spent Spring Break volunteering in the Gulf Coast with over a hundred other Dartmouth students. I gutted homes in New Orleans with the Navigators; what I saw blew me away. The damage was unbelievable, as was the strength and spirit of the people.

The Damage

It’s impossible to imagine the destruction without seeing it for yourself. People argue, “No it’s not! I’ve seen the pictures!” But pictures can’t really tell you anything. They’re too small, they don’t feel real, and they don’t extend as far as the eye can see. Standing in the middle of the Ninth Ward, even seven months after the storm, you’d think you were in Bosnia or Afghanistan. For a hundred yards on each side of the levee break, everything is flat. There are no houses, just concrete foundations with holes that show where kitchens and bathrooms once were. I found a stack of old gospel LPs next to some shoes and stuffed animals. Abandoned cars lie everywhere, sometimes piled on top of one another. There are piles of “debris,” but debris is a poor choice of words for the ruined remnants of someone’s life.

When you get about 100 yards away from the levee breaks, you find what are technically houses—they’ll never be homes again. The ones that haven’t collapsed have body counts painted on the front from September, but you can’t trust the numbers. A glance through a smashed window or broken door reveals massive piles of mud, mattresses, and plaster. The police couldn’t have gotten more than a few feet into these homes; bodies continue to be found.

All this is levee break damage. Residents say the breaching of the levees sounded like thunder, with lake water rushing down the street like a Hollywood flood. In other towns, like Slidell, the damage is just as tremendous, but entirely storm-caused. Houses that once sat on stilts and beams in the water are now gone. All that remains of one home is a few wooden crossbeams, a half-submerged station wagon, a long-dead caged pet, and part of a blender.

Most of the houses left standing have some form of “You loot, we shoot” still painted on the side; one read, “Please loot, we love to shoot!” These signs were a response to the violence that plagued New Orleans immediately following the storm. You may recall reports of someone shooting at rescue helicopters—residents told me this actually wasn’t part of the violence. The shooters were telling the pilots to go away, as the downdraft from helicopter rotors had knocked people off their roofs into the water. At least one man drowned that way.

The Work

The Navigators stayed at Trinity Church in Covington, where Compassion Ministries has been running a recovery operation since the storm hit. They logged their 100,000th volunteer hour the week we started; over 2,000 people have passed through that church, helping over 1,100 homeowners.

Volunteer operations find themselves in large need of skilled laborers, including carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. Since college kids lack these skills, we spent most of our time gutting rather than rebuilding. With a team of 15 students, the gutting process, depending on the size of the house, takes at least a day and a half.

Gutting a house entails taking everything in it out to the sidewalk—furniture, clothes, toys, videos, cosmetics, appliances, rotten food, etc. You try to save heirlooms, but there aren’t many left in salvageable condition. Once the house is empty, the interior is torn apart; in the end, nothing is left but the framing, outer walls, and roof—even the ceiling comes down. All the building materials, including the insulation, wind up in the same pile as the belongings.

Those trash piles can be fifty square feet in area and eight feet tall; you can’t drive half a block without seeing several. Garbage collectors drive aimlessly around the city, picking up ready piles. Some are contracted with FEMA, others with the Army Corps of Engineers, and still others with the city. There’s very little organization, rhyme, or reason to the way things get done.

The worst part of gutting a house is the refrigerator; upon entering a house, the first thing a group does is tape the fridge shut. These appliances have been full, closed, and without power for six months; the contents are now literally toxic. I helped move five of them; number four, a freezer full of toxic seafood, was lying on its side in a backyard shed, so we were unable to tape it shut. While we were dragging it out, its door hooked on something and swung open. The five of us it heard the splash and instantly dropped our ropes and ran a good thirty feet before turning around. Toxic seafood, to give you some idea, smells like the ten foulest odors you’ve ever encountered, combined into one. This was a big house, but right away you could hear the volunteers on the other side gagging. Bravely, one of the Navs staffers ran back with the words, “Well, if we don’t get in there and close that now, we’re never closing it,” spurring the rest of us to follow with a what-the-hell attitude. We managed to flip the fridge on its back, shut the door, and drag it across the street in just a few breaths. Another minute and we would have had to abandon the jobsite; as it was, no one could go downwind of the house for the rest of the day.

Given the health and environmental risks, refrigerators can’t be taken to the same landfills as the trash piles. A different fleet of Waste Management trucks drives around with cranes that extend to pick up the fridges and set them in the back of the truck. It is estimated that over half a million freezers and fridges litter the city, and their removal could take up to a year. Already, they are rapidly filling up two special landfills, hundreds of acres in size, where chemical crews in full hazmat suits open, clean out, and destroy the machines. One worker said, “It’s not too bad, as long as you stay upwind.”

If iceboxes are the worst part of gutting a house, seeing the owners is the best. Every other telephone pole in the city has a sign or flyer advertising gutting services, as cheap as a dollar a square foot, but some people lack even that much money, and must depend on volunteers. To hear their thanks and actually see the results of our work was a very gratifying experience. One family, the Landry’s, told us that until we came along, they weren’t sure what they were going to do, but after seeing the work we put into their house, they knew they were going to rebuild.

The People

I talked to many Gulf Coast residents during my ten-day stay, and though it may be hard to believe, I met not one bitter person—not one. Many people are angry at FEMA and other government agencies (the bureaucratic run-around is as bad today as it was in August), but no one seems angry at life, God, or their overall situation.

Instead, they are hopeful, have accepted their loss, and want to move on. Outside of disaster areas, I’ve met people who insist that New Orleans doesn’t need so many volunteers; they say “those people” should be helping themselves. The fact is, “those people” are helping themselves. They are ready to rebuild; if they haven’t yet, it’s because they lack the money or the manpower, or because too much insurance/government paperwork has stood in the way. Outside help is all that keeps some of these folks going – by no means are they mooching off the system. The city’s main Home Depot does over $3 million a day in sales. The residents of New Orleans are already doing all they can.

Their stories amaze me—life stories, storm stories, and recovery stories. I heard so many, and wish I had space enough to share them all. There are so many people who inspired me—Warren, Cheryl, Sharon, Michael, Pastor Landry and his wife, the Cajun trumpet player in the French Quarter, Ms. E
lizabeth—the list goes on. I’ll recount just one story here.

Alfred is an elderly black man who lived in a small, white house next door to a house we were gutting. He rode out Katrina there. Though he wanted to evacuate, his uncle (who he lives with) refused, so Alfred stayed to help the older man.

The sound of the levee breaking woke him up; he thought it was thunder. A little later, he realized he was floating, but attributed it to the previous night’s alcohol. When the TV floated past a minute later, he knew this was more than just a hangover. The water was already to his waist, less than an hour after the levee broke. He and his uncle made their way through the flooding to the bathroom, climbed onto the sink, and knocked through the ceiling into the attic. Alfred later dove back into the water, which stopped just below ceiling level, to find juice and Ensure. The fridge had been knocked over, so there was no food. In case he and his uncle need to escape the attic, he also returned with a sledgehammer and crowbar.

After two-and-a-half days, part of the attic floor collapsed, so Alfred chopped a narrow hole in the roof to climb through. I asked him why he didn’t just bust out the window; he said he was afraid of falling into the water three feet below. Several other families had also climbed onto their roofs, and they conversed by shouting across the water.

Their lower-income community, Holly Grove, was underwater for over a week. Alfred and his uncle spent a day and a half living on their roof, still without food. It was four days after the storm when a helicopter finally came for them. The tiny helicopter dropped them off at an overpass where a larger Black Hawk took them to safety; Alfred eventually wound up in Houston, where he spent the next few months.

While Alfred looks forward to rebuilding, he says he’s moving to Virginia if another Katrina-like storm hits. He is angry with Mayor Ray Nagin, Governor Kathleen Blanco, and the federal government, and believes, like many, that the levees were breached on purpose. Unlike similar theories, his is not based on racism; he believes state and city officials wanted to use the storm to gain much-needed federal funding for Louisiana. Their intent was good, he claims; they just didn’t realize how few people would be able to evacuate. Alfred points to mass resignations and suicides among city officials and police as his evidence, asserting that the truth will come out.

He told me part of his story while sitting on his front steps, and the rest while showing me through his house. All the contents had been removed, but the actual gutting process had yet begun. At one point we stood in the bedroom, a broken window on our right and a large hole in the hallway wall on our left. Alfred looked at the wall in front of us, white with brown stains where family pictures used to hang, and said, “The Lord’s been good to me.”

Alfred’s story is typical. He has lost almost everything he owns, but he’s doing his best to move on. He looks on the bright side: all five of his “grandbabies” are okay, and the homes he rents out for income are largely intact. He is filled not with despair, but rather hope, commitment, and strength. His sense of humor is stronger than ever before; he smiled most of the time we chatted. Almost everyone in Holly Grove feels the same way.

Since this was a Navigators trip, you probably deduced that I’m religious. I am, and while I’m no conservative fundamentalist, I am very proud of my Episcopalian background. Let me tell you this: I have never before seen God working like I saw Him working in the Gulf Coast. Shortly after the storm, Trinity Church needed an‘-wheeler for relief purposes, but had no idea where to find one and no way of paying for one. Unable to think of anything else, the Pastor sent his assistant into the city, instructing him to go up to the first trucker he saw and say, “The Lord needs your truck.” The assistant thought it was crazy, but did indeed go up to the first trucker he saw and said, “I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but my pastor sent me to tell you, the Lord needs your truck.”

It worked.

I believe that a person can be incredibly strong in the face of incredible adversity for a long time on his own; I’ve seen it happen, but surely there is a limit. For this many people to stay this strong and this faithful for this long in the face of this much? I have a hard time believing it’s anything but God. I wish I had the space to tell more; a ten-day trip provided me a lifetime of stories. But it occurs to me, I shouldn’t call them “stories.” These stories are more than a set of great experiences for a’-year-old college kid; they are people, and they are people we can help.

lthough ultra-conservative Sen. Rick Santorum’s unlikely bid for re-election has received much national attention, it may not actually be Pennsylvania’s most important midterm race. A Governor’s support is an important tool in a presidential campaign, so whichever party wins the Governorship in this swing state will have a large advantage in 2008.

An April 20th Rasmussen poll shows Republican Lynn Swann barely ahead of the incumbent, Democrat Ed Rendell, 44%-41%. When independent Russ Diamond is included in the poll, Rendell wins, 40%-36%. A May 3rd Franklin & Marshall College poll, however, has Rendell up 49-35%, but all other polls show a virtual tie.

As mayor of Philadelphia in the’90s, Rendell engineered what was, according to the New York Times, “the most stunning turnaround in recent urban history.” He turned a $250 million budget deficit into five years of surpluses while cutting taxes, creating new revenue initiatives, and improving services. From’99 to 2001, he was General Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and was elected Governor in 2002. As Governor, he has raised income and excise taxes, and advocated legalized gambling in order to allow drastic cuts in property taxes. However, his largest anti-tax pro-gambling initiative, “Act 72,” is widely seen as a failure, and he has had a rocky relationship with the state legislature.

Part of Rendell’s popularity stems from his regular-guy image. This may not be an advantage in the 2006 campaign, since his Republican opponent is former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and NFL Hall of Famer Lynn Swann. Swann has no political experience—he has been a media personality since his’82 retirement from the NFL. One of four African-American Republicans running for higher office nationwide, he has accused the Democrats of taking the black vote for granted. Nevertheless, he has had a hard time fundraising and demonstrates a lack of understanding on the issues. In February, he said that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortions will automatically be illegal everywhere. He has also pledged to cap property taxes, a move several tax experts have said would violate the state constitution.

If Swann manages to win, Rendell will be the first Pennsylvania Governor to lose a re-election bid, and the Republicans will be well-positioned to capture this swing state’s 21 electoral votes in 2008. To help the Rendell campaign, visit www.governor.state.pa.us/ and rendellforgovernor.com

hone Jamming

A major New Hampshire elections scandal has been tied to the White House.

The morning of Election Day 2002, as voting began in a very close Senate race, a telemarketing firm hired by state Republicans repeatedly called and hung up on the New Hampshire Democratic Party and a firefighters’ union conducting get out the vote efforts. The calls jammed Democratic phone lines until, after 90 minutes, Republican officials decided to shut the operation down. In 2004 and 2005, three men, including state Republican Party Executive Director Chuck McGee, pled guilty to or received convictions on charges stemming from the operation.

Phone records released on April 10, 2006 show that one of the three men, James Tobin (later President Bush’s 2004 New England Campaign Chairman), made two dozen calls to the White House Office of Political Affairs on Election Day and the night before. The office was then headed by Ken Mehlman, who has since become Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Several other NH Republican officials also called the White House on Election Day.

Although the Republican National Committee has paid Tobin’s legal fees, Mehlman claims neither he nor his staff knew about the plot. According to the Boston Globe, “Frequent contact between the White House and those involved in close Senate races is typical in an election season.”

Tom DeLay

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced his resignation from Congress earlier this month, and will leave his seat in June. Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced that no special election will be held, leaving the district unrepresented until the November midterms. DeLay claims that he is resigning not in admission of any wrongdoing, but for the good of his party, as he feels the Republicans will more likely keep his seat if somebody else runs in November.

DeLay was indicted by two grand juries in late 2005 for conspiracy and money laundering. Prior to the indictments, he had been admonished by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee on four separate occasions (three times in 2004 and once in’98). On the day of Delay’s resignation, one of his top aides pled guilty to accepting bribes from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, leading to speculation that DeLay will soon receive more indictments for his involvement with Abramoff.

The money laundering, committee charges, and Abramoff scandal are all unrelated.

artmouth Free Press: First things first$mdash;$mdash;why are you a better candidate for the Democratic Party than Brett Clemons?

Paul Hodes: I am happy to talk about my positions and my experience, and I think that is going to be up to the voters to decide. I think they have a clear choice between us; I am proud of my service to the state of New Hampshire, I am proud that I raised my kids in New Hampshire, I am proud of my record, and I am happy to let the voters judge us as candidates.

DFP: Do you think it will hurt your campaign, and did it hurt the last campaign, that Congressman Bass is known as a moderate in the New York Times, CNN, et cetera?

PH: Whatever he is known as, the question that voters really need to ask is, does this guy stand for anything? If you look at his record, you do not know what he stands for…He certainly stands for getting re-elected to Congress, and we are seeing that this year with an election year conversion [on Tom DeLay and other reform issues]…He is an election year reformer. When you ask what he stands for, I do not think the word moderate is very descriptive of anything, and that is about what the voters get from Charlie Bass. He is hard to pin down because you don’t know what he stands for.

DFP: The theme of your campaign is reform. What would you say is the best ethics reform bill right now in the House or Senate?

PH: The Democrats in both branches of Congress have a pretty good handle on it. I am not going to choose between all different kinds of reform. Some of the things that I think are important about reform…[are] having transparency about contacts with lobbyists, making sure that former members are not lobbying their colleagues before too long, making sure that there are important restrictions on lobbyist and corporate-paid travel, and introducing transparency in the legislative process….

The second thing is that there are rules about the ways Congress works that need to be either enforced or reinforced, and those include making sure that legislation is not monkeyed with behind closed doors without giving legislators a chance to read it. You need enough time to look at bills and not vote on mammoth legislation without having enough time to look at it, and then there are some other things that are really important: controlling earmarks in budget legislation. I support controlling earmarks; let’s say that they cannot be more than one percent of a budget. One of the statistics that is of great interest to me is that Ronald Reagan vetoed a budget bill because it had 451 earmarks in it, and the last budget bill before the current budget ended up with 6,700-plus earmarks. Those are pork projects that our legislators are giving away to lobbyists, and our pet projects, that we have to look very closely at, and the only way to do that is to separate them from the main budget.

Then finally, I think you need to look at the ethics oversight in the House. I am a former prosecutor; I am an attorney. Attorneys are regulated, if you will, by a professional conduct committee. The professional conduct committee is supervised by the Supreme Court and is composed of lawyers and lay people. I think that something to take a look at is Congressional oversight that is removed from inside the House and is fashioned in such a way as to have some real teeth and some real objectivity about what’s going on.

DFP: Your website says you stand for “universal access to health insurance.” Do you support a single payer system, a multi payer system, or is it on the table?

PH: I think it is on the table…The first question is creating and agreeing that as a matter of national priority, that we have the will to say the goal is universal access to health insurance. Now, let’s have the important dialogue about how to get it done. I have heard good reasons for single payer systems from some people, and I have heard lots of good reasons for different kinds of systems that use a public-private partnership to help the free market provide universal access combined with expanded government help. So, for me, it is on the table.

What I have not seen is the political will to really deal with that issue. I certainly have not seen it from the Republicans, and simply saying “health savings accounts,” which really only benefit people with enough money to take out a high deductible policy and have insurance, is no answer for our health insurance crisis.

DFP: You have called for a “Manhattan Project” on energy, which suggests that energy is our most important environmental policy. What other environmental policies do we need to focus on, and how should we focus on the environment in general as an issue?

PH: There are local issues and there are global issues…There is no purely local answer to environmental problems. For instance, you can go to the farthest northern reaches of our beautiful state, to the headwaters of the great rivers and to the pristine-appearing lakes, and catch fish which you cannot eat because of mercury. That mercury did not come from New Hampshire. The problem is coal-fired plants without adequate pollution controls in the Midwest, and perhaps from farther afield.

When we start talking about environmental degradation, sometimes you can say it is a local issue. [Maybe] there is an old plant that is dumping bad things in the river, and we clean up the plant and clean up the river and we have addressed that locality, but in general the issues are much bigger, which is why I think you need a very comprehensive federal solution. This administration and Congress have cut back on environmental protection, cut back on the Superfund program; they are selling out in terms of control on coal-fired plants and mercury admission standards; they’re forcing the states to try to band together for regional solutions because they’re not willing to tackle these issues on the federal level. We need a comprehensive energy program that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels [and] moves us to renewable and alternative energy. We have to set an example for the rest of the world.

The reason I think that national energy policy is so important is that it touches all facets of the great national debates. A real energy policy is about preserving and safeguarding the environment, locally and globally. It is about creating jobs and opening new markets as a result of entrepreneurial initiatives and government support to change the way we use our fossil fuels, and it is about our national security, because ultimately our national security is propelled by our voracious need for energy. Our foreign policy is in many ways governed by our appetite for oil, and we will create new jobs, safeguard the environment, and make ourselves a stronger, more secure nation with an energy policy that is a forward thinking, 21st century energy policy instead of being tied in to obsolete thinking of the past.

DFP: You mentioned national security. You are a critic of the President’s handling of the war in Iraq. What do you think a proper exit strategy is?

PH: First, an exit strategy, and most importantly, an exit strategy. The lesson that this country learned the hard way, a long time ago, was you do not commit troops without an exit strategy. When you do commit the troops, you make sure you planned properly in terms of supplying the troops, and you make sure that you have an appropriate buy-in, internationally and nationally. In this case, this administration’s failures and incompetence on all levels has put us in a very difficult position.

If you step back, things are very dynamic in the Middle East. Hamas has been elected in the Palestinian territories; Iran is posing a significant threat. I do not think that our presence in Iraq, stretching our armed forces thin and conducting offensive military operations, is making us safer, more secure, and better able to deal with those tensions in the Middle East. The reality is that the Iraqis now have a Constitution and a governme
nt. There is what I think is a sectarian civil war happening. Billions and billions of dollars of reconstruction money has been wasted. I think our focus needs to shift from offensive military action to counter-insurgency, towards credible efforts at reconstruction, to advancing as rapidly as possible the training of Iraqi security and armed forces, giving these people employment, electricity, water, sewers, and their oil back, and transitioning out of there some time within six months to a year. We must send a signal in the Mideast that we are not going to be a permanent military occupying force.

DFP: George Bush is cutting from his budget, which you called “mean-spirited,” twelve billion dollars in student loans. What do you think we need in terms of education reform, be it college or No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?

PH: Well, what I’ve said about NCLB is, you reform it and fund it or repeal it….We all agree that schools and school systems and teachers should be accountable for performance, good teaching, and working with students. I have fundamental disagreements about the premise of NCLB, because I think it creates a kind of punitive system that forces teachers to teach to tests, and I don’t think that is the right way to go about education, and I don’t think it’s the right way to go about ensuring teacher compliance or school compliance. There are plenty of voluntary programs to be done, and…to be competitive in a global economy, we have to increase our educational opportunities and do a better job at the basics, especially math and science. It is irresponsible to force students to pay more for student loans and cut educational opportunities for college students.

DFP: You have said you want to raise the minimum wage. What effects would that have on the economy and what level would you raise it to?

PH: I think the level the minimum wage is at is morally unacceptable. Nobody can live on the minimum wage as it is. I have seen proposals that suggest raising the minimum wage to $7.50, and I would say from what I have read, I do not believe there would be any adverse impact on our economy; and in fact, I believe that an adequate or more adequate and a morally justifiable minimum wage would help increase productivity and actually be a boon to the economy.

DFP: There has been a lot of controversy lately around Wal-Mart. Do you have any position on that store and its effect on the economy, both nationally and globally?

PH: You know, it’s an interesting question. I do not have any particular position on it, except to say this—that over the past few years, we have seen a general decline in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. We have a significant trade imbalance with China, who provides most of the products Americans buy, including at Wal-Mart. Many people who used to have good jobs in the manufacturing sector with health care and benefits are now working at places like Wal-Mart for minimum wage and without health benefits. I personally believe that while we have an employer-based health care system, the country’s largest and most profitable corporations have responsibilities to their workers and to society to provide the kind of basic benefits that help us become a healthy, strong nation and help their workers to stay healthy. I certainly hope and expect that companies like Wal-Mart will recognize their responsibility, and I think it is important.

DFP: What do you think the most ignored problem facing this country is, international or domestic?

PH: Domestically, I think it is poverty, and internationally, I think it is energy.

DFP: We talked about energy. Do you care to elaborate on the poverty?

PH: The nature of the problem is self-evident from the President’s recent budget proposal, which cuts $39 billion from the elderly, the poor, the disabled, students, [and] people without big voices and the big money to spend on congressmen, and the flipside is $79 billion in tax cuts whose effect will actually deepen our deficit while providing a benefit largely to the super rich. We have seen an economy where the super rich have done great and the middle class and the poor in this country are suffering progressively harsher consequences, so I think it is pretty evident. It goes back to my original question: what kind of country do you want to be?

DFP: You said the President’s tax cuts will just deepen the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office has said you cannot permanize these tax cuts and cut the deficit, and the President more or less ignored the report. How would you balance the budget?

PH: We probably don’t have enough time to talk about all the ways I would do it. In general, budgets reflect the priorities of an administration, and suffice it to say I favor fairness, equity, and balance. I think we should have a balanced budget, and I think we need to deal with our deficits. I think that the middle class needs relief, and the super rich have enjoyed an enormous advantage under this administration. When you look at waste and useless programs in numbers of different areas, there is plenty of fat to cut. We will be helped when this Iraq war is over, and in general, I favor a budget that is fair about its tax code.

At the moment I think things are skewed, and you have to make sure that there is real competition in our economic system, and that the free markets are working, and if you take a look at the kind of corporate welfare that is being handed out, and the results, there is a major area to cut in terms of corporate welfare, and you have to take a look at which tax cuts are permanent and how you deal with the tax code, and that is a huge question.

DFP: Would those cuts be large enough to pay for universal access to health care and an energy Manhattan Project?

PH: I believe that the budget can be rebalanced, [but] you have got to take a look at budgets and their effect over the long term. Looking at the president’s budget for 2007, what they don’t tell you, because the budget process lacks transparency, is that the effect of that budget over the next ten years is to increase the deficit by $192 billion from where it would be if things were just left as they were. You take the budget and the tax cuts—it is a deficit-busting exercise. With that said, what you have to understand is that investing money in the kind of forward-thinking energy policy I favor, as opposed to giving billions of dollars to oil and gas and refineries, would be better-spent making that investment, because we are going to reap economic rewards.

Take one area of health insurance; in fact, there are 46 million people uninsured. The cost to the rest of us from those people who are uninsured is in the billions of dollars. If we spent ten billion now on programs to insure people, we would reap the value many, many times over in the future. We have a hard time thinking in this country about investing to reap rewards down the line, and we have to have leaders who are thinking about those kinds of investments.

DFP: What positive qualities do you look for in Washington politicians?

PH: Robert Kennedy was a role model of mine. I admired President Clinton’s grasp of policy and his ability to find a way through the diatribe from both sides, and I am interested in political leaders who can listen to good ideas from all sides of the political spectrum, and apply common sense to getting things done.

DFP: You promised us ten minutes, and you’ve given us almost forty. We’ve probably taken enough of your time; thank you so much!

PH: It was a pleasure!

For more information, visit www.hodesforcongress.com.

s Republican politicians go, Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio (up for re-election this November) is fairly moderate. He was a member of the pro-filibuster Gang of 14, has earned an “F” from the National Rifle Association, and casts liberal votes on issues such as banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and raising the minimum wage.

DeWine is of that rare breed that helps bridge the gap between parties—but for all his pragmatism, he is still a gay-marriage-bashing, Patriot-Act-backing Republican in a state where Republicans face numerous scandals (the Governor pleaded no contest to several criminal charges and enjoys a single digit approval rating). As a result, DeWine is perceived as one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents. Since popular Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett bitterly dropped out of the race, Rep. Sherrod Brown is going to be the Democratic challenger to this insecurely-seated Senator.

Brown began his political career as an Ohio state representative in’75 when he was just twenty-three. Elected to the House of Representatives in’92, he led the fight against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), opposed the Iraq war from its start, and is one of the more progressive voices in Congress—as far left as Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Brown says, “On economic issues I’m clearly not just in the mainstream, but in the great majority. The overwhelming number of people think the drug companies, the oil companies and the insurance companies rip Americans off. They don’t like the Medicare bill, they want a minimum wage increase and they think our trade agreements hurt our country. On every one of those issues, I beat DeWine.”

According to a March 28 Rasmussen poll, DeWine is only barely ahead of Brown, 45% to 42%, with 9% undecided. Larry Sabato, one of the country’s leading nonpartisan campaign analysts, says, “DeWine is a slight favorite, but we put special emphasis on the word slight”.

Brown’s official websites are http://sherrod.house.gov/ and http://www.sherrodbrown.com/. Valuable articles can be found at http://www.inthesetimes.com and http://www.prospect.org.

artmouth Free Press: You’ve spoken to the press on a wide array of issues; you’ve denounced the Dubai ports deal, called for an investigation into coal mining safety, and been involved with a black farmers’ lawsuit. What issue are you most passionate about? What seems most important right now?

Artur Davis: Making sure that people who are working hard, that people who are playing by the rules, still count. We have a major problem in this country that there are a lot of people who do everything we ask them to—they go to school, they work, they work hard, they marry, they raise families, and they are still struggling at every single level for economic security. Sometimes they work in enormously dangerous places like mines, sometimes they’re working without health insurance, [and] sometimes they’re working in environments that don’t treat them right or that malign them. Those are the people who really move me to action.

Public policy has a host of challenging issues around it, but I think the key to getting what you should get out of a political life is bringing a set of values to the table and trying to build your work around those values. I got involved in the black farmers’ issues because a lot of these men and women just got a raw deal. The government settled a case with them, then did everything [it] could to prevent them from getting what they were promised.

I’ve gotten involved with the miners because they are very heroic people; in fact, I’ll be testifying on Wednesday at the hearing involving miners because they’re very heroic and very good people who face all kinds of risks every day, and we won’t even, as a matter of law, institute basic safety standards and basic enforcement provisions that need to be there.

I’ve gotten involved around these issues involving poor children because kids don’t pick their families. They don’t fill out a form to be born in a low-income and impoverished household or household without health insurance, and they’re blameless; they are innocent victims of all kinds of forces around them, and we have a real obligation to empowering children and to lifting children out of conditions that are pernicious.

So it’s empowering people who play by the rules and empowering people who are vulnerable and are blameless. Those two kinds of things really move me in politics.

DFP: The Alabama 7th is the third poorest district in the country. What do you think needs to be done to fight poverty?

AD: We have to do a substantially better job of targeting and identifying at-risk children and steering those children to better outcomes. That means much earlier, much more proactive intervention with at-risk children. It means building structures and schools that don’t give up on them or write them off so easily, and ultimately it means coming up with a job-training component for the kids who aren’t going to go to two or four year colleges but can still be productive members of the work-force. If we manage to do that combination of things, I think you would take a class of young men and women who are destined for poverty, and you would move them out of it.

The second thing which you have to do is…change the expectations around communities. Most very poor communities are saddled with very low expectations. You have to get the people in those communities to believe in the value of education; you have to get them to believe in the value of all kinds of things, from civic engagement to infrastructure. If you can raise expectations in communities, you will get better political outcomes, and that’s been a challenge that we don’t see everyday. It’s been kind of a silent challenge. But as I move around the rural part of my district, the poorest part of my district, I encounter way too many people who have written off their own communities, way too many people who accept that their areas have been poor and will stay poor. If you change that thought process, then I think you will also [see] a whole lot of changed outcomes.

DFP: Do you think the minimum wage should be raised, and if so, to what level? What do you think the economic impacts of this move would be?

AD: I think it ought to be raised. I forget the exact numbers that get kicked around and disputed right now, but I think that the bottom line is that Congress has not raised the minimum wage in a number of years, and the reality is that wages have been stagnant for significant numbers of people in the service sector in this economy. In fact, there’s been erosion in the relative purchasing power of people in the service sector—in other words, the people who would benefit from the minimum wage being raised.

In terms of what the economic impact would be, I think it would be an anti-poverty tool. It would be a tool for getting a little bit more economic security in to these families. The larger question is that we have a lot of people in the service economy, particularly working mothers, who are stuck in jobs with no social mobility, and the minimum wage is a part of it, but it’s only one part of it. The next component has to be worker’s skills. Raising the minimum wage without putting programs in place to improve worker’s skills…[would give you] a failed strategy….I think the problem is that when it comes to poverty in this country, we tend to have an either/or approach. We tend to think, okay, we’re either going to do this one thing or not. The reality is that you’ve got to do a combination of things. Wage security is one of them, but preparing people to do the range of work that’s available, and preparing people to be socially mobile, is also an equally important challenge.

DFP: Wal-Mart has a large presence in communities like the ones you represent; what kind of economic impact do you think the store has?

AD: Well, the reality of Wal-Mart, I think, is twofold. There is no question that Wal-Mart needs to make a stronger commitment—a much stronger commitment—to providing health care and a stronger wage base for its workers. At the same time, there’s also no question that Wal-Mart provides a supply base for a lot of very low income people who live in rural America… It provides low prices for a lot of people who do not have the wherewithal to travel to the mall in some other community, or who can’t buy at a more boutique outfit, and I think you almost have to be a rural Southerner to understand that.It’s very easy to view Wal-Mart as part of a purely pernicious force if you’re in another part of the country, but obviously if you’re on the ground, in parts of my district or parts of Arkansas where Wal-Mart was born, you have to recognize that there are people who are walking in there and buying things they couldn’t afford to get elsewhere.

Now the challenge for Wal-Mart is to come up with corporate policies that are as socially responsible and as accountable as possible, because Wal-Mart, frankly, has a unique roll in a lot of low-income communities. It’s often a major employer, it’s often a major supplier of consumer goods, and I think there’s a level of responsibility that comes with that. That responsibility certainly includes expanded healthcare, it certainly includes more environmentally friendly policies, and it certainly includes stronger worker protection [and child labor] policies, but I’m not as quick as some people are to say that Wal-Mart is this wholly evil, pernicious force. I think the reality is more divided than that.

DFP: I am a semi-rural Southerner, originally, and it is an issue I am passionate about. Have you seen the numbers from the store on the environment and child labor and things like that?

AD: Oh, there are certainly numbers; I’m always discouraged when I look at the child labor issues around Wal-Mart. I’m always discouraged when I look at the environmental issues, and that’
s the broader social responsibility that I would like to see, but the reality is… the issues around Wal-Mart expose another problem: the difficulty of providing consumer goods at a cheap price to large numbers of low income people in this country. … [T]here are counties in my district where… Wal-Mart is the major employer base. And sure, the wages are lower than they should be, sure, the level of insurance is even missing or inadequate, but it’s still an employer base, so I think that we have to figure out ways to move WM toward a greater level of social and corporate responsibility.

DFP: The Alabama 7th was on the very edge of Katrina’s path; how hard hit was it?

AD: My district was not substantially affected by Katrina. We were a little bit too far inland. We struggled with absorbing evacuees in the first week, and I remember one story about Katrina, in terms of my personal experience, that was probably day three or four. We had a significant number of evacuees, at that time probably around 10 or 15 thousand in the state, and we started having these fuel shortages. Literally, there were two counties in my district that ran out of gasoline, and then the word came to our office that these counties had closed their pumps. There were all these rumors floating around: the Governor was going to declare a fuel holiday and close all the pumps in the state, or at least in some areas, [and] we were getting all kinds of calls from our staff about disasters on the ground, about homeless shelters that didn’t have food, about all kinds of human crises around Katrina. For that little window of time, it just looked as if the world was unraveling. I… remember sitting in my office with my staff on Wednesday afternoon, when it looked like the world was just literally coming unglued. That was a very dangerous time for social stability in this country… Their were significant numbers of people in this country [who] felt that their government had let them down, and they felt that their lifetime was a pattern of their government and the rest of society letting them down, and that just was profoundly effecting from my standpoint.

DFP: I don’t really know what to ask about the church fires, but if you could just comment on them.

AD: We’ve had a rash of church fires in AL, 4 of them in my district, 6 of them in other parts of the state. Arson’s a very difficult crime to solve; by definition, the physical evidence at the scene is degraded or deteriorated, and you don’t leave a lot of hallmarks behind when you commit an arson. Most arsons are solved by people talking too much, by people telling someone what they did. Most of the characters who commit arson are sociopaths who don’t have a lot of friends, but they’re also people who pride themselves son their skill and they think they’re doing something very skillful.”

Reporter’s Note: At this point in the interview, the tape recorder ran out of room. Davis finished his remarks on the church fires by saying he doesn’t know if the fires were racially motivated or not. Five of the ten churches where black-dominated and five white-dominated, but you can’t tell a Congregation’s makeup from its outside. Race aside, all ten churches were Baptist, and Davis has in the past called the arsons hate crimes.

DFP: As the regional co-chair for the DCCC, what is your outlook on this coming November?

AD: I think the outlook is better than we could have remotely imagined this time a year ago, for two reasons. I think that the Republican Party has drifted away form the American people on a variety of issues. The country no longer perceives the Republican Party as having a competent set of economic solutions; the country no longer perceives the Republican Party as able to bridge differences that exist in America. I think that the Party is increasingly seen as being just irrelevant, [and] not being in tune with the day-to-day things that people worry about.

Second of all, I think that the DCCC has done a very skillful job of recruiting good candidates. There are substantially more races in play in early 2006 than there were in early 2004, or early 2002, for the Democratic Party. I think you have the atmospherics, in terms of the country’s mood; I think you have the mechanics and the logistics in terms of the right candidates. The challenge is obviously how the Democratic Party counters the Republicans in September and October, how we handle the counter-attack, [and] how we handle the counter-thrust.

The ’02 cycle looked to be a good one for Democrats until the Republicans turned the security issue into a wedge issue. The ’04 cycle looked to be a good one for Democrats until the Republicans managed to once again turn the security issue into a wedge issue. They’ve signaled that they’re going to do that [in ’06. Karl] Rove has already announced that the strategy is to brand Democrats as being weak on security and national defense. I am very hopeful that this time those kinds of distraction politics won’t work.

DFP: Can you give an estimate on how many seats we will pick up?

AD: We need to gain 15 seats to gain control in the House. If the election were held tomorrow, I think we would stand to certainly gain a good 8 or 9 seats, just based on the internal numbers I’ve seen…[But] any predictions today are obviously written in sand. It is impossible to know what the mood of the country will be in October.

DFP: You have a pretty bipartisan reputation, and it’s evident why after your lecture. Who are the easiest Republicans to work with?

AD: There are two people I have a lot of respect for. One of them is Rob Portman, the U.S. Trade Representative who was formerly a member from Ohio. The other is Bobby Jindal from Louisiana. Both of them are exceptionally sharp; they are exceptionally knowledgeable about issues, and while I disagree with them on a whole range of issues, they bring a thoughtfulness to politics, and they also don’t de-legitimize people who disagree with them. They will argue your ideas, but they don’t argue character back and forth, and I think that that’s a good thing.

There are obviously all kinds of other people you build relationships with. The Alabama delegation is a pretty cohesive one, and I often point to someone who is virtually unknown in most parts of the country, Spencer Bachus. Spencer Bachus, if you pulled his voting record down, is someone you would see is a standard conservative Republican, [but] the reality is he’s been one of the leading catalysts in Congress on third world debt relief…on relieving the incredible burden that underdeveloped nations face that prevent them from fully educating their children or dealing with wastewater treatment. For a conservative Republican to embrace that kind of issue speaks volumes, and in addition to that fact, he has been a strong and effective critic of predatory practices by credit card companies.

DFP: What does the election of John Boehner say about the Republican Party?

AD: Well, personally I like John Boehner. John is a very amiable guy and he is one of the people on the other side who is always friendly and who knows your name and takes the time to speak with you, and is personally a very, very nice guy.

John Boehner is a conservative Republican who I don’t think was greatly distinguishable from Roy Blunt. I’m not really sure what the Republican leadership contest was about; it certainly was not really about issues or a different direction for the party. I don’t think that John Boehner’s going to be terribly consequential to this election. I feel a little bit sorry for him, because if they lose seats he’s going to be blamed. I think he’s not had a whole lot to do with it, and I just can’t imagine them gaining seats. So I feel sorry for him, politically, but I think the reality of it is there are fundamental issue differences between the two parties. As long as we are debating and
disputing those differences in a respectful manner, in a manner that recognizes the legitimacy of both sides, I’m comfortable with that.

What I hope John Boehner will change is the all-or-nothing atmosphere of the Republican Caucus that Tom DeLay believed in. I hope that [Boehner] is willing to listen to Democrats’ ideas about how to make the drug bill… [and] No Child Left Behind a heck of a lot better—that’s a bill that he authored. DeLay was not interested at all in hearing another perspective. In fact, DeLay didn’t want Democratic support for his bills because he wants to say to K Street [lobbyists], “You know you’ve got to beat these people, they’re voting against you at every turn.” I hope that John Boehner brings us different politics.

DFP: Do you think Nancy Pelosi has been effective as the minority leader?

AD: I think she has been, and I point to two things that people often don’t think about. Nancy Pelosi made a very skillful tactical decision regarding Social Security a year ago. There was enormous pressure on the Democratic Caucus to take a definitive stand or to put forth a definitive set of policy proposals, and if that had happened…whatever we put on the table would have been mischaracterized, would have been de-legitimated, and would have been twisted or distorted into something that it wasn’t, and I think that Nancy made a very skillful, tactical choice that’s been borne out by not engaging in the specifics of the issue and by arguing for a core set of values around social security as opposed to getting lost in the policy issues.

Second of all, I think people underestimate how difficult it is to build unity within the Democratic Caucus. The Democratic Caucus is an incredibly diverse collection, much more so…than the Republican Caucus. It’s not just racially diverse, it’s not just ethnically diverse; it is ideologically diverse. It’s diverse in terms of background, and frankly, if you look at the Republican Caucus, it’s a much narrower shade, if you look at just who is in the House and who is a Republican. So I think that the leader’s task is far harder, and there are people in the Party, groups like MoveOn, that argue why can’t she build a consensus on the war, why can’t she build a consensus on you name it. The reality is that’s not the task of the leader. The task of the leader is not to build a policy consensus; the task of the leader is to manage the institutional politics of the House….

I think a lot of people misunderstand her role, but I think she has been an enormously valuable leader, and I think, frankly, she makes a statement that the Democratic Party is fully willing to empower a competent, talented female. She’s not there as a quota, she’s not there as part of any kind of agenda or task. She’s there because her qualifications were the ones that won out, but it’s a pleasant and good thing that those qualifications happen to be present in a female.

DFP: I know you paid attention to the DNC leadership race; did you support Simon Rosenberg in that race? [Davis had mentioned Rosenberg, head of the New Democrat Network, during his lecture.]

AD: I did, I did. I openly supported Simon, campaigned for him. It was the wrong time. Gov. [Howard] Dean obviously had significant support at the Democratic Party activist level. … It is very hard to campaign for party chair. It’s not really clear what you’re campaigning for; you are not the chief spokesperson for the party, so no matter how articulate… or great a messenger you may be, it’s really not what you do. It is very hard to really advance an agenda that fits the whole party, because a lot of the people voting in the contest just want to know if you’re going to cut a check to their state parties, so you have a lot of very narrow factions that control that process that have a narrow agenda, and it’s very hard to have a larger agenda about the direction of the party cut through that contest, so that was the problem that I think Simon faced.

DFP: Most politicians, when asked about later running for higher office, duck the question. Why are you so open about 2010?

AD: I have said that I will look at the Governorship in 2010 if it’s open or the Senate seat if Senator Shelby retires, and the reasons are fairly straightforward; when asked a question, I believe in answering it. A lot of politicians believe in giving non-answers. If I know the answer, and if I have an opinion, I’m willing to state it.

Obviously, being elected Governor or Senator from Alabama would be an enormously daunting task, for a variety of reasons….It’s a doable task if you can articulate the issues that resonate with enough voters. It’s a doable task if you can find a way to articulate what your core values are, and I don’t think that Alabama is fundamentally different from Tennessee, or fundamentally different from other states where African American candidates may be running—Ohio, for example. I think the test in politics today is whether you can persuade people who don’t necessarily agree with you on every issue.

DFP: Thank you, Congressman.

bramoff

Court papers show three more House Republicans have ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and indicted administration official David Safavian. Though none are officially accused of wrong-doing, Reps. Don Young (R-AK), Steven LaTourette (R-OH), and Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) attempted to gain favors from Safavian for Abramoff clients in 2002 and 2003.

According to The Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog, Capito accepted $4,000 in donations from Abramoff and his associates between’99 and 2005; LaTourette took none. Young, on the other hand, known as the king of pork barrel spending, received $19,708, which suggests that his favors may have been unethical.

Wiretapping

Despite President Bush’s claim that his warrant-less wiretapping program applies only to suspected terrorists, it was revealed that thousands of NSA tips to the FBI concerned innocent Americans; agents joked that new tips meant more “calls to Pizza Hut.” Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez defended the program before the Senate Judiciary Committee, claiming that Presidents Washington and Lincoln also used electronic surveillance.

Not all Republicans are as enamored with the wiretapping as Gonzalez. Numerous GOP officials, at least fourteen Senators among them, have expressed concerns about the program. Even the Pentagon ordered its intelligence personnel to undergo “refresher training” on laws that prohibit gathering information about U.S. citizens.

National Security Leaks

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s indicted former Chief of Staff, revealed that superiors instructed him to leak classified WMD information in 2003. Since Libby’s announcement, Cheney has said he has the power to declassify such information, which may suggest he played a role in leaking national security secrets for political purposes. Sen. George Allen (R-VA) has called for a full investigation.

Libby is being charged with lying about leaking a CIA agent’s identity to reporters and has continued to disrespect the judicial process. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says Libby is using a process known as “graymail” to sabotage the investigation. “Graymailing” the government involves threatening to reveal national security-related secrets during a trial; Fitzgerald points to the Libby defense team’s request for thousands of highly classified documents. The subjects of these are unrelated to the subject of his indictment, and their use in the trial would expose sensitive information. Libby claims that he intends to prove he had more important things on his mind when he exposed Valerie Plame’s identity.

homas Jefferson was the first President to deliver the State of the Union address as a letter; Woodrow Wilson the first in over 100 years to deliver it in person. Calvin Coolidge was the first to have his speech broadcast over the radio, and Harry Truman the first on television. Lyndon Johnson was the first to make his speech a prime-time spectacle, and George W. Bush, in 2006, was the first to deliver his speech drunk.

Okay, not really. President Bush gave up drinking in the ’80s, which is greatly to his credit. Nevertheless, inebriation is the only explanation for President’s ramblings. Sure, it’s not true, but how else do you explain all the lies and ignorance?

Overall, the speech had a very positive tone. In recent years, Democrats have found countless lines to jeer at, but this year the President’s speech writers went out of their way to avoid such lines. I can’t say I blame them; with his approval rating hovering at barely over 40%, the last thing Bush needed was a booing on every network and news channel at once. His strategy worked: a Gallup poll shows that 48% of viewers had a “very positive” reaction to the speech, with another 27% claiming “somewhat positive.” These numbers aren’t as impressive as those from some of his previous speeches, but they are still higher than they should be, given the facts.

Some of the President’s points were great, like honoring the late Coretta Scott King and Iraq war veterans, or bashing terrorists—but these would have been made by anyone. They’re platitudes all Americans can agree on: empty rhetoric. When it came to substantive comments on important issues, the President was way off base, as an analysis of the highlights shall show. I’ll use not only logic, but biting sarcasm as well. Oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen!

“Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time. In’45, there were about two dozen lonely democracies in the world. Today, there are 122.” I watched the speech with about 50 other Young Democrats. At this line, someone shouted out, “Hip, hip, Hamas!” That’s right—the Palestinians held, according to Jimmy Carter, the fairest of those 122 nations’ elections and put terrorists in charge. Is this the sort of “freedom” we want advanced? (To be fair, the President did address that situation.)

It gets better. “Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder—and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They…arm themselves with weapons of mass murder.” Oh, thank you, Mr. President! I was beginning to forget about those guys. I actually thought they didn’t mean their threats, but thanks to you, I’ll definitely start taking bin Laden seriously! Wow. Dude. C’mon. Instead of wasting time patronizing us all, why don’t you freakin’ catch the guy already?!?! I will give the President this—at least he said “weapons of mass murder.” For a second there, I was worried he would say “weapons of mass destruction,” which would not have been good—as everyone knows, he’s lost all credibility on WMDs. But he’s still good to go on WMMs! Nice save, Mr. President.

Moving on. “We’re on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory.” At “plan for victory,” the room full of Young Democrats did not boo or applaud. It erupted in laughter. Gut busting, side splitting, laughter. Enough said.

Continuing on with the subject of terrorism: “We’re striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy.” We’re taking an awful long time to train them—only a handful of Iraqi units are ready, despite the need for hundreds more. And let me add, those terrorist targets weren’t there before we invaded.

“We’re grateful to all who volunteer to wear our nation’s uniform—and as we honor our brave troops, let us never forget the sacrifices of America’s military families.” We all agree with the President here, but what he didn’t say is how to remember those sacrifices. His past actions show that his idea of not forgetting military families is to cut combat pay, cut veteran’s health benefits, short the troops the armor they need, smear veterans who disagree with him politically, decline to attend military funerals, and ban pictures of American flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq. He continued with his speech, suggesting people who disagree with him are “defeatists.” I argued against that in an earlier article, so I’ll just include a handy Theodore Roosevelt quote here and move on. “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else.”

President Bush ended his discussion of foreign policy by saying, “I have taken unprecedented action to fight AIDS and malaria, expand the education of girls, and reward developing nations that are moving forward with economic and political reform.” You know he must be talking foreign policy, because here at home Republicans are trying to slash funds for Medicare and Medicaid, and cut student loans by over $12 billion.

That little chestnut ended the foreign policy part of his address. The President opened the domestic side of things with an impassioned defense of his wiretapping program, explaining why such wiretaps are needed. While the public supports wiretaps, as do Congressional Democrats, they don’t support doing so without warrants, a key detail of this administration’s program that the President neglected to address. With a rhetorical sleight of hand, he explained that the power to issue wiretaps is “based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute,” approved by federal courts, and used by the Presidents before him. But what about the power to violate the’78 FISA law requiring warrants? Where does that come from? His aides have said President Bush’s Constitutional power as Commander in Chief gives him the right to bypass courts, but using that role as a blank check for power during wartime is tantamount to installing a Dictator in Chief. Though the post 9-11 “Authorization for Use of Military Force” law does give the President the right to exercise “all necessary force” to capture terrorists, it does not give him the right to violate older laws while doing so, and he has not shown why avoiding warrants is necessary, especially considering FISA gives the administration three days after a wiretap is planted to get a warrant. Oh, the lies.

Bush’s next big point was to ask that his tax cuts be made permanent, suggesting that they are responsible for recent economic growth—but the economy was even better under Clinton tax levels than it is now. Seconds later, promoting cuts in 140 helpful programs, he promised to halve the budget deficit by 2009. Yet only days before his address, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report stating that no matter what kinds of budget cuts the President proposes, if his tax cuts are made permanent, the deficit CANNOT be cut in half by that date. The President no doubt heard about this high-profile report. His promise to cut the deficit while simultaneously making his tax cuts permanent is about as bald-faced a lie as you can get, but at least it’s not one that leads us into war. Our little boy is growing up, learning not to make quite as big a mess.

The President recovered from this dismal performance with his best line of the evening, “Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security.” This received a
raucous standing ovation from the Democrats, something Bush did not take kindly to. His next few lines were delivered angrily—despite Republican claims that voters don’t like angry politicians. At least his newest social security suggestion wasn’t a bad one—there’s nothing wrong with a “bipartisan” commission investigating this or that.

Sadly, the President’s new found mastery of the English language did not last long. “Our government has a responsibility to provide healthcare for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility.” Why Congress applauded this, I will never know. Polls show the majority of elderly persons are very confused by the new Medicare overhaul, which went into effect last month and presents astronomical costs in the near future. If the status quo is the President’s idea of “meeting that responsibility,” he and his party are in for a nasty shock this November.

Next up, energy. “America is addicted to oil….Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources.” It is quite shocking to hear the oil mogul bash oil, more shocking that he did not regurgitate plans for drilling in ANWR, and most shocking of all that he mentioned switch-grass as a possible energy source. His calls for alternative energy sources are welcome ones; while he did not directly mention global warming or sustainability, his implied acknowledgment is still a step in the right direction. There is a downside, however. Some biofuels are even more carbon intensive than gasoline, and help isn’t exactly on the horizon. As NBC’s First Read newsletter put it, “Perhaps $10 billion spent on developing alternative sources of energy since 2001 will symbolically cancel out $10 billion in fourth-quarter earnings for ExxonMobil.”

Very little substance followed in the remaining fifth of the President’s speech. There was some, starting with a pledge to ban “human-animal hybrids”—wow. Just… wow. He also said the Gulf Coast region needs help recovering from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but burying an issue of paramount importance at the bottom of his speech was irresponsible and can’t help his public image. He spoke on ethics reform, but only gave the subject three sentences, all of which were upbeat despite the rampant corruption in his party.

President Bush finished the speech by comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. This gives me the perfect opportunity to make an assassination joke, but that would be wrong. I will, however, say this: if I were to make such a joke, I might suggest Tim Kaine’s villainous left eyebrow as the assassin. Kaine, the newly elected Governor of Virginia, delivered the Democratic response. His substance was good, but his delivery was atrocious. His left eyebrow took on a life of its own, staying almost permanently in an arched position. His speech was monotone and patronizing, his face stuck in an odd smirk. Fortunately for the Democrats, no one watches the response; even 3/4 of the Young Dems had cleared the room by the time Kaine started. Unfortunately for the Democrats, and for the country, people did watch the ignorant, trite, dishonest drivel beforehand, politically calculated to say and solve nothing.

n February 2nd, House Republicans will cast secret ballots to elect a new Majority Leader, the party’s second highest House leadership position. This election could potentially give Republicans a shot at damage control for their recent spate of ethical scandals, and the chance to reform their “culture of corruption”. Alas, instead of trying to find a ladder with which to climb out of this hole, our nation’s leaders are requesting more shovels.

The Republican Party is full of men and women who, while usually wrong on policy issues, nonetheless have the ability to lead effectively. Bipartisanship, pragmatism, and honor are not party-specific; merely having an “R” after your name does not make you a bad person. Men like Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) or Rep. Charles Bass ’74 (R-NH) are, despite their overall conservatism, pragmatic moderates fit to unite and lead this nation. Unfortunately, no such man has been put forth as a candidate for Tom DeLay’s old job. In the running instead are Congressmen Roy Blunt (R-OH), John Boehner (R-OH), and John Shadegg (R-AZ). None of these three men are anywhere near the American mainstream, and each is tainted with his own ethical problems.

In order to show that these three candidates are out of the mainstream, it should be explained that the mainstream tends to be moderate, not conservative. This is not to say that a moderate government or rule by majority opinion is preferable, merely that pragmatic leaders willing to reach across the aisle and unite the country are most desirable. While the Republican Party may control both political branches of government, it is only a tentative hold. President Bush, for all his claims, never had any sort of a popular “mandate” $mdash; he beat John Kerry by a mere three percentage points. Democrats have won the most votes in three of the last four Presidential elections; dozens of states have a Senator from each party. Over a fifth of voters waited until the last month of the ’04 election to make up their minds, because the majority of the American public chooses not to identify with a singular ideology or party, and instead votes for whichever party or candidate offers pragmatic policy and integrity of character

Yet thanks to frequently redrawn Congressional districts, fewer and fewer moderates are elected to Congress. District lines are now based on protecting incumbents, and so districts are more and more likely to be heavily Republican or Democrat. Since mostly party activists show up for the primaries, even moderate districts will choose between ideologues and party loyalists in the general election. This polarization amplifies the partisanship in Congress and puts extremists rather than those willing to make sensible bipartisan compromises in leadership positions. Blunt, Boehner, and Shadegg are all products of this trend, and none are fit to lead the country $mdash; not just because they are far to the right of the mainstream and won’t foster political consensus, but also because they each have significant ethics problems of their own.

Roy Blunt of Missouri has a leg up in the race given his incumbent status. He has been the House Majority Whip, the third highest ranking job in the Republican Party, since November 2002. House Republicans voted him acting Majority Leader following DeLay’s leadership resignation. Blunt claims to be a reformer, writing, “[I]t will be difficult to move forward with our platform until we regain the trust and confidence of our constituents by enacting new lobbying reforms and enhanced penalties for those who break the public trust. Like the Speaker, I am committed to moving forward with these reforms in the next several weeks.” Yet, these reformist comments ring hollow. Blunt, aside from being part of the same leadership team as DeLay, also accepted donations from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, turning over $8,500 in such donations to charity in December. According to Bloomberg News, Blunt “served as the Republicans’ official liaison to K Street,” arranging a meeting between top Republicans and 200 lobbyists, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to discuss the party’s agenda. Even more damning, his campaign employs DeLay aide Jim Ellis. Ellis, like DeLay, has been indicted for illegal use of campaign funds in Texas.

The pro-life Blunt holds a 94% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU). The National Rifle Association gave him an “A” rating, he is married to a tobacco industry lobbyist, and he voted last year to make it harder for families to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills. None of these positions are representative of the views of the American people, or even many self-declared Republicans.

Blunt’s $8,500 in Abramoff donations are mere pennies compared to Boehner’s $31,500, a sum which Boehner, unlike Blunt, has refused to return. The problems do not stop there. Rep. Shays (R-CT) claims Boehner is even closer to lobbyists than Blunt. According to USA Today, “Boehner was forced to apologize in the mid-1990s for distributing checks from tobacco companies to his colleagues as they worked on the House floor. More recently, he was scrutinized for accepting donations, parties and trips from Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest provider of student loans, as it lobbied the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which Boehner heads.” Accepting trips paid for by special interests has been a matter of routine for Boehner over the past five years. Boehner was also once part of the same tainted leadership team, holding the number four House Republican position from’94 until’98. He is campaigning for Majority Leader on a non-existent record as a reformer $mdash; given the current situation in Washington, few Republicans, let alone Boehner, can claim success as recent reformers.

Boehner’s ACU ratings are similar to Blunt’s $mdash; 94% lifetime, 100% in 2004. He was a champion of the’94 “Contract with America,” the document that swept Republicans into office with pledges to clean up government. Walter Shapiro of Salon.com, in an NPR interview, called Boehner a “don’t rock the boat candidate,” when the boat very much needs rocking.

Blunt and Boehner both claim they have the votes to win the election. To break the stalemate, Arizona Congressman John Shadegg entered the race as a dark horse candidate. He, like Blunt, is a part of the current problematic leadership team, holding the fifth-highest position. Ethically speaking, Shadegg isn’t as tainted as the other two $mdash; he has “only” accepted $6,900 in Abramoff-linked donations, and got rid of it all in December. He claims he had no idea the money’s source was affiliated to Abramoff, whom he has never met.

Shadegg’s problems are not so much ethical as they are ideological. America needs a man who can rally all its citizens, not just half; someone who can unite, and truly lead. Shadegg’s conservatism outflanks most of his party$mdash; the ACU ranks him a 98% lifetime, giving him a 100 in 2004. The Washington Post says he is to the right of George W. Bush on many issues, including the President’s first round of fiscally irresponsible tax cuts $mdash; Shadegg thought they were not big enough. He was elected in’94 as a part of the “Contract with America” crowd; he is a former president of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, the group that advised Republicans to call their opponents “unpatriotic” and “traitors.” The Arizona Republic has called Shadegg an “equal-opportunity iconoclast” and a “firebrand.” The man refuses to respect half the American public, claiming that citizens who voted for Kerry “have mental health problems.” He has also called Michael Moore “the anti-Christ” and said of a Bill Clinton environmental policy, “I would draw a par
allel to Hitler. He eroded the will of the German people to resist evil.” These comments are more becoming of Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell than they are a United States Congressman. Shadegg’s mean-spirited disrespect is unfortunate. He is a policy expert, his behind-the-scenes tactics are not nearly as hard-charging as DeLay’s (who was known as “The Hammer”), and his calls for new ethics rules sound the most genuine of the three. He may be the establishment’s biggest challenger. Nevertheless, his extreme politics render him unfit for leadership.

It is disheartening that Blunt, Boehner, and Shadegg have risen to the top of the pack. Redistricting fiascos aside, the Republican Party has no excuse for its “culture of corruption”. With honorable and decent members sitting in the wings, the party could easily find leaders to work with Democrats in a bipartisan manner to craft responsible legislation and a balanced budget. Its base would be thrilled; the average Republican voter is, even today, more like Dwight Eisenhower than Tom DeLay or Rick Santorum. Sadly, the Republican hierarchy doesn’t see the need to lead in such an appropriate manner; they would rather take kickbacks from lobbyists and tear the nation apart with their partisan bickering. Until these leaders realize the error of their ways, the Republican Party cannot be trusted to govern the United States. The Feb. 2 election, when only 232 people get to vote, will remind the voters of this ineptitude once more. When all Americans get to vote this November, they will almost assuredly express their displeasure.

uch has been made of the fedora and trench coat that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff wore outside a Washington, DC courtroom earlier this month. Left-wing bloggers and talk show hosts compared his look to that of’20s gangster Al Capone. One Washington Post writer said the lobbyist was “dressed like a crime boss. He could not have appeared more guilty, more menacing, and more unsympathetic than if he had walked out wielding a baseball bat and muttering something about so-and-so sleeping with the fishes.” This is unfortunate. While it is true that mob bosses like Capone wore fedoras and trench coats, so too did Elliot Ness and the other federal agents who pursued them. Not only did President Harry Truman wear a fedora, he once sold them for a living. Hats were once fashionable in Washington circles; now, showing off baldness and getting sunburned on the top of your ears is considered “in.” Hats deserve a comeback, so it is a shame that Abramoff was the first modern prominent politico to wear one. Donning that headgear might be the only good thing he has done for politics in recent years.

On January 3, Abramoff pled guilty to felony charges of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Two days later, appearing at a Florida courthouse in a blasÉ baseball cap rather than a stylish fedora, he pled guilty to fraud and conspiracy in a second case. In return for his guilty plea and testimony against those he bribed, he will receive nine to eleven years in prison instead of thirty. His crimes are symbolic of the current climate of corruption in Washington, DC. Conservative pundits claim that Abramoff’s ties to Democrats are every bit as close as they are to Republicans, but this feeble attempt at spin has no evidence to back it up.

Abramoff’s case is a complicated one—a Washington Post graphic trying to make sense of it used over a dozen arrows crisscrossing back and forth to explain Abramoff’s “galaxy.” He has been one of the most prominent Republican lobbyists for the past ten years; as the Post put it, “He treated lawmakers and their aides to lavish trips, meals and tickets to sporting events, and directed the tribes to donate millions of dollars to political candidates and parties.” The question, at least until Abramoff pled guilty, was whether or not these donations and gifts amounted to bribes—did he expect anything in return, either for himself or from his clients? And did the Congressmen know what was expected? The guilty plea would indicate yes.

Apart from the public bribery, Abramoff defrauded Native American clients in Texas and elsewhere. While he represented tribes publicly and accepted their legal payments, he privately campaigned against tribal gaming and education. He also defrauded lenders in Florida when purchasing a fleet of gambling boats in 2000; that case involved both a fake $23 million wire transfer and the eventual murder of a former Abramoff business associate, Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis. (Three men were indicted in November for the murder; two were consultants hired by one of Abramoff’s partners, Adam Kidan, who has also pled guilty to fraud and conspiracy.)

Dozens of lawmakers have accepted campaign contributions from Abramoff, just as they do from anyone who offers money. Abramoff has bragged that his testimony can implicate up to sixty lawmakers; the Justice Department is investigating six who may have accepted the contributions as bribes, as well as numerous aides. The investigation appears to focus almost exclusively on Republicans. Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), until recently the most powerful House Republican, is the most prominent. New Hampshire Congressional candidate Paul Hodes referred to DeLay and Abramoff at a recent Hanover function as “the dynamic duo.” Already under indictment in Texas for a separate scandal, DeLay gave up all hope of regaining his title following the Abramoff plea. DeLay went golfing at the world’s most prestigious golf course, St. Andrew’s in Scotland, on Abramoff’s tab. Furthermore, one of Abramoff’s former partners, former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon, pled guilty in November to conspiracy to bribe public officials. Another former DeLay aide, Tony Rudy, has extremely close ties to Abramoff; DeLay himself has called Abramoff “a good friend” on numerous occasions.

While DeLay may be the most prominent politician involved with Abramoff, he is certainly not the most involved. Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) is the only official directly implicated (albeit not named) in the Abramoff plea papers. In exchange for donations, Ney met with Abramoff’s clients, inserted statements into the Congressional Record for them, and arranged access with federal officials. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA), and numerous Interior Department officials may also be in trouble. Even the White House is involved—former White House Office of Management and Budget chief administrator David Safavian has been arrested for lying to investigators about Abramoff.

Though technically not politicians, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed have also been named as helping Abramoff in his various Indian and Florida business dealings. Norquist, himself a lobbyist as founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, holds weekly meetings attended by top Republican strategists and aides. These meetings play a large role in organizing the conservative movement and setting talking points for the next few days. Reed was the first executive director of the Christian Coalition and is now running for lieutenant governor of Georgia; he was a major player in the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. For a thorough guide to the players in the Abramoff scandal, visit The Washington Post.

This wide-reaching ethical scandal does not come at a good time for the Republican Party. DeLay, former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), and former Vice Presidential chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby all face indictments in ethical scandals of their own. Though not indicted, both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove face investigations of their own.

Democratic charges of a “culture of corruption” gained more weight with Abramoff’s plea, but it did not take long for the Republican spinmeisters to get to work. They claim that since Democrats also accepted money from Abramoff, the scandal will be a bipartisan one with no real effect on either party. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has gone as far as to release a complete list of Democrats who accepted money from Abramoff. The Wall Street Journal, a typically responsible yet nonetheless conservative publication, said in its January 4 front page article that “the fact that some Democrats also had dealings with Mr. Abramoff clouded the question of whether the scandal will have a sharp partisan impact in the November 2006 midterm elections.” Another Journal story, also on the same front page, said, “Any Democratic chortling may be premature. … Some in the opposition had dealings with Abramoff too.”

Republican attempts to paint the scandal as bipartisan are attempts at whitewashing the story. Though the Journal claimed Democrats are just as involved as Republicans, its article named seven implicated Republicans, but only two Democrats. One of those Democrats was Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who accepted money from Abramoff but gave him no favors in return. The same can be said of Reid’s predecessor as top Senate Democrat, Tom Daschle (D-SD). These men, however, did nothing wrong—they merely accepted a donation. The crime is in treating the donation as a bribe, like the Republicans in question did. The other Democrat named by the Journal is Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who not only accepted money from Abramoff’s clients but also lobbied in Washington on their behalf. While his involvem
ent is indeed suspect, he has since returned all the donations and is taking an active role in the Senate’s investigation of Abramoff. Even if guilty, his sole involvement does not support claims of bipartisan corruption.

Despite the Republican noise machine’s best efforts, there is no credible evidence linking Democrats to the Abramoff scandal. Even the National Review, perhaps the country’s leading conservative publication, was forced to admit to that fact in an online column, stating, “This is, in its essence, a Republican scandal, and any attempt to portray it otherwise is a misdirection.”

Fortunately, not all of Washington is caught up in the corruption. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has been leading a Senate investigation of Abramoff for the past several months. He and Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), who visited Dartmouth in October, and the Hanover Community Center earlier this month, are working on a bill (currently in the House) that would ban lobbyists from giving gifts to Senators, require full disclosure of all lobbyist-lawmaker contacts, and make former Congressmen wait two years after their terms expired to become lobbyists themselves. This bill predates the Abramoff scandal.

The new McCain-Feingold bill might not ban the bad guys from wearing fedoras, but it does give hope that not all in Washington, and not even all Republicans, are lost. The Abramoff plea is a revealing look at the “culture of corruption” that is modern, lobbyist-driven politics; with luck, the McCain-Feingold bill and the upcoming midterm elections will help clean up that culture.