Shopping Bags Full of Money

Afghan president confirms he received tens of millions of dollars from the CIA in suitcases and sacks 'for access to Karzai's inner circle'       

      - Headline, The Daily Mail, 29 April 2013

Each year the Hur Chamber of Commerce confers its coveted “Golden Scissors Award” to that federal department or agency which has done the most to cut through government red tape.  The award is normally not conferred until December, but this year the Chamber judged that one agency has already distinguished itself so markedly that the outcome of the competition is no longer in doubt.

In announcing that the Central Intelligence Agency is the 2013 winner, Robert Spinner, the Chamber’s president, heaped praise upon the agency, calling it “a model for the entire federal government.”

“We in the business community have long decried government bureaucracy,” said Spinner, “but the CIA has shown that it is possible for government to transcend itself, working with the same ‘can do’ attitude that distinguishes private enterprise.  Our hats are off to them.”

The announcement comes less than a month after the New York Times revealed that for the last decade the CIA has handed out tens of millions of dollars to Afghan officials in monthly payments.  Wads of money were delivered in backpacks, suitcases, and plastic shopping bags.  

The cash--variously described as “payments,” “bribes,” and “assistance”--is apparently not subject to the oversight, restrictions, and accountability of official American aid.  

“That’s the beauty of it," said a CIA official.  “Nobody on our end asks what we do with the money they give us, and we don’t even count it when we’re packing the shopping bags.  The money all goes directly to President Karzai and whomever he wants to share it with, and he doesn’t have to account for it to anyone on that end either.”  It was this chain of creative shortcuts that drew special praise from the Chamber.  

Disgruntled Afghans who didn’t get their own shopping bags full of money complain that the payoffs have “fueled corruption and empowered warlords who may be linked to the Taliban as well as politicians with ties to the drug trade.”  

Equally bitter are American officials who didn’t get an opportunity to pass out money bags themselves.  They have gone so far as to charge that “the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan has been the United States.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, however, described the bags of money as “multi-purpose assistance.”  

“It really hasn’t been that much money,” Karzai added.  “Most of it went to providing assistance to the wounded, the sick, and the disabled.”  He was unable to supply documentation for this assertion, of course, since he too has been cutting red tape.

A CIA spokesperson said that the agency stood ready, if asked, to provide training and technical support to the Department of Defense in developing streamlined financial disbursements of the sort for which his agency has just been recognized.  

“You have to remember,” he said, “that the cost of the war in Afghanistan--our CIA cash not included--runs about $60 billion a year.  The military’s expenditures make ours look like a drop in the ocean.”

Despite the popularity of the Chamber of Commerce choice, not everyone has been so positive about revelations of the CIA’s so-called “ghost money” payments.  One elderly county resident, claiming to remember “a time when the Constitution still meant something,” denounced the CIA ‘s actions as “yet another sign that in the Founders’ system of checks and balances, the checks have been replaced by cash.”

Full disclosure:  a former correspondent for the Hur Herald is said to be attempting to organize a march of the unemployed on CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.  Marchers will carry their own empty shopping bags to the headquarters, hoping to have them filled, while singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

© Tony Russell, 2013

Hundreds of Them Living in a Single File Cabinet

George Town: May 20

Authorities in the Cayman Islands reacted swiftly today in the wake of a scathing exposé of housing conditions in this small island territory.  The world’s conscience has been shocked by reports of more than 80,000 corporations crowded into office tenements under the most deplorable conditions.

Teams of housing inspectors scoured the financial district, motivated by a concern for the safety of the teeming hordes of immigrant corporations who have fled here, seeking shelter from taxes at home.   Confronted with this mass migration, the Caymans are struggling to house the refugee firms, which vastly outnumber the islands 55,000 human residents.

One of the inspectors, speaking anonymously because he has not been authorized to discuss his work publicly, described the office tenements as “worse than anything I’ve ever seen.”

“We found 18,857 corporations crowded into a single five-story building,” he recalled with a shudder, his eyes closed as if to shield himself from memories of the wretched scene.  “There were hundreds of them living in a single file cabinet.  Corporations were sleeping in their own feces.  The place was crawling with vermin.”

“We have helped them launder their money,” he said, “but in other ways sanitation is non-existent.” 

A member of the Caymanian Legislative Assembly, speaking yesterday on the floor of the chamber, said  “It’s a scandal, in a land as rich as the Caymans, to have immigrant corporations packed into offices that are nothing more than glorified warehouses.  We can no longer turn a blind eye to their welfare; this report is a wake-up call to our territory’s conscience.  We give these firms glowing titles like ‘corporate subsidiaries,’ but in reality they exist only as a few sheets of notarized paper, stuffed into a manila file folder, going year after year without seeing a single soul.”  

“Overcrowding of the kind that has been discovered is a disaster waiting to happen,” he declared.  He termed it “an affront to humanity” that these legal fictions were subjected to such minimal living conditions, and proposed strict new limits on how many corporations could be filed in a single drawer as well as how many could be housed under one roof.

An earlier proposal would have required each corporate headquarters be allotted at least one square foot for itself, but it drew little support and was withdrawn.  Opponents derided the measure as “regulatory overkill” and “a colossal waste of space,” pointing out that none of the headquarters had personnel, furnishings, equipment, or supplies on the Islands. 

Despite their squalid quarters, the corporations--which include banks, hedge funds, structured financing, investment firms, captive insurers, and offshore law practices--were described as looking “fat and well-fed.”

The CEOs of numerous U.S. firms, already struggling to fix their own nation’s debt by persuading Congress to slash Social Security, Medicare, environmental efforts, and other programs devoted to the common good, have nevertheless vowed to help fix the Caymans’ housing crisis as well.  

Their motive, a spokesperson admitted, is “not entirely altruistic,” as 83 of the top 100 publicly traded U.S. corporations have subsidiaries in the Caymans or other tax havens.  

The Caymans have no annual reporting, accounting, or auditing requirements for companies incorporated there, and the Caymans’ government provides a 30-year guarantee of no corporate taxes, no capital gains taxes, no payroll taxes, no property taxes, and no withholding taxes.

© Tony Russell, 2013

Revisiting ‘Shutting That Whole Thing Down'

Patty and her friend Helen met at Bodo’s for lunch on Thursday, and as it does with many close friends, their conversation strayed to what was eating them.  “Did you see that the president of the California Republican Assembly lost her office last week?” asked Helen.

“No,” said Patty, “I missed that.  But I don’t follow California politics.  Why did they dump her?”

“Apparently they were reacting to the public backlash after she claimed a couple of months ago that few women become pregnant when they’re raped ‘because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized’.”

“Sounds as if that remark was an act of ignorance, because the mind was neutralized,” Patty said.

“It does have that abstract, theoretical, detached-from-real-life quality.  It reminds me of when Paul Ryan referred to rape as a ‘method of conception’ that didn’t change the definition of life.”

“What is it with these politicians and rape?” Patty wondered.  “Are they slow learners?  I thought we’d heard the last of that after all those controversies leading up to the last elections.  It seems to have some weird fascination for them.  The topic’s like a tar-baby!  They just can’t resist grabbing the opportunity to talk about it.”

“Maybe they’ve bought into their own wishful thinking,” Helen said.  “You know, if you want to oppose abortion in all cases, and you also want to avoid dealing with the hard issue of post-rape pregnancy, then claiming that raped women don’t get pregnant is a way out of the trap you put yourself in.  It’s that old-time magic.  If you want a thing to be true, it’s true.  Abracadabra. Suddenly raped women can no longer get pregnant.  Just doesn’t happen.”

“That’s pretty much the same position that senatorial candidate took in the last election... what’s his name?” Patty asked.

“Uh huh.  Todd Aikin in Missouri.  Remember when he said, ‘If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”?

“I still cringe when I think about it.  That ‘legitimate rape’ line certainly didn’t help his cause.”

“No, it sure didn’t.  The first defense of a rapist is to claim that the sex was consensual and the woman ‘wanted it.‘   And when Aikin specified ‘legitimate rape,’ it implied that a lot of women are making bogus claims they’ve been assaulted.  By itself that was enough to really tick women off.  And then they could see the next logical step.  ‘She claims she was raped?  Oh, but she got pregnant?  Well, no way that’s a legitimate rape, then, because, you know, a real rape victim’s body would have just shut that whole thing down’.” 

“You have to wonder when somebody’s language starts to wander into a Never Never Land of vagueness and imprecision, don’t you?  The body has ways?  To shut that whole thing down?  Or something?  Seriously, does that sound like somebody who has the faintest clue what he’s talking about?”

“It doesn’t, but as unfounded and illogical as it is, it seems to have taken root.  You know, once a bat-crazy notion flies through enough belfries, it morphs into conventional wisdom in some quarters.”

© Tony Russell, 2013

I'm as Heartless as the Next Guy

6 o’clock evening news.  Closing business wrap-up; voice of reporter/script reader

Turning now to the business news, an innovative movement is drawing serious interest from corporate governing boards and investors, as more than a dozen of the nation’s Fortune 500 firms have moved to dismiss their CEOs in the past six months.  

In each case, the CEO has been replaced by a vast number of workers hired at the average wage in the company--many of them experienced, highly motivated, and well educated people who have been out of work for as long as two years, vainly searching for employment.  The phenomenon has been dubbed "The Robin Hood Revolution" and "Dump the Chump."

One corporate board member, who asked not to be identified, summed up the results of the movement as "Amazing!”  

Insert: Interview clip from anonymous board member

“We were able to hire an additional 1,795 workers for what we were overpaying one person, our CEO--who wasn’t doing that great a job in the first place.  Almost two thousand additional employees, and it didn’t raise our personnel costs one thin dime!  Those 1,795 are outperforming him on several orders of magnitude.  It’s been a real shot in the arm for the company.  Our costs have stayed level, production is way up, and morale has skyrocketed.  I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before!”

Return to narration by reporter/script reader

The movement is unexpected bad news for CEOs, who have been riding high during the current Great Recession.  At least ten CEOs reportedly took in more than $50 million apiece during 2012, at the same time they were closing plants, slashing workforces, raiding employee pension funds, and dramatically lowering wages for new entry-level employees.  Ford CEO Alan Mulally, whose pay is 2,500 times that of a new Ford plant worker, cashed in on $61 million, and Apple’s Tim Cook $139.7 million.  Both have been described as "nervous" about the recent development.  

Salary is only the tip of the iceberg with modern CEOs, who also commonly receive corporate stock, incentive payments, executive life insurance, financial and tax counseling service, and generous supplemental retirement plans.  One unanticipated problem has arisen with the departure of deposed executives--what to do with their other perks.

Insert: Interview clip from second anonymous board member 

“When we canned our CEO, we were left with the corporate jet and pilot; the company limousine and chauffeur at his disposal; the bodyguards and electronic technicians who provided his personal security; and the luxury apartment maintained for times when he was forced to remain in the city overnight.  We debated whether to make these available on a rotating basis to the 1,795 people who replaced him, but eventually decided the logistics were too cumbersome.  So we sold them off and used the income to supplement the inadequate pensions of the new hires.”

Return to narration by reporter/script reader

In areas impacted by these corporate realignments, the strategy has had the unintended consequences of increasing consumer confidence, reducing unemployment,  boosting retail sales, raising tax revenues, cutting mortgage foreclosures, and slashing crime and homelessness.  

“Not that we cared about any of that," said one corporate insider.  "I’m as heartless as the next guy, but you can’t buy PR like this."  He paused.  "Well, you can," he amended, "but nobody would believe it.”

© Tony Russell, 2013

New Deal, Fair Deal, ... Raw Deal!

If the rich paid taxes, there would be no poor.

If the rich paid taxes, they’d know what money’s for.

It’s not for furs and diamonds, and a great big fancy car.

It’s not to pay our government to let them have a war.

Oh, where is the justice in this great big land of ours?

It’s in the hands of the chosen few, the schemers and the liars.

If they made the rich pay taxes, we’d have no national debt.

The poor could live and work and eat ‘cause there’d be no rich, I bet.

- from Elaine Purkey’s song “If the Rich Paid Taxes”

               *                    *                    *                    *

When Franklin Roosevelt was told that he had been chosen as the Democratic nominee for president in 1932, the country was in the grip of the Great Depression.  He flew to Chicago and told the crowd at Convention Hall, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people!”   

It was a new deal, and he delivered on his promise.  Once elected, Mr. Roosevelt acted swiftly to give people not just a rhetoric of hope, but ambitious new efforts to lift them out of their desperate straits and forge a better life.  Despite Wall Street’s opposition and Herbert Hoover’s attempts to force him to abandon his “socialist” notions (that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), he and his administration swiftly created and set into action a virtual cascade of new agencies and programs.  Together, they provided security, stability, and opportunity to people who had never known such things before. 

The New Deal set out to protect workers like my parents against the common cruelties of the capitalist system, and assured them a more just share of its benefits.  Government acted on common people’s behalf.  It could be argued--and has been--that its reforms actually saved the capitalist system from itself, in a time when its greed and callousness had driven workers to the brink of revolution.  

A program known as Social Security, for the first time in history, enabled us ordinary citizens to enjoy our retirement years rather than be forced to work right up to the waning moments of our lives.  It also provided for those of us who were disabled, and for dependent women and children.  Unemployment insurance kept us from losing our homes and belongings and the life we had painstakingly built for our families when our jobs disappeared.  

We were guaranteed a minimum wage, and the hours we could be forced to work were actually limited.  We were guaranteed the right to form unions.  Child labor was abolished.  Huge public works programs were designed to create jobs and build useful things for our common benefit--highways and bridges and sidewalks and parks and schools.  The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created as a public utility, with the goal of providing electricity to one of the most dismal, depressed regions in the U.S.  It spurred economic development, controlled floods, created recreational areas, enabled navigation on the area’s rivers, provided fertilizer, and taught farmers how to control erosion and increase crop yields.

All of that has been around so long now that we take it for granted, just as casually as we expect water to flow when we turn the handle of a faucet.

That was the New Deal, the greatest leap forward in promoting the general welfare that has ever occurred in this country.  It was carried out in the face of vitriolic opposition from the financial elite and the upper class.  Hatred for Roosevelt and his programs immediately became an article of faith for the wealthy oligarchy, and their efforts to repeal the New Deal have been unrelenting in the eighty years since it was launched.

Mr. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, followed the New Deal by calling for a Fair Deal in his 1949 State of the Union address.  The Fair Deal was to expand on the social programs of the New Deal, adding things such as national health insurance, civil rights legislation (this in 1949!), public housing, an increase in the minimum wage, and federal aid to education.  A good deal of Truman’s program was stalled in Congress by a growing coalition of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats, who denounced them as socialist (there we go again), but the minimum wage was eventually increased--from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour--and a Housing Act was passed, funding 800,000 new homes.

Now, in a sorry sequel to Roosevelt and Truman’s efforts, we’re seeing a historic third “Deal” by yet another Democratic president--but this time it’s a “Raw Deal.”  In a grand stroke of historical irony, it’s a Democratic president who is collaborating with Wall Street and the Republican leadership in a carefully-orchestrated scheme to begin tearing down what his predecessors worked so hard to build.  Instead of fighting to preserve or even expand on Roosevelt and Truman’s vision, Mr. Obama is simply making a gift of victory to their opponents, rewarding the right wing’s eighty-year effort to repeal the New Deal.

Mr. Obama’s Raw Deal was preceded by propaganda about a “grand bargain” that would keep us from going over a “fiscal cliff.”  The truth is, it’s a great betrayal intended to stampede us over nothing more than a political barrier.  

After years of campaigning as the party that would protect Social Security and Medicare from the evil clutches of Republicans, here’s what Democrats are rewarding their supporters with.  The administration’s 2014 budget, unveiled April 10, outlines huge cuts in Social Security and Medicare.  Medicare is to be sliced $400 billion over 10 years, at a time when the poplulation is growing and aging.  A new, stingier way of calculating the cost of living will effectively slash $130 billion from Social Security.  These cuts are in addition to $1.4 trillion in spending cuts already enacted over the past two years.

Mr. Obama also plans to privatize the TVA, selling it off to private utilities which will jack up rates to 9 million people in 7 states (as a public utility, TVA is a nonprofit) and are almost certain to dump worker pensions and other retirement benefits.  He proposes to slash environmental programs such as the EPA, Clean Water and Drinking Water enforcement, and the Superfund program by hundreds of billions of dollars.  He will also use a federal commission as a smokescreen behind which other social programs can be dumped. 

But perhaps those cuts are unavoidable in tough times, you might tell yourself.  Surely the Democrats to whom we’ve given our votes and campaign contributions wouldn’t do this if it weren’t absolutely essential. 

Unfortunately, that’s the furthest thing from the truth.  

There are numerous options to avoid hurting ordinary people.  One would be to simply increase the figure at which Social Security contributions are capped.  Another would be to deal with the ruinous costs of our for-profit health care and health insurance system.  And a third would be to restore some fairness to a tax system that the rich and powerful have unrelentingly gamed to their advantage over the past thirty years.  

Some of the most obvious ways the system has been rigged to fatten the wealthy include: 

• Special subsidies in the form of tax credits, exclusions, capital gains, and other loopholes which benefit the richest among us to the tune of $1.25 trillion dollars. 
• Underpayment of taxes, generally from those in higher brackets, amounting to over $450 billion per year.  
• At least a quarter of a trillion dollars squirreled away by rich Americans, untaxed, in offshore tax havens.  
• A sharp decrease in corporate taxes from 22.5% twenty years ago to 10% now, even though corporate profits are skyrocketing.  

In short, it’s not at all difficult to identify several trillion dollars being siphoned out of the system to further fatten the gluttonous among us.  And rather than disturb them as they feed happily at the public trough, the Raw Deal chooses to take more from those who have much less.  

In presenting his budget, Mr. Obama portrayed himself as a leader “willing to make tough choices,” glossing over the fact that his choices are only “tough” on the poor and middle class, not on the privileged class to which he belongs, and which is doing extremely well, thank you.  Instead of protecting people from an increasingly predatory economy, he serves as the predators’ enabler.  This is a man who campaigned as a champion of “Main Street, not Wall Street,” and on vague themes of “hope” and “change.”  People who voted for him and are paying attention must rightly feel betrayed as they see the actual changes he and his party are delivering.

© Tony Russell, 2013

They Used to Be Convictions

The internet world was rocked today by the announcement that Of Principalities and Powers (known to its legion of fans as “OPP,” or sometimes just “Oh, Pee”) has opened its pages to corporate advertising and, in a clearly-related development, is involved in negotiations to sell the blogsite.  This follows close on the heels of the news, late last Sunday, that Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington is selling her liberal website to media giant AOL for $315 million.

At a hastily-called news conference, Of Principalities and Powers founder C. A. Russell said the blog was branching out into celebrity coverage and would immediately make its pages available for advertising at competitive rates to “interested corporate entities.”

When asked what prompted the moves, Russell said that it was “a timely response to opportunities to enhance our revenue stream and position ourselves more favorably for corporate takeover in the upscale market.”  When asked to clarify his statement, he paused and then said, “I’m selling out.”

Queried about what corporate advertisers the blog was targeting. Russell specified “the financial sector, energy conglomerates, defense contractors, and major pharmaceuticals.”  After reporters pointed out that those were the corporate areas often singled out for criticism on the blog’s pages, he responded, “Precisely.  That’s why it makes sense for them to book advertising and then exercise their financial clout to shape blog content.”  

“Does that mean that you’re actually inviting those corporations to gut your columns in exchange for cash?” asked one stunned reporter.

Russell failed to answer the question directly, saying instead, “I think I’ve already spelled out my basic stance.  This has been just another in a long lifetime of hard winters, and my wife and I have never been to St. Thomas, Anguilla, St. Barths, St. Vincent, Cancun, or even Hawaii.  The house we’re renting is being sold, I haven’t owned a new vehicle since 1972, we currently have nowhere near enough income to qualify for tax breaks, and Congress is poised to cut Social Security and medical benefits as wars eat up half the federal budget.  Add to all that the sale of The Huffington Post, and clearly the time was right to rethink my positions.”

“By ‘positions’ do you mean ‘convictions’?”

“They used to be ‘convictions’: now they’re ‘positions’.”

“What makes you think Of Principalities and Powers will attract the big-bucks advertisers you mentioned?”

“Our financial advisers tell us that corporations are always on the lookout for areas with an exceptionally pure water supply.  Once identified, those areas become prime targets for commercial and residential development, since pure water is an increasingly rare commodity.  Our blog holds a comparable position in the media landscape.  It’s virtually undiscovered, and in laboratory tests our columns consistently rate pro-peace, pro-nonviolence, pro-democracy, pro-human rights, pro-civil liberties, pro-environment, pro-poor and middle class, pro-tolerance, pro-arts, pro-education, and pro-activism.  We’re 99.44% pure.  That should make us extremely attractive as an area for commercial growth.”

“But my understanding is that the level of pollution in a water supply has a direct correlation with the level of development,” commented one reporter.

“Yes?”

“Well, I guess I’m asking if you expect the analogy to play out that way.  Areas have pure water, get developed, and then have polluted water.  Your blog is pure, it gets developed, and ...?”

“In both cases, think of the new revenues.”

“I’m not sure that addresses my question....”

“You need to understand our corporate vision.  We feel that with our new partner--whomever that may be--we can embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

“Consumers?  Haven’t you always thought of your readers as citizens first?”

“We’re rethinking our business model.  We see ourselves now as serving advertisers rather than the public.”

“Do you really think the culture needs another media outlet tarted up with celebrity coverage?” asked one reporter hesitantly.  “I mean, won’t it just distract people from the issues that matter to keep plastering pictures and stories of Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian, and Christina Aguilera all over your pages?”

“I see celebrity coverage simply as a way to attract more viewers to the blog.  Like spooning sugar on a grapefruit.”

“How far have you gotten in your efforts to sell your blog?”

“I can’t divulge many specifics at this time.  I can tell you that we’re engaged in extremely delicate negotiations with a number of serious candidates, including Fox News, AOL, Disney, and Viacom.”

“And the price tag?”

“Our starting point is the Huffington Post deal.  They draw about 25 million visitors to their site per month, and sold for $315 million.  We’re looking at prorating our price based on our number of monthly viewers.”

Hastily scribbling notes, one reporter asked, “So can you give us a ballpark figure for your selling price?”

“Somewhere in excess of $2,500.”

The reporter looked up.  “I don’t think that will get you a week on St. Barths.”

“We’re willing to settle for Tampa.”

© Tony Russell, 2011

An Equal-Opportunity Peace Advocate

Writer’s note:   This column is a sequel to the November 8, 2010, column “War?  What War?” in which Uncle Whitt chastised Ace for his foolish claim that we were a nation at war.  Unfortunately for Ace, he fares no better this time around in an encounter with another neighbor.

*                     *                          *

I found a parking place with twenty minutes still left on it at the side of the courthouse, and hurried out front to catch the peace protestors.  With a little luck, I could finish up and get back to the car before it was time to put another dime in the meter.

Three people were standing on the sidewalk, holding hand-lettered signs and waving when a car happened to drive by.  I didn’t recognize a couple who appeared to be in their seventies, but my heart sank at the sight of the third one, who was all too familiar.  Ms. Carrie Higgins, my former third grade teacher, now a feisty octogenarian.  “How’re you doin’, Ms. Higgins?” I said.  “What’s your sign say?”

She turned, saw who I was, and held her sign up so I could see it.  “You can read it yourself by now, I expect,” she said.  

“Give Peace a Chance,” I read, and nodded.  “We got a news tip that you folks had some pretty controversial messages,” I told her.  “Guess it was accurate.  That’s certainly provocative.  What has the public reaction been to your sign?”

She considered.  “We’ve been coming out here almost every Thursday for nine years, Ace, so your tip is a trifle tardy.  But to answer your question, a lot of people wave at me as if I’m a distant cousin by this time.  Other people give me a thumbs-up or make the peace sign, which is encouraging.”

“How about negative reactions?”

She laughed.  “We get some of those too.  Once in a while somebody scowls and jerks his thumb down.  One gentleman raises his middle digit each week as he drives by.  Some people crank their windows down and yell for us to move to Iraq if we don’t like it here.”

“Why did you laugh?” I asked.

“I laugh because their reactions baffle me,” she said. “Really, now.  ‘Give Peace a Chance’?  How can that be objectionable?  Can you explain that to me?”  

“Well, it’s political, isn’t it?” I said.  

“I’ve often thought about what Colman McCarthy said about politics,” she answered.  “He said the true definition was ‘Who decides where the money goes.’  And in that sense, it’s certainly political.  Do these bitter, angry people really endorse killing women and children, destroying cities, diverting a trillion dollars away from health and education and employment and research and what all, and bringing home horribly wounded and mentally scarred sons and daughters as their return on their tax dollars?”

“I meant political parties,” I said.  “They’re probably Republicans, and you’re criticizing George Bush’s war.”

Ms. Higgins gave a ladylike sniff.  “The last time I looked, Ace, Barack Obama, a Democrat, was president.  Mr. Obama has increased the military budget every year he has been in office and has escalated the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  We are as opposed to his policies as we were to Mr. Bush’s.  I’m an equal-opportunity peace advocate.”

I glanced at my watch.  I still had about four minutes.

“Maybe they see your protest as unpatriotic,” I offered.  “If our country is at war, you should support the war.”

She gave me an appraising look, and I squirmed.  For a minute I was back in an old high-ceilinged classroom with an oiled wooden floor.  “If the war is unjust, am I obliged to back it anyway?” she asked.

“Uh, it’s our country  ....,” I began, and stopped.

“If the war is bankrupting the nation and robbing our children and grandchildren of their future, am I obliged to support it?”

“Well, Ms. Higgins ....”

“If the war is alienating millions of people overseas, turning them into our enemies, and making us less safe in the long run, am I obliged to support it?”

“Well, you know, uh ....”

“If I surrender any moral sense I have, and any critical thinking ability I have, I’m simply a slave of the state, not a free and responsible citizen,” she declared with some passion.  “Are you seriously suggesting that loving your country enough to try to persuade it to halt a disastrous war is unpatriotic?”

Actually I was, I guess.  But I stole a glance at my watch and breathed a quick sigh of relief.  “I wish I had more time to talk with you,” I told her, “but I think I’ve got enough for a story.  If I don’t leave now, I’m liable to get a parking ticket.”

“That’s a convenient excuse, Ace,” she sighed.  “I’m afraid you haven’t changed a great deal in forty years.  When are you going to grow up?”  And she pivoted and resumed waving her sign at cars as they drove past.

© Tony Russell, 2011

Family Ties

But you're so far away

Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?

It would be so fine to see your face at my door,

And it doesn't help to know you're so far away

 -   “So Far Away,” lyrics by Carole King

* *                          *

I had our Great Dane out for her morning constitutional, and one of the new neighbors stopped to admire her.    

“She’s a beautiful dog,” he said, as she tried to climb up into what would have been his lap if he were sitting.  “My name’s Rick, by the way.”

“Chuck,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.  “We live around the corner in the yellow house.  She’s just a pup.  She has a lot of filling out to do yet.  Our son in Tennessee brought her up for us the last time he came up for a visit.”

“Tennessee?” he said.  “My dad was from Tennessee, near Sparta.”

“No kidding?” I said.  “My dad was born in Kentucky, but he and my mother lived in Tennessee for a few years before they moved to West Virginia.”

“So you’re from West Virginia originally?” he asked.  

“Yep,” I said.  “The state calls itself America’s Switzerland sometimes, but that’s a joke.  Switzerland is rich, educated, and secure.  They would no more strip mine their mountains than they’d desecrate a painting by Paul Klee or drive a bulldozer through their front door.  We're actually the Ireland of America.  Just like the Irish, we labored for the benefit of absentee landlords, were driven out of our homes to find food and work, and scattered all over the world, taking our music and our accents with us.”

“So where did you scatter to?” he wanted to know.

“Oh, I worked for a few years in North Carolina, and then got a job at an assembly plant in Ohio.”

“Is that right?” he said.  “Where in Ohio?  I was stationed there after I got back from Vietnam.”

“Near Cincinnati,” I said.  “I worked in a GM assembly plant.  It’s shut down now.”

“No kidding!” he said.  “I was stationed at Wright-Patterson outside Dayton.  I was two years there before I got transferred to Edwards AFB in California.”

“Our youngest daughter lived in San Francisco for a few years,” I told him.  “Then her husband’s company relocated.  They were in Seattle and then Chicago.  They’re up in Portland, Oregon, now.”

“Sounds as if your kids are pretty scattered,” he commented.

“Well, the oldest boy is in Alabama.  He met a girl from there when they were in school together in Georgia.  The next one is the one in Tennessee.  He got a job there after he finished school in Kansas.  And then there’s the daughter in Oregon, and another one in Minnesota.  She wants us to move up there, but I told her I have a tough enough time with the winters here in Virginia.”

“Must be hard seeing your grandkids, if you have any,” he said.

“We’ve got five.  We’d like to see a lot more of them,” I admitted.  “The oldest just graduated from MIT.  He took a job with a company in Connecticut--something to do with extreme low temperature physics.  How about you?  You have any kids?”

“Just two, both girls,” he said.  “The younger one’s a teacher up in Alaska.  She went to school in New Jersey and then graduate school in New York City.  The older one is living in New Mexico.  She was working in Louisiana, but got driven out by Katrina.  She moved to Nevada but didn’t care for it.  She says she likes it in New Mexico, though.”

“I drove through it once when my sister and her husband were living in California,” I said.  “But they’re in Colorado now.”

“Colorado’s a beautiful place,” he said, “but it’s getting overrun.  It’s like Arizona; too popular for its own good.”

“I guess so,” I said.  “My uncle and his wife moved to Phoenix years ago because of his asthma.  But I hear the air is as bad there now as it is anywhere else.  Maybe worse.”

“I don’t know about that,” he laughed.  “My brother lives in Pittsburgh, and the air there will peel the paint right off of your car.  Imagine what is does to your lungs.”

“I’ve got a niece in Houston,” I said.  “She says the pollution there is a nightmare.”  

“One of my cousins lives in Dallas,” he told me.  “She was an Army nurse for twenty years and out.  Lived in nine different countries.  I haven’t seen her in--gosh, must be thirty years now.”

“Are you originally from Texas?” I asked.

“No,” he laughed, shaking his head.  “I was born in Mississippi, but we moved to Missouri when I was just a kid.  My father’s brother went to work in the oil fields in Oklahoma, and one of his daughters married a petroleum engineer.  That’s how they wound up in Texas.  But they’ve been all over the world.”

“So how did you end up here in Virginia?” I asked.

“Oh, after I got out of the Air Force I took a job with the government in DC.  We lived in Maryland and commuted for years.  But when I retired, we decided to move some place walkable, where traffic doesn’t dominate your life.”

“Maryland,” I said.  “Where in Maryland?”

“Bethesda,” he said.

“My wife’s brother lived in Silver Spring for years,” I said.  “He’s from Iowa, but he lost his job there when the company he was working for outsourced his job to India.  He and his wife moved to Maine a few years ago when they retired.”

“Is that right?” he said.  “Small world, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t feel so small when you’re missing someone,” I said.  “We’re a nation of nomads.  Freedom’s just another word for somewhere else to move.”

“‘Me and Bobby McGee,’” he laughed.  “I loved that song, back when I was living in....  Darn, where was I living then?”   

© Tony Russell, 2011

Four Thousand Upward

A southwest Virginia school district [Giles County] is reposting copies of the Bible's Ten Commandments in all county schools, despite concerns that doing so is unconstitutional. ....  The decision came even though the board's attorney had previously advised that such Christian displays represent unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. - ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON, Associated Press

* * * *

LA School Board Approves Posting of Texts from Upanishad, Qur'an, Tao Te Ching, The Analects of Confucius,  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Book of Mormon, The Divine Principle, Zend Avesta, Kojiki, Dianetics, and Zhuan Falun

LOS ANGELES, Ca (MP) - This Californian school district is posting texts from the Upanishad, the Qur’an, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius,  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Book of Mormon, The Divine Principle, Zend Avesta, Kojiki, Dianetics, and Zhuan Falun in all classrooms in the district, despite objections that doing so violates the Constitution.

The seven-member Los Angeles School Board voted unanimously to post the framed three-foot-wide-by-four-foot-tall texts after parents and local ministers, rabbis, gurus, monks, healers, teachers, elders, and other religious leaders demanded space equal to that of Christians, who recently pressured the board to hang copies of the Ten Commandments in the district’s classrooms.  

Monday night’s board meeting was packed with supporters from the various faiths, who sat in separate sections to avoid contamination and reduce the chance of violence.  Speakers from each faith rose to shout over the objections of the others, telling the board that the schools had a moral obligation to reinforce God’s/Allah’s/the Supreme Being’s/Vishna’s/the Tao’s/Mohammed’s/Confucius’s/et cetera’s teachings.  

“After hearing from these members of our community,” said perspiring Superintendent Donald Madison, “we just felt this was the right thing to do.  It will take us a while to get copies of all the texts printed and framed, but we think we can have them in the classrooms by mid-April, at the latest.”  

Madison noted that other faith traditions, not represented at last night’s meeting, might also demand to be included.  Preliminary research by a reporter for the Herald indicates that while the precise number of religions in the world cannot be determined, the best estimates range from four thousand upward.

Harried teachers said after the meeting that they were concerned about whether there was space to incorporate that much moral obligation in their classrooms.  “Right now we’re looking at a hundred and ninety eight square feet of wall space devoted to religious texts, with more likely” worried Aakifah Ali, who teaches geography at Jefferson Middle School.  “I don’t have space now for everything I’d like to display.  I’ll have to take down my maps, posters, material on current events, and student papers.  Even then I’m not sure all the religious texts will fit.  Maybe they can mount them on the ceiling,” she joked.

One segment of the audience which left dissatisfied was a sizable contingent of secularists/non-religious parents.  Daniel Brinkman, spokesperson for the group, had risen to point out that one in six Americans have opted out of organized religion and consider themselves non-believers.  He asked about having one-sixth of available space allotted for his group to post their absence of belief, but was rebuffed by Madison, who said that the blank, transparent windows in the room already fulfilled that function.

Christians, who had earlier succeeded in having the Ten Commandments posted in classrooms, were furious at news that they would have to share wall space with groups they regard as heathens.  “It’s blasphemy, pure and simple,” asserted Rev. Randall Snodgrass, a leader of the group who had previously won the right to insert their religious text into the classroom.  

When reminded that he had earlier argued that the Ten Commandments belonged there because of their historical rather their religious value, and that each of the subsequent groups had argued for inclusion of their texts on the same grounds, he had to be restrained by security personnel.  “That was just a legal maneuver cooked up by our lawyers to get our faith in the schools where it belongs.  This farce tonight is all the work of the ACLU, the ADA, the Democratic Party, and other hate groups!” he yelled as he was being escorted out by half a dozen guards.

Constitutional scholars, almost unanimously, expect the courts to reverse the board’s actions.  Taxpayers will foot the bill for all legal expenses incurred.

© Tony Russell, 2011