Op-Ed

AUSTIN, Texas -- Across the length and breadth of this great land of ours, from the mountain to the prairie, from every hill and dale comes the question, "Where are the Democrats?"

They're among the missing, along with Judge Crater and Osama bin Laden. The venerable political organization, the party of Jackson and Jefferson, is not to be found in action. OTAM -- out to all meals. So this is what it's like to live in a one-party country.

Is it possible, remotely possible, that Democrats are frightened by the John Ashcroft-Trent Lott school of "patriotism," which holds that questioning our elected (or even not-so-elected) leaders is tantamount to disloyalty if not treason? That expressing concern about our fundamental liberties helps terrorists? For that line of attack to be treated with anything but the contempt it deserves is itself un-American, not a word I use lightly.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Did anybody vote for this stuff? I mean, aside from Congress.

Just to make Tax Day even more exciting than it usually is, we have been treated to a series of recent reports that the Internal Revenue Service is busy cracking down on poor folks, while letting an estimated 1 million rich folks and corporations move to Bermuda to avoid taxes.

If you are a worker poor enough to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit, your chance of being audited is one in 47. If you make over $100,000 a year, your chance of being audited are one in 145.

This is not only unfair, but also stupid, on account of rich people who cheat on their taxes tend to owe a lot more money than poor people. Thus, their cheating leaves a larger hole in federal budget, which all the rest of us then have to make up for by paying higher taxes. We also pay through all that bad economic stuff that comes with big deficits about which Alan Greenspan is always worried.

Michael Moore

The ex-editor of the Flint Voice – the equivalent of the Free Press in Flint, Michigan without the glamour – is at it again. We’re sure that Mike, a good blue collar democrat, chose the Rolling Stones over the Beatles in the 1960’s and ripped the “frat loops” off preppy-boy dress shirts. He’s become the bane of the Bush bunch (or klan) by writing a best-selling book that reveals how the former director of the CIA’s family essentially staged a coup in the United States. It’s called a “demonstration election,” stupids, I mean, Bush supporters. Moore’s brilliant popularization of populist discontent against America’s inbred and verbally-challenged self-proclaimed artistocracy is must reading. Despite the media blackout and Marxist-Leninist-style cult of personality propaganda promoting GW Bush by the mainstream media, Moore’s Stupid White Men book tour draws thousands even at the smallest sites in the smallest cities across the country. Many Americans are coming to the realization that the Bush family stands for war, debt and corporate oppression.



Kent Beittel and the Open Shelter

AUSTIN, Texas -- Well, things do seem to be going to hell, don't they? The beauty of having fled to Mexico for a week to escape the endless blat of television news is that it leaves you with enough energy to tackle the subject of the Middle East -- if not with cheer, at least with hope.

And that does appear to be the missing ingredient here -- the expectation that anything at all can be done about the situation. Of course it can. The Israelis and the Palestinians are not condemned to some eternal hell where they have to kill each other forever. There is no military solution, but there is a political solution -- and they will get there. The United States is obliged to broker the deal because there's no one else to do it.

In times of crisis, many policymakers and journalists pay special attention to the editorializing from America's most influential papers. The spin of news coverage and the mix of individual opinion pieces usually indicate the outlooks of the media establishment, but the editorials by powerhouse newspapers convey more direct messages.

The spin of news coverage and the mix of individual opinion pieces usually indicate the outlooks of the media establishment, but the editorials by powerhouse newspapers convey more direct messages.

With carnage a daily reality in Israel and the West Bank, some editorials have been entirely predictable. The Wall Street Journal, true to ideological form, applauds Israel's iron fist and urges the White House to stand firm behind Israeli leaders. In contrast, more refined Washington Post and New York Times editorials tell us a lot about common U.S. media reactions.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The evidence just keeps stacking up that this administration intends to turn the entire country into a giant Texas. The hallmarks of Bush's governorship are everywhere, being reenacted on a grander scale in Washington, D.C. The favors and services for big corporations, ludicrously obvious pro-polluter policies advertised as something else, the occasional bone thrown to the right-wing and, above all, tax cuts that leave the government unable to carry out even its most basic obligations. Foreign policy is the only new element in the mix.

-- Bush offers something called the Clear Skies Initiative, arguing it would reduce pollution "better and faster" than the Clean Air Act now in effect. But the Energy Department already did a study in 2000 analyzing various enforcement strategies and concluded the approach wouldn't even work as well as what we already have, a law that the administration is very busily NOT enforcing.

The Committee to Protect Journalists released a bleak report the other day. "Attacks on the Press in 2001" is a thick document with details about media suppression in much of the world. While American readers may feel very fortunate, they have no good reason to be smug.

Last year, the report says, 37 journalists were killed because of their work. Many more were jailed or physically attacked. In some countries the jeopardy is primarily legal; elsewhere the main dangers are assault and murder. But -- one way or another -- journalistic pursuit of truth can bring grim consequences.

Worldwide, the picture is largely dismal. But also inspiring. Despite serious and ever-present hazards in numerous countries, a lot of journalists keep setting aside fear to do their jobs with integrity.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Have you noticed that the health-care system is not working? In fact, it's falling apart. And the most curious thing about that is how few of the people for whom the system still works -- and they're the ones who make the decisions --- are aware of it.

It's like the old story about frogs and hot water. If you drop a frog into boiling water, it will leap to get out, but if you drop a frog in cool water and then gradually heat it up, the beast doesn't notice. Or so they say. Another factor is the now-constant cognitive dissonance we have in this country as a result of the ever-widening gap between most people and the people who run things. If you have health insurance, the system is a pain in the behind but it works. If you don't have health insurance, you are flat out of luck. And in case you hadn't noticed, more and more employers are deciding not to offer health insurance, or using "temporary" workers or out-sourcing various tasks so they won't have to cover the workers.

You've probably heard a lot of spooky tales about "the liberal media."

Ever since Vice President Spiro Agnew denounced news outlets that were offending the Nixon administration in the autumn of 1969, the specter has been much more often cited than sighted. "The liberal media" is largely an apparition -- but the epithet serves as an effective weapon, brandished against journalists who might confront social inequities and imbalances of power.

During the last few months, former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg's new book "Bias" has stoked the "liberal media" canard. His anecdote-filled book continues to benefit from enormous media exposure.

In interviews on major networks, Goldberg has emphasized his book's charge that American media outlets are typically in step with the biased practices he noticed at CBS News -- where "we pointedly identified conservatives as conservatives, for example, but for some crazy reason didn't bother to identify liberals as liberals."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Boy, we are marching backwards on the environment at a truly impressive pace. Between the Senate and the Bush administration, we are advancing to the rear, double time. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, fuel efficiency standards, toxic waste -- this is literally sickening stuff.

Last week, the Senate voted 62 to 38 to postpone, yet again, increasing the fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. According to he Sierra Club, the average fuel economy of cars sold last year was 20.4 miles per gallon, the lowest since 1980. The failed fuel efficiency proposal could have saved the country up to 1 million barrels of oil a day by 2016 -- as much as the United States currently imports from Iraq and Kuwait.