It looks like Alito

Once again, we have the circus of a Supreme Court judge’s nomination thrust upon us. The proceedings are truly a spectacle, in the dictionary sense, but also illustrate what DuBord called “The Spectacle,” a fragmented view of reality.

What I find amazing, is how this important choice for the highest court in are supposed free society, a decision that will send out ripples for decades to come, is being orchestrated primarily by a small group of white men, whose ranks are made up mostly of members from the privileged socio-economic class. No women, no minorities, no native peoples and no one who could remotely be considered from the working class. This small, exclusive club, is being given the right to determine the fate of millions of Americans. Amazingly, most of our citizens are acutely unaware of the farce that is being beamed into their homes.

Samuel Alito, like his predecessor, John Roberts, is a relatively young man. He is 52 years old and appears to be in good health and reasonably vigorous. Common sense tells us, based on expected male life spans and prior justices, that Alito could very well serve for the next three decades.

From a quick perusal of various analyses and a rundown of his prior decisions and writings, Alito’s ideology is squarely rooted in the conservative camp. This, in and of itself isn’t necessarily bad. What is problematic in the least, however, is how his views could very well alter in a dramatic fashion, the judicial landscape in the following areas: alter of the following:

Reproductive Rights-In one dissent, Judge Alito would have upheld a Pennsylvania law (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) requiring a wife to notify her husband before having an abortion. The Supreme Court rejected his reasoning, finding that the law imposed an undue burden on the wife.

Free Speech-While Judge Alito clearly supports free speech access for big business, as well as government agents, yet he clearly does not support the claims of prisoners seeking access to newspapers and photographs of their families.

Privacy-Not finding any problems with a 10-year-old being strip-searched, Judge Alito dissented in a case that ruled it unconstitutional.

Workers’ Rights- Judge Alito has consistently sought to limit the scope and reach of statutes protecting workers’ rights and to raise the bar that employee plaintiffs must overcome to bring legal claims. While many of these cases involved technical procedural issues, Judge Alito’s opinions are consistent in outcome. The employee or union would have prevailed in only five of the 35 employment and labor opinions he wrote.

Environmental Law-In case after case, Judge Alito has deferred to regulatory agency decisions, and appears reluctant, or even unable, to pre-empt state environmental laws unless directed by federal statute.
[Compiled from reports by the ACLU and People for the American Way]

It seems fairly clear to me that in viewing his record, Judge Alito will dramatically move the high court, rightward.

Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL, from 1985 to 2004, speaking on C-Span, yesterday, brought up privacy issues and abortion. While Alito apparently isn’t outspoken about overturning Roe, since 1985, he has clearly supported a strategy on Roe that would keep it in place, but eviscerate it and in essence, make it ineffective, by stripping out all provisions that allow women control over their own bodies.

As Michelman said, “Judge Alito wants to turn back the clock on poor women, women of color and rural women, in denying them access to abortion.”

I’m very concerned that a nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court will put him squarely in place to tote the water for his ideological home boys, the all-white, conservative caucus of women-haters. He’ll clearly be in a favorable position to once again, reduce women to being prisoners of their own biology, without a choice in any reproductive matters.

Additionally, those of us who aren’t members of America’s privileged class will find it harder to assert our rights that the Constitution supposedly guarantees us. We will be looking at an America that is less free, less democratic and a country that is ruled entirely by the highest bidders.

Feeding the lie machine

It seems that wherever I turn, I’m greeted by the latest attempt at shading the truth. Whether it is Congressional hearings on a Supreme Court justice, a state senator’s insistence that he didn’t compromise his position on the environment, or the hypocrisy of officialdom, lecturing a free spirit on virtue, our culture is crawling with the art of hypocrisy and fabrication.

Granted, prevarication isn’t new. For those who use religion and its sacred texts as a measuring stick, one could say that lies are as old as Adam and Eve, the first occurrence of such in biblical literature. History is replete with stories of the art of bending the truth to fit one’s situation, or pocketbook.

While lying is an age-old device, its pervasiveness seems to have taken on new parameters. From the highest office in our land, on down through the halls of justice and our law-making bodies, falsehoods flow freely and unchecked. They’ve become our norm, rather than an exception. Rarely, if ever, do I hear political figures speak, without the appearance of words pouring from both sides of their mouths. When asked the simplest of questions, they seem genetically incapable of an honest answer.

Yesterday, I was traveling home from an appointment and I was listening to the Senate’s confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito. Numerous senators pointedly questioned him on his views on privacy, abortion, and the extent to which he would allow executive powers to reach. One of the most grating of this gaggle of crooks and thieves was Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE). I’ve listened to him numerous times, in his typical manner of grandstanding, grill a nominee (including current Justice Roberts during his confirmation), appearing tough and having issues with them, then time-after-time, vote in favor of confirming. I will allow that it is the Senator’s prerogative to vote any way that he sees fit, however, occasionally, it would be nice if his vote actually matched his tough-talk and rhetoric. Another example is bloated windbag, Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who claims to speak for the poor and working class, when he wouldn’t know the first thing about working, or class. This very same Kennedy, a man who lectures Republicans on the need to wean ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, but balks when a proposed wind farm might be built a bit too close to his beloved Hyannisport compound.

Even my own Governor, John Baldacci, seems incapable of answering simple questions pertaining to running our state. Last Friday, while listening to MPBN’s Fred Bever interview him on statewide issues, Baldacci continually hemmed and hawed and evaded answering several questions.

Over the past few days, former Olympian, Bode Miller, has found himself in a world of trouble for comments he made to a 60 Minutes reporter, about his behavior on the slopes. Miller, who last year became the first American skier in 22 years to win the World Cup, apparently has found himself at the top of the mountain, while still under the influence of the previous night’s drinking and partying. Typically, his comments about skiing drunk have elicited the latest round of hypocritical hand-wringing, common when free-spirited young men speak from their hearts. You see, Miller, a New Hampshire native, who grew up in a cabin without heat or plumbing, raised by parents who made $600 one year, probably never learned the fine art of spinning the truth. With Miller, what you see is what you get. On the other hand, Bill Marolt, president and executive of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association has come out saying that Miller’s comments are “irresponsible” and send “an inappropriate message” to younger skiers and snowboarders. Officials like Marolt and much of the Olympic brass, have been exploiting the gifts and talents of young skiers for so long, they wouldn’t know appropriateness if it walked up and bit them in the ass!

Is it wise to end up on the top of a world class slalom course with beers under your belt? Certainly, not for most of us. For Bode Miller, on the other hand, I think he’s earned the right to make his own decisions. I, for one, find Miller and his open and unscripted ways much more refreshing and honest than the usual circumvention of the truth that makes up our daily parade in politics, sports and the media.

Investigate that!

For the most part, Maine’s newspapers no longer do investigative journalism. Occasionally, they’ll run a four, or six-part series, on topics like “poverty in Maine, or “underage drinking in Maine”, or the ever-popular, “teen-age suicide in Maine”, but generally, the need to sell advertising keeps them comfortably in the middle of the road. This need to fill advertising space not only keeps them conservative (I mean this in the sense of not-willing to take chances, as we all know that the media has a liberal bias, right?) in their content, but also prevents them from devoting the substantial column inches necessary to handle say, a 6,000 to 10,000 word investigative piece on some aspect of Maine, ala magazines like The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones and other print journals devoted to the investigative side of journalism. Oh for a new and updated version of The Maine Times!

A couple of former gumshoe journalists, who occupied the trenches at Maine newspapers in the past, have taken their craft from the print realm, over to the cyber side of news. Roberta Scruggs, a former award-winning writer at both the Portland Press Herald and Lewiston Sun Journal, has started The Scruggs Report, focusing Maine’s rugged outdoors and the issues affecting it. While Scruggs offers free content for readers to preview, the site charges for most of its material. This might be off-putting for some, but given the quality and the scope of Scruggs’ work, the girl’s ‘gotta eat, too! A good introduction to the site might be her expose of Inland, Fisheries, and Wildlife Commissioner, Danny Martin’s tour of Moosehead Lake this fall. Apparently the Baldacci call for belt-tightening regarding unnecessary travel doesn’t apply to Martin.

Former Portland newshound, Chris Busby, has given those of us who remember the glory days of the old Casco Bay Weekly, something to read. While in its early stages of development, Busby’s, The Bollard, promises to deliver news with a healthy helping of irreverence and muckraking. A good example of this was his channeling of Al Diamon, and his annual “25 Ideas for a Better Portland” column. Busby invokes the ghost of Diamons past while offering his readers his condensed version of “10 Ideas for a Greater, Greater Portland.” In addition to serving up tongue-in-cheek exercises like this one, The Bollard is chock full of music reviews, happenings about town, interviews with cutting-edge entrepreneurs and others, as well as a substantial helping of Busby, being Busby, reporting on the goings-on at city hall, and Portland’s push toward its holy grail of being a “gentrified, SUV-kind of town.” The best part of all this—it’s free! Apparently the ads (all local and non-corporate) on the site help him to pay a small pittance to his writing staff.

If Maine’s newspapers aren’t cutting it for you, well, there are some online options you can now check out in order to get your hard news jones on.

Pouring salt in the wound

In another example of the professional media getting it wrong--which is happening with ever-increasing frequency--distraught families had to deal with the latest buzzword bandied about--"miscommunication."

In one of the best quotes from an article in Editor and Publisher, the Poynter Institute's Scott Libin wrote, "This case reminds us of a lesson we learned, at least in part, from Hurricane Katrina: Even when plausibly reliably sources such as officials pass along information, journalists should press for key details....If we believe that when your mama says she loves you, you should check it out, surely what the mayor or police chief or governor says deserves at least some healthy skepticism and verification. I understand how emotion and adrenaline and deadlines affect performance. That does not excuse us from trying to do better."

I can only imagine what these emotionally wrung out families must be feeling right now.

Making a living in the mines

Mining is a dangerous occupation. While the incidences of accidents related to boring into the earth’s interior have gone down, this is partly due to the wane of mining’s viability in the U.S. Coal, the type of mineral being mined at the West Virginia mine where the latest accident occurred, is no longer the fuel of choice that it once was, particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries. There is also a greater emphasis on safety and better practices.

As with any disaster, the media’s need to sate their bloodlust for tragedy was on display last night, as a surf of the news networks found this tragedy front and center from CNN, to Fox, MSNBC and any other pseudo-news stations. While I could only stomach this in small increments, it appeared that the usual method of mining the misery of victim’s families was the vehicle of choice of the staunch journalists that ply their trade for cable news.

I read Barbara Kingsolver’s revealing book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mining Strike of 1983, two years ago. My eyes were opened to the hard life of mining, as well as the extent of exploitation that was visited on this particular group of miners, but represented mining since its inception. Regardless of the method used for extraction of riches from the earth, the process is either extremely dangerous, or leaves the earth scarred and rarely able to recover. Explosions are always a possibility, due to the buildup of gasses (most notably, methane) associated with the mining process; a spark or other ignition means danger and more often, death.

I read with interest that this particular mine, recently acquired by ICG in March of 2005, had been cited by federal inspectors for 46 violations over an 11-week period. Apparently, the number of violations increased in 2005, from 68, to 205. ICG insists however that it is operating a safe mining operation.

Concerning safety, modern mining would never qualify as safe employment in my book, however, it is much safer than it ever has been, particularly 100 years ago. Much of the safety and improvements for workers have come from being unionized. Miners have always been some of the most militant of workers and have been able to acquire a rate of pay that at least takes into account the dangers faced by them, each time they are lowered into a mine shaft. Their militarism stems in part from how hard they had to fight for some basic recognition of the hazards of their trade. Nowhere was this more apparent than in West Virginia, and its history of poor treatment of miners. Despite the gains that organized miners have acquired, this disaster illustrates the importance of never becoming complacent, as management of many industries will always look to cut corners on safety, in hopes of extracting greater profit from their operation.