HERE COME DE JUDGE: CLARENCE THOMAS

“‘tis, better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak remove all doubt”

          Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has just proven Abraham Lincoln’s observation to be on point. Thomas often called the “silent” member of the Court for not having asked a question during oral arguments for at least seven years, has just spoken and removed any doubt as to his stupidity. This judge is not only a fool but may well have violated civil and criminal statutes. And by the way, he is one of the guys that are the final arbiters of the law in our country.

          Thomas is not only silent but deaf and dumb. It seems that old Clarence is married to a lady by the name of Virginia, “Ginnie” to her friends. This good woman is gainfully employed, a commendable effort on her part. Far be it for me to suggest that her employment was a perk thrown Thomas’ way. From 2003 to 2007 she was employed by the Heritage Foundation of Washington, D. C., a conservative think tank, and Hillsdale College of rural Michigan and was paid a substantial sum for her efforts, $686,589 to be exact.

          It is unclear what exactly Virginia did to earn this salary but from available sources she was the author of a number of position papers with such arresting titles as Restoring Integrity to Government with Performance, Results, and Accountability; Not More Laws – More Oversight; Time for Congress to Hold Legal Services Corporation Accountable, and Legislation without Adequate Oversight. Emphasis Supplied. She clearly stood for oversight, accountability and full disclosure. Good for her!

          In 1978 the Ethics in Government Act was passed with the admirable purpose of ordering all public officials, including Supreme Court Justices, to provide financial disclosure of their, their spouses’ and certain dependents’, income and liabilities. Failure to do so in a timely and truthful fashion made the filer liable for fines for late filing, civil liability for willfully filing false information and potential criminal prosecution. Old Thomas filed the required forms for the years in question but somehow failed to note that Ginnie was gainfully employed and by whom. By the way, the Supreme Court Financial Disclosure Form does not require disclosure of the amount of her compensation.

          When this tiny oversight, after all it was only $686,589, was brought to Thomas’ attention by Common Cause, a liberal advocacy group, he promptly filed amended financial disclosure statements for six years claiming that this financial bagatelle was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions”. Either he is a fool, the more likely scenario, or he takes us for fools. If you believe that lame explanation you may well be interested in a bridge that I am trying to sell, the Brooklyn Bridge.

          The Supreme Court disclosure form entitled FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE INDIVIDUAL AND SPOUSE, SEE PP. 17-24 INSTRUCTIONS]. Part A is FILER’S NON-INVESTMENT INCOME. Old Clarence filled out that part properly. But then he was stumped by Part B, SPOUSE’S NON INVESTMENT INCOME.  He was stumped by that one presumably after reading the instructions. After all the $686,589 was not investment income so why bother reporting it. Whatever!

          Old Clarence was not deterred in his false non reporting by the language of the Certification Section: I CERTIFY THAT ALL INFORMATION GIVEN [INCLUDING INFORMATION PERTAINING TO MY SPOUSE AND MINOR OR DEPENDENT CHILDREN, IF ANY] IS ACCURATE, TRUE AND COMPLETE TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF…… Nor was he deterred by the language directly below his signature: NOTE: ANY INDIVIDUAL WHO KNOWINGLY AND WILFULLY FALSIFIES OR FAILS TO FILE THIS REPORT MAY BE SUBJECT TO CIVIL AND CRIMINAL SANCTIONS [5 USC app §104].

          Now Thomas went to law school and not just any law school but Yale Law School. One would think that he is aware that §104 allows the Attorney General to bring a civil action “against any individual who knowingly willfully falsifies or who knowingly and willfully fails to file or report any information that such individual is required to report” and seek a civil penalty not to exceed $50,000. Being not only a lawyer but a judge to boot he should be aware that 18 USC §1001 provides that “whoever…knowingly and willfully…conceals…a material fact; makes any materially false…statement or representation; or makes…a false writing or document knowing the same to contain materially false…statement or entry; shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years…or both”.

          Clarence Thomas called himself an “Uppity Black” during his confirmation hearings. It will be interesting to see if American justice is truly color blind and whether the powers that be, the Establishment, calls him to task in accordance with the law as it is now stands.

         

SEX WILL SAVE EUROPE AND THE EURO

          Last week the Litchfield County Times ran an Op/Ed column entitled The Sin Business Is Not for States. In the electronic version the County Times’ editors dropped “Not for States” from the title. Unlike the dumb columnist they were aware that sin is, in fact, the state’s business.

          The column was about state and local governments’ sorry forays in the sin business [gambling, sex and booze] resulting in bankruptcy or, at best, mediocre profits. You can access the article on The Litchfield County Times' Internet web site or at ttp://www.countytimes.com/articles/2011/01/14/opinion/op-ed/doc4d2f27da6483ae531500359.txt. 

          My advice to governments, both domestic and international, was to leave sin well enough alone and to the private sector. The “pros”, the bookies, bootleggers, pimps, madams and hookers, they know what they’re doing; after all they have been doing it for centuries. It is unseemly for government to engage in booze, gambling and prostitution. These are not proper governmental functions.  My unsolicited advice to government was to let them be, but tax the living beejesus out of them.

          Europe’s financial “pigs” [Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain] are desperately trying to stave off financial collapse and support a floundering Euro. There are rumors that the Euro is facing its demise. The cost of borrowing to keep governments afloat is soaring, now in the double digits. Soon the “pigs” will have to pay interest rates that American consumers have been coping with for years. Welcome “pigs” to the 19% interest rate on you international Visa and Master Card debt.

          The “pigs” are scrambling to find new revenues, restructure debt, cut costs and services and save the Euro as a currency. Retirement age is no longer 60 or 62, we are now talking   70. Even Europe’s non “pigs” are putting safety measures in effect. England has tripled university tuition and sharply reduced welfare benefits. France has instituted draconian pension reforms. Public sector wages have been slashed. Income taxes have risen. Because of this the Euro’s existence is threatened, so they say. 

          Holland, has sagely taken my advice. They have seen the writing on the wall and have found a new untapped source of revenue: commercial sex. Now do not be alarmed, the canny Dutch are not going to plunge headfirst into the sex business. They will leave sex to the “pros”, as in prostitutes, already toiling in the industry, and to the ladies sitting and trolling for customers in the windows of Amsterdam’s Red Light District [Rosseburt].    

          No, as a matter of fact, Holland is going to encourage the ladies of the night to do their utmost, to ramp up their efforts, to go the extra mile, or in this case millimeter, with the aid of Viagra to help their country. To become the Rosie the Riveters of the sex industry in this time of dire need. Holland will raise the much needed revenue by enforcing that uniquely New York City solution, the Parking Tax.

          For you foreigners and non New Yorkers, let me explain: You drive your car to Manhattan, a congested place and with little if no public parking. Parking is very much like sex, you got to, you need to, and so you must. And when you do, New York City slaps you with an 18.5% tax on top of the exorbitant ransom that those few minutes of parking cost. When you add the sales tax, the income tax paid by the owners and workers in the industry you have huge amount of cash, not to be sneezed at.

          That is exactly what Holland is doing. Since legalizing prostitution in 2002 Holland has taxed sex earnings as just plain income. While the sex trade is significant, generating a least $865 million in income according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, it remains substantially untaxed. Following New York’s example there is a 19% sales tax on each sexual transaction. Enforcing the tax on sex will generate millions of dollars in revenues.    

The Dutch are ahead of the curve. They are going to permit, then promote, then enhance sex and then tax the beejesus out of it, all to balance the budget. Now if the Greeks, the Portuguese and the rest of Europe would just follow their lead, austerity will be avoided, budget balanced and the Euro saved.

         

OF ASS & ASSES

In the eyes of a prude the female derrière is “obscene and indecent”. In this case the prudes are members of the Federal Communications Commission, truly a bunch of first class asses who so decided. In the eyes of others a derrière, an ass in plain English, is a thing of beauty, something to admire, something to marvel at.    

If you had to conjure up an iconic image of a prude, who would it be? For me it would be Eleanor Roosevelt, the prune faced First Lady who was often seen sporting a Minnie Pearl hat. Would it surprise you if I told you that Eleanor once sent a congratulatory telegram to Gypsy Rose Lee, the First Lady of Burlesque, “May you bare ass always be shining” she wrote.

Gypsy Rose Lee was voted the most popular woman in America in 1940, more popular than that First Lady. That year she stripped before thousands of adoring fans at the World’s Fair in Flushing, New York. It was reported that she shed all her clothes keeping certain strategic spots covered with ribbons and sequins. She wasn’t naked.  “I was completely covered by a blue spotlight” she said and that blue spotlight sure highlighted her golden assets.

Here we had the First Lady, the first Chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and in my eyes the First Prude, lauding a stripper that dared to bare it all, including her world renowned and acclaimed ass. But Gypsy Rose Lee was not just a stripper. As she often quipped “There is more to see [of me] than meets the eye”. There sure was. This was a woman of wit and intelligence. Her assets were but a bonus

In the case of the "asses" sitting on the Federal Communication Commission, it seems that the TV show NYPD Blue aired an episode entitled “Nude Awakening”. In it, one of the characters disrobes as she prepares to take a shower. Her nude buttocks, in other words her ass is visible. There is another shot which fleetingly reveals her ass once again. This flagrant display of “obscene and indecent” material took up less than seven seconds of air time. For this “explicit and graphic” depiction of “sexual organs” [the ass?] the FCC fined ABC $1,210,000. That’s more than a million bucks, to you and me.

But it took two years and a Federal appeals court to put the asses in their place and void the fine. What galls me is that we have Mike “The Situation”, Jenni “JWoww” and “Snooki” Polizzi, along with many other social retards, cavorting and shouting bleeped out obscenities on TV's Jersey Shore. I know, “That’s Cable” you say, and I say “Whatever”!

Let’s put it to a vote: Would you rather see Snooki’s fat derrière in full color, with ultra sonic sound or Gypsy’s in black and white, with a scratchy sound track playing “Let Me Entertain You”?   

MONTY PYTHON'S GOSPEL OF TOLERANCE

“Never be rude to an Arab, an Israeli, or Saudi, or Jew. Never be rude to an Irishman, no matter what you do” go the lyrics to the Monty Python’s Flying Circus ditty lampooning our political correctness. Yet for all its crassness and seeming insensitivity it does have a message for this New Year.

While the ditty sinks deeper in being downright offensive by hectoring us to “Never poke fun at a Nigger, a Spick, a Wop or a Kraut. And never put down….” it ends in a catastrophic explosion, “kaboom”. Keep on doing what we are now doing, denigrating all that is not “us”, and we will end up with an explosion that will destroy us all.

For all of its political incorrectness, Monty’s Circus preaches tolerance albeit with puerile humor. The Circus, so aptly named, goes on to note that “there are Jews in the world, there are Buddhists, there are Hindus and there are Mormons and then there are those that follow Mohammud [sic], but I’ve never been one of them” before staunchly proclaiming “I’m a Roman Catholic”. By explicitly naming the world’s many religions Monty Python has tacitly given them recognition and their just and proper due.

Tolerance and understanding is what we need in this New Year. If we learn to leaven tolerance with puerile humor and remember that “the world today seems absolutely crackers, with nuclear bombs to blow us all sky high, there are fools and idiots sitting on the trigger. It’s depressing and it’s senseless, and that’s why…” we should all sing Monty Python’s Gospel of Tolerance, with all of its irreverent wit and wisdom.

DETROIT-HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR

Most of us take the elevator unless something prevents us, forcing us to creak up or down the stairs. In late November my offices were in the throes of renovation. The elevator landing was being sanded and painted, so you had to walk down six flights of stairs. As I meandered down the little used stairs, at some landings I was confronted by this large yellow and black “cd” sign with “fallout shelter” below with an arrow pointing to the left.

          Unwittingly I went beyond the ground floor and found myself in the basement. My building was probably built in the 20’s, well before the Second World War and its aftermath, the Cold War. Down in the basement were more “cd shelter” signs and tucked in the corner were some olive drab barrels labeled “survival supplies - drinking water”. Stacked next to them were a dozen dusty aluminum containers labeled “shelter - food”. I had stumbled upon one of the last vestiges of the cold war, a fallout shelter. 

          That brought back memories of the early 50’s when I was a kid attending Public School 22 in Flushing, New York. My teacher, Ms. Anita Tully, she who all the boys lusted after, would have us sit at our desks and when the bell started ringing, announcing the monthly civil defense drill, made us hunker down under our desks. “Duck and Cover” was what that stupid maneuver was called. The shelter of our wooden desks was supposed to shield and protect us from the blast of an exploding atomic bomb. Having survived actual bombs during the “Big War”, and having witnessed at first hand the destruction wrought, I thought then and now “Fat chance! What a crock!”

          We did drop the bomb on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki. I will get to that later. But I just want you to bring back from the recesses of your mind the mushroom cloud, the destruction, the wasted bodies, the rubble, the utter devastation, the bricks strewn about, men with white gauze masks picking up what looked like barbecued spare ribs, total and utter devastation.

          I often wondered what ever happened to that bombed out city, the subject of “Hiroshima Mon Amour” the film with the unforgettable “You are not endowed with memory” line. My mind further conditioned by science fiction and apocalyptic movies, “On the Beach”, “Mad Max”, “Planet of the Apes” and “The Omega Man” among others, conjured up a vast arid plain doted by twisted building skeletons devoid of life. A man made desert doomed to eternity by radioactive waste never to bloom or welcome mankind.       

          Yeaterday's reality as revealed in contemporary photographs is even more disturbing. I invite you to visit http://search.aol.com/aol/image?q=hiroshima. I do not have to add any words to what you will experience.

          But is that the Hiroshima of today? Does my vision of the nightmare still hold true? No. Someone just sent me a link contrasting the yesterday's Hiroshima with the today's Hiroshima in all of its modern electric magnificence, in full glorious color and glory. Google “Hiroshima and Detroit after 65 years” or go to http://antioligarch.wordpress.com/20...5-years-later/.

            But the authors of these sites go one step further. They document the present glory of a modern, vibrant Hiroshima with the present hardscrable, abandoned, destitute burned out hulk that is today’s Detroit. Apartment buildings with empty eye sockets for windows that once kept out the cold. A grand Municipal Building, or is it a train station, with marble Doric columns framing stories tall windows shattered as if by the siege of Stalingrad. Roofs crazily sagging on burned out frame houses that were once homes. And a shuttered empty Tiger Stadium sporting an ironic “welcome” sign. Welcome to whom or to what, one asks?

          I am not about to lay blame at anyone’s feet for the dire straits of our cities. I will let others far more competent than I to administer to this task. I will not offer an opion on the viability of the proposed new arms control treaty except to note that it could, just possibly could, prevent another Hiroshima. I merely suggest that we should take our cue from our Japanese friends, our former enemies, and do something about Detroit, once my amour, so that it doesn't remain yesterday's Hiroshima. After all, we won that war, didn't we?          

   

THE LAST STAND UP JAPANESE AMERICAN GUY DOWN

          Frank Emi died yesterday at the age of 94. I had never heard of him until his obituary caught my eye in this Sunday’s New York Times. Then the magnitude of the crime that we perpetrated on him, and then compounded, sunk in. It made my head hang in shame, especially in light of the not as yet repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

          After Pearl Harbor, in one of the most constitutionally illegal and reprehensible Executive Orders ever, Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of more than 110,000 American citizens and permanent resident in makeshift “detention centers”. To me these were nothing less than concentration camps. The only transgression that these Americans were accused of was that they were of Japanese descent, deemed “threats to national security” by that Executive Order. So much for due process and “innocent until proven guilty”. It was the purported “Champions of Justice”, the President and the Supreme Court of the United States that perpetrated the foul deed.

          One of these was Frank Emi. He was born on September 23, 1916 in Los Angeles. He was married with a kid running a food market when he was interned. Back then you couldn’t really rebel, you had no choice but to go along, get along, even though it was at the end of a fixed bayonet.

          Two years later, with America quickly running out of men of draft age, the policy abruptly changed. It was decided to add insult to injury. The interned Japanese Americans were subjected to the draft. Go directly from jail to the killings fields of the European Theatres of war. You were still suspect and not “American” enough to die fighting the Japanese. Some, Frank being one, just said “Hell no, I won’t go!” not until all of my rights as a true natural born U. S. citizen have been restored. That cry, to be echoed anew during the Viet Nam War, resulted in criminal charges. Found guilty of draft evasion, Frank Emi was sentenced to four years of hard labor at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

          Today’s military age gays and lesbians are really better off. They are not in jail nor are they subject to the draft. Which brings us to yesterday’s non repeal of the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law. While the Senate’s vote ostensibly repeals it, it still leaves it in effect, its final repeal slowly inching forward.

But here is today’s version of “insult to injury”. If there was a draft today, as it should be so as to have all of us bear the burden of war, and you were a gay draftee openly declaring your sexual preference and you did so “for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service” you would be subject to criminal prosecution for draft evasion ,just like Frank Emi. Damn if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Frank Emi stood up for his rights and was rewarded with a stay in the Leavenworth brig, surely not a tourist destination, not a Disneyland. Lest we forget, the last stand up Japanese American is down. He was a patriot in that long ago war to be remembered for standing up for all of our constitutional rights, which we “round eyes” utterly failed to do.

           

THE DEATH OF A DIPLOMATIC FRAUD

Richard Holbrooke, a founding member of the Dead Diplomats Society, passed away yesterday. The Establishment and the media promptly canonized him and suggested a posthumous Nobel Prize. The eulogies are fraught with      hyperbole calling his role on the world stage “larger than life”. The pomp and circumstance surrounding his death make him a messianic, bold and courageous envoy of peace and stability. What pure and unadulterated bullshit. “Much Ado About Nothing”, say I, except his role was in the world’s sad tragedies, not Shakespeare’s light comedy.

Holdbrooke was the false bright and shining beacon of America’s failed diplomatic and economic disasters. His life was nothing but “A Bright Shining Lie”, starting with his service in Vietnam in 1962. He went on to Lyndon Johnson’s White House were he wrote a volume of the Pentagon Papers, but didn’t do a damn thing about the lies, deception and corruption that embroiled that war.

This man’s career spanning 50 years, in public service as well as substantial stints in the private sector, involved him with every conflict and with every subsequent defeat and humiliation. He participated in every failed attempt at diplomacy from Vietnam to Afghanistan, with stops in Bosnia, Kosovo and Cyprus along the way. His diplomatic efforts lacked a moral compass. He saw no shame in dealing with dictators, despots and corrupt politicians and actively supported their financing at the tax payers’ expense. He expressed outrage only after the corrupt official was of no longer use to his Machiavellian intrigues.

Holbrooke denied having made a deal with Bosnia’s Radovan Karadzic: withdraw from politics in return for a “get out of jail card” and no prosecution. But his denial was flatly refuted by Bosnia’s Muslim Foreign Minister, Karadzic’s arch enemy, Muhamed Sacirbey. His denial has been further refuted by Momcilo Krajisnik, Republica Srpska’s Parliamentary President, who was present when the deal was struck, and who personally recounted the encounter to me.

He, along with that other unprincipled eminence grise, Zbigniew Brezinski, facilitated the delivery of arms to Indonesia and supported Suharto’s brutal counterinsurgency which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths of East Timor dissidents. Likewise he supported Croatia’s “Operation Storm” which ultimately resulted in 250,000 displaced Serb refugees, destined to be strangers in a strange land, far greater than Kosovo’s Albanians who ultimately returned to their homes. All this in direct contravention of United Nations’ sanctions and embargoes and in violation of US domestic penal statutes. So much for abiding by international law. Holbrooke did so only when it suited his purposes.

His performance in the private sector was far from stellar. The financial institutions he was associated with skirted and openly flaunted the law. He was not passive but a proactive participant.  He started as a Senior Advisor, then Managing Director, of Lehman Brothers, the financial behemoth that ultimately made the largest bankruptcy filing in US history in 2008. Lehman was the firm embroiled in the sub prime mortgage mess and one of the firms that settled with the SEC and New York’s Attorney General for $1.4 billion in 2005. From 2001 to 2008 he was on the Board of Directors of American International Group, “AIG” the failed and flawed insurance giant that engaged in wildly speculative credit default insurance schemes during his watch that precipitated today’s recession. Those schemes have cost the American taxpayers millions if not billions of dollars to date. And, lest we forget, he was Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston that reached a settlement with the Government for violations of sanctions regulations for financial transactions with Iran and paid a $536 million fine in 2009. So much for his financial rectitude.

The least said about his three marriages and his adulterous liaisons, Diane Sawyer amongst others, the better. So much for his moral compass.

His last post, as President Obama’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was another moral debacle. He allowed the flawed elections of Hamid Karzai to stand, while other more upright diplomats were given the sack for denouncing them. He allowed graft, corruption and a flourishing narcotic state to flourish all in the name of nation building. Damn the torpedoes, the millions of dollars and American lives lost, full speed ahead.

I do not regret his passing. But I am comforted by the fact that there is one less malignant diplomatic fraud running amuck, feathering his financial nest, wreaking havoc on the world. Thank God and God speed, Richard Holbrooke, wherever you are!