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The Remmers Report Has Moved
The Remmers Report has been discontinued effective Dec. 14, 2010. All future columns will be written exclusively at http://themoderatevoice.com.
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— Jerry K. Remmers
John Boehner, Crier In Chief
John Boehner, the Speaker of the House come January, is a crier. So what? He’s an emotional dude. We just haven’t seen House Speakers who cry at the drop of a chat with a bunch of school children.
A few Americans unaware of his personal traits that helped him crawl from rags to riches saw for the first time his crying jag on election night Nov. 2.
On Sunday night he bawled like a baby at the most innocent questions on “60 Minutes” posed by CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl before an audience which usually hits 10 million viewers.
And on Monday morning, the ladies from ABC’s “The View” mocked Boehner except, of course, the token conservative regular on the show, Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
My sensibilities of Boehner, the leader of the second most powerful political chamber in the nation, duplicates that of Tom Hanks, the manager of a women’s baseball team in the movie “A League of Their Own.”
“There’s no crying in baseball,” Hanks scolded a crying right fielder for missing her cut off throw.
Of course, if one saw current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cry, that would be a gossip item to end all.
I also find it rather amusing that some of the muddle-headed, vicious women running for election this past autumn told their male challengers to “man up.”
Will these losers and forgetters of good manners ask the same of John Boehner, the poor little boy from Ohio who worked every crappy job he could find to wind his way through college in seven years?
I personally almost never agree with Boehner’s politics. That doesn’t mean I have to attack him for crying until the melodrama becomes absurd and his tears are a manipulative way to win over votes on House issues he supports.
I suppose Boehner will have to endure the mockery from every critic and comedian for the next few months. In time, we will get so used to it and take up bets in office pools what coming event will trigger a good old cry from our august House Speaker.
Here’s the Huffington Post account:
Barbara Walters was the first to lay into Boehner. “This guy has an emotional problem,” she said. “Every time he talks about anything that’s not ‘raise taxes,’ he cries.” That sent the audience into gales of laughter. Walters continued, “If you had seen Nancy Pelosi all these past years crying, what would you say? [You’d say] she’s got a problem.”
Joy Behar said she called Boehner the “Weeper of The House,” and that, in her view, he only cried when he was talking about his life, but had “very little empathy for people who are in that position now.”
Hasselbeck objected to this.
“Let’s not crucify a man for getting emotional,” she said. “He’s probably a fine man who cares and if he wants to give small businesses tax breaks so they can hire somebody so they can have a job…you can’t just brush him like that and say that he’s a bad guy.”
Judge Rules Obamacare Mandate Unconstitutional
A U.S. District Court judge in Virginia has ruled a provision of the health care reform law is unconstitutional. It is the provision that mandates all Americans have a minimum level of coverage, or pay a fine if they do not.
The Los Angeles Times reports Judge Henry Hudson said the mandate exceeds federal authority. This challenge, among many in the federal court system, was brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli who argued against the government’s view that the mandate is enforceable under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The newspaper provided this brief background:
Virginia has passed a law stating that residents cannot be ordered to buy insurance.
A federal judge in Florida ruled in October that a separate suit challenging the law brought by 20 states and the National Federation of Interdependent Business could move forward. But a Michigan judge had dismissed a third suit earlier that month.
The most controversial section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does not go into effect until 2014 and only after its constitutionality is determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.
I would hope clear thinking people will relax and let the courts decide this issue rather than working themselves into a lather from fear spread by bigots who oppose virtually every aspect of the health care reform legislation.
One popular myth circulated by these fearmongers is the law exempts Muslims from mandatory insurance coverage. It is a practice called dhimmitude that purveyors of this nonsense says appears on page 105 of the new law.
In April, snopes.com clarified and deflated the perceived favoritism considered an affront to Christians and Jews.
Cutting Federal Spending Is Time To Man Up
I have maintained that Republican conservatives and their Tea Party base are sincere about limiting the size and scope of the federal budget.
Their problem is they tend to cherry pick programs they don’t like for the cutting room floor.
Take Michele Bachmann, founder of the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives. I quote from her bio on Wikipedia which may or may not be accurate:
Bachmann … has an ownership stake in a family farm. Her holdings in the farm are worth up to $250,000, and generated annual income ranging from $2,000 a few years ago to up to $50,000 in 2008. In the period from 1995 through 2006, the Bachmann family farm as a whole received $251,973 in federal subsidies, chiefly for dairy and corn price supports.
Question: Does anyone think Bachmann or any congressman representing agricultural constituents are going to vote against farm subsidies?
We’re not talking peanuts here, which, by the way, cost U.S. taxpayers $3.4 billion in price supports to 91,563 growers between 1995 and 2009.
Peanut producers ranked only 12th eating from the public trough. Here’s a list of the top 20. Forgive me but cherry-picking three commodities begs some comment:
— Corn costs us $73.7 billion over 14 years and includes a failed effort to produce ethanol to drive our cars more cheaply than gasoline.
— Has wheat subsidies of $30.7 billion reduced the price of a loaf of bread?
— Why in tarnation (pun intended) are we supporting tobacco growers $944 million when their product gives most of us lung cancer?
In all fairness, the growers are not the bad guys. The price they receive for their products is only nickels on the dollar what it costs consumers in retail stores.
———————-
EPILOGUE — 1
This essay is directed at only one small part of where government spending can be cut. To steal a horrible phrase from some of the winning and losing women Republican candidates, it is time to man up when it comes decision time to cut spending. Lives and jobs are in your hands. Campaign rhetoric is priceless. Cutting pork is in the eye of the beholder.
EPILOGUE 2 —
Full disclosure. I come from a vegetable farming family in which there were no government subsidies for perishable products. That was the free capital market system in its rawest, purest form and we survived. If my father was offered money by the federal government not to grow a crop, he would have told them to go to hell. That was the free enterprise system in which I grew up. The farmers on what amounts to federal welfare should keep that in mind before rattling their pitch forks and screaming for the government to get out of their lives. That, my friends, is the rallying cry of Michele Bachmann.
(Bachmann photo courtesy of Huffington Post)
Bernie Sanders, The Democrats And Other Insane Asylum Members
The Democrats are the best compassionate political party in America and the worst at governing, except for the Republicans who want no part of it but say they do.
The Democratic mantra was expressed eloquently and redundantly Friday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont.
Sanders spoke for eight hours in an empty Senate chambers extolling the grief inflicted upon us by those dastardly devilish Republicans who he described as greedy bastards who can afford a penny ante 4% tax increase.
In those eight hours, Sanders recapped history of how the American working man is getting screwed, highlighted by the once golden standard auto workers who’s salaries in just the past three years have shrunk from $27 to $14 an hour.
The problem with Sanders and his Democratic Party buddies is that their policies work only if unemployment is below 3%, the economy is riding the latest artificial bubble and the nation is not at war with some fourth rate rogue nation or terrorist group which hijacked a religion.
It grieves my sensibilities that the Democratic Party argument against extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% would cost an additional $700 billion in 10 years to our national debt. And not once point out that the tax cuts for those earners under $250K would cost $3 trillion over the same 10-year period.
Ah, conventional wisdom tells us never to raise taxes on anyone during a recession.
Bunk, I say. Prove it. The conservatives who argue for less taxes and limited government can’t. Nor can the Democratic Keynesian economists. At least not in this recession even though the idiots declared it over last year.
This is why the worst of all worlds, the compromise everyone hates most or part of, is the only deal we are forced fed to live with.
That is the one now being worked out brokered by President Obama and Senate Republicans.
It is the political can kicked down the road for two years by extending all the Bush tax cuts until days after the presidential election in 2012, extending unemployment benefits an additional 13 months, cutting the payroll tax 2% for one year, exempting taxes on business expansion for one year and taxing estates 50% over a predetermined multimillion dollar threshold.
Former President Clinton says it is the best political deal under the worst of economic conditions. If Bill Clinton says it, it must be true.
Right.
(Photo courtesy zimbio.com)
Putting The Rangel Ethics Conviction In Ethical Perspective
One would think after 50 years of public service Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-New York) might have gamed the system for more than what the House Ethics Committee convicted him.
Rangel, the gravel-voiced nattily dressed Harlem congressman, was not a crook in the criminal sense. Rather, Blake Chisam, the committee prosecutor, suggested, the congressman was “overzealous” and “sloppy in his personal finances.”
The committee convicted the 20-term Rangel on 11 counts of breaking House ethics rules. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last spring stripped Rangel from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee.
The sentence will be mild compared to the self-inflicted wounds Charlie has done to himself.
One might say Rangel went down in flames Monday as the television voice overs described the pol “storming” out of the committee hearing room because he could not afford legal counsel.
May I be so bold as say 80-year-old pols don’t physically “storm” out of much of anything. Rather, the proud man stood erect, carried the brief of charges against him to an aide, and left the room a disgraced human being.
Charlie found himself spending by his account $2 million on lawyers spread out over 2 1/2 years with the last firm walking out on him.
By my accounting, that exceeded whatever Rangel may have gained in perks and sloppy reporting that benefited a man in the exalted position he obviously saw himself. And I am guessing the cost by the House Ethics prosecutor and staff came close to that amount, likewise.
The congressional panel, sitting as a jury, found that Rangel had used House stationery and staff to solicit money for a New York college center named after him. It also concluded he solicited donors for the center with interests before the Ways and Means Committee, leaving the impression the money could influence official actions.
He also was found guilty of failing to disclose at least $600,000 in assets and income in a series of inaccurate reports to Congress; using a rent-subsidized New York apartment for a campaign office, when it was designated for residential use; and failure to report to the IRS rental income from a housing unit in a Dominican Republic resort.
And committee chairmen milked the perk system dry if not worse than Rangel now finds himself convicted.
But times, they have changed. Perception trumps substance. Charlie didn’t adjust.
It seems to me if illusions are all that important, why is it perfectly reasonable to accept millions of dollars in anonymous campaign donations to vote in favor of a project those same lobbyists support.
That, to me, is more of an ethical issue facing elected officials than abuse of power that satisfies an old pol’s ego.
Judge Sacked For Reality Show
The California Commission on Judicial Performance has given the wackiest San Diego Superior Court judge in modern times five days to resign.
The last caper for Judge DeAnn M. Salcido was filming a TV reality show in her El Cajon branch courtroom. In May she sued her boss, the presiding judge, for not enforcing domestic law the way she preferred. The suit was dismissed.
The state disciplinary board in effect gave her five days to get out of Dodge, never accept a judiciary position again (in California, at least) and man up for a public verbal lashing of censure.
Salcido was appointed to the bench in 2002 and won a contested election for the seat in June 2010.
A royal thorn in the side of the county’s judicial hierarchy from the beginning, the final straw was the reality show in September that did her in.
With remarkable restraint, the city’s major daily newspaper gave this account of Tuesday’s decision:
The commission alleged 39 acts of misconduct, contending Salcido made numerous disparaging, unflattering and improper comments from the bench that belittled defendants, attorneys and court staff.In her response, Salcido said she tried to use humor and an unorthodox approach when dealing with cases, but the commission was not persuaded.
In the order censuring her, it said her actions “made a mockery of the judicial system.”
It slammed her “utter lack of decorum” and said it reflected poorly not only on her, but the entire judiciary.
“Judges are expected to administer justice and resolve serious issues, not to provide entertainment,” the commission wrote.
Here’s the Union-Tribune account at the time of her reality show laugh-in.
In an unrelated incident to her sacking, Salcido produced a YouTube video with a voice over of her as a cartoon caricature apologizing to a defendant for what she said was a bad decision based on other judges’ mistakes.
(Salcido photo courtesy San Diego Union-Tribune)
Learning Family Values From My Grandchildren
Every time I hear someone say our nation is going to hell in a hand basket, I think of my two grandchildren.
There is a major disconnect in hearing a national discourse towards Armageddon and seeing children develop through the eyes of a grandparent.
In my eyes, Lauryn, 10, and Adam, 8, will not be burdened by a national debt passed onto their shoulders by the hapless decisions of their elders and others before them.
Rather, they will be responsible human beings carving out a life of their own and making the world less wicked. Of course, this is a loving grandparent’s dream who has seen war from afar, racial strife up close and personal and economic downturns forcing desperate but bad decisions. Yet, we remain optimistic.
How can one believe otherwise when at their tender ages they know and live the basics: Love and respect for their peers and elders.
Only now we are judging from glimpses of their actions a rosy future that is good and wholesome and the essence of family values.
A year and a half ago, Lauryn set out to achieve her first goal in life: Earning a junior black belt in karate. Trust me, it was not given to her because of 100% attendance and her parents paying class tuition.
And, yet, when you ask how she feels about it, a one-word answer follows: “Great.” Her eyes say much more.
Lauryn still is a scrawny, pretty little moppet, faster than a speeding bullet and equipped with tools of the trade that can knock a grown man to his knees.
Pity the first bully she encounters at school and in a few years the first pimple-faced teenage male who puts his hand on her against her will.
Adam arrived in this world the shape and durability of a refrigerator and the inherent speed of a snail. At 8, his world is changing with swimming, karate and flag football. “He’s my meal ticket,” his father jokes.
Like most lads, at six he mimicked perfectly how his grandfather appears to him walking with a cane. At seven, he learned fractions from his grandmother by following recipes and whipping out tasty meals.
Actor, chef or football star, Adam has a future of which I am certain.
In the classroom both Lauryn and Adam are in the top two or three of their class. As a grandparent, I worry the academic challenges may be lacking and turn both their brains lazy for lack of competition followed by diminished curiosity. Over the dead bodies of both parents, I am assured.
Children are amazing as well as sneaky. They have an innate ability to act like they see and hear nothing when you talk to them. In fact, they are sponges.
Late last August, I told Lauryn I would miss her birthday party because that day I was having laser surgery to remove the cataract from my left eye. She listened politely but said nothing.
Two hours later as I was leaving to go home, Lauryn came to hug me goodbye and with no coaching from either parent, said:
“I hope the eye surgery goes well, Grandpa.” When I got home, I cried.
As a grandparent, I am not a bearer of presents and bribes for love and attention. They accept me for what I am as well as a simplistic understanding of medical challenges I am confronting.
Several weeks ago, their grandmother called to say she and the grandkids wanted to meet me for lunch at a restaurant of my choice at the sprawling mall a mile down the street. I told her to let Adam and Lauryn decide.
They selected a Mexican restaurant across the street from my seniors apartment complex. Their parents had taken them to that place once about a year ago. Neither rate Mexican food No. 1 for eating out. But it was close so grandpa didn’t have to travel far in his power chair. I arrived home with tears in my eyes, not from devouring the hot salsa.
These are family values as I know them. They no longer are words in a political campaign.
It is ironic, I suppose, that it takes a tragedy or a dish of diseases to bring true meaning from family and friends what family values really mean.
“We talk a good game about brotherly love,” my brother Larry said. “Now, we are living it and understand its true meaning.”
Grandpa Jer at Lauryn’s karate awards ceremony
He’s Back …
I will keep this short. Keith Olbermann returns Tuesday from a two-day suspension to resume hosting his “Countdown” show on MSNBC.
It proves to me network executives sully the reputation of the world’s oldest profession. They caved at NBC’s half sister after four days of controversy where Olbermann received more media hits than he probably has nightly viewers.
Olbermann was “indefinitely” suspended for violating company rules. He did not ask permission to contribute to political campaigns of three Democrats, two of which appeared recently on his show.
At MSNBC, “indefinitely” is measured in hours and journalistic integrity is paid lip service only when it serves its own purpose.
And all the pompous people in corporate and small fry media wonder why they lack the public trust.
I have forgotten how many times I have shared life experiences on newspapers living by an ethics standard that is dead by today’s standards.
Even the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, whom I admire as the best explainer-in-chief of complex issues, earned a D+ in his convoluted attempt to explain Olbermann’s case.
Perhaps I have been wrong all these years. Perhaps it was a pretext of convincing myself in my published works I was an objective observer.
It was a make believe world of suppressing personal opinion, perhaps. As if the two never surface simultaneously. Sort of an attorney/client privilege.
As for Olbermann, he is one of the few professionals (only in terms of being paid) who is a brilliant newsman in his own right and not just a reader of news copy. And in today’s market, there never is a question where he is coming from, what he stands for and unblushingly puts his money where his mouth is.
To say the cable news entertainment/opinion anchors are merely messengers of the news gives credence to the kings in olden times who killed the conveyors of bad news.
One bright spot developed in all of this and I hope the cable news executives take note, again from an old newspaper salt. Thomas Roberts, the fill-in for the two nights Olbermann was taking a forced time out, was excellent: Strong on information, comfortable to watch and light on opinion.
Good Night And Good Luck, Keith, Your Replacement Is A Breath Of Fresh Air
I understand now why MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann last Monday “temporarily” suspended his show’s “Worst Persons” segment. It was he who was the worst person of them all.
By the end of the week, Olbermann was “indefinitely” suspended by his network for contributing $2,400 to three Democratic Congressional candidates in Tuesday’s midterms in violation of company policy.
Olbermann was replaced Friday night with veteran morning and day anchor/reporter Thomas Roberts who was magnificent, a breath of fresh air who would be a great addition to the last truly good hire, Lawrence O’Donnell. Roberts w2as less politically biased — which isn’t saying much for the cables — but his professionalism showed through loud and clear.
Roberts asked good questions, got decent answers and ran the show smoothly despite a few glitches and self-deprecatory comments about paying more attention to the video than his teleprompter.
I’m sorry, Keith, but you were a damn good news anchor when you wanted to be. And you, more than anyone with a sports background, knows damn well you cannot play hard only when you feel like it. That puts you in the same category as prima donna wide receiver Randy Moss.
Anyone who watched Olbermann anchor Tuesday’s election coverage for MSNBC would agree he did a magnificent job coordinating news breaks. No one in the NBC family other than Brian Williams could have done better.
That is until his bias showed and he became snarly that his liberal Democrats were taking a scrubbing. The poor man was rooting for his team on the short end of a blowout. You don’t do that in that role. He turned testy even at his panel of Democratic apologists — O’Donnell, Eugene Robinson, Chris Matthews and Rachael Maddow. Of course, that is only my opinion.
I have followed Olbermann’s career back to his days on ESPN where he was occasionally brilliant and funny second only to Chris Berman.
After some dry runs, Keith found a home at MSNBC as a prime time anchor and made his bones by lampooning the Bush administration. Some considered him a pioneer in that field. Others considered him a jerk.
Depending what sources you read springing or leaking out of the MSNBC heirarchy, Olbermann was creative, salvaged the struggling network from obscurity, impulsive, boorish, paranoid, bullying, snarky and oftentimes unreliable.
He admitted on air his idea of escape is to attend a Major League baseball game. Roots for salvation, so to speak. I was never convinced his first love, sports or news anchor.
What role Olbermann may or may not have had in flipping MSNBC from straight news reporting with a slant and attitude, to a liberal copycat version of the uncanny success of Fox News, I do not know. He became their showcase face.
Some but not all of his “special comments” features were brilliant, erudite and extremely biting in their pronouncements at the delight of one-dimensional die hard Democratic liberals. The conservatives, every one of them at Fox and across the country, hated him. And, Olbermann feigned he loved every minute of it which I don’t think was the entire truth. Criticism hurts all men with inflated egos.
But intertwined in Olbermann’s on air antics was the core of a veteran journalist. He knew what he was doing which is more than some of his competitors can say. His impatience was exemplified mostly in Worst Persons destroying the pompous asses of the world. He railed against bias and inaccurate news stories by Fox yet in his own right was equally guilty — of bias if not of fact but by omission.
But that seems to be the nature of the cable beast as it has evolved in recent years. Yes, the pop anchors report news but with a slant and the line is blurred — despite Bill O’Reilly’s protestations — between news and opinion.
Memo to the cable networks: The public cannot differentiate between the two most of the time.
In recent weeks, Olbermann accused Fox of hypocrisy for some of its anchors such as Sean Hannity funding Republican candidates and fund raising committees. None of those guys were fired, as Ms. Maddow reported on her show Friday, because she said Fox does not have an impartiality clause as does NBC even though that policy does not extend to MSNBC staffers below the grade of anchor. Keith charged, and correctly based on the reported $2 million owner Rupert Murdoch contributed to the GOP, that Fox was an appendage of the Republican party.
But, if you are going to point fingers, you better wash your hands first. Olbermann didn’t and two of the three candidates he mailed checks to in the past month were recent guests on his show.
Why Keith did this without company approval is a subject of psychobabble. Oh, what the hell, let me guess. I think the guy is self destructive and was thinking if Fox can do it, by golly I can too. In some perverted fashion he was setting himself up as a martyr.
You know what, folks? I am from the old school of newspaper journalistic ethics. If caught, we, too, would have been fired on the spot for admitting contributions to a political campaign we were assigned to report. How we voted in the sanctity of a polling booth was our business but we knew it best to keep our mouths shut.
In my day, ethics, honesty and accuracy were the hallmark of our existence for without it we lost all semblance of credibility.
Nowadays, we don’t even bother with a perception of credibility.
What’s more incredible, the vast majority of readers don’t care any longer. Too many want to believe what they want to hear that fits their own view of the world.
There are multiple choices out here. Keith Olbermann isn’t one of them any longer.
(Olbermann photos courtesy of, top to bottom, loonwatch.com, olbermannwatcch.com, thehotjoints.com; Roberts, incideocal.com)
The Remmers Report 