Living off one teat or another - John McCain and his money

Before we reached our sophomore year of high school, my best friend’s parents had built themselves a new showpiece home, bought a ski house in New Hampshire, and a beach house on Nantucket. It wasn’t uncommon for a family in Weston, Massachusetts to own a second or third home and whenever someone’s parents were in the market, it was definitely a topic of conversation in the cafeteria at Weston High. That’s why it blows my mind that John McCain thinks I’ll believe him when he says he doesn’t know how many homes he and his wife own. He must really think I’m stupid.

The question was put to him last Wednesday and it wasn’t complicated or even nuanced. A reporter wanted to know how many houses the McCain’s have. The Senator’s response was priceless. “I think – I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums…I’ll have them get to you.” I hadn’t heard a more ridiculously convoluted statement compressed into so few words since Hillary Clinton’s “I did not say it should be done, but I certainly recognize why (he) is trying to do it” gaffe on driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. Any McCain supporter who likes him because of the whole “Maverick” thing has got to be seriously reconsidering voting for this guy because the wheels have come off the Straight Talk Express.

His mumbling, stuttering answer to what may be the simplest question anyone will ever ask him also undercuts the argument about his experience. The most skilled American politician of the last half-century is speaking this week in Denver and he would have handled the question much differently. I’m not talking about Barack Obama or even Bill Clinton, I’m talking about Ted Kennedy. He would have mentioned the compound in Hyannis Port, the one in Florida, their place in Washington, and whatever else they own – but he would have done it right away. That’s what a truly experienced politician does with an uncomfortable question: answers it directly the first time and never again.

Contrast that to how John McCain handled it. First, he bungled the answer to the question. Then his response didn’t come in a statement from his staff, but in an interview his brother gave to a local cable news network in Washington, D.C. Joe McCain claimed that it’s the women who run the finances in a McCain household saying, “the person who took care of all the business was my mother. My father had no idea about the family business, what oil leases he owned in Oklahoma.” Note to Joe McCain: when your brother lies to a reporter to hide the fact that he and his wife are so wealthy that their grandchildren’s grandchildren won’t have to work and you make a statement referring to your family’s oil leases, you’re not helping.

John McCain almost got it right when he talked to Katie Couric over the weekend. She asked how it could be possible for him not to be able to recall how many houses he owns and his response was, “first of all, let me say that I am grateful for the fact that I have a wonderful life.” Then he spewed some crap about how his wife’s late father worked hard and made a bunch of money after the obligatory reference to the time McCain spent in Vietnam “without a kitchen table.” Then he mentions how grateful he is one more time. He’s grateful Cindy didn’t care that he was almost twenty years her senior – and married to another woman – when they started seeing each other and eventually tied the knot with him despite the fact that he’s an adulterer? I guess if I was John McCain and I had married a trust fund baby with daddy issues who was still in diapers when I graduated from high school, I’d be grateful, too.

When asked how much money a person would have to earn to be considered rich, McCain said, “I think if you’re just talking about income, how about five million?” In John McCain’s America, if you make $2 million you’re middle class, if you make $250,000 you’re poor, and if you make $50,000 you’re screwed.

He can’t relate to the average person because he’s never lived in the same world as the average person. The government provided all of his food, clothing, shelter, and medical care when he was growing up. Then he went into the Naval Academy, served in the Navy, and became a Member of Congress. So everything he’s ever needed has been provided by the taxpayers. Basically, the man went from living off the government teat to living off of Cindy’s. It’s no wonder he’s out of touch with the 99.5% of us who will make less than $5 million this year.

Don't feel sorry for Home Depot - Dignity for L.A.'s day workers

Former Speaker of the House and great Bostonian, Tip O’Neill, once said that all politics is local. He was advising politicians in Washington that the key to their success is meeting needs of their constituents back home. I’ve never seen a better illustration of this basic truth than the difference between the way the federal government and our city government are handling the issue of illegal immigration and undocumented workers.

First, let’s do the math. By most estimates, there are about 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. By the way, I don’t call them “illegal immigrants” because to me, the label “illegal” implies that person has gone through some sort of process and been determined to have entered and/or stayed in the country “illegally.” It’s documents, or the lack of documents, which would determine whether or not an individual is here legally. So until that person has gone through they system and been determined to have broken the law, the proper way to refer to someone who has immigrated to this country, but may not have gone through the proper channels, is “undocumented,” not “illegal.” Feel free to tell Lou Dobbs.

Not counting the ones with criminal records (a.k.a. “criminals”), the real number of “illegal immigrants” is about 500,000. These are “fugitive aliens,” or people who have received deportation orders from judge. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, the only agency that can enforce our immigration laws, recently started a program called “Operation Scheduled Departure” targeting those fugitive aliens and offering them (if I may quote Gladys Knight) a, “one-way ticket back to the lives they once knew” and a scheduled deportation. The program started in Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; San Diego and Santa Ana, California.

As a solution to the problem, it’s a Band-Aid on a gaping head wound. In the first week, this effort netted a grand total of six people – and only three who would have crossed our southern border. There was one Estonian in Phoenix, an Indian couple and a Guatemalan in Chicago, a Salvadoran in Charlotte, and one Mexican in San Diego. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a single person who volunteered to be deported from Santa Ana.

Of those 12 million undocumented people, about 8 million are in the workforce. Like the rest of us, they’re getting up every day and going to work, raising their kids, paying their bills, and trying to live their lives while worrying about how much it costs to fill their gas tanks and feed their families. Unlike the rest of us, if they’re being abused or taken advantage of at work, they can’t complain without having to worry about being the target of an (unscheduled) deportation. Imagine what it must be like to leave the house every morning knowing that the last time you saw your kids might be the last time you’ll see your kids. Think about all the grief your boss gives you at work, then think about how much worse it would be if your boss had the power to kick you out of the country if you mess up on the job. I was always one step away from choking the boss with a bike chain, so I know I couldn’t handle that kind of stress every day of my life.

But such is the power of a job. As a lure to this country (and this city), the promise of a work is so strong that they keep coming by the millions, even when our economy is weak. Our City Council knows this and, led by Bernard Parks, recently passed an ordinance that would grant “conditional use” permits to new big-box stores (like Home Depot) that would require them to provide shelters for day laborers equipped with trash cans, restrooms, and drinking water. The retailers are pitching a fit because they know they’ll eventually have to provide the same amenities at existing stores, but Home Depot can cry me a river – then build a bridge and get over it. Part of the appeal of these places is that homeowners and contractors can pick up parts, supplies, and workers all in one shot. It’s not too much to ask that these workers have a shady place to sit and water to drink when it’s 100 degrees in the Valley, is it?

America is well on its way to being a majority minority country and the fastest-growing segment of the population is Latino. In the next few decades, one-in-three Americans will be Hispanic. In L.A., the percentage of whites and Latinos is about even at 47%. By the time kids now in kindergarten graduate high school, whites will be a minority in this city and our politics will be local - and brown. Start brushing up on your Spanish.

Trial of Salim is a sham - Military commissions at Gitmo

I was living in New York City on that September morning 7 years ago when the world changed forever. From the constant rumble of rescue vehicles passing my Brooklyn apartment building on their way to the Battery Tunnel to the fine layer of ash covering my neighborhood like a grim snowfall to the smell of smoke that lingered well into spring, terrorism had gone from a foreign concept to a daily reality for me. So I’ve been paying very close attention to the first trial of one of the co-conspirators who supposedly helped make the events of that day possible. The proceedings are now over and I’m forced to conclude that just like the administration which coined the phrase, the “global war on terrorism” is a joke.

Salim Hamdan who had been picked up by Afghan forces in November of 2001 riding in a car with four other alleged Al Qaeda members and two surface-to-air missiles. Hamdan was handed over to the U.S. military who sent him to join “the worst of the worst” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Because he was Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard, the administration was (wrongly) convinced he was part of Al Qaeda’s inner circle and decided that his would be the first case brought to trial in the new system of quasi-military “justice” the Pentagon had concocted. This is how the first American war crimes proceeding since World War II began and from the beginning, I should have known it was a sham.

The deck was stacked against Hamdan from day one. According to the administration, he had no legal rights – including those guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, he could be held without charges until the end of the “global war on terrorism,” he couldn’t have his case heard in a civilian court and instead would be subject to a newly created system over which the president rules like an emperor. Unlike a regular court proceeding, the new “military commissions” allowed secret testimony by secret witnesses to whom the defense may or may not have been given access. Also, evidence was admitted despite being obtained by what the administration calls “coercive measures,” but the rest of the world rightly refers to as “torture.” I guess they figured since they had Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard (an Al Qaeda member) in Afghanistan (a war zone) with missiles that could be used to kill Americans, it was an open-and-shut case. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

First the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have rights under the Geneva Conventions. Then it ruled that they have the right to challenge their detention in courts - in addition to striking down the military commissions the administration created to make an end-run around the justice system. But the President had Congress in his back pocket, so they passed a new military commissions law that took the Supreme Court’s ruling into consideration. After replacing the chief prosecutor (who quit after being told that these trials could not produce acquittals), Hamdan’s case was back on track.

Keeping in mind that all charges of providing material support for terrorism had been dropped a year earlier, he was on trial for conspiracy to support terrorism and for providing material support (himself) for Al Qaeda. The decision came down last week and Salim Hamdan was not convicted of conspiring to kill Americans in the African embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, or the hijackings of 9/11. Instead, Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard was found guilty of being Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard. Stop the presses.

The administration counted on our buying that “worst of the worst” crap when it came to the people held at Guantanamo. They couldn’t have counted on the first defendant becoming a sympathetic (if not pathetic) figure to the jury during the course of his prosecution. Hamdan is a man with a wife, two daughters, and a fourth-grade education who left Yemen to go to work for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan fro $200 a month. It became clear that Hamdan didn’t know everything his boss was up to and when he found out, he was visibly shaken. He basically said he thought bin Laden had gone crazy and that innocent people did not deserve to die. Some radical fundamentalist he turned out to be.

So after all was said and done, he was sentenced to 66 months and given credit for 61 months served. The two most telling statements came from the mastermind of the 9/11 hijackings who said Hamdan “was not fit to plan or execute” and from the judge in the case who said, “I hope the day comes that you are able to return to your wife and daughters in your country.” He then added the words “God willing.” In Arabic.

Putting a leash on the paparazzi - Keep the kids out of it

To date, Vivienne and Knox Jolie-Pitt have each earned about $7 million. Considering they’re less than a month old and have already made more than most people will earn in their entire lives, I’d say that’s pretty good. It’s below average in the Jolie-Pitt clan, however, since their older sister made over $7.5 million by the time she was their age (if Jan Brady thought she had it tough, imagine what it’s going to be like growing up in the shadow of Shiloh). Of course, all they had to do was sit still for the camera – an easy gig for a newborn – and they were independently wealthy before they’ve been weaned off their mother’s internationally recognized teat.

This is the new reality in the celebrity economy; images ranging from the iconic to the idiotic are captured, bartered, and splashed on screens all over the world. A good percentage of these images originate in L.A.’s “thirty-mile zone” where you can’t swing a dead cat in a sidewalk café on Robertson Boulevard without hitting someone who considers themselves a celebrity. It’s time our police department recognized the risks involved in getting those photos and did something about people who will hit a five-year-old in the face with a camera in order to get a shot of Reese Witherspoon at California Adventure.

I give credit to former LAPD officer and current City Councilman, Dennis Zine, whose proposed city ordinance creating “personal safety zones” between photographers and their subjects might help. “This is out of control with the paparazzi that violate all the rules and thinking the law doesn’t apply to them,” he has said, “and someone’s going to get hurt.” Last Thursday, Zine held a hearing at City Hall to discuss the problem. In attendance were musician John Mayer as well as actors Eric Roberts and Milo Ventimiglia who said he’d “lost confidence in the laws” after being followed by carloads of paps (who would jump out at red lights and surround his car while snapping photos) to the Sheriff’s station and being told there was nothing they could do to help him.

Unlike Zine who is a native Angeleno, our Chief of Police, Bill Bratton, is a carpetbagger who has only lived here for about six years. Zine grew here and Bratton flew here. If either of them has a better sense of the unique personality of our fair city, it’s the Councilman and not the Chief. That’s not going to stop Bratton from appearing in front of a KNBC camera, sweaty from exercise in a sleeveless t-shirt with a gym towel around his neck, to patronize all of us with his infinite wisdom.

“I figured I’d come over and straighten it out,” the Chief said. “We have no intention of participating in today’s hearing, a total waste of time. We have sufficient laws on the books that we enforce to deal with this issue. If you notice since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving, Paris is out of town not bothering anybody any more (thank God), and evidently Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, you don’t seem to have much of an issue. If the ones that attract the paparazzi behave in the first place (like we expect of anybody), that solves about 90% of the problem. The rest of it we can deal with so as far as all this grandstanding and foolishness, waste of city time on this issue, and the fact that I felt aggravated enough about it to interrupt a workout to come over and set the record straight – LAPD has no intention of participating in this farce.” God forbid the Chief of Police should be “aggravated” by a risk to public safety.

Never mind that L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca was in attendance, along with representatives from the celebrity-laden enclaves of Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Calabassas; and forget about the fact that Chief Bratton lives in Los Feliz where the only paparazzi are following Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale. Boston Bill says there is no problem. He handed reporters a list of over 40 laws dealing with aggressive photographers, but I guess he never gave it to the rank-and-file in his department.

I’ve watched my Britney being trailed by a caravan of about a dozen vehicles full of photographers and I’ve seen six or seven cars run a red light while chasing her. This cat-and-mouse game has been going on for almost a year and only once – once – has Bratton’s LAPD seen fit to enforce the “sufficient” laws we’ve got. So maybe it’s time for some new laws. As John Mayer put it, “you can either name the law after what it prevents, or you can name it after the first person who is killed.” Got that, Chief?