Category: Politics

The Brethren

The Book of the Week is “The Brethren” by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, published in 1979. This book documents the power struggles of, and kinds of cases decided by members of the U.S. Supreme Court– the highest court in the land– covering the period from autumn 1969 to the spring of 1976, during President Richard Nixon’s administration.

Annually, the Court received about five thousand petitions that were handwritten, mostly from prisoners appealing their cases. The justices ruled on only a tiny number of cases. The ones they chose to rule on, gave rise to weeks or months of scrutiny, debate, hours of research, and reams of writings. When the justices or their clerks (assistants) gave further consideration to a case, they might procrastinate reviewing the case until the next court session in the fall, or order it remanded to a lower court.

The major controversial cases involved desegregation, pornography, monopolies, abortion, freedom of the press, and the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court had the final say on where local control (States’ Rights) ended and Constitutional protections began.

Warren Burger, a conservative, was the Chief Justice. His authority was exceeded only by the President and Vice President.  Nevertheless, there were usually two or three justices who might vote one way or the other in any given case, as tiebreakers. So they had the real power. The Court members were always divided in their votes along liberal/conservative lines.

The early 1970’s were eventful years for the Burger Court, what with the replacements of a few justices who retired due to ill health; and attempted lobbying of two justices on a monopoly case (considered not just a conflict, but an overtly aggressive act that would have biased the justices had they not been sufficiently principled in demanding the departure of the lobbyist forthwith). Oh yes, and a near-impeachment of a president.

In June 1971, the first installment of the 47-volume Pentagon Papers was published in The New York Times. It was the job of the Court to decide the extent to which publication of the 1945-1967 study of Vietnam would affect: national security, the process of the termination of the war, and release of prisoners of war. However, the government had lied too much about the war already.

The Court– at least five justices– had to decide whether to expedite the case relating to Nixon’s turning over of audiotapes consisting of conversations of administration officials. The overall dispute was not uncommon, over the authority of two branches of the American government– the Executive and Judicial. Nixon (a member of the Executive) was attempting to claim executive privilege (invoking Constitutional protection) in not turning over the tapes. Seven of Nixon’s top aides had already been indicted by a grand jury. They had implicated unindicted coconspirators. One was the President himself.

Those portions of the tapes containing Nixon’s voice engaging in interactions of a conspiratorial nature were not protected by executive privilege. At least one justice believed that such audio evidence bespoke of obstruction of justice.

Nixon’s attorney attended the hearing that would determine the role the Court would play in presiding over Nixon’s conspiracy case. It was the attorney’s contention that Nixon would basically be the judge at his own trial, as he should get to interpret the Constitution, after the Court made a recommendation on the case law.

Read the book to learn the details of the office politics in the Court, different aspects of the endless ideological debates on various super-controversial issues, how the justices dealt with the Chief Justice’s actions, as well as Court-related lore– during a particularly tumultuous time in the nation’s political history.

Fidel Castro

The Book of the Week is “Fidel Castro, 10th World Trade Unions Congress.” This is the repetitive speech delivered by Castro on the 10th of February, 1982– year 24 of The Revolution. Its hearers consisted of 135 nations representing 351 trade union organizations comprising 260 million workers.

At the time, it might be recalled that the United States was engaging in an arms race with the Soviets. Castro accused the U.S. of being a greedy bully.  The monster-sized corporations, oil and chemical interests of its military industrial complex were profiting from oppressing Third World workers.  Such workers were victims in nations plagued by aggressors: South Africa in Angola, Israel and its neighbors, various imperialists in Vietnam, dirty little wars in South America…

Was it necessary for the U.S. to have three hundred military bases worldwide with personnel numbering half a million? Was it actually threatened by anyone?  The arms race defied reason, as every day, it cost more because the weaponry needed to be more and more destructive. “… the U.S. and its allies seek military superiority as an instrument for political pressure…” According to Castro, there existed three tons of explosives for each man, woman and child on the planet.

Castro railed on about how the world was experiencing its worst financial state since the Great Depression. Humanity would benefit if only a part of the money spent on military-related purposes was diverted to raise people’s standard of living and make progress in the world. He claimed that spending in the private sector created more jobs than spending in the military sector.

In 1980, U.S. military spending was five hundred billion dollars. Reagan’s military spending was out of control. If it continued at his pace, it would be valued at $940 billion by the year 2000. The money could be spent instead on eliminating malaria or caring for infants. According to Castro, the U.S. was planning to build thirteen “Trident nuclear submarines” by 1990. The cost would pay school tuition for sixteen million Third World kids for a year.

Children were dying for various reasons but the ultimate cause was imperialist policies– selfish war-mongering and capitalism. Castro claimed (about Cuba) “… Our health indicators can compare with those of developed countries; the scourge of unemployment has been done away with, and there is no racial discrimination, prostitution, gambling, mendacity or drug addiction.” He said there was a vicious rumor that Cuba had bought militarily advanced weaponry, but it wasn’t true!

Read the book to learn more about the villainy of the United States and how it was hurting the workers in socialist countries.

They Also Ran

The Book of the week is “They Also Ran” by Irving Stone, originally published in 1943; updated in 1966. This book documents 23 specific losing candidates in 45 American Presidential races spanning 166 years, from the early 1800’s to the early 1960’s.

In 1872, Horace Greeley, newspaper publisher, tried to convince voters to nix a second term for Ulysses S. Grant, Republican, hero of the American Civil War; the General’s administration had been mired in nepotism, cronyism and corruption. No such luck. “Grant had not the faintest conception of what a president should do… gazed with the mind of a child at the affairs of state, blinked uncomprehendingly, and turned them over to his friends to be kicked around.” Zachary Taylor’s ignorance and inexperience was largely similar, although his 1848 (mercifully short-lived) administration was less corrupt.

Another election in which voters chose the wrong man– resulting in an egregiously dishonest government– was that of Republican president Warren G. Harding. “If ever a nation made a valiant attempt to commit suicide, the United States did in the year of 1920.” However, economic mores were different in the early 20th century. There was thought to be no conflict of interest when newspaper owners accepted shares of stock of public corporations to foster favorable reporting, and amiable relationships. James Middleton Cox was one such owner, who failed to stem the tide of political wreckage under Harding.

In 1824, Democrat Henry Clay, narcissistic attention-whore litigator, super-successful at courtroom histrionics, used his talents to attack the characters of Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Upon his being nominated, Clay acquired a healthy dose of hubris syndrome. The opposition depicted Clay as a drinker and gambler (probably true). “The nation was crisscrossed by plowing streams of rumor, gossip, invention, fragmentary truths.”

William Jennings Bryan was another colorful character who mesmerized audiences with his public speaking skills, in the elections of 1896 and 1900.  Unfortunately, his megalomaniacal belief that he was God, diminished his chances to get elected president. His debating on the issues of the day– tariff, monopoly, railroad legislation and agriculture– lacked substance. He had sympathy for poor voters only insofar as it would help him retain political power. Nonetheless, his entire campaign in 1896 cost him $34(!) Democrats voted for Bryan, but in their hearts, shuddered to think what would happen if he was elected.

In 1905, in a ten-week investigation, Charles Evans Hughes, as corporate attorney for the New York State legislature, single-handedly found that a gas-supply monopoly was overcharging customers through artificially keeping prices high. Hughes’ good work led to more work, in the form of opening the can of worms that was corruption perpetrated by New York Life Insurance Company; more specifically, the bribing of local politicians in exchange for the enactment of insurance-friendly legislation (horror!).

Yet another war hero turned politician was George B. McClellan. In 1864, he lost to Abraham Lincoln. In the military, he had trouble with authority, control-issues stemming from an inferiority complex. The soldiers under him worshipped him; however, if elected president, his insecurities would rule. There would have been “… destructive clashes with his cabinet, the Congress, the Supreme Court, with every function of government which attempted to limit his control.”

Modest Civil War hero and losing 1880 presidential candidate Winfield Scott Hancock had read the politically democratic book of his day, Chitty’s Blackstone. Thus, it was his opinion that civil, not military courts should settle disputes concerning the Confederacy’s rejoining the Union under “Reconstruction.” Congress disagreed.

In the 1870’s, Samuel Tilden did an end-run around the entrenched criminal syndicate that was Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall, to kick out the perpetrators.  Lawsuits were useless because the Boss owned the judges. Instead, over the course of four years, as a New York State legislator, Tilden aggressively pushed anti-Tammany elective candidates for Democratic state officers and the legislature. Most of them won; he impeached the rest. He paid for some of the investigations out of his own pocket.

In his 1876 pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, Tilden launched an aggressive direct mail campaign with extensive print promotional materials in color– hundreds of thousands of pieces, on the political situation and on himself. He also published a 700-page tell-all tome about Grant’s failures as president.

Calvin Coolidge beat John W. Davis in 1924. Coolidge truly thought that big business could do no wrong, so he allowed a free-for-all. He would never have been elected but for his promotion from vice president upon Harding’s death in office. Herbert Hoover ignored pleas by experts to halt the gravy train and impose some regulation.

Another fun factoid: in 1940, prior to losing to Franklin Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie (and his wife) rode in open-car processions where people threw food and other objects at them.

Fast-forward to 1942. WWII economic sluggishness led New York State Governor Thomas Dewey to wrongheadedly stimulate the economy by rewarding the moneyed class. As is well known, incidentally, he lost to Harry Truman in 1948.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater used extreme language and failed to work harmoniously with his fellow Republicans. He refrained from reining in his constituents’ rudeness and selected a reactionary running-mate.

Read the book to learn which candidates should have won, why they didn’t, and qualitative as well as quantitative data on their professions, parties, platforms and personalities. One important generalization: “Many were teachers in their youth, and nearly all came from homes in which there was love of learning and books.”

This Just In

The Book of the Week is “This Just In, What I Couldn’t Tell You On TV” by Bob Schieffer, published in 2003.

The author started his journalism career at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at the dawn of the 1960’s. Later, he covered the overnight shift police beat. In those days, there was no security in the detectives’ office. He and people off the street could roam the station at will. Before Miranda Rights, reporters frequently recorded the confessions of suspects because they could type and the cops couldn’t.

Schieffer got his wish to go to Vietnam to cover the war in 1964, before it became controversial. During more than four months, he rooted out and interviewed all of the soldiers from Texas, hitching rides on military helicopters. President Lyndon Johnson was also from Texas, so the author trusted him when he initiated fighting in order to nip Communism in the bud and keep neighboring states from it, too.

The author later changed his mind when he saw how extremely inefficient it was to have tens of U.S. troops searching for one or two Viet Cong guerrillas per day in rural areas. He also saw how the teenage South Vietnamese would-be ragtag soldiers recruited by the Americans, refused to help the U.S fight. Stateside, he was sent to cover countless anti-war protests. At that time, protestors were expressing their feelings about a super-controversial situation in their country that was a matter of life-and-death.

In 1966, the author started to anchor TV news in Fort Worth. At the time, the screening of primitive newsreels was the norm. Next came CBS radio news in Washington, D.C. in 1969. Washington’s real beats consisted of the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Schieffer’s station chief expected his news gatherers to be on call 24/7, so CBS became the network that covered the government best.

However, President Richard Nixon held sway over the FCC. Negative news about the president was censored, because the agency had the power to revoke the licenses of TV stations.

In 1971, Nixon’s childish aides had nothing better to do than generate a blizzard of memos pouncing on every little negative thing that the press reported on the president, or memos on issues they failed to cover. Ironically, there was no security at the Pentagon– most of the building was open to the public. Anyway, the aides also did phony letter-writing to the networks with exaggerated complaints about slanted coverage, and had praise for the Nixon administration.

In 1972, during George McGovern’s presidential campaign, it was found that “Man-on-the street interviews are notoriously inaccurate gauges of public sentiment…” Broadcasting news on the traveling candidate was quite cumbersome. In those days, two reporters were at every campaign stop– one to get the story and the other to go get the film developed. Another fun factoid– the campaign plane served whiskey and food to the news crews, paid for by the networks.

THE AUTHOR HAD PEOPLE TELL HIM THEY THOUGHT A GOOD BUSINESSMAN COULD “… STRAIGHTEN OUT THE GOVERNMENT IN NO TIME…” The author disagreed. Sure, the positions of CEO and president both require leadership skills. However, a business and a government have different goals. THE GOAL OF GOVERNMENT OUGHT TO BE PUBLIC SERVICE, NOT MONEY-MAKING AND THE ACQUISITION OF POWER. All too often, elected officials forget what they were supposed to have been taught in high school civics class. They go astray. And a leopard doesn’t usually change its spots. Businessmen are usually once and always.

That’s why business leaders are less than ideal candidates for government. Besides, the 535 members of Congress make up a very diverse group of individuals who bear listening to, unlike a small board of directors- who are less likely to disagree.

Even when journalists are not under duress to slant their reporting, they have confirmation bias– hearing and seeing what they want to– which is “… the easiest and most destructive habit that a reporter can fall into and has probably caused more stories to be missed than any other single thing.”

Read the book to learn other pearls of wisdom from Schieffer. His decades-long career included experiences in the newspaper, radio and TV trenches covering crime, war and politics– which in some cases, were and still are, one and the same. 🙂

Iphigene

The Book of the Week is “Iphigene, Memoirs of Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger of The New York Times Family” by Susan W. Dryfoos, published in 1979. This is the life and times of a New York Times heiress, as told to Dryfoos– her granddaughter.

Iphigene was an only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a highly successful newspaper publisher, having turned around The Times upon his purchase of it in 1896. “While the other New York papers fought a ruthless and unscrupulous battle for circulation by means of outrageous headlines and sensational stories, The Times sought to expand readership with sober and comprehensive reporting.”

In 1898, The Times faced stiff competition from the tabloids that sent their reporters on location to the Spanish-American war front. Iphigene’s father, Adolph Simon Ochs, dropped the price of his paper from 3 cents to 1 cent instead of making up inflammatory war stories.

The paper maintained its integrity and avoided conflicts of interest under Ochs . For instance, he claimed to refuse to accept gifts from, or print laudatory stories, about advertisers.

Iphigene was born in September 1892. Suffering from then-undiagnosed dyslexia, she was beset with poor grades although her schooling was the best that money could buy. Nevertheless, Iphigene studied for Barnard College’s entrance exams. At that time, the school had a two-year program for students whose academic abilities were less than stellar, but were eager to learn. She wrote, “I found the atmosphere of the school congenial, the students friendly and the teachers excellent…” Iphigene passed additional exams in order to upgrade to the four-year program, enabling her to graduate in 1914 with a degree in economics.

The Times went beyond the call in covering WW I. Its daily circulation between 1914 and 1919 rose to 170,000. Iphigene wed a man who eventually proved himself equal to the task of publishing The Times as competently as her father did. In 1944, he had the company purchase the New York radio station WQXR.

Read the book to learn much more information on what Iphigene did for various communities in New York City in various areas including parks and education; her global travels during which she met various politicians and dignitaries, and her impressions of them.

Stalin’s Daughter

The Book of the Week is “Stalin’s Daughter” by Rosemary Sullivan, published in 2015. This biography tells of the life and times of someone who could not escape her father’s shadow. As is pretty well known, Joseph Stalin, of Soviet Georgian origin, was a twentieth-century world leader who committed untold atrocities for decades, during which his country ended up on the winning side of WWII.

Born in February 1926, Stalin’s daughter was given the first name Svetlana, but her last name kept changing later in life, pursuant to her marriages and desire for anonymity. In order to run his brutal dictatorship of her birth country, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, her father formed a cult– an atmosphere of fear and loathing with himself an object of worship. Soviet citizens who had seen peoples and cultures other than their own developed a split personality because in their hearts, they knew they were living a lie. “Many Red Party members were seen at their dacha but mysteriously disappeared through the 1930’s.”

There was a 23-year age difference between Svetlana’s mother and father. The older one, her father, was 48 when she was born. She, although receiving what was thought to be the best of everything while growing up, was sheltered from many truths, such as the real cause of the death of her mother when she was six. As was common in wealthy families of that era, she got a nanny, governess, and tutors until she started attending school. She was taught German and Russian at an early age.

In the autumn of 1937, Svetlana was assigned a bodyguard, who stuck to her like glue. Her whole life was seen by that bodyguard, and she was forced to terminate relationships with friends whose parents had shown any signs of political leanings adverse to Stalin.

In the late 1930’s, Stalin “purged” his own in-laws– employees of the State Bank. When Svetlana was seventeen and a half years old, she was tested on assembling a rifle as part of the final exam her first year of college. When her son was four years old, he met with his grandfather Stalin for the first time. As an adult, her father had always provided her with luxurious housing– a four-room apartment with a private kitchen, unlike most folks who shared their kitchens and bathrooms and had one-room apartments with plywood separations.

In March 1953, ironically due to a murderous policy perpetrated by Stalin himself– the “Doctor’s Plot”– Stalin failed to receive possible life-saving medical treatment for his arteriosclerosis and later, stroke. Svetlana’s father might have died, but his ghost lived on to sully her reputation for the rest of her life. No matter that she constantly changed her geographic location, her Soviet mentality was evident. Regarding her friendships, she expected 100% loyalty and reciprocity. She adopted a “go big or go home” attitude in hiring former professional mentors and coaches to help her younger daughter learn piano, drawing, swimming and horseback riding. They attended many social events at which her fourteen-year old daughter was a party to numerous customary drinking-toasts, and was a marriage prospect in Tbilisi.

Read the book to get what is probably a more comprehensive picture of the life of Stalin’s daughter in one volume, than any other.

Francis Bacon

The Book of the Week is “Francis Bacon, The Temper of A Man” by Catherine Drinker Bowen, published in 1963. This biography describes the life and times of an English aristocrat born in 1561.

When Bacon was in his late teens, his father died. His older brother got the lion’s share of the estate. Bacon was an arrogant debtor, always blaming others for his debt. Nevertheless, he continued to maintain the standard of living to which he was accustomed, thanks in part to his uncle– who was immensely wealthy with a global network of contacts and a collection of mansions with hundreds of rooms.

England in the 1570’s was a nation of four million fronted by Queen Elizabeth. It was still seen as a primitive backwater, “…her native tongue rude, her food and wines execrable… No less than eight hundred men, women and children were hanged each year… maybe for picking a pocket or stealing a sheep.” Deaths from disease were rampant.

The church elders at Trinity College, Cambridge– where Bacon started his higher education at thirteen years of age (not uncommon for his generation)– thought more truth could be found in faith than in knowledge.  Bacon, an extremely intellectually curious lad, a budding grand thinker and passionate, prolific writer, disagreed. “Beyond the first row of the House of Commons were men unlike Bacon, nonintellectuals who knew more of hounds, horses and crops than of Latin and philosophy.”

During Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the custom was to arrange a marriage between next door neighbors so as to enlarge the families’ estates and wealth. Bacon finally wed in 1606 to a fourteen year old girl. He was 45.

In 1620, Bacon published a fictional story whose plot mentioned many of the advances in humanity he anticipated, such as the existence of institutions of higher learning that would perform empirical research in the “hard” sicences. It was written in Latin so that all of Europe could read it.

Read the book to learn about the ups and downs of Bacon’s legal career, and how he became one of the first victims of the beginning of reform for England’s political system in the 1620’s.

Raif Badawi, The Voice of Freedom

The Book of the Week is “Raif Badawi, The Voice of Freedom” by Ensaf Haidar and Andrea C. Hoffman, published in 2015. This ebook tells the story of the problems that can arise in a theocratic monarchy (Saudi Arabia) when people speak their minds and act of their own free will– considered serious crimes, according to certain powerful men who interpret the Quran in a fanatical way.

One indicator that the story revolves around the author, is that a photo of ONLY Haidar (more than a headshot) is on the front cover of this ebook– not a family portrait, or any other scenes.

Infuriating their families is just one of many consequences of the non-conformist behavior of Haidar and her husband; another– causing an international incident in an ongoing saga that has lasted more than a decade.

The story starts when Haidar is in her early 20’s. Her polygamous father runs a financially successful furniture business. He has fifteen children, including the author– one of his younger daughters. The culture precludes any kind of paid work for the females. However, the author is allowed to have a mobile phone, and is encouraged by her much older, widowed sister to try to get a job so she won’t be dependent on her father. He is the ruler of his wives and daughters. If the daughters get married, their own husbands become their rulers. Haidar’s older brothers also hold authority over her.

A certain man who knows her brothers, decides Haidar is the one he wants to marry. But it is against their religion for her to be with, let alone speak with, any male, even on the phone, without a chaperone. The father, or no one, will choose a mate for her. The author and her suitor risk shaming their families and public punishment, when they communicate via mobile phone. They rebel anyway.

The major human-rights cause for which the family is fighting, is freedom of speech. The author’s husband (Raif) starts an Internet forum in which he argues for women’s rights, among other irreverent activities. Yet, “… at home he’s behaving like every other Saudi macho man.” She outwits him– “I hadn’t told Raif anything about the Facebook and Twitter accounts that I ran under a pseudonym.”

Later on, another emotional wrench in the works, is that the author resists telling her three children about why their father is absent from their home. The father tells her not to tell them. Still a product of her culture, she feels the need to obey him. She keeps lying to the children, so when they finally hear the truth– how can they ever trust her?

At any rate, read the book to learn of the trials and tribulations suffered by people who buck their religion-bound culture and government.