Bobby

The title of our blog comes from Robert Kennedy, or really Aeschylus, whom Robert quoted in a speech just after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. 

"Let us dedicate ourselves to
what the Greeks wrote so many years ago
to tame the savageness of man
and make gentle the life of this world.

I've posted below the text to an eulogy for Kennedy that I am giving in speech class tomorrow.

George Bernard Shaw said, “There are those that look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Robert Francis Kennedy was fond of poetically quoting others in order to make a point or express a belief. Robert, or Bobby, as he was popularly known, was a son, brother, husband, politician, and a voice for the weak and disenfranchised. Of his eight siblings, one, John, became President, and another, Ted, became and still is a United States Senator for Massachusetts. John got involved in politics first as a Senator, but Bobby followed him to Capitol Hill, where he became famous in his own right for aggressively prosecuting the corrupt Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa.

In 1961, when John became President, he appointed brother Bobby as Attorney General. Instead of building political capital for his own future, Bobby risked not only his career but his life, pursuing the Mob and fighting valiantly for civil rights. During the potentially disastrous Cuban Missile Crisis, he proved so valuable President Kennedy remarked, “Thank God for Bobby.”

Stricken with grief after JFK’s assassination in 1963, Robert became despondent and depressed. Within time, however, he recovered enough to realize that his duty was to the American people. Therefore, he ran successfully and became a Senator in 1965. While there, he grew increasingly disdainful of the glad-handing, smoke-filled room bargaining style of the Senate, focusing his efforts instead on community revitalization projects in New York’s inner cities, and dragging Senate committees to investigate poverty in the Mississippi Delta and farm labor unrest in California among other things.

The year 1968 marked probably the most significant chapter of his life. That year, Lyndon Johnson’s plans to fight poverty had disintegrated under the pressure of fighting Vietnam, an issue that had consumed public dialogue and even sparked domestic terrorism. The cities were burning and blacks were struggling to be made equal Americans. Robert announced his candidacy in the upcoming Presidential election and began a campaign that would take Americans by surprise. He campaigned against the Vietnam War and against military aggression in general. He was a proponent for the rights of minorities. He railed against the poverty in both cities and rural areas of America. With an almost demonic rage, crowds would swarm his campaign cars, trying to touch him and in the process ripping off his cufflinks, taking his shoes, and once, smashing his face against a curb knocking out a tooth. But he thrived off the crowds, struggling against the divisions in America, promising a new day and new age in a time wrenched apart by social and cultural revolution and discord.

While at a campaign stop in Indianapolis in April, RFK learned off the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He was speaking to a largely black, inner-city crowd, to whom he had to break the news. In his impromptu speech from the back of a pickup truck, he quoted the Greek poet Aeschylus. “Even in our sleep, pain which we cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” That awful night, riots broke out in 60 major cities, but not in Indianapolis.

Two months later, Bobby won the California primary, moving from an outside candidate to front-runner alongside Vice President Humphrey. As he left the victory party, a man named Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy and killed him. In the aftermath, the Democratic Party became split and Richard Nixon became President.
I’d like to leave you with a quote from Robert himself that effectively summarizes what he stood for.

“Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Three Cheers for the Founding Fathers and California on President's Day

The State of California has the lowest credit rating of any state.  We have a $42 billion deficit and no budget to ameliorate it.  In fact, we haven't had a budget for four months [Bloomberg.com].  Every Friday, employees of the State go on unpaid leave.  A breakdown in republican democracy?  Hardly.

Sure, none of these things are desirable.  But they do prove the vitality of our democracy.  The deterioration of democratic processes is evidenced not in the budget crisis, but in Congress' acquiescence in the invasion of Iraq, the apparent lack of any desire in Washington to criminally investigate the Bush Administration, and the legions of Obama-fixated citizens content with any and everything Obama is and has been doing.

I'm not at school today because of President's Day, a day for commercial sales, reverence for past Presidents, and for me, doing lots of homework (and sneaking in some blogging).  This tradition concerns me however, because the nature of democracy is that of the rule of law exercised by an elected government, not of the benevolence or good nature of our rulers.  While it's safe to revere dead statesmen (they can't come back and tyrannize us), we must be careful not to give this same reverence to our current politicians, most notably to the Office of the unduly-powerful President of the United States.  No good can come out of faithfully adhering to what public officials tell us we should think.  We can adhere, but only if we've critically examined what they've said and know it's valid.  And even then.  In 2003, the WMDs seemed to be valid.  

Nor should Congress really listen to Obama's pleas that the apocalypse will be upon us if they don't blindly pass the stimulus.  We're in a recession.  Solidly.  And a few days or weeks or a month will not make such a big difference.  The stimulus is not going to bring us out.  Period.  Quote me on it.  Sure it'll help, but the survival of America sure doesn't depend on it.

California's legislative issues are much closer to the precipice and also much more tied up.  For four months they haven't figured out what to do.  Though they are close.  But this is precisely what our Founding Fathers, the men we celebrate today, had in mind.

Why do you think they created "separation of powers" between the three branches of government?  Or the delegation of authority between states and the Federal government?  It surely wasn't to speed things up.  The framers of the Constitution were afraid of the abuses they had just escaped with their Revolution a decade earlier.  So they purposely pitted the government against itself in order to slow it down, make it inefficient, and thus make it harder for the government to become despotic.  

This doesn't mean it can't and won't become despotic.  Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts, slavery, Jim Crow, our domestic Holocaust, Californian eugenics, and torture under Bush.  That's what happens when the American public and press sits on its hands and relies on the well-meaning of our officials.

California's budget problem is not a constitutional crisis.  It's a byproduct of comfortable elected officials (redistricting), a result of the global economic recession, and the legacy of our Founding Fathers.

Obama Watch: Civil Liberties

On May 30, 2007, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of three men against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.  These three men report having been abducted by the CIA, transported secretly and against their will, and tortured while being interrogated.  This government program is called "extraordinary rendition."  Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. is a (San Jose-based) subsidiary of the large aviation and aeronautics corporation Boeing, Inc. 

"Jeppesen's services have been crucial to the functioning of the government's extraordinary rendition program," said Steven Watt, a staff attorney for the ACLU's Human Rights Program. "Without the participation of companies like Jeppesen, the program could not have gotten off the ground."

In September of 2008, the Bush administration threw the case out of court because of issues of national security.  Like that.  With a snap of the fingers, the government decided Jeppesen could not be legally held responsible for participating in torture.  The ACLU appealed and today, Obama's Department of Justice got to decide what to do about the five plaintiffs (two more were added to the original three).

What happened?

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.

No change.

If you want to read about why it's so heinous that Obama is continuing this state secrets privilege, I suggest you read Glenn Greenwald's recent post or watch the video below.

In his Inaugural Speech, one of Obama's most hailed lines was:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our ideals are the upholding of liberty for all people.  We signed the United Nations Convention on Torture which includes the following clause:

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Appalled, I wrote a missive to the Obama Administration asking why they upheld the Bush position and that I was "heartbroken."  You can too.  I'm not sure if it'll help.  But it's our duty as democratic citizens to say something.  Meanwhile... keep hoping. Hope.  Change.  And we'll keep writing.

No Salary Bonuses for Bailed-out Companies

There has been a lot of talk recently about big businesses abusing their bailout funds; people were outraged that, while Americans were being laid off by the thousands, AIG was taking its employees to Southern California for a nice $440,000 corporate retreat. These funds were spent a week after the Federal Reserve extended an $85 billion emergency loan to AIG to keep it from going bankrupt due to insurance liabilities. If AIG was on the brink of going bankrupt, taxpayers argued, shouldn't it have been using its bailout money for something a little more practical?

Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat) seemed to agree with these taxpayers; last Friday she proposed a bill that would limit Wall Street executives who accept TARP funding to be allowed no more than a $400,000 yearly salary, arguing that “You can’t use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses…What planet are these people on?”

And surely one would think that this limit to an annual compensation equal to the president’s is no where near being an unreasonable thing to ask of corporations, yet the bill had some people up in arms. People all over the media were saying that it’s wrong for the government to require that the failing banks not give out bonuses until they pay back the taxpayers for their hundreds of billions in bailout money, arguing these executives are the best at what they do and if the taxpayers don't pay their bonuses, these failing banks will lose their expertise and the economy will suffer.

Really? There’s a correlation between a failing bank losing its expertise--leading to economic suffering--and not allowing its employees to make more money than the president does?
….Does anyone else spy a slippery slope argument here?

A Tale of Two Murders

January 1st and January 20th two murders rocked the Bay Area.  On New Years' Day, Oscar Grant, a black male, was shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. It was captured by numerous people on video and is posted all over the Internet.  On the 20th, Rylan Fuchs, a high schooler was shot by another teen in what has been rumored to be a botched drug deal.  Both murders highly excited our collective emotions and consciousness, the BART shooting because of the nonchalant way Mehserle shot Grant without any appearance of a motive, and the Fuchs shooting because the death of a child or teenager, whether an accident or an act of malice, is always horribly, senselessly tragic.

From the beginning, the public has been in general outrage over the murder of Oscar Grant.  As it was happening, the numerous observers in the video above can be heard reprimanding the police as they handle the detained men roughly and then shoot Grant saying, "Hey, that's fucked up!" among other things.  Protests have turned to riots over the issue, especially when the BART police were slow to act.  Mehserle has since been arrested (in Nevada) and a judge set bail at $3 million, indicating that the judge sees this as murder, not manslaughter as Mehserle's attorney has argued.

Fuchs' murderer is (allegedly) a 15 year-old former San Ramon Valley High School (and Monte Vista) student who was living in a group home for kids in dysfunctional situations.  He is from Alameda County, and from my own personal knowledge, has had run-ins with authority before.

So what's the point?  The parallels between Oscar Grant and Rylan Fuchs?  Both of their murders were recent and in our area.  But furthermore, both were senseless.  Sympathy, in different forms, has poured out for the two.  And in the midst of all this quite righteous emotion, it is easy to demonize the perpetrators.  Johannes Mehserle abused his position of authority and took the life of an innocent man.  He has changed his story to the judge, which the judge then used as justification for setting multimillion dollar bail (see link above).  Fuchs' killer is being denounced as invading our nice suburban world and bringing the drugs and violence of the inner city.  

We have lost two lives with these two killings--irretrievably lost.  And now two more lives are in our legal system's hands.  Mechanisms of government are of, by, and for the people, and so by extension, Mehserle and Fuchs' murderer are in our hands.  We have the option to retaliate.  We also have the option for mercy.  It's doubtful that Mehserle was out on a mission to kill a man.  If he was, he wouldn't have done it in front of a cloud of human and electronic witnesses.  And in Fuchs' murderer's case, he is 15 years old.  And some people are calling for him to be tried as an adult!  His is a life too, a life that has caused great harm, but a life nonetheless.  

When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, Robert Kennedy, then running for President, gave an impromptu speech to a mostly black crowd in Indianapolis.  Quoting the Greek poet Aeschylus, he said, "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."  That night, more than sixty cities burned as riots spread across the country.  But not in Indianapolis.

Wisdom comes slowly and not in the beginning throes of great grief.  We cannot crucify the murderers in the public forum and claim to have retained our humanity and decency.  Loss of life is not repaired by the taking of more.