.

The 100-meter dash was about to begin when my agent brought over an American who wanted to talk to me. He did not fully identify himself, but he said he was with the American Embassy in West Germany. He told me in strong terms that it would be completely unacceptable for me to run the high-hurdles race that was about to start. As a member of the American team, he argued, I was a representative of my government. Since America did not recognize East Germany, I would be giving tacit recognition to a country that the United States felt was illegitimate. He implied that by competing I could start an international incident; if I had any patriotism, I would get my gear and head back across the border to West Berlin immediately.

What a dilemma for a twenty-one-year-old who was simply enjoying the opportunity to travel and had no real understanding of the international consequences supposedly at stake. I wanted to run, but I certainly was not going to go against the wishes of my country. So I gathered my warm-ups and had the interpreter tell the meet promoter that I was not going to run.

As the announcement was being made that I would not compete, I headed for the locker rooms, which were located at the other end of the stadium, diagonally across the infield. Thousands of people in the stadium stood up and whistled loudly, which was their way of booing. I learned later that the announcer had told the crowd the American was afraid to compete against the East German. I was angry and disappointed, but I had enough common sense to change my clothes and get back across the border.

Many years later, I would look back on this controversy as my first political act. I guess the possibility of starting an international incident certainly qualifies as a baptism in politics.

The following year, President Kennedy stood at the foot of the Berlin Wall, and told a crowd of 125,000 that “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich ein Berliner.’” But the wall stayed in place for another 25 years. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan spoke in West Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate and admonished; “Mr. Gorbachev take down that wall.” The wall finally fell three years later.

Fifty years have gone by, and we no longer fear one super power. There are brush fires worldwide that have overwhelmed America’s resources. Stephen Glain, a guest on my radio show this weekend, and author of the best seller, State vs Defense” articulately argues that America is in a whole new era of defining America’s empire in the years to come. Let’s hope we will continue to argue about destroying walls and not destroying countries in the future.

*****

“Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him.” ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Criminal Cases that Fell Apart!

2011-07-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

July 7th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

A RUSH TO JUDGEMENT IN THE ANTHONY AND STRAUSS-KAHN CASES?

The press told us that both high profile cases were slam dunks for the prosecutors. In the Casey Anthony case, we heard about a hard-partying single mother who fails to report her toddler missing for a month, then lied to police about a kidnapping by a non-existent nanny. In the Strauss-Kahn criminal investigation, a high rolling, womanizing French financier took advantage of an immigrant maid from Africa in the New York hotel room where he was staying, then immediately tried to flee the country. There was no doubt in the press and by the prosecutors. Both were guilty. Or so we were told.

From the beginning, both cases were played out in a soap opera bubble that was surrounded in a circus like atmosphere. Cable TV and talk radio served up a daily dose of inflamed rhetoric that convicted both of the accused in the media from day one. Prosecutors quickly moved in for the apparent kill, opposing bond and seeing to it that both Anthony and Strauss-Kahn were jailed from day one. Anthony sat in jail for the past three years. Strauss-Kahn was arrested and whisked off to Riker’s Island where he was jailed until the prosecutor’s case began falling apart.

Rarely do criminal cases in the U.S., even on a local level, command much attention. The justice system in our country stays “off our radar,” and runs largely in the background of the country’s conscience. The public pays the system little attention as long as it does not come off its wheels. A fellow attorney, Erick Erickson, put it this way: “But then something like these cases happen, it is a good reminder that neither judges nor juries nor government prosecutors are perfect and flawless. We live in a world were when the court says something is blue, we are expected to bow to the judge and proclaim the something blue. But judges and people make mistakes.”

In the Anthony case, the court of public opinion and the cable talking heads rendered their opinion way before the trial. Casey was guilty of murdering her child. And there was good reason for many to hold this opinion. How could a mother wait for months before reporting her child missing? Her lifestyle raised suspicions. She was portrayed, with good reason, as both a liar and a bad mother. But did that make her a murderer?

Popular opinion said, “yes.” But the case was decided by jurors who must adhere to a higher standard than the average citizen. That higher standard is finding the accused “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Of course jurors, just like the rest of us, had to have held deeply troubling concerns. But it’s the responsibility of jurors to listen to the evidence and not listen to the media. It’s the duty of the jury to draw conclusions based only on what is presented at a trial. The press and the public held only presuppositions. The jury can only work with the facts presented in court.

It has become more difficult for a prosecutor to win his case with only circumstantial evidence. After a steady diet of television shows like “Law and Order,” or “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” the public expects the same clear-cut forensic evidence seen on fictional TV shows. But Forensic evidence was particularly in short supply in the Anthony case. When was she killed, how was she killed, where was she killed? The public is looking for, and expecting, a forensic “smoking gun,” and none was produced. So no hard proof, no smoking gun, no direct testimony, no convincing motive -- only circumstantial evidence. There was just not enough for an informed jury to overcome “reasonable doubt.”

One thing both sides can agree on was that all parties to the trial were guilty of hogging up endless hours of cable TV news coverage. As the Anthony verdict came in, CNN’s Nancy Grace shouted, “The Devil is dancing.” I thought Grace was going to explode right in front of us. A case could be made that Grace, despite her nightly tirades against the “Tot Mom,” played a significant role in how Anthony was found not guilty. Before Grace spent years campaigning relentlessly for Tot Mom’s conviction on her nightly cable show, Anthony was only able to afford the legal representation that the state of Florida would give her.

Brian Dickerson, who writes for the Detroit free Press summed up the alternatives well: “You do not escape a legal abyss as deep as the one Casey Anthony had dug for herself without skilled legal representation, and in the United States such representation is available to only two kinds of criminal defendants — those who can afford to hire the full-time services of a good lawyer themselves, and those whose cases are so celebrated that good lawyers are willing to work on them for little or no fee, in the confidence that their labors will ultimately be compensated in some other way.” So thanks to the notoriety created by Nancy Grace, Casey was able to attract a top flight legal team all gratis.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the villain we all love to hate. A wealthy, womanizing, French politician who was (and still may be) the socialist candidate for French Prime Minister. Many of us still eat only “freedom fries,” and you know how those French guys are when it comes to women. The poor African maid was quite believable, and Strauss-Kahn had to be pulled off an Air France plane to keep him from fleeing. He was cuffed in front of the TV cameras and immediately sent to jail. No bail, no chance to explain his side of the story. It was the Queen in Alice in Wonderland all over again saying: “Sentence first - verdict afterwords.”

Then the accuser’s story began unraveling. The maid had cleaned several more rooms before reporting the alleged rape. She lied about an earlier gang rape, about having a child, falsified child support claims, and told her boyfriend in her native tongue that there was big money to be made from Strauss-Kahn. His “fleeing” from the hotel was followed by a quiet lunch with his daughter, and then a long scheduled flight back to his home in France. Some way to flee.

Neither one of these two accused should be placed on a victimized pedestal. Both of them are pretty sleazy characters. However, a cornerstone of American justice is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. But we all know that’s often not the case. Many potential jurors will tell you that “most of the accused are guilty, or why else would the police arrest them?”

But even the sleazy have basic constitutional rights. The arrest is assumed to be based on “probable cause,” and a conviction is supposed to be based on “beyond a reasonable doubt.” A conviction should not be based on media frenzy or allegations that do not hold up under scrutiny. That’s the way the system is presumed to work. Sometimes, justice does not prevail. But that’s the system, and that’s all we’ve got.

*****

“In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.” Lenny Bruce
Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Real Meaning of Independence Day!

2011-06-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

WHAT’S HAPPENED TO FREEDOM ON THIS 4TH OF JULY?

Independence Day to most Americans means a three day weekend with gatherings of family and friends, barbecues, parties, games, food, parades, baseball games and fireworks. Traditionally, most of us know that July 4th is the recognition and celebration of our country’s independence from an oppressive government. But this mid-summer special day is really only about one thing. Freedom.

Most Americans agree on the importance of safeguarding basic freedoms protected by the constitution. But here’s where it gets a little murky. Do we have to give up certain of these freedoms to be safe and secure? The current and past presidents, one Democrat and one Republican, think that there are trade-offs, and that individual freedoms have to be compromised for the sake of security. In order to combat crime and terrorism, they say, it is necessary for the government to take away certain freedoms and civil rights. In the realities of the 21st Century, is our constitution “out of date?” Both parties in Washington would have you believe so.

In the opinion of a majority of both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, freedom has to make way for safety concerns. That disturbing view manifested itself in the recent passage of the so-called Patriot Act. In the name of fighting terrorism, members of congress drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights.

Here is what members of congress did in their Patriot Act vote. They authorized and empowered federal agents on their own, in violation of the Constitution, and without you knowing it, to obtain records about you from your accountant, bank, boat dealer, bodega, book store, car dealer, casino, computer server, credit union, dentist, HMO, hospital, hotel manager, insurance company, jewelry store, lawyer, library, pawn broker, pharmacist, physician, postman, real estate agent, supermarket, tax collectors, telephone company, travel agency, and trust company, and use the evidence thus obtained in any criminal prosecution against you.

Congress, both Republicans and Democrats alike, at the behest of President Obama, tightly embraced the less-freedom-equals-more-security false prophecy. So here’s the tragic irony. On this special 4th of July weekend, when we celebrate our independence and our right to be free, we are being told by our leaders in Washington that, yes, America fought a war with the British, and over the past 230 years continued to fight wars to protect our freedom from foreign governments. But nevertheless, now, we have no choice but to let our own government compromise these same freedoms that we have sacrificed so much to maintain and protect.

Constitutional scholar Judge Andrew Napolitano hit the nail on the head when he said on Fox News recently: “President Bush argued frequently and forcefully that his first job was to keep us safe. He was wrong. The Constitution tells us that his sole job is to enforce the Constitution: and that means keeping us free. Free from tyrants who sought and claimed power from thin air: free from prince-like federal agents who could behave without constitutional or legal restraint: free to live with a government that obeyed its own laws. Any president who keeps us safe but unfree is rejecting his oath to the American people.”

Lenin’s words concerning freedom would apparently find solace with a majority of members of Congress. “It is true that liberty is precious, so precious that it must be carefully rationed.” And that’s the rub. Or politicians want to control our basic liberties in the name of security. The more security the bureaucrats in Washington try to impose, the more freedoms are taken away. You see, freedom and security are not the same. The most secure citizens in American are in jail. That’s why it’s called “maximum security.”

. When we hear all this talk of our members of congress fighting to protect American freedoms, a paraphrase of George Carlin’s observations comes to mind. “Crime fighters fight crime, fire fighters fight fire, so what do our supposed government freedom fighters fight?”

When I was studying at the University of North Carolina back in the early 1960s, poet Robert Frost came to speak. He talked a good bit about individual freedoms and the challenges of speaking up to protect constitutional freedoms. “Don’t leave it to the politicians,” he said. “Freedom is just too important. He went on to say that protecting freedom from within is hard work. “You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.”

So is there some nefarious plot by congress and the president to undermine basic constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of the American people? No. But as is often the case, we allow a fictitious notion to grow that the government is only looking out for our own good. C.S Lewis, in his essays on theology entitled God in the Dock, addresses the issue head on:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the food of its victims’ may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity many at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Your congressman will no doubt protest that he or she is seeking the worthy goal of keeping you safe. The reply of the true patriot is, “Yes, but at what cost?” Is the benefit of some perceived (but often unproven) measure of safety worth, in this constitutional tug of war, the sacrifice of the basic liberties that American citizens have enjoyed for the past two centuries? Thomas Jefferson would argue no. Principals matter. The Bill of Rights matter. The Constitution matters. The best way to keep us safe is to keep us free. That’s the message on this Independence Day. And for every other day of the year.

*****

“Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security.” Benjamin Franklin

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Republicans Let the Good Times Roll in New Orleans!

2011-06-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 23rd, 201
New Orleans, Louisiana

THE GOP DOG AND PONY SHOW
COMES TO NEW ORLEANS!

The circus comes to town quite often in New Orleans. It’s always Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, frolicking in the French Quarter, and weekly festivals where zany antics take place, few restrictions apply, and the good times continue to roll. So it was no surprise that republicans gathered in New Orleans last week to assess their chances in 2012. Sizing up the field of presidential wannabes that showed up, there were no real standouts. National polls indicate that half the republican voters nationally are still hoping a better candidate emerges. But don’t bet on it.

It was tea party tough talk as the eight announced candidates engaged in one-upsmanship in seeing who could be the bigger critic of the President, and who could offer the biggest slice of rhetorical red meat to the party’s base. Congressman Ron Paul told the crowd it was time to shut down any foreign military involvement unless the U.S. was directly threatened. When pizza king Herman Cain called for a continuing policy of support for Israel, the Paul crowd booed loudly. Cain also clarified an important issue in the coming campaign. He prefers deep dish pizza over thin crust.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota charmed the crowd with a big smile and tough talk. With Bachmann dressed in white from head to toe, one observer dubbed the candidates Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I interviewed Bachmann for my weekly radio show prior to her speech, and it’s easy to see why her popularity is growing. She grasps your hand, and looks you straight in the eye, ala Bill Clinton. She reminds you that she not only has 5 children, but 23 foster children. Hey, even I’m impressed.

Bachmann warmed up the strong Louisiana crowd by telling them: “You survived Katrina! You survived President Obama’s oil moratorium! There is nothing you can’t survive!” She is the warmest and most accessible candidate of the lot, followed closely by former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum. And Bachmann is no slouch on details of what she believes. No comparing her to another potential female candidate (You betcha!). Bachmann did get “glittered” by a gay activist, but she just kept smiling and waving to the adoring crowd.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich left most of those in attendance (and yours truly) cold when he went over the top saying that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are a "secular-socialist machine" that "represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union." He gave the GOP loyalists an off the wall neocon lecture that seemed out of touch with present day foreign policy realities. Newt has become a political dinosaur whose days in the presidential ring, by his own missteps, are numbered.

Then to the podium came bigger than life Texas Governor, Rick Perry. With the swagger, the twist of the head, and the puzzling smile, was it Dubya reincarnated? As Comedian Andy Borowitz, a regular guest on my talk show, suggested, Perry’s campaign slogan could be: “What Harm Could a Governor from Texas Do?” Perry once suggested that Texas ought to secede from the union. Andy suggests Perry should propose that “The United States should secede from Planet Earth and pray for rapture.” The national press, however, seems to be taking the Texas Governor much more seriously. With the South having become completely red, and with no present southern candidate having emerged so far, a number of commentators look to Perry to fill the vacant role of a strong, conservative, tea party- leaning candidate to oppose the present front runner, Mitt Romney.

The most substantive, sensible speech of the convention received a polite but lukewarm response. It came from former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer, who has been working for months to get more media attention, with limited success. Roemer has been crisscrossing early primary states in his campaign bus selling his message that what’s wrong with America is that it’s been largely sold to powerful corporate interests. Roemer puts it this way:

“I know when we’re being taken advantage of, and I know our own corporate giants have never been more profitable than they are right now because they keep sending these high-priced American jobs overseas. I will run successfully for President, accepting $100 maximum contributions, like I always do. No PAC money, full disclosure. I will attempt to beat the tyranny of the big check. If we don't do this, the change that's necessary to rebuild America will never happen.” Roemer is the best orator in the bunch, but he can’t get his message across because he has limited his resources.

So what was the highlight of the convention? My friend Andy would say it was when the Obama impersonator took the stage. Reggie Brown had the crowd standing and cheering raucously when he lit into the Democrats from disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner to the President himself. Brown joked that Obama celebrates only half of African-American History Month. But then the crowd quieted down when Brown turned on Republican candidates. “Newt Gingrich’s supporters are dropping faster than Weiner’s pants.” He followed up by put downs on most of the other candidates, until convention organizers had had enough. Brown’s mike was cut off, and the music swelled.

The convention itself was organized and run in a first class manner. Kudos to the Louisiana Republican Party, and the convention CEO, Charlie Davis, who knows how to organize and put on a good show. And what better place to hold such a gathering than New Orleans? As Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told the republican faithful: “If you can’t come down here and have a good time, it’s your own darn fault.”
Three contenders who, at least for now, have a good shot at the nomination, were not in attendance. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who presently leads in the polls, chose to “stay above the fray,” and skip New Orleans. His strategy seems to be to raise money and not get caught up in the interparty squabbling. Red state south is not fertile ground for the more moderate Romney, where polls show his Mormon faith is troubling to a number of voters.

Minnesota’s former Governor Tim Pawlenty also was a no show, choosing to give a paid speech in California instead. He has been under fire for breaking Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment of not criticizing other candidates in his recent attack on Romney’s Healthcare proposals. In a New Hampshire debate earlier in the week, Pawlenty seemed to wilt like a bodega tulip. Huntsmen, who like Romney is also a former Utah Governor and a Mormon, surprisingly won the straw poll in New Orleans, but called in sick for the New Orleans gathering.

Despite all the anti-Obama rhetoric, Republicans realize that this coming election will be no cake walk, and that the President is going to be hard to defeat. As former Governor, and once candidate, Mike Huckabee points out, “It's not Obama's performance, so much as his money and a possible lack of Republican unity.” New Orleans was a warm up. These candidates still have a long and rough road to travel before any of them emerge as the one to beat.

*****

“I'm not sure Lincoln would fare well if he were a presidential candidate today.”
David Herbert Donald

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Politics or Opportunism on Healthcare?

2011-06-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 16th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

ARE REPUBLICANS FLIP FLOPPERS ON
HEALTH INSURANCE MANDATES?

Remember the old knock on presidential candidate John Kerry back in the 2004 election? “I was for it before I was against it.” Today, about the single worst charge that can be made against any conservative republican presidential candidate is that they support requiring Americans to buy health insurance. But for decades, the Republican leadership in Washington embraced and championed individual mandates…well, that was before they “saw the light,” and flip-flopped against such a requirement. As Ricky Ricardo used to say: “Lucy, you got some explainin’ to do.”

The push towards mandated health care began back in the mid 1980s under President Ronald Reagan when he signed legislation that mandated free health care for all who seek it. That law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), was the largest expansion of government mandated health care since Medicare. But from the start, this new law engendered controversy from conservative economists. Their concern was that the system was not encouraging individual responsibility. Their thinking was that many people would not purchase health insurance, so the taxpayer would get stuck with the medical bills.

From that point on, a whole host of Republican congressional leaders called for mandated health coverage. Here is House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2007 -- “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it.” An “individual mandate” should be applied.

In 2008, Tommy Thompson, The Secretary of Health and Humans Services under President George W. Bush, said, “Just like people are required to have car insurance, they should be required to have health insurance.” Add to that list of supporters former Senate majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist of Tennessee, and all the Senators who co-sponsored legislation with an individual mandate -- Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Senator Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa), Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).
Here’s what Senator Grassley said just two years ago on Fox News: “There isn’t anything wrong with an individual mandate, except some people look at it as an infringement on individual freedom. But when it comes to states requiring it for automobile insurance, the principal then ought to lie [be] the same for health insurance. Because everybody has some health insurance costs, and if you aren’t insured, there’s no free lunch. Somebody else has to pay for it….I believe there is bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”
As these comments and many others by Republicans and numerous conservative think tanks have pointed out, there is a strong case for personal responsibility. Why should a certain portion of the population ignore their healthcare protection, then have an accident or get sick, and run to the emergency room for treatment, forcing you and me to pay their bill? If we have to pay the piper, then why doesn’t everyone?

There is little hue and cry over mandated automobile insurance. Everyone is required to be insured, so that if you are in an accident, and it’s not your fault, the other guy has to step up to the plate and pay you damages. What’s fair for one, is fair for all. Most of us don’t want to subsidize the uninsured driver, so why would we want to subsidize the irresponsible guy who just doesn’t care enough to buy health insurance? If someone can’t afford the cost, then perhaps there should be a subsidy. But everyone should pay something. That’s called being responsible. And that is why in the past, so many conservative republicans embraced the individual mandate.

What about property insurance? Just try to go to a financial institution to borrow money for a new home, or for refinancing. No property insurance? Forget it. And isn’t it ironic that the same politicians who are opposing government mandated health insurance are leading the cry for property bailouts. No help when you get sick, but members of congress demand that the government cavalry come charging in when a flood or hurricane hits. If you live in my part of the country and don’t responsibly buy flood insurance, then government bailouts are both expected and demanded.

Following Hurricane Katrina, U.S. Senator Trent Lott’s Mississippi beachfront home was destroyed, and he had not purchased flood insurance. So he introduced legislation to provide retroactive flood insurance to victims like himself. He was joined in support by his Senate colleague, Thad Cochran and Governor Haley Barbour. Make the government bail out those who didn’t look out for themselves. But they now strongly oppose any mandated health coverage.

And the flood insurance, itself, is highly subsidized by the federal government. Now catch the irony here. With health insurance, the insurance company will reject you if you have a pre-existing condition. No subsidy and no coverage. But for property insurance, it’s just the opposite. If you live in a part of the country that floods or is prone to hurricanes, your flood insurance is even cheaper because it is subsidized by the government. Go figure.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger summed up the dilemma well. “There is nothing else in our economy where an individual who has made no preparation can go in and get $1 million of goods and services passed on to them at taxpayer expense.” That means the system struggles with free riders --people who would have society pay for their care, rather than pay for it themselves.

Will the health mandate stand up to judicial review? Right now, each side has two victories in the lower courts. The challenge to the existing mandate is a dead cinch to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. And it’s also a certainly that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the swing vote. No good odds on which way the Justice will vote.

Of course party politics plays no role in the current debate. Can you envision the republican Senator looking across the aisle in the nation’s capitol and saying, “Actually, I’m voting against any mandate, before I vote for it, when a Republican is back in the White House?” And you can just hear his democratic colleague retort, “Well, I’m voting for it, after I voted against it, back when you voted for it, when a Republican was in the White House.” Is there any wonder why the country is so enmeshed in gridlock?

*****

If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

2011-06-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 9th, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana

JOHN EDWARDS-
IS IT A FEDERAL CRIME TO BE A SLEAZE?

He was once the fair haired boy of the Democratic Party, and a major contender for the presidential nomination. In December of 2006, I was working in New Orleans hosting a daily radio program on Clear Channel’s WRNO, and stood in the crowd as he announced his candidacy for President. In 2004, he was the democratic candidate for vice president on the Kerry ticket. He formed and led the “One America Committee” that undertook a major effort to combat poverty in America. And now, John Edwards just hopes to stay out of a federal prison.

The former US Senator is certainly no paragon of virtue. During his presidential run, he fathered an illegitimate child by a campaign aid, lied about it and funneled some $900 thousand through friends to support and keep his paramour quiet. Now he’s being charged with violating federal campaign laws by accepting donations beyond the allowable limits. The question is this: Is it a violation of federal law to accept and direct money to the mother of his child? Did he do this to protect his candidacy, and therefore the money should be considered campaign funds?

A number of former prosecutors and legal scholars have sharply criticized the Justice Department saying that such an interpretation of the federal campaign finance law is a real stretch, and have accused the prosecutors in the Edwards case of proceeding under a convoluted interpretation of what the law actually means. Such charges have never been filed before, and for good reason. The money in question continued to be given to Edwards’ mistress long after he dropped out of the presidential race.

So if the money was supposed to be to help with the campaign, why was it still being given after the campaign ended? Former federal elections Commission Chairman Scott Thomas looked at the case and said the payments “would not be considered to be either campaign contributions or campaign expenditures within the meaning of the campaign laws”

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington regularly criticizes the Justice Department for not holding public officials more accountable, but they too think such a prosecution is a waste of taxpayer’s dollars. Executive Director Melanie Sloan said it is highly unlikely that prosecutors can prove that the money given was to aid Edwards’ candidacy. “This is really a broad definition of a campaign contribution. It has never been that broadly interpreted and the judge could and should toss the case before it goes to trial. John Edwards is horrible, but it doesn’t mean they should be prosecuting him criminally,” she said, “and I’m usually all in favor of the prosecution. I think this is a silly case.”

Then there is the prosecutor, George Holding, a Bush appointee, who was not reappointed by President Obama, and is on his way out. There is no love lost here, as Holding used to work for former Senator Jesse Helms, and Edwards blocked several key judgeships important to Holding. Is it payback time? Holding is being assisted by the same public integrity section of the Justice Department that bungled its last high profile case against the late Senator Ted Stevens, when the prosecutors admitted they withheld key evidence from the Senator’s legal team. One of the prosecutors in the Stephens case then committed suicide.

“The Department of Justice as a whole, and the Public Integrity Section in particular, has a black eye,” says white collar defense attorney Bob Bittman. He knows of what he speaks for Bittman was once the chief prosecutor in charge of the Monica Lewinsky investigation involving President Bill Clinton. “They just are not seen as fair,” he concludes. So there is plenty of sleaze to go around on both sides.

Here’s what the Edwards defense team should argue. None of the money that was given to the mistress went through either Edwards or the campaign, so there is no requirement that it be disclosed and reported. The money given was used to hide the mistress from Edwards’ wife, not from the public. The Federal Elections Commission rules refer to the “irrespective test.” Does the expense exist even if no campaign were taking place? Most people would agree that paying money for the child of a candidate is an expense that exists “even in the absence of the candidacy.” Hey, lots of candidates pay alimony and child support.

In fact, Edwards’ lawyers could well argue that the prosecutors have it backwards. If Edwards had reported the private gifts, this in itself could be a violation of the campaign law for he was spending money for his personal use from his campaign fund. If he ends up getting convicted, will this mean that in the future, paying money to one’s mistress can be considered a legitimate campaign expense?

Professor Jonathon Turley, a regular legal commentator on CNN, says “the ambiguity of where to draw the line between personal and campaign expenditures is the biggest problem for the prosecution’s theory. Just because hiding the affair would be of benefit to Edwards as a candidate as well as a spouse does not necessarily mean the dual benefit converts to a cover-up or an affair into a campaign violation,” he told The Nation. “The uncertainty of where to draw the lines makes me uncomfortable with the criminal charge.”

John Edwards is a sleazy guy who has betrayed his family, his friends and his supporters. He has certainly fallen from grace and will carry this albatross for the rest of his life. But is he a criminal under federal law and should he go to jail?

Thomas Jefferson once said the criminal law has to be so clear that you can understand it if you read it while running. Clarity should not be in the eye of the beholder. In the Edwards case, prosecutors who seem to have questionable motives have way over reached. John Edwards, the judicial system, and the American public deserve better.

*****

“It's just an awful, awful story. It was one of those cases that, in a perfect world, one would think the prosecutorial arm of our government might exercise better discretion on how to handle.”
~ John Palmer

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown
Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Patriot Act Flat Out UnAmerican!

2011-06-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, June 2nd 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

CONGRESS BETRAYS BASIC AMERICAN FREEDOMS!

Since the founding of our country more than 200 hundred years ago, Americans have enjoyed core rights and liberties that made our country not just unique, but exceptional in protecting our basic freedoms. But no more. Just last week, The Congress of the United States sent a strong message to the American people that infringement on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself is just all part of the price we pay for “Big Government” to protect us. Thomas Paine warned us at the birth of our nation that “it is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” He would be stunned today to watch our Congress march in lock step with the President in renewing the so called Patriot Act.

Simply put, the Patriot Act is one of the most egregious acts against basic rights and liberties that we have witnessed in our lifetimes. The President and many members of Congress will argue that they have a job to keep American safe. But that’s not the starting point. Their job is to see that the Constitution is enforced, and that means keeping us free. As Judge Andrew Napolitano said on his Fox News program this week, the job of these federal officials is to keep us “Free from tyrants who sought and claimed power from thin air; free from prince-like federal agents who could behave without constitutional or legal restraint; free to live with a government that obeys its own laws. Any president who keeps us safe but unfree is ignoring his oath to the American people.” And doesn’t keeping us safe include keeping us safe from the tyranny of our own government as well?

Not only does this unconscionable law rip at the very fiber of each and every American’s basic liberties, several courageous U.S. Senators are charging that federal agents are now twisting the law with interpretations that go way beyond the few limits infused in this unpatriotic act. Senator Mark Udall from Colorado, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned: “Americans would be alarmed if they knew how this law is being carried out.” His concerns were echoed by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, also a member of the Intelligence Committee, who charged: “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.”

The President may have inadvertently given an opening to opponents of the act to void it when he “signed” the legislation by using an autopen to reproduce his signature in Washington while he was in France. The primary purpose of the autopen (a machine) is to replicate numerous signatures generated by one person signing with one pen. I used such a pen as Louisiana Secretary of State where my signature was required on virtually all official state documents. But the law is clear that I had to be in the state at the time of signing, and the autopen was merely a convenience so as not to have to sign and hundreds of documents, one after the other, in one sitting.

Now I know that the present mind set in Washington is to pay little attention to the Constitution. But if anyone in charge is remotely interested, Article 1, Section 7 of our founding document clearly states and requires that a proposed law “be presented to the President of The United States; if he approve he shall sign it.” Nothing here about giving the OK to reproduce his signature from 3000 miles away by telephone. It would be interesting how the “strict constructionists” on the Supreme Court would interpret this action.

A lighter anecdote on autopens concerning this extremely serious subject. During the time I was Secretary of State backing the mid 80s, I was in Atlantic City attending a convention, and bought tickets to see one of the last performances of two of my favorites -- Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. The show was to be held that evening, and I received a call from the Louisiana Governor’s office around 4:00 in the afternoon. The Governor needed my official signature to call an emergency special session of the Louisiana Legislature, and the proclamation had to be signed by midnight.

No way to make it back, I said. I was 1500 miles away and I certainly didn’t want to miss the concert. Just use my autopen. But the Governor’s two lawyers insisted I had to personally sign and it was imperative and vital that I make it home by midnight. I reluctantly hailed a cab from Atlantic City to Philadelphia, caught a plane back to New Orleans, and landed at 11:50 pm. The lawyers had flown down from the state capitol in a police helicopter, and were waiting on the runway as the plane landed. I signed the required document with only minutes to spare. The President may want to take heed. At least follow the dictates of the Constitution.

The next time you have the chance to talk with your Senator or Congressman, you might want to pose a few questions for his consideration. The Patriot Act has, for all practical purposes, driven a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights. What I would like to ask my congressional representatives is just who will protect us from our government. Congressman, do you support the domestic surveillance of American citizens by authorizing (as you did by voting for the Patriot Act) far reaching authority for government agents to pry, without judicial authorization, into practically every aspect of a citizen’s personal life? Do you agree that government agents can now come to your place of employment and seize your personal and medical records, all without notifying you?

Congressman, do you have any problem with the FBI demanding customer records from a bank, the phone company, an internet provider, a doctor or your local library all without any notice or court approval? How about the monitoring of where one goes to church, clubs they belong to, or their lawful activities with any political organization? What about jailing American citizens indefinitely without allowing a trial? Is this the kind of country you want us to live in Congressman? Is this the kind of country we should ask our young men and women to fight and die for? Congressman, we would like to hear your answer!

*****
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
Edward Abbey

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Presidential Primary Candidates Ignore Many States!

2011-05-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 26th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

HOW CAN STATES LIKE LOUISIANA
BECOME PLAYERS IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?

Last week, this column analyzed how only a handful of states will be both relevant and make any substantive difference in next year’s presidential election. Under the present system, it’s a “winner take all” contest, where the state’s electoral votes go to the top vote getter. In a red state, like Louisiana, a Republican voting majority is a dead cinch. So why should the candidate for president pay any attention to die hard red or blue states where campaigning is of little value? How about this? Maybe there is a way for my home state of Louisiana to become a major player.

There is no doubt about the Democratic nominee. The president is running for reelection, but has little chance for any gains in Louisiana and the Deep South. But the Republican nomination is wide open, with a number of candidates actively in the running. The primary season kicks off on January 16, with the Iowa caucuses. Here is what takes place before it is primary election day in Louisiana.

Monday, January 16, 2012: Iowa caucuses

Tuesday, January 24: New Hampshire

Saturday, January 28: Nevada caucuses, South Carolina

Tuesday, January 31: Florida

Tuesday, February 7 (Super Tuesday): Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Montana Republican caucuses, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah

Saturday, February 11: Louisiana primary

Not only will there be a number of elections before Louisiana’s primary, the cost factor has become a big legislative issue. The cost for a primary in the Bayou State is $6 million, no chump change in a year with a real state budget crisis. The Louisiana Legislature is searching for ways to fill a void of some $1 billion less than was available last year. Some legislators are suggesting calling off the primary all together and letting the political parties choose delegates to their respective national conventions as they each see fit.

Louisiana political commentator John Maginnis wrote recently about why there is little enthusiasm for a state primary. “If like four years ago, only a quarter of Republicans who are about 25% of registered voters, vote in the presidential primary, overall participation will be about 6%. The arithmetic frames this question for our Legislature: is the opinion of 6 percent of Louisiana voters worth almost $6 million, or about $30 a vote, to find out?”

So is there anything Louisiana can do to save $6 million, yet still have a significant impact on who will be the next president? Yes! And at no cost. Louisiana is the only state in the country that has a late 2011 election already scheduled. It’s the regular gubernatorial election where many races will be on the ballot with a significant statewide turnout. Therefore, instead of wasting $6 million in election costs, the Bayou State could be the first in the nation to have a vote on who will be the respective party nominees.

It need be only a non-binding beauty contest. Both Republicans and Democrats could hold caucuses in the spring of next year to pick their respective delegates. But as far as giving the nation an indication of how voters are thinking nationally, Louisiana could, at no cost, be the first state to hold a presidential primary.
It would be an understatement to say that the candidates from both parties would flock to the deepest of the deep southern states. It is the first chance, particularly for the current long list of Republican presidential wannabes, to build momentum and show strength. It would be unwise for any candidate, particularly within the republican ranks, to pass up making a significant campaign effort in Louisiana.

A Louisiana presidential election tied to the gubernatorial election this fall would also put some additional heat on the candidates to focus on Louisiana issues. Put them on the spot when it comes to drilling in the Gulf, revenue sharing, and coastal erosion. Here’s what the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives had to say in commenting on Florida moving its primary up to next January: “Moving up the primary would force presidential candidates to pay more attention to issues that are important locally, like soaring property insurance rates.” Hello! Sounds like what Louisiana officials should be saying.

Iowa has the process of sucking in presidential candidates down to a science. The have the first of the nation’s primary voting through their caucus system that will take place in January of 2012. But they take gambit one step further by having a second “mini-caucus” this coming August. As Mike Murphy in Time magazine wrote this week: “It’s an essentially phony contest that forces the candidates to start earlier, visit more often, book more hotel rooms and put more friendly Iowans on the payroll to organize the vast logistics of getting all those would-be voters…” out to vote. Hillary Clinton spent $29 million in 2008 Iowa caucus, with other candidates spending millions more.

If Iowa can get the various candidates to genuflect all over the Hawkeye state and garner huge media attention over 10,000 voters at a caucus, it would seem for Louisiana to be a no brainer to tie in a straw vote for president at the same time as this fall’s gubernatorial election. The Louisiana legislature is in session right now. A simple minor change in the election law will allow the presidential straw poll in November, and pull millions of dollars into the state, and cost the taxpayers nothing. No other state has such an opportunity.

The Scots have a saying that opportunities are never lost; someone will take the one you miss. There is a win-win opportunity available for Louisiana if its political leadership is wise enough to seize the moment.

“Opportunity is often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be tuning in.” Jackson Browne

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Electorial College Undermines Democracy!

2011-05-18T19:25:00.001-07:00

Thursday, May 19th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

IS LOUISIANA IRRELEVANT IN
THE COMING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?

The jockeying for the 2012 republican presidential nomination is rapidly picking up speed with candidates coming and going almost daily. Arkansas’s former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump, both the leaders in most recent polls, are out of the race. New Jersey Gov, Chris Christy is reconsidering his earlier demurrer. In Louisiana, we have former Gov. Buddy Roemer playing Don Quixote, while current Gov. Bobby Jindal, who protests that he is not in the running, secretly struggles with the role of Hamlet. Since some 45 percent of voters now say they’re dissatisfied with the GOP candidates who have declared, look for more new republican faces to appear in the weeks to come.

This is certainly one of the most important elections in modern history. But if you live in strong red states or blue states, your vote is looked upon as irrelevant to the process. Your say on who will win American Idol has more influence than who will be the next president of the United States.

The South as a whole has been written off as one big “red state,” which means, for all practical purposes, the vote of a citizen there does not count. The same can be said of the majority of states in the U.S. You might as well write in “none of the above” or leave a hanging chad. Why? Look no further than the Electoral College. We are about to elect our country’s and the world’s most powerful leader, but the system we have in place causes us to abdicate our right to have our vote count.

The next president will more than likely be decided in just a hand full of states. As the Wall Street Journal said recently: “Most states (in the coming presidential election) are not in play. Mr. Obama will not win Utah and Wyoming, and the republican nominee will not carry the District of Columbia or Rhode Island. But right now, 14 states (with 172 electoral votes) are up for grabs.”

Under the present system, the Electoral College rules require that all the state’s electoral votes go to the winner, no matter how close the election might have been. If, for example, Obama gets 45% of the votes in my home state of Louisiana, he still gets 0% of the Louisiana electoral votes. If the republican nominee ends up winning by one vote in Louisiana, he receives all of Louisiana’s electoral votes. In fact, it is mathematically possible for one of the candidates to get 49% of the popular vote and 100% of electoral votes. Go figure.

As next year’s election date nears, only these few battleground states will be receiving the focus and the money from the presidential candidates. In a state like Texas, where the republican nominee will easily win, or a state like New York, where President Obama is a cinch, why even vote for president? All of the electoral delegates get assigned to the winner, and we know who the winner is going to be, so for all practical purposes, your vote for president has been taken away.
When it comes to other statewide races on the ballot, like Governor or U.S. Senator, we use the popular vote, which is what you would expect in a democracy.

So why, in the presidential election do we have an electoral system that allows voters in the majority of the states to be disenfranchised? It’s an idiosyncratic system that on four occasions in our nation’s history created a quagmire, wherein the presidential candidate with the largest number of popular votes did not win the largest number of electoral votes, and therefore did not become president. Remember a guy named Al Gore?

The system in place was confected in the early days of the republic by our founders, where electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their best judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders. Why? Because the Framers of the Constitution, our Founding Fathers, the champions of democracy, did not trust the voters to make an intelligent choice. Check out these quotes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

“The extent of the country renders a popular vote impossible, that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the candidates.” Delegate George Mason, July 17, 1787.

“A popular election in this case is radically vicious. The ignorance of the people would put it in the power of some one set of men and throughout the Union, and acting in concert, to delude them into any appointment.” Delegate Elbridge Gerry. July 25, 1787.

“The people are uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing men.” Delegate Samuel Johnson, July 19, 1787.

So what this all comes down to is that the Founding Fathers were trying their best to insulate the selection of the president from the “whims” of the public. They didn’t trust voters, then, and the system does not trust you now to make your choice. So because of conservative political persuasions, a large majority of states are left out of any serious attention from the presidential candidates.

Once they receive their respective nominations, it’s highly unlikely that either the Republican nominee or President Obama will set foot in a state like Louisiana. Neither candidate will feel any pressure to say a word about hurricane recovery, wetlands protection, or supporting a larger percentage of oil and gas revenues for the state off the Louisiana coast. From the perspective of both major party candidates, issues in red and blue states will be irrelevant in their coming campaigns. There is simply no political capital to gain by visiting these states, or speaking about their state and regional issues.

By being so out of the mix, just what else is Louisiana missing? No knocks on the door by college students from out of state with leaflets about how inept and divisive the Republican nominee is? No robo-calls in the middle of dinner telling us what a mess Obama has made of the economy? And no presidential TV ads. In politically irrelevant states like Louisiana, voters are left out of the national political bombardment that is taking place in the likes of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, where those voters are taught that the republican nominee is a Bush clone and that Obama will continue to socialize the country. Besides those political commercials paid for by state and local candidates, all we will get are ads about bladder control and erectile dysfunction.

There are a number of reforms being considered for future elections. A proportional electoral vote by congressional districts is as compromise solution that makes sense. In the meantime, don’t forget to go vote for a number of candidates and propositions on the ballot when the national election rolls around next year. Your vote might make the difference in many of these local and state races. But in this election, depending on where you live, your vote for president really could be irrelevant.
*******
“We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – the American Electoral College system sucks.

The Daily Iowan
The Daily Iowan. Editorial/Opinion. “Long past time to fix Electoral College.”

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Ole' Man River a Tough Challange!

2011-05-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 12th, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana

SOUTH UNDER SIEGE BY
MISSISSIPPI RIVER!

Randy Newman’s song, Louisiana 1927, hit home to many residents up and down the Mississippi river this week. He was singing about the 1927 flood, where more than 23,000 square miles were inundated, hundreds of people died, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. As of right now, predictions are that water levels up and down the river will exceed those reached in the 1927 disaster. And no one really knows how bad it will get.

It has been abnormally hot this spring throughout the south. A number of states have seen three times the normal amount of rain. But along with the downpours, there have been droughts and wildfires. Then came the tornadoes in all time record numbers that killed at least 309 people and caused massive destruction. Insurance losses are now projected to exceed $6 billon, with a similar amount for homes that were either under insured, or not insured at all.

The heavy spring rains have been incessant up and down the river, and there are projections for more Midwest thunderstorms later on this week. And all this water has, over the years, been channeled in tight levee systems that are right now under massive pressure. Author John Barry, who has been a guest on my radio show on several occasions, documented the dangers of flooding on the Mississippi in his award winning book, “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi river Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America.” I asked him about his concerns today. “I know the power of this river, and quite frankly it makes me nervous to see this much water on the move,” he says

Barry also points out that “there will be a lot of backwater flooding going up rivers that are normally tributaries flowing into the Mississippi. They won’t be able to empty into the Mississippi, so the main line River will back up these streams causing a great deal of additional flooding.”

I know his scenario well from living through back water problems during the 1973 flood, where water levels reached their highest point to date. I was a newly elected state senator in Louisiana living right on the Mississippi in Ferriday, across the river from Natchez, Mississippi. I could go up on my roof and see across the main line levee as the waters continued to rise.

The water got so high that the Red and Black Rivers in that area that it began to back up, flooding many communities throughout my district. Some towns, like Jonesville, were surrounded by water and local residents had to get to and from their homes by boat. At the lower end of Catahoula Parish (other states have counties, but in Louisiana they are called parishes), some homes were buried under twenty-five feet of water.

When the river along the mainline levee came within four feet of overtopping, the local sheriff emptied the jails putting prisoners to work filling sandbags to build up the levees. For four days, I occasionally catnapped while working alongside neighbors and prisoners as we tried to raise the levee with sand. When the river finally crested, there was a little over a foot to spare that kept the Mighty Mississippi from pouring into our neighborhoods and destroying our homes.

Fast forward 38 years and the river levels look to be even higher and the flooding worse. Some three million acres will go under water in Louisiana alone, and almost half of the parishes here have been declared disaster areas. The River is approaching dangerous heights right now, yet the projected crest in Louisiana is not until May 23.

There are three major spillways along the river in Louisiana, and each has floodgates that can be opened to divert the raging waters. Opening these gates lessens the chance of flooding many inhabited areas, but the process is not a panacea. The millions of tons of sediment in the waters that are diverted will wipe out any crops in the water’s path along with many homes.

Roy Dokka, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Geoinformatics at Louisiana State University, says Louisiana farmers are in for a long hoe. “Any existing crops are going to be toast when you look at the damage caused to corn, sugar cane and soybeans that will be covered with sediment,” he stated. “Plus, God knows what’s in the water and what gets deposited.”

And what if the levees collapse as they did during Katrina? “That’s the worst case scenario,” says Dokka. “If levees break, weeks could pass before engineers could reseal them. If wide-scale flooding occurs, the resulting economic damage will be felt for years, he said. “Any city that ever floods never really returns economically to where it once was because people don’t have confidence, people don’t want to put businesses there. New Orleans is the big example.”

So the south is taking on Mother Nature with a wing and a prayer. Living in this part of the country is a gamble that has consequences. Newman’s lyrics for a flood 84 years ago could just as well apply to what many residents who live along the Mississippi are facing right now, as each day passes.

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Will Bin Laden Continue to Affect our Lives?

2011-05-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

WILL OSAMA BIN LADEN
CONTINUE TO HAUNT US?

The most wanted war criminal in the world is now dead. And it is for good reason that Americans are enthralled over his death. So do we now go back to our life before 9/11? Or will we find that in death as in his life, bin Laden will continue to haunt us? And how many members of congress will have the wits to ask just how much damage did he really do, and why it took so long to find him?

It took a decade for the most sophisticated intelligence network in the world to locate bin Laden. For 10 years, he hoodwinked the CIA, the FBI, and 16 US intelligence agencies, along with the intelligence operations of NATO, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At bin Laden’s direction, a few Saudi Arabians with box cutters started this whole nightmare by following his plan to compromise the country’s entire national security system and commit the murder of thousands of innocent Americans.

Why did it take ten years to find the world’s top assassin? As we have just found out, he was not living in an isolated Afghanistan cave, but in a million dollar hideout just a stones throw from the Pakistani Military Academy. He was protected by eighteen foot high walls and a ream of security guards. Numerous military personal lived in the neighborhood. Didn’t anyone wonder who was living behind these high walls? Or did they know?

The state department is requesting $3 billion this year for Pakistan. The U.S. has already spent 10 years and billions of dollars chasing Osama bin Laden around the world, only to find him hiding in plain sight, right next door to a country it has invaded. And for most of this time, bin Laden has been hanging out less than 40 miles from Islamabad, Pakistan’s capitol city in an affluent suburban neighborhood with manicured lawns. What does this say about our capability to keep our own citizens safe?

A strong case can be made that no other single human being, either directly or indirectly, has inflicted the huge fiscal damage that was caused by Osama bin Laden. The attack of 9/11 all but shut down the American economy for days, and then caused a sluggishness that went on for months. Many Americans stopped flying, causing congress to enact a $15 billion federal bailout. And how about the new security requirements that were instituted? Annual costs have been pegged at more than $8 billion.

Because of bin Laden’s provocation, America launched wars initially in Iraq, and then in Afghanistan.

The estimated amount in United States dollars spent by the US on its military operations in Iraq to date is $787 billion. The estimated amount, in United States dollars, spent by the US on its military operations in Afghanistan to date is $400 billion. And we continue to spend $2 billion dollars a week in Afghanistan alone.

Who knows the final cost? It will certainly end up being in the trillions. Throw in escalating oil prices, which sky rocketed after we invaded Iraq, the rebuilding at the Twin Towers site, and the repair of The Pentagon, the price of damages and health care for the thousands of 9/11 victims... the costs just go on and on.

And wasn’t that the whole reason for the 9/11 attacks? To drain the U.S. dry financially? Bin Laden pulled the same stunt fighting the Russians in Afghanistan when he was a leader in the resistance. He knew full well the lesson that superpowers fail because of economic collapse, not because of military defeat. As Russia’s economy went stagnant, bin Laden boasted: “We bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt. We broke them as they tied to conquer a mass of rocks and sand.” He said the same thing about America in 2004, asserting that he was “continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

It’s puzzling how much damage bin Laden was able to do with so few resources. In 1996, after being exiled from both Saudi Arabia and Sudan, this calculating Arab declares war on America. At the time, he was broke with no significant followers, no political party and no movement. But he painted a scenario of a “cosmic struggle” by Muslims against the infidels in the West. Plain and simple – it was them against us, portrayed in religious tones, that this was the will of Allah.

The human suffering inflicted by this one murderous thug has been enormous. Tens of thousands of American soldiers have been killed, or maimed and psychologically scarred for life. All told, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives including the lives of thousands of innocent Muslims have been lost directly or indirectly because of Osama bin Laden.

Even though he is dead, Osama bin Laden will be a continuing presence in our daily lives. He will be there when you take off your shoes and submit to invasive searches at airports. His affect will be felt when you stand in long lines at public events while security guards search bags and purses. And he can be credited with dramatically curtailing your basic freedoms as an American citizen.

As Brian Doherty writes in the American Conservative: Thanks to the “massive security apparatus erected after 9/11, the government now wiretaps telephone calls without warrants, creates profiles of citizens even if they’re not suspected of specific crimes, and seizes information without judicial oversight.” Yes, he has but a chill on the basic American freedoms that we so dearly covet.

Some semblance of justice may have been served for the many who died in the terrible wave of violence that began on 9/11. Unfortunately, the injustice for the living will continue at home and abroad for many years to come.

*****

“We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the difference between us two.”
Osama bin Laden

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Major Insurance Problems on the Gulf Coast!

2011-04-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 28, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA--
NIGHT AND DAY ON PROPERTY INSURANCE!

All this week, Florida’s largest newspaper, the Miami Herald, has been writing both feature articles and editorials about the problems facing Florida property owners in finding affordable insurance. Day after day, headlines conveyed the intensity of the struggle -- “Storm Warning: Prop up Insurance,” was a typical lead, along with, “Is Citizens Insurance ready for the big one?” and “Lawmakers still scrambling on wind insurance.” Florida, like all gulf coast states, has problems of both insurance affordability and availability. But here’s the difference between the Sunshine state and the Bayou state. Florida is giving the problem serious attention. It’s a front and center concern for the governor, the legislature, insurance regulators, and the news media. In Louisiana where I live, there is hardly a whisper.

When Florida Governor Rick Scott took office a few months ago, his first words of commitment were: “The lack of available and affordable property insurance is the biggest threat to our economy.“ Just this week, Scott began exploring how to sharply curtail or even shut down the state’s Citizens Property Insurance Company. The Miami Herald editorialized just last week that the Florida legislature should allow no more property insurance rates in the state. The Florida governor and the legislature are taking the insurance problem head-on.

Florida has significantly more hurricane exposure than does Louisiana. Ninety percent of all homeowners live within a few miles of the Gulf or the Atlantic Ocean. A hurricane crossing the Florida peninsula slows down, at best, only 15 miles per hour. Yet in spite of all this exposure, property insurance rates are cheaper in Florida than in Louisiana. In Perdido Key, on the Florida-Alabama border, many Louisianans have beach homes or condos. On average, they pay significantly less on these properties than they do on their homes in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and other Louisiana cities. Property insurance rates for commercial real estate have gone down, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% to 40%, according realtor Steve Ekovich of the Tampa office of Marcus & Millichap, and insurance is more available.

Look at the figures released by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. In Louisiana, for every $100 of residential property insurance, the homeowner paid, on average, $1.006. In Florida, a similar homeowner paid only 69.3 cents. Louisiana has, hands down, the most expensive property insurance rates in the entire U.S. Yet Florida has much more exposure. Why?

Simply put, Florida officials, from the Governor on down, have made insurance affordability a front burner issue. In Louisiana, it has been little more than a blip on the radar. The Louisiana legislature began meeting just this week, and newspapers across the state ran stories listing the state’s top issues and concerns. Insurance wasn’t mentioned. Louisiana is a state with the highest automobile and property insurance rates in the entire comity, yet not one solution was suggested by Louisiana insurance officials or legislators.

Like Louisiana, Florida has a Citizens Property Insurance Company that is state created and sells to those homeowners who cannot find insurance anywhere else. The difference is in legislative support. From day one, the Florida Company has received state funds on a regular basis to build up reserves. By properly managing the company, Florida Citizens has almost $ 4 billion in cash in the bank to pay claims. There is also in place a bank line of credit and proceeds from municipal bonds that put total available funds at close to $7 billion.

Florida has also created a Hurricane Catastrophe Fund to back up and reinsurance losses for both Citizens and other private insurance companies operating in the state. This year, Citizens purchased nearly $9.8 billion in coverage. So all tolled, the Florida state created company has the ability to handle claims of up to $16.8 billion.

So how does Louisiana stack up? Well, for starters, due to inept and corrupt management before Katrina hit, no back up funds were arranged, and Katrina and Rita claims now exceed well over $1 billion. There was only minor reinsurance in place when the two major storms hit in 2005. The company was recently tagged with a $95 million legal judgment for failing to pay claims on time, and the former CEO is serving time in jail for misappropriating for his personal use hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is no wonder why the company, created by the legislature and overseen by the Insurance Department, has been called the biggest financial disaster in Louisiana history.

There have been eight major hurricanes that have hit Florida since their legislature created Citizens. Yet 40 new companies have come into Florida to sell property insurance, and ten of their companies sell windstorm coverage right along the most exposed areas of the Florida coast. But to qualify for the available insurance in these storm-prone areas, strict building code requirements are in place. The roofs of such insured homes must have been updated since 1996. And all window protection, including required shutters, must meet specific state and local regulations.
Has Florida solved its property insurance problems? Hardly. Increasing costs and continuing hurricane exposure makes any effort to control insurance rates all the more challenging.

The difference between Florida and Louisiana is one of effort and priorities. The Florida Insurance Commissioner is lobbying hard for a national catastrophic program for gulf coast states. Florida congressmen are pushing a number of programs in Washington. The legislature meets regularly to discuss insurance issues, and Governor Scott makes no bones about the fact that insurance issues will be at the top of his legislative agenda.

There is a proactive effort in Florida to protect consumers. Here’s what the Miami Herald said this week about current Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty: “He has not hesitated to take on the insurance industry when he thought consumers were being scalped.” The new House Speaker said this week that property insurance issues are of huge concern to Florida legislators. “This is a very complex issue and I hope we see some solid solutions come forth, but it won’t be easy,” he said.

No, it won’t be easy, but there seems to be a major good faith effort by Florida officials to keep affordable insurance front and center. In Louisiana, property insurance issues have faded away and are barely a blip on the perennial screen, with little comment or concern expressed by any public official. So is it any wonder why Louisiana property owners continue to pay the highest rates in the nation?

Louisiana business and homeowners, when you look across the board at all the higher insurance costs they are absorbing, are paying some $3 billion more than if they were paying the national average of such costs. Think what an additional $3 billion in the Louisiana economy would mean to the economic vitality of the state. So why isn’t more being done by Louisiana officials? A good question to be asking as election season approaches.
*****

“It’s not hurricanes that are causing high insurance rates, but bad government policy,”
Policy analyst Michelle Minton
Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Losers All Around in Bonds Case!

2011-04-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 21, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

BARRY BONDS AND THE GREAT
AMERICAN WITCH HUNT!

Now let me try to understand. Bankers, investment brokers and insurance magnets, whose greed and fraud reached into every household in America, don’t even get as much as a slap on the wrist. But home run champ Barry Bonds will go to jail as the scapegoat for major League Baseball, which choose to turn a blind eye to how much drugs had infected the sport. In walks the federal government who took on the role of the omnipotent umpire When all is said and done, all parties to this pathetic case are real losers including the prosecutors.

The Feds spent close to $140 million in their effort to nail Bonds. Compare that to the costs of the Clinton/Lewinsky investigation of $40 million. After an eight year investigation where hundreds people were investigated, Bonds was convicted on one count of “obstruction of justice.” The supposed crime is a catch-all offense where the accused is supposed to “attempt to interfere” with the judicial system, whatever that means.

Just what did Bonds do to “obstruct justice”? According to the prosecutors, he was “evasive” when asked about using performance enhancing drugs. He was essentially convicted of giving a long, rambling monologue to a grand jury of whether he knew if the substances he took were illegal. No federal crime was involved, the steroids can be legally purchased with a prescription, baseball did not ban such drugs until 2003, and it wasn’t until 2004 that baseball began penalizing players who tested positive.

So after spending well over $100 million, and carrying on a 10 year investigation involving hundreds of federal agents, the best the feds were able to come up with was that “he was evasive.” And for that you could go to jail for up to 10 years? By that standard, a whole host of presidential appointees should be in prison today. Remember Valerie Plame?

It would be interesting to hear the jury’s reaction if the question would have been framed differently, by asking: “If you have broken no federal law and the government has no business asking you a question involving your own private life, do you have the right to be “evasive?” Why is some rogue prosecutor wasting time and tax dollars trying to force Bonds, or any other player into admitting that they had taken steroids that were not illegal at the time the substances were taken?

Bonds is certainly no honorable fellow here. He cheated to win a whole host of baseball records including being the home run king. He cheated on everyone around him and his checkered baseball career will forever be imprisoned in a purgatory of suspicion and asterisks. He tainted the game and should have been banned from baseball by the baseball powers that be. But justification for a federal crime? Hogwash.

Those who run baseball, including the owners, are also part of this scandal. The major league officials just didn’t care. More “pumped up” players -- more revenue. Revenue tripled during the steroids era, as fans flocked to the ball parks to see records being broken. In 2007, former U.S. senator George Mitchell prepared a report that connected dozens of baseball stars including seven MVPs, to using performance-enhancing drugs. And baseball officials just looked the other way.

The entire Bonds fiasco was followed in great detail by law professor, Dr. Roger Roots. He summed up the case by concluding: “Since the first grand jury inquiry, the baseball steroid investigations have been typified by investigator misconduct, prosecutorial overreaching and fake grandstanding over infidelity to the rule of law or fair play in sports. Baseball’s ongoing steroid self-inquiry is in fact a ten-year record of warrantless searches, coerced statements, illegal leaks, and strong-armed threats and intimidation.”

The Bonds scandal is the shame of virtually everyone who was party to this witch hunt over the past 10 years. From Bonds, to the baseball owners, to the judicial system itself, there are no good guys here. Those of us who follow and love the sport of baseball have every right to question the credibility of everyone involved in this whole sordid mess. We fans are also the losers.

*****
"What bothers me is that you've got a very powerful federal government that has the money and time and resources to ruin someone's reputation," Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownla.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am central time on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

What Could Lincoln have Done?

2011-04-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 14, 2011
Port Hudson Battlefield, Louisiana

WAS THE CIVIL WAR REALLY NECESSARY?

One Hundred and Fifty years ago this week, the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. During the next four years, carnage, mayhem and death were the order of day after day. By the time the dust settled and the South had surrendered, some 620,000 soldiers had died on the battle field. The Union lost around 360,000 soldiers, and the Confederacy lost 260,000. More than twice that number were injured. Fifteen decades later, here’s the question that needs to be asked: Was it really necessary to have this war?

Here in my home state of Louisiana, we are surrounded by remnants of the bloody battles that took place. When I began my law practice in Northeast Louisiana across the Mississippi River from Natchez, my home was the Lisburn Plantation, just north of Ferriday. To make his final siege of Vicksburg in one of the final and decisive battles of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant commandeered my future home to headquarter for several days before crossing the Mississippi River and attacking Vicksburg from the South.

As Grant undertook his offensive against Vicksburg, Union Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks’ army moved against the Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson on the Mississippi River just north of my current home of Baton Rouge. On May 27, after their frontal assaults were repulsed, the Federals settled into a siege which lasted for 48 days. On hearing of the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederate garrison of Port Hudson surrendered, opening the Mississippi River to Union navigation from its source to New Orleans. There were 12,208 casualties at Port Hudson of which 7,208 were Union soldiers. Hundreds of similar battles took place with devastating results of death and destruction for both North and South.

Could Lincoln have done more to stop the fighting? Was there a middle ground to buy time for ongoing discussions? It was not like the South’s eventual leaders, from Jefferson Davis to Robert E. Lee, were from a foreign land. Davis was a U.S. Senator, and Lincoln asked Lee to take over command of the entire U.S. Military. They were colleagues in government. Couldn’t Lincoln have been more persuasive?

Lincoln stayed at the Willard Hotel in Washington the night before he was sworn in as President. The Willard, situated just across from the White House, was then the nation’s largest hotel. For the previous three weeks at the same hotel, 131 delegates from 21 states met continually to find a solution for saving the Union without war. Judges, legislators, and even former president John Tyler argued, cajoled, and pleaded with one another for a way out of the looming conflict. As a last effort, the delegates pleaded with Lincoln to join them for some direction and leadership. Lincoln declined.

Imagine the public reaction today if either George Bush or Barrack Obama stood by and let some six million Americans kill one another in battle. That’s the number of deaths based on today’s comparative population. There would be open revolt and an immediate cry for new leadership. Did Lincoln fail the test then? Oh, he did take action. Lincoln suspended parts of the constitution including habeas corpus, arrested numerous political opponents, and shut down several hundred newspapers. Sounds like Iraq redux, but at least that’s half way around the world and not here in our own backyard.

Was Lincoln obsessed with freeing the slaves? Here are his words in a letter written to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

So was it a total commitment to keep the union intact? Not if you believe Lincoln’s words a few years before the Civil War began. “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred right— a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.”

Professor David Goldfield has written a new book called “America Aflame, How the Civil War Created a Nation.” He’s a guest on my radio show this weekend. Goldfield computes the total monetary cost of the war to around $6.7 billion in 1860s currency. He asserts that if “the government had purchased the freedom of four million slaves and granted a 40 acre farm to each slave family, the total cost would have been $3.1 billion, leaving $3.6 billion for reparations to make up for a century of lost wages. And not a single life would have been lost.”

What about the morality of a president declaring unbridled warfare on his own citizens? One can well argue that saving human lives would have been far more important than keeping the Union together. How can a President responsible for so much bloodshed be thought of as the greatest President in US history? I understand that Lincoln wanted to avoid the Civil War. However, was preserving the Union worth the cost of spilling so much blood on both ends of the battle field?

Lincoln went on to lead the country in reconstruction, and offered exemplary leadership as the nation healed it’s all too deep wounds. Maybe it was because he was brand new at the job as the war began. But it seems clear that when real leadership was called for in an effort to save hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, Abraham Lincoln blinked. And the country is still, after these 150 years, still reeling from this national tragedy.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
~Abraham Lincoln
Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

An Ugly Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court

2011-04-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 7th, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana

DEATH ROW, NEW ORLEANS, AND THE
SUPREME COURT’S BETRAYAL OF JUSTICE.

There is an aura of myth that surrounds Lady Justice, who is pictured standing tall with the balanced scales of justice in her hands. She is blindfolded to assure impartiality and fairness. But if she read the decision about the death row inmate from New Orleans that was handled down by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, one could only wonder whether she dropped her scales, pulled off her blindfold, and wept.

If there was ever any doubt about the lack of fairness, competence and fundamental decency among the current majority composition of the Supreme Court, such doubt was put to rest by a decision that would make any oppressive and dictatorial government proud. Heavy words, that’s true. But one would have to look long and hard to find a more repugnant decision.

Here are the facts. New Orleanian John Thompson was convicted back in 1982 of first degree murder and given the death sentence. He came within days of being executed after spending 14 years on death row and 18 year’s total in prison. Five different prosecutors were involved in the case and all knew that a blood test and other key evidence had been hidden that showed Thompson was innocent.

On his death bed dying of cancer, one of the prosecutors confessed to a colleague that he had hidden the exculpatory blood sample. The colleague waited five more years before admitting that he too knew of the hidden evidence. Thompson, after 18 years, received a new trial, and his lawyers were finally able to produce ten difference pieces of evidence that had been kept from Thompson, that overwhelming showed he was innocent. The new jury took less than 35 minutes to find him not guilty.

Hiding evidence that can find the accused innocent is nothing new for prosecutors in New Orleans, both in state and federal court as well as with the FBI. The Innocence Project of New Orleans reviewed a number of convictions over the past 25 years in the city and concluded that prosecutors gave a "legacy" of suppressing evidence. The project said 36 men convicted in Orleans Parish alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Nineteen have since had their sentences overturned or reduced as a result.According to the Innocence Project in New Orleans, favorable evidence was concealed in a quarter of the murder convictions from 1973-2002. In 19 of 25 non-capital cases, the prosecutors withheld favorable evidence; in the other six cases, the courts ruled that evidentiary hearings were needed.

With full justification, Thompson sued the prosecutor’s office in New Orleans for ripping away and stealing 18 years of his life. He had two sons that he never saw grow up. A New Orleans jury awarded him 14 million dollars. Some said it was too much money. Would you give up 18 years of your life in solitary confinement on death row for 14 million dollars? On appeal, the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, reputedly the most pro prosecutorial circuit in the nation, upheld the award in favor of Thompson.

But a bitterly divided Supreme Court said to Thompson “no way.” In a 5-4 decision, his case was tossed out by the Supreme Court– not because they disagree that the prosecutor’s office hid evidence (in fact all 9 justices agree on that point). Instead they tossed the case because, in their divine judicial opinion, they didn’t see any “pattern” of the prosecutor’s office doing this to other people besides Thompson (because one life ruined is apparently not enough). Sounds like a John Grisham novel with a bad ending, right? If only that were so. Unfortunately, this is real life and John Thompson gets nothing for his 18 years in jail. Not a red cent. Tough luck fella. The system failed you, but “stuff happens.”

This was not a decision based on a conservative interpretation of the law, even though the so called conservative block voted in lock step to deny Thompson’s claim. A true conservative justice would be strongly opposed to government oppression and the encroachment on the liberty of a falsely accused person. After all, when a prosecutor can operate with impunity, totally absent of any criminal or civil check on their actions, the seeds of fascism are planted. No, a true conservative judge would have held these rogue prosecutors fully accountable.

John Thompson, stunned by the Supreme Court's decision, says he intends to spend his life working to help wrongly convicted inmates. He has founded a new group called Resurrection after Exoneration. Sadly, he will not have the financial resources that the lower courts rightly concluded should have paid to help him pursue his goal.

The judicial system failed John Thompson. Along with Lady Justice, we all should shed a tear.

*******
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
- Elie Wiesel

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Colleges Taking Advantage of Athletes!

2011-03-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 9, 2009
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

MARCH MADNESS
ARE ATHLETES BEING SHORT CHANGED?

Millions of rabid college basketball fans have been glued to their TVs over the past month as March Madness reached its crescendo this Monday night. My North Carolina Tar Heels came close in an effort to win its second national title in the past five years. And the big bucks have been rolling in. There are lots of winners, with coaches getting big salaries, and colleges spiting up their percentage of huge TV and admission revenues. But there is one group that is being both exploited and shortchanged. It’s the players, themselves.

There’s certainly not a shortage of income. This year in the NCAA tourney, television income is estimated to be some $750 million, with an additional $50 million from ticket sales and sponsorships. The cost of a thirty second spot for Monday night’s championship game exceeds $1 million. And college football is awash with the same increasing yearly income. More bowl games, and the ever increasing television revenue allows most college football programs to cover the cost of a growing array of minor sports.

One sign of the growing sports revenues is the dramatic increase in coaches’ salaries. The University of Kentucky hired basketball Coach John Calipari from the University of Memphis with a salary package of $35 million over the next 10 years. Head coaches whose teams made the NCAA tournament have an average salary of $1 million. And that doesn’t include all the perks like free cars, country club memberships, housing subsidies, access to private jets, and generous severance packages.

In college football, the numbers are even higher. LSU football fans are still incensed over former Coach Nick Sabin taking a salary package estimated at close to $ 4 million at arch rival Alabama. South Carolina Football Coach Steve Spurrier was enticed to take the job with a free country club membership at Augusta, home of this week’s Masters Golf tournament, which includes the use of a private jet to get him there for a quick 18 holes. LSU is paying assistant football coaches as much as $700,000 a year or more. The University of Tennessee announced it would pay two assistant football coaches $650,000 or more, each, for the coming year.

The average compensation for these NCAA tourney coaches is almost triple that of the typical university president, which shows us the perverted priorities of these institutions of higher learning. Little wonder that American industry has not been standing up too well in world competition.

Fans pay through the nose to attend major college athletic events. As an LSU football season ticket holder, I personally pay $840 just for the right to buy my season tickets. The seat ticket itself is $54 per game. So there are big bucks coming into major college programs all over the country. Top-level college sports are big business. LSU, for example, receives some $100 million in revenue each year from ticket sales, television rights, concessions, parking and logo sales, which is about five times what the school receives from tuition.

All this income comes from one source…the athletes. Yet only college expenses -- room, food, tuition, books, and maybe a summer job -- the basics are paid to these young men and women. No pocket money to go to the movies, no gas money, no extras whatsoever. So we have college athletic programs raking in millions on the backs of talented, disciplined, hardworking athletes, without sharing the revenue with those responsible for generating it. Such a system is ill-defined at best and hypocritical at worst. The universities, administrators, and coaches are reaping great value -- even luxury -- provided by their recruits, and the players, themselves, are given only a Spartan subsistence.

It was a little better than 40 years ago when I was lucky enough to attend the University of North Carolina on an athletic scholarship. I was given a housing and food allowance that exceeded my costs, as well as “laundry money” that allowed for weekend dates, gas, and a few frills above the basic scholarship costs. What I received then was equivalent to some $250 in pocket money if the same were allowed today. But it’s not. The NCAA tightened up the rules, and college athletes get less today than athletes like me received some years back.

Supporters of the present system will argue that there is the opportunity for these athletes to move on to the pros and make big financial returns. But we all know that very few make it to that level. They may not even end up with the basic skills necessary to succeed in other workplaces, since only a minority of student-athletes in major sports even graduate. LSU football and basketball players generally graduate at a rate of less than 40%
.
There is a system in place now that’s allows our young college athletes to be exploited, and the exploitation is being committed by their adult mentors. What a deal -- your body in exchange for a pittance of basic expenses. A little monthly expense money is not about to corrupt the system. Providing $300 a month to all athletes on full athletic scholarship seems reasonable. March Madness, as is always the case, turned out to be a financial bonanza -- but not for the kids that many of us paid to watch. They deserve a better shake and a small piece of this huge financial pie.
*********
“The coaches own the athletes’ feet, the colleges own the athletes’ bodies, and the supervisors retain the large rewards. That reflects a neoplantation mentality on the campuses that is not appropriate at this time of high dollars.”
Walter Byers, former executive director of the NCAA.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show live each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. Many radio stations throughout the country carry the program at various times throughout the week.

Is America Overextended?

2011-03-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 24, 2011
Pensacola, Florida

AND LIBYA WOULD BE….
WHERE EXACTLY?

My morning coffee group can solve just about any domestic problem, and it generally offers better solutions than the folks up in Washington. But all of a sudden, our daily rants about Wall Street bailouts, corporate welfare, the bumbling educational system, and lousy final four picks are being overshadowed by murky events from half way across the globe. We now are inundated twenty four-seven with news on countries most Americans could not point out on a map.

If you sometimes think the world is spinning out of control, maybe that’s because it is -- and at breakneck speed. Japan has been crippled by a gigantic earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear meltdown. Revolution has engulfed the entire Middle East and North Africa. A month old crisis is eclipsed by a new cascade of events, and the U.S. has now declared war on Libya. We’ve been broadsided with American confrontations from countries and factions we can’t even pronounce. Try Djibouti, Qatar, Shiite, or Nicker-rog-wah.

It was exactly eight years ago this week that President George Bush gathered the so called “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq. President Barack Obama has now jumped into the fray by invading Libya under the banner of “Operation Odyssey Dawn.” As Steven Colbert pointed out, President Reagan fired missiles on Libya in the 1980s, and named his mission Operation El Dorado Canyon, a name that "sounds like some serious desert ass kicking." As for Odyssey Dawn? "That's not a military operation," Colbert said. "That's a Carnival cruise ship."

Those of us who gather each morning to commiserate about our daily lives are not well versed in foreign affairs. America has been the center of the universe for decades, and we all agree that our schools have done poorly in bringing the rest of the world alive to our young minds. But we do have some basic common sense and follow what happens beyond our borders in a broader view of how we are affected. And we know a few things that don’t seem to sync in up in Washington.

First, we know we have been at war for a long time. Our troops have been fighting in Iraq for eight years, which is twice as long as our World War II efforts to defeat Nazi Germany. 4,385 U.S. soldiers have died over a war that was supposed to have ended back in 2003. Remember President Bush, standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, telling us that “the United States and our allies have prevailed, and that major combat operations have ended?” So the Iraqi war ended, and then another 4300 American soldiers were killed there.

Our longest war in Afghanistan continues into its tenth year. More than 1500 U.S. soldiers have been killed and we are spending $2 billion dollars a week to keep this war machine moving. 64% of Americans oppose this war, including a wide majority of my deep southern coffee group, but our congressmen seem quite comfortable with letting the president and the generals carry on as they see fit.

Second, experience and common sense tells us it’s easy to start a war, but hard to end one. Hey, we have invested blood and money in this foreign country’s cause, so we just can’t pull out. And then we have to undertake nation building, even if that nation shows little or no interest in wanting to build it. There are always a multitude of reasons why we can’t get out. And we just may not have that tolerance to wait. There is a Pashtun taunt that is often hollered to our soldiers in Afghanistan: “You have the watches, but we have the time.”

Third, we all know that air power doesn’t win wars. Oh, maybe the A-bombs dropped on Japan hastened the ending. But again, going back to common sense, when some general starts talking about “no fly zones” bringing Libya’s Gaddafi to his knees, we know better. A lot of civilians are going to be killed, and we are going to see American troops on the ground fairly soon. You can bank on it.

Fourth, is the America really invading for humanitarian reasons, or is it primarily about oil? The U.S. showed little humanitarian concern for years of massive slaughter throughout Africa, the most catastrophic example being Rwanda. Zimbabwe, under brutal dictator Robert Mugabe, continues to carry out numerous atrocities against his own people. In his new book, “The Fear,” Peter Goodwin, points out that most Americans view Africa as monolithic, with little understanding of individual countries. Libya is much easier to understand. It’s a small country with a bad dictator who has been accused of killing Americans, and sitting on lots of oil. Easy call there.

Here’s what my gang at coffee is saying. Wall Street bailouts have cost the U.S. a bundle, we can’t afford to fix our roads and crumbling infrastructure, home values have plummeted, our national debt continues to rise at alarming rates, and our educational system seems to be going into the tank. But there seems to be no end to tax dollars available to fight big wars and small brushfires worldwide. We may be our brother’s keeper, but are we obligated to be? And just as importantly -- can we afford to be the world’s peace keeper? So when we do bring down a tyrant like Kaddafi, do we end up just propping up another puppet, who often turns out to be just as brutal as the one just deposed? Using the bully stick of U.S. troops, are we destined to perpetuate these “necessary” wars with no end in sight? We executed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and created the perfect storm for the Taliban tyranny to explode across Afghanistan, destroying our soldiers and fortunes at an incredible rate.

Here’s the bottom line from my guys. American is not the Messiah, and our government has been hypocritical in “picking and choosing” its “humanitarian” fights. Our country is broke. Yes, there is a role for America to play in a United Nations effort to intercede when brutal dictators set prey on their countrymen. But it’s not always our cause. We can’t have a dog in every fight. Our government needs to quit looking for (supposed) dragons to slay abroad.

If we continue to jump into every future skirmish, they ought to call the next one “Operation Enduring Idiocy.”
******

“We cannot ignore our own complicity in arriving at this point. We cannot continue to arm regimes that abuse their own citizens, and try to claim the moral high ground when addressing the conflicts that those same arms have helped to perpetuate.” DAVID LAMMY

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

The Unpatriotic Act by Congress!

2011-03-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 17, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

BIG BROTHER HAS YOU UNDER CLOSE WATCH
THANKS TO THE PATRIOT ACT!

When Tea party candidates throughout the country ran for office last fall, most members offered soaring campaign promises to defend liberty of ordinary Americans, and fight governmental intrusions on basic freedoms. But whatever hopes there were that newly elected Tea Partiers would put the brakes on intrusive domestic surveillance, illegal wire wiretapping and warrantless searches went out the window just 20 days into the new Congress.

With only minor whimpers, Tea Party leaders did an about face by abandoning their previous opposition to the so called Patriot Act, voting to indefinitely extend this Orwellian law that flouts the Bill of Rights. The federal government has now been given carte blanche to spy on everything you do online, every call you make, and every trip you take. “But there is danger out there,” says your congressman. “So just get used to it!” Privacy is gone, so get with the new world. No more basic constitutional protections? “Get over it.”

As Brian Doherty writes in the American Conservative: “Thanks to the massive security apparatus erected after 9/11, the government now wiretaps telephone calls without warrants, creates profiles of citizens even if they’re not suspected of specific crimes, and seizes information without judicial oversight.” In this brave new world, private companies that maintain massive data bases of information on what we are saying, writing, buying and thinking, willingly turnover reams of information about their customers.

Here’s one example. Sprint Nextel provided the government with GPS locations on its subscribers 8 million times in a recent one-year period. Thanks goodness I use AT&T, who, to its credit refused to provide such private information to the FBI without receiving a warrant signed by a judge.

William Pitt stood up in Parliament back in 1763 and declared: “The poorest may, in his cottage, bid his defiance to all the forces of the Crown, the storm may enter; the rain may enter….but the King of England may not enter.” But because of the betrayal of a majority of the members of Congress, including most Tea Partiers, the FBI can now enter our personal cottage of electronic communications without the nuisance of any court oversight.

And three cheers to US Senators on both sides of the aisle who had the courage to stand up for the Bill of Rights. They include Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Jon Tester (Montana), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Tom Udall (New Mexico), Jeff Merkley (Oregon), Ron Wyden, and (Oregon), and six other courageous senators. Boos to my home Louisiana delegation, who marched in lock step with political party leadership, and voted against basic American freedoms.
Peggy Noonan was Ronald Reagan’s speech writer and now writes a regular column in the Wall Street Journal. Here are her thoughts on the basic intrusions of the Patriot Act. “When we lose our privacy, we lose some of our humanity; we lose things that are particular to us, that make us separate and distinctive as souls, as, actually children of God. We also lose trust, not only in each other but in our institutions, which we come to fear. People who now have no faith in the security of their medical and financial records, for instance, will have even less faith in their government”

George Bush began the deep decline of basic civil liberties, but Barack Obama, has been no better a protector of the Bill of Rights. The President recently signed into law provisions allowing “roving wiretaps” that allows the FBI to wiretap phones in multiple homes without having to provide the target’s name or even phone number. The mere possibility that a suspect “might” use the phone is enough to justify the wiretap

The FBI continually protests that their investigations will be hindered if they have to go find a judge to approve such invasive surveillance. Getting judicial consent, a foundation of our basic protections, just “slows down the process,” they say. “Hogwash,” says Fox News commentator and former Judge Andrew Napolitano. Here’s his response.

“The time-is-of-the essence argument is nonsense. I once issued a search warrant in my gym shorts from my living room at 3 am, and I know a former FISA court judge who did the same from his cell phone while riding a motorcycle. While neither of these situations is optimal, there are at least written record of what was done to whom and why.”

The so called “Patriot Act” has driven a stake trough the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments-the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eight Amendments, as well. Conservative columnist John Whitehead put it this way: “In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they told anyone that the government had subpoenaed information: monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause, and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.”

Many Tea Partiers and other Patriot Act vindicators continue to hound us with the supposition that we have to choose between liberty and security. And if your only concern is security, then certainly if we lived in a police state, it would be much easier to catch the terrorists. If we just would allow the government to listen to your phone conversations, read through your mail, look at all your email communications, search your home on a whim, and lock you up because what you write or think, then we would surely catch more terrorists and other bad guys. But is that what America is all about? Do you want to live under such a restrictive cloud? Is that the kind of country that we ask our young volunteer soldiers to fight and die for?

In Herbert Hoover’s winning campaign backing 1928, his slogan was “A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage.” Today’s slogan could well be “a government agent on every corner, a wiretap on every phone.” It is, after all, for our own security, right?

*****
“Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. The patriot Act should be at the top of the list. Nobody who has supported this wretched law should ever be allowed to brag of defending liberty again.” Former CIA Agent Susan Lindauer

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Roemer one of many Louisiana Prez Wannabes!

2011-03-09T21:04:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 10, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana

A LOUISIANA GUY THEY COULD CALL MR. PRESIDENT?

Here’s your question for the day! Name a Louisiana resident who seriously considered running for President? Here are a few hints to round out his profile. His resume’ shows that he was well educated and intelligent, was a member of congress, was elected governor of Louisiana….and is short. Several candidates come to mind, right? Bobby Jindal, and now, Buddy Roemer. But there were more. Read on.

Actually, no Louisianan has ever been elected President. Zachery Taylor might barely qualify, although he spent very little time down in the Deep South. One resident of the Bayou State did make it to the nation’s highest court. Edward Douglass White, a former Louisiana Supreme Court justice, served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 27 years between 1894-1921. In 1910, at the age of 65, White was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court by President William Howard Taft.

The latest Louisiana native to give the presidency a good look is former one term Governor Buddy Roemer, who kicked off his campaign at a presidential forum in Iowa this week. Roemer right now is the longest of long shots, but so was his case back in 1987 when he pulled an upset victory to get elected as governor. He beat quite a pack of candidates back then, including incumbent Governor Edwin Edwards, Congressman Billy Tauzin, future Speaker of the U.S. House Bob Livingston, and some other forgettable character named Brown.

Roemer is taking on the system and the other Republican candidates by chastising the moneyed interests in politics. He’s going after Washington lobbyists, Middle East oil money, and ethanol subsidies that he says are ruining the country and its politics. “I declare my independence,” Roemer told the crowd. “Tell people a seasoned warrior against special interest money is in the race. Washington is not about leadership. Washington is not about people. Washington is about money and re-election.”

So is Roemer undertaking a fruitless effort and becoming the Don Quixote of the presidential season? Maybe not. It will all come down to money. Roemer is, and has always been, a good messenger. But to get his message out, it will take big bucks. He has a self-imposed rule of refusing any money from political action committees, nor will he take any individual donations greater than one hundred dollars. It took Obama $250 million to get the democratic nomination. Do the math, and you will see Roemer needs several truckloads of checks to be competitive.

Current Governor Bobby Jindal, with his obvious national ambitions, keeps raising money nationwide, but will sit on the debate sidelines while dealing with a huge budget crisis back home in Louisiana. But don’t think that Jindal would not jump at the chance to be on a national ticket as vice president. Roemer actually helps Jindal’s chances by keeping an articulate voice from Louisiana in the national spotlight.

So who were the other candidates? Edwin Edwards gave a national race a good look back in 1978 when the President Jimmy Carter was floundering. Edwards just didn’t like Carter, and had read several books on how the former Georgia Governor had come from obscurity to the Presidency. Edwards toyed with the idea for six months, and then ended up supporting Republican Ronald Reagan.

John McKeithen sought the national stage, and thought he had a commitment to be the Vice Presidential candidate on the Hubert Humphrey ticket in 1968. The Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue in Chicago was the convention headquarters, and I had trekked up to the Windy City as an observer. I happened to be on the hotel elevator when McKeithen and Sen. Russel Long got on. Long later told me they were on their way up to the penthouse meet with Humphreys and solidify McKeithen’s position as the vice presidential nominee. Humphrey changed his mind from his earlier commitment, turned McKeithen down, and the Louisianan governor immediately left the convention to return home in a huff.
Don’t forget Huey Long, who had all but announced a challenge to sitting President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though a backer of Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, Long split with the President in June 1933, and planned to mount his own presidential bid for 1936 in alliance with radio's influential Catholic priest Charles Coughlin. Long was assassinated in 1935, and rumors abounded that his presidential ambitions played a role in why he was shot to death.
So we have Long, McKeithen, Edwards, Jindal and now Roemer. All served in congress except McKeithen. And they were all short. I wonder how the results would come out if we took the three living candidates and had a Louisiana primary? Roemer, Jindal and Edwards. Yes, ole’ EWE is eligible under federal law to run for president. Who do you think would be the top vote getter in this three man race?

Right now, it’s just Buddy Roemer in the national mix. At 67, Roemer is telling the nation that he is “old enough to know what to do and young enough to get it done.” Remember that the first primary is in Iowa, and the winner is determined by a small number of voters who have to show up on election night in person. If Roemer’s gift of gab can create some sparks and convince a respectable number of reformers in the Buckeye state to jump on his band wagon, who knows how far the Shreveport native might go.

In the meantime, I say let’s go with our own state in the presidential primary. Along with Roemer, Jindal and Edwards, let’s thrown in country singer Tim McGraw, a Louisiana native who has expressed great interest in politics. And maybe Saints Quarterback Drew Brees and General Russell Honore’ to round out the slate. Mardi Gras just ended, so we need something way down here in the deep south to keep us occupied.

*****

“I never lose. Even when I’m the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech.”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Reapportionment Blues

2011-02-24T05:31:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Shreveport, Louisiana

GET THE POLITICIANS OUT OF REAPPORTIONMENT

It’s redistricting time for legislators, both in Louisiana and throughout the country. Criticism that decisions are being shaped behind closed doors is raining down on this politically sensitive process. Lawmakers in my home state have scheduled a number of meetings to discuss the process of divvying up the various political boundaries including congressional, public service commission, and their own legislative districts. Many of the sessions are not open to the public. “Wrong!” cry the press and the good government groups. But the question should be, why are legislators meeting at all?

By federal law, all election districts must be reapportioned every 10 years to reflect the latest census figures. This puts Louisiana elections officials in a bind because census figures have just become available that reflect changes over the past ten years, and the state is just months away from a gubernatorial election. But should legislators, who have a vested interest in how the redistricting lines are drawn, actually be the ones to do the drawing, anyway?

The problem is one of gerrymandering, where district lines are not drawn to reflect geographical or political balance, but to favor the incumbent or some other partisan choice. When legislators do the redistricting, the norm seems to be that the state ends up with meandering footprints meticulously designed, it would seem, to ensure that no incumbent will face serious opposition, regardless of how the political winds are blowing. As one local political observer said, “Think about it this way. In elections, people choose their legislators. In reapportionment, legislators choose their people.”

Gerrymandering, by the way, means to manipulate the electoral boundaries for political gain so as to give undue influence to an incumbent or other favored candidate. The name comes from Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, who in 1812 created winding districts that looked like salamanders to favor incumbents. Thus the convoluted word – “gerrymandering.”

What most voters want to avoid is the self-dealing by legislators where voting districts slash across communities of interest and geography. A blatant example of winding, disjointed gerrymandering is the Louisiana third congressional district. It winds from the Mississippi border south of New Orleans though the southern part of Jefferson Parish and all the way through south Louisiana up to Lafayette, some 300 miles in length.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger led an effort in his home state to get legislators out of the redistricting business. “The politicians have divided a neighborhood”, he says. “They have divided cities, towns and people, and this is what we what to eliminate. And this is why we need redistricting, because the district lines were drawn to favor incumbents rather than to favor the voters.”
So the question for Louisiana voters is this: Are they that concerned that the legislature is, for all practical purposes, creating their own voters? Is this healthy in the Bayou State -- or in any other state? Many think it’s not.
“The self-dealing quality of legislators drawing districts for themselves or for their partisans has basically collapsed the enterprise,” says Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor who is an expert on redistricting. “There’s an increasing sense of revulsion among voters at this self-dealing. It is somewhat scandalous that there are few competitive elections anymore.”

So what are the alternatives? What are other progressive states doing to transfer the power of redistricting to a system less driven by self-interest? Fourteen states have assigned the task to officials or panels outside the state legislature. And independent redistricting wears the cloak of good-government reform, as long as a consensus can be built on just who will serve on such panels. How do you pick the members? How can such a system be put in place that assures voters the final result will be fair, non-partisan, and keep local interests balanced?

Louisiana and every other state in the country have a number of bright people with solid business and educational backgrounds that are capable of taking on this controversial task. There are several respected demographers in the Bayou state, and a number of well-qualified professors at Louisiana universities. Retired judges fit the category as well as representatives of some of the state’s good government groups.

When I was first elected to the Louisiana legislature back in 1971, legislative redistricting had taken place just months before. But the reapportionment plan did not pass federal court muster, and was thrown out just weeks before the primary election date. Ed Steimel was head of the Public Affairs Research Council at the time, and was appointed by federal judge Frank Polozola to serve as a “special master” to redraw the district lines. Based on Steimel’s rework, the old plan was thrown out and the new court ordered plan put in place. There was general agreement that the Steimel Plan was fair and kept the district more cohesive and less spread out. (It must have been good as I won my senate seat easily in the first primary.)
One idea would be to create a Louisiana Fair Reapportionment Practices Commission made up from a cross section of various recommendations. Let nominations come from the legislature, the Supreme Court, the good government groups like PAR and CABL, the various college boards, and perhaps a key business group or two. Then put all the submissions in a hat, and draw out eleven names to serve as members to begin their work right after the new census data is made available.

The goal for such a commission is simple – put the important issue of redistricting into the hands of those with non-partisan interests, instead of those who in the past have been allowed to define the terms of their own cartel. Simply put, it’s just wrong for legislators to draw these districts and then run in them. There needs to be a better way.
*****
“If you’re hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the legislature. You’ll get the same kind of feeling and you won’t have to pay.” Sen. Dudley LeBlanc

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

Lessons to be learned from Green Bay

2011-02-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

WHY LOUISIANA SHOULD BE
FOR THE GREEN BAY PACKERS!

So who ya’ rootin’ for in the Super Bowl game on Sunday? It’s an easy choice for me living down here in Louisiana. The Packers are one of the best examples of how a sports franchise should operate. They don’t go to the state capitol hat in hand, looking for a handout. The team is owned by citizen stockholders all over Minnesota, and the Packers’ management doesn’t regularly try to blackmail public officials into giving more handouts under threat of picking up and moving the franchise.

Recently, when it came time for Green Bay to revamp and refurnish legendary Lambeau Field, the state of Wisconsin didn’t put up one penny. All proceeds to pay for the renovations came from the private sector. Season ticket holders were charged a one-time user fee of $1,400, which fans can pay over several years. In addition, the Packers did a stock offering, just like many corporations do for capital improvements. And finally, the packers took out a team loan to be repaid out of yearly revenues. No sweetheart deals from the state, no special considerations, no coming to the public trough for taxpayer money.

What happens in some states, including my home state of Louisiana, is that team owners cry wolf saying that they will have no choice but to move their franchise elsewhere if, the tax incentives and outright dollars are not bountifully offered. But a review of the NFL team financial arrangements will show that team income is structured in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to run a profitable franchise even in a small location like my old home town of Ferriday.

Unlike other professional sports operations, television revenues are not sold by individual teams. In baseball, the New York Yankees get broadcasting revenues significantly greater that what a smaller market team like the Kansas City Royals receives. In pro football, every team shares in one gigantic pie. Little Green Bay receives the same television revenues as does a team in New York or Chicago.

The other major factor that lets a small market stay competitive without taxpayer dollars is the National Football League salary cap. Not only is the incoming revenue approximately the same for each team, expenditures are also more or less the same, as each team shares the same parameters as to just how much can be spent on team salaries. This means salary limits, which allows a small market team like Green Bay to stay competitive year after year.

Finally, the Packers have bought up 28 acres spending more than $27 million to develop an entertainment district. This would give the team revenues that it would not have to share with other clubs. It is a business strategy that a number of NFL franchises are undertaking. Yes, the New Orleans Saints are following this diversity approach. But here’s the difference. The Saints get it all paid for by Louisiana taxpayers.

The Saints receive $6 million in direct funding, from the state of Louisiana, each year. But there is much more the Saints will receive that is every bit as valuable as direct payments. $85 million will come out of the state treasury to upgrade the Superdome. But the upgrades greatly benefit the Saints and mean significantly more profit. Most of the money will go towards building new luxury boxes and new club lounges, all which mean more high priced tickets for the Saints to sell. The state pays the cost, and the Saints get the income.

Then there is the agreement for the state to lease office space in a downtown office building adjacent to the Dome being purchased by the Saints owners. The state is to lease more than 320,000 feet at $24 dollars square foot, which is one of the highest rental rates in the state today. So the Louisiana taxpayers are basically paying the cost of the building the Saints ownership is buying.

But what about all these projections of how much the economy in New Orleans will be positively impacted, with millions more in tax revenue. Figures are being wildly thrown around, with little study, indicating a $500 million economic impact. A University of New Orleans study, quoted in a New Orleans Times Picayune editorial, estimated some $22 million in state revenue is produced by the Saints. Here’s the fallacy. Any such study assumes that all of the dollars spent at Saints games are dollars that are new to the region’s economy. Most dollars spent going to the Superdome are dollars that would have been spent on other leisure activities in the area. There are numerous choices as to how to spend leisure dollars. Going to a football game is just one.

The Brookings Institution’s recent 500 page study titled, Sports, Jobs and Taxes, concluded that professional sports teams “realign economic activity within a city’s leisure industry rather than adding to it. Professional sports,” they write, “are not a major catalyst for economic development.” They are saying, in effect, that all the public subsidies accomplish is to help shift spending from other forms of entertainment to stadiums like the Dome, with little net employment gain or significant increase in new tax dollars.

A later report by Brookings found that numerous other studies have concluded the same thing. “Independent research by a number of independent groups has uniformly found that there is no significant positive correlation between sports facility construction and economic development.” Consultants, often hired by team owners who say otherwise, according to the Brookings study, “are peddling snake oil.”

So I’ll be pulling for Green Bay on Sunday. They got to the Super bowl as a wildcard team, and played some outstanding playoff football. But more important, the Packers represent the best of the American free enterprise system. They built a championship team by paying their own way without trolling for taxpayer dollars. It’s the way a franchise should be run. Go Packers!
*****
“The Green Bay Packers never lost a football game. They just ran out of time.”

Vince Lombardi

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

New Orleans is Murder Capitol of America!

2011-01-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 27th, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana

BOB DYLAN AND THE MURDERS IN NEW ORLEANS!

New Orleans is off to a fast start in this New Year to maintain its perennial title of being the murder capital of America. When the city celebrated Martin Luther King Day last week, five people were shot down. Just a few killings often seem to be a good day. The first violent death took place on day two of the New Year. In the few short weeks since then, 16 more murders have been chalked up. At this rate, could a new record high be in the making?

Any murder is tragic, but one can weave through the crime lore of the Crescent City to see some deaths that just can’t be explained. The locals often seem to shrug and accept the blood flowing as a price you pay for living in what always ranks as America’s “most interesting city.” Violence seems to be an integral part of the gumbo that blends a different genre of street smells, music, spices, poverty, and minions of eccentric characters. But then, the killings continue and grow in numbers.

The brutal execution that got to me the worst was the tragic death of a little boy a few years back. Ja’Shawn Powell was two years old, and lived in New Orleans with his mother. His father, a guy named Danny Platt, came to pick up Ja’Shawn for a weekend visit. The boy, according to his mother was really excited. “Oh, my daddy’s here,” he beamed as he ran to the door. “Daddy, daddy, daddy.” His mother said: “He was so happy.”

Then his daddy drove off….. took a knife….. slit this little boy’s throat….. and allowed the toddler to bleed to death.

It’s impossible to make any sense, or even find the words to define such a ghastly act. Horrifying, shocking, sickening, abhorrent, repugnant; no thoughts can describe such a dastardly deed of unspeakable horror. Platt claims he had “a whole bunch of reasons” for taking this little boy’s life. He said “I had a lot of pressure on me.” But he denied that one of the reasons was the $4000 in back child support he owed to the boy’s mother. Hogwash. He did it to keep from paying the money.

In a city that has the highest per capita murder rate in the nation, where multiple killings often happen on a daily basis, a town that is rated as one of the five most dangerous cities in the world, it is still incomprehensible to imagine that a father could take a knife and plunge it into the throat of his two-year-old child.

How could anyone kill their own son? That’s the question posed in the book of Genesis as to whether a father could kill his own son, even at the urging of God himself. According to the scripture in the first book of the Bible, the Jewish patriarch Abraham was told by God to kill his son Isaac to show obedience to God. It was a test, and when God was apparently satisfied that Abraham would undertake such an appalling act, he called out for Abraham to stop.

How does a believer, like Abraham, respond if he had been asked to sacrifice his one and only son? And then there is a separate question. How could a loving God even put one of his followers to such a test? Why would any being, God or man, force such a horrendous choice?

Bob Dylan poignantly and pointedly asked the same question on the title track of his “Highway 61 Revisited “album that came out in 1965. Now follow the symbolism here. Highway 61 runs from Duluth, Minnesota all the way down to New Orleans. It was a major transit route to get out of the Deep South, particularly for African Americans traveling north to Chicago, St. Louis and Memphis, as the highway followed the Mississippi River Valley for most of its 1400 miles. The song puts to the test the moral dilemma of killing one’s own son at the request of the Almighty.

Dylan raises the same concerns about God’s actions that I have felt for years. The lyrics say:

Oh God said to Abraham, Kill me a son”

Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”

God say, “you can do what you want Abe but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”

Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killing done?”

God says, “Out on Highway 61.”

So when America’s poet troubadour picks a location to symbolize one of the most heart wrenching choices posed by God to man, a choice by the way that I personally think was dead wrong for God to pose in the first place , the heart and soul of the dilemma runs right through the Crescent City, on Highway 61.

Since the killing of little Ja’Shawn, there have been a series of other family murders in New Orleans. Just a few days after Ja’Shawn was knifed to death, a son killed his 73 old mother, who was a member of her church choir. He stabbed her repeatedly with a butcher knife and robbed her. Why? He needed money to buy drugs.
New Orleans is a city where I was educated, where I have worked and lived off and on for some fifty years. It’s a real tragedy to see the will and the hopes of so many locals seem to slowly drift away. And let’s face it. No outside help is going to sweep in to solve the city’s massive list of problems.

New Orleans needs political leadership, increased community activism, more public dollars into law enforcement, and a renewed focus on juvenile delinquency. But there also needs to be a will. All this can make a difference and all this needs to be done. But it all begins right here at home, on Highway 61.
********
“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and
nothing worth killing for.” Tom Robbins

Peace and Justice.

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

The Return of Edwin Edwards!

2011-01-19T20:06:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 20th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

EDWIN EDWARDS-THE PRODIGAL SON COMES HOME!

After eight and a half years in a federal prison, Louisiana’s prodigal son has come home. And far from quietly slipping back into home confinement, the former Louisiana governor was greeted with the fascination generally reserved for a rock star. There was the kind of media coverage and public fascination generally reserved for a President or the Pope. Even the Kingfish would have been envious. Edwin Edwards is back.

I played a minor role in the Edwards homecoming, being the publisher of his recently released biography, “Edwin Edwards-Governor of Louisiana.” Written by my colleague, Leo Honeycutt, it became an immediate best seller. On the day of Edwards’ release last week, ten Louisiana television stations came by my office for interviews. The entire state seemed to be consumed by the frenzy of the return of the most controversial public figure in the state’s history. Love him or hate him, only a few were not caught up in the fascination of the state’s longest serving governor.

I had been approached in 2008 by B.I. Moody, a friend and supporter of mine over many years, who built Moody Publications into the largest newspaper chain in the state. B. I. and Edwards had shared office space when they first started out in business back in the early 1950s, and they had remained the closest of friends over the years. B.I. felt that a balanced legacy of Edwards had not been fully presented.

“Anyone born after the late 1970s would only know of the controversy surrounding him. History so far has not highlighted his many accomplishments,” B.I. had told me. He had read my first book about my time in public life, and asked if I might find an author to take on the task of writing a more balanced and fairer presentation of the Edwards story. I had formed a publishing company called The Lisburn Press, using the name of my old plantation home in Ferriday, Louisiana.

I accepted the task, and interviewed a number of local and national authors. Leo Honeycutt lived in Baton Rouge, and had been a television personality locally and up in Monroe, La. for a number of years. As a newsman, he had covered and talked with Edwards extensively. I read his 15 year old novel, “Over the Edge,” and knew that Leo had a descriptive writing style full of expression and understanding of the nuances of Louisiana. After several interviews, from a field of other well qualified writers, I decided on Leo to collaborate with the former governor, who continued to captivate while sitting in a federal prison.

Leo spent weeks at a time in solitude immersed in the project in a cabin on Lake St. John up in Concordia Parish. His first draft was 1600 pages, with over 3000 footnotes. I sent him back to the drawing board for rewrite after rewrite. I also spent a great deal of time reviewing some of the legal ramifications of many of the charges made by both Leo and EWE. It took the better part of the year to get the book in final form. Designing a cover and selecting photos from the thousands available that reflected Edwards’ time in public life took more months. Our hopes for a one year project extended four fold.

So how many copies of the first edition should we print? After all, the guy had not been governor for 16 years and had been in prison going on eight years. Was there really all that much interest left in the “Silver Fox?” Or was he a has been, and would all this effort be just for the history books? Start with 5000 copies? Knowing that he would soon be out of prison and there would be some spike of interest, maybe a 10,000 copy run? OK, let’s go with 10,000 books, since we did have a warehouse large enough to store the entire inventory.

The truckload of the Edwards biography arrived in the bookstores less than two weeks before Christmas. The first printing of 5000 copies sold out in two days. A quick call was made to the printer in Canada requesting another 10,000 copies. We paid overtime for the printer to work the weekend around the clock, and another truckload arrived a few days before Christmas. That run sold out in a week.

With approximately 50,000 copies sold, the Edwards Biography is well on its way to being the largest selling Louisiana book in the state’s history. With the former governor back home, we are projecting sales of another 50,000 books before year’s end. And how about the new Edwin Edwards autobiography? He says that he has his own take on what transpired during his investigation and trial, and that he has many insights that so far have not been revealed. Edwards Redux? Stay tuned!

The colorful Cajun has been roundly roasted by some editorial writers for years, as the cause for Louisiana’s sad state of affairs. Louisiana is close to the bottom on many quality of life lists. He has not been in public office for sixteen years, and three other governors have followed in his path. Yet, according to some, it’s all his fault. Fifty years from now, there will be those who still point to Edwin Edwards’ influence as the state’s major problem.

But could it be that this charismatic character represents the pulse of Louisiana? Is it possible that most public officials in the Bayou State are no better and no worse than the voters who put them in office? That’s a subject for another book. And I could be just the guy to publish it!

*****
“People say I've had brushes with the law. That's not true. I've had brushes with overzealous prosecutors.”
Edwin W. Edwards

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

Politics of a Killer?

2011-01-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 13th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

HOW TO EXPLAIN THE SHOOTER IN TUCSON!

Are there political lessons to be learned from Saturday’s tragic shootings in Tucson? The talk show pundits on both the left and right would have us believe that the other side’s hyper-partisanship has been the catalyst for a growing vehemence and hatred that led to the terrible violence by one deranged killer. Are there underlying causes to explain this shocking event that can be directed towards either side of the political spectrum? Many talk show hosts would have you believe so. But killings tragically happen, and birds fall from the sky. And often, the cause is not political.

Two tragedies took place last week. A highly unstable punk kid did have some political misgivings. But they were not influenced nor directed from viewpoints on the left or the right. On the Internet, he ranted about government thought control, and how the country should return to the gold standard -- hardly partisan issues. Few of us trust the government’s involvement in our personal lives, but almost none of us reacts with violence. No, the cause of this tragedy in Tucson appears to be exclusively the shooter’s internal demons.

The news media that claim neutrality had no problem inflaming the debate al this week by assuming there was a political angle to the shooter’s actions. What part of the political spectrum was Jared Lee Loughner coming from? He just had to have an agenda we were continually told.

Some said the attack was linked to the bull’s eye directed at some twenty democratic congressmen including last week’s victim, Rep. Gabriele Giffords. The popular political website, The Daily Kos wrote: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” How unfair and offensive were both the comments and the bull’s eye. It was tasteless on both sides. News commentary has become segmented by political philosophy and as such it has become shamelessly irresponsible.

Conservative columnist David Brooks pointed out, these “were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.”
There is a great deal of anger in the country now. I hear it each week on my national radio show as callers vent from coast to coast across the political spectrum. And they vent with justification. A recent survey by the Pew research Center found there is “a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust in government -- a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.”

Members of Congress are the most accessible branch of our national government and like it or not, they represent symbolically what many voters see as an out-of-control and out-of-touch federal government. Most constituents are just plain angry. But in the mix, there are a few who are deranged, and in them, the anger that most of us keep under control, explodes in violence.

In our democracy, any nut case can walk into a town hall meeting and confront their representative or senator face to face – and Congresswoman Giffords was always having small meetings in grocery stores and other retail establishments and this made her vulnerable to the walking time bomb, Jared Loughner.

Despite what pundits on both the left and the right continue to pontificate, Jared Loughner had no political agenda. Jared Loughner’s actions were driven by the psychotic delusions of his mental illness. He could not protect himself from his demons inside, and our society could not protect those slaughtered last week from his deadly outbursts.

There can be a link between derangement and politics. Jared Loughner lives in the epicenter of hatred, resentment -- all distorted by what seems to be an extreme mental illness. He is not alone in this country. In a book by research psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey called “The Insanity Offense,” he concludes that some one per cent of seriously mentally ill in this country, some 40,000 people, are violent. Fuller says they account for about half the rampage murders in the United States.

Yet a number of states, including my home state of Louisiana, are proposing deep cuts in mental health treatments. Of particular concern are disturbed inmates who are soon to be released, but who have been given little treatment for their unstable condition. There is a low priority in this country for aggressively providing treatment to the mentally ill who are becoming increasingly disruptive. How do you stop such individuals from owning guns? What are the standards for involuntary treatment? Many tough questions need to be addressed.

Jared Loughner posted his favorite books on his YouTube page. Their general and similar themes centered on government stripping an individual of their own free thinking. “Animal Farm,” “Brave New World, “Mein Kampf,” and “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” to name a few. But the book on Loughner’s list that summed him up best was Harper Lee’s, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“He was out of his mind,” said Atticus. “Don’t like to contradict you, Mr. Finch-wasn’t crazy, mean as hell. Low-down skunk with enough liquor in him to make him brave enough to kill children.” I don’t know about the liquor. But Harper Lee got it right in regard to Jared Loughner. He has to be both crazy and mean as hell. The polarizing ideology here is not on the left or right. It’s in the jumbled mix of a ground up dysfunctional character and conscience in the psychotic mind of Jared Loughner.

A larger question is what will happen after all the political hysteria dies down? Can we as a country do more to prepare for another day when one of our communities is thrust into a confrontation of disorder, cruelty and horror? The answer is that there is a way. Whether or not there is a will; that is the question.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

Bad News on Insurance Rates!

2011-01-05T22:24:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR INSURANCE RATES ALONG THE GULF COAST?
NOT REALLY!

So happy New Year! And by the way, get ready for higher property insurance rates along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Louisiana. One would think that if anything, homeowner’s rates would be going down. After all, there has been virtually no hurricane activity in the Gulf for the past four years. And with the national economic slump, home prices have dropped which should translate into lower insurance rates. Not so say the experts. Here are a few reasons why many states, particularly my home state of Louisiana, will see higher rates in the coming year.

Huge claims for the BP Gulf Oil spill will definitely boost insurance rates for the oil industry. No one at this stage can even guess what the final insurance costs will be from both the damage and years of ligation from the Gulf spill. Most of the larger oil companies are self insured, which means they will have to divert funds from operating costs into designated reserve funds. Independent companies, that produce both oil and gas, will see their insurance costs go up. Higher insurance costs mean cut backs, possible layoffs, and higher prices for both oil and gas. And those insurance companies that have taken a big hit over the Gulf spill will have no choice but to raise rates for all lines of insurance, including homeowners.

Citizens Property Insurance Company in Louisiana continues to run amok, and be a factor in higher insurance rates. Louisiana taxpayers are on the hook for well over a billion dollars because of the state created company’s mismanagement. The company is now bragging that it has reduced the number of policies it is selling. But this becomes a catch 22. As Citizens looses customers, the overall risk increases. A new study by the Insurance Information Institute pointed out the Louisiana state run plan still maintains a “precarious financial condition.” Simple translation -- it’s broke, and will be for years. Last month the company asked the Louisiana Insurance Department for an increase that in some south Louisiana parishes will top 24%.

Yes, the number of Citizens policies is dropping, but often in a troubling way. Just last Sunday, The Times Picayune reported that when property owners make claims against Citizens, the company drops the homeowner for future insurance. Wasn’t Citizens created to be the state’s property insurer of last resort? Apparently not. Make a claim against Citizens, and boom…you lose your insurance coverage.

And to rub the salt into homeowners’ wounds even more, Louisiana is holding back some $350 million in rebates that are due homeowners from the Citizens debacle. Now remember that this rebate is owed to all homeowners who buy insurance from any company, not just Citizens. It would be a simple matter for the Insurance Department to send information as to who is entitled to such a rebate to the Department of Revenue, and the state tax collector could then give a tax credit to all homeowners entitled to the rebate. But they way the system works now, few homeowners even know about the rebate, so these hundreds of millions of dollars will go back to the state general fund.

Apparently our politicians know quite well what they are doing.
Much of the blame for rising rates can well be directed at state insurance regulators. Too many insurance companies try to game the system. Florida newspapers are full of recent stories revealing how a number of insurance companies tell Florida regulators they are losing money and need higher rate increases. Yet these same companies, who are publically traded, have made filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that they are making a tidy profit. A number of these same companies that are hoodwinking Florida regulators are operating in Louisiana, pulling quite a bait and switch.

Here’ how they do it. Many companies operating in both Florida and Louisiana create sister companies set up to provide management services, claims adjusting, and other jobs. The same owners are often involved and operate with no employees of their own. It gets a bit complicated here, but companies often pay affiliates based on a percentage of premium, so any rate increase to the insurance company is also an increase in what the affiliates get paid. Expenses are deducted, the company says it’s not making money, and gets a rate increase even though the wholly owned affiliate is making a big profit. Guess who gets stuck with paying higher rates?
And who is checking to be sure that an insurance company is not overcharging? State regulators are supposed to aggressively audit companies on a regular basis. Unfortunately for the small business owner and homeowner, few states aggressively investigate charging practices of national companies that operate in their home state.

Liberty Mutual, which operates in Louisiana, agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement in several states after they were accused of bid rigging and paying kick backs to insurance agents who steered customers to the company. Customers were cheated out of a chance to get the lowest price. Other major companies including Zurich Financial, AG, Ace, CNA, and Pennsylvania Manufacturers all agreed to pay New York $120 million for overcharging customers. These same companies operate in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, but no similar investigations are taking place in this part of the country. So are you being overcharged?

AIG is the largest insurance entity operating in Louisiana, for example, and yet it has never been audited by Louisiana state regulators. Taxpayers had to bail out AIG to the tune of $180 billion, putting many Louisiana policyholders at risk. Insurance is regulated at the state level, so if your home state does not join in an effort to audit national companies, then the policy is that you are on your own.

What is Louisiana doing about continually rising rates? It will spend one million dollars in the coming months to study health insurance premiums. But Louisiana regulators have no control over health rates. Medical insurance rates are not subject to approval by the state department of Insurance. So Louisiana has the highest property insurance rates in the country, the highest auto rates in the country, yet one million dollars will be spent to study health rates over which the state has absolutely no control. Is there any wonder why insurance premiums keep going up?
*****
“It’s not hurricanes that are causing high insurance rates, but bad public policy.”
-Policy Analyst Michelle Minton

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

So Whatcha Doin' New Year's Eve?

2010-12-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

December 31, 2010
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

NEW YEAR THOUGHTS FROM THE BAYOU STATE

Did you make a New Year’s resolution yet? I always do. Hope and foreboding are at the top of my list and have been these past few years. The New Year always brings a promise of uncertainty. More so for most of us in the coming year. I would rather be absorbed with the more mundane things in life. But that won’t happen in the busy lives that most of us lead.

One resolution I make each year is to maintain my curiosity. It does not matter how limited your perspective or the scope of your surroundings, there is (or should be) something to wet your interest and strike your fancy. I discovered early on that there are two kinds of people; those who are curious about the world around them, and those whose shallow attentions are generally limited to those things that pertain to their own personal well-being. I just hope all those I care about fall into the former category.

And a resolution of hope. Successful and fulfilling endeavors for my children, happiness and contentment for family and friends, the fortitude to handle both the highs and lows of daily living with dignity.
I asked each of my children to give me two gifts for this Christmas. First, to make a donation to a charity that will help needy families. And second, to read the unforgettable holocaust novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace laureate who survived the Nazi death camps. I have a Wiesel quote framed on my office desk.
To defeat injustice and misfortune,

if only for one instant, for a single victim,
is to invent a new reason

Just like many of you, our family welcomes in the New Year with “Auld Lang Syne.” Did you know this song is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the New Year? It’s an old Scotch tune, written by my favorite historical poet, Robert Burns in the 1700’s. (I’m Scottish, so there’s a bond here.) “Auld Lang Syne” literally means “old long ago,” or simply, “the good old days.”

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

I can look back over many years on a number of memorable New Year’s Eve celebrations. In recent years, my wife and I have joined a gathering of family and friends in New Orleans at Antoine’s Restaurant in the French Quarter. Our private party normally clusters in the Rex Room for a complete dinner including an array of seafood appetizers (oysters, shrimp and crabmeat) and Baked Alaska for dessert. A number of champagne-filled toasts with an occasional family member dancing on the dinner table. Then off to join the masses for the New Year’s countdown to midnight in Jackson Square. We often finish the evening (or early morning) at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville on Decatur Street.

When my daughters were quite young, we spent a number of New Years at a family camp on Davis Island, in the middle of the Mississippi River some 30 miles below Vicksburg. On several occasions, the only people there were my family and Bishop Charles P. Greco, who was the Catholic Bishop for central and north Louisiana. Bishop Greco had baptized all three of my daughters, and had been a family friend for years. And he did love to deer hunt.

On many a cold and rainy morning, the handful of us at the camp would rise before dawn for the Bishop to conduct a New Year’s Mass. After the service, most of the family went back to bed. I would crank up my old jeep, and take the Bishop out in the worst weather with hopes of putting him on a stand where a large buck would pass. No matter what the weather, he would stay all morning with his shotgun and thermos of coffee. He rarely got a deer, but oh how he loved to be there in the woods. Now I’m not a Catholic, but he treated me as one of his own.
One of the most fulfilling and rewarding projects I took on in my state senate days was to help Bishop Greco fund and build the St. Mary’s Residential and Training School for retarded children in Alexandria. He was, for me, a great mentor and friend who touched the lives of so many. He died in 1987, and I will always think of him on New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Day means lots of football, but I also put on my chef’s apron. I’m well regarded in the kitchen around my household, if I say so myself, for cooking up black-eyed peas as well as cabbage and corn bread. And don’t bet I won’t find the dime in the peas. After all, I’m going to put it there.
I’ll be back next week with my opinions that are cantankerous, opinionated, inflammatory, slanted, and always full of vim and vigor. Sometimes, to some, even a bit fun to read. In the meantime, Happy New Year to you, your friends and all of your family. See you next year.
*****

“May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions. “

Joey Adams

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all is past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

Keep the Politicians out of the way!

2010-12-22T19:51:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 23, 2010
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

GET THE POLITICIANS OUT OF REAPPORTIONMENT

It’s getting close to redistricting time for legislators, and the criticism that decisions are being shaped behind closed doors is already raining down on this politically sensitive process. Lawmakers in my home state of Louisiana have scheduled a special session of its legislature in March to divvy up the various political boundaries including congressional, public service commission, and their own legislative districts. But a question should be asked as to why lawmakers are meeting at all?

By federal law, all election districts throughout the state must be reapportioned every 10 years in order to reflect the latest census figures. And as 2011 approaches, Louisiana elections officials are in a bind, knowing that census figures have just become available, in the same year as the Louisiana gubernatorial election. A process does need to be in place so that quick action can be taken once the new census figures are available -- but should legislators, who have a vested interest in how the redistricting lines are drawn, actually do the drawing?
The problem is one of gerrymandering, where district lines are drawn not to reflect geographical or political balance, but to favor the incumbent or some other partisan choice. When legislators do the redistricting, the norm seems to be that the state ends up with meandering footprints meticulously designed, it would seem, to ensure that no incumbent will face serious opposition regardless of how the political winds are blowing.

Louisiana political columnist John Maginnis summed the problem up well when he wrote: “Think about it this way. In elections, people choose their legislators. In reapportionment, legislators choose their people.”
Gerrymandering, by the way, means to manipulate the electoral boundaries for political gain so as to give undue influence to an incumbent or other favored candidate. The name comes from Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, who in 1812 created winding districts that looked like salamanders to favor incumbents. Thus the convoluted word of gerrymandering.

What most voters want to avoid is the self dealing by legislators where voting districts slash across communities of interest and geography. A blatant example of winding, disjointed gerrymandering is the Louisiana third congressional district. It winds from the Mississippi border south of New Orleans though the southern part of Jefferson Parish, and all the way through south Louisiana up to Lafayette, some 300 miles in length. And it was created with one purpose in mind; to protect the local incumbent.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been leading an effort in his home state to get the elected officials out of the redistricting business. “The politicians have divided a neighborhood,” he says. “They have divided cities, towns and people, and this is what we what want to eliminate. And this is why we need redistricting, because the district lines were drawn to favor incumbents, rather than to favor the voters.”

The question for voters is this: Are they concerned that the legislature is, for all practical purposes, creating their own voters? Is this healthy in the Bayou State, or for that matter, any state? Many think it’s not.
“The self-dealing quality of legislators drawing districts for themselves or for their partisans has basically collapsed the enterprise,” says Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor, who is an expert on redistricting. “There’s an increasing sense of revulsion among voters at this self-dealing. It is somewhat scandalous that there are few competitive elections anymore.”

So what are the alternatives? What are other progressive states doing to transfer the power of redistricting to a system less driven by self-interest? Fourteen states have assigned the task to officials or panels outside the state legislature. Independent redistricting wears the cloak of good-government reform, as long as a consensus can be built on just who will serve on such panels. How do you pick the members? How can such a system be put in place that assures voters the final result will be fair, non-partisan, and keep local interests balanced?

There are a number of bright people in here Louisiana and in every state with solid business and educational backgrounds that are capable of taking on this controversial task. There are several respected demographers in the state, and a number of professors at Louisiana universities well qualified for the job. Retired judges fit the category. as well as representatives of some of the state’s good government groups.

When I was first elected to the Louisiana legislature back in 1971, legislative redistricting had taken place just months before. But the reapportionment plan did not pass federal court muster, and was thrown out just weeks before the primary election date. Ed Steimel was head of the Public Affairs Research Council at the time, and he was appointed by federal judge Frank Polozola to serve as a “special master” to redraw the district lines. Based on Steimel’s rework, the old plan was thrown out and the new court ordered plan put in place. There was general agreement that the Steimel Plan was fair and kept districts more cohesive and less spread out. (It must have been good as I won my senate seat easily in the first primary.)
One idea would be to create in each state a Fair Reapportionment Practices Commission made up from a cross section of various recommendations. Let nominations come from the legislature, the Supreme Court, good government groups, various college boards, and perhaps a key business group or two. Then put all the submissions in a hat, and draw out eleven names to serve as members to begin their work right after the new census data is made available.

The goal for such a commission is simple – put the important issue of redistricting into the hands of fewer vested interests instead of those who in the past have been allowed to define the terms of their own cartel. Simply put, it’s just wrong for legislators to draw these districts and then run in them. There needs to be a better way.
*****
If you are sitting around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the legislature. You’ll get the same kind of feeling and you won’t have to pay.” Former La. Sen. Dudley LeBlanc

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and on websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

Who's Going to Pay the Piper?

2010-12-16T06:56:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

IN WASHINGTON AND BATON ROUGE,
THEY’RE SPENDING LIKE DRUNKIN’ SAILORS!

It’s the holiday season, and we always talk a good bit about watching our weight and curtailing our appetite. We just cannot pass up all the tempting finger food at holiday parties, washed down with too much to drink and desserts galore. Wait till the New Year, right? That’s the message we received from Democrats and Republicans alike in the final days of the 111th congress. Both parties are supporting a second stimulus package that will blow another $1 trillion hole in the budget. Forget the ever growing deficit. It’s just not the right time.

What a well worn phrase. It never seems to be the right time in Washington. After all, we are continually told, the economy is fragile and the recovery is halting. But when is the “right time?” It wasn’t that long ago when the economy was churning. So instead of planning a reduction of the deficit, both parties joined the fray by adding massive entitlement programs, cutting taxes, and entering two wars that cost several trillion dollars. Who cares about the debt? The mantra to follow is Mark Twain’s -- "never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

It should be obvious to Republicans in congress that the president was wrong to believe that the United States could fight a war, cut taxes and increase federal spending all at once. Yet here they are, embracing Keynesian economic arguments they have denounced for years.

When I was on the radio in New Orleans on WRNO a few years back, I enjoyed my regular economic policy arguments with Rob Couhig, a lawyer friend who preceded me on the early morning time slot. Rob would often stay over for my show, and it was a standing joke that he would constantly bring up the theories of Nobel Prize economist Milton Friedman, working Freidman’s thoughts in to any and every conversation.

Friedman's ideas were embraced by President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and lauded by many in the business world. But they were also controversial because of the deep cuts in government spending and the more restricted role they entailed for government in buffering citizens from economic forces. To most Republicans, Friedman’s views represented the “holy grail” of how government spending policy should be implemented.

But we sure have seen an about face by Republicans and conservative Democrats alike. Now, Republicans have joined hands with Democrats in a Kumbaya embrace of the Keynesian arguments that they have denounced for years. As Time economist Fareed Zakaria points out: “John Maynard Keynes argued that when private demand weakens, the government should pick up the slack. He advocated either of two paths: government spending or tax cuts.” Republicans and democrats alike have irresponsibly embraced both options with no one around to pay the bill.

And what’s all this ballyhooing for bipartisanship? Both parties are so proud of themselves for “reaching across the aisle” to find the middle ground. But how does this really get the best result? Does this, “I’ll take a half a loaf if I can’t get the whole loaf” theory really benefit anyone? Voters want solutions that work, and problems to be solved. Not so much “bipartisanship,” but more “post partisanship.”
It’s not easy for a new congressman arriving in Washington not to be seduced by the swarm of vested interests licking their chops to bring the new lawmaker into the partisan fold. Platoons of Wall Street bankers, 13,000 corporate lobbyists, corporate media flacks, Demodon’ts, Republican’ts, war machine promoters, tea party yackety-yackers, and other powerful forces of business-as-usual politics are not so easy to resist. I wrote last week about the throng of Tea Party candidates who ran against the Washington establishment – and that within weeks of their election victory they were jumping at the chance to have these same lobbying interests pony up at one big money Washington fundraiser after another. The early lesson is to stay in lock step with your respective party leadership, and, from the very start, gather up campaign dollars. No time here for post partisanship solutions.

State governments are not immune from the Washington mentality of spending with little regard for cutting back. In my home state of Louisiana, the governor is proposing the selling off of state buildings and other state properties to fill the current year’s budget shortfall. This means doing away with an asset to pay for years worth of debt. Huey Long would be rolling over in his grave on the front lawn of the state capitol, except for the fact that he might be part of the onetime fire sale. Any way you look at it, this is an irresponsible way to pay stare expenses.
Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy, who is a dwindling voice of reason in state government, put it this way, "A junkie can go sell his television and sell the radio and pay for a fix," Kennedy said. "But sooner or later... he's got to face his addiction. I would prefer to have us face our addiction."

Louisiana workers, by the way, will see significantly less help in the new proposal than most of the rest of the country because of the greater number of low wage earners. Any employee making $20,000 or less will not get the benefit of a $400 tax credit, and state employees, who are exempt from payroll deductions will also see a tax increase compared to those who make significantly higher wages.

Americans are borrowing more and spending more. And they are running up a higher personal and national debt. We keep hearing that our national debt is now above $13 trillion dollars. But when you include Baby Boomer demographic demands that include Social Security, union, pension and health-care obligations that all end up drawing on the public purse, the national debt skyrockets.

China lends us cash so that we can give ourselves one more big tax break. So when all is said and done in Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike, find it much easier to give away $ one trillion, than to make any meaningful effort to curtail spending. Congress is merely buying time. Sadly, that’s not what leadership should be about.
*****
Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.
Lao-Tzu

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all is past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

Hypocrisy and Tea Party Candidates

2010-12-08T20:18:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 9, 2010
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

ARE TEA PARTIERS, ESPECIALLY IN LOUISIANA,
SELLING OUT FOR CAMPAIGN MONEY?

It was just a few months ago when we listened to Tea Party candidates across the country declaring that they were going to Washington in order to shake up the political establishment. No more “politics as usual” was the battle cry. But in a matter of a few weeks, these new guys and gals on the block have rapidly embraced the Washington culture of big-money fundraisers. Special interests galore and numerous lobbying groups are falling all over themselves to host fundraisers for these progressive agents of change. And the new so-called reformers are taking the bait and gathering up the big bucks for their campaign war chests. The more we hear about change in Washington, the more things stay the same.

In my home state of Louisiana, newly elected congressman Jeff Landry was the Tea Party’s poster boy for opposing the Washington culture of bowing to special interests. On election night, he told his followers that it’s going to be a new day in Washington, and “we need to get our country back on the right track.” Three weeks later, Landry was in the heart of Washington at the posh Capitol Hill Club on the hunt for Washington campaign dollars. He’s two months away from even being sworn into office, yet Landy is asking for money from K Street lobbyists and other Washington power brokers.

Getting to visit with Landry doesn’t come cheap. The high priced “meet and greet” with the new Louisiana 3rd District Congressman carried a price tag of $5,000 for the “PAC Gold Level; $2,400 for the individual Gold Level; $2,500 for the PAC Silver Level, and $1,000” just to get in the door. All of a sudden, just weeks after getting elected, many new congressman like Landry found that Washington went from a “cesspool” when they were campaigning, to a “hot tube” once elected.
A guest on my weekly nationally syndicated radio show this week will be Gabriela Schneider, who tracks political fund raisers for the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group. She observes that “the lobbyists are all saying, ‘Welcome to Washington -- let me help pay off your debt.’ It’s particularly interesting when so many of this year’s freshman congressmen were running against Washington. But as soon as they get elected, they come to Washington and put out their hand.”

Another guest on the program this Sunday will be Meredith McGehee, who serves as policy director at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington. She told me this week that debt-retirement events and other post-election fundraisers “are God’s gift to special interests,” that allows corporate PACs and lobbyists to curry favor with grateful congressmen. And she says these early fundraisers for newly elected lawmakers are a way to get an inside relationship for some lobbyists who had ignored or even opposed the congressman-elect back during the campaign.“If you were on the wrong side or just AWOL during the election, this is your chance to make it up,” McGehee told me. “It’s a great way to get in good with members of Congress.”

The good news for Landry and other new Republican congressman is that, with the Republicans now in control of the U.S. House, the campaign money spickets have opened and are abundantly flowing. These new GOP Tea Partiers strongly oppose earmarks, unless the earmark is a campaign donation sent in their direction. The bad news is that many states like Louisiana could well become the “wild, wild west” for political fundraising with candidates no longer in control of their own campaigns.

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court declared that corporations and unions can now spend money on political advertising. In the future, corporate boardrooms will soon become political cockpits for plotting the success or demise of candidates like Landry. Better tow the special interest line, or guess who just might come after you?
It’s no secret that in the majority of elections there are two key elements in getting elected to a major political office. The first is money. I’ve forgotten the second. My home state of Louisiana is often the most expensive for campaign spending, per capita, in the nation. Out of state corporate and special interest money regularly flood into the campaign coffers of Louisiana candidates.

Current Governor Bobby Jindal has raised over $10 million for his re election campaign. The New Orleans Times Picayune reported this year that Jindal has more contributions from outside Louisiana than from within. One might wonder why almost 1000 California contributors are so interested in Louisiana issues.

How do Louisiana citizens benefit when large amounts of campaign cash flood into the state to influence Louisiana elections? The same question could be asked about out of state dollars being sent in to any state. Isn’t there a built in conflict of interest as to where an official’s loyalties lie when large, out of state donations are accepted?

There is a simple and constitutional way to keep Louisiana elected officials focused on Louisiana issues. A candidate for public office should only raise campaign funds in the district from where he or she is running. If a candidate is running statewide, he or she should raise all their financial resources within the state. If a candidate is running parish or countywide, the limits should be within the home district. Legislators would be limited to raising campaign dollars from within their respective districts. Simple. Keep fund raising local. Make the candidates focus and be responsive solely to the voters in the boundaries that put them in office.

To be sure, there would be loud protests from lobbyists who hand out the campaign dollars to gain their “special access.” And incumbents, who can work the system from day one in office, would object at having to forgo all the many out of district fund raising opportunities. The voters would be the beneficiaries. But don’t count on any groundswell of change. The recent Supreme Court decision was touted as a catalyst for major campaign changes. But as long as out of state money floods into any state, it’s going to be the same old, same old in both Baton Rouge and Washington. Yes, the more we hear about change, the more it’s just the same old song and dance.
*****

People used to complain that selling a campaign was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least you get the soap. In this campaign, you just get two guys telling you they really value cleanliness.”— David Brooks

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all is past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

I Can See Sarah Palin from my House!

2010-12-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

WHO DOES SARAH PALIN THINK SHE IS --

BOBBY JINDAL?

Sarah Palin brought her indomitable road show to my hometown of Baton Rouge this week with the flair and the chutzpah of a larger than life personality, which she just might be. Security was tight at the local Books-A-Million, and the crowd of over 1000 was given strict instructions of what it could, and could not do. From the way her entourage carried on, on you would have thought she was trying to be like Louisiana’s own, Governor Bobby Jindal.

Jindal, for the benefit of you readers outside Louisiana, has set a standard for inaccessibility that is unmatched in Louisiana history. As is the case in most states, Governors in general are openly available public officials. A few, like the Governor of South Dakota, even answer their own home phones. Stories are legendary in Louisiana of average citizens just showing up at the Governor’s office, or even the Governor’s mansion, asking for help, or even just to pay a visit. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour receives accolades from locals in his home state for being easily available to the press and the general public. Jindal has taken the opposite approach.

When the Louisiana Governor is making a speech, even in the far reaches of the state, the Baton Rouge press corps complains that they are often given only a few hours notice, if any notice at all. The national press gains easy accessibility to Jindal where the locals, at best, get a self-serving quote from a staff member – an approach similar to the one taken by Palin back home in Alaska.

I live just a short walk from Books-A-Million, so I decided to mosey on over to check out the Sarah phenomena. I read Palin’s first book, Going Rogue, which came out last year. Yes, it was an easy read, but you know what? I learned a lot.

First of all, it was no surprise that Sarah didn’t actually write the book. Few celebrities do these days. Writing a book of personal experiences is a long and drawn out labor of love as I know from my own experiences, both as a writer and a publisher. The breezy Palin memoir was written by former Bush speech writer, Lynn Vincent, but there are still enough “you betchas” in the book to give it the lady’s special Alaska flavor.

Wanting to read all the juicy tidbits first, I immediately went to the index to get an idea of what Palin listed as being of particular importance. Surprise! There is no index in Palin’s first book. Nor is there an index in her new book. So there was no choice for me but to wade on through. I did make a few page number notations so I could share with you, my loyal readers, some of the more relevant parts of the book -- key words that should wet your appetite for more.

First, a stop on page 102 is a “must read,” just for the lyrical prose: “As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on.” Faulkner would have been impressed.

During the campaign, there were questions of Palin’s reading habits. Who can forget her non answer when Katie Couric asked her what she liked to read. She cleared up any uncertainty in her new book by listing cookbooks (p. 15), Reader’s Digest (P.15), Sports Illustrated (P. 27), The Wonderful World of Oz (p. 16), and my favorite, Ranger Rick (p. 27).

Then, of course, there is Palin’s vivid description on page 302 of praying in the shower with Rev. Rick Warren. I kid you not. OK, maybe I inferred too much. She was in the shower when the California Evangelist called, so she pulled in the phone to join him in prayer.

And food? She makes no bones about how she loves and cooks Alaskan edibles. Her specialties include halibut tacos (p. 1), reindeer sausage (p. 1) and caribou lasagna (p. 218). She recounts how on the day she got married “we stopped by the Wendy’s drive-thru for our wedding dinner.” (p. 49). Palin also makes it quite clear that “I love meat,” particularly “the seared fatty edges of a well-done steak.” (p. 18). She follows this homily with one of the book’s deeper and more poignant quotes: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat? “ (p. 133) Nuf said.

So after getting a taste of these and other Palin homilies, you can imagine my enthusiasm to join the throng of Sarah diehards marching on my local bookstore. But before getting near the store entrance, I was confronted by a team of guards who spelled out the rules. There was a list of requirements for anyone who wanted Sarah’s autograph on her book.

To be allowed admission to Palin’s book signing, you had to have a wristband. But to get one, you had to show up two days before, on Sunday, and be one of the first 500 in line.

On book signing day, you had to show up one hour in advance, with a copy of Sarah’s book to be allowed to get in line. No photos or video of any kind were allowed, and all cameras and cell phones had to be checked outside the bookstore.

Look, this was a real labor of love to stand there for hours and go though all these procedures just to get a book signed. The process was similar to visiting a relative in prison, or maybe waiting to see Kim Kardashian. But as much as I would have liked to visit with Sarah, the hoops you had to go through were just a little too much for me. So with some reluctance, I walked back home.

Now, like I said, I live just a stone’s through away from the bookstore. So when I got home, I decided to climb up on my roof. It’s flat, with a full view of the shopping center where the bookstore is located. And then it dawned on me. We have a common bond, this lady and I. Remember back during the campaign when she was asked about her foreign policy experience? She said she could see Russia from her house. Well guess what! I can see Sarah from my house! Pretty cool, huh? “You betcha.”

*****

''Only dead fish go with the flow.''

—Sarah Palin, quitting her job as governor, July 3, 2009

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all is past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. The show is televised at http://www.justin.tv/jimbrownusa.

Louisiana Governor and sabbaticals!

2010-11-23T19:54:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 24^th, 2010

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

GET OFF BOBBY JINDAL'S BACK

ABOUT TAKING A SABBATICAL!

So what’s with all the criticism about taking a sabbatical? It’s become a big issue in my home state of Louisiana with educators, legislators, and good government groups debating the value versus the cost of taking a little time off. A sabbatical let’s a person get away from pressures and responsibilities back home at the job they were hired to do. Traveling around the country let’s one do research to better focus on the job at hand when the time comes to get back to the real world of responsibility. So let’s quit all the criticizing. Let Bobby Jindal travel and take his sabbatical in peace.

The cost of sabbaticals for academicians has been an election focus for Jindal, as he crisscrossed the nation during the campaign season in support of Republican candidates. But Republicans running for office in Louisiana were not able to garner the Governor’s endorsement as he took a “hands off” approach and refused to endorse his incumbent U.S, senator as well as a fellow Republican’s bid to be second in command as Lt. Governor. But be a conservative leaning candidate in just about any other state from coast to coast, and Jindal has been glad to lend a hand in any needed fund raising effort. Louisiana incumbents who found themselves in political trouble, like New Orleans congressman Joseph Cao, were left to fend for themselves with no hopes of any help from the popular governor.

When the election season came to an end in early November, many expected Jindal to come home and face his gubernatorial responsibilities. After all, the state is facing a monumental deficit that now approaches $2 billion for the coming fiscal year. Education at all levels is on the chopping block with universities facing major cutbacks requiring wholesale layoffs to make up the shortfall. The state health delivery system is mired in controversy as the medical community raises troubling questions of how indigent healthcare needs will be met and paid for. Time for the Governor to come back home and take control.

But that’s like asking an LSU professor to cut his year abroad short by coming home and, God forbid, actually have to go into a class room and teach. You do have to set your priorities in both the business of teaching and government -- right? Look, when one is on sabbatical, problems at home will just have to take care of themselves. Professors and governors need a little break from the humdrum life of teaching and governing.

Remember the scene in “Animal House when the Delta Tau Chi fraternity is close to being kicked off campus for various shenanigans? The members turn to John Belushi for advice. What does he propose? Toga party! So we have Louisiana facing major financial and governmental service problems that continue to grow with no rational solution in site. And what does the Governor propose? Book tour!

Jindal is traveling the country, hyping his first book, on the talk show circuit. The book is titled “Leadership and Crisis.” Some cynics in his home state are suggesting that the Louisiana Governor drop the “and” in the title of the book. The focus of Jinadal’s book is to pound the inadequacies of the federal government and in particular, the short comings of the Obama administration. Personal comments by the President to Jindal are all put on the record.

In last week’s column, I listed a number of ambitious potential national office seekers from the South. In that mix were Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, Texas Governor Rick Perry, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and newly elected Florida Senator Marco Rubio. They each have harsh words for Washington politics, but they have shied away from direct attacks on the President.

As one Barbour aide told me recently, “Haley ain’t no fool. He’s still getting much more out of Washington than Louisiana is. You don’t personally bite the hand that’s pouring federal dollars into your state unless you’re an announced candidate against Obama.”

Jindal’s sabbatical will apparently last a while longer as national interview opportunities continue to pour in and book sales increase. So who’s running the state? Here’s an idea. While Jindal continues his sabbatical in the weeks to come, Sarah Palin brings her book signing tour to Baton Rouge next Tuesday. She bailed out of being Alaska Governor after only a year and a half in office.

But now Palin is rested, ready and full of vigor and venom. Maybe we could borrow her for a few months until Jindal finishes his sabbatical. Kind of like being a fill-in professor at LSU while the regular professor takes take a much needed leave with pay. She gets to know Louisiana. He can go up and sell books in Alaska. And who knows? It could be Jindal-Palin, or Palin-Jindal in 2012. Ain’t these sabbaticals grand or what?

*****

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book." ...Ronald Reagan

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

JIndal one of Many National Candidates!

2010-11-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 18, 2010

New Orleans, Louisiana

JINDAL ONE OF MANY NATIONAL WANNABES

FROM THE SOUTH

Last year, before the President’s State of the Union address, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was the fair haired boy of the national Republican Party. He had even been considered as a vice presidential candidate on the McCain ticket in 2008, and every pundit had him high up on the list of contenders for 2012. But like the old saying goes, “the south shall rise again.” Potential candidates for a Republican national ticket are emerging from all over the South. And while Jindal has to tend the home state brush fires with a huge budget crisis and a reelection ahead, a number of southern candidates are free to raise money and head for Iowa.

This, of course, presupposes that Jindal has any interest in being on a national ticket. He professes only a desire to be reelected so that he can have the honor and thrill of facing one budget crisis after another.

And who can doubt his word as he has, for months, been crisscrossing America raising campaign funds for a number of candidates in other states, raising money for his own purposes, and now conducting a national book tour, for no other reason than to run for re election in Louisiana. He’s sure convinced me.

Twelve months ago, he was the only candidate being talked about in the south, but what a difference a year makes. It seems that every week a new candidate comes out of the deep southern framework. Two old perennials are trying to keep there hopes alive. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee brought his conservative message that mirrors Jindal’s to Baton Rouge a few weeks ago. He’s raised money and is creating a Louisiana organization for his national campaign.

Former House speaker and Georgia native Newt Gingrich is also on the move with a new book about to come out. He was asked on Meet the Press this past Sunday if he is running. “I think Callista and I'll make a decision probably in February; and probably, if we do run, we'll announce, I suspect, in late March. But we're still months away from that." Coy yes, but he is definitely in the mix.

Then there are all the new guys on the national scene. Florida’s new senator, Marco Rubio, arrived in Washington this week and was received like a rock star. Rubio is Hispanic with a compelling story of his parents emigrating from Cuba. He and Jindal are both the same age. He is being tagged as “the Great Right Hope” and “the Republican Obama.” In the past few weeks alone, Rubio has graced the covers of National Review, The Weekly Standard, Time and The New York Times Magazine. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, an early ally of Rubio, has predicted that he will be president within the next five years, and Rubio’s Wikipedia page already has a “Presidential Election 2012” section.

Jindal is also no longer the only Indian American in the mix. New South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is both female and the second Indian American to became a state’s chief executive. . Like Jindal, Haley’s parents moved to the U.S. back in the 1960s. She is younger than Jindal at 38, had has invited a large contingent of Indians from her home town of Punjab to attend her swearing in ceremony. Haley has also promised to make an early trade mission trip to India, something that Jindal has not yet done.

Jindal is surrounded on both sides of Louisiana by formidable state governors who are giving the 2012 presidential election a close look. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and Texas Governor Rick Perry both are expressing serious interest in making a run, or at least in stirring the pot enough to be considered for the second spot on a Republican ticket.

Barbour is a two term governor who presently serves as chairman of the National Governor’s Association. He is also past chairman of the National Republican Committee, where he raised millions for candidates all across the country. As one Republican insider told me, “Haley has more IOUs than any potential Republican looking at the race. He will be a formidable candidate if he runs.”

And then there is bigger than life Texas Governor, Rick Perry. He cruised to an easy reelection victory early this month, and he’s immediately begun hawking his new book, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington.” The Perry book, like Jindal’s, is all about burnishing his image to ascend the national stage. Not to give Jindal any leeway, Perry is heading toward the national media circuit next week with appearances on Fox News, The Today Show, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Perry is the state’s longest serving governor, and has a major base of funding for a national campaign right out of Texas. He peddled a “Morning in Texas” message in his appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

So it’s obvious that Republican candidates, particularly in the south, are crawling out of the woodwork and are more prolific than at any time in recent memory. And Jindal faces a special problem of governing a state that ranks dead last or near the bottom in numerous national rankings. What does he do? Continue to travel the country and rely on his staff to address a growing budget crisis back home? Or get back to Louisiana, and take a more aggressive hands on approach to what will require major crisis management?

So far, Jindal has not sought out help in addressing Louisiana’s growing budget problems from anyone beyond his staff. The good government groups, outside think tanks and many public officials have been left out of Jindal’s quest to balance the state budget. For example, the state treasurer, who is putting forth a number of cost saving ideas has not talked to the Governor in over 18 months. Jindal would be wise to reconsider his arms length approach and make it a “big tent” effort. When you are the governor, you get and can take all the credit. So why not seek out all the help you can get? For if Jindal fails to adequately face and solve the present budget mess, the blame falls entirely on him.

Timing is often everything in politics. Jindal does not have the luxury of merely making campaign promises like many other of the national party candidates can. In Louisiana, he is going to have to produce, or see his national aspirations fall by the wayside. It’s a huge uphill fight for him. But isn’t that what real leadership is all about?

*****

On Wales losing 28-9 against Australia: 'No leadership, no ideas. Not even enough imagination to thump someone in the line-up when the ref wasn't looking'
JPR Williams

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

What's Happened to our Leadership Today?

2010-11-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 11^th, 2010

New Orleans, Louisiana

THE RIGHT TO BE WRONG IN POLITICS!

Abraham Lincoln was elected President 150 years ago this week. Civil War buffs are looking back to these war years for lessons learned in the current debate over the stagnation of the American political process today. Historians have written over 26, 000 books on this time in history with the premise that there were two Americas-a house divided-back then. Do we find the same two Americas today?

The Tea Party movement has engulfed a Republican Party that now has an agenda of low expectations centered on whatever it takes to beat Obama in 2012. The Democrats, from the President on down, have lost control of the narrative with little vision of passion being offered to the American public. Forty percent of American voters think it’s time for a third party alternative.

Historian Philip Kennicott tells us that “The Civil War taught us, as a nation, our patterns of argument, our impatience with hypocrisy, our sense that every election is an apocalypse. It taught us how to be stupid, how to provoke our enemies, how to resist modernity, how to fight on after logic an argument have failed.”

I’m not all that big a Lincoln fan. Lincoln was the guy who micromanaged a war that took the lives of almost 1,000,000 Americans. On one day alone, September 17, 1862, more American soldiers were killed in the Battle of Antietam than in all other wars fought by the United States in the 19th century put together. How did Lincoln, this supposedly great compromiser, allow such devastation to take place? And many Louisianans can never forgive Lincoln for his failure to stop notorious Union Gen. Benjamin Butler’s decree that any woman in New Orleans and surrounding areas who did not show respect for Union Troops should be considered and treated like a prostitute.

Having expressed this caveat, give Lincoln credit for believing that he had history on his side. His appreciation of history was not free will, but a belief that deterministic forces gave his view of America as an upward spiral of progress. Perhaps he did not read 18^th century philosophers like Kant and Hegel, but he adopted their premise that, as Kennicott suggests, “There is a pattern and a progress to history, rather than endless cycles of growth, violence and decay.” What Hegel viewed as a “grand process of the consciousness of Freedom.”

There is a special passion for those who want to be left alone, and in that effort, to resist progress in the world around us and the right to say “no, thank you” to modernity. Who would oppose the Quaker community in their belief of self subsistence and privacy? Retreating into private conviction is an important part of the American character.

If you listen to my radio shows, you know I use the “stay out of my face” mantra directed to our politicians not to impose their social views on me frequently. Don’t want to wear a motorcycle helmet? Fine, but don’t expect me to pay your health care expenses when your insurance payments run out (if you even bought insurance) because of your stupid decision. Want to smoke? Your choice, just don’t smoke anywhere around me, and don’t expect me to cover any of your medical costs in your final days of agony from your lung cancer. Do your thing, but leave me alone,

Having said all this, we come back to Lincoln’s vision of history for America as being a special place on a historical path that transcends politics, economics and morality. For Lincoln, History for America had a capital H. He felt it imperative that political leaders of his time pass on to the next generation just w hat it means to be an American. The weakness of both national parties is their failure to both grapple with and convey the premise that America cannot survive as the leader of the free world unless there is a “why “to survive.

Republicans and Democrats alike have not articulated what our country’s values are. Just what is it that makes this country exceptional with a system of government unparalleled in human history? I personally believe there is a uniqueness that gives or county a special place in the world today. And I would disagree with President Obama, who said recently that America is exceptional to Americans in the same way Greece is exceptional to Greeks, and Germany is exceptional to Germans.

Lincoln’s vision of American exceptionalism can be found on any coin in your pocket. Three basic concepts. And no other country has these three. In God we Trust, E Pluribus Unum, and Liberty.

In God we trust? America was founded on the notion the God is the source of our values. That’s why the Declaration of Independence says we have inalienable rights. Not man given, not from humanism, not from great thinkers, but these rights have come from God. No God, then rights can be taken away by government. God is a central part of this country’s foundation.

E Pluribus Unum. From the many, one. We don’t care where you come from, or your color, creed, race or religion. If you stand with us to build this country, then you are one of us. From the many, one.

And finally, Liberty. The French also endorse liberty as a basic right. (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). But notice in the French version, freedom is adopted as a part of equality. Equality when you are born, and the right for government to give you equality as you grow old. The difference in America is that we all agree we are born equal, but then we are on our own to make ourselves what we want. Where you end up is your business.

Does anyone really feel that either national party has articulated a vision that makes America special? The passion that drove the Obama election in 2008 has been bottled up and stored away over the past two years. The President has let his narrative slip away, and his party leaders have failed to pick up the mantle and offer any independent hope that our country is on the right path to economic recovery.

Republicans certainly have little to gloat about despite their recent election victories. The Republican leadership has missed the opportunity to offer any realistic diagnosis of where we are as a country and what it will take to reestablish sustainable growth. Doing no more than demanding tax cuts while we are still fighting two wars and mired in a recession seems to be a limp response from a dysfunctional political system.

Voters are hungry for leadership and someone or some party to define the “Why” of being an American. If this mantle of leadership is not seized upon, than as night follows day, disappointment, vexation, and anger are sure to follow.

*****

“America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.” ~Adlai Stevenson

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown