JUDGES ON LIFE-SUPPORT

Isn’t it about time that we stopped giving Supreme Court judges a lifetime job? The president doesn’t even get that. No one gets that.

Germany has a 12-year limit for its high court judges. France, Italy and Spain have a nine-year term for their judges. Other nations such as Israel and Australia kick their judges out when they reach 70 years of age. Canada shows them the door at 75. Beyond judicial term limits and a mandatory retirement age, it’s also worth considering multiple appointing authorities.

In France, Germany and Italy, no single person or institution has a monopoly on appointments to the constitutional court. In Spain, four judges are appointed by the upper house, four by the lower house, two by the government, and two by a Judges Council.

This seems so much more progressive than us giving our judges lifetime appointments.

I’d say ten years for the judge, maybe twelve, but that’s it. Then we bring in some new blood. Some new thinking.

Even our judges on the U.S. Court of Federal claims are limited to 15-year terms. Members of the Federal Reserve Board, who are shielded from politics because they oversee the nation’s economy, serve 14-year terms, with their chairman appointed for a four-year term.

I think maybe this thing about our high court judges being appointed for life may have come from the fact that during the first 20 years, Supreme Court justices averaged 13 years of service. This is an acceptable figure. Later it went up to 26 years. That is when something should have been done; something changed.

I think everyone should be accountable to someone, but a person with a lifetime job is accountable to no one. During their later years, they can develop weird ideas, but these ideas must still be accepted as gospel.

This is not how this country should be run. We must get the Supreme Court judges away from politics and back to where they can concentrate only on the constitutionality of cases brought before them.

The California Curmudgeon.

THE CRUISES TO NOWHERE

On September 1, as tens of thousands of desperate Louisianans packed the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, FEMA was out buying 10,000 berths on full-service cruise ships. They gave Carnival Cruise Lines $236 million for a six month lease on three ships. These ships remain half empty as they bob in the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay.

If the ships were at capacity, with 7,116 evacuees, for six months, the price per evacuee would total $1,275 a week.

A seven-day Caribbean cruise out of Galveston normally costs around $599 a person, and that would include entertainment and the cost of actually making the ship move.

So actually, the government would have saved money if they had just sent all the evacuees on a six-month luxurious cruise.

The California Curmudgeon

A lot of this rant was stolen from Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post.

CONGRESS TO THE RESCUE

The estimated cost of full reconstruction of the Gulf Coast region is $200 billion unless, of course, Halliburton has cost-overruns).

Our glorious Congress rides to the rescue of the Gulf States by cutting into the lean and ignoring the fat.

Instead of cutting back on the tax cuts for the wealthest one-percent of the country (which would save us an estimated $327 billion), they have chosen to cut back on vital national services (programs for the people).

They plan to cut:

$225 billion from Medicare (the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor).
$200 billion from Medicare (the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled).
$25 billion from the Centers for Disease Control.
$6.7 billion from school lunches for poor children.
$7.5 billion from programs to fight global AIDS.
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
$4.8 billion to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program.
$3.6 billion to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.
$8.5 billion to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion from Amtrak.
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative.
$417 million to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency.

They call this plan "Operation Offset". This plan is not about "offsetting" or rebuilding, it's about exploiting this crisis to push their longstanding goals for America. And this goal is, as conservative movement leader Grover Norquist puts it "to get government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub".

I think I hear the water running now.

The California Curmudgeon.

BUSH WELCOMES GREED WITH AN EXECUTIVE ORDER

Katrina destroyed much of the Gulf States and now the repairs must begin. But even in these times of strife Bush “Politics of Greed” rears its ugly head.

First, there were “no bid” contracts given to Halliburton and Bechtel. Then Bush signed an executive order taking away the “prevailing wage” standards for construction workers who will be hired to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

This means that these people who are struggling to get back on their feet, after being knocked down and losing everything in the hurricane, will not be paid the “prevailing wage” for the job they do. It’s all about greed, folks. Less for the worker, more for the contractor.

At least nine times in the past decade, right-wing extremists in the Republican Party tried to get Congress to repeal or undermine the law that requires federal contractors to pay the “prevailing wage” for the region in which they are working. None of the efforts succeeded until now. The extremists in the Bush administration have taken advantage of Katrina to do what they could not do otherwise.

When is this government “of the people, by the people and for the people” going to be for the people?

The California Curmudgeon.

THE "HAMMER" TO THE SLAMMER

Well, it looks like ol’ Bill Frist got his tit caught in a wringer trying to use inside information with his blind trust.

He sold all his stock, as well as those of his wife and kids two weeks before his parent’s company, HCA came out with a disappointing earnings report. Now that couldn’t be considered insider trading, could it?

Even though Martha Stewart was convicted of the same thing, it’s my bet that Frist will come up with some excuse and walk.

There seems to be two sets of rules governing us. Those for Bush and his friends and those for the rest of us.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I want to see Billy boy with an ankle bracelet.

The California Curmedgeon

THE GREENSPAN MAN

I have always thought that Alan Greenspan was not the man for the job. I was not aware of when or how he was appointed, but I remember being very disappointed when our then president Clinton appointed him to serve another term.

Little did I know that I was right and he should have been put out of office many years ago.

He is the most Ideological Fed chairman since the 1930s. He enlisted himself and the awesome governing powers of the central bank in advancing the “reform” agenda of the Republican right.

He crossed the line of neutrality when he prodded Congress and the public to accept the right’s larger goals. The money guys gained domination over the “real economy” of production and work. The consequences imposed on society are often described as “the tyranny of the bottom line”.

He endorsed Bush’s massive, regressive tax cuts and gratuitously embraced the GOP plan to deform Social Security by turning over its trillions to the private investment houses.

The so-called “independent” Federal Reserve should not be sticking its nose into party politics. This ideological shift by the Greenspan Fed is more extreme than generally recognized. Greeenspan seems now to be acting as an errand boy for the special interest crowd.

When Greenspan retires next year, you can expect waves of adulation for his extraordinary eighteen-year reign over the American economy.

Senate minority leader, Harry Reid had a different idea of his reign “I’m not a big Greenspan fan. I think he’s one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington”

When the adulation fades and people begin to understand the full weight of Greenspan’s legacy, they should be able to see that Reid had it right.

Greenspan was a political hack and I was right all along.


The California Curmudgeon

Much of this commentary was stolen from William Greider

BIG OIL vs TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF THE GULF STATES

Have you ever seen gas prices go up any faster than they are right now? The oil companies use any excuse they can think of to raise the price of gasoline. Some Arab stubs his toe and the price goes up a couple cents -- a small refinery goes off line for several hours and the price goes up some more cents or OPEC thinks that it should get more money for their oil and the price goes up a dollar.

OPEC raises the price of crude oil 10 cents on a 42 gallon barrel and the price at the pump goes up 10 cents a gallon (a barrel of crude yields 19.7 gallons of gasoline).

Sometimes it seems to me that I am the only one to equate the fast-rising price of gas with the obscene profits of the oil companies. Everyone seems surprised that the oil companies are able to make any profit because the high cost of a barrel of oil.

The California Curmudgeon

BUSH AND HIS LIGHTNING FAST RESPONSE TO NEW ORLEANS

Just like he did when told of the attacks of 9/11, Bush sprang into action only two days after being told of the destruction of New Orleans. He gave up two of his 38 vacation days to rush to the aid of the survivors of the hurricane Katrina, but first he stopped in San Diego to party with his business friends.

After all the glad-handing with some of his "base" in San Diego, Air Force One flew him to Louisianna where he had the pilot descend a bit so he could catch a quick look at the disaster. Then it was back to the safety of the White House and his many handlers.

I guess his handlers convinced him to at least show his face in New Orleans -- make a couple of speeches, shake a few hands, tell the people that he will be thinking of them. They didn't tell Bush to admit that he had, just two years ago, cut $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers which was a 44% reduction.

I don't imagine that they told him to admit that even though Clinton set some tough policies on wetlands, he not only repealed those policies, he also ordered federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.

Despite all of the cover-up and the spin doctors working overtime, maybe this time the chickens will come home to roost.

Some times "what goes around, comes around" just takes longer than other times.

The California Curmudgeon