Shock of the year

I see the Glens Falls daily Post-Star endorsed the resoundingly uninspiring Republican candidate Harold 'Bud' Taylor to be the next mayor of Glens Falls.

After giving Taylor a grossly disproportionate amount of coverage in their 'news' articles for most of this year, attentive readers of The Post-Star could've predicted this endorsment in July.

I'd like to think voters will make up their own mind, but I just hope they knew enough to go to other sources to learn about the other four candidates.


Reminder: this blog endorses Esmond Lyons, independent candidate for mayor of Glens Falls.

So they DO believe in evolution (of 'ethics')

There's an old joke that goes like this...

Q: Why are politicians like porn stars?
A: Both are comfortable changing positions in front of the camera.

(I'm sure others can come up with more creative answers)

For example: last week, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said she hoped that if 'Scooter' Libby and Karl Rove were indicted, it would be for actually leaking the name of the CIA agent, not for perjury, which she called a "technicality."

Hutchison's spokesman, Chris Paulitz, said on Monday that the senator was not commenting on any specific investigation, but rather "was expressing her general concern that perjury traps have become too common when investigators are unable to indict on any underlying crime."

Libby, who was a top aide to Vice-President Cheney, was indeed indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

How did Sen. Hutchison vote on articles of impeachment against then-president Bill Clinton: one article for obstruction of justice and one article for the 'technicality' of perjury'?

She voted guilty on both counts.

So much for the unchanging ethical and moral standards some people claim to believe in.

Conservatives torpedo Bush judicial nominee

Harriet Miers, President Bush's choice to join the Supreme Court, has withdrawn her nomination. She came under predictable criticism from some liberal groups who thought her unqualified. But the real storm came from the right wing of the Republican Party who wanted a more dependable hardline conservative ideologue to join the Court, an Antonin Scalia Jr. if you will.

Though the real reason Miers was pushed on to her sword was to appease the right wing, the pretext used was that senators (including Republicans) wanted access to documents Miers wrote as White House counsel. Since she had almost no other public record, the Senate wanted these documents to have some idea of the person they were voting on. Without these documents, she was a blank slate.

The White House did not want to release the documents, citing some invention called executive privilege; executive privilege has long been invoked by presidents as an excuse for secrecy, though it's mentioned nowhere in the Constitution (or, to my knowledge, regular law). It's telling that they would rather sacrifice a woman they consider to be a fantastic potential justice in order to prevent the public from learning how things really work at the Bush White House. As for the accusations of excessive secrecy in the administration, bizarre decision making processes and general sliminess, none of those suspicions are going to be alleviated by this decision.

Miers was basically seen as a blank slate; her main attribute was her closeness to the president. Even President Bush himself made no bones about this. His basic pitch for Miers was, "I know her. I trust her. You trust me. So confirm her."

The trouble is that Americans increasingly DON'T trust the president. Given the Iraq debacle, his controversial handling of Hurricane Katrina and the general atmosphere of fast-and-loose with ethics in the White House, faith in the president's judgement is (finally) through the floor.

But what's surprising is that even the right-wing, so fiercely loyal to Bush on Iraq, torture and the war against civil liberties, didn't trust Bush on this one. Instead, they went into open revolt.

This begs the question. When Bush said, "I know what I'm doing, just trust me" on Iraq or the war on civil liberties, the right smeared as unpatriotic anyone who didn't. "In times of war, we must always defer to presidential omniscence," they huffed.

So you can't blame Bush for trying the same approach on the Miers' nomination. Imagine his shock when after years of mindlessly accepting "I know what I'm doing, just trust me" as the be all and end all, suddenly conservatives decided to think for themselves and make up their own mind.

I'm glad they've finally realized that this is how issues should be dealt with. Let's hope they remember this when the public debate gets back to Iraq.

Wal-Mart: raise the minimum wage

So what should one make of a recent call by Wal-Mart to raise the minimum wage? Their rational is that the low national minimum wage, which has been $5.15 an hour for almost a decade, has harmed Wal-Mart's core consumer base: low income earners.

On one hand, it's hard to take it seriously coming from them. It seems to me that if they wanted low income earners to have more money, they could do a lot simply by raising wages for their own workers. I don't know a lot about labor law but it seems you don't need Congressional action to give your staff more money.

And it's worth being skeptical of Wal-Mart's intentions given their alleged propensity to force workers to work overtime for free or deny them lunch breaks. I guess they don't know much about labor law either. Raising the minimum wage only helps workers if the employer actually pays it.

Or alternatively, Wal-Mart could use some of its $10 billion profits to provide health care to the majority of its staff that's not covered so that workers could use their wages could be used on other essentials. Maybe then they'd have less turnover and would spend less money training new 'associates.'

On the other hand, the call does hammer another nail into the most common argument against the minimum wage and raises of it, specifically that they harm business. Wal-Mart says that raising the minimum wage would HELP its business because its customers would have more money to spend.

Of course, it's easy to see this as a gimmick by Wal-Mart to deflect attention away from their battered image. And I have no doubt that this is the reasoning behind it. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt. If they're serious are higher wages for low income workers, by all means let them lead the way!

So workers want a higher minimum wage because they want to be able to pay for essentials. Small businesses want a higher minimum wage so big businesses can't lowball them anymore. Big businesses (at least this particular one) want a higher minimum wage so their customers will have more money to spend. Consensus at last!

New archbishop faces bigotry

This essay is part of a weekly feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.


No sane person would claim that racism is dead, least of all Dr John Sentamu, who was recently installed as Archbishop of York.

Apparently, some people had a little problem with a black man (he was born in Uganda) ascending to the second-highest post in the Church of England. Archbishop Sentamu revealed that he'd been greeted with racist letters, including some covered in human excrement.

"I don't know where they are from. They don't tell you," he said of the cowards. "They simply tell you, I am Mr White X and nigger go back and this is what you are like, this is what you are worth."

He has also courted controversy by expressing his desire to fight homophobia within the Church of England.

I wish the archbishop success in his fight against bigots of both stripes.

Death of a soldier: two years later

Adirondack Almanack blog points to an interesting story in The Glens Falls Post-Star on the second anniversary of the death of a local soldier in Iraq.

Two years ago, Staff Sgt. Kevin Kimmerly was killed in Iraq. I believe he was the first local soldier to die over there. The day after his funeral, The Post-Star ran on the front page a picture of his young son Christopher, then 9, sobbing at graveside.

The Post-Star received a lot of criticism for running the picture. People claimed the photo was tabloid trash; they claimed it was sensationalism. Though I'm not the daily's biggest fan, I disagreed at the time with its critics and still do.

The picture of the little boy in tears with his father's medals pinned to his rumpled powder blue dress shirt was the most powerful photo I've ever seen in any newspaper. It was also also one of the saddest pictures I've ever seen. I looked at the picture on three separate occassions on that day and I cried each time for a little boy I didn't even know. That's what war's about, not some staged shot of a statue being toppled.

The picture drove home the reality of war. Behind the lofty rhetoric of freedom and liberty and democracy are human beings. Each of the almost 2000 dead US soldiers represents a family shattered. And yes, each dead Iraqi civilian (of which there are several times more) represents the same thing.

Whether the Iraq aggression is necessary or not will be debated for decades. But everyone, whatever one's opinion of the morality of this war, should acknowledge the tragedy it represents, both for Americans and Iraqis. To brush aside human devastation of this magnitude is beneath indecent.

I remember at the time of his death writing: I hope Kevin Kimmerly honestly believed in what he was doing over in Iraq. I hope he truly believed that our country's actions would eventually lead to a safer America and a better Iraq. I certainly don't but since he gave his life for the war he was ordered to wage, I hope he at least believed in the virtue of the mission he part of.

Kimmerley's widow, however, seems a bit more skeptical.

"People hear the number of soldiers killed, but every single number represents an entire family that's devastated," she said, adding that her television is tuned most of the day to cable news. "Why did we start a war with Iraq? President Bush had no proof of weapons of mass destruction, although he said he did. It was so obvious to other countries the weapons didn't exist," she said.

"It makes me so mad ... not just for the loss of my own husband. No good is coming from the war, and it's not getting any better," she said. "Every day it goes on, and there's just more pain and suffering. Every time they report that another soldier has died, I know what the soldier's family is going through," she added.

I mention her comments not to 'prove' that the Iraq war was wrong. The aggression was and is wrong on its own merits, not because one person who's angry and in mourning says so. But I do this to put another dent into The Big Lie.

Too many Americans act like anyone who dares raise questions about the wisdom of the Iraq aggression (either the fact of its continuing, the way it's being waged or the improbability of victory) is unpatriotic. That they are a terrorist-appeasing, America-hater whose sole thrill in life is to risk the troops' safety and undermine their morale. These fear mongers will always deny that they believe this but this is how they act.

Any relative of a soldier who advocates whacko policies that would ACTUALLY support our troops (like only putting them in harm's way for real reasons) or who otherwise dares question the administration's wisdom is smeared with taunts of 'media whore' or worse.

Some see these relatives as worse than the 'leftie peaceniks' because being linked to the armed forces, they are supposed to be submissive (since after all, a soldier's job is to follow orders whether s/he likes them or not). Some see these relatives as traitors to the institution of the military, in the same league with the subversive Veterans for Peace.

Maybe we should listen to these families of fallen soldiers. Some will agree with the war. Some won't. Some families will be divided themselves, just like the country. No one has a monopoly on speaking for all soldiers' families and no one claims to. But all these families have been deeply affected, their relatives having paid the ultimate price

If the family of a soldier who's given his life suppoedly for his country can't speak frankly about the war without being accused of 'dishonoring the sacrifices of our troops,' then who can speak openly?

Christopher, 11, likes to play fish, ride his bike and be outdoors. Except he now has to do those things without a father. Countless Iraqi children the same age as him also now have to grow up without fathers (or brothers or sisters or mothers). A lot of Americans don't like to acknowledge their existence and their suffering, those beneficiaries of 'liberation.' But they're part of this story too.

People think of war as glory, as liberation, as an expression of machismo. Some view it like a video game. But this video game has no reset button.

The reality of war is that people die. People get hurt. People lose family members. And the people most devastated by war are those who never chose to join any army.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: The people most devastated by war are those who never chose to join any army.

The people most affected by war are those who have no guns. The people most affected by war are those without tanks and bulletproof vests or armed comrades watching their back.

This is what war is about, whether it's a 'good' war or not. War and death should never be cheered with some deceitful 'mission accomplished' banner. "Rah rah, yay, our team kicked the other team's butt!" should be reserved for Super Bowl victory parades.

War may sometimes be necessary, though not in the case of Iraq, but to celebrate war is obscene, to glorify it profane.

Is what we're doing over there worth countless little American and Iraqi boys growing up without their dads, countless women spending the rest of their lives without their best friends? Is it worth it? That's for each of you to decide. After all, we might never have launched the aggression if 70 percent of Americans hadn't thought it a great idea at the time so your opinion does carry some weight.

But you owe it to the late Staff Sgt. Kimmerly and the other American and Iraqi dead to factor their families into that equation.

The UN's Abu Ghraib

The United Nations as an institution has been under attack in the last few years by the US far right for its refusal to lick President Bush's boots on the Iraq invasion. On that question, the UN tried, if unsuccessfully, to do exactly what it was founded to do: discourage unprovoked international aggression.

While all the sound and fury was directed at the UN's refusal to be subservient to the bullies in Washington, a REAL UN scanda wasl being overlooked. Early this year, six peacekeepers from Nepal and six more from Morocco working under the UN flag in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were widely accused of sexually exploiting girls in their 'protected' area... some were as young as 13. An internal UN investigation substantiated the allegations and found a pattern of sexual exploitation of women and children, which it said was continuing. Most despicably, many of the victims were usually given food or small sums of money in return for sex.

The UN has since overhauled its rules for peacekeepers acting under UN auspices. The UN mission in the DRC has since banned peacekeepers from having sexual relations with Congolese.

An editorial in The New York Times rightly condemns this outrage. Because The Times understands the structure of the UN, it also calls on member states to take this issue seriously.

(If you don't have a good grasp of the structure of the UN and how authority is divided within the organization and amongst its member states, I explain it thoroughly in this essay)

Though the UN is still widely respected outside the US, the peacekeeper sex scandal risks damaging its reputation as much as Abu Ghraib stained America's.

Sex scandals are quite frequent in places where there are large numbers of foreign troops. There have been a number of such scandals in Okinawa, where there is a huge US military base. Not surprisingly, Okinawans haven't appreciated the sex assaults any more than the Congolese.

One of the particular problems with UN missions is their structure. There is no standing UN army. Rather, each time the Security Council authorizes a mission, it depends on member states to volunteer troops for the mission. In reality, the scandal was not by soldiers of a UN army, but soldiers of the Moroccan and Nepalese armies working under the UN flag. This lack of a coherent command and control structure contributes to a lack of control over peacekeepers.

The richest member states with the most well trained armies rarely volunteer peacekeepers, so UN missions are left with soldiers from countries where they might not have a lot of money to put into rigorous military training. Some are from countries where the military is deliberated kept weak so it's not tempted to interfere in politics.

For example, in September 2005, France, the US and Britain had a combined 1300 soldiers in UN missions. Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Nepal, Jordan, Ghana, Uruguay, South Africa, Morocco, Senegal and Kenya EACH had more UN peacekeepers than the three powers put together.

The Nigerian army, for example, has a poor reputation for indiscipline and corruption but it's willing to donate troops to place where no one else is so they are chosen to fill the vacuum.

One possibility to address this problem would be to establish a standing UN force with proper training and a unified vision on what peacekeeping, rather than ad hoc missions with invited forces. But the UN charter prohibits this and the UN's fiercest critics would be the most deadset against such a change.

A UN panel recommended that soldiers working under the UN flag and accused of sex crimes should be tried in their home country. I'm not sure this is a good idea since the military justice system in some countries is not trustworthy. A better option would be for peacekeepers to be tried in the country they allegedly committed the crime in. If this is not practical, then they should be tried at the International Criminal Court.

UN peacekeeping is a lucrative enterprise for some countries since the UN pays them for their efforts. This is why so many developing countries donate troops: they can keep their militaries (who in some places are politically meddlesome) occupied, get the soldiers real-life training without starting a war and get nicely remunerated for their efforts. Countries whose soldiers repeatedly commit such crimes should be banned from serving in UN missions. A potential ban (and the resultant loss of a lot of revenue) might force an emphasis on improved military discipline in those armed forces.

Pondering journalistic ethics

Two recent articles in the Glens Falls Post-Star daily raise some interesting questions on journalistic ethics.

In the last week, one of the paper's big stories was an allegation against Hebron (NY) town supervisor Ken Talkington, a Democrat. A few Republican members of the town board accused him of showing up drunk to a town budget meeting. Was it appropriate to publish these unsubstantiated allegations against a politician made by his political enemies? It's questionable.

If they'd run anonymous attacks, I'd have no problem condemnding the paper's actions. But in fairness, The Post-Star published the actual names of Talkington's accusers. Does that automatically make it ok? I'm a bit uncomfortable with printing rumor as fact, especially when it's something fairly serious. The paper could reasonably counter that the report was justified since Talkington landed in hot water earlier in his term for driving while under the influence of alcohol and thus even though it's a rumor, it points to the possibility of a pattern of negative behavior.

However, I think the paper crossed the line when it ran an editorial condemning Talkington's judgement even though the allegations against Talkington remained unsubstantiated and were made by political opponents. In doing so, it implicitly accepted the accusations against the supervisor without explaining why.

Another recent story was that of Dr. Stephen Serlin, an obstetrician/gynecologist who was recently arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated.

On Friday, the paper reported a rumor that Serlin was not only intoxicated, but on his way to the hospital to perform a cesarean section on a pregnant woman. The woman claims she was told that Serlin was on call and that she was waiting for him in labor for some two hours but he didn't show up (presumably because he was arrested). Finally, another doctor in Serlin's practice, Dr. Ann Soucy, arrived to deliver the baby. Serlin claims that he passed off his on-call duties to Soucy earlier in the day.

The baby spent the next five days in Albany Medical Center with blood problems and continues to have medical problems, according to the paper.

Now, if it were certain that Serlin were on call, this would clearly be a story. But the new mother is the only one to make that claim, at least in the pages of The Post-Star.

Serlin, not surprisingly, denies he was on call. The president of Glens Falls Hospital would not comment, pending an investigation. Ditto the state health department. Soucy and the anesthesiologist in the surgery were also unavailable for comment.

So in other words, the paper had the allegation of the patient, a denial from the accused but comment from none of the many third parties in the case and it still decided to run the story.

There's just something about this approach that I find distasteful. At this point, it's merely a bunch of hearsay. A headline in the paper (or at least the edition I received) read: 'Doctor charged with DWI possibly on call.' This is too serious an allegation to be based on the adverb 'possibly.'

Couldn't the paper have waited until the health department or hospital concluded their investigations or until the paper had something, ANYTHING, more substantive?

The daily has tremendous power in the community. It's completely irresponsible of the Post-Star to be assassinating people's reputations unless they have something more concrete than mere he said-she said.


Update (sort of): The Post-Star has 'updated' the situation with an article with the illuminating title 'On-call status unclear in case of doctor charged with DWI.' Nothing's new and the paper felt the need to remind us that they know nothing new. Thanks guys!