Coverup for you to probe, Senator

    Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., says the "coverup" surrounding the tragic incidents in Benghazi is "bigger than Watergate, bigger than Iran-Contra, bigger than the Pentagon Papers."

    It's interesting that Inhofe doesn't mention another matter that didn't make his top four. It involved allegations of weapons of mass destruction, talking points planted in the press and weekly news programs about a "mushroom cloud" looming.

    It involved linking Saddam Hussein to a terrorist attack on America. It involved sending men and women to war.

    Sen. Inhofe wants more about events that caused the deaths of four Americans.

    Four-thousand, four hundred and eighty-eight Americans died in events triggered by that matter he doesn't mention.

    Throw in the 2,977 killed when unheeded warnings bore out about the 9/11 attack.   

     We did not hear Sen. John McCain calling for a Watergate-style probe into those matters like he now does about Benghazi. I wonder why.

    That said, I disagree with Democrats who say this pageant of indignation is all about tarring Obama and, of course, Hillary Clinton. That's just not true.

    The truth is that Republicans are pursuing their ongoing mission in Washington: "Do everything in our power so that our government can't govern, so help us God."

    Not a word above should be taken as dismissing the horrific screw-up that was Benghazi, the paucity of security despite warnings, the mixed signals from the White House afterward. Horrific. Screw-up.

   Then again: A Nixonian coverup? As I recall, Watergate consumed months and years and reels and reels of White House tape. If the Obama administration was papering over something, you'd think it would have stuck with its story more than 19 days before changing its explanation and calling it a terrorist attack, as Clinton did Sept. 20.

     If this was telling tales so as not to undermine Obama's re-election — the reframed explanation gave voters a month and a half to decide for themselves. But, whatever you say, senators.

    While we're at it: The administration unambiguously sought $1.80 billion for embassy security, construction and maintenance for fiscal 2012. Too much, said House Republicans. They cut it by $331 million, after cutting the request by $128 million the previous year.

    Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who sits on the House Oversight Committee on Benghazi, said the U.S. consulate didn't meet the "basic, minimum standards." Asked later, he defended putting clamps on embassy funding.

    "We have to make priorities and choices in this country," he said, tough budgetary times and all.

     With that in mind, Rep. Chaffetz, here is something for your committee to study, and you'll be excited to know it comes with a coverup:

     A 2012 study by the bipartisan Congressional Research Service that found that while resulting in more income inequality, the Bush tax cuts didn't boost the economy. It simply increased the federal deficit.

     The coverup? Republicans quashed it. Didn't want it muddying the 2012 dialogue. Didn't want Mitt Romney to have to wrap his ideas around debunked economic theory. Talking points, you know.

     The GOP wanted everyone to think of the deficit as Obama's baby, even if spending in his presidency rose at a slower rate than under Bush. (That's not a Democratic talking point. That's from factcheck.org.)

      Yes, Congressman, an investigation. Let's investigate how foolish fiscal policies so strapped this country that it couldn't do what you now say should have been done: protect our brave diplomats.

    Let's investigate how a strategy of strangulation has worked so well that paralysis is what we call motoring in the nation's capital.

   You so want to have an investigation. Give this one your best shot. It beats governing.

      Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

       

  

Unelected, untouchable, uncontested

   From reports, the entrance was what one imagines of a drug lord who isn't used to waiting for a table in Guadalajara. Only this was in Washington.

  Stepping out of the elevator, a wedge of body guards shoved people out of the way, one pinning a cameraman against the wall.

  "You don't have jurisdiction here," the cameraman protested.

  But of course, the National Rifle Association sets his own rules. Mr. Big had come to lecture Congress last January. Wherever he — and you — may be, you will get out of Wayne LaPierre's way.

  Doesn't matter if a vast majority of Americans don't buy what he shills. He will meet his quota on Capitol Hill.

  Of course, what he does is hardly unusual. The NRA is one of any number of entities that comport themselves as their own branches of government, and whose officials govern their own protectorates. It's all about money.

  Speaking of acronyms: More and more Americans are coming to know GEO, as in GEO Group Inc., the Florida company that runs more than 111 for-profit prisons and penal facilities.

   Recently a GEO executive, Thomas Wierdsma, was found civilly liable for "outrageous behavior," including attempts to pressure U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials to deport his immigrant daughter-in-law when her marriage to his son soured.

   You know: "Half of our prisoners are federal. I'll get ICE on the phone."

    Don't expect these developments to hurt GEO's business. With $1.48 billion in revenues last year, it has reached Halliburton-esque critical mass, profit- and power-wise.

   So much liquidity has the company that it offered to plunk down $6 million for naming rights to Florida Atlantic University's new football stadium. 

   That idea was nixed after a public backlash. Rest assured, GEO will find good ways to spend that money, possibly convincing state and federal lawmakers that prison cells are good for the economy.

   Nobody elected GEO, but know that it has power beyond the founders' imagining, even that of Thomas Jefferson, who warned about the "aristocracy of our monied corporations." Power? GEO has power over thousands of prisoners' every breath.

   Maybe it makes sense to privatize trash hauling, or streetlight repair. It doesn't make sense to privatize life-or-death matters (See Hurricane Katrina). But when bigness is next to godliness, too many policy-makers simply bow to the GEOs of the world and proclaim, "At your service."

   Big oil, the pharmaceutical industry, big insurance, all have managed to engorge themselves while blunting the public interest when it comes to policy. For one, Americans would be paying less for over-the-counter drugs if pharmaceutical makers hadn't prevented the government from negotiating prices under Medicare reforms.

   Each of these players serves much like Russia or China in the U.N. Security Council. Whatever a body might wish to achieve, they carry a one-vote veto.

   Unelected. Unaccountable. Grover Norquist has the pledges of most Republican members of Congress, along with governors and state lawmakers, to do what he says, which is to never raise revenue for any purpose.

   How did Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform gain its power? Silly question. As a lobbying arm funded by corporate interests like big tobacco and big oil, it spends millions to elect candidates who kiss Norquist's ring and to smite anyone who backs away from the no-new-revenue pledge. The group spent $16 million on the last election.  

   "Conservatism, my foot," said Bill Moyers about Norquist's hold on politicians' souls. "It's all about the money."

    And so we return to the unelected sheiks of the gun cartel, their flowing gowns, their gusher-style fiscal resources. As in the sand-blown Third World, politically they control whole provinces. They are the law, because they have the guns, and the money. And who will stand in their way?

     Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Call it reproductive justice

   Harold Lloyd had nothing on today's forces of regression.

   In iconic black-and-white on a silent screen, the bumbling comic grappled with the big hand of a clock. The year was 1923.

   Today, in Arkansas, North Dakota and wherever they can summon the votes, political forces seek to turn the hands of time back at least that far on reproductive rights.

   President Obama observed this syndrome last week in a speech to Planned Parenthood. Points to you, Mr. President. However, you need to follow up that "turn back the clock" analogy with one for those of us on the side of modern times.

    It's time to turn the clock forward — to 2013. Let's stop living in 1973.

    That was when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land and women no longer were at the mercy of people who made Bible verses statutory.

   The time is right to move forward, not just because of the threat pervasive in certain states, but because the 2012 elections carried an encouraging message that should be translated in a new rallying phrase: reproductive justice.

    The term comes from African-American feminists in the 1990s who, according to Time magazine's Kate Pickert, "wanted to broaden the appeal of reproductive rights" beyond simply keeping abortion legal and accessible. Increasingly it is being adopted as an alternative to "pro-choice."

    Simply put: Unwanted pregnancies are a principal harbinger of poverty and distress. Abortion is an option for which no one wishes, but is something a majority of Americans wouldn't foreclose by law.

    Reproductive justice is about exactly that. It's about "choice," but in a broader sense 

    The anti-choice movement not only seeks to ban abortion but to blunt policies that promote holistic women's health, including birth control.

    Observe legislation in Texas that diverted millions of dollars from family planning. Bill sponsor Randy Weber, R-Pearland, cited "research" showing that women who used contraceptives had higher rates of abortions than those who didn't. In fact, the study he cited showed just the opposite.

    Ah, what the heck. Facts be damned, and those who use them as well.

    For those who consider themselves pro-choice, this is the kind of policy debate they should be winning, because the nation is receptive.

    The other side wants to focus on abortion. The side supporting reproductive justice focuses on prevention through contraception and sex education.

    To stand for the latter, Obama was the first sitting president to take a dais before Planned Parenthood, the one entity that does more than any other to help low-income women prevent unwanted pregnancies.

    The forces of regression in recent weeks have sought to score propaganda points in light of the horrors associated with Philadelphia abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, facing a murder rap for illegal late-term abortions and literal infanticide.

    Prosecuting Kermit Gosnell is a matter of reproductive justice. The last thing most Americans should want is for women to be so desperate again as to turn to people like him when abortion can be early and safe, and pregnancy can be averted so many ways.

   The next time you encounter an abortion foe picketing a Planned Parenthood clinic, ask that person. "So, you oppose birth control, eh? Congratulations. You are part of the problem."

    The next time someone brings up the case of Kermit Gosnell, ask: "So, do you oppose agencies that provide birth control? Congratulations. You are Dr. Gosnell's accessory."

   Reproductive justice. Preach it. Pursue it.

   Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com