"Worst Congressman in History" Contest

Because I miss Keith Olbermann's "worst person in the world" segments I have decided to launch a contest called "worst congressman in history."

I nominate my very own Stevan Pearce (R-NM) for the honor.

Big oil and gas loves Stevie, who made his own personal fortune selling equipment to the exploiters and profiteers of our natural resources.  It loves him to the tune of nearly $2 million in campaign contributions.

Now guess why he wants to pollute the largest underground water table in one of the nation's dryest states by allowing natural gas drilling at a fragile grassland called Otero Mesa.

Big ranching loves Stevie to the tune of nearly $1 million.

Now guess why he wants to remove protection for the Mexican gray wolf packs re-introduced to Arizona and New Mexico public lands after being hunted to virtual extinction.  Stevie thinks it's peachy keen that Catron County ranchers in western New Mexico shoot, poison and trap the animals -- all illegally.

Single-issue kooks -- birthers, Tea Partiers, abortion doctor-haters, Christofascists, racists, anti-immigration and small-government ranters -- love Stevie to the tune of $1.6 million.

Now guess why he supports every whacko anti-abortion bill, border fence plan, theocratic insult to the Constitution and quit-regulating-corporations bill that's introduced by his fellow crackpots in the House.

Mining and off-road vehicle makers, sellers and users love Stevie to the tune of nearly half a million bucks.

Now guess why he wants to end all regulations on the use of public lands so that they can be savaged, pillaged, polluted and despoiled by . . . .mining operations and off-road vehicles!

Stevie has voted for every congressional action that has diminished the national quality of life, fed the nation's insane and debt-causing wars, trampled on individual liberty, violated human rights, enriched corporations at the expense of ordinary people and generally set the nation back a hundred years in terms of human progress.

He has voted against every piece of legislation that would help people of modest means, protect the environment and the health and safety of the citizenship and enhance the quality of life for those who weren't born on third base thinking they hit a triple.

Stevie is the Perfect Republican, selflessly dedicated to making the richest one per cent of Americans still richer, while cutting off the means to existence for millions of less fortunate citizens.

And so, readers, there is your challenge: nominate, if you can, a better candidate for "worst congressman in history."

Abroad in the Great American Jungle

A recent cross country trip dished up depressing visual evidence of our nation's physical decay and moral depravity, capped by the news that the government was transferring Bradley Manning to Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas.

His initiation, according to a released inmate who went through it himself, will be three weeks of continuous gang rape.  Since we  weren't told the details of his transfer, it's possible this new humiliation of an innocent man has already begun.

"Free Now" (the alias of another recently released Leavenworth inmate) wrote: "Bottom line is you're going to be sucking c*** or getting plugged in the seat, unless you fight. Anytime someone tries to punk you, you fight, unless he happens to be a gang member. In that case you need permission from the leader of his set to fight him."

His military captors know full well what Manning faces; may, I suspect, have secretly arranged for it with one of the seven prison gangs known to operate in -- and actually run -- Leavenworth.

And, yes, Manning is Constitutionally an innocent man: he has not been tried, his guilt has not been proved in a court of law, he is as innocent as you or your pastor.

Our national state of denial will enable millions of Americans to ignore these truths, as they ignore so many others.  In town after town I saw signs of pride in our military and the unending wars they wage. Nowhere did I see regret for the slaughter of innocent civilians, for documented atrocities, or for the massive national debt these wars have created. I did see signs and hear people condemning immigrants, the poor, the uneducated and the sick for causing our national indebtedness by needing assistance to survive.

In town after town I saw a Wal-Mart, but in what once was the business district were boarded-up buildings where the American Dreams of small businessmen went up in smoke.

Once when I paid a restaurant cashier, I jokingly told her to keep my three cents change and "give it to the governor next time you see him."  She replied: "If enough people did that, maybe he'd fix the roads."  The roads in this "blue" state were indeed in terrible condition; when I drove them ten years ago they were safe and well-maintained.

America's infrastructure is rotting while we squander tax dollars fighting insane wars and supporting inhumane dictatorships because they're friendly to our vast military machine. Government funds creating jobs to bring the infrastructure into the 21st Century would help solve our massive unemployment problem, and bring down the deficit, as any number of Nobel Prize-winning economists have told us over and over again.

But that would spoil Wall Street's free ride on the backs of the struggling millions of ordinary Americans.

Our national sense of denial won't allow us to face these unpleasant truths.  We're up to our clavicles in "news" about the royal wedding.  We pay no attention to the screams of an innocent man being gang-raped in a federal prison.

It's the new American Way.

Frankly, my dear, it sucks.

Another Very Special Pulitzer Prize

Medicine's loss was journalism's gain.

Paige St. John would have been a great doctor or veterinarian.  But somewhere during her studies at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville she veered into what was then the nation's smallest accredited J-school and the die was cast.

Today, she holds the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, for a two-year-long investigation into fraud, failure and misfeasance in the Florida insurance industry, particularly in the field of home insurance against hurricanes.

We were on the road when the news broke last week.  "Paige Wins Pulitzer!!!" said the text message from our son, John -- Paige's husband.

For the second consecutive year, Lois and I -- particularly Lois -- walked step by step in the shadow of a Pulitzer Prize winner on the trail of corporate corruption and greed. Lois was Dan Gilbert's "journalism stepmom" in pursuit of the oil and gas royalty scandal in Virginia that won the 2010 prize for public service.

We first met Paige when John's then wife-to-be visited us in Pennsylvania.  She could transform a walk in the woods with the dogs into a series of enlightening mini-lectures on the flora and fauna to be observed around us.  She exuded compassion for all things great and small.  She might have succeeded in any number of careers, including music and science and medicine, but her commitment to journalism was total.

As a skeptic about the future of the craft -- megacorporate ownership already was diluting the quality of journalism across the land -- I feared for her future and John's.  Our son, too, was still then an award-winning journalist who had been a finalist in the Pulitzer judging.

Having shepherded more than one Pulitzer Prize-winning effort ourselves, Lois and I knew the cost -- not just time and money but emotional toll, internal stress, political pressures, libel fears.  As American media came under increasing pressure for profit rather than quality journalism, fewer and fewer information purveyors were willing to pay the price.

The Sarasota, FL, Herald-Tribune, where Paige landed in 2008, is one of the few surviving practitioners of that kind of old-fashioned journalism.  None of her editors blinked when the project stretched on and on beyond the six months originally envisioned.  None expressed purse-string concerns when the pursuit of the story took Paige to Monaco and Bermuda, where the really high rollers of re-insurance fraud frolicked.  No editor panicked when the writing, editing, illustrating, re-checking and publishing of the reportage stretched over a full year.  Nobody at the paper backed down when regulators, politicians and powerful corporate lawyers tried to block publication and smear Paige. 

State Sen. Mike Bennett, a Bradenton Republican and member of the Banking and Insurance Committee, wrote:

Paige, you are one of the few that continues to uncover details and one of the few that the newspaper industry continues to support and finance.
Thank you from all consumers in the State of Florida.

Kurt Luedtke, probably the only man ever to win both a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and an Oscar from the film industry, and a subscriber to the Herald-Tribune, had made essentially the same point in an e-mail to the editor shortly before the Pulitzer was announced. He wrote that "enterprise and investigative reporting all over the place is diminished because of money problems, and the lack of it is, I think, a real problem for all things civic and maybe democracy itself.

"That said, here is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, with resources which must be as threatened as anybody's, consistently turning out work that's damn good, and greatly relevant to its market, and well-written and well-presented to boot. And not easy stuff, either: I think about the insurance series as an example of difficult, time-consuming work which badly needed doing. . . If there were a big, fancy prize for quality work over, say, a five year period, you'd win it."

Paige told an interviewer that her husband was her first and best mentor in the art of investigative reporting, which he once taught at the University of Michigan.  John responded that now the tables are turned. "She knows much more than I do.  I could be her student."

So, I might add, could the entire Washington press corps.  But that's another story.  Maybe there's a Pulitzer in it for someone.

Nice Music: Overture to a Sell-Out

The Old Gray Lady was positively ecstatic.  "President Obama, Reinvigorated," she trilled in the headline on her editorial.

"For months, the original President Obama had disappeared behind mushy compromises and dimly seen principles," the New York Times editorial said. "But on Wednesday, he used his budget speech to clearly distance himself from Republican plans to heap tax benefits on the rich while casting adrift the nation’s poor, elderly and unemployed."

Please forgive the Pianist for failing to share the Lady's enthusiasm.  Perhaps it's his accursed memory for familiar old tunes.  Heckuvva speech, Barry.  Fluid, firm, articulate, smooth, reassuring -- all the right notes.

Just like the campaign rhetoric on health care.  "Insure every American."  Except that we took universal single payer off the table before there even was a table.  Except that we sold out to the pharmaceutical industry before there was even a plan.  Except that every time the Republican minority shouted "Boo!" we gave away more benefits for the sick, the aged and the poor.  Good speeches, though.

Just like the campaign speeches on the economy.  Grand populist phrasing, bold pledges to "main street" -- and a total sell-out to Wall Street.

Just like the campaign speeches on war, on torture, on working people -- a moving, soaring hymn to our better angels.  Except that we still torture shamelessly, have added a third war to our agenda and refused to stand shoulder to shoulder with the brave unionists of Wisconsin.

And now we're expected to believe that Dr. Kidglove will actually stand up to the Tea Pot House of Representatives on the phony issue of the Deficit Bogeyman and the Battle of the Budget ?

Good speech.  Remindful of the exchange in the bleachers of old Tiger stadium when Norm Cash played first base in Detroit and hit the occasional home run.  Norm swung at a fastball and  missed by a foot.  "Goof riffle," said one patriot.  "He leads the league in good riffles," said his companion.

Don't mind the cynics,  Barry.  It was a good speech.


Of course we've heard this tune before.  We have learned that it is but an overture, a  stringing together  of pleasant, hummable platitudes that won't be borne out when the curtain rises and the real action begins.

You could call it, "Prelude to the Cave-In."

He has said the pretty words -- with a few glaring hedges if you listened closely. Even the Old Gray Lady sort of noticed. "His plan relies on about two parts spending cuts to one part tax increases," its editorialist said. "It should have been closer to 50-50, broadening the sacrifice."

Sacrifice? How about reining in the war machine?  Old Gray Lady?  Old Gray?  Hey, the war machine?  Are you still there, Old Gray editorialist ?

Oh, never mind.

From yesteryear's presidential debates comes the distant sound of another pretender to be president, chiding his debate opponent.

"There you go again!"

Is There Anything These People Don't Hate?

Do you have to hate everything in order to be a new Republican?

You've got to hate women: the Republicans in Congress refused to accept any budget that funds the health and social services that millions of American women need just to eke out an existence. These are the kind of people who came up with "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen."

You've got to hate animals: my Republican congressman wants to kill all the wolves in the southwest and other Republicans want to gut wildlife protections and endangered species laws.  These are the kind of people who would shoot Bambi between the eyes, feed poison to Lassie, put Flicka in hobbles and filet Flipper.

You've got to really hate poor people.  In a land where the richest one per cent of the are getting richer still by leaps and bounds, while the rest of fall further and further behind, the Republicans want to cut funding for programs to help the poor.  When Barry Goldwater, the godfather of neoconservatism, was running for President, Bill Mauldin drew a cartoon depicting an impoverished woman in tattered clothes on a church step, with B.G. towering over her saying, "Quit whining.  Go out and inherit a department store."

You've got to really hate the planet we inhabit.  Let the filthy rich mining companies turn Grand Canyon and Arches National Parks into slag-filled swamps of bile and rot.  Drill, baby, drill!  Put the tree-huggers in concentration camps and make them drink from the streams befouled by mountain-top removal.  These people never met a landscape they didn't want to defile.

You've got to really hate good health.  The Republicans want to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency.  Never mind that it prevents the polluters from causing cancer, diabetes, asthma and emphysema in millions of Americans.  It's a damned nuisance for industries with billion dollar profits that don't pay a nickel of income tax. These are the kind of people who would make matchsticks out of Tiny Tim's crutch.

You've got to really hate the old and the sick.  Republicans want to end Medicare and Medicaid as we know it.  They detest what they call Obamacare.  They think primitive tribes had it right: when you're old, infirm or sick, you should just crawl off into the wilderness and die.  Except that if the Republicans had their way, there'd be no wilderness to crawl off into.

You've got to hate real people and love corporations.  (See Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.) No wonder women are beginning to incorporate their uteruses: "It's a person, not a choice."

You've got to really hate liberals. Liberals, by definition, are open to new opinions and progress; they favor  individual liberty in political and social affairs.  Next thing you know they'll be wanting to inflict stuff like  habeas corpus  on us.

You've got to really hate working people.  Republicans have already put 27 million Americans out of work, and now they're zeroing in on  the unions that protect workers' rights.  A variation on the idea in the Mauldin cartoon. These are the kind of people who would strangle the canary in the coal mine because it costs too much for birdseed.

But Republicans still love motherhood and apple pie.  Unless, of course, mother is a liberal.  Then, well, send her out into the wilderness! 

But Thanks for the e-Mail, Anyway, Barry

President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Pres:

Thanks for the recent e-mail about your 2012 campaign, which mentioned my financial and other support of your election in 2008, and requested that I redouble my efforts on your behalf this time around.

Unfortunately, I cannot do that.

You wrote:

We've always known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does. But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we've made -- and make more -- we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest.

A quick review of the progress you've made turns up:

* continuation of the wars we elected you to end and the addition of a new one, initiated with the same kind of subterfuge and deception your predecessor used before invading Iraq. (A shady deal with Saudi Arabia to look the other way if it invaded Bahrain, provided the Saudis would muscle their Arab League cronies to support a bid for a UN "no-fly zone" over Libya.  For shame!)

* continuation of, and then worsening of, your predecessor's denial of constitutional rights to citizens illegally detained at Guantanamo.

* continuation of your predecessor's illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens under the unconstitutional so-called Patriot Act.

* strengthening the corporate hold on all branches of government, until the last faint ember of democracy flickers and dies.

* total cave-in to a Congressional minority on health care, the economy and unemployment.

* summoning John Boehner to the White House, presumably to sell out to Tea Pot Republicans on funding for social services in order to pay for the sins of the filthy rich bankers who are raking in record bonuses on Wall Street since you bailed them out of a crisis of their own making.

Barry, old buddy, I fell for your eloquent line of bovine excrement once.

As your predecessor once tried to say, but typically messed up, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

My conscience will not permit me to support your re-election.

Recent Comments

(These comments appeared in Grasroots Press, which frequently re-posts commentary from A Bordello Pianist).

xandtrek
    I agree with everything you say here, Mr. Wark.
But until there is a viable 3rd party to the left of the Democratic Party, I will hold my nose and vote for whomever is a Democrat — and that includes Obama. 
I believe that much of Presidential elections are about the Supreme Court whose appointments are for a lifetime. We can hardly go any farther to the right on the Supreme Court, but we still have four votes to temper the out-of-control corporatist righties. 
And there is some movement to the left within many of the agencies who regulate our health, safety, and environment — although not as much as I would like.
So as usual, I will be holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils — I’m just not willing to accede the future to the right.



Dan T
 Mr. Wark, there is a choice. Obama versus–Trump/Palin/Bachmann. Not difficult, actually.