Restored Democracy Should Be Our Focus

R.A. Monaco
August 25, 2011


Americans are being lured into distractions and caught up in partisan bickering while becoming increasingly disillusioned by congressional partisanship that has no foreseeable horizon. Every six and a half minutes another crisis fed headline booms across talk radio and 24 hour cable news programming enables, aids and abets, Congressional outlaws intent on accomplishing their stated purpose--not to fix things but to keep our president from fixing anything. The fact is that, as the country continues to regress as a democracy, most voters just don’t know which ball to keep their eye on.

Much has been said to criticize the vast right wing of our political system--deservingly so. However, right wing enlightenment, while not likely to occur, isn’t going to restore what is truly wrong with our political system. As a starting point, America needs to go back to their 7th grade civics studies, recall, understand and accept that our system of democracy was designed to limit the power of the president.

The endless criticisms of President Obama, that he is an appeasement-happy crypto-Republican, that he hasn’t tended to jobs quickly enough, that his administration’s healthcare plan is destined for the Supreme Court guillotine, or that the bankers on Wall Street are thriving once again while tens of millions of Americans are being crushed by the overhang of mortgage debt in an economy that predictably continues to fail, are all foreseeable issues of orchestrated design.

How long will it be before we hear that the President has been slow to act to the charge of a justice department investigation of Standard & Poors, who is thought to have purposely overrated toxic mortgage securities in the years before the bust? Surely, the next words we’ll hear from Wall Street drum beaters is that the investigation is a retaliatory decision that flows from the debt ceiling crisis credit downgrade—would the Tea Party mind?

President Obama’s strategic and structural challenges are immense but they are not solely the result of the radical right wing either. With the exception of continuing the Bush tax cuts, the president has needed 60 votes, not the customary 50, to address every major issue including stimulus, extending unemployment benefits and healthcare. Conservative Democrats have made the party’s majority an illusion while enabling insincere disruptive play-to-base regressive obstructionists. The bottom line for America is that the president lacks the power to overcome the congressional challenges set in place by a changed campaign finance election system that rewards obstinate representation and, in effect, has set functional limitations upon our democracy.

As early as 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt asserted the need for campaign finance reform and called for legislation to ban corporate contributions for political purposes. In response, the United States Congress enacted the Tillman Act of 1907, named for its sponsor Senator Benjamin Tillman, which banned corporate contributions.

In 1971, Congress consolidated its earlier reform efforts in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA, Pub.L. 92-225, 86 Stat. 3, enacted February 7, 1972, 2 U.S.C. § 431 et seq.), instituting more stringent disclosure requirements for federal candidates, political parties and Political Action Committees (PACs).

More recently, in 2002, Congress made major revisions to the FECA in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, more commonly referred to as "McCain-Feingold." However, in 2007 major portions of McCain-Feingold were struck down by the Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds in Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission , and again in 2008 in Davis v. Federal Election Commission .

However, in 2010 the Supreme Court gave new meaning to ATM machine politics by way of their Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision which struck down FECA's complete ban on corporate and union independent spending originally passed as part of the Taft-Hartley law in 1947.

Surely we can hope for, demand and attempt, to seek out better politicians and presidents. It’s time for Scotty to beam us all back up to reality. Our focus needs to be on realigning the interests of our elected representatives with that of the voters--not campaign contributors. Corporations don’t vote but their financial influence clearly has a hand around the throat of a functional democracy. We must refocus our priorities and first correct a campaign finance system that fosters an unworkable climate through the absence of transparency, financial accountability and the ATM machine politics that has put our democracy up for sale.

All We Want for Christmas is Our Two Front Teeth

By R.A. Monaco
July 1, 2011

Most Americans will remember the melody, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth..." Well, going into the 2012 elections, mouthpieces for an ardent corporate plutocracy are likely to pour an obscene sum of money into telling the nation that, that's just too much to ask, especially if they're the front teeth of a progressive idea.

Nevertheless, I'm going to write my Christmas "wish list" and suggest that Americans, whether they celebrate Christmas or not, ask for some useful and meaningful gifts this election year, not just for themselves but for everyone of us. Let me start by asking for a grassroots rally of support to overturn Citizens United--the Supreme Court decision that constitutionalized corporate plutocracy. A ruling that perverted, in totality, the ideals of our democracy by permitting corporations to spend any amount they want on electioneering propaganda.

Add to my list, public funding for all elections--eliminating the inherent conflicts of interest that prospective and elected representatives can no longer ethically balance against the public's interests. Include a gift of free air time for political candidates as a public resource--which will help to neutralize the outlandish linguistic silencing of substantive claims and political discourse.

Please don't forget to put a heap of transparency on campaign funding, underneath where the Christmas tree once stood, that would reveal and shame those corporate CEOs who're perverting our democracy. And, if it's not too much to ask, generally bring America's elections back to the people. Oh, and if you can, throw in impeaching a Supreme Court justice or two--that would be just fine by me.

That certainly wasn't the longest list of wishes written over the years but, for Americans, it is a list that is far longer than we're likely to realize this side of the North Pole, absent a real grassroots campaign that focuses on seriously needed structural changes on campaign finance reform upon which our democracy now depends. That's right, depends. I'll explain.

Let's begin by talking about the truly dangerous mechanisms and linguistic strategies that are undermining truth and, in effect, silencing substantive debate and political discourse. At this moment, America is at the threshold of what will be a deluge of unlimited and unreported corporate spending strategically intended to finance what scholars refer to as Speech Act--the outlandish claims that will be made about public figures and progressive ideas intended only to undermine the public's trust so that nothing that is said can be taken at face value.

The significance of Speech Act politics as a tool can be illuminated by way of reflection from some brief moments in the 1952 presidential campaign between candidates Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. Louis Cowan, a television producer who later became President of CBS, was concerned about Stevenson's failure to adapt to the techniques of radio and television so he devised a strategy during the convention to flash the camera onto the three sons of Stevenson with the young Adlai agreeing to touch his father lightly on the back and say "Good luck, dad," to show something warm and that he was a family man. At the last minute, Cowan's conscience began to bother him and he told Stevenson about the plan. "Lou, old boy," said the first Democratic candidate for President in the television age, "we don't do things like that in our family."

On the other side of the campaign trail, Eisenhower was being tutored by a young staff aide named David Schoenbrun. Schoenbrun, who was attempting to convince the General of the merits of radio was asked, "Do you realize how frightening this really is?" Ike would question, "What's to stop a demagogue from taking over?" "Who's to set the limits on it?" "What are the controls?"

Clearly, their mutual concern was the possibility of dangerous people taking over these mediums and exploiting them. A concern that was accurately foreseen and fully realized to an even a darker extent, thanks to a divided 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that ignored over a hundred years of precedent.

The very nature of Constitutional decisions are rooted in fundamental social concepts about liberty and property. They are, by definition, political. Now, when the Supreme Court decides the constitutionality of social policies their rulings are seen as partisan ideology which undermines the court's legitimacy. Particularly when Justices fail to respect the appearance of impropriety or make themselves accountable to a code of conduct as was once the practice and, always paramount to former Chief Justice Earl Warren.

While we might wish that pundits or politicians like Eric Cantor, John Boehner or Mitchell McConnell might engage in the reality of our political discourse, it seems few Americans have come to recognize and understand that's no longer possible or a reality. Their public posturing is not truly about making substantive claims but, rather, that they individually are playing a role of silencing--a linguistic strategy for stealing the voices of political discourse.

We've only to read the recent news reports about the debt ceiling deadline to see some clear examples. Most notably, for example, Eric Cantor who clearly used a premeditated speech act to oppose "anything the 'Kenyan socialist' president might propose" were his words repeated in the Washington Post, June 28th by line of Katrina venden Heuvel. By referring to our President as a "Kenyan socialist", Mr. Cantor revealed that his clear purpose was not to engage in a debate about truth. The more bizarre, improbable and twisted the innuendo, the more likely that his meaning will be misappropriated.

If we take more time to compare the news reports of Congressional Republicans with those of Democrats and the President we'll clearly see that Republicans continually refer to increasing taxes or new taxes as a component of the democratic proposal when what is really being proposed and discussed is ending tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Those are not new techniques in the arsenal of political posturing. But what Americans hear is more taxes, more spending, again and again. Those are speech acts or linguistic tactics specifically intended to undermine truth in the debate.

John Boehner was quoted by the New York Times as saying, "The American people know tax hikes destroy jobs." More speech act tactics which are not about making substantive claims. They are clearly intended to dramatize the debate and undermine the political discourse. Does John Boehner's statement really mean that ending tax breaks for oil and gas companies, hedge funds and closing corporate tax loopholes is going to put even more of us out of work and further fuel wage deflation?

Mitch McConnell in a speech Wednesday said, "It's about whether Washington will ever be held accountable for its mistakes. That's why Republicans refuse to let the taxpayers take the hit when it comes to reducing the debt." Is there really truth in that debate? Which taxpayers is he really talking about--the corporations who will fund his campaign and those whose tax rate is lower than the guy outside mowing the lawn? Insincerity is another form of speech act. What Americans need to understand is that its true purpose serves solely to silence truth and the voices of reasoned debate.

If the President and Congressional Democrats are repeatedly called irresponsible by corporations who can spend any amount they want on electioneering propaganda coordinated in step with the likes of the House Speaker, House Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, then voters will be less willing to believe anything being said by the President or Congressional Democrats.

On the other hand, by trying to protect all federal spending except defense, Congressional Democrats are guaranteeing that many of their most important plans will be in jeopardy. Programs that award college scholarships, finance the National Weather Service and medical research, and improve food safety, for example.

The challenge for individual Americans over the months to follow is seeing through the deceptive agendas and the secretly financed campaign fronts whose funding comes by way of executive expropriation of corporate shareholders money that is being spent, usually without their consent, to make negative and false attacks and not to engage in honest political debate.

It surely is being argued and insisted that Democrats, too, are free to spend unlimited amounts in secretly funded campaign strategies and therefore elections are on a fair and level playing field. But the democratic system becomes far too weighted by the access to unfathomable corporate treasuries which Conservatives are able draw upon and the fact that progressives don't believe in clandestine campaign funding.

There is a mountain to be climbed which voters are unlikely to fully appreciate and which the President needed to make more clear, which is, that even in the financial straits in which the country currently finds itself, more help for the economy is still needed. Specifically, political support is needed to extend a reduction for payroll taxes and provide loans for infrastructure which has the benefit of providing an important exponential return benefit. The President's reminder that our economic recovery will take time doesn't fully drive home the fact that the broader measure of unemployment is almost 20 percent depending on which segment of the population or region of the country is measured.

The true measure of the success of the stimulus is not the actual level of unemployment, but what unemployment would have been without the stimulus. According to Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz, all evidence showed that the stimulus had made things better. In his opinion, the benefits of the stimulus are so strong that it outweighs the longer-term risks of indebtedness increases and higher interest demands of creditors which is why the debt ceiling debate is such an irresponsible Republican ploy.

It becomes very hard to argue against the conclusion that Republicans have moved from merely rooting for a bad economy to actively committing to making it worse when one thinks carefully about how irresponsible the threat to blow up the economy over the debt limit truly is.

Try to think in these terms as you work through the bizarre political dialogue on the economy--if another round of stimulus money were spent on investments, those adverse effects of concern are less likely to occur because markets should realize that the United States is actually in a stronger economic position as a result of the additional stimulus, not a weaker position. If the stimulus spending is for investment, then the asset side of the nation's balance sheet increases in tandem with the liabilities and there is no reason for lenders to be worried, and no reason for an increase in interests rates.

The big issue raised last year by economist Joseph Stiglitz, who believed that the initial stimulus was insufficiently strong enough, was whether the government would continue to provide a stimulus should the economy fail to achieve a robust recovery after its first dose of medicine, as is the current state of our economy?

Americans need to add to their Christmas "wish list" a second dose of stimulus funding and open our eyes to the irresponsible partisan agenda of the deficit hawks in Congress urging a cutback in government spending until our economy returns to and maintains stronger growth. The interests and voices of the public must not fall silent to extremist ideology and a vengeful partisanship agenda. We can each remain true to our political affiliations, republicans and democrats alike, and fix what is wrong with our democracy by granting ourselves the grassroots support to make election reform and the changes needed part of our list of wishes for restored democracy.

Blagojevich Trial-- A Back Seat View After The Fact

By R.A. Monaco
June 28, 2011


The most stunning surprise that came from the Blagojevich trial was from the former governor of Illinois himself saying that, "among the many lessons that I've learned from this whole experience is to try to speak a little bit less." Jurors, clearly fed up with their perceptions of unseemly politics, delivered their intended message to politicians, corrupt or not, future and past. Politicians beware, the days of backroom deals and machine politics are no more--or are they?

First, an observation of how Rod Blagojevich's arrogance did him in when, on 7 out of 10 trial days, he did exactly what he likes to do---talk, talk, talk. Mr. Blagojevich actually believed he was going to ramble his way out of a corruption case at a time when the entire nation and Chicagoans are weary of political schemes and circuslike politics.

On the other hand, there is another aspect to this spectacle reflected in this Jury's verdict which we are not likely to hear or read much about--that there is plenty of blame and responsibility to go around. Accuseology, let's call it. Mr. Blagojevich clearly thought he knew his lawyers' job better than they and good lawyers just don't let their clients do what he did. Do you go to a doctor and tell him how to practice medicine? They needed to be able to control their client or they shouldn't have taken his money. No exception!

Juries come to the dance, so to speak, with the view that we have a judge, bailiff, clerk, courtroom, prosecutors, and in their minds, they're saying, "....this guy did something" to themselves. Regardless of what jurors typically express during voir dire or in oaths to the court, that is a reality of criminal defense trial work and must be understood before the séance begins. High ideals, while important, are a fool's gold in this arena.

The question that should always be paramount for all of us, not just defense lawyers, is whether the prosecution has carried their burden of proof. Was this really a different case the second time? Did prosecutors show beyond doubt, based on reason, that each element of the alleged crimes was true to the satisfaction of the jury in the first trial? Clearly, they did not.

As it has been written, to serve the ends of justice it can never be enough for jurors to think, believe, or just suspect criminal charges to be true--it must be shown. Justice is not a mere promise to the accused. It is an oath to American freedom made for the benefit of every person walking free within our country and not on trial.

The most important message to be learned from a high profile trial such as that of Mr. Blagojevich is that a trial is always, and most importantly, about the process, not sending messages. Clearly the jury in this case diligently carried out their responsibilities even though a motion for a new trial and Sixth Amendment challenges will surely follow. But of greatest importance to all, is that each and every one of us depends upon that most essential and complete understanding of a Jury's purpose.

In a circumstantial evidence case, such as in the Blagojevich trial, inferences must be made from the evidence shown. Was that what he really meant? Were those statements made in contexts? Is the intent of his statements fully shown? Can what he intended be fairly inferred based on reason without other possible interpretations equally as reasonable?

When the prosecution failed in their first attempt to prove this case, the jurors said that the case had been too tangled and confusing. Whether the prosecution boiled-down their case or actually had improved their strategy was much less a deciding factor overall by comparison to the colossal contributions of Mr. Blagojevich and a reckless defense strategy.

Criminal trials are almost always about the absence of evidence. How the prosecution must carry their burden of proof is singularly the most critical legal evaluation of the defense. While Mr. Blagojevich may have an unconditional right to testify the lack of prosecutorial success in the first trial was a lesson learned too late. Their potential for success evaporated the instant Mr. Blagojevich's attorney let him take the stand to testify--end of story. They needed to have a clear, factual issue in dispute that could be corroborated by a credible third person so that his veracity was bolstered. Nothing short of being able to accomplish that objective justifies the sacrifices that appended to what is nothing less than a strategic blunder. You just don't throw your client up on the stand with the hope that the jury believes him, no matter what. Why change what worked? The defense needed to show what couldn't be proved--not prove it! Rod Blagojevich is not Laurence Olivier.

The case against Mr. Blagojevich was a circumstantial evidence case which required the jury to make inferences that were reasonable. Until he testified, ambiguity was the their best defense. Strategically, the defense team and Mr. Blagojevich sacrificed their best arguments and removed all doubt. Indeed, the celebration probably started in Patrick J. Fitzgerald's office long before closing arguments and the jury returned their verdict for guilty on 17 of the 20 alleged counts.

We've all heard the saying, better to let them think you're a dummy, than to remove all doubt. In the end, Rod Blagojevich's arrogance did him in with a good helping of, we can't control our client.

Some compassion for Rod Blagojevich is clearly due as he's little more than a reflection, produced by the system itself. There are many others much more sophisticated and deserving on K Street, Wall Street and across the nation to be sure. The fact is, these days there is no shortage of politically crass deal making and the distinction between financial trade and political exchange has blurred and not become any easier particularly in light of last year's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Fair Elections Committee.

What we must keep in mind and understand is that the criminal justice system can also be a politically manipulated tool--a solid reason why we Americans should begin to look more carefully at publicly funded campaigns and election reforms that obviate the need for backroom schemes and political corruption.