And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
–Plutarch, Life of Alexander
In 1994, Newt Gingrich, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, shut down the Federal Government.
Officially, the reason was a budget impasse with President Bill Clinton. Unofficially–and in reality–the reason was altogether different.
Clinton had forced him to sit in the back of Air Force One on a trip to Israel for the funeral of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabinl.
“This is petty,” Gingrich confessed to startled reporters. “I’m going to say up front it’s petty, But I think it’s human.
“When you land at Andrews [Air Force Base, in Washington, D.C.] and you’ve been on the plane for 25 hours and nobody has talked to you and they ask you to get off by the back ramp….
“You just wonder, where is their sense of manners, where is their sense of courtesy?”
Gingrich’s childish verbal tirade was a public relations disaster for the Republicans. “Cry Baby,” screamed the New York Daily News, next to a picture of Gingrich in a diaper.
When House Democrats brought a poster-sized image of the cartoon onto the floor, the Republican majority forced them to remove it.
But the damage was done, and Republicans paid a fearful price for the shutdown and Gingrich’s candor about the reason for it.
Fast forward 19 years later, and, once again, the public–and, most especially, federal employees–faced the hardships of another Republican-led government shutdown.
The official reason given by Republicans was: They wanted to save the country from the dangers of providing healthcare insurance to all Americans, not simply the wealthiest 1%.
To hear Republicans tell it, Obamacare–actually, the Affordable Care Act–would “destroy the medical system as we know it.”
The Act aims to:
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Increase the quality and affordability of health insurance;
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Lower the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage;
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Reduce the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government;
- Forbid insurance companies the right to deny coverage for “pre-existing conditions”; and
- Require employers with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance to their fulltime workers–or pay a large penalty.
Republicans also claimed that it would bankrupt the country–although the Congressional Budget Office stated that the ACA would lower future deficits and Medicare spending.
After passing the House and Senate, the ACA was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.
On June 28, 2012, the United States Supreme Court–whose Chief Justice, John Roberts, is a Republican–upheld the constitutionality of the ACA,
Yet House Republicans continued searching for a way to stop the law from taking effect. By September, 2013, they had voted 42 times to repeal “Obamacare.”
But their efforts achieved nothing, since the Democratic-led Senate refused to go along with such legislation.
Finally, unable to legally overturn the Act or to legislatively repeal it, House Republicans fell back on something much simpler.
Threats and fear.
Threats–of voting to shut down salaries paid to most Federal employees.
Most employees, because they themselves would continue to draw hefty salaries while they were denying them to FBI agents, air traffic controllers and members of the military, among others.
And fear–that would be generated throughout the Federal government, the United States and America’s international allies.
It was the my-way-or-else “negotiating” style of Adolf Hitler: Do-as-I-say-or-I-will-destroy-you.
When Obama and Senate Democrats refused to knuckle under to yet another Republican extortion effort, House Republicans made good on their threat.
They shut down the government.
Republicans claimed that Obama and Senate Democrats were the ones who refused to see reason and negotiate.
By “negotiate,” they meant: Agree to Republican demands to de-fund “Obamacare.”
But then the unthinkable happened: A Republican gave away the real reason for the shutdown.
“We’re not going to be disrespected,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told the Washington Examiner. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
Marlin Stutzman
With Newt Gingrich, the real reason for the government shutdown was his petty ego.
A subsidiary reason was to bully President Clinton into gutting Republican-despised Federal programs to help the poor and middle-class.
Nineteen years later, Republicans–as admitted by Martlin Stutzman–were out to get “respect.”
And they were out to get it the same way a thuggish gang leader gets it: By demanding: “Do what I say or I’ll kill you.”
At the end of World War II, Americans tried to cleanse West Germany of its former Nazi leaders and their supporters.
Such thuggishness will continue unless, somehow, Americans cleanse their own government of those who “negotiate” Nazi-Republican style.
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“A TEAM PLAYER”: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2014 at 12:15 amRecruiters for corporate America routinely claim they’re looking for “a team player.”
This sounds great–as though the corporation is seeking people who will get along with their colleagues and work to achieve a worthwhile objective.
And, at times, that is precisely what is being sought in a potential employee.
But, altogether too often, what the corporation means by “a team player” is what the Mafia means by “a real standup guy.”
That is: Someone willing to commit any crime for the organization–and take the fall for its leaders if anything goes wrong.
Consider this classic example from the files of America’s premier law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
On November 14, 1957, 70 top Mafia leaders from across the country gathered at the estate of a fellow gangster, Joseph Barbara, in Apalachin, a small village in upstate New York.
The presence of so many cars with out-of-state license plates converging on an isolated mansion caught the attention of Edgar Crosswell, a sergeant in the New York State Police.
Crosswell assembled as many troopers as he could find, set up roadblocks, and swooped down on the estate.
The mobsters, panicked, fled in all directions–many of them into the surrounding woods. Even so, more than 60 underworld bosses were arrested and indicted following the raid.
Perhaps the most significant result of the raid was the effect it had on J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI.
J. Edgar Hoover
Up to that point, Hoover had vigorously and vocally denied the existence of a nationwide Mafia. He had been happy to leave pursuit of international narcotics traffickers to his hated rival, Harry Anslinger, director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).
But he had been careful to keep his own agency well out of the war on organized crime.
Several theories have been advanced as to why.
Whatever the reason, Hoover had, from the time he assumed directorship of the FBI in 1924, kept his agents far from the frontlines of the war against organized crime.
Suddenly, however, that was no longer possible.
The arrests of more than 60 known members of the underworld–in what the news media called “a conclave of crime”–deeply embarrassed Hoover.
It was all the more embarrassing that while the FBI had virtually nothing in its files on the leading lights of the Mafia, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had opened its voluminous files to the Senate Labor Rackets Committee.
Heading that committee as chief legal counsel was Robert F. Kennedy–a fierce opponent of organized crime who, in 1961, would become Attorney General of the United States.
So Hoover created the Top Hoodlum Program (THP) to identify and target selected Mafiosi across the country.
Since the FBI had no networks of informants operating within the Mafia, Hoover fell back on a technique that had worked wonders against the Communist Party U.S.A.
He would wiretap the mobsters’ phones and plant electronic microphones (“bugs”) in their meeting places.
The information gained from these techniques would arm the Bureau with evidence that could be used to strongarm mobsters into “rolling over” on their colleagues in exchange for leniency.
Hoover believed he had authority to install wiretaps because more than one Attorney General had authorized their use.
But no Attorney General had given permission to install bugs–which involved breaking into the places where they were to be placed. Such assignments were referred to within the Bureau as “black bag jobs.”
So, in making clear to his agent-force that he wanted an unprecedented war against organized crime, Hoover also made clear the following:
Before agents could install electronic surveillance (an ELSUR, in FBI-speak) devices in Mob hangouts, agents had to first request authority for a survey. This would have to establish:
According to former FBI agent William E. Roemer, Jr., who carried out many of these “black bag” assignments:
“The [last requirement] was always Mr. Hoover’s greatest concern: ‘Do the job, by God, but don’t ever let anything happen that might embarrass the Bureau.”
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