Thune gets rebuked by Norah O'Donnell

When political games displace work

As the story on Tom Daschle's tax reporting lapses developed, people who have worked closely with him knew that withdrawing his nomination as HHS secretary was a seriously-considered option. That information was circulating last weekend. The record of Daschle's character and accomplishments in his three decades of public service portrays a much different picture than what is painted on the South Dakota blogosphere.


The situation reinforces the growing recognition that while the Internet can be used as an important communication medium, its content must be treated as a genre that deserves skepticism, suspicion, and great selectivity. After the election in November, the fact-checking agencies shut down their operations. The propagation of disinformation is a way of life for many on the Internet, and everything posted on it needs to be examined for factual veracity. For people who care about truth as anything other than their own preferences, we need perpetual fact-checking.


The focus on Tom Daschle's belated tax payments and his choice to utilize a car and driver has trivialized the job he was nominated to do. His tax problems were a serious issue, but he addressed them and paid his bill. The inference promoted by opponents of health care reform that his lapses were deliberate fraud is a convenient way to block that reform by shifting the focus from the state of U.S. health care to tabloid gossip and speculation. Just as his house in D.C. was made a campaign issue in 2004 as an appeal to the sullen jealousies of voters who resent anyone's success, his use of a car and driver was inflated into a betrayal of South Dakota values. The puling petulance on the blogosphere defines what those values are in fact.



Daschle's withdrawal from the nomination occasioned great bipartisan elation on the blogosphere, but it leaves 50 million people who cannot afford health care with greatly diminished prospects for ever having it available to them. No one possesses the combination of knowledge of health care issues and the skill to guide real reform through Congress more than Tom Daschle.


Those who have worked with and for Tom Daschle knew that he would keep his situation regarding his tax payments and his nomination in a highly analytic perspective. As a leader, Daschle always carefully defined what jobs needed to be done and determined just what it would take to get them done. In fact, Pres. Obama made just that assessment when he nominated Daschle. Making health care accessible requires someone who knows the health care industry and understands the issues of both the health care consumers and the providers. While Daschle has been criticized for his consulting and speech-making to sectors of the health care industry, this experience demonstrates and adds to his knowledge. But in our culture, particularly in our state, being really good at what you do is a demerit. Although Obama won the election, our culture has been Palinized.


When Tom Daschle came to Congress thirty years ago, unlike his replacement in the Senate, he quickly attracted attention for diligence and his aggressive desire to learn. A Viet Nam era veteran himself, he led the fight to acknowledge the effects of Agent Orange and to see that veterans received badly needed medical treatment for all the physical and mental disorders that were inflicted upon them. He also became a leading expert on and advocate for rural health care. During the agricultural collapse of the 1980s, Daschle assumed leadership in taking measures and setting up programs to help keep families on farms and to provide opportunities for those who were displaced. During the disastrous winters of the late 1990's, when livestock was killed by blizzards and communities were devastated by floods, Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson led the efforts to see that the people affected received emergency and recovery aid. All this leadership attracted notice. Tom Daschle earned a reputation for his diligence and effectiveness in representing the people and serving their needs and interests.


Consequently, Daschle earned leadership roles on important committees and in the Senate. His colleagues wanted him to extend the focus of his abilities from the state to the nation. Although his record in vigorously representing his state is consistent all through his term as Senator, many of his constituents feel that embracing larger interests in the course of one's duties is a betrayal. For many, South Dakota is a cultural nursery that regards its care-givers as bonded servants. Woe be to someone who appears to break those bonds.


In contrast to the vigor and competence of Tom Daschle and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin when they first came to Congress, the record of John Thune was a demonstration of fecklessness and irrelevance. Thune did not seem to think that the northern part of South Dakota was part of the state’s geography. He did not think a service office in Aberdeen, the state's third largest city, was needed. Members of his party had to coerce him into acknowledging that the northeastern region had political issues to address.


When officials and residents wanted a by-pass for Highway 218 so that trucks did not need to drive through the center of town and realized it was time to provide four-lane access to Aberdeen from I-29 as a transportation facility essential to the economy, Thune disapproved. His argument was that it would cost money. Again, members of his party insisted that he at least inform himself of those projects and dragged him into an eventual grudging support.


But for the state at large, Thune's feckless bumbling was even more ridiculous. As a congressman, he belonged to none of the agricultural caucuses that monitor agriculture and make recommendations for government action. He had no interest at all in water development for the state. It, too, cost money. Not until campaign opponent Curt Hohn pointed out Thune's irrelevancy to South Dakota interests did he make any attempt to inform himself of those issues and become part of the caucuses that studied and formed polices on those areas of concern.


The main point of his campaign for senator was to insist that Tom Daschle's successes in Washington, D.C., were betrayals of the folks back home in South Dakota. A majority of the folks back home in South Dakota bought it. The only thing Thune had going for him was his personal attacks against Daschle. And the folks back home bought it. But he is a presentable looking chap who can read the scripts provided for him by his hired character assassins and party hacks.


Thune has one other strength. He is very good at insinuating himself into taking credit for work done by other people. His actual efforts in instituting action and implementing vital programs does not compare with Daschle's or Herseth Sandlin's. It boils down to a matter of competence.


As many commentators have pointed out, Tom Daschle's nomination to Secretary of Health and Human Services would have been approved, even though it would have been a grueling process. Tom Daschle knows when such a fight would detract and distract from the real job to be done. This is a democracy, and there comes a time when people have to live with the choices they make. In the matter of reforming health care, a large portion of the nation has chosen to dwell on contriving resentful gossip rather than confronting the problems of 50 million people who cannot afford health care. Daschle realized that his late tax payments would be used as an obstacle to reform, and so he decided it best to withdrew from the HHS secretary nomination.


The cost of health care for those who can afford it and its unavailability for the 50 million Americans who can't is a major factor in our economy. The Republican attitude is that we cannot afford health care reform. They trot out their tired tripe about socialized medicine and government interference with private enterprise and offer no acknowledgment that health care bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. and that 50 million people cannot afford health insurance. The Republicans regard those 50 million much the same way that Hitler did the old, infirm, and handicapped he referred to as "useless eaters." The conservatives seem to regard them as the "worthless workers." Their attitude seems to be to let those 50 million get sick and die. That way they won't be a drag on the economy. Or a burden on taxpayers.


And ffter all, Tom Daschle's use of a chauffeur driven car for which he made belated tax payments is one hell of a lot more important than 50 million people who can't afford health insurance.


The republic once again has made a choice. It will have to live with it. Except for the 50 million for whom that is not even a consideration.



{See The Columbia Journalism Review for more on health care possibilities.]

The Taliban Wing of the GOP comes out of the closet

During our current economic collapse, the Republican Party has become more strident as it falls into line in support of corporate fascism. Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas set a tactical agenda when he called for the Republican Party to circumvent the democratic processes and adopt insurgent methods modeled after the Taliban. Many people tout Rush Limbaugh as their putative leader. Limbaugh makes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem like a model of democratic good will and rationality. A number of Republican senators have expressed the political doctrine they favor in response to Pres. Obama's measures to prevent bailout money from being used for lavish executive perquisites.

When Ronald Reagan began his efforts to diminish government, he liked to use the example of the black woman who drove to the social services office in a Cadillac to pick up her welfare check. And the Republicans have tried to make Tom Daschle's use of privately paid-for car and driver a national disgrace. But to them it is perfectly fine for corporate executives to come and beg for bail-out money needed because of their profligate incompetence and then spend it in garish and criminal displays of luxury and self-indulgence. The Republicans say that taxpayer money used for rebuilding schools and preparing the infrastructure for clean energy is excessive, but when the President limits the use of tax-payer money for the purpose it was appropriated --shoring up a sinking financial system instead of executive luxuries--he is intruding government into places it has no business. It is imposing socialism onto American business.

Sen. John Kyl, R-Arizona, told The Huffington Post, "Because of [the bankers'] excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That's not a good thing in America."
Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Florida, said, "What executives have done is troubling, but it's equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives,"

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, said, "as I was listening to [the President] make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?"

What the Senators do not state, or seem to understand, is that the issue is not telling private businesses what it can pay, but what taxpayer money can be used for. Or to insist that the government expects it to be used for the purposes it was dispensed.

The assumption is that the government has an absolute responsibility to dictate how welfare money must be used by the poor, but it has no business telling the privileged class how to use its welfare money.

The current debate in Washington is clarifying he issues. In recent years, conservatives have howled and whine with indignation when it is suggested that they are embracing fascist principles and doctrine. But now they are openly and loudly expressing their political values.

Bipartisanship is for dummies

The idea that we can turn this economy around by caving to the feckless demands of those who screwed it up in the first place is utterly bankrupt.

Read Josh Nelson's take on the subject.

Pierre, the Bridge Builder, comes to South Dakota

Doug Wiken of Dakota Today posted recently on an article in which a professor of the history of science makes the point that the Internet has led to a deterioration of the information we receive rather than an amplication. Professor Proctor says that the information circulated on the Internet contains "agnotological rot." "Agnotology" is the study of culturally constructed ignorance. In the fields of English and communication, we used to call it illiteracy or "static," but the Internet has made it a cultural, rather than an individual, enterprise.


I cite the discussion in the light of Tom Daschle's problems with paying taxes. I have carefully made the point that I have no idea of what circumstances are involved in this matter. Therefore, I have neither defended nor condemned him for having to pay back taxes. But you have to read what I said to know what I said.


Rather than make any conjectures about the matter, I have posted links from real journalists for reference. You know, real journalists, as in people who give a damn what the facts are and what kind of reasoning produces valid judgments of those facts. There are plenty of opinions expressed, but few facts cited, and quoting the unproven and false claims from bloggers during the 2004 election campaign and since are not facts about Daschle, but only facts about the mentalities of their authors and their quoters.


I do express surprise at Tom Dashle finding himself in this circumstance. It is no secret that my spouse was a staff member for Tom Daschle, and I have been involved in campaigns and other projects from his offices. Like many of his Senate colleagues have said in the real news reports, I find this tax matter totally inconsistent with Tom Daschle's character and mode of operation as I have known it. Tom Daschle was meticulous in avoiding anything that appeared questionable. He held his staff to that same standard. During the campaign of 2004, when people came up with some negative factual matters that could have been used against his opponent, the word not to engage in that kind of campaigning came directly from Tom Daschle.


Furthermore, I have had two experiences with the IRS for which I was billed taxes and interest. In both instances, I had sought and followed the instructions of people in the state IRS office when it was in Aberdeen. In both instances, I had been given the wrong information by IRS personnel about how to handle grant money. The Aberdeen IRS office was a hotbed of bullying and incomptence, and eventually its status as a state office was closed down and its duties were assigned to Fargo, I believe. In one instance, the IRS changed a rule in August that affected money I received in June. My point is that no matter how hard you try to be sure you are meeting the rules, you can be wrong according to the IRS, and there is nothing you can do about it, but amend your tax forms and pay.


So, I have withheld judgment and comment about Tom Daschle's plight. It reminds me of the story of Pierre (pronounced pee-air), the Bridge Builder. Pierre was complaining about the reputation he had acquired.


He said, "I have designed and built bridges all through France and Europe. Do people call me Pierre, the Bridge Builder? No."


"I have designed and built some of the biggest cathedrals of our times throughout Europe. Do people call me Pierre, the Cathedral Builder? No."


"But just suck one cock.."


As I say, I will depend on real journalists and Senate committees for any information that I trust or believe in.


My posts which have implied some criticism about the cultural habits, including agnotological habits, of South Dakota have produced the usual invitations for me and anyone else who criticizes to leave. That, too, is a cultural custom. Many people accept the invitation. It is called the brain drain.

South Dakota has its merits. It also has its demerits. Of the 50 states, its government is rated as the most closed. Many people have cited the politics of Illinois, but blithely ignore the state government's dealings with credit card companies--or making it a crime for any state official to reveal if any investigations are being made of those companies. Its history of dealing with non-nordic races is also one of the worst in the country. Its antipathy toward education is so embedded as to be a cultural trait. Once again, we are confronted with organizations that deal with bringing higher culture and art to the state are on the chopping block to be closed down. These are just a few of the matters that affect the quality of life in South Dakota.


But no one will pay attention to those matters as long as they can berate Tom Daschle for riding around in a limousine in D.C. Nor does it matter that he caught the problems himself and took measures to rectify them. It is much more pleasurable to post headlines on the Internet that state:

More on Daschle's Tax Fraud

And so, we can talk endlessly about Tom, the Tax Cheat.

I assume those who are not satisfied with rectifications and who do not wish to see what facts emerge are working for his withdrawal from the nomination. It would not do much for the country and its health care problems, but it could sure limit some of the agnotological rot in South Dakota.

The Daschle Debacle: Some informing updates

[Some very informative journalism has been produced on the Daschle Debacle: one piece in the New York Times and another in The Washington Post.]


As an old news dog who has used that experience periodically in political work, I have often noted something about politicians being voted out of office that does not get talked about. If after many years of successful, untroubled political office, what happens to the relationship between a politician and his/her constituents when they vote the politician out of office?

My first experience with this came with an Illinois congressman, a contemporary of mine, whose family I knew quite well. He ran as a Republican, unopposed a few times, in a very Democratic district.

A member of the House Judiciary Committee, he voted to impeach Richard Nixon. That fascist-base portion of the Republican Party did not let this sin against its creed of power-at-all-costs-imposed-on-all-people go unrequited. They kept trying to dislodge the Congressman, and shortly after I moved to South Dakota they succeeded. They put one of their kind up against him in the primary and launched one of their character-assassination assaults against him. The character-assassin won the primary. He did not win the election. The Democrat won and a Republican has not come even close to taking that seat in the House for the last 26 years.

Rather than return to Illinois and resume a very successful law practice, the Congressman decided to move. On a visit back to my home state, I asked a family member of the Congressman's about his moving. The family member told me that while we like to say nice things and pretend that we honor public service, the hard political fact is that a defeated politician can't go home again. Especially when you have been dumped by your own party. He would return to friends, but the atmosphere created by enemies dominates. It only takes one rotten fart to destroy the sanctity of a church service. It takes only a few malicious resentments in a community to make it a hostile environment.

What had impressed me about this Congressman was that no one understood how the rural and urban cultures and economies intersected with the thoroughness he did. Shortly after he left office, the industrial community he represented crashed. One large community in his district lost 30,000 industrial jobs. The Congressman had the knowledge and the contacts to provide assistance. But he was in the process of creating a new life in a far-away place. When I conjectured to newspaper colleagues about the leadership he could have provided, they replied that he had new responsibilities and new loyalties that needed tending for himself and his family. He had moved on both physically and socially.

South Dakota has dumped a number of incumbents: Sen. Abdnor, Sen. George McGovern, Sen. Larry Pressler, and Sen. Tom Daschle. We assume that politicians understand that they serve only at the behest of the electorate, but what do we do with politicians when we are through with them?

George McGovern returned to Mitchell to live, but not before working for important projects on the national and international level. After being defeated by Abdnor, he involved himself in many ventures of a nature that just are not available in South Dakota. He resides here, makes broad acknowledgment of his ties to South Dakota, but he does not let the state shape his identity. Rather, he keeps insuring that there is a progressive line of thought kept alive in South Dakota

James Abdnor was an administrator in the Small Business Administration after he lost an election to Tom Daschle. He, too, lives in South Dakota, and was an advisor to the John Thune campaign in 2004 against Tom Daschle. There has always been a element of vengeance surrounding Abdnor's continued involvement in Republican politics.

Larry Pressler made an attempt at running for Congress again in South Dakota after his defeat, but his energies have been concentrated quite intensely in New York City and Washington, D.C. Shortly after leaving office, he passed the bar exam in New York. He later established his own firm in Washington, D.C. His relationship to South Dakota is cursory. His talents and his interests are simply not invested in this state.

Now comes Tom Daschle, who has been nominated to one of the most powerful positions in Pres. Obama's cabinet. Like my former Congressman from Illinois, Tom Daschle has moved on. He chose not to retreat quietly to his state of origin. Rather, he has set about to create a life that is not possible in South Dakota.

His tax problems may well obstruct his chances at assuming the post to which he has been nominated. I attempt to make no apologetics or excuses for these matters, other than to say I have been involved in campaign finance reports for the last decade. It is very easy to make mistakes. Sometimes I receive bad information. Sometimes I receive erroneous advice about what to include and how to include it. Sometimes I receive erroneous advice about what to omit. Often peripheral issues that get raised in passing retreat into the ether of memory and then come sailing back like a burning comet to crash at your feet. Corrections and admendments have to be made.

Tom Daschle included charity donations to organizations that turned out not to be charities. He had consulting fees that somehow were not reported. But the big issue is that he was provided a car and driver, and did not report this as in-kind income.

But that is not what is making the crotch knots that so gall the South Dakota pudenda. People remember Tom Daschle driving through the state in an old car, dropping in on constituents like a neighbor. Now they are outraged that he would accept a limousine and driver to conduct his business around Washington, D.C., and wherever else he goes. Some are more irked that he would choose to ride in a driven limousine rather than toot around DuPont Circle in a Ford Pinto, or whatever its current equiavalent is. Of course, the Dementia Sisters at South Dakota Politics have termed it an outright case of tax fraud, and we needn't bother to find out the actual circumstances.

Tom Daschle lost an election in 2004. A majority of his constituents told him he wasn't needed around here anymore. Rather than come creeping back in an old clunker to give succor--pun intended--to the dysfunctioning egos that resent his success on the national stage and would still like to tell Daschle how to live his life as if his destiny rests in ingratiating himself with the perpetually petulant, Daschle moved on. He has new interests and new loyalties to maintain. And for people who keep up intense and productive work schedules, a chauffer-driven car can be a huge time-saver and convenience. I can even imagine how the question of including it as in-kind compensation can slip one's mind. But I am not in a position to know that, although most commenters on this matter claim to be.

People leave this state because they have better, more sustaining prospects elsewhere. That is especially true of politicians elected out of office.

If the Republicans really want to organize like they did on the House stimulus bill, I have no doubt that they could throw up obstructions to Daschle's nomination that could result in his withdrawal.

But he was nominated because he has long outgrown the small-minded and cramped intellectual dimensions of South Dakota. Now, that is something you can really resent.

The year of Lincoln

I grew up in a house where a bust of Abraham Lincoln was right next to the family Bible on an entry-way table. My childhood took place during the Great Depression and World War II. Consequently, we could afford few trips out-of-town for vacations, but the one I remember was a family tour of Lincoln's New Salem and Springfield, Illinois. When we visited those Lincoln sites, the family dressed in its Sunday best. As we visited New Salem, Lincoln's home in Springfield, the Illinois Capitol, and Lincoln's tomb, I recall how strong was the feeling of Lincoln's presence. Many years later, I took my own children on that same tour of Lincoln sites, and that sense of Lincoln's presence was still strongly there. The people visiting his tomb on the day I took my children there responded with the same quiet sense of reverence I recall from my own childhood visit there.

The entire State of Illinois is a shrine to Lincoln. One cannot wander to any part of it without encountering a memory of him. We grew up in Illinois, particularly those of us from working families, understanding that Lincoln changed the country, and also changed the standards of equality and equal opportunity as it applied to the people whose labor supplied the nation's motive force.

Lincoln's importance to the working people of the U.S., and particularly Illinois is,therfore, in the respect he articulated through his words and demonstrated through his life about equality and opportunity for working people.

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"I shall prepare myself.
Someday my time will
come."

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The tour guides at New Salem and Springfield often mention Lincoln's strained relationship with his father as something that shaped his attitudes toward slavery and the rights of people who work to benefit from the fruits of their labors. Lincoln wanted an education, and he chaffed under the constant demands for him to perform drudged physical labor. Relatives report that he sneaked off to read books whenever he could and was described as lazy in regards to physical work. Still, he did it. As was the rule of law back then, his father had the right to "rent" him out to others and collected all the wages earned. This legal custom of taking all the wages earned by people under one's charge caused problems in America fron its inception. Bonded servants were often rented out to others. This caused a near-uprising during colonial times and resulted in a plantation named Merrymount becoming a refuge for bonded servants who wanted to escape this treatment. Frederick Douglass was leased out to another master who mistreated him and Douglass got into a physical struggle with the master over mistreatment. Being leased out as a beast of burden was the source of deep resentments, whether it was slaves, servants, or children who were being treated like beasts.

Tour guides at New Salem also mention Lincoln's resentment at being rented out for labor until he was of legal age, 21. They point out that as soon as he reached that age, he left his family and began life on his own at New Salem. The experience informs Lincoln's thinking about slavery and about work. While he had a tendency toward laziness as a child, he was known for his industry, his ambition, and his intelligence in New Salem. His image as the railsplitter was accurate. But it tends to ignore that he remained a voracious reader.

Lincoln did not see capitalism as the driver of the American economy. Rather, he saw labor and the individual efforts of people to build lives and improve their stations as the primary force in building the nation. The institution of slavery was justified, in fact, because it possessed the greatest source of labor, as is articulated in Mississippi's articles of secession from the union.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of
slavery--the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. ... A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

Part of Lincoln's objection to slavery is that free laboring people had to compete for wages against a labor force that was not paid, a force whose earnings went to the people who owned them. A nation which operated on forced labor would never provide full opportunities for those who made their livings in labor. Lincoln's argument against slavery rested very much upon the similar plight of American workers today having to compete with the low wages--sometimes the forced labor--from the developing countries of the world. He said, "labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied."

Lincoln was a great promoter of investing in what were called "internal improvements" in his time, infrastructure in our time. He realized that the efforts of workers, whether on farms or in industry, and businesses had to have ways to get to the market. In his day, this meant the building of waterways, roads, and railroads. And even in bad economic times, he was in favor of taxing, if necessary, to maintain those investments. During the panic of 1837 he favored a general property tax to keep the internal improvements under construction. Such a tax, he said, took from the "wealthy few" not the "many poor."

It has been no coincidence that Barack Obama has deliberately invoked the presence and heritage of Abraham Lincoln in his quest for the presidency. The parallels between the times of a working class undergoing distress and a war dividing the country are obvious. Obama came to Illinois to work with the communities in Chicago which were devastated by a changing world economy that displaced the steel workers in south Chicago from their jobs. As a state legislator, Obama was familiar with Springfield and the general environs of Illinois which are pervaded by the Lincoln legacy.

Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency on the steps of the Illinois Capitol, he 0ften quotes Lincoln--especially the references to the better angels of human nature--, and he took his oath of office on the same Bible Lincoln did. Like Lincoln, Obama is a compelling orator. He strives to restore language to an integrity that has been ravaged by malicious partisanship, the spin-habit of ignoring the definitions of words established by their place in history and human experience, and not to regard the general value of language as a means to deceive and coerce, but to use it as the means to inform.

Biographers point out that Lincoln built his presidency on the building blocks of words. He used literature, particularly Shakespeare, to provide his perspective on the world. In words, he saw the hope of the world, but also their misuse as the destruction of the world.

This year celebrates Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday. And as we approach it in the context of our own times, it is useful and, perhaps, encouraging to contemplate the words from his second inaugural address:

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history....The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation....In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.