Collapse

Which do taxpayers prefer to fund?

A freeway bridge over the Mississippi river collapsed in Minneapolis last night. Not only did this interrupt the Minnesota Twins' baseball season, but four motorists are confirmed dead, with up to thirty missing. Perhaps it is a good time, then, to reassess priorities and refocus our collective attention:

Spending so far on the war in Iraq: $448,593,276,851

Spending on inspecting and maintaining the I-35W bridge: ?

Number of deaths in Minnesota history caused by terrorists: 0

Number of deaths in Minnesota,

caused by the collapse of the I-35W bridge: Up to 34

Before continuing to venture abroad to fight bogeymen who are either figments of the national imagination, or created only by our aggression itself, perhaps the US should begin to tend its own garden. And stop public funding for the construction of billionaire Carl Pohlad's new Twins stadium immediately. Minnesotans need the money for a new bridge.

Barry Bonds, "Scooter" Libby and the Integrity of American Justice

Relax, It's Just a Game

"SAN FRANCISCO -- AP, 7/12/07. An attorney [Troy Ellerman] who admitted leaking the confidential grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds and other athletes to a reporter was sentenced Thursday to two and a half years in prison, by far the harshest penalty to result from the government's sprawling probe of steroids in sports."

If obstruction of justice by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the investigation into the leaking of the name of covert CIA counter-proliferation agent Valerie Plame was deemed not to warrant prison time by President Bush, can there be any doubt that Mr. Ellerman's sentence will be commuted as well? If the integrity of the nation's justice system can be eroded when issues of national security are involved, surely it can be obliterated when dealing with something as trivial as a summer game for boys. Mr. Ellerman should be able to rest easy tonight knowing the president will ensure he never serves a day in the slammer. Clearly, his sentence was "excessive." After all, thanks to the White House, the nation now understands that honesty in judicial proceedings isn't really necessary .

The Democrats' Push to Militarize America

"To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines . . . As commander in chief . . . I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary."

--Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Apparently, the Democrats have spent the last few years examining the US' military situation and foreign policy, including the debacle in Iraq, and concluded that what the nation needs is to take the status quo and give us more of it. How they have drawn such a lesson is a bit mystifying. Iraq is in shambles, with around $600 billion in direct costs down the drain; our nation's international standing is at an all time low. And let's not forget the 3,600 American soldiers killed in Mesopotamia, along with at least 66,000 Iraqi civilians. More than 3 million Iraqis have fled their home country since America overthrew its prior government, and Baghdad now suffers from the worst living conditions in the world. At Abu Ghraib, our nation's youth in uniform - our purported "heroes" -- committed what the Pentagon's own investigator, Major General Antonio Taguba, determined to be torture against the very people who were to receive the gift of democracy.

Time to Change into Battle Gear

That Obama wants to divert more potential teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs into America's military ranks, where they will be trained to kill while drawing a salary on the back of the taxpayer, shows a devastating failure to understand what our country needs for long-term prosperity and viability. The US faces no large and imminent conventional military threat. The "peace dividend" of the '90's contributed to the strongest national economy seen in forty years. As baby boomers retire en masse, we will need more young workers to pay into the Social Security system. To take American youth out of civilian life, where they can learn and work in mainstream society, and place them into an institution that constitutes an economic deadweight, is high folly. What happened to investing in our kids' futures, instead of suiting them up for either make-work or death in the desert? America deserves better than the Democrats' vision of further militarization.

"We Have No Important Enemies"

"We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals, and we don't do that. We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. Who are we afraid of?"

--Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Democrat), April 26, 2007

"We have a lot of goodness in this country and we should promote it, but never through the barrel of a gun. We should do it by setting good standards, motivating people, and have them want to emulate us. But you can’t enforce our goodness . . . with an armed force. It doesn’t work."

--Texas Representative Ron Paul (Republican), June 4, 2007

There is a macabre yet popular style of Virginia license plate that features the slogan "Fight Terrorism." Above these words is a black pentagon with a section of the American flag inside, and imprinted on top of this the date 9/11; the "11" is formed using the outline of the World Trade Center towers that were infamously destroyed by airplanes that terrorists hijacked almost six years ago. Invevitably, these plates show up on some of the most expensive and luxurious German and Japanese vehicles sold in the Washington, DC metro area, and I always marvel at the juxtaposition of opulence with the morbid fetishism of one of the most horrific days in US history. "How's the fight going?," I'm often tempted to ask the drivers of these cars.

I doubt I would get a coherent answer. An ill-defined and distant enemy who apparently has no ability to harm you on your home turf can't possibly focus the mind and stir the passions the way the shiny steel of a new sports car can. A year or two ago these cars would often feature a yellow "Support Our Troops" magnet as well, but now these emblems of convenience-store strength have all but disappeared. On one hand, if a war isn't finished before the bumper stickers fade or go out of style, it probably never will be; but on the other, if you're a driver who impulsively jumped on the jingoist bandwagon by slapping a magnet on your trunk, you should probably be forced to maintain it in full view for the duration. Once you've shown yourself to be a reckless hothead, the label should stick so the rest of us know who we're dealing with. "Stay the Course" ought to apply to wartime fashion statements, too.

One institution that has not lost its militant fervor, however, is the San Diego Padres baseball club. In attendance at one of the team's games a couple of weeks ago, held in one of the newest and most beautiful stadiums in the country, I was asked along with the rest of the crowd to rise in ovation to several hundred or more uniformed Marines who were on hand to watch some baseball. New recruits, they looked like. The usual platitudes about sacrifice and heroism were offered up as I seethed about the beautiful and bucolic sport of baseball -- America's pastime, we're told -- being enlisted in the cause glorified by the Virginia license plates. When it comes to outdoor entertainment on a beautiful spring day, we baseball fans have a right to expect our sport to be hermetically sealed off from all endeavors involving organized killing.

As the ballpark crowd lavished frenzied applause on the honored guests, it was clear that several pertinent questions were being overlooked. Is it through the military that we want American youth to apprehend the wide world beyond our country? How will the experience transform these citizens and influence the trajectory of their lives? Do we taxpayers in fact get our money's worth out of paying to train and support these kids? And, indeed, who are we afraid of? Perhaps it was just an illusion caused by the verdure and fun of a baseball game, but it was hard to believe that any menace outside the stadium warranted such a national focus on brute force.

Then the deplorable irony became clear: "America's Heroes", the vaunted Marines, had been given seats in the absolute worst part of the Padres' stadium. High up in the bleachers, far away from home plate, the soldiers sweltered in direct sunlight. They spent the afternoon sweating and squinting, while the rest of the crowd purportedly revered them from the cool shadows, enjoying a decidedly better view of the game on the field.

The Grocery Store Gauntlet

In what other society in the history of the world besides the US has obtaining food -- the basis of survival -- necessarly entailed being exposed to pornography? Because here in America every trip to the grocery store unavoidably involves just that: as one puts his groceries on the conveyor belt for the cashier to scan, the trashy magazines right there to the side scream out: "75 New Sex Tricks"; "How To Make A Home Sex Video"; "What He Really Wants You To Do To Please Him"; "America's Sexiest TV Cop," etc. Provisioning one's home thus becomes a titillating and tawdry experience, each and every time.

Grocery shopping is an experience whose conclusion is always demoralizing, in every single sense of that word. When it comes to buying food, I am a puritan. With reluctance I suggest that our nation's self-appointed moral guardians in Congress legislate smut out of our checkout lines. ("Cosmopolitan" is the most regular offender, but there are many other imitators aimed at women, as well as some objectionable magazines for men.) As we buy food for ourselves and our families, we should be free of commodified sex. We should not have to put up with such an elemental part of our lives being turned so unseemly by decadent magazine publishers and tasteless grocery store owners.

Jackie Robinson and the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team

I am tired of Jackie Robinson. More precisely, I am tired of Major League Baseball exploiting the courage, integrity and talent it took for Robinson to break baseball's "color line" sixty years ago. Through the various commemorations around the nation's baseball stadiums this weekend, MLB will have turned a substantive achievement into an innocuous cliche. The legend of Jackie Robinson will be neutered, fawned over by the masses, and safely put back in the petting zoo stable for another ten years.

A few facts: the percentage of African-American major leaguers reached 19% in 1995, and now stands at just 8%. Baseball as a sport is either increasingly irrelevant or inaccessible to blacks nowadays, and that is hardly cause for celebration. Moreover, since the Jackie Robinson story is presented as a microcosm of America, we should look at society at large over the last few years. Here we see that the proportion of blacks living in poverty has risen from 22.5% in 2000 to 24.9% in 2005, exactly triple the rate for whites; the number of black adults attaining a college degree in 2000 was 11.5% below the rate for whites, while the gap in 2005 had grown to 12.8%; and the percentage of blacks in the US Senate is one.

Now, let's look at the demographics of ownership among the 30 major league teams: 100% white, 100% male. In other words, there is not a trace of the Jackie Robinson legacy here. That this close-knit group of often reactionary oligarchs would have millions of baseball fans bask in the glow of Robinson's aging breakthrough represents either a subterfuge or rank hypocrisy. MLB is very, very far from being a paragon of fairness. In fact, while these team owners try to paint a pretty picture on the social front, they are often busy picking the public's pocket by demanding government money for new stadiums. Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins and a man with a net worth of $2.8 billion dollars, has just succeeded in wresting $392 million from Minneapolis residents for a new ballpark built specifically for the use of his private business.

Meanwhile, on the field, one of Jackie Robinson's African-American heirs -- Barry Bonds -- looks set to break Hank Aaron's hallowed all-time home run record of 755 sometime this season. Normally, this would be cause for delirious celebration and heated discussion involving historical comparisons. What are the meanings of Babe Ruth's 714, Aaron's 755, and now Bonds' 755-plus? But no such conversation among fans will take place, because the thirty MLB owners have been running a dirty racket: the use of illegal steroids has been rife in baseball for at least two decades, and nowhere more conspicuously and more certainly than in the case of Barry Bonds. The American public now can have no more confidence in the legitimacy of a baseball statistic than in the certified outcome of a presidential election in Florida or Ohio.

Beyond baseball, too, race and sport do not look so glittery as an ESPN graphic. The 2007 Rutgers women's basketball team are runners-up to the national champions, but better known for being the target of a racist insult by a nationally-syndicated radio host. Unfortunately, the insult is identical in spirit to the thousands Jackie Robinson had to endure in 1947 and afterwards. So, some of us perhaps can be excused for not joining in MLB's self-congratulatory antics this weekend.

Take That, Liberal Media! Baghdad's Hard-Won Distinction

Every year, Mercer Human Resource Consulting ranks 215 cities worldwide based on quality of life criteria such as ease of transportation, cleanliness and crime. New York City is assigned a benchmark rating of 100, and normally Zurich tops the list as the best city to live in with a score of around 107. Besides Zurich, this year Munich, Tokyo and London finished ahead of New York, while Beijing, Delhi and Moscow trailed far behind. In last place -- at number 215 -- was the US colonial showcase of Baghdad.

It has been suggested to me that before the American invasion of Iraq, Baghdad would have scored even worse. Not so! In pre-war 2002, Mercer ranked Baghdad — suffering under UN economic sanctions and the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein — 211 out of 215. Thus, in 2007 after more than 3,000 American deaths and $500 billion in direct expenditures, Baghdad has taken the place of Brazzaville, Congo to rank dead last.

Achieving the distinction of world's very worst city for Baghdad was difficult, but our military's Commander-in-Chief has done it. So, Take that, liberal media! It’s about time you saw that Baghdad, in the face of some truly dismal competition that most would have thought unshakeable, has made at least one singular breakthrough. Now, if you would like to live the life of a corporate expat in Iraq, just contact Mercer for placement opportunities.