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A silver lining?

Considering the Supreme court’s decision equating corporate spending to free speech, and considering the court’s holding that a corporation is a legal person in the eyes of the law, bearing in mind Justice Roberts corporate bias and his desire to strike down laws regulating corporations, including those regulating corporate mergers, remembering that people have other rights that the court has recognized, including the right to marry, and that a corporate merger is much like a marriage, and seeing as corporations, while perforce sharing all rights that individuals have, including the right to marriage, are of uncertain sex, some saying female, others male, with most denying their sexual identity completely, but allowing for the fact that it must be said that when two corporations marry it is questionable that such a marriage is between a man and a woman, and recognizing that Roberts and his ilk want, whenever possible, to make their decisions appear to be intellectually consistent, is it possible that we can look forward to the court blessing same sex marriages so it can do the same for corporate marriages?

(Thanks to my brother Joe for passing on the picture).

Note: As I said in a recent post, I am cutting down on my blogging, to pursue other intellectual endeavors, primarily reading. I am also currently listening to a Teaching Company lecture series on “BUILDING GREAT SENTENCES” on the theory that since I inflict these things on others, I should at least learn to write. This post is my first attempt at putting my new found knowledge to work, the post itself being an example of what the lecturer calls a “suspensive” sentence also known as a periodic sentence, for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. He also advocates long sentences, which as you can see, that sentence certainly was, and this sentence certainly could be, if I didn’t feel like stopping right now.

Personally, I would say my sentence is “built”, but great it ain’t.


Two doomed candidates

My wife has urged me to link to this column by the estimable Dave Collins, one of the better columnists over at the Day. The Day carried much water for Rob Simmons, but Collins was not one of the water bearers, and he does a good job making the case in this column that Simmons is a typical “moderate” Republican, reliably in the pocket of his right wing masters.

Simmons comes to the race as a longtime Bush loyalist, who for years toed the line with the Republican majority in Washington on a variety of issues that put him at odds with mainstream political thinking in Connecticut.

He supported the war in Iraq, a decision he arrived at, he said, after reading thousands of pages of classified documents about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that, in the end, there weren’t any.

He talked down the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, calling himself a political moderate and fiscal conservative, then voted for them anyway. He also called himself an environmentalist and then voted for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

He also voted for cuts to Medicaid and student loans, after he said he wouldn’t.

In the developing primary race against wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, Simmons has all but abandoned any pretense to moderate credentials, taking increasingly rightist, tea party positions on everything from stimulus spending to tax cuts.

As to the last point, we veteran Simmons watchers can easily predict that his plan is to pivot the moment he gets the nomination, distancing himself from the whackjobs, taking that teabag out of his pocket, and touting his moderation yet again.

Collins makes the point that Simmons is now out of his league. As I’ve said before, he “won” in 2000 because Sam Gejdenson beat himself, and he was planning on Chris Dodd doing the same this year.

Meanwhile, Merrick Alpert is getting a lot of free press in this neck of the woods. A front page article in the Mystic River Press (no link available) and a front page article in the Day. On first blush, the overriding impression is of a very delusional guy. He’s doomed to lose, but we may not have seen the last of him. This observation by Jonathan Pelto pretty much sums up the impression I’ve always had about him:

Some of Alpert’s less charitable observers say they’re not surprised to see him unwilling to wait in line. Jonathan Pelto, a former state legislator for whom Alpert worked as an intern while in college, then later when Pelto was managing the gubernatorial campaign of former state Rep. William Cibes in 1990, says Alpert was planning a political career from the beginning.

“He set out to build himself a resume, and you’ve got to give it to him,” Pelto says. “I remember him sitting around there (on the Cibes campaign) saying, ‘I want to serve in the military so I can build credentials so I can go after conservative candidates.’ He set out the things he needed to do to be the perfect candidate.”

In addition, I’m told that he’s charming. I’m also told by someone I trust (my wife) that I’m impervious to charm, so I can’t tell, but since I’m also told by my wife that he is charming, I believe that he is. He is also, as was Caesar, but with far less reason, ambitious. My guess is that we’ll be hearing from him again in 2012, and unless Joe Courtney decides to retire, he’ll set his sights on Lieberman’s seat. He’ll have to go through Chris Murphy, if not others, and my own thinking is that, charm or not, he’ll fall short again.

By the way, although the article states that he “has yet to file a quarterly campaign financing report”, in fact he has. Of all the announced candidates,his proportion of out of state contributions is highest.


More on the court

A reasonably good editorial in this morning’s Day, decrying the recent Supreme Court decision that handed the government over to the corporations. One quibble and one more serious caveat.

While it’s true that the decision also gave the unions the right to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, that fact is not worth mentioning in the same breath as the fact that this “right” was extended to corporations. The financial resources of unions pale to insignificance next to that of the corporations. Consider, for instance, that the banking industry alone will be handing out bonuses this year that would, all by themselves, pay for the health care needs of the entire country. It is beyond doubt that had this ruling applied only to unions, it would have been nine to zero against what is now a spent force in our political system.

The more serious caveat involves this paragraph:

We renew our support for public financing of campaigns. While such laws cannot, and should not, force candidates to use public financing, a candidate’s decision to forgo it and turn instead to corporate and other special interests to bankroll a campaign will send a message to voters as to where that candidate’s true priorities stand.

The justices took care of public financing as a tool to clean up the system, with the same stroke of the pen with which they freed the oppressed corporations. The decision involved independent expenditures, not money given directly to candidates. A candidate could accept public financing secure in the knowledge that his or her corporate masters would be bankrolling a separate but more than equal campaign, a campaign for which the candidate could disclaim responsibility. We Second District residents remember Rob Simmons doing exactly that in a small way a few years ago, when he maintained that he simply couldn’t control what the RNC put in their ads. Given this ruling, any system of public financing would be a sham, since the Supreme Court has already created a loophole the size of the Grand Canyon. (And, why, by the way, should a candidate not be forced to participate in a system of public financing, were it possible to create an effective system? Why do we worship the wealthy so much that we insist that they have a god-given right to rule us? Why can’t we as a nation exercise our right to defend ourselves from the oligarchs?)


Friday Night Music, take one Zoloft and see me in the morning

This has been one of the more depressing weeks on record, what with the people of Massachusetts having an episode of decompensation, the Democrats having several, and the Supreme Court giving democracy the coup de grĂ¢ce, though, truth to tell, the week has not been entirely yuck free on a personal level. Still, it seems only fitting that a depressing week should be capped off with a depressing song, albeit with an anti-depression title. Who does depression better than Neil Young?

Postscript: Last Friday or Saturday, my wife read somewhere that someone or other had done a study, and determined that Monday, January 18th, would be the most depressing day of the year. Even at the time I was pretty sure Tuesday would beat it (who know that both Wednesday and Thursday would beat Tuesday), but still, I must give that expert credit for coming so close, presumably sort of far in advance.


The End of What’s Left of Democracy

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot restrict the amount corporations spend on political advertising. They will still be forbidden to give money to favored candidates, but they will be able to spend as much as they want opposing or supporting candidates of their choice. If you think Democrats live in fear of the corporations now, imagine how they’ll react when those corporations unleash millions of dollars of ads against them on a regular basis. Regular people, the contributors who have until now had some impact on candidates and how they think, will not be able to keep up. We will end up with two parties, one of which will gleefully nominate corporate friendly candidates, the other of which will, gleefully or not, ineluctably gravitate toward doing the same. If you think things are Tweedledee-Tweedledum now, just wait a few election cycles.


A prognostication

The Democrats are busy drawing the wrong lessons from yesterday’s Massachusett’s debacle. But we may take some cheer in the fact that quite likely the Republicans are missing the cloud in the silver lining. The fruits of victory, in politics at least, often contain the seeds of future defeats.

Scott Brown is the new Republican hero, and unless I miss my guess, he will now be propelled, Obama style, over the heads of his seniors, dull to a man all, into the ranks of potential presidential candidates. Why not? He’s better looking than Romney, and is not a Mormon. He is every bit as empty headed as Sarah Palin, but people are far less aware of that than they are about the deficiencies of the Alaska airhead. He has heavy cred with the tea partiers, whose every wet dream has come true. Besides, the lure of national politics, and the prospects of being a half termer at home, will force him to turn on his home state, just like Mitt. So might we not look forward to a rollicking good time in 2012, when he, Sarah, Mitt and Mike (poor Tim will be sadly forgotten) go head to head after their party’s nomination? Will their respective adherents (I will eschew references to Kool-Aid or zombies) accept the judgment of the delegates assembled, or will we have a spectacle that will make the ’92 Republican convention look civil? Can any of these people weather a year long campaign and have any sort of appeal to the still not crazy portion of the American public (I am an optimist, I still think there are more of us not-crazies than nut jobs). Even the Democrats, given enough time, should be able to beat any one of those folks.


A question answered

What lesson will the Democrats learn from the disaster in Massachusetts?

Whatever lesson the Republicans and the brain dead punditry tell them they should learn. After all, the Republicans must have their best interests at heart.

What lesson did the Republicans learn from their disaster in New York’s 23rd (remember that?)?

Precisely the opposite of that they’ll be asking the Democrats to learn.


Obama’s Tax

The Big Banks are weighing a constitutional challenge to the tax that Obama is proposing to impose, to recover the government’s bailout costs. According to experts consulted by the New York Times the legal theory behind the challenge is “dubious”:

[The Bank’s] primary argument, however, might be that a tax so narrowly focused would penalize a specific group. Legal scholars say the Supreme Court has overturned only a handful of laws on those grounds, and those were typically rules that singled out political outcasts like former members of the Confederacy or people accused of being communists.

The article fails to account for the overriding fact that we are encumbered with a Supreme Court that has a disdain for precedent and a fealty to corporations unlike any court since the early 20th century. John Roberts was appointed not for his socially conservative positions, but for his steadfast support for the American corporation, a support that increases in proportion to the size of the corporation Alito ditto. There’s every reason to believe that the court, as presently constituted, would reach out to use this case as a way to serve its corporate masters and push us back toward the 18th century, where they think we belong.

It happens that the tax is probably the wrong tax for Obama to propose. It would make more sense to pass a transaction tax, a tiny tax on each sale of securities that would have little effect on those of us who buy and sell stock for the long haul, but would have a huge and salutary effect on speculators. Still, the proposed tax is better than nothing.

Whether its the best policy, it is good politics. Consider this, also from the Times:

Republicans have remained unusually silent on the tax, hoping to avoid a choice between supporting a tax increase and defending big bankers.

Yes, indeed. As Jesus said, you can’t serve two masters, and this would give us a great opportunity to see which master, the tea partiers or the bankers, means the most to the Republicans. My prediction: the Republicans have become so inflexibly negative that they will ultimately oppose this bill out of pure instinct. Now, if they can only get Baucus, Nelson and the other so called Democrats to get out of the way, the real Democrats might have a chance to salvage the elections in November.


Massachusetts Madness

Martha Coakley looks set to lose the Senate election in Massachusetts, a staggering achievement, if ever there was one. This is what comes of taking an electorate for granted, not to mention accusing Curt Shiling of being a Yankees fan.

There are some lessons here for our own Dick Blumenthal. If he runs true to form, he will not take the electorate for granted. He will run hard and he’ll be omnipresent. In that sense, we don’t have to worry about him repeating Coakley’s mistakes. What remains is for him to take the inevitable attacks seriously, however specious they may be. They are already test marketing some of the lines of attack on the internet. So far, I haven’t heard of any that seem likely to get much traction, but if history tells us anything it’s that you have to take every attack seriously, and you have to respond immediately.

Finally, every opponent must be taken seriously, something Coakley obviously did not do. Last week, Lawrence O’Donnell opined, on the Olbermann show, that Brown’s past as a nude Cosmo centerfold was not proving to be a negative because O’Donnell’s home state had turned “French” and people just didn’t care. When he said that my wife remarked that if Brown had been a Democrat, that centerfold would have been all we’d hear about him. Last weekend I was with some Massachusett’s residents, people who are smart and informed. They were totally unaware of his former modeling career. We will, in other words, never know if Brown’s past could have hurt him, because the word never got out. I suppose we could choose to be proud of the Democrats for failing to raise this issue, but my own feeling is that when you’re fighting with the Republicans, it’s a mistake to stick to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. I still think that Linda McMahon will be the candidate. Simmons has no money, and Blumenthal’s entry into the race will discourage the out of staters who wanted to take down Dodd. She should not be taken lightly, and the time to go after her is now.


To Keene and back

My wife and I just returned from New Hampshire, and herewith a few pictures.

We stopped in Northampton at the Green Street Cafe, which is, believe it or not, located on Green Street in that fair city. The owners are currently engaged in a David and Goliath battle with Smith College, from whom the apparently lease space, and who wants that space to build a new facility. You can read all about it at their blog, which you can reach from the link above. Anyway, the food was good, as were the murals. It took me a while to realize that this one is slightly sacrilegious.

If you don’t see it, think Leonardo.

We stopped briefly in Brattleboro, where I noticed this apparently lovingly restored ad from a bygone era.

We proceeded on to Keene, where, as I said in a previous post, we were meeting friends and going to see a Little Feat concert. As I said before, I had heard of them but couldn’t name a single song they’d done. Turns out I did indeed choose their most popular song for Friday Night Music, Dixie Chicken, which was their encore song. I was interested to learn that one of their now deceased founders penned a song that Seatrain performed (I’m Willin) a song laden with drug references that got him thrown out of the Mothers of Invention, where Frank Zappa apparently ran a drug free ship. The band also adopted Don’t Bogart that Joint, which it recorded in the ’70s. Here they are in all their glory.

A word about Keene, New Hampshire. The concert was in the Colonial Theater, the interior depicted below.

It’s a beautiful theater, apparently recently restored, and it brought to mind the Capitol Theatre in New London, which has been vacant and unused at least as long as I’ve lived in this area (going on 35 years). It’s my understanding that the Capitol was a great theatre, now sadly deteriorating under the weight of decades of pigeon droppings. If they can do it in Keene, why can’t we do it here?

No trip to a small New England town is complete without a picture of the town green and/or white steepled church, so here it is. (For reasons I cannot explain, my blog editor would not upload this picture, so I had to do it using WordPress, hence the small size. It will enlarge if you click on it)


Keene Church