Organizing for America | Hollywood, CA for OBAMA

Hollywood, CA for OBAMA

Anyone who works, lives, eats, drinks, parties, sleeps, worships, purchases, peruses, stalks, runs, walks, skateboards, computes or has sex in, around or because of Hollywood, can feel free to join this group.

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Book Report: "Working Class New York," by Joshua Freeman

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 25th, 2009 at 3:59 pm EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

The narrative in "Working Class New York," grows less interesting along with the declining labor movement it chronicles.

That's no criticism. After all, Joshua Freeman did not write a novel, rather penned an important nonfiction and academic effort that tells the story of New York through its workers.

"Working Class New York," is wonderfully done and demonstrative, at every turn, with the author's passion for his subject.

But, for labor enthusiasts, the end can't match the beginning for excitement.

In the early chapters, the poesy of labor reigns as the Hatters, Printers, Furriers, Elevator Operators, Milliners, Bakers and Tugboat workers, representing a rainbow of crafts and productive industries, bring the world's mightiest city to a halt through mass strikes driven by the underlining goal of reorganizing society itself.

Freeman's analysis of New York's economic structure, and how it created a textured union movement unequaled in the rest of the country, is fascinating and as much a love letter to the unions as to Gotham itself.

Indeed, the author frequently asserts that the city's best face was the lined countenance of the laborer or craftsperson enlightened by their recognition of a shared destiny, on the shop floor and front stoop, with similarly situated souls.

"Working Class New York," meticulously follows the labor movement's progress and retrenchments, starting with its halcyon days in the post-war 1940s.

It makes no bones about the powerful impetus communist politics played, and the subsequent loss of energy that coincided with the reds being chased out of American labor.

Freeman illustrates how the union movement reflected changes in the city as it lost manufacturing jobs and embraced the financial and service-based industries.

His mapping of municipal unionism's rise has less of a workerist flavor and more of what the departed Allan Bloom called the "Nitzscheanization of the left," as ethnicity and cultural issues consumed unions' internal power struggles and drove their industrial strategies.

And the book details how the decline of labor in New York reflected its nationwide losses as the country grew more individualistic and market-oriented in the 1970s and '80s.

Freeman's chapter on how financial types used The Big Apple's fiscal crisis in the late 1970s to undermine and rollback the unions' hard-earned, and unique urban social democracy, is must-read for anyone interested in those dynamics affecting the American workplace for nigh on a generation now.

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Jerry Brown Does Sunset Blvd.

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 23rd, 2009 at 5:14 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

California Attorney General Jerry Brown's Nov. 19 appearance at XIV on Sunset Blvd., was proof there is such a thing as being young at heart.

The former-governor-running-to-be-governor was in good form, voluble, humorous, and purposeful.

By way of confession, highwayscribery attended the event, sponsored by Generation for Change, with little enthusiasm for the budding Brown candidacy.

Covering the attorney general as a real-life reporter at press conferences, the highway scribe's alter-ego and rainmaker was left with an impression that, at 71-years-old, Brown had lost a step and gone mushy in his gray matter.

And besides, maybe it's time for some others to try. Politics these days, at least Democratic Party politics, have a transformational tinge that was reflected in the event itself.

Generation for Change, after all, grew out of Generation Obama Los Angeles following the president's triumph last November.

It is headed-up by two political operatives - Justyn Winner and Haroom "Boom" Saleem, still young enough to actually believe in all the Obama-inspired Hopela and energetic enough to convene a cabal of handsome, well-dressed, young professionals comfortable in venues like XIV (by Michael Mina) who, prior to last year' campaign were hardly worthy of political consideration.

And the kids are learning the hard way. Saleem noted that last year's ardor for change has given way to this years sen

se of disappointment.

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

For his part, Brown has always been more of a visionary type. His turns as secretary of state, Oakland mayor, and attorney general, while positive contributions, do not bring out the quest-like qualities in him that running for president and governor do.

For Brown wants to lead in big, system-changing ways and Generation for Change, thinks he has the stuff, and has come out early for him.

The ambience of confident cool hardly intimidated Brown who grabbed the microphone, and persuaded the crowd to separate itself so that everyone could see him.

He did not, Brown said, work from prepared speeches, "because they're boring. If you have something to say you should be able to say it without looking at some notes."

Freed from the tyranny of text on paper, Brown rambled on in an organized fashion only someone of his unique cast can.

He pulled the crowd, separated from him by decades of life lived, closer, talking about the nonpolitical part of his personal journey: "I've lived in Mexico and different countries of South America, I took Linda Ronstadt to Africa. I went to Japan and meditated for six months; not on the achievements of my life, but on the essential emptiness of it. And you're not going to find a lot of politicians who will do that."

Working the crowd afterward, Brown may have learned how few knew who Linda Ronstadt is (was?), but he's just getting going at this point, a

nd that gap could link his living legend to a time when California was truly a Golden State.

The day's backdrop was a University of California Regents meeting two miles away at UCLA. There, student demonstrators clashed with police while inside "the board" jacked-up their tuition 32 percent.

The campus was crammed with so many police it begged the question of whether cutting the force's size might improve the tuition picture. The university's shock troops, with the help of California Highways Patrol(ers) handled the students' in a typically over-the-top fashion: rude, violent, disdainful of the fact universities exist for the kids.

It was tense, and unpleasant, and sad for those who remember the state's halcyon days.

Things clearly need fixing and if Brown's audience represented a generation of "change," he suggested they had much in common since he's been accused by political enemies of changing all his life.

"And it's true. But I'm not ashamed of that," he said, "because if you're alive, and your mind is open, than you have to change."

They ate it up without fully understanding how true the claims were. Brown's politics have always invited intense debate. However, the inherent truth of his commitment, his advocacy, and his willingness to go a new way are agreed upon by friend and foe alike.

Perhaps the crowd sensed it.

The quintessentially Irish-looking pol enumerated the many offices he has run for successfully and not so successfully.

"Many of the people I ran against are dead," said Brown, hinting of his hand in their demise, "because I'm a stressful person, and some of these other people in this campaign for governor are going to find out the same thing."

And them's fightin' words of which the impromptu address contained more; perhaps a tip-off to the approach Brown may take in the campaign, running on his experience rather than away from it.

Brown said the country had been, 30 or 40 years ago, a productive one that lost its edge and then continually borrowed to maintain privileges no longer earned the old-fashioned way.

He did not, of course, use the words "old" or "fashioned."

Brown conducted a brief analysis of the financial "leveraging" that brought the state and country to its knees, and referred to the resulting fiscal crisis as "the greatest case of grand larceny in American histor

y."

Applause again.

The country's political system is, Brown observed, "in an advanced state of decay." He lamented the "wall of resistance" President Obama has run into at the hands of Republicans in Washington D.C. and said it was a symptom of that decay.

The attorney general did not run away from Obama, rather suggested the president was a kindred spirit who could use some help with the heavy lifting out on the Left Coast.

He wove is merry way through about a 20-minute discourse, jumping from subject to subject, free-associating, joking, and holding the group's attention through the background chatter of the adjacent restaurant, and clatter of pots in the close-by kitchen.

California's budget deficit, large as it is, amounts to only 1 percent of its annual gross product and is fixable, said Brown.

He is, naturally, the person to do it. "These other people running don't know how tough it is to run the state. I've worked in it my whole life. I do."

For political junkies, the evening on Sunset offered a good sampling of what Brown is testing in the campaign's early phases.

His effort at tapping into the energy of a generation that knows little of him, but offers some of our best prospects, demonstrated the flexibility he claims to possess in real time.

More than anything, it was a tip of the hat to the hoary old notion that youth must be served...

...in very good restaurants.

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On Obstruction

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 21st, 2009 at 3:30 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

Saturday's Senate debate has as much to do with Republican obstruction as it does with health care.

The Republican strategy of arresting any progress on the country's problems, of suppressing the will of voters who elected President Barack Obama and a attendant Democratic congressional majority, has begun to garner attention.

Which is why this post will be written more by other writers than the highway scribe, whose intention is to extend their reach and blow off a little steam at the same time.

Like Social Security, the weekend, paid vacations, and health care reform, the first volley came from the far left of the American spectrum in the form of a Nov. 11 "Washington Post," piece by Harold Meyerson.

In the "Do-nothing Senate" the one-time "L.A. Weekly" essayist referred to that body as "dithering heights."

That's pretty good and demonstrates how you need a sense of humor to make your ideology go down a little easier.

Meyerson noted that a few weeks ago, the Republicans thrice filibustered a measure to extend unemployment insurance. Once they relented, the measure passed 98-0.

"Just flexing their muscles, mind you," he wrote. "Establishing a new normal. If we have anything to do with it, nothing moves."

Indeed.

The filibuster, as we know only too well now, is an endless stream of B.S. meant to bury a bill under the Senate's terms of unlimited debate. It was not always thus. At the beginning, under rules drafted by none other than Thomas Jefferson, a senator was allowed to "move the previous question" and end floor discussion.

But Aaron Burr, the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton and came to personify American infamy (except for Gore Vidal), got that rule stricken and the filibuster was born. Its use was nil at first, but grew over the years.

During the Bush II debacle, Democrats used it with greater frequency, but typically infuriated their radicalized supporters with an urge to cooperate and get things done.

Under Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell (pictured), the thing has taken on a life of its own, since voters so reduced his caucus that filibusters are all he can use for leverage.

And use it McConnell has.

As Meyerson pointed out, "Unless you can get a 60-vote majority to end debate, all major bills (and some minor ones) are dead in the water."

He left out political and judicial choices, but on Nov 16, Michael Savage of the "Los Angeles Times," picked up on the meme, detailing a disparity in the judicial appointments made by his predecessor over the same time-period Obama has been in office.

"So far," Savage wrote, "only six of Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have won approval. By comparison, President George W. Bush had 28 judges confirmed in his first year in office, even though Democrats held a narrow majority for much of the year."

The point being Democrats recognize the president's prerogatives, even when he garners less votes than his opponent and the Supreme Court shuts down a recount in a state governed by his brother (making him president).

On Nov. 17, one day later, the "New York Times" joined the chorus in an editorial generically entitled, "Obama's Judicial Nominations."

While noting the president has been tentative, the anonymous editorialist observed that Senate Republicans bear the blame on the confirmation side by, "doing their best to drag things out."

On Tuesday, a crack in the armor appeared over Obama's nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the U.S. Seventh District Court of Appeals.

The gentleman, who hails from a paternal line of Methodist ministers and enjoys the support of home-state Republican Senator Richard Lugar, apparently ran afoul of "conservative activists," because he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union before joining the bench.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demurred in respecting the president's choice, saying "a common DNA" ran through Obama appointees in the form of an "ACLU chromosome."

And they say Republicans are "anti-science."

They tried to filibuster the nomination and, in the words of the "Washington Post's"Dana Milbank, got "Filibusted."

Which is pretty good, too.

His piece does a great job of detailing the suddenly changed views of Republicans who, just a few years ago, likened Democratic filibusters to obstruction.

By November 19, the big boys were taking a wider view of the filibuster phenomenon.

"The Washington Post's" E.J. Dionne came out with the "The GOP's no-exit strategy," which warned that it is "time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machievellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit."

On November 22, "The Post's" Fred Hiatt got into the act, further fleshing out the ramifications of what the "New York Times'" Charles Blow referred to as "the Republican's surprisingly effective obstructionist strategy."

Hiatt noted that, "more than a year after his electoral triumph, President Obama has filled only 55 percent of Senate-confirmed slots in his government. He has nominated few judges, won confirmation for fewer. The principal item on the agenda of the unions that went all in for him, labor law reform, is on hold. Almost everyone agrees that America's immigration laws are broken, yet no fix is in sight. Long after the collapse of our financial system, new systems of regulation have yet to emerge. There is no discernible trade policy."

Hiatt's point of departure was what all this looks like to friend and foe alike overseas. And what it looks like is that American democracy is in paralysis.

The Republicans, the party of flag-wrapped patriots, care a lot about America's image, but not so much as they do about regaining power. And they show no shame in their effort to do it.

For example, in "Help in Battling the Big Boys," highwayscribery lauded the efforts of Democrats, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut in particular, for proposed legislation that would prevent credit card companies from imposing the arbitrary interest rates and fee increases they're dumping on customers before the new law capping such things takes effect.

But in "A Gift to Credit Card Companies," the "New York Times" reported that Sen. Thad Cochran of (R-Miss.), blocked a vote on the bill, "in yet another act of obeisance by Senate Republicans to the banking and credit card industries."

Thanks Thad.

"The Times" editorial on the judicial nominations noted that, "In March, every Republican senator signed an outrageous letter to the White House warning that they would filibuster any nominee from their home states if they did not approve the choice in advance."

That the Republican caucus is "outrageous," is not the point here. It's that "every" Republican senator signed the piece of trash.

Democrats have never enjoyed such lock-step discipline and as Meyerson and Dionne pointed out, "Blue Dog" or "centrist" or "spineless" Democrats (whatever you want to call them) are playing an important role in all of this.

Dionne said Republican use of the filibuster is making the majority look "foolish, ineffectual and incompetent." Moderate Democrats, by making their own narrow interests paramount on crucial matters like health care reform and climate change, "will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation."

The balky Democratic senators are not only betraying their own party, Myerson wrote, but simultaneously making a mockery of majority rule.

If they are "comfortable with the idea that elections shouldn't have consequences, they should say so publicly. If not, they should let the debate begin."

The word is out. Spread it around. Let's see what happens.

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Now That The Health Care Reform Bill Passed....

By Nezer - Nov 11th, 2009 at 7:25 pm EST

Also listed in: 5 groups

Now that the Health Care Reform Bill has passed the House; I am looking forward to the Health Care Reform Bill w/ a Strong Public Option passing in the Senate. Then when the Bill gets to President Obama's Desk he will be able to Sign the Bill into Law. That would be, as awesome as, the Noble Peace Prize President Obama received. It's nice to get recognition for the work you're doing when it's something you believe in doing. Have a Grate Day.

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Help In Battling the Big Boys

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 3rd, 2009 at 12:21 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

Life's not easy when it is spent jousting with the Internal Revenue Service, Bank of America, and Anthem/Blue Cross.

As it is for many of you, it is thus for the highway scribe. The American struggle is a lonely one. It is a gauntlet run without the assistance of potent unions, affordable legal help, merciful tax rules, or simple health insurance policies.

For decades, policy has exalted the myth of our rugged individualism to the point where we have been left alone to tilt at behemoths against which we are no match.

Today, via the wonder of Web banking, Bank of America helped itself to $8.95 of the highway scribe's money for services that can only be guessed at. And that's because any time the scribe actually needs something from the bank, he gets nailed with a fee.

The relationship is simple wherein the bank serves as a brief holder and dispenser of the scribe's money while checks are deposited and quickly gobbled up by expenses associated with his humble existence. It's a pretty clean collaboration, which is why the free price originally offered for the account made sense.

One day, without any notice, the price went up to $5.95. highwayscribery called to find out what was up with that and got the stock response that such increases were included in the long, illegible text of a document he signed agreeing to a free checking account.

Which is not news to any of you.

Then, sometime after the Obama administration came into power, banks found themselves in the extremely rare position of having customer gripes funneled back at them through the White House.

In "Change New World," we expressed our initial shock at having the government do our bidding.

In "Credit Card Crookery" and "Credit Card Redux," this unique pleasure was extended, in particular, to the financial industry, which had it coming.

Of course, these companies didn't get richer than the rest of us by being stupider. Soon came their response to new rules reining in the parasitical abuses.

These involved arbitrary increases to most everyone's interest rates and general account fees. The companies also kept their promise on sticking it to credit cardholders who were on the up and up all these years.

That's around the time the aforementioned bump to $8.95 on the scribe's free checking account occurred. Bank of America stretched the terms of our original agreement by $107.40 per annum with nary a "howdy-do!"

Of course, on a sliding scale, a $107 heist is relatively small when compared with what happens when a bank does one the favor of paying a series of five $6 debit charges and then hits you for $35 on each.

Which is to say, the scribe absorbed it figuring nothing in life is truly free. Mired in a 1099 hourly wage reality, the effort in going over to the bank and getting the monthly fee reduced wasn't worth the time... financially speaking.

So it was with great pleasure that highwayscribery, in its ritual perusal of the "New York Times," on Tuesday, Oct. 2, ran into a charming slice of life on page B9 wherein Sen. Chris Dodd (D) of Connecticut was calling for an "interim freeze" on further fee increases of the type just detailed for your reading pleasure.

The author of the piece, Andrew Martin, by the way, does an excellent job on the myriad ways banks and credit card companies screw people. His pieces provide the consolation that you are not alone, and that someone with a decent megaphone is pointing out the abuses of usury to which we numbly submit.

But we digress with much territory to cover.

The article explains that Congress is only too aware of the run-up in fees and rates as banks interpret the interim between when the new law goes into effect, and now, as a window in which it’s okay to loot as many customers as possible.

A bill was recently reported out of the House Financial Services Committee that would close the window more quickly, on Dec. 1, instead of February 22 of next year.

Said Dodd: "At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, jacked-up rates can quickly create crushing debt. People need to be responsible with their money, but they shouldn't be taken to the cleaners by outrageous fees."

What the Connecticut Yankee wants, in reality, is an old-time, 1970s-style price control. highwayscribery and others of his ilk love a good price control. They had fallen very much out of favor during the free market rage, but since that worked out about as well as it did in 1929, the price control may be making a comeback.

A fellow named Talbot from something called the Financial Service Roundtable said Dodd's desire is fired by the false notion that fees and interest rates are going up because of the new law to hold them down (if you follow).

Talbot added that the increases strem from the economy is so bad and people are having such a tough time paying their credit card bills.

But that's why taxpayers gave the big banks and brokerage houses those big bucks bailouts, so it won't wash. And thank heavens the Democrats are in power because we'd never have gotten this kind of love from the Tea Party Party.

Not to suggest the Dems are somehow holy and sacrosanct when it comes to protecting the naked consumer. They sat around for years bending to the will of marketeers and cultivated a lot of our current-day problems during the disappointing days of President Bill Clinton.

And that's because they're not as good as Republicans when it comes to loving their base.

GOPers can rush into a hotly contested New York congressional race and back the Conservative Party candidate (against their own!) without fear of...well, fear of anything.

National Democratic leaders jumping into a local race to back a socialist candidate, on principle, would result in their being sent straight to hell, or jail or worse. So they tend to take their left-wingers for granted because they have nowhere else to go.

Then they sit around waiting for independents and Olympia Snow (R-Maine) to give them cover.

Even as they have benefited from the change in our political landscape, Democrats have been slow to truly internalize it, which is why the public option was dead a month ago and now it’s not.

We've had 11 months of the Obama administration, but are into about the third year of the Obama era during which conventional wisepersons have seen their predictions upended again and again.

And so it goes with the public option. In his most recent column, David Broder wrote that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) finally decided upon the public option to satisfy the "labor-left" of his party. That's the highway scribe, who will avail himself of the benefit as soon as it becomes available.

But it's also a lot of other people, not necessarily for unions or anything else "left," but affordable health care.

Broder, like many in his field, think the Obama election happened in some weird vacuum that represented no shift in Americans' political thinking.

Reid thought that, too, and so did a lot of other people in Congress until the President did some decent explaining, the debate groaned on, and the public option concept grew clearer to the electorate.

The numbers don't lie. Reid can interpret them and feels safe in putting the idea forward.

But he needs some help, because oft-times, the peoples' will is thwarted.

Here's a petition asking Democratic leaders to strip any Senator supporting Republican filibuster efforts of their chairmanship.

highwayscribery calls it the "Lieberman Petition."

Here's Reid's petition asking you to help him out on the public option.

Here's former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich asking you, via video, to call your representatives on behalf of the public option.

Now, don't you feel better?

The "Times" ran an article on "Senate naysayer," John Cornyn (R-Okla.) who is hell-bent on stopping health care reform, because of the "financial ruin" it represents.

The article says he has a big "No," sign behind his desk in the Hart Senate Building of which he is very proud. The reason why is a secret of Cornyn's own keeping, but highwayscribery is willing to bet his tightwad ways don't extend to arms purchases and war packages.

And we're betting a yahoo like Cornyn, effective as he may be in gumming up the legislative works, won't be able to stop this thing coming down the pike.

Once achieved, health care reform is going to make life with or without Anthem/BlueCross a lot easier for a lot of people.

All of which, dare we way, represents something of a pending victory for President Obama whose Paul Krugman noted, "The seemingly impossible dream of fundamental health care reform is just a few steps away from becoming reality, and each player has to decide whether he or she is going to help it across the finish line or stand in its way."

Wow.

Which brings us to that final phantom, the IRS.

If you follow American politics very closely, you might come away with an impression that President Obama is not faring well. That people like him, but not his policies. That Republicans are poised for a comeback. You might have been caught off guard by news that he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize and swayed by those who say he has accomplished naught to deserve it.

In an Op-ed piece penned by U2's Bono in the "New York Times" a short while back, the singer attempted to explain why Obama is beloved in Europe, where they lack an entire network dedicated to the daily trashing of his reputation.

Among these virtues are Obama’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals of halving world poverty by 2015. Obama, Bono notes, was not around when the goals were set, “but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further -- all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.”

Such policies, wrote Bono, “are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity, if the words signal action.”

This does not mean the specter of the Internal Revenue Service and the crushing penalties it has visited upon the scribe's family will suddenly evaporate. Even Obama can't do that.

But, we hope, it means that WHAT we give to the government will be spent less on institutionalized violence and more on the promotion of peace, human harmony, and the vision of our better angels abroad.

And that's change you can bank on.

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Letter to the Honduran Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 7th, 2009 at 12:33 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

Roberto Flores Bermudez
Honduran Ambassador to the United States
3007 Tilden St., N.W. #4 M
Washington D.C. 20008

Mr. Ambassador,

I'm absolutely sickened by press notices regarding the treatment, not only of anti-government supporters but of those who just happened to be in the way of government troops.

As I just wrote to your counterpart from Guinea, military coups do not work. Either they further enrage popular sentiment, which is always on the side of democracy, or they smother it. The latter instance entails nothing more than a country being occupied by its own army.

Unleashing these ill-prepared, and unscrupulous soldiers on middle-aged women, academics, and any poor soul trying to get home from the market is speaks volumes as to Micheletti Government's ability to lead. This is not leading, this is repression.

Reports of tanks rolling through the poor parts of the country as a way of intimidating President Zelaya's supporters is unconscionable and hints of oligarchic forces seeking to forestall a true democratic process.

If people didn't want Zelaya to run for a third term, they would have voted down the referendum. "Fixing" things with an army that brutalizes them was probably a distant preference for Hondurans of both the left and right.

Shame on the ruling junta.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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Letter to the Guinean Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 7th, 2009 at 12:32 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Guinean Embassy to the United States
2112 Leroy Place N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008

Dear Sir or Madame,

I want to express my outrage at the behavior of soldiers in your country. We do not hear much of Guinea here in the United States and it is most unfortunate that we should become familiar with your country thanks to the savage acts of men whose charge, one would suppose, is to protect a country's citizens.

These stories and images of women being raped by military forces in the streets of Conakry are abhorrent. President Moussa Dadis Camara's protestations that he could not foresee this bloodbath are unacceptable. Either he controls his army or doesn't. They should all be stripped of their commissions. These are not soldiers, but thugs.

Perhaps I am naive, but there must be a difference between the two types of person.

This is why military coups don't work. Nobody can stand in the way of those with guns if there is no system of civil law to provide prior restraint. I don't see how the trauma and tragedy can ever be revoked, but the current government might do the whole world a favor and step down so that voters might have a chance to replace them with more responsible human beings. And I emphasize "human."

Shame on your government.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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Free Elliot Madison

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Before you get upset about all those Iranian protestors being run through the wringer over there, you might turn your attention to those enduring similar treatment over here.

In "Twitter-Patter Revolutions," highwayscribery drew parallels between what governments do in Iran, and everywhere else, by framing examples of the violent way our own government has treated its dissidents.

highwayscribery reached back to the murder of four students at Kent State University in the 1960s and moved onto some overzealous police enforcement at Democratic and Republican national conventions over the past decade.

Now, we've got a fresh example from the recent G-20 summit and corresponding protests in Pittsburgh.

Similar to the way authorities responded to the Twitter-Patter revolution in Tehran, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents invaded a house in Queens, New York on Oct. 1, and rooted around its entrails for 16 hours.

That's not a misprint: 16 hours.

As part of the FBI effort in overkill, agents arrested a 41-year old social worker named Elliot Madison. It is not clear what Mr. Madison has done other than participated in the coordination of demonstrations around the G-20 confab.

Last we checked, which was just a few minutes ago, that's not a crime, rather a protected civil right.

His attorney, Martin Stolar told "The Times, "There's absolutely nothing that he's done that should subject him to any criminal liability."

highwayscribery agrees.

The article is devoid of evidence this fellow did anything other than occupy an improvised e-communications bureau that helped demonstrators divine the movements of the police details bent knocking the snot out of them.

The attorney said he'll know what the charges are when the affidavit empowering the FBI to disembowel his home is unsealed.

That's another anti-democratic feature of our democracy that drives the highway scribe nuts. The sealed court document. In his real-life job as a reporter, the scribe must comb the PACER system for federal court documents and they are often sealed, which is a way of keeping them from public purview without explanation.

Explanation, we posit here, is the essence of democracy. For a government by and for the people to take an action, it must explain the action to those same people.

The point being we have a ways to go here before pointing the figure at other places.

A criminal complaint against Madison, in Pennsylvania, said he directed, "others, specifically protestors of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse."

Of course, whenever a government issues an order to disperse, it's lawful, so Pennsylvania authorities are belaboring a weak point.

Emerson reminds us, "A good man obeys the law not too well," as in a case like this where your constitutional right to assemble for political reasons is questioned by a bunch of meat-headed, truncheon-wielding yo-yos.

Meant-headed, truncheon-wielding yo-yos, by the way, hate the Constitution because of the way it makes a crime out of venting their most basic and savage urges.
So what we're saying here is the same thing we said in "Twitter Patter Revolutions" and "President Obama and The Venice Drum Circle": Countries in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

If you want to argue that there is no moral equivalent between the enforcers in Iran and those in the United States, ask those who have to breathe the spew from their teargas canisters first.

If you think highwayscribery is getting all bent out of shape over something isolated, keep in mind that on the next page, same newspaper spread, it is reported that New York City will blow $24 million -- useful in forestalling foreclosures or paying furloughed teachers -- to install an "electronic bulwark" against "terrorists" in midtown Manhattan.

Hey, we're all against terrorism right? What's the problem with that?

The problem is that "terrorists" are not the only people the forces of order will be using their new electronic toys to watch.

How do you think they found Madison and his protesting friends in Pittsburgh?

And why is highwayscribery taking potshots at the police?

Because highwayscribery wouldn't trust a policeman farther than he could throw one, and because this article, also in next page of "The Times," regarding the impunity with which officers in that once free and anarchic city operate.

Screw 'em. We're with Madison and his ilk.

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Cantor's Song

By Stephen Siciliano - Sep 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Governing Governing and protesting are markedly different activities.

This from a daily newspaper article dated Sept. 22:

"The same actions to confront the same problems are reaping the same results: voluntary activism, heroic public protest, slogans and posters, militant loyalty and the concentration of hopes in the central figure of a leader who has yet to harness a national crisis into a viable alternative political and social organization through which multiple sectors and interests impacted by poor government can fight for more than sound bites and the next congressional elections."

A summation of the populist uprising fomented by Glenn Beck and FOX News?

No, words from the pen of "La Jornada" columnist, Julio Hernandez Lopez on the state of Mexico 's left-wing opposition.

But it crosses that screwy “virtual” border fence to sum up the Republican status quo pretty easily doesn’t it?

In yesterday's "Washington Post," another columnist, Dana Milbank, wrote a piece that might lead one to believe House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has been delving into some of Lopez's writing.

In "The Health-Care War Gets a Little More Civil," Milbank recounts the staid circumstances of a public meeting convened by Cantor on (what else?) health care.

The meeting was conducted under rather strict rules of conduct, that wouldn't be considered so strict had certain people demonstrated an ability to behave like responsible adults during this summer's nefarious health care town halls.

You can read the piece for yourself, but in summation, Cantor, a snarky, perpetual Young Republican, invited a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and the issue, to join him.

The usual cast of crazies who found the town halls such fertile ground for ranting about the president, the color of his skin and socialistic tendencies, materialized anew.

But Cantor informed them, after some predictable early outbursts, that this was not a town hall, rather a "public square" and that, "We are here today to talk about health care."

That was something of a shocking, if passive, admission that those who disrupted the town halls did everything but talk about health care.

The piece chronicles the disappointment of those who came to rumble over the fact that Cantor was more willing to engage those who came to discuss. They were aghast at the collegial treatment, once a hallmark of The Peoples' House, Cantor afforded his opposite number, Rep. Bobby Scott (D).

"I felt like pulling a Joe Wilson," one defrauded attendee told Milbank.

We know.

You have to wonder what Republican internal polls are telling them about the impact the Tea Party and 9-12 crowd's caterwauling has had on party fortunes.

highwayscribery thought he espied the first shoots of this new Republican tone when Newt Gingrich, the original braying backbencher, decided not to join in bashing the president’s school kids speech.

Let’s revisit the Mexico article and highlight the fragment which reads: "...has yet to harness a national crisis into a viable alternative political and social organization through which multiple sectors and interests impacted by poor government can fight..."

Columnists (and bloggers) can get very wordy, but that swatch of text can be reduced to: “Yelling loud is bringing us no closer to governing.”

And as we said in our opener, whether in Mexico or Richmond, Virginia (Cantor's redoubt), screaming, tearing down, and obstructing is something quite different from governing.

Gingrich, who couldn't match Sara Palin in "exciting the base,” had this epiphany and decided to make a run at being a serious, even-tempered alternative, because people don’t like to see their presidents yelling.

Just ask Howard Dean.

Cantor, as potential national leader, apparently came to the same conclusions Gingrich did. And he might have also noted, with his belated town square on the topic, that for all the media clamor about the August troubles, we're still talking health care.

Worse, for he and his party, it’s going to become a law, with all the ensuing ballyhoo and poll bumps one might expect from that miracle. There is a resolve becoming apparent and it has something to do with the guy in the White House.

The lesson here is this: The party with the votes is the party that makes the laws.

Back when highwayscribery was in the opposition he, and those of his political ilk, made a lot of angry charges about George W. Bush. This left us, or the highway scribe at least, watching the town hall ruckus with a sinking sense of (ir)responsibility.

We still feel, naturally, that our caviling about Bush's questionable legitimacy was er, um, more legitimate, because he filed a lawsuit to stop votes from being counted, which made his claims to victory fairly transparent.

And furthermore, Obama won by a landslide, not by electoral votes delivered in a questionable tally by a state his brother (Jeb Obama) governed.

But we rant when we now recognize the corrosive effects of ranting.

For all our efforts to blow holes in the prior administration’s embarrassing run guiding the ship of state, at the end of the day, the Republicans and Bush always beat us because voters had delivered power unto them.

Yes, journalists fanned rumors of moderate Republicans disagreeing with how the (p)resident and Tom Delay were going about crafting some legislative package or other, but the bottom line is that they eventually got in line and passed the bill.

And so will moderate Democrats, because, once Republicans made clear they wanted health care to be Obama’s Waterloo, there was very little value in striking out independent of the president’s wishes.

And, of course, there are conservatives who play politics because they want to legislate and participate in the majestic process by which our system has unfolded over the past 230-odd years.

They, too, were going to have their say. Not at the top of their lungs, but in the hushed tones of the cloakroom and/or country club.

And like Obama, they wisely waited for the blowhards to run out of gas and the value of their shock tactics to wear thin.

Smart Republicans have faced up to the fact that they lost the election and that cooperating with the other guys is the only path to policy input.

The rants are giving way to something like Cantor’s sweet song.

We congratulate the Republican House Whip and welcome him to the real patriots’ debate.

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The case for Single Payer over Public option

By March4health4All - Sep 20th, 2009 at 4:29 am EDT

Also listed in: 8 groups

The case for Single Payer over Public option

If we are going to fight let's go for the real thing.

Enough with the Public Option, it covers, at best 5% of us, when Obama says, if you like what you have you can keep it, the most important statement is lacking: if you hate it, you can leave it. All the PO does is to create another entitlement for people to resent.

Also, if they wanted to control insurance prices, all they need to do is declare them a public utility, a mandate without price control is untenable.

Single payer is all inclusive, thereby creating less resentment and can be explain in two sentences: This is how it works. You pay your premiums through payroll withholdings, just like ssi, Medicare, etc. and you get the care free.

By eliminating the middleman, you pay a lot less and Drs get pay better.

Single payer is actually an easier sale, as it answers that very human question: "What's in it for me?"

http://healthcare4all.org/

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What's in it for me? Healthcare

By March4health4All - Sep 15th, 2009 at 9:05 pm EDT

Also listed in: 8 groups

Must read http://kucinich.us/index.php

Enough with the public option, it covers, at best 5% of us, when Obama says, if you like what you have you can keep it, the most important statement is lacking: if you hate it, you can leave it. All the PO does is create another entitlement for people to resent.
Single payer is actually an easier sale, as it answers that very human question: "What's in it for me?"

Le's fight for the real thing.

Please join me in demanding your Medicare ASAP, regardless of age:
In FB: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147637363022

In MyBO: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpk4pt

Read Rep. Kucinich analysis below, and let's go after the real thing.
The Private Mandate Sausage Machine

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Dear Friends,

It is said one should not ask how sausage or laws are made. Are you concerned about a public option? Let me share with you some insight about health care legislation which may not be good for your health.

A lesson in politics. The Kucinich Prediction: Here's what's going to happen ...

House will make a big deal about keeping/putting a public option in HR3200 because it competes with insurance companies and will keep insurance rates low.
The White House will refer to the President's speech last week where he spoke favorably of the public option.
The Senate will kill the competitive public option in favor of non-competitive "co-ops". Senate leaders like Kent Conrad have said the votes to pass a public option were never there in the Senate.
The bill will come to a House-Senate Conference Committee without the public option.
House Democrats will be told to support the conference report on the legislation to support the President.
The bill will pass, not with a "public option" but with a private mandate requiring 30 million uninsured to buy private health insurance (if one doesn't already have it). If you are broke, you may get a subsidy. If you are not broke, you will get a fine if you do not purchase insurance.

This legislative sausage will be celebrated as a new breakthrough and will be packaged as health insurance reform. However, the bill may require a Surgeon General's warning label: Your Money or Your Life!

The bill that Congress passes may pale in comparison to the bill that millions of Americans get every month for having or not having private health insurance.

It will take four years for the new legislation to go into effect. During that time we are going to build a constituency of millions in support of real health care, a constituency which will be recognized and a cause which is right and just: Health Care as a Civil Right.

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Book Report: "I Am a Teamster," by Terry Spencer Hesser

By Stephen Siciliano - Sep 5th, 2009 at 6:46 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

In recognition of Labor Day, highwayscribery presents this review of "I Am a Teamster."
If departed Teamster leader Regina Polk had been a book, a thorough read would have been required before any judgment was rendered.

Terry Spencer Hesser's newly released "I Am a Teamster" details the too-short life of a woman who forged striking personal contradictions into a hybrid hellion of unique force.

The union organizer's story puts the lie to Republican detractors who can't see "real Americans" in the country's progressive ranks.

It is a story with roots in a hardscrabble western existence begun in Prescott, Arizona. Her father was a farmer who roamed from spread to spread in search of that ever-elusive American dream.

The family ultimately settled in the Sierra Nevada town of Paradise, California where the credo was, "Less Government, More Responsibility, and -- with God's help -- a Better World."

But raising a child takes a village and, in the 1960s, the village was undergoing a transformation of the kind that permitted teenaged Regina to access the sexually-charged "Kinsey Report."

At her mother's urging, Polk applied to the rich girls' school of Mills College where she was caught up in the chaos that was nearby, 1960s Berkeley.

She was permanently affected by the crosscurrents of civil rights, feminism and anti-war activism that characterized the time and place.

Freed by cheap gas at the height of automobile era, the searching Polk wound up at University of Chicago where she enrolled in a masters program for labor relations, but it was her real job where she got the true schooling.

To pay bills she found work as a receptionist at the inappropriately named Red Star Inn. Hesser writes that Regina was a "knockout by anybody's standards," and enjoyed the concomitant privileges extended by management.

But the employer's treatment of lesser types -- dishwashers, busboys, waitresses and kitchen help -- stuck in Polk's politicized craw and she contacted Bob Simpson, organizing director of Teamsters Union Local 743.

In the book, Simpson recounts that Polk struck him, "as a hippie. The way she dressed and looked. She was for all kinds of rights. Worker rights. Civil rights. Women's lib."

Simpson, who had little interest in expending precious resources on organizing the Red Star, became one of many who learned that Regina Polk did not take "no" for an answer.

She set out to organize the restaurant's workers and, when management got wind of the effort, was fired. The union filed a grievance, the restaurant paid money to get rid of Polk, and Simpson hired her as a part-time organizer.

The rest, as they say, is herstory.

By 1975, American capital's move out of the manufacturing business was in full swing and the Teamsters' saw their primary source of dues-paying members evaporate. In search of greener pastures, union researchers identified a surging class of white, middle-class, moderately educated workers.

"To organize white-collar women," Hesser writes, "the Teamsters needed a different kind of organizer to lead them out of the mire of scandal and suspicion that surrounded them on a national level."

Enter Regina Polk.

She was a college-educated, floppy-hat-wearing fashion plate with a philosophical crush on Jimmy Hoffa. Polk possessed a cosmopolite's travel lust and a farm girl’s ear for country western. A serial savior of imperiled animals, she carried an ice pick for slashing tires in the old-time Teamster way.

A culinary epicurean, she walked into one of Southside Chicago's roughest neighborhoods so that her maid Johnnie Scott didn't go without a paycheck.

"I lived on Justine on the South Side," Scott remembers in the book. "At the time, it wasn't a suitable neighborhood. It was bad. And I remember lookin' out the window and here comes Regina walking by herself. Bringing me my paycheck. She wasn't afraid of nobody. 'Have a nice vacation,' she told me, 'it's better with pay.' That's the way she phrased it: It's better with pay.'"

The anecdote is indicative of Polk's approach to both organizing and contract enforcement, which focused on individuals. None of whom were too insignificant to benefit from her assistance.

"She defended ferociously her members when managers attempted to abuse them, believing that the union should do more than just guarantee a wage, that it should also see to it that its members were treated respectfully," Gary Mamlin, a University of Chicago shop steward, told the author.

In her under-appreciated "The Other Women's Movement," Dorothy Sue Cobble posited that in between the first wave of suffragette feminists, and the second-wave feminists spawned by the Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan five decades later, thrived a special breed of "labor feminists."

These women took root and cover in their unions during the 1930s when labor syndicates enjoyed a heyday in the United States.

Polk's religious dedication to union values, and fearless confrontations with the old boys in labor and management alike, suggest she was a unique mix of the latter two waves.

As such, she neither demeaned the value of domestic work nor avoided it.

"If she was coming home late or not at all," Scott remembered, "she would cook for Tom [her husband] a beautiful plate of lamb chops and peas and wrap his dishes before she left, leaving me instructions or telling him to eat it cold."

Classified by the famed political scientist C. Wright Mills as "weak insiders," unions typically groan under the weight of servicing the least fortunate with a dearth of resources

And so, the Teamsters promptly put Polk to work helping organize clerical workers at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Chicago. She later reported to union bosses on the difficulty of getting "status-conscious" and "image conscious" women to join a "truck drivers union."

Nonetheless the Teamsters prevailed. The extent of Polk's contribution to the victory might be read in the 28-year old’s subsequent assignment to organize workers at the University of Chicago.

Faced with a recalcitrant university president who had successfully dislodged the union at Yale, Polk's campaign was conducted largely "underground" or secretively so as to protect those with the courage or need to join the Teamsters' drive.

The campaign prevailed, too.

"The university was stunned," writes Hesser. "It had failed to realize that over the previous twenty years the people who worked on campus were no longer faculty wives but bread-winners who needed the money. They were mothers, many of them single, whose paltry paychecks started looking worse and worse."

"I Am a Teamster," is no syrupy-sweet story about the virtues of organized labor. Hesser makes it clear that Polk had her detractors within the union.

"I think it was because she was so aggressive," said Simpson, "but I can remember specifically one guy saying to me, 'I didn't like her from fuckin' day one!' And that was exactly his words and this guy was a board member."

Regina also grew disillusioned with the union’s lackluster support of its members.

Nor is “I Am a Teamster,” the tale of perpetual triumph, because Polk's campaigns did not always prevail.

After one defeat, she came across her opposite numbers from a union-busting law firm at a local bar. One of the "bastards with briefcases," as she referred to such consultants, approached to share a conciliatory, post-battle drink. Instead, she took the one she was nursing and threw it in his face.

All of Polk’s fire was extinguished in a plane crash at the age of 32. Some years later, when her wrongful death suit was at trial, one of the jurors recognized Regina as the person who had donated the very clothes she was wearing.

Hesser's slim volume, 147-pages long, renders a large life with efficiency. The author commits the biographer’s forgivable sin of falling in love with her subject. She starts off unevenly, accumulating too many posthumous summations, inappropriate for a chapter on childhood, while applying enthusiastic adjectives to someone whose larger-than-life actions speak for themselves.

But as Polk's career takes form, so does the narrative, which is delivered in a no-frills reportorial form that leans properly on numerous interviews of people who were there at the time.

"I Am a Teamster," celebrates the difference one person, empowered and guided by the simple principal of solidarity, can have upon the lives of others through brute effort, consideration, compassion, and even joy.

One of her Teamster mentors, Ray Hamilton, eulogized Polk by saying, "She lived as she believed and felt that it was more important to actually help one person than to talk about saving the world."

Although she inspired fellow Teamsters, the union was never going to make a template of Polk from which a generation of like labor leaders could be modeled.

She was too unique and too individual. A real American if you will.

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The Liberal

By Stephen Siciliano - Aug 26th, 2009 at 4:12 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

He carried his personal flaws and tragic miscues in the same way he carried the liberal credo: slightly wearied, but unyielding.

His opponents linked them seamlessly.

If the health care debate reveals anything, it is that to believe in a government conceived with the purpose of serving the people places one in the company of someone who drives a young girl off a bridge, runs, and then hides.

Together, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy and the large liberal constituency that thrives throughout this country, have trudged on, standing by tired platitudes that are no less virtuous for being time-worn and tested.

His loss is a terrible blow to Republican fundraisers, but not so much as it will be to an ungrateful and impatient people who take whatever they can get, while viewing the acts of sharing with or giving to the less-fortunate as foolhardy.

For those of us inspired and instructed by his political example, his like will not be seen for a long time, if ever.

Kennedy never saw a military intervention he liked. He taught, by his example, that such consistency is the stuff of being anti-war and pro-human, never falling for the slick trick of associating support for a missile system with a desire for peace.

Those of us who agreed with him were never disappointed - no matter how low the value of our philosophy sunk - when we awaited his lone and familiar voice to speak out with intelligence against organized and taxpayer-funded mayhem.

We were never disappointed when the corporations that run our lives, pirate our money and health, had come up with yet another new line of propaganda that succeeded by appealing to what was worst, rather than best, in the American spirit.

He was there, like a default setting; turning our helpless rage into articulate argument that we might carry forth onto the streets, into parties, and anywhere else informed public debate still percolates.

For those of us who retired at night, beaten by our own mistakes -- thrown into doubt -- Kennedy demonstrated how one picks-up and carries on.

The marvelous and masterful senator taught us that our questionable pasts and sorry records could be righted by doing one small thing tomorrow and another the day after and so on.

He taught us that our job is to get better at what we do and to not be undone by setbacks.

He did not define what it meant to be liberal because all of that came before his rise to power and fame. But Kennedy taught us what it cost to remain liberal, to endure the insults and continue the work of assisting those who need it.

Unlike his brothers, frozen in youth by martyrdom, his story encompassed the sloppy narrative that becomes all our narratives, which in the end, is the same effort at doing good while swimming against a current of so much evil.

Good bye you good Liberal.

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NO MORE HEALTHCARE DISCRIMINATION

By March4health4All - Aug 23rd, 2009 at 4:38 am EDT

Also listed in: 6 groups

Today I had the privilege to interpret for Maxine Waters at the town hall meeting on healthcare.

The good news, the insurance mignons that have been disrupting so many of these meetings with all of their racist and anti-Semitic poison do not have enough cojones to show up in Compton.

The bad news, even in the most liberal of the bills, the public option is no more than a token, it will not cover more than 10 million people and it is not a choice, most people will NOT have an option, much like today, worse yet, by making insurance mandatory, the rest of us will be left even more at the mercy of the insurance companies than we are today.

So even as a matter of strategy this lukewarm reform is no reform. As someone pointed out today, we elected Barack Obama, not Mitt Romney, even under the best light as presented by congresswoman Waters, this is the Romney plan implemented in Massachusetts, it is not working there and it will not work nationally.

The public option is just a misnomer to appease the left, not an option at all, puzzling since last time I check the majority in congress IS THE LEFT, so who are they appeasing?

Healthcare is a right protected and provided by the government to senior citizens, children, veterans and their own employees, as such, equal protection under the law demands that it be provided to all.

Medicare for everyone today, it is a constitutional issue, not a matter of congressional negotiations subject to debate.

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A Tale of Two Governments

By Stephen Siciliano - Aug 6th, 2009 at 9:06 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Republicans and their wing-nut fellow travelers believe there are two governments in the United States.

One government runs foreign policy and wars and it is a government that never apologizes for America because America never commits a sin overseas.

It is a government never referred to as such.

It is just "America," a bright and shining example of all things good, that runs itself on the strength of its immaculate conception

The other government is the one that should never get involved with America's interior workings, should never monitor its businesses, and should never render any services, because it can't do anything right.

The two governments, of course, are one and the same. Republicans and their ilk consider the first one their particular provenance and shunt the other one off on Democrats whom they then deny the right to adminstrate as often as they can.

FOX News runs montages of President Obama committing the cardinal sin of admitting the first government's humanity and concomitant flaws before foreign audiences to the soundtrack of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana."

It spends the remaining air-time lamenting Obama's attempt to lead the second government's "takeover of the health care system."

The argument is this: The same American government that should never apologize for actions overseas cannot be trusted to best the wild and woolly wiles of our entrepreneurial class.

That's the religion.

It's a religion, like many religions, with adherents who subscribe to the tenets against their better interests.

But as Michael Hiltzik of the "Los Angeles Times" noted the other day, the entrepreneurs handling of health care sucks.

Writes Hiltzik: "Throughout the heroic struggle in Congress to provide a 'public option' in health insurance, one question never seems to get answered: Why are we so intent on protecting the private option?"

And that's a whopper of an omission, which most of our elected representatives (in a rare demonstration of bipartisan comity), and cable news offerings on both the "left" and right, are all complicit in arranging.

Maybe some of you saw bumbling Bill Kristol's interview on "The Daily Show," not too long ago.

Host Jon Stewart observed how members of our military are the beneficiaries of government-controlled health care and Kristol, in his knee-jerk understanding of patriotism, noted that, because of their sacrifice, the soldiers deserved the best.

Stewart was on it, scribbling in a pad, "So you're saying a government-run plan is better than the sh*#t private insurance coverage the rest of us have?"

Kristol wanted to counter, but the knee had already jerked. He was nailed in the same way the rest of the hysterical right wing should be.

Republicans and conservatives are out to torpedo anything the Democrats might do to improve health care in this country. Not because they love getting reamed monthly by their insurer, but because they don't want the other "side" to have a victory.

This is an extreme example of what candidate Obama was talking about when referencing the corrosive impact of our divisive politics: Some Americans would rather forego better, perhaps life-saving health care, than let their opposite political numbers claim they had done something good for the country.

Full disclosure: highwayscribery hates his insurer Anthem/Blue Cross/Blue Shield etc. He views it as an adversary to whom he ponies-up the second largest chunk of his discretionary budget.

And it's not fair.

Taking his blogger's sense of the responsible citizen into the realm of health care, highwayscribery eats fruit salads every morning (except Sunday when he gets a sausage, egg, and cheese "McGriddle"), and salad (or gazpacho) for lunch.

At dinner, the scribe averages a single piece of meat per week, two fish meals, two pasta feasts, and some other culinary delights chosen for their salubrious balancing of his dietary intake (although he'd prefer more McGriddles).

He surfs three times a week, runs an average of 10 miles over the same period, and plays baseball with a six-year-old who can, and does, run rings around him.

The result is a low-cholesterol, low blood-pressure, clean bill of health for a middle-aged guy (don't ask) who asks little else of his health care providers than to confirm these positive results.

Last year the scribe paid $208 a month for his premium and this year it was raised to $248. No reason. Now the scribe is no Adam Smith, but he figures if the free market system our conservative countrymen are so worried about conserving actually functioned, a cut in premium would have been due.

But that's not what happened. What happened was the unilateral imposition of a considerable increase backed by a threat of financial ruin should the scribe walk away from this "relationship" and then be badly hurt.

What insurance really gets you, of course, is the right to pick a fight with your insurer once illness strikes, and it decides "the procedure is not covered."

Or as Hiltzik puts it: "For if the insurers have proved anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution."

the scribe wrote the Anthem/Blue Shield plan administrator and let him know exactly what he felt about the increase. He said the company should have paid him for the aforementioned custodianship of his own well-being and added that he hoped President Obama instituted a single-payer, government-run system that responded to public pressure because private insurers certainly don't.

Anthem confirmed the argument by not replying.

The premium stood, much the same way Bank of America's unilateral decision to increase monthly fees by $5 on the scribe's checking account did.

It's all one way. Big boy leans, little guy bends and breaks.

"The firms," Hiltzick writes, "take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too."

That's what, no, that's who The Right is defending. These companies.

They are organizing (read: paying) people to attend town hall meetings on health care and disrupt the dialogue, shout down speakers, and insult their elected representatives.

Republican Party leaders at the national level such as Rep. John Boehner and Michael Steele defend these actions as if they were proper and worthy of a healthy civic culture. With the sophomoric smirk that has become their party's trademark responses to earnest policy, they mock Democrats as people who just don't get how badly Americans want to keep the crap arrangement currently in place...in place.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Instead these purported loyal oppositionists gain succor from what passes for the left in this country, with the onerous Democratic senators Max Baucus (pictured) and Ben Nelson, from Montana and Nebraska respectively, doing everything they can to eviscerate or eliminate altogether the American peoples' desire to have a public option to these corporate crooks.

Hiltzick, in his excellent piece, makes the connection to these "Blue Dog" Democrats thusly:

"You've heard of the Blue Dog Democrats, those mostly rural conservatives who blocked a summertime vote on reform legislation on Capitol Hill? According to the Center for Public Integrity, the biggest backer of the Blue Dogs’ political action committee is the healthcare industry, which is on the path to pumping a total of $1.2 million into the PAC's maw in the current 2009-10 election cycle."

Wow, there's a surprise.

Maybe this time things will backfire. Maybe if the opponents of change yell loud enough and insult enough people, Americans will get past the cant about "socialism," or "bureaucrats" (as if health insurers didn't have them, too), and see that the only thing Republicans propose is doing nothing.

Maybe Americans will see that the President's opponents stand for nothing, but will fall for anything that does harm the largest number of Americans.

But don't wait for an apology. Their America doesn't do that.

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President Obama and The Venice Drum Circle

By Stephen Siciliano - Jul 27th, 2009 at 10:04 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

For many years, on cool, cool California nights, the Venice Beach Drum Circle has gathered at the rim of the Pacific and rendered rhythmic homage to the sun, to life, and to liberty.

Congas clip, djembes clop, drummers bang and dancing dervishes delight. Incense floats from boardwalk merchant stands and sometimes it is accented with a wisp of marijuana. A crowd of onlookers, always different, enjoys all the spontaneity under the watchful eye of ...

...the Los Angeles Police Department.

highwayscribery can attest to this Sunday night ceremony stretching back to at least 1996, but suspects the tradition dates back to the first hippies.

Frequent attendance over the years also qualify the highway scribe to unequivocally state that these folks are not bothering anybody. Quite the opposite. Carving out a small piece of the public commons for themselves the goal is establishment of a tiny bubble where tolerance and primal beats reign.

It is a charming space to be for those who share the circle's open door philosophy and even for those who don't.

The fly in the ointment is the police presence. They do not serve any protective purpose. Instead the police skulk around observing and intimidating. It has gone on for years and often, they ruin the fun, inexplicably barging in and breaking up the circle before its climactic crescendo just as the sun dips into the ocean drink leaving an orangeade sky behind.

Venice Beach is Los Angeles' Greenwich Village. Despite suffering similar ravages of gentrification, it is holding better than its more famous bohemian cousin. It residents are your usual real estate poison pills of blacks, working-class Mexicans, and dreadlocked indy freaks.

They do not participate in the ambitious race that is American life for reasons varied as their odd raiment. But last year the neighborhood was papered in Shepard Fairey's famed "Hope" poster and local activists, usually aligned with the Green Party or Che Guevara's ghost, came out strong for Obama.

Like the conservative pundits who hurled time-worn labels at Obama such as "leftist" and "socialist," they did not completely buy what the media was claiming the next president to represent.

A "The New York Times," editorial on Mr. Obama and race, noted how he has refused the role of black "exceptionalist" lecturing his people "to stop whining about racism and get on with it."

Regardless of Obama's posture on Guantanamo, detentions, the intelligence capers, and other civil rights issues, the conservatives were correct in their earliest presentiments that he was something "other."

So were the "others."

And last Wednesday. The Venice Beach Drum Circle got their reward for voting Obama in November.

That was when President Obama, a guy who thinks thrice before talking, said that a stupid Cambridge cop "acted stupidly" in its handling of a report that a Harvard professor was burgling his own home.

Of course, the upstanding and obedient who claim all American values to be their own pounced, but out at Venice, around the drum circle at sunset, the congas were getting conked a little harder.

Because the victim of police abuse in the case at hand was African-American, much of the ensuing debate has rested upon the question of race, which is fine.

But for highwayscribery, and those at The Venice Drum Circle on behalf of whom he deigns to write, it was only a "black thing," to the extent African-Americans are subject to the larger "police thing."

In America, we reserve a place for the forces of law and order that are too often, well, above the law. There is and always has been a slavish deference to the whims and desires of those we ostensibly pay to protect us.

The only exception to the habitual bending of this tropism toward all things cop is the National Rifle Association, which can beat a capitol building lined with police officers seeking some sanity in our gun laws, every time.

highwayscribery does not need to go back very far in time in a search for events that make his case. And it is worth pointing out that the only reason we're talking about this now is because the Cambridge Police Force picked on the wrong black guy.

That's because Professor Gates is a black guy with a big brain, a brain with our Constitution's Bill of Rights etched into its recesses, and a strong conviction that democracy is healthier when you question cops rather than lick their shoes.

That, of course, was his privilege. Gates took the cop on because of the firepower (intelligence and connections) he had.

But not everyone is so blessed.

Only a month ago, in San Diego, a jury acquitted a police officer who, while off-duty, got into a road-rage scrape with another driver and wound up shooting both she and her eight-year old boy.

As the current state of affairs would have it, the one who got shot was convicted and sentenced, medical problems associated with being wounded by a cop, notwithstanding.

It turns out that she was an "unsympathetic" victim, someone whom even the prosecutor trying the cop called a "butthead" in court, a person plagued with flaws we'd have never known about had Officer Frank White not taken aim at her.
And fired.

Whatever Rachel Silva's imperfections, it was Mr. White who carried the gun, who was sworn to uphold the law, and who should have gotten spanked for acting in a manner beneath the dignity of his office (or anybody else's).

Also down in San Diego, Encinitas to be exact, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Brian Bilbray's congressional seat had a residential fundraiser "upset" by the local police.

A 60-year old woman, Shari Barman, and a 62-year old activist named Pam Morgan, were both pepper-sprayed, handcuffed, and charged with the usual crimes associated with telling a cop to go and respond to a real crime.

The American Civil Liberties has said the case involves, "what appears to be a significant abuse of power by a peace officer who intruded into a person's home and reacted with unwarranted force to an unsubstantiated complaint alleging a minor infraction."

When Will Carless, an intrepid investigative reporter for the nonprofit "Voice of San Diego," requested documents from the Sheriff's Department on the investigation into Deputy Marshall G. Abbott's
meltdown, he was told to go screw.

See what we mean?

The "San Diego Union-Tribune," which never met a police raid it didn't like, was able, with the help of local "Christian" activist, to dredge up some evidence of Barman's "violent past" involving an altercation with an airport security guard in...1977.

Michael Wilson and Solomon Moore of the "The New York Times" wrote that, "The line of when to put on handcuffs is a personal and blurry one, varying among officers in the same city, the same precinct, even the same patrol car."

Some officers in the article described a degree of tolerance and the need for a thick skin in their particular line of work.

But another officer from Denver had a different take. "We're not going to take abuse," he said. "We have to remain in control. We're running the show."

Well, over at The Venice Drum Circle that they're never abusing anybody when the police come around. They might add that "control" is the provenance of free citizens until they forfeit it and note that civil society is not a "show" so there is no reason for somebody to "run" it.

It is worth noting that, in the San Diego incident, Abbott went haywire when Barman asked him why he needed her date of birth.

Seems Barman and Professor Gates hail from a similar time and generation that did not care much for the dictates of security guards and police officers with a dim view of America's claim to being a free county.

Ms. Barman's "partner," the 55 year-old Jane Stratton was also knocked down by "Wildman" Abbot.

See a pattern here?

NRA wins. Conga players, lesbians, and black people lose.

The NRA did not support or endorse Obama. Its propaganda about the meaning of his election led a guy in Pittsburgh to shoot up the town for fear our president would remove the sacred gun from his cold sweaty hands.

The conga players, the lesbians, and, for certain, the blacks, did vote for Mr. Obama. Thus elevated, he characterized a certain type of police behavior, common and accepted from the cold Northeast to the warm Southwest, in the same way they would have.

The president has not apologized. Obama has said he would have "calibrated" his remarks differently, but the sum total would have been the same.

If his hand was forced in commenting anew, and calling the policeman and the professor to a White House conversation, the victory goes to his supporters, because there Sergeant James Crowley will come face-to-face with his sloppy handiwork.

And that would be a first.

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Little Story, Big News

By Stephen Siciliano - Jul 15th, 2009 at 10:32 pm EDT

Also listed in: 8 groups

Your "big" news stories confected for mainstream consumption do not always cover matters of mainstream consumption.

Sotomayor, health care, Guantanamo...a liberal's dream list of concerns blanket our Web pages and daily newspapers thanks to the change in power affected last November.

Sometimes, in the heat of it all, it is not so easy to remember that during the Bush regime Guantanamo was the particular province of media oddities such as, well, highwayscribery.

Yes, there are close votes on health care forthcoming, and frustrated minority senators sniping at a nominee assured confirmation, but the shift in agenda from Bush to Obama is dramatic enough to suggest they were two presidents of two different countries (with the same name).

As to mainstream consumption, it would have been unheard of, a year ago, that our big media outlets must needs bother themselves with such a thing as the Obama administration's efforts to restrict the use of anti-biotics in our food supply.

But lo and behold, there was Gardiner Harris's piece in the July 14 edition of "The New York Times."

Given its page 17 placement, HR 962, sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) is not the biggest star in the media constellation.

But if the Michael Jackson circus taught us anything, it is that the chieftains at our networks and bureaus have no monopoly on the country's sober priorities and are as apt to lose their heads as a teenage girl at a concert of the now departed pop star.

Gardiner ledes with the administration seeking, "to ban many routine uses antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans."

One of the unsung heroes of our time, or any time, Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drug Joshua Sharfstein, told the House Rules Committee on Monday that, "feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs, and cattle -- done to encourage rapid growth -- should cease."

And that's a start. From there highwayscribery would like to see the cessation of all additions to farm livestock that are not necessarily...actual food.

Slaughter's legislation would ban seven classes of antibiotics from being given and restrict the application of others to therapeutic and preventive uses.

One would have thought that's what such things were intended for in the first place.

Sharfstein, and those who hired him in the Obama administration, believe the antibiotics lead to the development of bacteria in humans for which our immune systems have no response.

The American Medical Association agrees with them.

The bad and somewhat dispiriting news is that the farm lobby is against the measure and therefore, Gardiner reports, "makes its passage unlikely."

Well, you know, that's awful.

After all, we're aware something makes us sick -- and sounds funny as an idea to begin with -- the doctors' council essentially agrees, and because the National Pork Producers Council has paid for the loyalty of enough Congress members, we've got to eat...

But all hope is not lost. There's a plan to sidestep Congressional fans of polluted food and slip the "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007" into the health care reform bill.

That should make the President's job even easier!

Dave Warner, a spokesman for the porkmen, admits there seem to be more cases of anti-biotic resistance diseases from food consumption. But he added that there are "no good studies" tying them to the use of these substances in the production of that food.

Which may or may not be true, but wouldn't it be nice if they stopped using these things until some degree of certainty is achieved on the question?

The Pew Environment Group, the article goes on to note, is paying for some advertisements supporting the measure.

Robert Martin, a senior officer at Pew said, "Just the fact that Congresswoman Slaughter is having a hearing today is a huge step forward."

Which is somewhat the point of this post.

(You can call Slaughter at (202) 225-3615 to encourage her efforts in this area).

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Obama: The First 106 Days

By Stephen Siciliano - May 6th, 2009 at 4:13 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

It's a good thing that, as a blogging outfit, highwayscribery decided to stay clear of the "first 100 days" traffic and waited patiently for the no less important FIRST 106 DAYS milepost.

On top of highwayscribery's little peep being overwhelmed by the roar of outlets both mega and minor, President Obama's ensuing stand against offshore tax havens and unequivocal nod to industrial syndicalism might have gone unremarked.

Offshore tax havens are the things that people who don't get 10-99 or 1040 forms at the end of year use to avoid paying taxes the people who get 10-99 or 1040 forms can't use to avoid the annual tithe.

Like, say, Warren Buffet.

When the Oracle of Omaha was asked by "New York Times," business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, why his empire was structured as a conglomerate when he advised other investors to "keep it simple," Buffet responded, "We've got this ability in terms of moving money around into various opportunities without tax consequences."

Get it. WITHOUT TAX CONSEQUENCES.

Jackie Calmes and Edmund Andrews at the "New York Times," (NYT) reported that Obama's is a move which, "appeals to growing populist anger among taxpayers but that is likely to open an epic battle with some major powers in American commerce."

To quote a very unpopular former president, "Bring it on."

The new President, you see, is fulfilling a campaign promise to end tax breaks for American companies that send American jobs overseas.

John Castellani of the Business Roundtable gave the reporters a canned reaction: "This plan will reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in foreign markets, which will also crip

ple economic growth here in the U.S."

The obvious question is what is it that makes these countries "American"? You also have to wonder if other companies in other countries pay taxes and, if they do, how they compete.

Finally, while blessed with all these neat tools for avoiding taxes, why has economic growth been crippled anyway?

If the NYT reporters are to be taken at their word, Obama merely wants to fix provisions that no longer serve the original purpose of protecting multinational corporations from being taxed twice: once overseas and once by the Internal Revenue Service.

But according to the same article, in 2004, the last year for which there are figures, corporations deferred reporting earnings and wracked up tax credits that led to a paltry 2.3 percent contribution on what is supposed to be a 35 percent tax rate.

In short, they didn't come even close to paying their fair share.

the highway scribe, by the way, is still being forced to pay his.

The Obama plan has left open one big, fat loophole, according to Lynnley Browning, also of the "New York Times" (which should give you an idea of what political blogging's future will look like when all these "real" newspapers go under).

The Obama plan, apparently, doesn't do away with "transfer pricing," a concept we feel no need to explain since most of you aren't going to need it and because the outcome is essentially the same, where multinationals and taxes are concerned.

There's a pattern developing with the president, who seems to throw big punches, but them dance off into a corner when battling the big boys.

Robert Reich at Salon.com thinks the president throws a lot of stuff out there, and keeps some close to his chest, because he's trying to affect great changes in American society. More often than not, Reich believes, he will run into the same people at the negotiating table and all of these plans and provisions will serve as so many bargaining chips on its coffee-stained surface.

For example, when the American car industry started going belly-up, there were complaints from people the scribe has coffee with that the bankers were bailed out, while unions were being required to eat their contracts in most usual and inequitable fashion.

But lo-and-behold, at Chrysler Obama practically went syndicalist, which is a philosophy that believes unions, workers councils, and others cooperative labor groups are best-suited to running industrial entities.

On May Day itself, "NYT" subscribers awoke to a headline that claimed "Chrysler Files for Bankruptcy, UAW and Fiat Take Control."

True, it's not the revolutionary syndicalism preached by Pierre Prodhoun, but it's still United Auto Workers control with $8 billion in g

overnment grease for the wheels.

Or as Jim Rutenberg and Bill Vlasic, again, of "The Times" noted, "It was a stark moment, and one unseen in modern times..."

Micheline Maynard, of (yes) "The Times," penned "In Chrysler Deal, Union Takes Rare Front Seat," and observed that Chrysler's Chapter 11 could end up being the "Cadillac" of bankruptcies for the United Auto Workers.

Apparently Chrysler didn't have a luxury model that could make the analogy workable.

Quoted in the piece was an expert in bankruptcy restructuring of Washington-based Arent Fox saying, "This is extraordinary, truly extraordinary. I never would have thought a year ago that this would occur. These are truly unusual times."

Change indeed.

Maynard noted that the United Auto Workers is not just any union thanks to its heavy political contributions, but that's a narrow conclusion that lacks a back story.

Which is why you come to highwayscribery.

The UAW is the holy grail of democratic trade unionism in this country with a not inconsiderable reputation around the world as well. The union's dramatic history is woven into labor lore. The auto workers have cut a noble and progressive profile in countless fights since their formation by the Reuther brothers in the 1930s.

In 1986, when the highway scribe was a cub reporter, he was assigned to cover the union's national convention in Anaheim, Calif.

Now reporters are a pretty jaded lot. We've got to sift through a lot of buffalo chips to get at the truth and many events we cover are shows concocted especially for our delectation and/or distraction.

But the sight of 5,000 UAW delegates, sitting at long tables across the sprawling convention floor, rising to their feet and singing "Solidarity Forever" stamped a memory in the scribe's mind that 23 years have barely dimmed.

And that's part of what is behind this move. A progressive president standing by a blue chip labor union and assuring its members get a fighting chance rather, rather than sacrificing them to the cold and heartless logic of the marketplace.

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The Message, Not the Messenger

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 8th, 2009 at 3:06 pm EDT

Also listed in: 8 groups

The messenger is beloved when the message is peace, freedom, equality, rights, and other byproducts of the American and French revolutions.

A lot, but not everything, that President Barack Obama does passes muster with the highwayscribery editorial board.

Take, for example, the Obama Department of Justice brief in Jewel v. National Security Agency.

For nitty gritties we suggest you visit Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon, where he applies an unrelenting commitment to civil rights with a constitutional lawyer's training.

In broad strokes, the lawsuit represents a legal challenge to the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping policy.

By way of recap, last year Obama and other Democrats joined Republicans in passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This nefarious piece of legislation granted immunity to telecommunications companies that had complied with Bush administration requests to spy on their customers.

This provoked a howl of protest from civil libertarians. Congressional Democrats responded that the government, in spite of the FISA bill, could still be sued for its transgressions upon our rights.

Jewel put that promise to the test.

An unfortunate byproduct of our country's majestic process for transferring power is that new administrations get saddled with their predecessor's sins, and the Obama administration necessarily became the defendant in Jewel.

But rather than fold the government's defense and bless the claims of citizens legitimately asserting their constitutional right to privacy, Attorney General Eric Holder has done just the opposite...if not worse.

In requesting the lawsuit's dismissal, Holder asserts the state's "secret privilege" doctrine and attempts to repress evidence that might add meat to the plaintiff's boney claims.

It is identical to the Bush administration's posture which said: "We can't play ball in this court, because its rules require the exposure of information that threatens our national security...

..."trust us."

Holder then argues the doctrine of "sovereign immunity," which leans upon the loathsome Patriot Act and says you can't sue the government on illegal spying unless the pilfered information is made public.

Or, you can't sue the government for spying on you, unless it lets everyone know it has been spying on you.

Worse, it serves the double purpose of letting all Bush administration officials off-the-hook on these crucial constitutional questions.

Howard Fineman of "Newsweek" told Keith Olberman of "Countdown" that the Obama administration was engaged in a political calculus pitting its earliest and core supporters against the "intelligence community" in Washington.

Obama is an "outsider," Fineman explained, who needs the support of the intelligence community in waging the war on terror.

Being commander-in-chief is, apparently, not enough to get them to do their jobs.

highwayscribery does not know much about intelligence types since they sit on the other side of a deep cultural, political, and philosophical divide.

And highwayscribery can say it has about as much use for this particular "community" as it has for highwayscribery's civil rights.

That President Obama would expect anything from them by acquiescing to age-old tropisms evident in our political fabric suggests he may be as naive as some right-wingers insist.

The government could lose. The last administration did not fair well even in a federal judiciary system largely appointed by presidents named Bush, so that losing the case would also mean losing face, with Obama having sold-out his principals for no good reason.

As for the "earliest and core supporters," the scribe can claim initial membership and long-time relations in and with that particular army.

And this qualifies him to observe how people who never gave a hoot about politics came out of their ghettoes, border shacks, and coffee shops to rap, sing, write musical anthems, and put their street cred on the line for the president.

They did not prevail in the administration's formula on this issue, and they can hardly be expected to view this kind of expediency as some new politics fashioned by a unique leader for their own benefit.

Losing their energy and belief would be a real tragedy to the Obama narrative.

Of course, it was always going to be difficult conducting a "new" politics. Obama has been a doctrinaire liberal in many of his first steps and this has pleased the doctrinaire liberals among us, although it is new only to the extent such politics have been out of fashion for so long.

To date his politics have been to the left of President Bill Clinton's, but that is a product of the present political climate.

President Obama has been no more willing than Clinton to engage the right wing in a full-throated battle over a nominee or a law that is important to his supporters, always fearful of losing just one Republican Senate vote he rarely possesses in the first place.

Barack Obama seems a very successful politician, but his triumphs are in the old-style politics.

We see it in his financial plans, which not only leave the old order in place, but reward them with our money for the misery they've inflicted upon us.

We see it in the signing statement he made reserving the right to silence government whistleblowers not explicit in the legislation sent to him.

Of course, when he wins as an orthodox liberal we are glad, but the horse-trading and calculation represent a dark side to his old-school tics and the high price we pay for his doctrinaire leftism.

Perhaps this was inevitable, but the President was hired to do a special job on behalf of wronged, but hopeful, people the world over who look to him in a way they have looked to no other U.S. leader.

And this cannot be what they had in mind.

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A Letter to the Iranian Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Mar 26th, 2009 at 4:27 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

March 26, 2009
Los Angeles, California

The Iranian Ambassador to the United States of America
2209 Wisconsin Ave. N.W.
Washington D.C. 20007

Dear Sir,

I’m writing after reading a brief news report on the uncertain fate of the journalist Roxana Saberi in the March 25 edition of the“New York Times.”

The piece reports that your government, after promising to release the woman, now may keep her in custody for months “or even years.”

I’m ignorant of the tenets governing Islamic law, but less so when it comes to the rights of human beings, and especially journalists, confronting the overwhelming power of the state.

I urge you to release Ms. Saberi. Journalism is a crucial function in the Western democracies. It permits a fully informed populace to make educated decisions about their own government and those of others with whom their countries interact in an interdependent world.

I understand that whatever medieval code you’ve decided to run your own country by probably does not extend the same courtesy to information-seekers, but it is incumbent upon me to inform you of your presence amidst other states and other peoples who conduct themselves more openly and fairly.

Who are you, in the end, to curtail the movements and box in the body and spirit of another human being? Is this something Allah desires? I should think not. What your detention of this journalist demonstrates, dear sir, is that you are running a dictatorship fearful that its own citizens, and those beyond your borders, would be repulsed if fully informed as to its actions.

The only government worth preserving is one that lives in truth. Not one that would jail it.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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