By H. N. BURDETT
There can be no plausible argument that there are those among the 172 detainees in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay who require imprisonment lest they become grave threats to national security. There are 47 prisoners in this category at that facility.
In his 2008 election campaign, President Obama pledged to shut down Guantanamo. Four months into his presidency in a speech at the National Archives, he declared: "Rather than safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American security." The president called Guantanamo "a rallying cry for our enemies" and ordered it closed within one year.
In May of this year, it will be a full two years since President Obama spoke those words. But less than a dozen of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo since it began receiving inmates from the war on terrorism in 2002 have stood trial.
The president has now signed an executive order establishing indefinite detainment for those who remain a significant threat to national security.
With the interminably long 2012 presidential election campaign gearing up, the president is doubtless recalling the Democratic party nightmare of the 1988 presidential campaign and the noxious Willie Horton episode.
While Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was Governor of Massachusetts, Willie Horton, serving a life sentence for stabbing a boy to death, was granted a weekend furlough during which he kidnapped a young couple, tortured the young man and repeatedly raped his girlfriend.
Referring to Dukakis, Lee Atwater, Bush's campaign manager known for his bare-knuckle politics, vowed to "strip the bark off the little bastard" and "make Willie Horton his running mate." After that, Dukakis's 17-percent lead in the early polls vanished and Bush went on to a landslide victory. It is a lesson that can hardly have been lost on Barack Obama in his quest for a second term.
Human rights advocates, who had denounced the George W. Bush administration policy of holding Guantanamo prisoners without trial, hailed Obama's promise to close the prison. They are now crestfallen at the president's turnaround on his pledge.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of the executive order. In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete about face."
On the heels of the president's announcement, Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, responded: "The bottom line is that it affirms the Bush administration policy that our government has the right to detain dangerous terrorist until the cessation of hostilities."
In a so-called "war" against terrorism, Rep. King or anyone else would be hard pressed to define when hostilities actually cease.
King's backhand compliment is one that President Obama might well have anticipated but finds far preferable to the possibility that a current Guantanamo prisoner once released perpetrates an act of terrorism and becomes his "running mate" in 2012.
The highest profile Guantanamo detainee, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, openly boasts of having plotted the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Obama administration abandoned its plan to have him him stand trial, following strong public and political outcries.
Five years ago, the Department of Defense reported that three of the Guantanamo Bay detainees had committed suicide with nooses made from their shirts and clothes. trial. Systematic disregard of the American tradition of due process is the shame of Guantanamo.
The United Nations, the European Union and Amnesty International have all requested closure of the Guanatanamo prison.
Obama's reversal of his pledge is somewhat mitigated by the requirement in his executive order of a regular review of prisoners by an independent executive panel, as well as to access to legal counsel throughout their incarceration. Together with adherence to international laws barring torture and other forms of inhumane treatment and contrary to Rep. King's boast, these are significant departures from detainee policy under the Bush administration.
Moreover, Obama's original goal to shut down Gitmo has been thwarted by a bipartisan congressional ban on moving the prisoners' trials to the United States, rendering it virtually impossible to release the prisoners - a prohibition the Washington Post calls "unconscionable" and the New York Times lambasted as "an act of notable political cowardice."
The Obama administration decision to continue indefinite detention rather than to push back hard against the congressional mandate reflects a president withering in the heat generated at the starting line of this nation's overlong presidential race.
Future presidents would be able to negate the executive order with a stroke of the pen; it is no substitute for passing a law requiring independent evaluations of the courts and the guarantee of legal protection of the prisoners. In a nation ruled not by monarchs or despots, but rather by law, nothing less is acceptable.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
WISCONSIN AND BEYOND
By H. N. BURDETT
State governments are reeling from recession-driven revenue declines, but the impetus for protesting thousands to descend upon Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. capitals owes at least as much to a January 2010 Supreme Court decision.
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that the government may not restrict political spending by corporations. Such limitations would be a denial of freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, according to the majority in that 5-4 decsion.
While the Citizens United ruling does not directly address labor unions, the implication seems clear enough that it applies to them as well. Labor unions and corporations have been among the more productive cash cows of the Democratic and Republican parties respectively.
GOP strategists see the crippling state deficits during the recession as an opportunity to severely weaken if not outright eliminate, the influence of unions during election campaigns, thereby tipping the scales in favor of corporation-backed Republican candidates.
The most convenient target for attacking collective bargaining -- anathema to big business and, therefore, to the GOP -- is organized labor in the public sector. It is hardly a coincidence that the service employees and teachers unions are among the largest and arguably most powerful in the country.
Brookings Institute senior fellow E. J. Dionne, Jr. recently wrote in The Washington Post that he was told by an unnamed pro-union consultant: "The game goes like this. Destroy private-sector unions, reduce private-sector health and retirement benefits, then say, 'Hey, how come these public employees get such [relatively] good benefits? That's not fair.'"
Dionne added that the anonymous consultant took exception to those claiming private-sector unions are all right but oppose public-sector unions: "Private-sector unions are only 'okay' once they are completely emasculated."
Under Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's agenda, it would not be sufficient to merely reduce state employees' benefits to help lower the state's $3.6 billion deficit. His plan would eviscerate most of their collective bargaining rights. Benefits and working conditions would be removed from the bargaining table. Only basic pay would be negotiable. But even that would have to be kept in line with inflation.
With public-sector unions having roles in electing state legislators who determine their wages, they have undue political influence, according to the GOP mantra.
Meanwhile, a progressive think tank, Policy Matters Ohio, challenges the validity of the contention that public-sector unions are responsible for a significant amount of state government deficits. For example, last year the nine states that prohibit such unions had average shortfalls of 25 percent, compared to 24 percent in the 14 states that allow them.
New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg reminded us in a New York Times op-ed article that taxpayers foot the bill for pensions, benefits and job security for public employees "that almost no one in the private sector enjoys." But Bloomberg contended that these costs, now growing at rates outpacing inflation, are simply unaffordable.
"Yes, public sector workers need a secure retirement," the mayor conceded. "And, yes, taxpayers need top-quality police officers, teachers and firefighters. It's the job of government to balance those competing needs. But for a variety of reasons, the scale has been increasingly tipping away from taxpayers."
Bloomberg noted that budget deficits are being used by several states to justify efforts to scale back "not only labor costs, but labor rights." He stressed, however, that unions "play a vital role in protecting against abuses in the workplace, and in my experience they are integral to training, deploying and managing a professional work force."
"We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to the secret ballot," the mayor argued.
He further observed that in Wisconsin, "proposals to rein in spending on labor contracts have included proposals to strip unions of their right to collectively bargain for pensions and health care benefits.
"Yet the problem is not unions expressing those rights: it is governments failing to adapt to the times and act in a fiscally responsible manner. . .Benefits agreed to
35 years ago that now are unaffordable should be reduced. Similarly work rules that made sense 70 years ago but are now antiquated should be changed."
Bloomberg concluded: "The job of labor leaders is to get the best deal for their members. The job of elected officials is to get the best deal for all citizens.
"Rather than declare war on unions, we should demand a new deal with them -- one that reflects today's econonmic realities and workplace conditions, not those of a century ago. If we fail to do that, the fault is not in our unions, or in our stars, but in ourselves."
As the situation now stands, the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has overturned decades of limitations on corporate spending to influence elections. Parlaying this with stripping unions of much of their hard-fought rights would gift wrap for big business a decided advantage in determining election outcomes.
In the current contentious climate, it would be well to remember that it is to organized labor that working men and women owe virtually every major right they have achieved from the minimum wage and the 40-hour week to workplace safety and laws restricting child labor.
Mayor Bloomberg is on target when he insists that collective bargaining must remain as sacroscanct as the secret ballot. Governor Walker and other state governors attempting to dilute or remove this right are indeed treading on their own constituents.
State governments are reeling from recession-driven revenue declines, but the impetus for protesting thousands to descend upon Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. capitals owes at least as much to a January 2010 Supreme Court decision.
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that the government may not restrict political spending by corporations. Such limitations would be a denial of freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, according to the majority in that 5-4 decsion.
While the Citizens United ruling does not directly address labor unions, the implication seems clear enough that it applies to them as well. Labor unions and corporations have been among the more productive cash cows of the Democratic and Republican parties respectively.
GOP strategists see the crippling state deficits during the recession as an opportunity to severely weaken if not outright eliminate, the influence of unions during election campaigns, thereby tipping the scales in favor of corporation-backed Republican candidates.
The most convenient target for attacking collective bargaining -- anathema to big business and, therefore, to the GOP -- is organized labor in the public sector. It is hardly a coincidence that the service employees and teachers unions are among the largest and arguably most powerful in the country.
Brookings Institute senior fellow E. J. Dionne, Jr. recently wrote in The Washington Post that he was told by an unnamed pro-union consultant: "The game goes like this. Destroy private-sector unions, reduce private-sector health and retirement benefits, then say, 'Hey, how come these public employees get such [relatively] good benefits? That's not fair.'"
Dionne added that the anonymous consultant took exception to those claiming private-sector unions are all right but oppose public-sector unions: "Private-sector unions are only 'okay' once they are completely emasculated."
Under Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's agenda, it would not be sufficient to merely reduce state employees' benefits to help lower the state's $3.6 billion deficit. His plan would eviscerate most of their collective bargaining rights. Benefits and working conditions would be removed from the bargaining table. Only basic pay would be negotiable. But even that would have to be kept in line with inflation.
With public-sector unions having roles in electing state legislators who determine their wages, they have undue political influence, according to the GOP mantra.
Meanwhile, a progressive think tank, Policy Matters Ohio, challenges the validity of the contention that public-sector unions are responsible for a significant amount of state government deficits. For example, last year the nine states that prohibit such unions had average shortfalls of 25 percent, compared to 24 percent in the 14 states that allow them.
New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg reminded us in a New York Times op-ed article that taxpayers foot the bill for pensions, benefits and job security for public employees "that almost no one in the private sector enjoys." But Bloomberg contended that these costs, now growing at rates outpacing inflation, are simply unaffordable.
"Yes, public sector workers need a secure retirement," the mayor conceded. "And, yes, taxpayers need top-quality police officers, teachers and firefighters. It's the job of government to balance those competing needs. But for a variety of reasons, the scale has been increasingly tipping away from taxpayers."
Bloomberg noted that budget deficits are being used by several states to justify efforts to scale back "not only labor costs, but labor rights." He stressed, however, that unions "play a vital role in protecting against abuses in the workplace, and in my experience they are integral to training, deploying and managing a professional work force."
"We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to the secret ballot," the mayor argued.
He further observed that in Wisconsin, "proposals to rein in spending on labor contracts have included proposals to strip unions of their right to collectively bargain for pensions and health care benefits.
"Yet the problem is not unions expressing those rights: it is governments failing to adapt to the times and act in a fiscally responsible manner. . .Benefits agreed to
35 years ago that now are unaffordable should be reduced. Similarly work rules that made sense 70 years ago but are now antiquated should be changed."
Bloomberg concluded: "The job of labor leaders is to get the best deal for their members. The job of elected officials is to get the best deal for all citizens.
"Rather than declare war on unions, we should demand a new deal with them -- one that reflects today's econonmic realities and workplace conditions, not those of a century ago. If we fail to do that, the fault is not in our unions, or in our stars, but in ourselves."
As the situation now stands, the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has overturned decades of limitations on corporate spending to influence elections. Parlaying this with stripping unions of much of their hard-fought rights would gift wrap for big business a decided advantage in determining election outcomes.
In the current contentious climate, it would be well to remember that it is to organized labor that working men and women owe virtually every major right they have achieved from the minimum wage and the 40-hour week to workplace safety and laws restricting child labor.
Mayor Bloomberg is on target when he insists that collective bargaining must remain as sacroscanct as the secret ballot. Governor Walker and other state governors attempting to dilute or remove this right are indeed treading on their own constituents.
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