bustardblog

Another Failure: Haiti

It was a really long article, but still really worthwhile. Please read it.

Yesterday's NY Times finally had a front page story on the disintegration of Haiti.  In the months that I've been blogging, I have posted a few times about the damage we have done to that fragile nation.

The piece is overly kind to Bush, but the harm done to Haiti by this ever arrogant and incompetent administration is still obvious.  Once again Bush's corrupt and inept appointees  have added to a catastrophe.

Haiti was barely functioning under the governance of it's democratically elected President.  But he was not sufficiently pro Bush or America, and so we participated in a coup d'etat that removed him from office. Chaos has been the entirely predictable result.

Bush's confidence in his own superiority, and his adamant refusal to walk on any path upon which Clinton had walked, has now hurt the Haitians, just as it hurt us on 9/11.

Tierney: Callous

Our nation marked the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster in various ways. Seven astronauts died that day.  In total NASA has lost 17 astronauts over the years.  According to Wikepedia there have been 153 astronauts in the space program, so the number of lost is over 10%.

John Tierney thinks this number insufficient.  He marked the 20th anniversary by writing a piece in which he faults Congress for the death rate in the Space Program. He would like it to be higher. He wants space research to be privately funded rather than government supported " because a private adventurer can take the kind of risks that Congress would never allow NASA to take."

Tierney reserves his admiration for the entrepreneurial explorer like Shackleton- this, despite the death rate in his exploratory mission to the South Pole.

It seems an odd way to honor our brave Astronauts.

John "Cato" Tierney

On the 25th I wrote a post on that day's Op-Ed piece by John Tierney. It wasn't the first time that I complained of his shoddy work.

I considered his report on the unfair conviction of a Doctor to be unfair. While I conceded that the Doc might in fact be innocent, I thought that Tierney's coverage was only emphatic in his condemnation of the FEA agent involved and not the prosecutor. (an 'up and coming' Republican) I further thought it deceptive to concentrate on the witness who seemed to have committed perjury, and not the other witnesses nor the documentary evidence presented. I pointed out that there were plenty of greater injustices in our system, and expressed my disappointment that he chose such an odd one to promote.

Radley Balko of The Cato Institute was upset with me. His comment said that I was me an "hysterical ideologue." This surprised me because I also criticized Tierney for not giving credit to Balko, who had already covered the issue. In fact, I think Mr. Balko's reaction would have to be the one described as hysterical, and here's why.

He states that my "characterization of Tierney is laughable. He's hardly a Republican shill." I  in no way implied that he was. I did complain that he seemed to concentrate on the D.E.A. agents , rather than the prosecutor. I have this aversion to those who blame the one obeying orders rather than the one giving orders. It's the prosecutor who cut the deal to grant leniency to the witness Tierney says is a liar, not the agents. I did accuse Tierney of following in the footsteps of Safire. But in my opinion Safire's intellectual dishonesty is the more salient characteristic that Tierney imitates, not his less than doctrinaire support of Republicans.

Balko describes the war on drugs as contemptible. I completely agree. He is angered that I don't embrace a columnist that speaks out against it.  True, since Tierney has been writing for the Op-Ed page he has written on the war on drugs. Once. (Aug 9/2005) Out of 84 articles, one was about the war on drugs.  He has written much more often on  Balko's specialty: the "War on Doctors," and that's why Balko was so harsh about my criticism of an article covering his signature issue. But I also agree with them that any medical treatment that eases pain should be as widely available as possible.

So the question becomes one of why would Balko get so hysterical over my post? Because I suggest that what he paints as a grave injustice of  the War on Doctors, is not a big deal. Balko needs to fan the flames of indignation over his pet issue, because it is not an issue at all.

While the War on Drugs has tens of thousands of casualties, the War on Doctors doesn't even have tens. There is no war.  One of Balko's staunchest allies in denouncing this non-existent war is John Tierney. "Handcuffs And Stethoscopes" 7/23/05 and  "Punishing Pain" of 7/19/05 are two of his pieces. In the first he describes how the D.E.A., having failed to have much of an impact on  illegal drug use by imprisoning hundreds of thousands of crack dealers and drug gangs, "shifted their focus to doctors and the new scourge of OxyContin and similar painkillers." 

Tierney explains the shift in focus by saying: " As quarry for D.E.A. agents, doctors offered several advantages over crack dealers. They were not armed. They were listed in the phone book. They kept office hours and records of their transactions. And unlike the typical crack dealer living with his mother, they had valuable assets that could be seized and shared by federal, state and local agencies..."

On April 5, Balko had also explained it: ". It's easy to see why. Doctors keep records. They pay taxes. They take notes. They're an easier target than common drug dealers. Doctors also often aren't aware of asset forfeiture laws. A physician's considerable assets can be divided up among the various law enforcement agencies investigating him before he's ever brought to trial.

Surprisingly, Tierney in his piece on "Handcuffs" does not tell us how many doctors have been handcuffed in this war. Nor how many have been arrested, prosecuted or imprisoned.

Another of Balko's allies in his crusade, is the Pain Relief Network.  It is vigilant in following the "war." In 2005 it issued 78 News Bulletins.  Many of them concerned Pain Doctors and their legal problems.  But they were virtually all old news, covering legal machinations of doctors who had been arrested in previous years. The same cases are referred to over and over again.   This watchdog in the war issued bulletins covering fewer than five new arrests in 2005.

In a piece for The Cato Institute, Balko gives us a number. Sort of. "The high-profile arrests and prosecutions of physicians (up to 200 per year by one estimate) have caused many doctors to under prescribe." That's it. That's the War. Who made the estimate? And don't most prosecutions involved people who were arrested?  So the 200 per year might  really be only 100 different doctors? And some of them are undoubtedly guilty.

I am sure the Balko/Tierney team has done some good. It sounds like the case of Richard Paey is  truly a tragedy and a travesty.

Some libertarians, like Tierney and Balko, seem to specialize in phony crises. The War on Doctors is probably even less real than the War on Christmas. But these guys gain their fame and fortune by their supposed independence and their willingness to take on entrenched foes.  They are about  as independent and as willing to fight as a pair of tag-team wrestlers in the W.W.F. If they really care about the war on drugs; then they should fight against that war. Not against a myth. They should be supporting some of the half-million, mostly poor and powerless, in jail for drug offenses. Not the prosperous physicians. Unfortunately, it's a lot more profitable to protect those with power than those without.

But even more disheartening is their claim that the "high profile" prosecution of doctors means worse care for pain patients.  If true, that would be terrible. But the ones who make this bogus war high-profile are Tierney/Balko.  I am happy to report that there was over 2 Billion dollars worth of OxyContin sold in the last 12 months.

P.S. I'll post additional italicized comparisons Monday.

Googling Michelle

I have to assume that my abilities to search the net are close to zero.  I did notice that the Queen of Bile, Ms. Malkin, was having great fun denouncing Google for it's bowing to pressure from China. It does seem to deserve our condemnation.

What I could not find was her fury at Rupert Murdoch for his even more serious capitulation to the will of China. Former Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patton, had a contract with the publisher Harper Collins for a memoir about his experience there.  In it, he wrote quite critically of the Chinese government. Murdoch, owner of Harper Collins, was in the process of trying to get a license from the Chinese government for his satellite network. The book was pulled.  Nary a peep from the ever outraged Michelle.

I also couldn't find her condemnation of the Bush administration's attempts at stifling Google.  Goggle has been subpoenaed to supply hundreds and hundreds of thousand of bits of information about what its customers are watching. It is resisting, but somehow I can't find Michelle's support.

I'm sure that Michelle has been way more honest and consistent than my limited search skills can determine. For that I apologize.

Tehran & D.C:Standing Together

Despite all the sword rattling he's doing these days, Bush sees eye to eye with Iran on some issues. On Monday we supported their initiative to deny two gay and lesbian groups the right to consultative status at the U.N.

Such status would allow the organizations to have an official right to present their point of view at the institution. There are currently about 3,000 groups with this ability. Normally, groups applying to obtain the right are at least able to plead why they believe they should get it. But  Bush and Ahmadinejad teamed up to prevent that from happening.

To be fair, it is not just the U.S. who supports Iran on this issue. We are joined in our noble efforts by the likes of Sudan,  Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Pakistan and Russia.  Cuba, China and Senegal round out the club.

Bush signs on with these other protectors of human rights, these freedom-loving democracies - because he's the "values" President. A compassionate conservative.

(H/T Human Rights Watch)

Troop Support

Atrios's pick for Wanker of the Day early this morning (1/25 12;38 AM), certainly penned a moronic op-ed in yesterdays L.A. Times. In it Stein flippantly declares that he does not support the troops, essentially because they are fighting in an immoral war.  He believes that when they signed up they should have expected to fight in an immoral war because a soldier might "get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam." His arguments would lead one to the conclusion that no moral person can serve in our military.  After all, the massacre of American Indians by our Calvary was immoral, so no decent American should have served in WWII.

The predictable pile-on from the right followed as the day the night.

Michelle managed to get out a few posts attacking the piece. The latest one was about Twenty-Five ways to ignore Joel Stein and Support the Troops'. One of her recommendations is that we knit hats for the troops in Iraq. I actually did not even know they could wear any hat that they wanted. I had assumed that they were in uniform.

Outside the Beltway joins the scrum. The Jawa Report argues that nations, not people, fight wars, and so to be against this war is to be against America, and to be unpatriotic. A frequent theme of the right,which is that Stein's piece proves how much the left hates the troops, can be found at Ace of Spades who says "At least he's honest... They're anti-American military first and foremost."

Wizbang is actually sort of reasonable. They say that the success of the war is worthy of debate, but not the sacrifice of the troops. But this was exceptionable - the vast majority of wingnuttia were frothing.

Although Stein's Op-Ed piece was sure to elicit such a response, I am not sure that we are wise to so quickly give the right a pass.  After all, Stein wished no harm to the troops. He wanted them brought home quickly and safely; that  "we give our soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health." He just did not want to give them a parade.

Michelle is all for the parade, and the knit hats, but is firmly against "hospitals, pensions" and help with mental health.

• The budget that Bush proposed  for 2004 included a 28.8 billion dollar reduction in money for vets.
• Because of Bush II's budgets, there is a growing backlog of claims by Vets of  Bush I's Gulf War
• Democrats have been fighting Republicans over access to TRICARE health insurance for serving reservists.
• Neither those riding in Humvees or the soldiers on the ground in Iraq have been given the opportunity to wear sufficient body armor.  The right is fond of quoting individual soldiers who want no additional armor. I've yet to see a poll from patients in Walter Reed.

There are many more statistics available, but it gets a bit tedious. If you need more evidence, I'd be happy to post it or e-mail you.  Larry Scott of Military.com has written of the "welfarizing" of the V.A., in which the right, after hosting the parade, treats veterans as 'welfare recipients' eager for their 'entitlement.' While Michelle Malkin is all for knitting hats for the Armed Forces is Iraq - she never talks about fighting for their pension and medical benefits, never argues for decent V.A. hospitals, and she never even complains that our soldiers might be  drinking contaminated water courtesy of Halliburton.

I am not trying to defend the juvenile Op-Ed of Joel Klein. But I am wondering if the left's reaction to his piece doesn't explain in part how a storyline gets established in the media. Peter Daou wrote a brilliant piece on this issue.  But in this case the anti-American, soft on security, leftist Klein says 'give them care, just don't give them a parade' while Malkin says "do knit ,don't build hospitals, and do give them a parade.' Somehow she gains the moral upper hand.

John Tierney, Again

At the start of 2005, there were over two million Americans in U.S. prisons.  Over 3,000 were sitting on death row, awaiting execution. Close to half a million were in jail because of offenses involving drugs.

So in today's N.Y. Times, John Tierney deals with issues of injustice in our country.  He takes up the cause of Bernard Rottschaefer, M.D., currently pursuing an appeal to his sentence of six and a half years. The upper middle class, white male's legal team seem guardedly optimistic.

Even as Tierney decries "the D.E.A.'s war against doctors", he manages to mislead.

His piece adds nothing to the post last August 30th by Radley Balko of the The Agitator, to whom Tierney gives no credit.   In fact one learns from Balko that the prosecutor is a "law-and-order Republican and rising star." Tierney omits a description of the prosecutor who carried out what he clearly believes is a miscarriage of justice.  Instead he emphasizes the fault of nameless D.E.A. agents.

The Dr. was convicted of about 153 counts of writing prescriptions for drugs like OxyContin in exchange for sex.  Four women testified against him. Tierney totally ignores the testimony of three of them. Instead he concentrates on one, who he believes committed perjury. Even assuming that she did, Tierney gives no reason to discount the testimony of the others. He also forgets to mention that a local pharmacist testified that the Doc "was writing so many prescriptions that [she] refused to fill prescriptions from Rottschaefer, saying the patients had no medical need." Tierney forgets to mention that the Doctor's former medical assistant had complained about the Dr's having sex with his "playmates and druggies" to officials from 2000 until she was fired in 2003. Tierney considered the voluminous documentation presented in the case unworthy of mention. The medical files showed that the doctor never tried to diagnose nor treat any of the women. They showed up, went into a locked room with him, and came out with a prescription.

Like Tierney, I was not in the courtroom to hear the case. I can't be sure that the judge and the jury reached the right verdict. There are tens of thousands of people in jail who are innocent, and maybe the Doctor will be another inmate who is not actually guilty.

I do know that Tierney does not give a fair accounting of the case.  He blames a government bureaucracy for not being fair to a prosperous white doctor. He fails to mention the responsibility of the up and coming Republican prosecutor. He is very concerned about a victim of the "war on doctors" who has a team of lawyers. I have never seen any empathy from Tierney for innocent victims of the "war on drugs" who tend to be poorer, non-white and under-lawyered. 

Tierney continues his quest to fill the shoes of former columnist William Safire, a Nixon devotee.  By writing deceptive columns condemning 'big government' bureaucrats, while ignoring real iproblems of justice in our country, Tierney shows that he is well on the road to achieving that goal.

America Can Finally Spot A Liar

AOL is reporting on a speech Alberto Gonzalez gave today in which he complained that critics of the President's illegal wiretapping program were misleading the public.

This - from the most misleadingest Administration ever.

AOL is conducting a poll about misleading. They ask if you trust the Media to report accurately on this issue. 58% Said No, 42% Yes. Then they asked whether you can trust the Bush administration to make accurate statements about it: 73% said no, and only 27% thought that you could trust this administration.

They report that "Gonzales cautioned his listeners about critics and journalists who have mischaracterized details about the program. "Unfortunately, they have caused concern over the potential breadth of what the President has actually authorized," he said."

The administration, not its critics,  has been completely inconsistent and misleading as to the breadth of this program from  Day 1.  When they think it helps their cause they describe it as very small and focused, and the next day they defend their breaking the law because of the volume of work involved.

Being A Liberal

On the 19th my post concerned the racism that helps define the Republican Party. Many thanks to Rick for his thoughtful comments on the post, and thanks to That Gay Conservative and the Queer Conservative for their excited responses.

When Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 he predicted that he had just lost the South for the Democratic Party for the next 50 years. Sen Russell of Georgia, a real powerhouse in the Senate at that time, was not so optimistic. When LBJ said he was determined to push the bill through, Russell said: "Mr President, you may well do that, but if you do, you will not always lose the South forever, you will lose this election." Russell was wrong about losing the 1964 Presidential election, but he was right about losing the South for many years.

Rick argues that our democracy needs two healthy political parties. He suggests that the Republican dominance of our government is not good for the future of our country. I agree with these points.  But I can't sign on to a lot of his other statements.

• The Right has been winning (and I have noticed). But the spread is not so big. Gore got more votes than Bush did in 2000. 2004 was surprisingly close for an incumbent at war. The gain in House seats in 2004 was entirely the result of what seems to be some pretty crooked actions by Tom DeLay.
• As a liberal, I don't believe that the ends always justify the means. Particularly when that end is simply maintaining power. Winning is not everything.The civil rights bill LBJ pushed through Congress was the first since Reconstruction. I don't regret how very expensive that act was for the Democratic party.
• It's true that the Democratic party was once the party of New York firemen,as well as Pittsburgh and Birmingham steelworkers. Today's NY Firefighters are a mixed bag - certainly they are no longer so dominated by democrats as they once were.  But the right has no monolithic hold on them either. Steelworkers are a different issue. There simply aren't very many of them left.  In 1943 the U.S. Steel Company employed 340,498 people. In 2000 the number was 52,500. The population in the U.S. more than doubled in that period.
• The Republicans, and even guys like Rick, have become very fond of the smear. Rick says that I, and other democrats, employ language like "Bushitler, Nazis, Fascism, and on and on." This is the first time I've even seen the word "Bushitler" and I certainly have never said it.  He says that my party is now the home of "George Soros, Cher, Ted Kennedy, Maxine Watters, Cynthia McKinney, Al Franken et al."  First, I have to say that I know nothing of Cher's politics. I also don't know what is so bad about George Soros - he's an enormously successful guy who has done a lot of good in the world. I am aware that there are many African-Americans serving in Congress.  McKinney and Watters are two of them. Even though there are more Republicans than Democrats in Congress, none of those Republicans in the House or in the Senate are Black.  One may think that Al Franken is flaky, his show is unquestionably more accurate than either Rush or O'Reilly.  What is true about all these people is that the right has managed to define them in pretty outrageous ways. (Think of the Swift Boating of Kerry and Murtha, while Bush ducked service. Whether or not technical arguments can be made about their receiving some of the medals they did - they were shot at. W was served shots.  It's a big difference.)
• Rick proceeds to argue that the democratic party offers nothing.  I have to disagree with this as well.  Republicans have spent the last 50 years appealing to people on the basis of fear. Fear of Willie Horton. Fear of Saddam. Even though there is absolutely no evidence of any connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, 22% of the population believes that Saddam helped plan 9/11.  This is the result of the lousy job done by our media, and the intentional disinformation by the Bush administration.

Certainly the Democratic party must do a better job at selling it's agenda.  But we have to find a way to do so without losing our beliefs.  We need not lie as the Republicans do. We need not use an attack on our country as a political bludgeon. We need not blather about "values" while taking money from Abramoff.  The Republican party owes its current success to an intentional strategy of dividing the country,instilling fear, and painting those who disagree as the enemy. 

The Republican party made a Faustian bargain.  Whether or not you liked Republicans such as Goldwater or  Rockefeller; they actually believed in something. The only belief that guys like Bush and DeLay hold is that they should maintain their power. To the devil with them. And I hope that sooner, rather than later, they go.

Thank You WaPo & NY Times

The left side of the blogosphere is often extremely critical of media institutions like the Washington Post and the New York Times. True the right is far more critical, and vicious, but our we have no obligation to compete with the wingnuts for ugliness.

So I think that every so often we should thank these outlets.  In today's Times, for example, they devote a lot of front page real estate to topics that they know will subject them to attack. Their piece on "Struggling Back From War's Once-Deadly Wounds" will elicit an entirely predictable outcry from Rush, Sean etc etc. Rush will be on Armed Forces Radio, again advising our troops how the liberals wished more of them died in combat. He will denounce the hatred and bloodlust by the left directed at our Armed Forces. 

"Pakistan's Push in Border Areas is Said to Falter ... -... Members of Al Qaeda Are Seen Guiding Militants in Tribal Lands"  will immediately be called inaccurate liberal defeatism. It will once again be noted how the Press only reports negative news about our Glorious Leader's Crusade. The "cowardly" press will be condemned again.

The paper of record, which gave us Judith Miller and sat on the FISA scandal for far too long, at least finally gave us the scandal.  It also reported on the failure of Bush's illegal wiretapping to turn up much of anything - a report which was guaranteed to arouse the right's attack dogs. The WaPo reports today on how the Bush propaganda machine is intervening in Palestinian elections.

We have to hold these guys to a higher standard.  But we also have to be grateful for the courage which they do at times display.  Imagine our wold with only Gannet, USA Today, and Rupert Murdoch keeping us misinformed.