ARNOLD GETS HIS SCRIPT REWRITTEN

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Last week I commented about Der Governator, that he's only The Hero when the script is written that way. The news is out that there?s a new draft of the movie "Der Governator Reforms California."

This draft of the script has Der Governator's parties being crashed by opponents, forcing Ahnuld The Hero to alter his schedule and duck into his events through the back door, at locations from California to New York City to Washington D.C. He's getting testy with this opposition - A-listers like him aren't supposed to deal with the "below-the-line" folks. (For those not in the know, that?s a Hollywood term for those whose names appear in the credits "below the title", in other words, all the hard workers without whom the movie doesn't get made.)

When he appeared at "21" in New York to meet his $22,300-a-person out-of-state supporters for his "local" reforms here in Kahleeforneeah, Arnold found himself slipping inside through the service entrance while Governor Pataki went in through the front door, to avoid fire-fighters, policemen and nurses yelling "Screw Arnold!" outside.

Inside, San Jose firefighter Jeremy Ray, secretary of Santa Clara Firefighters Local 1171 had reserved a table for dinner. Once there, he slipped in to Big Boy's reception on the floor above and confronted Der Governator over his "reform" of the state retirement system, turning it into a Wall Street-run 401(k) system that the California Attorney General has said will deny pensions to the widows and children of firefighters and policemen who die in the line of duty. According to Ray, "He said 'I'm a friend of the firefighters and would never take anything away from them.' I said 'No, you're not a friend to us, sir. And what you're doing is wrong.'" The NYPD was called to remove the "unruly extra" from Arnold's set. As Ray remembered, "while I was being led away, one of the officers introduced himself and said 'God bless you, brother, we're on the same side. Thanks for doing what you did.'"

When Arnie showed up in Columbus Ohio over the weekend for his Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition, nurses from California marched outside, providing information to passers-by about Der Governator's move to sidestep a state law requiring sufficient hospital nurse staffing to provide proper care for patients.

Arnold isn't used to this. For the past thirty-odd years, he's basked in the adoration of the crowd, whether it was at a Mr. Universe competition, a Hollywood blockbuster opening, or his campaign for Governor in 2003. While speaking before groups who make five-figure individual contributions to sit in the same room with him, he calls the nurses, firefighters and policemen picketing outside "special interests."

Still, 75 of them were waiting for him outside the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., when he arrived for a "business roundtable" with national corporate donors for his "local" reforms. Der Governator's cavalcade drove up to the side of the building where he walked down a flight of stairs to an underground rear entrance. Still, he couldn?t avoid the demonstrators, who crowded around the stairwell chanting "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Schwarzenegger's got to go!!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a "new kind of Republican." He shills for the far right just like any other standard-issue Rightie. He's even been caught with his own "Karen Ryan" scandal. For those with short memories, "Karen Ryan" was the actress portraying a news reporter in the stealth campaign by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote Bush's Medicare prescription drug "reform" that was being hit in the "real" news. Here in California, Der Governator spent $1,262 of the taxpayers' money for a "video news release" that supports his proposal to wipe out mandatory meal breaks for hourly workers. An ex-reporter now working in Arnold's publicity office is heard over professionally-shot "B-roll" footage of men and women at work, saying "Many working Californians can benefit from the proposed regulations because the change provides real-life relief." With the text helpfully provided for the local anchor to open and close with, the unwary viewer might think they were watching an actual "news" report. This past Wednesday, it was revealed the Governor?s office has prepared other "video press releases" on the subject of nurse staffing ratios and public employee retirement. Unlike official press releases, however, neither of these have any statement on them that they come from the office of the Governor, either. What we have is more Republican lies, just like the President's.

The good news is, the California press is beginning to clear their heads of Der Governator's Cubano smokescreen and see him for the right-wing shill he is and always has been. The rest of the country needs to wake up to the truth of Arnold. Speaking to his corporate sponsors at "21", he said "As California goes, so goes the nation." He's right. George Bush?s campaign against Middle America?s greatest asset - Social Security - is only the first wave of a far right attempt to cosset the comfortable and roll back the rights won over the past 70 years by the rest of us who work for a living.

WARD CHURCHILL - THE FAR LEFT FRAUD AND CON ARTIST

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The left needs to back off its knee-jerk defense of the fake 1st Amendment claims and see "Professor" Ward Churchill for the lying, cheating, thieving, morally-corrupt academic and political fraud that he is. This scumball is completely undeserving of the support he's been getting of late from people who should know better.

Let's start with the fact that Ward Churchill is about as much of a "Native American" as I am. Which is: Not Any At All. Churchill has been denounced as an impostor for close to 30 years now for his claim of being "Native American." He began by saying he was a Creek, but when the Creek Nation said they'd never heard of him, he changed that claim to being Keetoowah Cherokee. The Tribal Council of the Keetoowah Cherokee say none of the Cherokee ancestors he lists ever existed. Carol Standing Elk, head of the American Indian Movement of Northern California has said, "We have told the University of Colorado he is not an Indian and he should not be out there indicting Indian people."

That last point is a reference to Churchill's campaign against the "racist" tribal membership rules that prevent his making up his ethnic background without question. Churchill also finds it "racist" that a "Native American artist" has to be able to prove actual membership in a tribe in order to sell their work as Native American art, since he made a good living before that selling his "art." Nowadays, he just commits art fraud by passing off copies of the original work of artists like the late Thomas Mails as his own.

All this leads to the first point of Ward Churchill's career of continuing Academic Fraud.

Churchill has promulgated in his "writing" the lie that the "1/16 Rule" of tribal membership was forced on Native Americans by the U.S. Government when they passed the law breaking up tribal reservations into 160-acre individual parcels in 1887. In fact, there is nothing in the law that defines how one is to be defined as a tribal member, this rule being left to the individual tribes. The rules are "racist" because they prevent Churchill living out his fantasies.

Beyond playing fast and loose with historical fact on this point, Churchill has also promulgated the fraudulent "history" of the U.S. Army's "genocide of the Mandans" in 1837, in which he claims the Army provided blankets infected with smallpox, which he then claims killed a quarter-million Mandans in a government-planned act of genocide. Churchill's "academic citation" of these "facts" is the work of UCLA professor Russell Thornton (who really is a for-real Native American historian). Thornton's own account is completely different from Churchill's ravings and makes no mention of the Army whatsoever. When he was asked about this, Professor Thornton said "If Ward Churchill is citing my work as supporting his, then he has no support at all for what he says."

In other words, folks, Ward Churchill just makes this shit up as he goes along.

The fact Churchill has the position he does at the University of Colorado is further proof of the complete corruption of "the Academy" in the past 30 years. When he applied to CU in 1978 for a position tutoring minority students, he checked off "Native American" on his employment application and Federal affirmative action forms - something that was never verified, but with which he then managed to create an entire career. In 1991, he beat out several actual Native American applicants for a position at the university, teaching Native American Studies despite the fact that two of his competitors held Doctorates in the subject while his academic background is a Master’s Degree in "Communications."

Later that year, the faculty of the CU Communications Department was informed by their incoming chairman Michael Pacanowsky that Ward Churchill had been offered a full professorship at California State University Northridge and that they had to decide whether Churchill should receive tenure in the Communications Department after he was turned down by the Sociology and Political Science Departments. Pacanowsky said that hiring Churchill would be "making a contribution to increasing the cultural diversity on campus." Despite his lack of academic credentials, Churchill was given tenure in the name of academic political correctness.

In fact, no such offer had been made. John Chandler, spokesman for California State University Northridge, has stated "We have full records from that time and we cannot find any evidence of a hiring offer ever being made to Ward Churchill."

So, this scumball's a liar as well as an academic fraud from beginning to end.

He's also a liar and a fraud in the rest of his so-called "resume." What particularly pisses me off is his bullshit claim to be a "Vietnam combat veteran." If all those who claim this status really were, we’d likely have won that war. The truth is - of 1,500,000 who served in Vietnam - maybe 175,000 actually were "Vietnam combat veterans." That's because in the American armed forces at that time, for every grunt in the boonies there were nine others in "support." According to the US Army's records, PFC Churchill did his year in-country as a "light vehicle driver." In other words, he drove a jeep. Back in the rear, with the gear. There was a term for those guys back then: REMF - which stands for "Rear Echelon Mother F---er."

To me, what completely demonstrates his total unreliability is his claim to have come home from the war, become an organizer for Students for a Democratic Society, and to have joined The Weatherman Faction, who he taught to make bombs. I was in SDS back in the days of the scumbag Weathermen, a bunch of upper class radical-leftist morons who should have all died unlamented in the Townhouse explosion in 1970. I personally still hope that "Professor" Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn "get theirs" one of these days for their crimes against the antiwar movement and the left back then.

These people like Ward Churchill made our work harder back then, and they still do so. They weren't worthy of support 35 years ago, and they still aren't today. Unless you think a lying, conniving, thief and third-rate fraudulent con artist is someone you want on your side.

COME TOGETHER, RIGHT NOW, OVER THIS
by
Ryan Oddey

It is rare when a situation arises involving politics that people from both sides of the aisle agree on. In spite of that, I believe that the upcoming situation involving Election Law and how it relates to the Internet will be a cause in which many bloggers from all walks of life will find themselves on the same side. The reason for this rare showing of unity has less to do with politics and more to do with something we all cherish: Freedom.

A Recent Interview by Brad Smith has caused some in the Blogging world to become concerned about the future of the internet. Smith, who is one of the six commissioners on the Federal Elections Commission, has decided that a controversial court decision made in 2002 regarding campaign finance law should be applied to the internet.

The law that was adopted in 2002 pretty much put a limit on media (TV, Radio, Mailing Lists, etc) that is done in conjunction with Political Campaigns. At the time this law was adopted, the FEC voted to 4-2 to exclude the internet from this new form of regulation. However, last Fall U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kelley ruled that the FEC's decision to exclude the internet from these regulations severely undermines the intent of the campaign finance law.

So, now that Kollar-Kelley has made that ruling, lets examine some of the changes Brad Smith has talked about. Smith wants to assign a value to links on personal pages that direct someone towards a politician. He feels that this is important, because if an individual has already contributed the legal maximum amount to a campaign their website would be in violation of campaign finance law.

You may be wondering just how much a website is worth, well, Smith has a plan for calculating that too. Smith says "Design fees, that sort of thing." Granted, I can not totally critique Smith's plan because I do not know the specifics of "that sort of thing" but I do understand a thing about design fees. However, I pose this question, what if you designed your own site, or the site was designed for free?

As for the individual links that bring you to a politicians website, Smith plans on that being quite expensive when he uses the following logic. Consider this:

"Corporations aren't allowed to donate to campaigns. Suppose a corporation devotes 20 minutes of a secretary's time and $30 in postage to sending out letters for an executive. As a result, the campaign raises $35,000. Do we value the violation on the amount of corporate resources actually spent, maybe $40, or the $35,000 actually raised? The commission has usually taken the view that we value it by the amount raised. It's still going to be difficult to value the link, but the value of the link will go up very quickly."

Ok, so how about instead of using a link, we just post website addresses. Should the viewer of the website wish to view any of the web addresses posted, they will need to put the web address into their web browser on their own.

You see, Smith thinks that the judges decision means this:


"The judge's decision is in no way limited to ads. She says that any coordinated activity over the Internet would need to be regulated, as a minimum. The problem with coordinated activity over the Internet is that it will strike, as a minimum, Internet reporting services." So a fine start up website such as www.ThatsAnotherFineMess.com would fall under this category since we read the news and report what we feel is useful information.

We have hope, because the internet currently falls under the press exemption. However, the debate over whether or not the internet should fall under the press exemption is approaching the foreground of this debate.

I believe that the internet is the most open form of media. Average citizens, such as myself and countless others, do not have the pull to have our own section in a news paper or our own talk show on a cable news network. However, we do have the resources to go online and find a way to post our political opinions. Some of us own a website, some of us contribute to a website, while others find a forum where they can engage in political debate. The internet opens people up to a wide range of opinions that they would otherwise not hear. Why are people like Bradley Smith so intent on undoing a good thing?

Yes, both parties take advantage of the internet loophole, but if that is the worst thing that happens I think it should be allowed so average citizens continue to have access to view and voice different opinions. If Smith is able to regulate the internet he will silence countless voices that are a valuable part of the blogging community and the political scene at large.

It does not matter if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or anything else, limiting free speech on the internet, which is what Brad Smith is trying to do, is totally and completely nightmarish. We can't all own a newspaper company, we can't all own a television station, but so many of us own a computer. The internet gives us the forum to spout of our ideals and engage in the discussions that we so cherish. It must be protected.

Let us not forget that the United States does not own the internet. Yes, the government can monitor campaign donations from abroad, but how is someone like Brad Smith going to tell some person in France that they have to shut down their website because it is in violation of United States Election law simply because it has a link to a certain candidate? What is your plan to do when that person in France tells you to buzz off because you don't own the internet? Do you censor him? Do you block American access to all foreign based web sites that contain information about political candidates?

Hmmm, a country that censors all websites based in foreign nations that contain any political information...I've heard of this before.......oh yeah, China, Cuba, North Korea. We won the Cold War Mr. Smith, why must we follow the lead of Communist Nations?

This is a serious problem, and it is perhaps the one thing that most bloggers can agree on. It does not matter what side of the aisle you sit on, I am willing to bet you want to keep the internet free so we can all continue to post our rants, opinions, and any other important information we feel like sharing. With so many of us using the internet to raise public awareness about the issues and share our differing opinions I only have one final question for Brad Smith.

WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM?

SOCIAL SECURITY: THE DILEMMA OF THE WORKING MASSES

By: Dallas Foster


The President wants to change Social Security now while he is in the Oval Office so that he will not be considered a "lame duck" President like many others before him in history. President Bush wants this as his legacy as it was for Roosevelt's Presidency during the Great Depression. He feels that if he were to "fix" Social Security, he will go down in history as a great President and not the man who touched of a deadly war because of bad intelligence.

But what he is telling us is a lie or at least a half truth. He claims that "One way for a younger worker to come closer to what the government has promised is to be able to take a portion of the money and get a better rate of return on your own money than that which the Social Security system gets." But that's only true if you make more than a 3% return on your investment that you make with the 4 points that the President wants to give you. If you make lower than the 3% that Social Security makes, than you are worse off than if they just lowered your benefits in the first place. Also, he never explicitly says that there is a risk; he tells everyone to be conservative with their stocks and bonds and not to take their money to the track. But the fact is that all stocks experience a loss over a period of time, while Social Security does not experience a loss in value.

He also claims that "It's your money, and the interest off that money goes to supplement the Social Security check that you're going to get from the federal government. Personal accounts are an add-on to that which the government is going to pay you. It doesn't replace the Social Security system. It is a part of getting a better rate of return to come closer to the promises made." But this implies that the check you will receive under the new plan will be the same as it is with the current system and that the investment is an extra add-on to this money. But its not, it's a replacement for the money the government will need to keep the program up and running. So again, you could receive less than you would if we stay under the current plan and fixed it to work as needed.

Another false claim is that "You can pass that money [from a private account] to whomever you want." But again that is an untruth. What is really going to happen is this, under Bush's proposal a portion will be set aside by the government as an annuity and can only be paid to the tax payer it belongs to and can not be inherited by others. But the other portion is able to be given away as the taxpayer sees fit. So if this is our money why can't we give all of it away to our children or other loved ones when we pass? It is so that the government can use that unused part of your annuity to help Social Security to keep going. So again, not all the truth is coming out of our leader's mouth.

The next false statement about the new Social Security plan is that there is an $11 trillion dollar deficit. The President said: "If we don't act, we're looking at about an $11 trillion hole for the American taxpayer coming up. This is a big liability not for me or baby boomers ... but if you're a young worker, you've got a problem." The President incorrectly suggests that younger workers will have to deal with this shortfall if the program continues on its wayward course. This $11 trillion number according to the Board of Trustees report is over an "infinite" about a time not over the next 75 years that number is more like 3.75 trillion. So why all the lies about how much trouble Social Security is really in? Because the President is looking out for his own legacy and not what is good for the people that elected him.

So beware of all the false statements on Social Security and let's tell the President what we think of his cockamamie plan.

SAY GOOD-BYE TO YOUR DAY IN COURT - PART 2

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Note: You can read part 1 of Say Good-Bye to Your Day In Court By Clicking here.

Now that the Republicans have eviscerated your right to pursue a legal claim against a corporation for wrongdoing by use of class action lawsuits in state courts, the President is aiming his sights at curbing "frivolous" medical malpractice lawsuits.

I think the best overall comment on the President and the policies he announced in the State of the Union speech was made by Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council at his Bullmoose Blog
"Unfortunately, the President will offer a domestic program in his State of the Union address that will serve the narrow and partisan agenda of the Republican Party to comfort the comfortable and crush the domestic opposition. This President is completely incapable of a politics of national unity or greatness even amidst a long twilight struggle against our terrorist foes. The donor class must come first."

While many might think that the war in Iraq or the struggle over Social Security are the over-riding issues progressives need to take on, one that will have a far wider, far more thorough effect in changing life in America is what the President disingenuously calls "tort reform."

Bush is depending on the American people's general ignorance of what goes on in the public life of this country in order to bring this about - in the same way he depended on the general ignorance of foreign affairs by most Americans to turn the War On Terrorism into the War in Iraq. With all the anti-lawyer jokes that abound, and thirty years of right wing propaganda against "ambulance chasers," it just might work.

For the past fifty years, as the definition of actionable torts was reformed and expanded, the American civil justice system became the last and best line of defense for the average citizen against the abuse of corporate power and government policies that fail to protect the citizens they claim to be doing. When the courts began to allow class action lawsuits under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, more progress for society came into real day-to-day effect than had happened in the previous century.

Class action litigation forced the Veteran's Administration and the Congress to address the issue of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam for veterans and their offspring suffering from the effects of dioxin exposure when the government claimed there was no such problem.

Class action litigation formed the basis of the civil rights movement that finally ended segregation and promoted the equal protection and treatment of women and minorities from their previous status as victims of allowable discrimination.

Class action litigation forced the American automobile industry to start producing safer cars.

Class action litigation brought the tobacco industry to its knees.

When one looks at that list, it's no wonder the Republican Party wanted to change the rules regarding class action lawsuits. Their "reform" - designed, they said, to prevent "frivolous lawsuits" from being instituted in jurisdictions that are "too friendly to plaintiffs" - was to federalize almost all class actions so that the already-overburdened federal courts would be the only forum.

It's no surprise that the interests supporting these "reforms" include the insurance industry.

I don't know about you, but my definition of "reform" doesn't include proposals that make things worse. I once endured five years of attempting to obtain redress from an insurance company that tried everything they could to destroy my credibility as to whether I had any injury to be compensated for, probably spending four times as much doing this as they would have paid out with just compensation for demonstrated losses, and finally made it clear they would never accept a final judgement within my lifetime, with the result they were able to settle for about ten cents on the dollar after they exhausted me.

The President is set to make his case to rein in "frivolous" medical malpractice lawsuits that result in millions of dollars of losses to doctors. As with his assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, this lie doesn't stand up under the light of day either.

There is no "malpractice crisis." The "crisis" the President is riding in to rescue is the crisis created by the pinstriped pimps of the insurance industry, whose brilliance and "business acumen" resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in investment losses on the stock market (that wonderful place he wants to have you play in to create your retirement "nest egg."

A friend of mine - a "good conservative" (lifetime NRA member) Republican lawyer with 20 years' experience in tort litigation - recently pointed out some home truths about the "malpractice crisis." As he said, "The claims from the insurance companies that the payments are killing them are FALSE. But many are willing to believe them without proof. The insurance companies complain they have to raise premiums due to the litigious nature of our society. I don't believe that is true. The last time we went through this, in the 80's, the insurance companies had taken a bath in the real estate market. We're going through it now because they took a bath recently in their stock investments. All you have to do is look at their payouts relative to their income. For 2003 - the last year numbers are available - claim payments of medical malpractice suits were 1.5 percent of their gross budgets. They publicize rare and unusual cases as the norm, and folks believe it's true. "

He went on to say, "I have not seen one shred of empirical evidence that supports the insurance companies' position that their recent punitive premium increases are due to monetary judgments. In fact, there is substantial evidence that the insurance companies scream this mantra when their investments go sour. The last time we heard the insurance companies claiming they had to raise premiums due to legal judgments was in the 1980's. After Congress researched the issue, they concluded that the insurance companies' real problem was they had lost a bundle of money in the real estate market. The insurance companies go berserk when their investments tank. And their favorite scapegoat is the courts. If you know anything about insurance companies then you know their accounting practices are nothing short of bizarre when compared to other businesses. It is the only industry I know of that can enjoy substantial growth and claim a loss."

President Bush has been called the most partisan President in recent history. I personally think he can win the title hands down for all 43 presidencies in the country?s history. As Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris pointed out in the Washington Post on January 30, "... a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say... legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party." They go on to say, "What is notable about the Bush White House, some analysts believe, is the extent to which its agenda is crafted with an eye toward the long-term partisan implications."

John D. Podesta, who was chief of staff to President Clinton and is now President of the Center for American Progress, has said, "I think that most of their domestic agenda is driven and run by a political strategy as much as core fundamentals and belief. Why would you make this (a curb on lawsuits) the cause celebre? The notion that this is a key element of their economic program is laughable. It's important to them in both directions both in organizing core elements of their business and doctor communities, and at least undermining a financial base of the Democratic Party."

If you really want to know why George W. Bush is promoting the "legal crisis" the way he promoted the "Iraq WMD crisis," here is the reason: during the 2004 electoral cycle, lawyers gave Democrats $107.3 million according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and $39 million to Republicans. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America gave a total of $2.4 million, and 92 percent went to Democrats. Baron and Budd, a trial lawyer firm based in Dallas, gave 98 percent its $1.1 million in contributions to Democrats.

Looking at the President's campaigns for "domestic reform" - Social Security, class action lawsuits, medical malpractice claims - it's hard not to think of what H.L. Mencken had to say about American politics 80 years ago:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Bush crying "crisis" is like the little boy crying "wolf." There were no WMDs in Iraq, there is no Social Security crisis, and there is no medical malpractice crisis. All these "crises" are entirely of the President's own making.

SAY GOOD-BYE TO YOUR DAY IN COURT - PART 1

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

On the day he signed legislation protecting his corporate sponsors from the threat of class action lawsuits to bring their excesses and crimes to account, President Bush went on to say that his next goal is to limit further litigation over the issue of asbestos. He claimed that 70 companies had been forced into bankruptcy with the loss of more than 10,000 jobs, all to pay $70 billion in claims by plaintiffs, "many of whom weren't even sick." In the President's view, the legal system is being misused by these "frivolous asbestos claims," which are holding back the economy.

In the same week, Senate Majority Leader and serial kitten killer Bill Frist made the claim on the Senate floor that one of those 70 companies - the W.R. Grace Company - was "a reputable company driven unfairly into bankruptcy."

As usual, both the President and his Senate Majority Leader are lying about an important issue, one that has severely affected many people who likely voted for George W. Bush.

The case of the W.R. Grace Company is of more than passing interest, since it represents the worst aspects of both the problem of asbestos contamination, and the contamination caused by Republican political intervention in the cases. It is no coincidence that the President and the Majority Leader would mention the company by name, since this case personally involves the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. In 1995, while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he made an executive decision to acquire the W.R. Grace Company, without doing the due diligence necessary to easily discover the asbestos liability claims the company faced (sort of reminds you of the way he led the charge into Iraq without accurate information, doesn't it?).

While the President and the Senate Majority Leader were claiming W.R. Grace company had been unfairly driven into bankruptcy, the Grand Jury in Missoula, Montana, had two weeks earlier brought felony indictments against seven former and current top W.R. Grace executives for having knowingly put their workers and the public across the entire United States in danger with their mining activities in Libby, Montana, over the past 50 years.

Here's a little background:

W.R. Grace Co. mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in Libby, Montana since the late 1940s. For those who don't know what this is, vermiculite is a substance that is widely used in home heating insulation and floor tiles used in kitchens across the country. The result of the contamination was that hundreds of the company's employees have died over the years of asbestos disease, along with many residents of the town of Libby who never worked in the mine but were exposed to asbestos fibers in windswept dust coming from the mine.

The executives of W.R. Grace not only knew from the beginning the hazards of asbestos and did nothing about it, but they also committed outrageous and reckless misconduct in the course of the asbestos litigation over the past twenty years, which resulted in the company receiving punitive damages by the jury hearing the cases. It was this punishment for deliberate, demonstrated, proven illegal, outrageous and reckless behavior that drove the company into bankruptcy and may yet put Halliburton - and Dick Cheney's personal fortune, which stems from his time at the Halliburton helm - at risk of being held corporately responsible for the crimes committed by Grace.

As it happens, the economic ripples of this case extend far beyond Dick Cheney's billfold. Over the years, 700 mills nationwide have processed millions of tons of the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mined by W.R. Grace, and government experts believe it highly likely that most of these mills have released hazardous levels of asbestos dust into the environment. It is estimated that 35 million American homes have Zonolite insulation in them, a W.R. Grace product manufactured from the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite.

When the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to issue a warning about Zonolite in 2001, it was rejected by the Bush Administration's Office of Management and Budget as an "onerous regulation" of the housing industry.

When the World Trade Center towers fell, they released a toxic cloud that included hundreds of tons of asbestos insulation and thousands of tons of asbestos-containing floor tiles, made from the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mined by W.R. Grace. When the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to alert the residents of lower Manhattan to the health hazard, the agency was overruled by the Council on Environmental Quality, which wished to avoid any action that might slow the reopening of Wall Street. Instead, that good Republican "moderate" Christie Whitman stated publicly that the air in lower Manhattan was "safe to breathe." Her claim was later disputed by the EPA's Inspector General. In the three years since 9/11, medical authorities have found that 60 percent of those who worked at Ground Zero have developed persistent upper and lower respiratory tract symptoms associated with asbestos disease. Many of the firefighters, police, and other first responders who toiled in the ruins have been forced into early retirement for medical reasons as a result of this toxic contamination.

Asbestos disease was first tracked in the early 1960s, when Dr. Irving J. Selikoff's pioneering studies demonstrated the threat of asbestos insulation and the spread of the disease in workers employed in installing such insulation. He then demonstrated that asbestos disease was striking less-exposed workers who worked with the insulators in shipyards and building construction sites. Other investigators discovered the spread of the disease among wives and children of those who worked with asbestos, who were dying as a result of exposure to the asbestos fibers and dust carried home by their husbands and fathers on their clothes.

Beginning in the 1970s and through the 1980s, product liability class action lawsuits were brought against the manufacturers of asbestos insulation. Most of these plaintiffs were able to prove that the asbestos manufacturers had not only known that asbestos could cause fatal lung disease since at least the late 1940s, but had withheld this information from their employees. With that knowledge, thousands of other suits have been brought by construction workers, factory workers, refinery workers, brake mechanics and other workers who have either developed asbestos disease or whose chest X-rays show evidence of lung damage caused by their exposure.

Asbestos diseases include asbestosis, a scarring of the lung tissue, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, which is an always-fatal tumor.

Millions of homes, office buildings and factories throughout the country still contain significant amounts of asbestos insulation. This means that whenever these structures are renovated or demolished, there is a definite possibility of continuing asbestos contamination of the local environment with the release of asbestos fibers. Asbestos disease will be responsible for the disability and death of people for most of the rest of the 21st century. The Environmental Working Group estimates that 10,000 people will die of asbestos disease in the next 20 years.

This isn't some "crisis" brought about by ambulance-chasing tort lawyers who successfully shopped around for jurisdictions where they could win big. Just like his attempt to point to a "crisis" in Social Security, the President's claims that a public health crisis should be seen as a crisis of "frivolous lawsuits" is as big a lie as his claim that he went to war in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction.

The Republicans and their corporate supporters want to create a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund to satisfy all asbestos claims present and future, in return for those so compensated waiving their right to a jury trial on their claim. The figure of $140 billion was not arrived at through any attempt to quantify how many people might develop asbestos disease and submit claims, or how much compensation they deserved. The figure came from the Republicans in Congress asking the asbestos industry and its insurers how much they would be willing to pay to eliminate their liability. Anyone who has had the slightest experience suing an insurance company for a car accident knows they always settle short. The figure of $140 billion is - at best - perhaps half of what would be fair and just compensation. Since no one knows how many people will bring claims, there is no assurance the trust fund has any hope of remaining solvent.

As usual, Bush wants to cosset the comfortable, extending assistance to companies that behaved with proven criminal negligence in failing to notify their employees and customers of the known dangers of the product they were selling, while selling out the millions of workers and their families - many of whom likely voted him into office.

No wonder the Republicans are worried about "frivolous asbestos claims." In the newspeak of the GOP, "frivolous claims means anything that threatens their bank accounts.

Note: This is Part I in a two piece series, you can find Part II in next weeks edition of "This Week's Mess"

THE FORGOTTEN RACE

By: Xaivier Martin

Watching TV during the month of February, I was both pleased and disappointed by what I saw. Many cable channels like ESPN, MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon's "TV Land" chose different ways to pay homage to those African-Americans who have had a profound effect on our society. As important as these people who graced my screen may have been, they all have something in common, other than being Black. They all affected the world of sports & entertainment.

I recognize African-Americans have made some of their greatest advancements through athletics and entertainment. Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby breaking baseball's color barrier in the National and American Leagues, respectively. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, using the 1968 Olympics to bring world attention to the poor conditions of Blacks in the U.S. Music legends like Jelly-Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald helped bring African-Americans to the forefront of art and culture both here and abroad.

Still, the fact that in the 21st century we as Blacks can't move past recognition for contributions in sports and entertainment is a sad reality. I remember as a child seeing tributes to George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Frederick Douglass, Barbara Jordan, Sojourner Truth, Phillis Weatley and Harriet Tubman, to name a few. Granted, I didn't understand their importance at the time, but I knew the names and eventually I asked about them and discovered the tremendous roles they played in our country's and my people's history.

All this reflection made me think about where the state of African-Americans ranks among the country's priorities and where it ranks among the Democratic Party's priorities.

Somewhere around 2020 - depending who you ask - minorities will become the majority in these United States. Of those grouped in the minority, Latinos will be the dominant race/ethnicity by numbers. People of color are not foolish enough to believe there will be a sudden paradigm shift of power just because our numbers may increase. Numbers are great, but anyone who has a clue knows the direction of our country is decided at the top.

Despite the strides made by the U.S. in expanding equality and opportunity, most of the people at the top are still melanoma-deficient. In response to this impending demographic change, the last five years have seen a greater emphasis on issues that affect Latino-Americans such as immigration, identification/documentation and bilingual education.

Events like 9-11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom have brought about a greater emphasis on issues of defense, intelligence and privacy. The state of Massachusetts' controversial decision concerning same-sex marriages has brought issues involving homosexuality and the definition of marriage to the forefront. Republican sweeps in 2000 and 2004 have given the Christian Right and such leaders as Pat Robertson even more clout than in the '80s, allowing them to bring out golden oldies like school prayer and abortion. Not one issue relating to the welfare of Blacks outside of Bush's attack on Social Security is being discussed on the national stage.

It used to be that during the month of February one could expect to be inundated with gestures, proclamations and declarations from elected officials all over the nation. February used to be a month where a general "state of the race" assessment would be taken for African-Americans. Now, many of the requests and complaints made by Black leaders were often explained away or denied, but at least there was an opportunity to be heard.

In the latest contest for the Democratic National Committee Chairmanship; there was but one African-American candidate, former Dallas mayor and failed senator candidate Ron Kirk. Kirk's bid ended before it began and one of the most powerful Blacks in the Democratic Party is freshman Senator Barack Obama (IL), a captivating speaker and rising star, but far from having the power to make any significant change.

Obama is only the third African-American to be elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction and only the fifth in this nation's history - the first two being Republican Reconstructionists from Mississippi. The first Black Vice Presidential candidate would have come from the Republican Party, but Colin Powell - in what is probably one of the smartest moves he has made - decided against it.

African-American voters have been a consistent and strong base for the Democratic Party since the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement fifty years ago. Yet one could argue that the African-American voter has made more progress towards gaining positions of influence and power in the nation-at-large than it has in the party he or she supports year in and year out.

High School Drop-Out rates continue to climb, and of those who are able to graduate and get into college, an alarming 41 percent have to take remedial classes to make up for a lack of basic skills. Prisons continue to teem with Black men and women, most of whom are there on marijuana possession charges. With public schools getting worse, things will just get more crowded.

A disproportionate percentage of Blacks continue to make up the working poor or the impoverished. Affirmative Action continues to get attacked in favor of "merit programs" like the "10 Percent Program" in Texas that allows any high school senior who is in the top 10 percent of their class admission to any state college of their choice. At first, the merit before race argument makes sense, but when one considers the lack of educational opportunities for the average African-American student as compared to the average White student, the failure of "merit based" programs to address issues of inequity comes a bit more into focus.

I am not dense or insensitive to the plethora of issues facing our nation and its people, but this country's ever-so-subtle shift in issues of national concern is quite troubling. Even more so is the Democratic Party's failure to keep issues that directly concern Black America either in or somewhere around the national discussion. Still, the most troubling thing for me is that more African-Americans have not brought attention to their own race's lack of attention. Until then I guess I'll just have to comfort myself with a viewing of Ken Burn's Jazz series or another 15 second Black History Month tribute on TV next year.

DO THE RIGHT THING

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who - in a time of great moral crisis - preserve their neutrality."
-Dante, "The Divine Comedy"

I began writing this column on the day that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there was nothing unconstitutional to a revision of the Canadian marriage law to allow "marriage between any two persons," and a bit more than a week since the Supreme Court of the United States refused to overrule the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court of a year ago, in which that Court found the Constitution of the State of Massachusetts in opposition to the laws governing marriage in that Commonwealth, thereby legalizing "gay marriage."

Since then, Canada has gone on to offer a national law legalizing gay marriage, presented to the Canadian parliament by a Prime Minister who is a practicing Catholic, who says he considers it a defense of religion, not to impose the particular beliefs of any specific religion on a secular society. And people wonder why I have called Canada "the civilized sector of North America" for the past thirty years.

After riding to victory on his claim of defending marriage by proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Bush seemed to backtrack after the election - as Republicans always do - by saying there was little likelihood the Senate would approve such an amendment unless the Supreme Court were to hold the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. His fundamentalist supporters - who hold themselves responsible for his victory and thereby due their pound of flesh - rose up in holy wrath over that, with the result that in the State of the Union speech, Bush stated, "Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage."

Thus, as any number of observers have stated, this has become an issue that is not going away, like it or not.

I will admit to the fact that, a year ago when Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco turned this issue into a national political crisis by issuing marriage licenses for gay couples, my reaction was "Oh God! Not this! Not now!" My reaction was purely pragmatic, as I looked forward in 2004 to a political struggle for the Presidency in which the deck was sufficiently stacked against the Democratic nominee that we didn't need to chain an anvil around our neck and then attempt to fly.

I am of an age that I can remember - as a teenager in Denver, Colorado - having friends tell me they were going out to "get some faggots" on a Saturday night, and asking me if I wanted to come along for the fun. I am glad to say that I didn't go, but I don't think it was from any grand awareness of moral authority and a personal decision not to commit what wasn't at the time a crime (or at least not a crime where the victim was likely to report his attackers to the authorities). The truth was, I didn't like fighting; but I didn't think at the time that the plan was anything abnormal, and didn't think badly of my friends for the fact they would want do such a thing. In fact, a bit over a year later, I found myself, as a young sailor in San Francisco, agreeing to go along with a friend in a scheme in mug the man who would attempt to pick us up in his car as we walked along Mission Street back to the East Bay Terminal - our justification for this being that sailors in those days weren't paid enough money to get through the month and we needed the money. As it turned out, I ended up as the one in the front seat, and I choked in the clutch, as it were. Perhaps my subconscious was more of a liberal on the topic than I was at the time.

After I got out of the Navy, I ended up living in San Francisco for about ten years, and - as will happen to anyone living there - I ended up with gay friends, people I really liked for their creativity, their wit, their awareness, and their just plain general likeability - not to mention they introduced me to the wonders of a well-cooked meal (having grown up the son of a mother who - on her last day on earth - could burn water). I remember as if it was yesterday the time 35 years ago, when friends I already knew were gay felt compelled to tell me this fact about themselves, as a result of an event now known to history as "The Stonewall Riots." Those of you too young to have been aware of the world around you (in other words, anyone under about 50 or so) cannot have the slightest understanding of the significance of that event. Gays, the group everyone - no matter their politics - could hate and discriminate against with no negative reaction, had stood up for their rights of who they were, and had won at least respect, if not acceptance. It was liberating for my friends, and it was liberating for me, too, not to have to say to my wife, "so-and-so has to be gay, it's the only explanation for this and that of the way they are," for us to both agree on the analysis, and to then never mention our knowledge of that fact to our friend. I well remember the first weekend we spent with an "out" gay couple, long-time friends of ours who we had never spoken to of our knowledge of them, scuffling through the leaves in a green-tunnel street in East Sacramento, just talking like friends, not having to say anything, everyone knowing everything and thinking nothing of it.

The Eighties were a killer. Literally. I lost five friends to "gay cancer" and to the other "syndromes" it got called before the plague became known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I remember getting drunk at the local writer's watering hole in 1986 with a fellow writer - who felt the need to tell me what I had already figured out about him a couple years previous - so that he could tell me (as the only person he knew who had lost friends in difficult circumstances, mine having been lost in a war), how awful it was to go to funerals of good friends who had been healthy, wonderful, creative, young men only weeks before they died a wasted near-skeleton.

But still, when it came to standing up and being counted when doing so would make achievement of a long-sought goal even more difficult than it already was - even after all the history outlined above - my reaction to the possibility of gay marriage rights becoming a reality was "Oh God! Not this! Not now!"

And then...

I didn't go to the 40th reunion of my high school graduating class, for all of the good reasons I didn?t go to the 10th, 20th, 25th, or 30th reunions. For me in high school, the best day was the day they opened the cage and the bird flew free; 72 hours later I was on an airplane headed for California and the Navy - the poor boy's ticket out of town - and I never looked back.

But my good friend from childhood - a guy I knew from Kindergarten to 12th grade, the way boys know their friends - did go to that 40th reunion. He came with his partner, a man he has lived with for three times longer than I have ever managed in two marriages and two Committed Relationships combined. I was definitely as surprised as everyone else who e-mailed me the information, and as unsurprised as all of us who had been his friends were when we thought about him and our friendship for maybe 20 micro-nanoseconds. It was like taking a picture - you fiddle with the focus, and then you "get it" and everything is sharper than sharp. Everything I remembered about my friend "made sense" with that knowledge.

I got back in touch, to tell him how brave I thought it was, what he had done, and with the people he had done it with. I don't know about you, but my definition of a Really Close Friend is someone you haven't talked to in a really long time who - when you finally do - it's like the last time you talked was yesterday. Well, my childhood friend is a Really Close Friend.

Over the past year, I have heard the Defenders of Marriage say that this most important event must be the union only of a man and a woman, solely for the purpose of propagating the species. So what does that make of my relationship? She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are both far past the age of propagation; in fact, the main reason both of us have been able to come up with for making the relationship official is our desire to have someone we trusted have the power to make medical decisions for each other, depending on the circumstances, so that we don't die alone with idiots keeping us around past our time because of their fear of a nonexistent malpractice suit. According to the Defenders of Values, our relationship is as worthless as that of my oldest friend, the difference being that SWMBO and I can marry, with our decision unquestioned by anyone, and yet my oldest friend and a partner he trusts more than we trust each other cannot. What crap!

What does all this have to do with politics? Over all the time I have been involved in politics, I have found that not only was Tip O'Neill right when he said "all politics are local," he would have been even more right had he said "all politics are personal." Who we are, who we believe we are, has everything to do with the political choices we make.

I still wish this wasn't a fight we had to make now - not against this enemy, not in this situation. But my great-great-grandfather didn't have a lot of choice when he and his fellow soldiers had to save the Union on the crest of Little Round Top at Gettysburg on his 16th birthday, and yet they made that choice - hard as it was - and we live in the world that was created as a result.

I think of Grover Hall, the editor of the "Montgomery Advertiser" - a man I was fortunate to meet at the end of his life when I was researching another historical event he'd been involved in - who went on at length about how Martin Luther King's Montgomery Bus Boycott didn't come at a "convenient time" for him and the paper, yet he went on as the Editor to state publicly what he had come to know about race relations in the South as a reporter whose first assignment had been to cover the trial of the Scottsboro Boys because he knew that - however inconvenient the event was - he had to make "the right choice" this time, regardless of the difficulties so doing would involve. He won a Pulitzer for his decision. His name isn't in the Pantheon of Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, but it should be.

Stepping up to "do the right thing" is never convenient. If it was, no one of us would honor those who do so. It always comes at a moment when one would rather be doing anything else. To choose to "do the right thing" is a test, a test of our humanity. I don't believe in God in any traditional sense (I agree with Rabbi Maimonides that "to understand the universe is to know god"), but I do believe that those moments when one is forced to make a decision one way or the other are the moments which define us as who we are.

So who am I to say that my best friend from childhood, who has been far more successful at maintaining a committed loving relationship than I have been with all of society's mores and laws on my side, is wrong, that his existence is a threat to Life As We Know It, that he is someone whose freedom to be is somehow unworthy of my deciding to "do the right thing" and support him?

THE MYTH AND REALITY OF ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

I first saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in action 21 years ago. As an aspiring screenwriter, I had figured out that writing about the movies was a way to be around the movies, and a damn good way to learn about making them from an otherwise-unobtainable perspective. That summer of 1984, an actor friend told me he was working on "The Terminator" with a genius director and an original scripts - it would be worth my time to write about it.

"Starlog" magazine set me up to do an interview of the star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was back when Arnold was mostly thought of as a joke in Hollywood. Friends said I should be sure I only used simple questions to get a "yes" or "no" answer, since that would be the maximum extent of his ability.

The day I was there they were on location, shooting the scene where the Terminator kills the second Sarah Connor. I'm sure you've all seen this great movie - still to my mind the best of the three - so you'll know the scene as I tell you what went on there in the working class suburb of Van Nuys. The action required Arnold to drive up in front of the house, get out, walk to the front door, grab "second Sarah Connor" when she answers, go inside and kill her, come out, get back in the car, and drive off - crushing a child's toy under the tire. That's a total of perhaps three minutes of final screen time - including the scene inside where he does the deed (which they were shooting at the same time in order to stay on budget). Those three minutes are a day's work in movie production - and a long day's work at that when the director is James Cameron, who even back then was a big believer in multiple takes of each shot.

Arnold was holding court from a captain's chair in the front yard. The news had gone through the neighborhood about who was there like a bucket of water spilled on a kitchen floor. Every kid for several blocks around - and their mom - was there. They were in awe of Arnold. I had covered a few productions, and had never seen a movie star acting like this. A kid would decide if he had the guts to approach Mr. Schwarzenegger, who would spot him (or her), and beckon them over. While he was talking with that kid, there was no one more important in the world. Then he'd ask mom over and the moment would end with a picture taken by mom of the kid sitting on Mr. Universe's lap. Every once in awhile, the Assistant Director would come over to tell him they were ready for the next shot. Arnold would turn to his fans and tell them he needed their help, that it would be really, really helpful if no one made noise. "That way, I can do this, come back, and we can all talk some more." There was dead silence on the street - something I've never seen before or since. True to his word, he was right back, socializing with those kids.

Lunch break came and it was time for the interview. I commented I'd never seen another movie star act the way he was. He answered, "Then you have only been hanging around with idiots! Those kids - without them, I'm nothing, I'm nobody. They're the ones who give me the chance to do this." That was the moment I realized Arnold Schwarzenegger was completely unlike his public image, that those who thought he was an idiot were the idiots.

The interview - conducted in a haze of cigar smoke ("hahve a cigah?" as he handed me a 12 inch Cubano) over a very good Cabernet Sauvignon from his personal collection - had a lot more to it than grunts. He gave me a very detailed analysis of why "The Terminator" was going to be very successful commercially and would as a result "make my career." Film history proves he was right. He demonstrated a detailed knowledge of the business of "the industry," and a deep awareness of exactly what he had to do to make things click in his chosen profession. In all the years since, I've never been surprised by anything Arnold - who really does qualify as Hollywood's most unlikely star - has done.

There was another story he told me, which is also of interest. When asked how he'd become involved in the project, he said the head of Orion Pictures had offered him the script, to play Reese - the hero. "But I immediately saw that the role for me was the Terminator, it's the one everyone will remember." He told that story with complete believability, and most film historians believe that's how he turned himself into a major star. The truth is otherwise. Arnold was originally offered the role of the Terminator, which he turned down because he wanted to play the hero. He had to be convinced to take the role that made his career! If you hooked him up to a lie detector and asked him to tell you the story, his version would record as the truth, he's that good at believing his own baloney. This is important in understanding Arnold Der Governator today.

I wasn't surprised when he ran for Governor of California. While I didn't vote for him - being biologically incapable of voting for a Republican - I didn't vote with any expectation other than that Arnold would win (all those 7 and 8 year old kids who sat on his lap in 1984 were old enough to vote in 2003, as I am sure they did, as well as their mommies and daddies). I wasn't surprised when he hit the deck running and scored some impressive political victories right off - he had the other side thoroughly cowed. And I'm not surprised by what he's doing at present for his "reform" agenda, with his attacks on the "special interests" as he plays the role of a modern Hiram Johnson while he seeks the support of the same sector of society the great reformer saw as The Enemy, or by his breaking all the political promises he made last year. What does surprise me is the number of otherwise-intelligent, politically-experienced people who are surprised by all this. Their problem is they fail to understand Hollywood. And you can't understand Arnold Schwarzenegger if you don't understand the jungle he came out of.

Probably the biggest thing the Sacramento Democrats don't understand is that, in Hollywood, a promise is only good for so long as it makes profitable business sense to the party in the strongest power position of those participating in the promise. As that most-astute observer Samuel Goldwyn once put it, "A verbal contract's not worth the paper it's written on."

In fact, a written contract's not much better, as any number of famous contract fights going back to the beginning of Hollywood demonstrate. The party with the power in a contract knows that the other - less-powerful - party most likely wants to continue working in their chosen field, and is in no economic condition to make a fight of it in the Delaware Chancery Court (there's a reason why so many corporations are chartered there, and it's not for the Chesapeake crab). Thus, the more powerful party - usually the one who can say "yes" and thus "greenlight" the less-powerful one's desire to make a movie, or one whose "yes" to doing the movie (like Arnold) will lead those who can do the greenlighting to say yes - can and will do what they want, secure in the knowledge that the other party won't complain, since complaining will to insure one doesn't do further business.

This is not to say people in "Duh Biz" go around making promises they are planning not to keep. Far from it!! They are notably sincere when they make such promises. At the time they make a promise, they are absolutely committed to carrying it out.

The important words are "at the time."

In Hollywood, a screenwriter knows as he or she options a script to a producer who promises they'll fight to the last ditch to insure said screenwriter is the sole writer on the script, that this will only last till the first executive the producer believes can get the picture made suggests "why don't you use so-and-so for a rewrite?" Even if the promise is in writing, it will only say the producer will "use best efforts" to insure a solo credit. That's why the Writer's Guild pisses off lots of writers every year with a credits arbitration system that strongly favors protecting the original writer.

The same is true for any director or actor. Even when they've signed a "pay or play" contract, the possibility still exists that decisions and events down the road will result in them not seeing their name in lights on that particular project.
So far as Hollywood is concerned, none of these people should complain, since they're being compensated for their pain with money (though not as much as most people outside the business think - when you survive to the point where they pay you Serious Money, they stop this stuff).

Promises are different in politics. In Hollywood, someone who is powerful will likely remain powerful; the studios will always be powerful vis-a-vis the supplicants seeking to get their movie made. In politics, this year's majority may become next year's minority - in the back of their minds, politicians know ultimately they are subject to the will of the people. Thus, promises are more sacrosanct, since messing someone over today means that at some point in the future that person may be able to mess you over back. In politics, revenge is "a dish best eaten cold," and everyone knows it. Thus, it's in everyone's interest to not create future fights where none need exist.

This is why the "special interests" - who were promised a year ago by Der Governator that he would not only not ask them to make such a sacrifice again as he was then asking, but would restore them to their previous condition - are so angry now.

The fact he has no political experience, and thus no personal knowledge of why in politics one does certain things in a certain way, is why he is so genuinely surprised people are angry over the broken promises. He's a Hollywood Boy. Don't they understand he sincerely tried to do as he promised, but that the situation is such that despite his "best efforts" he can't make good? He can't upset those who can "greenlight" his career, can he? Don't they understand "best efforts" don't always pan out? What are they doing, being "complainers"? Don't they know complaining means you don't get to keep doing business?

It's time for the Sacramento Democrats to stop behaving like a gaggle of 8-year old kids in a Van Nuys neighborhood standing in awe of Mr. Universe. Of course, given the facts of political life with Term Limits, we in California have the situation of a Governor with no experience playing against Democratic leaders in the Assembly and the Senate who don't know where the bathrooms are. As someone who used to play the game when there were real players around - guys like Jesse Unruh and Willie Brown - the current gaggle of amateur stickballers trying to convince everyone they're the New York Yankees are a joke. If there's any hope for this gaggle of sandbox superstars to not be outmaneuvered, outplayed, and defeated, it's time they learn The Five Rules of Hollywood:

Rules Number 1-3: As the great screenwriter William Goldman once put it: "The three rules of Hollywood are: Nobody. Knows. Anything." Hollywood is a crapshoot. Nobody - not Steven Spielberg, not Michael Eisner, not any of them - knows if a movie's going to be a hit until the receipts are in from the opening weekend. I'll transfer this to Sacramento in simple terms: Make a real fight of it - he's not a dead-set winner unless you morons let him win.

Rule Number 4: You're only as successful and powerful as your last success. "Bad buzz" kills movies more surely than bad reviews. This means for the Sacramento Democrats that if you can actually figure out what in hell you believe in, and organize a real opposition, you can win. Especially since your "special interests" really are THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA.

Rule Number 5: As that very astute observer of Hollywood David Freeman said, "the difference between a producer who calls you from his office on the Paramount lot, and a producer who calls you from a pay phone at Santa Monica and Fairfax, is one hit." What this means for the Sacramento Democrats is: CAMPAIGN FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE - the worst that will happen is you lose.

Der Governator has spent his life sucking up to the people with the power to "greenlight" his career and really does believe his own baloney: to him, the teachers, the nurses, the public employees and all the others who work for a living by helping create a civilized society are "special interests," while banks and corporations and those who can pay $100,000 per person to sit within spitting distance of him at a fund-raising dinner are "the people of Kaleeforneeya." The man who campaigned against Grey Davis by accusing him of being a tool of the"special interests" for having raised some $70 million dollars in political contributions over six years is on the way to raising $150 million in three years!

In 2003, even a majority of Democrats voted for Arnold. His approval ratings have been "stratospheric" for a year. But his approval polls are now down to 54 percent overall, well within striking distance. Among Democrats - a majority in California - his disapproval rating is twice the size of his approval rating. He isn't "Der Governator," unless you mistake hype for reality.

It's time for California Democrats - and Democrats across the country - to step out of Arnold's tent, shake their heads to clear their lungs and their eyes of the cigar smoke, and realize that Arnold Schwarzenegger is only The Hero when the script is written that way. And that only works in the movies.

THE AMERICAN DELUSION

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

In the weeks and months since the election, and most particularly the weeks since the Emperor's Coronation, I have been thinking about our role in the world, and how that differs from what many of my fellow citizens - on both sides of the political aisle - appear to think about that role.

As Andrew Moravcsik put it in Newsweek International in late January: "Not long ago, the American Dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the world. East Europeans tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square."

The other week, a good friend of mine in France wrote his thoughts about Bush's inauguration.

"I have been involved in American culture for years and I am a Frenchman who knows about the Boston Tea Party, the Stamp and the Sugar Act, and who is well aware of the fact that the fathers of the US Constitution, like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Georges Washington had all strong links with Freemasonry in France... but the Humanist lessons have been lost along the way. Charles Peguy, a French poet who was killed in 1914 on the Marne river, wrote: 'It is by the means of suffering that God comes in to Man. In normal times the shield is too strong.' But the God who has come in to your leaders from the suffering of America on 9/11 is not one the rest can understand."

Last week I received an e-mail from another friend, a fellow American who was writing to tell me how surprised he finds it that he's catching a plane to go spend two months out of the country, looking at places to retire to later this year, places from which he intends to never return to the land of his birth. He explained his reasons this way:

"I think the US is in quite a bit of danger of becoming much like Cuba or Albania used to be; an isolationist country deeply suspicious of everyone else and living a fantasy regarding its own merits and place in the world. The big difference will be that those places had no clout and posed little danger; the U.S. has plenty of clout and is rapidly becoming a problem for everyone. While the neocons are not Nazis, there are far too many parallels to the growth of a militaristic, leader-based, single party government for my comfort."

Thinking back to Bush's intonation of "freedom" and "liberty" so liberally (if you will) in his speech, it's interesting to contemplate the results of a world-wide opinion poll taken by the BBC shortly before the coronation.

Fully 71 percent of the Americans polled see the United States as a source of good in the world, and more than half of them view Bush's election as good for global security; nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas and customs" should spread globally.

In counterpoint to this American optimism, the rest of the world comes to very different conclusions. 58 percent of the rest of the world sees Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among our traditional allies, that figure is even higher. In Germany, 77 percent hold that belief, while a 64% majority in Britain agrees with that position, as do 82 percent in Turkey. Former Brazilian president Jose Sarney expressed the sentiments of the 78 percent of his countrymen who see America as a threat: "Now that Bush has been re-elected, all I can say is, God bless the rest of the world."

How did we get here? When did we stop being the country She Who Must Be Obeyed here at Le Chateau du Chat remembers as a three year old Lithuanian refugee born in a post-war Displaced Persons camp in southern Germany, looking out a porthole of the troopship bringing her family to New York to see the Statue of Liberty, and thinking to herself that "everything's going to be wonderful here"?

As one of those "blue state elitists" who is among the 15 percent of Americans to hold - and have used - a passport, who has friends around the world who like Americans, this hasn't been surprising to me since I first learned the limits of American goodness in Southeast Asia 40 years ago - this crisis has been a long time coming. Various "red state patriots" I have had run-ins with in recent years call me "Tommie the Commie" for my willingness to see the less-desirable blemishes in the American profile. Still, I look at my neighbors in this "immigrant neighborhood" I live in, and I see people whose only difference with SWMBO is that they didn't have to cross an ocean to get here, and I find I have hopes that America's best days are still ahead of us.

Unfortunately, President Bush - by turning himself into a hated figure - has sabotaged America by making it popular to oppose him. Thus, when we've got an unpopular political, economic or military priority that the Administration is pushing, it makes domestic sense for other countries to deny us our wish.

As Michael Lind wrote in The Financial Times in late January, "A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited."

In the field of international economics, ASEAN Plus Three (APT) unites the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea, creating the potential to become the world's largest trading bloc - one that would easily dwarf both the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. These deepening ties are a major diplomatic defeat for the Bush Administration, which had hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum to limit Asian economic regionalism. Similarly, recent actions by South American countries to build an economic community among themselves represents a clear rejection of American aims to create and dominate a western-hemisphere free trade zone.

Militarily, the progress of the European Union toward military independence has come in the face of American protests which failed to prevent the establishment of the EU's own military planning agency - independent of NATO and thus American control - and the creation of a European rapid-reaction military force.

As a fairly prominent for-instance, the military and commercial monopoly of the American global positioning satellite system is threatened by the Galileo project, which is designed to create a European GPS capability. The Pentagon has expressed alarm that China - which shares an interest with other aspiring space powers in preventing American control of space for military and commercial uses - is collaborating with Europe on Galileo and is now a partner with Brazil to launch satellites. In an unprecedented move, China agreed this past December to host Russian forces in China for joint military exercises.

America used to be the great moral leader of the world, a role that was crucial to the winning of both the Second World War and the Cold War. Yet today, the United States is a follower rather than a leader. Europe has banned both the death penalty and torture, while the United States is a leading practitioner of execution, with the state of Texas alone being a world leader in executions. After 9/11, the Bush Administration created an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently been proven recently and was supported by the man most recently appointed the chief law enforcement officer of the country - this is supposed to demonstrate our moral and cultural superiority to the enemy?

For generations, we were the leader in promoting international law in collaboration with other nations. Today, the Republican-controlled government in Washington mocks the very idea of international law.

Today, it's hard to look around and not see the rest of the world taking actions to reduce American influence in nearly every area of activity. The United States may well have the strongest military in the world, but the rest of the planet can see every day the limits of American military power clearly demonstrated in Iraq. This may be George W. Bush's greatest crime against the country he claims to love. Clearly demonstrating the limits of American power is not the way one goes about establishing a system in which countries like Iran and North Korea conform their actions to American policies out of fear of the consequences. Our failure to cooperate with Britain, France and Germany in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program - while obviously having no extra-diplomatic way of enforcing our will on the Iranians - has made it possible for the world to become a far more dangerous place. A few weeks ago, Kim Jong Il announced that North Korea actually has weapons of mass destruction! One immediate result of this is that Japan has announced they plan to reduce their spending in support of the stationing of U.S. forces in Japan. The Japanese plan to spend more funds on their own forces - which they can count on - rather than ours, about which they have increasingly-reasonable doubt. With the U.S. unable to influence events in North Korea, it will not be unreasonable for the Japanese to amend their U.S.-dictated pacifist constitution and begin developing their own nuclear deterrent. This makes the world safer?

If they were willing to accept reality - rather than their faith-based military analyses - even the most vociferous neoconservatives would admit that America's Afghan and Iraq operations have pushed us to our military and economic limits.

When the President proclaims "democracy" his method of ensuring his goal of "national safety," and then welcomes General Pervez Musharraf to the White House - a man who overthrew democracy in Pakistan and reneged on his promise to step down as commander of the Pakistani military, a position from which he could not have failed to know about the nuclear proliferation activities of A.Q. Khan and most likely was their protector - the 49 invocations of"freedom" and "liberty" and promised commitment to "make Americans safer" ring hollow indeed. "Parade" magazine recently released a list of "the world's ten worst dictators." Six of them could not hold the position they do without the active support of the United States.

The news that the rest of the world is creating alliances and institutions to shut out the influence of the United States cannot be surprising. The belief that American leaders can be trusted to act for the good of humanity as they make use of a monopoly of military and economic power is not one that has ever been widely shared by the rest of the world. Irony abounds to realize that America - the nation that won the Cold War - now hopes raw military power will intimidate other great powers alienated by our belligerence. We have adopted the very strategy that brought about the defeat and destruction of the Soviet Union in that struggle.

What the red state patriots whose breasts beat with pride when they watch a B-2 stealth bomber fly low over a local military celebration fail to realize is that it won't take military force to put the Republican dream of an American Empire on history's scrapheap. All it will take is for the businessmen and bankers around the world - and the politicians they support - realizing that George W. Bush's looming $400 billion-plus annual deficits and his current economic proposals will only result in greater growth of this mountain of debt, with a resultant fall in the dollar wiping out the value of the treasury bonds they hold, for them to adopt the Euro as the planetary reserve currency.

Just in case you think the above is the fantasy of some "America-hater," the news from the World Economic Forum going on at Davos, Switzerland, this past January was that, at a standing-room only session focusing on the world's fastest-growing economy, Fan Gang - Director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation - said the issue for China isn't whether to devalue the Yuan but "to limit it from the U.S. Dollar." He went on to say (in English, to be sure he was not misunderstood) that "The U.S. dollar, in our opinion, is no longer seen as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time. So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging to a more manageable reference...say Euros, Yen, Dollars, those kind of more diversified systems." If that doesn't send a chill down your spine to read it, then you don't understand International Econ 101. I have heard friends on the right say that our international financial problems are like Donald Trump's financial problems - i.e., a problem for those holding the debt, not for the debtor. What will these "patriots" say the day China decides to forcibly reincorporate Taiwan, and rather than launch a nuclear missile at the United States begins selling off their Treasury bonds? The destruction of a nuclear bomb over an American city will be as nothing compared to the national devastation such a financial first strike would create.

Domestically, economic inequality was once tolerable because America was the land of opportunity. This is no longer so. Twenty years ago, the average American CEO earned 39 times as much as the average worker. Today, that CEO is paid 1,000 times as much. Are the leaders of America 1,000 times better than they were twenty years ago? In a study of the American economy, Briton George Monbiot summarized the data: "In Sweden, you are three times more likely to rise out of the economic class into which you were born than you are in the U.S." Wal-Mart has destroyed what was left of American domestic manufacturing with its race to the bottom, a race that is turning those very red-state Bush voters into denizens of a Third World economy of minimum-wage jobs with no future.

The Republicans and their "f--k yeah!" supporters may think America is big enough and strong enough to thumb our collective nose at the rest of the world, but these Good Christians would do themselves a favor if they consulted their Good Book and remembered just what it is that "goeth before a fall." As Seymour Hersh put it in a recent interview with Democracy Now, "Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there -- collective action against us. Certainly, nobody -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our
credit -- we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians -- everybody -- is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars."

Hersh may be talking to governmental and business leaders in Europe, but I hear the same thing from my European friends - common, ordinary, everyday people, people who like Americans and detest America.

As my soon-to-be-expatriate friend concluded, "We've become everyone's worst nightmare: a banana republic with a huge military - think Mexico with one party running the country for 70 years, then toss in the world's largest nuclear strike force for good measure."

My friend in France finished thus: "We are probably at the end of a cycle. All the great empires have turned to rubble, and this one will too."

The next four years of the Second Bush Administration are going to be "interesting" - as that word is used in the ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."


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Updated: Monday, March 7, 2005 12:53 AM EST