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Op-Ed: Senator Undermines U.S. National Security
This op-ed was also sent to Veterans Today from Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) noting that in a clear and present internal danger to our Nation’s security, U.S. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama has kept a “hold” on as many as 70 political appointments, many of them at the Department of Defense, thus blocking their confirmation by the full Senate.
Shelby’s actions are as partisan as they are reckless, especially as our Nation fights two prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shelby, who faces no re-election opponent in November 2010 and may feel invincible, should end his battle against our military just so he can get special favoritism for a few ‘earmarked’ defense contracts.
VCS and Veterans Today strongly condemns Sen. Shelby’s actions and urges Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to move quickly forward with confirming Pentagon leaders to replace Bush administration hold overs.
ROBERT L. HANAFIN, Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired, Veterans Today News
The Winter of America’s Discontent
It has been more than four decades since the Congress of the United States has been able to summon the will to pass a major piece of social legislation. Significant healthcare reform is all but dead for this session, and the chances of substantively addressing the regulatory breakdown that allowed Wall Street’s irresponsible speculation to precipitate the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression seem to recede with each passing day. So too the prospects for passage of further stimulus measures to remedy the crisis of unemployment and underemployment that continues to ravage the lives of families in states from Michigan to California.
What does that have to do with Veterans and National Security?
In the face of these daunting issues, what was it that preoccupied the Senate on the eve of its long weekend recess before the snow storm now bringing DC to a standstill?
It was a standoff between the White House and Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who has put a personal hold on more than 70 executive branch appointments [many within the Defense Department to replace Bush administration hold overs] until the Obama administration agrees to fund a couple of pork-barrel projects he has earmarked for his state.
One involves tens of millions of dollars for an FBI laboratory focusing on improvised explosives — something the bureau doesn’t think it needs. The other involves [defense] contract specifications for an aerial tanker that U.S. Air Force defense contractors Northrop Grumman and Airbus would manufacture in Alabama, if they win the deal. (Boeing also is competing for the plane, which it would build in Topeka, Kan., and Seattle.)
VOTERS CAN PICTURE VULTURES CIRCLING AROUND THE CARCASS OF THEIR TAX DOLLARS.
Unless the administration agrees to give Shelby what he wants, he intends to invoke an archaic senatorial privilege that allows him to prevent the chamber from considering any of the administration’s nominees to executive branch vacancies, no matter how crucial. Without the 60 votes to force cloture — another archaic convention…
Outside the Senate, Shelby’s conduct would be called extortion; inside the chamber, it’s a “parliamentary tactic.”
It’s also the sort of shabby situation that brings into sharp focus both the sources of congressional dysfunction and the popular discontent on both the left and right with the congressional parties.
Earmarks and pork [most tied to DEFENSE CONTRACTS] are anathema to a majority of conservatives and independents; the Senate’s outdated, made-for-obstruction rules and susceptibility to special interests are a source of increasing frustration to liberals and some independents.
Yet, here we have one senator from one state obstructing with impunity an entire nation’s business — purely for his narrow constituency’s financial interests.
You don’t have to attend a “tea party” convention to see the corrosive effect this sort of political earmarking has on American attitudes toward the institutions of national government and the parties vying to control them.
JUST HOW ANGRY ARE AMERICAN VOTERS?
The Democrats of course are going to blame the Republicans, and the Republicans are going to blame the Dems, so what?
Evidence of the damage [to both parties] is scattered throughout the recent polls:
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, for example, found that although 52% of the nation’s voters retain a favorable view of President Obama, only 38% have a similar appraisal of the Democratic Party. The Republicans fare even worse; just 30%, fewer than 1 in 3 voters, view the GOP favorably.
A recent CBS News poll found that nearly half of all Republicans, 45%, disapprove of their party’s congressional delegation.
A national Washington Post/ABC News poll found that just 24% of Americans, fewer than 1 in 4, trust congressional Republicans, like Shelby, “to make the right decisions for the country’s future.” (Wonder why?)
Blame the Republicans, don’t think so.
The House and Senate Democrats didn’t fare all that better, and are trusted by just 32%. Forty-seven percent of those polled — still less than half — have confidence in Obama’s ability to make the right decisions.
When people’s mistrust of their elected officials and the parties reaches these levels, there is little for political leaders to do but take counsel from their own anger and anxieties — and, these days, the popular mood fairly seethes with both those things.
Discontent with the present and apprehension about the future have become the background noise of our politics.
Yet both sides of the congressional aisle seem deaf to the din.
In one of his magisterial explorations of German politics between the wars, the historian Ian Kershaw mused that “there are times — they mark the danger point for a political system — when politicians can no longer communicate, when they stop understanding the language of the people they are supposed to be representing.”
It would be reckless not to insist that this country and its politics remain, in crucial ways, far distant from the Weimar Republic, the failed attempt at democracy in Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler.
It would be rash, though, to pretend that the distance remains as great as it once was.
timothy.rutten@latimes.com
Copyright credit goes to writer Tim Rutten of the LA Times.
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=14411
Posted by Robert L. Hanafin on Feb 8 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Why is any Congressional leaders haggling over an Air Force defense contract as our Army and Marine’s carry the brunt of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is beyond me, but it does point to the reason Obama’s Defense Budget is out of control, and far from smart defense spending. Even if outlandish defense budget were essential during the highest deficits in U.S. History they should be going to the Army and Marine Corps defense contracts NOT Air Force or Navy. We need to cut costs somewhere or pull back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking from Ohio, we are another Air Force state with no Navy or Marine bases, and no Army installations worth mentioning, combine that one Senator from Georgia with hundreds of Senators and House members from every state, yes Ohio too, with an ‘earmarked’ defense contract, and viola we have a dysfunctional Congress, wasted tax dollars, a blossoming national deficit, and angry voters on the left and right ready to tare asunder both the Democratic and Republican parties, and they will come November 2010.
major, with all due respect, there is no “or”…..if i may, “We need to cut costs somewhere or pull back from Iraq and Afghanistan”. a simple and complete withdrawl would tickle me.
“A simple and complete withdrawal would tickle me.”
It would thrill me, significantly cut down on the National Debt, and maybe, just maybe result in an ability to rebuild our ground forces.
In fact, cutting the Defense budget while not diverting the savings into anything but bringing down the national debt is the best way to Defeat the Debt.
as far as i’m concerned hes a criminal,for blackmailing the government and should be put in irons.however the number one reason for most of the waste,fraud and abuse is privatization!! with built in overrides and no bid contracts the nutcases in congress and senate are destroying our military and our infrastructure here in the US. this country will go bankrupt.but they,the rich fascists will have a private army that has no “posse comittatus” rules to abide by thanks to bush et.al when they come after the us the impovorished dissenters(or if you prefer poor pro democratic citizens).
“The number one reason for most of the waste, fraud and abuse is privatization!!”
I frankly believe you are onto something with that one mrg!!!
In fact, I’d have to agree that the most significant source of fraud, waste, and abuse in most federal agencies, including the VA and DoD has traditionally been privatization.
Cases in point: The VA Contracts out certain medical services it cannot or will not provide, at some point when the VA can provide the medical services there still remains a let’s say five year contract with so and so Medical contractor.
DoD went overboard in contracting out security at most Air Force bases, including those with nukes. Now that Air Force Security forces are returning from the war zones, we see at USAF bases both uniformed Air Force Security Police and Rent-A-Cops, because the Air Force still has a multi-year contract with a private security firm – Blackwater, maybe?
Any military service closes bases during Base Realignment (BRAC), however contracts had gone out a year or two prior to build a new commissary, new BX, new Gym, what have you or worse yet there was a contract to build several facilities before the base was placed on the chopping block. Guess what, those facilities that tax payers forked out the bill for either sat empty or were bought at a fire sale by – you got it some contractor.
They, the rich fascists will have a private army that has no “posse comittatus” rules to abide by”
I’m sad to admit as a retired military officer but this too is not simply paranoia or idle concern. This is a real potential threat given the rise of corporate Armies that THUS FAR have only been used overseas – again Blackwater comes to mind.
Here in Green County, Ohio our family witnessed something we never dreamed of in all our days in America. Well it is something one might see along Embassy Row in DC, or Beverly Hills in California, but we were taking a Sunday drive along a country road that is our favorite, and we knew there was a high roller’s mansion recently build on what once was farm land. We never paid much mind to it. Heck, we though it was some country club for a pending development of estate homes or something, heck someone in America has to get rich.
However, we finally learned the mansion was owned by one family – SAY WHAT? The darn place looks exactly like something out of Old European aristocracy, you know the one the French Revolution rolled heads as aristocrats cried, “Let them eat cake.”
Anyway, my story telling aside. We drive by the place Christmas time as we drove around looking at all the pretty lights everywhere. Low and behold we see at the main gate and along the road a series of SUVs that look fairly government looking, and they are not. We also noted that these were private security people who looked like Secret Service Agents, but for a private U.S. citizen.
Bro, this is the kind of thing one sees only in the movies. The private-corporate security guarding the estate of a Drug Cartel aristocrat.
Sent into Veterans Today via email from Iowa candidate for U.S. Senate
STATEMENT BY BOB KRAUSE
Democratic Candidate, United States Senate
Statement by U. S. Senate candidate Bob Krause on the ‘Nuclear Option’ and Senator Shelby’s Block on Appointees
“With the advice and consent of the Senate, the President may appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not otherwise described in the Constitution.”
–Article 2: Executive Power, United States Constitution
Bob Krause, Democratic Candidate for U. S. Senate, today [Feb. 8th] called on the Democratic senators in the United States Senate to use the so-called “nuclear option” in the battle with Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama over his hold on all Obama Administration appointees. Senator Shelby reportedly put on the holds recently due to a local matter affecting a campaign donor — an aircraft contractor in Alabama — as a negotiating tactic.
Krause’s statement in its entirely follows:
“In 2005, when then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (Republican of Tennessee) threatened use of the “nuclear option” to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush in response to this threat, Democrats threatened to shut down the Senate and prevent consideration of all routine and legislative Senate business. This was stopped by an agreement among key Democrats and Republicans in order to maintain the 60 vote precedent on court appointees.
“In the “nuclear option,” 51 votes in the Senate can theoretically end a filibuster on nominees, but the technique has never been used. In the “nuclear option,” it can be achieved by invoking a point of order to essentially declare the filibuster unconstitutional. This can be decided by a simple majority, rather than seeking formal cloture with a super-majority of 60 senators. The procedure is the subject of a 1957 parliamentary opinion and has been used on several occasions since.
“Despite the potential consequences, and in spite of partisan differences, I believe the Republicans who advocated the “nuclear option” in 2005 were right. Even when I disagree, I do not think that it is right for a minority to over-rule the majority, as has been done in the United States Senate in recent years. We have to create a decision where those who are in power can govern — no matter to which party they belong.
“We cannot criticize President Obama for not governing decisively if we deny him the appointments he needs to run his administration. If we are to maintain a democracy, we have to allow the winner of the election to govern, regardless of whether the winner is a Democrat or a Republican.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, February 8, 2010
Contact: Keith Dinsmore
573-230-5360
keith@krauseforiowa.com