Let's not dramatize Daschle

The California Energy Crisis - Wikipedia
The 2004 release of transcripts of taped conversations among Enron electricity traders in the summer of 2001 revealed that company insiders not only knew they were stealing from California and other states, but gloated about it. (...) At a time when streets in Northern California were lit only by head lights, factories shut down and families were trapped in elevators, Enron Energy traders laughed:

"Just cut 'em off. They're so f----d. They should just bring back f-----g horses and carriages, f-----g lamps, f-----g kerosene lamps."

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I don't want to dramatize the Daschle affair, it's just another drop in the boundless ocean of America's ongoing Satyricon.

The decadence of a society is a very mysterious thing. Many people recognize it, denounce it, rail against it; finally even a majority of its members might acknowledge it, but somehow, seeing it, recognizing and denouncing it doesn't change it. Decadence doesn't come about overnight, it is chaotic in its complexity and may go on a long time and rarely ends painlessly.

I suddenly became very pessimistic about the direction the USA was taking way back in the California electricity crisis that lasted from May 2000 to September 2001. I intuitively felt/feel that everything followed out of that: Enron, Iraq and all the ensuing Katrina and financial drek.

The California energy crisis was soon forgotten in the drama of 9/11, but for me it was more significant then the attack on New York and Washington.

9/11 was basically imperial blow back as if Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse could have raided Wall Street with a Sioux war party in the 1870s.

However, the California energy crisis was about a group of highly trained and skilled, educated, pampered Americans, 'masters of the universe' who had banded together to cripple America's most important state. This was terrorism truly worthy of Guantánamo.

I suddenly had the feeling that America was an empty shell.

The only way I can describe the feeling I had/have was that the USA had/has lost its Dharma.

Bush was for me only a symptom, never a cause.

Trying to pin it all on Bush is to distract attention from the hollowing out of a society. Bush had the merit of his clumsy inarticulateness, a magic buffoon who let people get a glimpse, a whiff, of how things really were.

The American people have now pinned their hopes on Barack Obama, who is no buffoon, magic or otherwise.

Can the new president fix it?

In Hindu mythology Rama restored Dharma and initiated the golden age of "Ramaraj"

Here copied and pasted from Wikipedia is a wonderfully condensed resume of the monumental Ramayana:

Rama's life and journey is one of perfect adherence to dharma despite harsh tests of life and time. For the sake of his father's honour, Rama abandons his claim to Kosala's throne to serve an exile of fourteen years in the forest. His wife, Sita and brother, Lakshmana being unable to live without Rama decide to join him, and all three spend the fourteen years in exile together. This leads to the kidnapping of Sita by Ravana, the Rakshasa monarch of Lanka. After a long and arduous search that tests his personal strength and virtue, Rama fights a colossal war against Ravana's armies. In a war of powerful and magical beings, greatly destructive weaponry and battles, Rama slays Ravana in battle and liberates his wife. Having completed his exile, Rama returns to be crowned King in Ayodhya (the capital of his Kingdom) and eventually becomes Emperor of the World, after which he reigns for eleven thousand years – an era of perfect happiness, peace, prosperity and justice known as Rama Rajya.

Alas, we are not Hindus, today's crisis is not mythological, Washington is not Ayodhya, we don't have eleven thousand years and, if the Daschle affair is any measure, I'm afraid Obama is no Rama. DS

The tax farce

"Rule of all without rule of oneself would prove to be as deceptive and disappointing as a painted toy-mango, charming to look at outwardly but hollow and empty within." Conquest of Self - M.K. Gandhi

President Obama’s choice for the position of chief White House performance officer has withdrawn from consideration for the post, an administration official said Tuesday, after coming forward with concerns about her tax returns. New York Times

Thomas A. Daschle, President Obama's choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, has withdrawn his nomination, White House officials announced shortly after noon. Daschle cited the distractions that followed his failure to pay all of his taxes in recent years. Washington Post

Obama is off to a very shaky start. The belief that he is ready to push for a fundamental remaking of America has weak evidence in its favor, despite his intelligence and his intellectual openness. The United States is getting good grammar. It needs bold remaking. Immanuel Wallerstein

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Gee, that didn't last long did it?

As skeptical as I have often been about Obama, I admit that the last place I ever expected him to trip up was on something sleazy like this.

The word was that everyone being considered for even minor positions in the Obama administration was being exhaustively vetted, gone over with a fine tooth comb, held up to the light like a dangling chad...

It has been my experience that one of the first things that those doing vetting normally want to look at are people's tax returns. Official financial records are usually the easy part, looking under rocks for the nasty stuff comes much later. So, I think that it would be fair to say that failure to check simple information concerning important, cabinet level, nominations is indicative of extremely poor staff work, wouldn't it?

I've been away so long, somebody tell me: are America's tax laws now like those curious old laws against sodomy and miscegenation that used to be on the books in the south? If this is so, then what is all the fuss about? I'm sure that Obama could nominate someone who was openly gay to a cabinet position without it being a problem. Why not a tax evader?

Of course the comparison is absurd: obviously public officials are supposed to obey the laws that they pass and are sworn to enforce. The state lives from the taxes it collects, so paying taxes is fundamentally important for anyone who aspires to public life and not just a question of personal taste like an individual's sexual orientation.

I always expected Obama to come up hard against reality in places like the Middle East, Afghanistan and, of course, on the economy, but not on something as idiotic as this.

The staff work has been so lousy on this that I fear we are only looking at the tip of an Iceberg here.

I wonder what the Obamese equivalent of "heckuva job Brownie" will turn out to be? DS