Dead Cops as Stage Props: Pat Lynch and NYPD Blue Union

The head of the police union, which has been working for some time without a contract with the city, said the blood of the two murdered policeman, shot in their car by a lunatic, is on the mayor's hands, because, presumably, the mayor did not say enough to defend his police officers who were video'd killing a large black man with a choke hold.  The police, some police at least, are also upset about the mayor's ending "Stop and Frisk" procedures, whereby Black and Hispanic men can be thrown up against a wall and searched for weapons, despite the Constitution's constraints about unreasonable search.

If only, Lynch was saying, the police had been able to throw that maniac  up against a wall and search him, they would be alive today, but instead they had to be sitting in their patrol car, looking the other way,  just waiting to be killed.

Or so Mr. Lynch would have us believe.

Mr. Lynch thinks the mayor should ask forgiveness. The police turn their back on the mayor.

Mad Dog, however, believes it is Mr. Lynch who should ask forgiveness, from the families of these two officers, who he has used as a stage prop for his own political agenda. Mr. Lynch is torn from the pages of "House of Cards," as cynical and nakedly manipulative as any character, and once again life imitates art.

Mad Dog is reminded of that famous scene from the Army/McCarthy hearings where the defense counsel, a Mr. Welch, looks Senator Joseph McCarthy in the eye and says, "Have you no sense of decency, at long last? Have you no sense of decency at all."

Biggest Stories of 2014: Labor Unions, Lost in the 21st Century

As the governor of Wisconsin recently demonstrated, running against labor unions is good for the bottom line.

In “Citizen Koch,” a documentary about the Koch brothers, these two concerned citizens loathe labor unions as demons from the darkest pits of hell and they make clear their money sent to the governor of Wisconsin to defeat his recall and to win re election is drawn from the well of their contempt for labor unions.

          Full disclosure: Mad Dog’s grandfather was an ardent union man.  He suffered for his union and one of his favorite quips was that a bayonet is a weapon with a worker on either end. The real struggle in the world, from grandfather’s point of view, had little to do with nations but with classes: workers vs bosses.

           Anyone who has read Howard Zinn knows how ruthlessly captains of industry have fought unions and how they bought all the politicians they needed to do this.

            Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers’ union and Maggie Thatcher broke coal unions and virtually every union she could get her hands on. And it wasn’t just the owners and barons of industry who thanked them: They were hailed by the general public for their efforts.

         But, even Mad Dog’s own father, looking at a strike by professional football players said, “I’m all for the workers. But these guys aren’t workers. They’re millionaires fighting with billionaires.”

         There are some unions which simply fail to win public support.

         On a recent trip to France, Mad Dog heard many stories, from many sources about the evils of unions.  When the lock workers, who operate the forty odd locks along the Seine went on strike, it meant the barge captains and workers could not haul their loads on the river; it meant the cruise boats and restaurant boats and all their workers could not go to work.  When pilots for Air France go on strike, thousands of people sleeping on floors of airports become easy converts to the Koch brothers’ point of view.

            There was once a time when a strike by one set of workers triggered sympathy strikes from other workers; no longer—the workers who are idled by another worker’s strike resent the loss of pay. They see no brotherhood with other workers; all they care about is how much they have been inconvenienced.

           When Market Basket employees went on strike, the customers were not much inconvenienced: They could shop at some other store. The farmers who relied on Market Basket were hurt, but there were not all that  many farmers.

            Union workers can strike without alienating the public at large when they are in manufacturing, when the company they work for produces a product for which there are competitors. If the workers hold up production, then the company suffers, but not the general public. That puts the workers in a good position to pressure the owners without losing public support.

             But in the 21^st century increasingly, most workers do not produce a product in a competitive environment;  air traffic controllers, airline pilots, city garbage collectors, river lock operators, city school teachers are in the service economy and often in positions where the strikes they impose create widespread resentment and public antipathy. Members of these unions have shot themselves, not just in the foot, but considerably higher up, and the unions have hemorrhaged crucial public support.

          Union rules, it must be admitted, have too often  thwarted the mission of the companies they work for: when a hospital needs to clean out operating rooms quickly but the housekeepers’ union refuses to allow workers to get the job done in 30 minutes (which is what it takes in non union hospitals) but insists on 60 minutes so only half the number of surgeries can get done daily, that hurts the hospital, and ultimately, if the hospital goes into the red, it hurts the workers.

Unions exist to defend the rights of the workers, but when they forget that the mission of the employer is also important and, ultimately, important for the worker, they wind up hurting everyone, workers included. When a union stage hand has to move a chair on a set rather than allowing an actor to simply pick it up and place it down in a better spot, the definition of work and who can do it reaches absurd proportions.

          Unions have, over decades, done far more good for this country than harm. Safety at the workplace, a fair wage for a day’s work, the emergence of a strong, stable middle class all owe much to union strength.  Structured working groups of workers have identified inefficiencies in production, which would never have reached the managers had the institutionalized system of worker in-put not been forced by the unions—so cars, airplane engines and a whole range of things have been produced better as a result of unions. Even the five day work week, not to mention overtime, has meant workers can actually have enough time to shop, recreate and, by their spending, drive the economy.

      But, philosophically, Americans love to hate groups, and Americans love to believe they can make it on their own. We do not like to think about the idea Elizabeth Warren has emphasized: We are all using stuff made by others,  from roads to education. We are all interdependent. The hard driving capitalist wants to think he is special and he deserves all the money he’s made because he’s worked harder and smarter. Admitting we are all in this together and that even when we excel, we have stood on the shoulders of others to do this--well, that's something we find hard to swallow.

       The welfare queen, that mythical woman who lived the high life without working, by simply exploiting the welfare system remains a fixture in the American mind. When uneducated or less educated people exploit the system, they are reviled. When someone who has graduated from Harvard summa cum laude succeeds, well, he’s earned it. But he didn’t go to Harvard on his own dime. When two engineers invent Google or Microsoft or Apple or Facebook, well they are simply the cream rising to the top. And there is some truth to that. But cream cannot form in a vacuum. You need a pot.

          Mad Dog has no solution to offer, and likely all of the above is well known to union leaders, academics, politicians and corporate boards. It is a rare day when the little guys can win in this environment. The Market Basket story was the exception which proved the rule: Here, an avaricious goon of a corporate oligarch tried to wrest half of the cash reserve of the company for his own bank account, with, predictably, the acquiescence of a board of directors.  But he was opposed by the “good Arthur” who said the money belonged to the workers, to the corporation, and, ultimately to the customers, before it belonged to any stock holders. This was a new idea, that a company has more than a single raison d’etre: That is,  it exists, yes to make money for the shareholders, but it has other obligationsm  to its workers, to its customers, to American society, to all those who make its continued viability a success.

          Capitalists have successfully argued that the only thing which should matter for every company listed on the NYSE is to generate profit and return for investors. This position has the virtue of simplicity and clarity.  It is an idea which should be dissected and butchered and hung out to dry.

          For Mad Dog’s money, the Market Basket story was the story of the year.

          Long live King Arthur (T).

Torture R US: Who the We Is

In her New Yorker piece, Janet Mayer reviews the 500 page report from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee which details the systematic torture program carried out by the CIA, in the name of protecting the American people from another 9/11.

"Before it was released, [it] came under attack from Republicans, including Dick Cheney, who, although he hadn't read it, called it 'full of crap.' Senator Mitch McConnell, the incoming majority leader, castigated it as 'ideologically motivated and distorted."

Mad Dog well recalls when President George W. Bush responded to the photos from Abu Gharib prison from the oval office saying, "This isn't who we are."

But, in fact, it turned out it is exactly who we are. The question, of course, is who the "we" is.  You and I may be repelled by torture, but the sadists who find work at the CIA are also "we."  So are the Congressmen and Senators who support torture, if not in name, in practice. So is Joe Sixpack, who snarls at the wusses, mostly Democrats, who shrink from doing the unpleasant but necessary thing. 

Now, Mad Dog hastens to add, he knew scores of people who worked at the CIA, although, for the most part, they were not on the "operational" side of the agency. They were analysts, and they were, typically, erudite, analytic, and not, at least overtly, cruel or sadistic.  

But then you have Dick Cheney raising the specter of terrorists setting off a nuclear bomb in Washington, DC or New York every time anyone questions the centrality of torture to protecting the homeland.

What the report shows, in fact, "In all twenty cases most widely cited by the CIA, as evidence that abusive interrogation methods were necessary, the same information could have been obtained, and frequently was obtained, through non-coercive, methods. Further, the interrogations often produced false information, ensnaring innocent people, sometimes with tragic results."

And, forgotten in all this are those people still held at Guantanamo, without charges, without trial, let alone due process. What the Congress has said--and if the Congress isn't a "we" who is?--is that we do not have to honor the principles of the Constitution when it comes to what we do as a government, as a people off shore. The Constitution only protects US Citizens when they are on US soil.

There is something bizarre about the release of Alan Gross after five years in a Cuban prison for the crime of trying to help Jews in Cuba to hook up to the internet. Mr. Gross was abused, lost most of his teeth, and emerged, at age 60 something, just barely alive. We all look at the Cuban regimen which would do this and decry their ruthlessness. But just down the road, at the other end of the island, we have American held prisoners, who have never been charged with a crime, never had the benefit of even a kangaroo court, were just simply imprisoned--oh, excuse me, they are not "prisoners" they are "detainees." Some for more than a dozen years. They are our "guests." We do not believe in due process for these people, because, you know, they were captured in Afghanistan and they must be bad.

So, who are we? 

Who we is, apparently, is a nation of people who can be stirred into a frenzy of fear, and once that happens all restraints are dissolved and we can bring people to near drowning, torture them in other creative ways, hold them prisoner forever, as long as folks in the homeland can sleep well at night, secure they live in the home of the brave, land of the free.

Postcard from France

When people say, "I had never been here before but I felt like I was coming home," what they are really saying is, "I felt very happy just being here."  There are so many places where and people whom you simply have to endure in life, but there are some people and places which make you happy simply by their presence.

For Mad Dog, New York was one of those places, but not London or Rome or even Dublin. Paris is one of those places, for Mad Dog , as it was for Hemingway and for James Baldwin and for David Sedaris and for so many other Americans. Hemingway said, "The only problem in Paris was deciding where to be happiest," and Mad Dog now understands.

Paris has the energy and eccentricity of New York; but it is  as if New York were run by the Catholic Church. France is very Catholic. Mad Dog is not sure how seriously the French take the teachings of the Church, but they do not ignore it. There is no separation of church and state here enshrined in law, and Mad Dog prefers the American approach, but he has to admit, the presence of the Church here adds a creative tension.

France has been a surprise:

French economy: The country looks affluent and well groomed. The roof of every house is so superior to what we have in New Hampshire. No asphalt shingles: Every roof is slate. Along the Seine, in Rouen, is a long asphalt road and it is filled with affluent looking joggers in Spandex, and along the river are one sports club after another, with people jogging on treadmills overlooking the Seine. No jogging in basements in front of TVs running sappy Netflix movies.

French women: Their faces show bones, zygomatic arches. They have great style. They dress in black with spalshes of color. They wear high heeled shoes in the streets of Paris and Rouen, and the streets are cobblestone, which means they have to be determined to wear those heels. They take off the heels when they get to the office, but in the street, they are on display.

In conversation, Parisian women make prolonged eye contact; Mad Dog was thrilled a little by this, until  he realized there was no seduction there--they were simply thinking, "What language is it he is speaking? Certainly, not French."

Normandy:   For an American, this  is different.  Falstaff looking at a soldier's rotting corpse  held his nose and said, "That's glory for you. It stinks." Elizabethan audiences laughed knowingly.  But that would draw no laughs from an American  at Antiem or Gettysburg or at Normandy.

It matters little that most of the American soldiers who died here had no idea what a monstrous evil they were attacking. They were fighting for their friends and, yes, for some idea of country.  They knew they had become part of something much larger, and that ennobled them. 

Have there been any other wars or military deaths like those of World War II, since World War II?  

Most of the American warriors in 1944 could have been at home, did not need the paycheck. 

Food:  The French eat smaller portions. And they have some things we do not have in New Hampshire. His first day, Mad Dog was served some sort of hot chocolate which was heroin in a cup. From that moment onward, all he wanted was another fix. He has yet to discover the name of this stuff, tragically lost after that first sample.  The bread and cheese are also unlike anything we have in New Hampshire. 

French rain: It is the type of rain which invites the use of an umbrella, and couples walk along in a sort of umbrella intimacy one rarely sees in the States.

In New Hampshire, we are comfortable. We walk along the seacoast, and we love it, as we ought to love it. But sometimes, we have to remind ourselves we are part of something bigger. Mad Dog looked out from Omaha Beach and realized, on the other side of that ocean lay Plaice Cove.

Going to France is tame compared to travelling to China or India--there is much more here to give you your bearings. Paris  does not take the same courage as Beijing or Calcutta. But it's a start. It's worth the effort.

Be Thankful: We Live in America, and we vaccinate against Polio

"In July the Guardian revealed that the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, in the hunt for Bin Laden. In the weeks before the 3 May operation to kill Bin Laden, Afridi was instructed to set up a fake vaccination scheme in the town of Abbottabad, in order to gain entry to the house where it was suspected that the al-Qaida chief was living, and extract DNA samples from his family members."


There have been 260 case of polio in Pakistan this year; this year 65 anti-polio workers have been murdered in Pakistan. 

Mad Dog was as happy as anyone when they got Osama Bin Laden, but when he heard they had used an anti-polio worker as part of the plot, he thought "Uh-oh."
Of course, this has been used by the Taliban to bolster its contention that polio vaccinations are "dangerous to health and against Islam."

Wait, polio vaccination is "against Islam?"  Remarkable, really,  thinking the Prophet could have been so prescient as to inveigh against polio vaccination as being "against Islam"  so many centuries before the vaccine became available. But if the vaccine is used to hunt down heroes like Osma Bin Laden, okay, maybe this begins to make sense to villagers in Pakistan.

Prevention of polio has been one of major triumphs of 20th century medicine. It is a dreadful disease, a true scourge. A nightmare, really. Paralysis. Children. And even if the child survives, and even if the child is able to recover and to walk and function afterward, there is post polio syndrome which can make life pretty miserable decades later. 

Who could find a dark lining in that story? Militant fundamentalists, apparently.

But before we get too superior about those wacko Islamists, we have to look around at our own well meaning neighbors who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against measles, pertussis, tetanus and HPV and yes, even polio.

But we can be thankful our rational citizens can be vaccinated.
And here is another bit of good news to be thankful for: In the first week of open season more than a million people signed up on the government site for health insurance. The Affordable Care Act is actually working. 

But we can be thankful, there's a new Congress on the way, all set to kill Obamacare, castrate hogs (and maybe other species)  and maybe even stop those damn vaccination programs. 

GOP Pick of the Litter Or How I Learned to Love the Tea Party

Mr. Hice, Not Asking His Wife's Permission

Gary Trudeau once bemoaned losing George W. Bush as an inspiration for his daily cartoon.  Now that we have so many Republicans in the House and Senate to entertain us, Mad Dog can appreciate the feeling. They're back! Better than ever. Who needs George W?

What could be more invigorating than to explore the new personalities available to us in Washington, D.C. It's really a wonderful confection shop--so many wonkies and so little time. How to choose among them?

There's Rep. Glenn Grothman from Wisconsin, who informed voters that women should not complain about being paid less than men for the same work because, "money is more important for men."  Mad Dog is sadly lacking in context here, but he can only imagine money is less important for women, because they are, in Mr. Grothman's mind, supported by men, and only working because they want to be able to afford a new refrigerator.  Mr. Grothman is not burdened by a reluctance to tell other people what they can talk or think about, so he would forbid teachers from mentioning homosexuality in the classroom. (Presumably, he does not tape the episodes of "Modern Family" he misses.)  And he is bracing-ly honest about the reasons for his support of voter ID laws. He does not focus on the overwhelming fraud at the polls; his argument is practical--there's more people who believe in what the Democrats say, so we have to limit  Democratic sympathizers from voting if we want Republicans to win elections. Now, here's a man you can understand. 

Alex Mooney, now a Congressman from West Virginia, has demonstrated it doesn't matter where you draw boundary lines on a man, when it comes to running for a seat in the national Congress; what matters is whether you can find a place filled with like minded souls.  He ran for the state House in New Hampshire, unsuccessfully, then moved to one of those parts of Maryland which the people of the Free State have been trying to forget is part of the Free State, and he won a seat in the Maryland State Senate. Now he is representing a hollow in West Virginia in the U.S. House. He hates gays and all those who tolerate them. He rails against those who find his homophobia virulent, claiming the free speech rights of homophobes have been trampled.

But my favorite, thus far, the pick of the litter, is the New Republican Congressman from the 10th District of Georgia, Jody Hice, who believes no woman should serve in Congress without the freely given permission of her husband. (What he thinks about unmarried female candidates is unclear.) Taking a page from the Taliban, he has staked out a courageous stand on the wife-as-property platform and, at least in Georgia, prevailed.

This opens up so many other possibilities: What other things does a wife need to apply for permission to do, in the Georgia 10th? The mind simply runs wild. Georgia Stepford wives. This could spread. This could become a movement.

Mr. Hice's success is understandable: Unlike most Democrats who suffer from that endemic Democratic malady "afraid to offend," Mr. Hice charges right in, saying that Islam is, in truth, not actually a "religion." It's a lifestyle. Mr. Hice edifies, and Mad Dog had not previously appreciated this, that Islam is "a totalitarian way of life with a religious component," which "does not deserve First Amendment protection." Well, talk about a fresh perspective. I feel so much better about Gitmo and Abu Gharib now. 

Oh, and Representative Hice has a sense of history, too. Legal abortion is "worse than Hitler's six million Jews," and he throws in, just for dramatic effect, "or Mussolini's three hundred thousand." (That may have been a pitch to the Italian-American voters in the 10th District.)  It's really striking how often Hitler gets reference by Tea Party acolytes.  Hitler is just never far from their minds.  He was a flamboyant leader, Adolph was, and his followers had a great sense of color and theater--all those scarlet flags and that snazzy Swastika icon, not to mention the SS logo, but really can we not get through one paragraph without lumping Mr. Obama and his merry band of abortionists in the same bag as Adolph Hitler? You know, as the very least, it would make der Fuhrer uncomfortable.

Oh, and did Mad Dog mention Mr. Hice has a radio show? On said show he finally helped us understand the underlying pathology responsible for all the school shootings: It's--and there can be no real surprise here when you think about it--the liberal Democratic demons who are responsible for "kicking God out of the schools and ...kicking God out of the public square." Had God only been permitted to enter these places, then those gun wielding wackos would have fled in fear and never fired a shot. The solution was just so simple, there in front of our eyes all along. Mad Dog is ashamed to have missed it. 

Another thing to consider: Who had the power to kick God out of schools and the public square? This is clearly not the omnipotent God of the New Testament. But then, Mad Dog is no theologian, and Mr. Hice, is also a pastor, so he must be right.

One thing we have to ask about Mr. Hice however, is whether his ambition got ahead of his conscience: After all, Mr. Hice is taking the seat of Paul Broun, who famously informed us that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory were "lies straight from the pit of Hell." 

Mad Dog could not help but think that Mr. Hice should offer Mr. Broun his seat in Congress back. Who could represent the voters of the Georgia 10th better than Mr. Broun? If he decides to keep the seat, I'm sure Mr. Hice will remember where he comes from.

What Mad Dog is still wondering about is how embryology got on that list. Mad Dog studied embryology in college--it's all about how a sperm and an egg develop into a two cell thing then divide and reshape and divide again and finally a little human being emerges. Hardly seems like a hair ball from the pit of Hell.

The Big Bang theory, that Mad Dog can understand. It's sexual double entendre is so obvious and offensive. (Fresh talk, as Maud's mother would say.) Mad Dog, in his dark past netherworld of sinful desire, has to admit, sought the Big Bang for most of his febrile days as an intern and resident, exploring the cosmos of the nurses' residence and the bars in the shadow of the the New York  Hospital with names like "The Recovery Room," and "The Intensive Care Unit" and  "Healing Touch."  And Mad Dog can attest, that experience, with some happy exceptions, was straight from the pit of Hell.

More Women In Congress

Joni of the Sharp Shears

Even though she is a Republican, I was somehow cheered to see the Castrator made it to Congress.  Joni Ernst ran on the platform that because she grew up castrating hogs, she should would bring something new and valuable to Washington, D.C. I can see her point.  She replaces Tom Harkin in the Senate and she will be a breath of fresh air: She believes states ought to be able to nullify federal laws, an idea which harkens back to what resulted in the Civil War; she has called for arresting federal officials attempting to implement Obamacare; she agrees with Glenn Beck about a world conspiracy centered in the United Nations; she still insists George W was correct about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq--we just haven't found them yet. This is a woman with a fresh perspective on things. The great mystery to Mad Dog is she is from Iowa, not South Carolina, Arizona or Texas. In those states, she is main line.

Fact is, she has got herself a promising career and she is not mired in conventional thought.

When Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in the early 1960's her major, breakthrough insight was that women were unfulfilled and unhappy despite having  been told paradise on earth was a home with lots of modern appliances, a husband, children and material wealth. Friedan made it acceptable for women to look at their lives and ask themselves if the conventional life was really as honorable, fulfilling and wonderful as everyone said it was.  Each woman, in the privacy of her home, had to ask herself if one man, one life was enough. She did not have to feel guilty for asking this question. You have everything. Why are you looking for more?

Betty Friedan 

 So women went to work, and found new satisfactions and new frustrations, but who could be as happy as a castrating female Senator?

Betty Ice Princess 

Of course, this was the trap which Betty in Mad Men found herself: Beautiful husband, great house, kids, cars, horses to ride, but somehow, something was missing. In Betty's case, the hole in her life could not be filled by a single liaison in the men's room of a Manhattan bar; eventually she traded for a new husband, which did not seem to solve the problem either.

The problem, of course, was never the golden trap of wealth; the trap was buying into what you had been taught by the prevailing authorities about  what will make you happy.

When Mad Dog was struggling through his adolescence, when his seventeen year old with red lips was not concealed inside, but in full display, he kept running into girls who had been told that happiness was being a virgin on your wedding night. These were mostly the girls with good grades and hot college prospects. He ultimately discovered girls whose grades may not have been as stellar, but who laughed at the idea of restrictions on their sexual appetites or their prospects in life.

"I'll go through men the way men go through razor blades,"  one hotly pursued girl friend told him. "Men are disposable. I'll be a partner in a law firm and I'll command my own destiny."

That was a breath taking notion to Mad Dog in those days, because he did not feel he was at all in command of his own destiny.  In fact, she went off to college, then law school, and now works in Washington, DC in the federal government. She did go through quite a few men along the way.  

Mad Dog has heard, from mutual friends, she's had some rocky times, emotionally, but not because she chose to reject convention.  About that, reportedly, she has never had regrets. She ultimately did one conventional thing: She married the coolest guy in high school. He played football, became a Rhodes Scholar and ultimately a war correspondent. Mad Dog used to listen to him cover Bosnia on NPR. But then a college friend of hers visited them in London and her husband  ran off to Europe with the friend on the back of his motorcycle. So she came home, went to work for the government.   

Mad Dog hopes she's considering a run for Congress.  

As a Democrat, of course.