Op-Ed

AUSTIN, Texas -- It's time to connect the dots. If you think the government is having a connection problem on the national security side, you should take a look at the starburst of dots on the economic side for a really stunning scandal. When you start to connect the dots on the business side, you will notice that we're being stolen blind.

One of the best interviews I've read in a long time is in the current issue of The Texas Observer with Bill Black, a name that will bring back fond memories for those who followed the S&L scandals closely.

Black is now an assistant professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. He is a lawyer, an economist and former litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board -- which is to say, the man who went after the S&L crooks. After he left government, he got a Ph.D. in criminology. His greatest claim to fame is that Charles Keating, that noted thief, once wrote a memo to his top lobbyist that said: "Highest priority -- Get Black. GOOD GRIEF -- If you can't get (Jim) Wright and Congress to get Black -- kill him dead -- you ought to retire."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Throwing around words like "fantastic" and "stupefying" is considered bad form outside the tabloid press. But I'm damned if I know what else to say about the news that the Bush administration has decided that global warming is indeed taking place and they are planning to do exactly nothing about it.

Here we are in the middle of wallowing in this, "What didn't they know and why didn't they know it?" debate -- this maddening, haunting and probably useless exercise in "Why didn't somebody do something?" Sept. 11 left quite a bit of spilt milk on the floor, but even that disaster will pale against the consequences of unchecked global warming. Yet here is the Bush government announcing right here and now that it knows this disaster is coming but it will not do anything to stop it. They will not even do anything to slow it down or soften its impact. What can you call that except fantastically irresponsible?

Two countries -- each with dozens of atomic bombs -- are threatening to make war on each other. Large numbers of troops have mobilized. Deadly cross-border clashes are intense. And people in charge of both governments have become more bellicose by the day.

Maybe you think this situation calls for U.S. officials and American media outlets to focus on ways of preventing the outbreak of a war that could quickly turn into a nuclear conflagration. If so, your mode of thinking is distinctly out of step with the "war on terrorism."

You see, as the summer of 2002 begins, what matters most is the Pentagon's determination to kill as many Al Qaeda fighters as possible. Some of them are located in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and perhaps also Kashmir, the region that's under bitter dispute by India and Pakistan.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Those of the populist persuasion are struggling against what is perhaps the most irresistible of all temptations -- the urge to say, "I told you so."

It is raining evidence these days. The newspaper business sections are turning into the Daily Fraud Update. Deloitte & Touche is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its role in the unpleasant doings at Adelphia, energy CEOs keep biting the dust -- first at CMS, then at Dynegy -- the Arthur Andersen trial in Houston gets more depressing by the day, and corporate evildoers are suddenly ubiquitous.

To: George, Dick and John

Re: Counteracting the Media Evildoers

Damage control efforts are on track after those rough days in mid-May.

First, let's note a silver lining. John's move to prosecute Arthur Andersen pushed Enron off a lot of front pages, and the recent media commotion about "advance warnings" has helped too. However, complacency would be unwise. For instance, George's mash letters to Ken Lay are posted on Internet sites. Reporters could get tired of the raw meat thrown from the Andersen case. Fortunately, they're more like kitty-cats than lions.

To facilitate the purring, stroke as desired. Do what works. Avoid foot in mouth. Friendly pundits will float trial-balloon excuses. What doesn't get shot down is worth repeating.

Dick, you've been magnificent on the Sunday shows. That grim Edgar Bergen look is a knockout -- just don't tell anyone George is your Charlie McCarthy. (Joke.) The main thing is, stay on message. Change the subject whenever necessary. At this point, do FDR one better: The only thing to fear is not enough fear.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The financial industry has always been anathema to populists. "Bankers all have hearts like caraway seeds," is one of the mildest populist pronouncements on the breed, and the pugnacious populist William Brann used to denounce life insurance companies as "vampire bats." So I thought it was just me when reading the financial pages caused me to wonder, "Is there anybody in this business who is not a crook?"

I don't think it's just me.

"Republicans lead by Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas and the accounting industry's trade group are working to kill a Democratic measure that would impose new rules on auditors, companies and investment banks in the wake of Enron's collapse," reports The New York Times. That would be the same Phil Gramm who got $101,350 in contributions from Enron and $927,055 from the financial industry while chairman of the banking committee. (By way of contrast, the late Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas, a populist, accepted no contributions from the financial industry while serving as chair of the House banking committee.)

Politicians are often eager to outdo their foes with media images of greater patriotism or piety. But in recent days, Republican and Democratic leaders have also vied to appear more offended than their opponents.

The catalyst was a GOP effort to boost campaign donations by offering the faithful a Sept. 11 photo taken as President Bush spoke on a phone aboard Air Force One. At the Democratic National Committee, rainmaker-in-chief Terry McAuliffe called the move "grotesque" and declared: "We know it's the Republicans' strategy to use the war for political gain, but I would hope that even the most cynical partisan operative would have cowered at the notion of exploiting the Sept. 11 tragedy in this way."

A Republican spokesman quickly defended hawking the Sept. 11 picture, which is part of a "limited edition series" that includes a pair of photos from Bush's inaugural and his speech to the joint session of Congress soon after 9-11. "These pictures are of historic moments from the president's first year and are living testimony of his courage under fire, and leadership," said Carl Forti. "It is frankly offensive that anyone would suggest otherwise."

EL PASO, Texas -- This is one of those stories, like drought, that happens quietly over a long period, so no one quite notices how horrible it is ... except those directly affected. Those who pay attention to the Texas-Mexican border have known for years now about the murder of women in Juarez.

Mexican and American feminists have tried to draw attention to what at first seemed just an extraordinary case, or series of cases. There was one arrest that looked good (and a bunch of cases of guys who confessed after the cops beat the crap out of them -- this has now become a standard claim), and for a time it seemed the police might have the right guy in custody. But the killing continued.

The newspaper Norte of Juarez bannered the story again last week under the headline, "State Justice Fails." Above it on the front page were the numbers: "More than 250 women murdered, 19 arrests, no one sentenced." The bodies of 274 women who fit the pattern have been found since 1993.

AUSTIN, Texas -- President George Bush's foreign policy is starting to look like a running gag on "Saturday Night Live." How inept can he get?

On Tuesday, Bush teed off on Castro of Cuba, saying he "ought to have free elections," "ought to have a free press" and "ought to free his political prisoners." All of which is dandy, except Bush was standing right next to one of our more questionable allies in the "war on terrorism," the prime minister of Malaysia.

Malaysia is also in serious need of free elections, a free press and freed political prisoners. Mahathir Mohamad is a far more brutal ruler than Castro ever dreamed of being. His party has been in power since 1957 (love those free elections). He's been in office since 1981 and the subject of denunciations by human-rights groups the entire time. His ruling faction is far ahead of Castro on bloodshed points. And we're offering Mohamad whatever he wants.

A basic principle of democracy is that every person's vote should have equal weight. So we might expect some public discourse about the fact that the U.S. Senate is fundamentally undemocratic. But it's a complete non-issue among politicians and journalists alike.

One of the key roles of news media should be to raise important questions that powerful people in government don't want to ask -- or answer. However, while thousands of reporters and pundits stay busy with all kinds of stories about politics, they keep detouring around a central tilt of the national legislature's upper chamber.

Like the "purloined letter" openly displayed in a famous tale by Edgar Allan Poe, the Senate's huge structural flaw is right in front of us all the time -- but we don't see it as anything more than an eternal legacy of the nation's political heritage.

The past has ways of enduring. Today, in the 100-member Senate, cattle may be more equitably represented than people.

For instance, Montana -- with a total of 902,195 residents, according to the 2000 census -- has a pair of U.S. senators. So does California, with a population of 33,871,648.