Political Corruption on Steroids
Political Corruption on Steroids
Corruption and dirty politics is nothing new in America. However, the level and scope of dirty politics within the Republican Party at this point in American history seems to be unprecedented! It increasingly looks like the Republican leadership has become a kind of mafia-style criminal gang pretending to be a political party.
Both elections that put the Bush-Cheney ticket in the White House in 2000 and 2004 were questionable at best. Millions of votes were not counted. Millions of Americans were denied their voting rights. The Bush vs. Gore ruling by partisan Republican judges on the Supreme Court was blatantly unjust and stopped a legal statewide recount in Florida ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.
Republican statewide election officials misused their offices to tilt election outcomes to favor the Republican ticket. Republican judges provided legal cover. Corporate controlled media (therefore Republican controlled media since corrupt corporations are the dominant force behind Bush Republicanism) feed the public a much distorted view of the process by hiding the extent of the corrupted electoral process.
The Bush-Cheney White House was born in a corrupt process and remains to this day completely corrupted. The Republican Party was already deeply corrupt before 2000. The “get Clinton” movement that forced thru the trumped-up impeachment of President Bill Clinton clearly demonstrated the unethical and often illegal behavior of the national Republican leadership. The Republicans never accepted the reforms needed to purge political corruption after the Nixon scandals of Watergate.
It is unfortunate that President Ford pardoned Nixon. If Nixon had gone to jail, reformers would likely have won control of the Republican Party and the current situation been prevented. America needed to see Nixon tried and convicted. He was not the only source of Republican corruption. Americans often forget that some super wealthy citizens and corporations helped finance Nixon’s illegal political activities.
Many current Republican leaders cut their political teeth as part of the Nixon machine. It was no accident that some of the top players in the Iran-Contra scandal were part of the Nixon machine. Others from the Iran-Contra scandal are now players in the Bush-Cheney machine.
Iran-Contra was much more serious than the public generally realized. The White House knowingly and intentionally ignored the law to impose their illegal policies. The Reagan White House claimed nonexistent Presidential powers. The current White House routinely does the same. The main lesson that the Bush-Cheney seems to have learned from both Watergate and Iran-Contra is that the US Department of Justice and the federal courts must be politicized and corrupted for Republican politicians to get away with ignoring the rule of law.
The various corruption scandals involving powerful Republican members of Congress from Tom Delay to Duke Cunningham to all the Abramoff characters can be closely connected to the Republican culture of corruption resulting from this mindset. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George W Bush have criminalized the political mindset of the national Republican leadership. They all seem to believe that they are more powerful than the rule of law. They are routinely hiding illegal and shameful behavior under the veil of secrecy, claiming powers that would make them virtual dictators.
The political prosecution of Governor Siegelman in Alabama on trumped-up charges seems to be connected to the Abramoff scandal, Karl Rove and possible election fraud concerning the questionable defeat of Siegelman by now Republican Governor Riley. Many observers believe that massive, politically-motivated illegal activity was involved in pushing for the prosecution of the Democratic candidate, Siegelman.
The Alabama prosecution looks to be a blatant and successful attempt to destroy the career of a popular Democratic figure in Alabama. It reminds this writer of the Clinton impeachment effort. It also shows the importance of investigating the US Attorneys firing scandal. It is vital to our democracy to investigate and prosecute the politicization and corruption of law enforcement. I hope Congress investigates the Siegelman prosecution aggressively. The next Democratic President should pardon Siegelman.
Legal corruption and lying on political issues is bad enough. The recent vote and statements by Republican Senators on the Employee Free Choice Act were definitely unethical but not really illegal. Republican Senators blatantly lied that workers were being denied their voting rights by adopting card check unionization by a majority of workers. The card check system is just another kind of voting but not one easily subject to employer intimidation and manipulation. The current system is rigged against workers but Republicans simply lied about that fact with the notable exception of Senator Specter.
This kind of corruption demonstrated by all the other Republican Senators can just be dealt with at the polls. The kinds of corruption demonstrated, in the current White House abuses of office, calls for more aggressive tactics and punishment.
All aspects of corruption and abuse of office connected to the Bush-Cheney White House needs to be investigated including the Cheney Energy Task Force, White House involvement in the California electric price-gouging scandal, lying about WMD’s in Iraq, torture, secret prisons, wiretapping of American citizens without court orders, election manipulation, gutting civil rights enforcement, no-bid contracting and more. If needed, we should impeach federal judges whose rulings condone illegal behaviors or grant un-Constitutional powers to officeholders. America cannot tolerate corruption on steroids by any public officials!
Written by Stephen Crockett (co-host of Democratic Talk Radio http://DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland 21919. Email: [email protected] . Phone: 443-907-2367.
Feel free to publish at no charge without prior permission.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Understanding The Damage Done By Alberto Gonzales
http://www.thoughttheater.com/2007/06/understanding_the_damage_done_by_alberto_gonzales.php
American’s have heard ample analysis on the role of Alberto Gonzales and how his actions have impacted civil liberties and the established rules of law in the United States, but the op-ed piece by Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post Intelligencer may be one of the most thoughtful. Connelly takes the time to look beyond the momentary ramifications and towards the long term considerations of the Attorney General’s disregard for the concept of justice.
In a 1994 alumni banquet speech at the UW Law School, the late U.S. District Judge William Dwyer quoted a famous gloomy line from Yeats — “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
He then suggested that America has a “center” that holds the country together. “That center is the rule of law,” Dwyer said. “By the rule of law, I do not just mean law and order, although that is important, but much more.
“I mean equality before the law, access to the law and freedom under the law. I mean the jury system, the Bill of Rights, constitutional liberty and justice provided through a fair, honest and open court system.”
I wrote yesterday about a new poll that surveyed American’s view of major institutions in the United States…a survey that indicated people did not view the justice system with much confidence…even though they did rate the police and the military highly. Looking at this data in conjunction with Dwyer’s observations, one begins to see the damage done by an Attorney General that has diminished the core components of our view of justice.
American citizens have been held without access to counsel, let alone the jury system.
The federal government has, without warrants, intercepted telephone communications to and from the United States — in direct violation of a law passed by Congress setting down procedures for obtaining warrants.
What has been the role of Gonzales, nicknamed “Fredo” by the president? As White House counsel, and now attorney general, he has played the roles of both knave and fool, serving as an enabler for Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, and then claiming he can’t remember the details.
“Fredo” signed a famous 2002 memo to Bush on the treatment of so-called enemy combatants. It described provisions of the Geneva Convention as “quaint,” and dismissed then-Secretary of State Colin Powell as a defender of “obsolete” rules on the treatment of prisoners.
The real author apparently was David Addington, legal adviser to the vice president. Along with others in a tight-knit group of White House lawyers, “Fredo” undermined and went over the heads of Cabinet secretaries. Powell was cut out of the memo’s circulation, and would read about it in the press.
The legal gang did some famous redefining, such as casting “torture” as actions of “equivalent intensity” to “the pain of organ failure or even death.”
It seems to me that what Connelly is describing is the pride one has in one’s system of governance or justice…pride that emanates from one’s sense of the equity it affords to all it touches. People that are proud of their affiliations generally believe in the decency and civility of the organization or institution with which they are associated.
The actions of the Attorney General have, in my opinion, led a number of Americans to shy away from embracing or touting our justice system. Many Americans now equate it with those governments we have criticized for years as arbitrary and dictatorial…systems reserved for cloistered and clandestine societies that first and foremost serve the goals of those who hold power…regardless of any true measures of fair and equitable treatment.
A curious reversal of roles has taken place in America, notably over the past seven years.
“Conservatism” once stood for checks and balances, restraint on what Lyndon Johnson’s critics called “the imperial presidency,” and the principle that government works best when closest to the people.
Bush-era conservatism means unchecked presidential power. Authorities have the right to run roughshod over the individual in the interest of “security” or, in an opinion this week by Chief Justice John Roberts, to “protect those entrusted in their care.”
As the Aesopian justifications pile up, one turns to Dwyer for the antidote, only in this case a warning.
“George Orwell showed us brilliantly how freedom depends on the integrity of language: If words are debased, the liberties that are sustained by words are in peril,” he told the Washington Library Association.
“In the late 20th century, there is a disturbing trend toward the debasement of language, as well as toward a reliance on symbols and catch phrases.”
The “other” Washington is, increasingly, an Orwellian place of twisted language and wars by proxy. As in Iraq, the casualties are those of lower ranks.
Cheney gets angry about Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s editorial, and retaliates by “outing” Wilson’s CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame. What happens? Scooter Libby is convicted, Cheney carries on. “Fredo” fires a bunch of U.S. attorneys for improper reasons. The consequences? Virtually all of his top deputies resign under pressure. Gonzales goes free.
The imagery is that of a banana republic that crafts its rules on the fly…dependent upon the amount of information that may seep into the purview of the masses either by accident or by dissent of those who still maintain higher ideals. Its the wizard who thinks he remains behind the curtain while pulling the levers to suit his fancy…all the while rationalizing his actions primarily because he has set out to create a system in which he and his cohorts cannot be challenged.
What remains to be seen is the degree to which the American electorate will reject this intentionally amorphous approach to justice. If the data reported yesterday is accurate, one thing is certain…Americans are increasingly disenchanted with the apparent malleability and manipulation that they perceive exists in many of their established institutions.
The most recent example is that of the Vice President’s assertion that he isn’t part of the executive branch and therefore sits alone and autonomous outside of the presidential order that dictates and details the handling of classified documents. Not surprisingly, the White House quickly launched a litany of labored language to defend the Vice President…leaving many Americans further questioning whether this administration has any limits upon its efforts to obfuscate.
The warnings offered by Dwyer and Orwell are noteworthy. I am remiss to recall a prior time when language was so intentionally crafted and corrupted to serve the goals and objectives of those in power. 2008 will provide the voting public with an opportunity to issue a clear and concise rebuttal…one that can be spoken, measured, and delivered as an unmitigated rejection of the status quo…one that can begin to restore the confidence necessary to “hold the country together”.