I'm with stupid, sir - Obama, Gates & Crowley

One reason I love living in Santa Monica is we basically have no street crime. Instead of petty crooks, we have uniformed officers who usually combine an overwhelming show of force with a surprisingly personal touch on their stops and calls. And when you know the SMPD sends three cruisers to respond to a report of a homeless person sleeping in a doorway, you’d have to be an idiot to commit a real crime here. Plus, actual courtesy from cops a nice change from my hometown police department in Boston. I note my appreciation for the SMPD because it’s possible my agreeing with our president’s critique of the Cambridge police department and its handling of the arrest of America’s preeminent black scholar, Professor Henry Louis Gates, might be misunderstood.

Unless you’ve been in Alaska for the last week, you know that Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley showed up a reported break-in at Professor Gates’ house, discovered that the only person in the house was the legal resident, and placed that legal resident under arrest anyway – all within about five minutes. You’ve probably also heard President Obama’s answer to the question of what the arrest says about race relations in America, “I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.”

Say what you want about whether or not a president should have answered the question at all, the only part of his answer that any reasonable person could take issue with is the word “stupidly.” And if you’re going to do that, then what you’re saying is Sgt. Crowley’s actions during those five minutes were “smart.” A second look at what happened doesn’t back that up.

The 911 call Crowley was responding to started with, “I don't know what's happening.” The caller, Lucia Whalen, went on to say, “I just had an older woman standing here and she had noticed two gentlemen trying to get in (Gates’ house). And they kind of had to barge in and they broke the screen door and they finally got in. When I had looked…closer to the house a little bit after the gentlemen were already in the house, I noticed two suitcases. So, I'm not sure if this is two individuals who…live there.” When asked about ethnicity she said, “one looked kind of Hispanic but I'm not really sure…I just saw it from a distance.” Yet when Crowley arrived on the scene and spoke to her, he says she “went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch.”

I know what I’d call a guy who, within seconds, turns two men (one possibly Hispanic) in the house with suitcases into two males (both black) on the porch with backpacks – and the word “smart” doesn’t rush to mind.

In an interview, Crowley said he didn’t think Gates “looked like somebody who would break into a house” and was surprised that the Professor was “very upset, very put off that I was there in the first place.” The Sgt. said, “when I asked for ID…he asked for my ID. I thought, ‘that’s not an ordinary request…but if that’s all the guy needs…I’ll show it to him.’” As Crowley should know, and as the Professor probably does know, police officers in Massachusetts are legally required to present ID when requested. Gates held up his end of the ID bargain, Crowley didn’t – and that’s what most likely set the Professor off.

I know what I’d call an officer who doesn’t know the law says he has to show ID when asked, is asked to show ID by an upset person, doesn’t show his ID (despite thinking it would calm the person down), then arrests the person asking for being upset – and “smart” ain’t it.

In Sgt. Crowley’s defense, he teaches other officers about how to avoid racial profiling and by all reports doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. That said, not profiling the one man in the city of Cambridge with the DA, Chief of Police, Mayor, Governor, and President in his Fave Five isn’t exactly…what’s the word I’m looking for?

Whatever your thoughts on what this arrest means, there are a few things we can all agree on. Number one, the President shouldn’t have weighed in on a local case involving a friend about which he didn’t have all the facts. Number two, Professor Gates shouldn’t have flown off the handle talking to Sgt. Crowley. Number three, Sgt. Crowley should have just left when he determined there was no break-in. Number four, when they have their long-awaited beer together, they should all drink from mugs that say “I’m With Stupid” on them.

Lobbying the four horsemen - Senate Democrats who might kill health care reform

Sixty years ago, a union organizer named Walter Reuther changed America forever when he negotiated employer-funded pensions and health care for UAW workers at Chrysler and GM. To the 180 million people who now get their health insurance through their employers because Walter Reuther made that deal for his union members, it probably doesn’t matter that he was a socialist.

President Obama is holding a prime time press conference tonight to discuss his plan to reform our health care system. And it probably doesn’t matter to the 47 million uninsured who would finally get coverage that RNC Chairman Michael Steele called the plan “socialism.” The last details are being worked out and we’ve now gotten to the point where quality, affordable health care for all Americans is within reach. The fact that it’s being held up by four Democratic Senators who need a lesson in progressive politics is unacceptable.

Because 2010 is an election year, any reform must be passed in 2009. So the President wants a deal done before Congress leaves for their August recess. Last week, Democratic Senators Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Ron Wyden, and Joe Lieberman sent a letter to the Senate leadership asking for more time to consider the proposals. But since these changes have been coming for six decades and the president’s plan has been in the works for six months, there is no more time.

I understand Democrats aren’t used to winning, so they don’t know what to do with the power the voters gave them last November. But these four Senators can rest assured that there is no risk in voting with the guy whose promise to reform our health care system helped win the election in a landslide – and whose coattails were long enough to carry their party to control of Congress. When they add that to the 54 percent of people who support the plan, the 10 percent of people who only oppose it “somewhat,” and the 3 percent margin of error in the new Washington Post-ABC poll, they’ve got as many as two-out-of-three people on their side and a mandate to reform the system.

The sticking point, as always, is money. Insuring those 47 million people will run an additional $1 trillion – pushing our health care bill over the next ten years to about $36 trillion – and these shaky Senators are afraid to vote for the tax increases we’ll need to cover the cost. They don’t realize that even if we do nothing and leave millions of people to continue to fend for themselves in emergency rooms and urgent care facilities, our health care costs over the next decade will still be in the neighborhood $35 trillion. And we will be no closer to solving the problem.

The alternative is for these four horsemen of the uninsured apocalypse to support the president’s plan to basically spend $1.03 for every $1.00 worth of health care we get for the next ten years in order to ensure that 97 percent of us are covered. It might be tough to go back to Nebraska, Louisiana, Oregon, and Connecticut and tell the top 6 percent of income earners that they’ll be paying slightly higher taxes, but nothing worth doing is ever easy. And I seriously doubt that anyone would try to say they can’t afford to contribute a few bucks to the national “make sure everybody’s covered and healthy” fund when they earn $25,000 per month.

But this fight isn’t about money, it’s about moving forward. It’s about progress toward a more perfect union that, by definition, requires progressive policies. We use a progressive tax code to determine the fair price each of us should pay for the right to live and work here, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t have a progressive policy to determine the fair price each of us should pay for the right to quality health care.

On a purely political level, none of these Senators has anything to lose by voting for the President’s plan. The only one up for re-election next year is Wyden, and there simply aren’t enough wealthy voters who would punish him for raising their taxes to counter the legions of loyal Democrats in Oregon who would reward him for supporting the President. Landrieu owes her victory in a way-too-close race last November to the Obama wave and isn’t up for re-election until 2014. Nelson isn’t up again until 2012 and won’t face a serious challenge. And after going off the reservation last year, Joe Lieberman had better get in line or he and Hadassah won’t be welcome anywhere this side of Tel Aviv.

The fact that there is opposition to the progressive policies that move our society forward is no reason not to pass them. Progressives give us safety nets like Social Security and Medicare, and conservatives let us know when they’ve grown too big. Meanwhile, everyone’s standard of living improves. That’s progress.

We don’t need these four Democrats to be socialists like Walter Reuther, we just need them to be progressive enough to finish what he started sixty years ago.

Leading man needs to lead - Arnold Schwarzenegger & California's budget

If some guy had told me six years ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger the movie star would be my Governor, I wouldn’t have believed it – partly because I don’t think he can be taken seriously in the role of a politician. If that guy also told me that Governor Schwarzenegger would be presiding over an intractable budget crisis, I would have called him crazy – partly because Arnold the movie star had proven he mastered the art of the deal with his contract for “Terminator 3.” An actor who can get a studio to guarantee a $29 million payment whether or not a movie is made, $1.6 million for every week shooting runs over schedule, 20% of gross receipts in every market in the world – and change the usually mystifying definition of the “cash break-even point” on the back end – can do anything.

I wrote in this column in February that the Governor needed to get tough on one or two Republicans and push his budget through. Now that he’s out of the frying pan and into the proverbial fire, it’s time for a different approach. He should reject the premise that California can’t afford to pay our bills – along with the false choice of either raising taxes or cutting spending. The combination of his movie star status and his family’s political history put him in a unique position to lead by his example on a budget issue that will be widely supported by Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly and be very popular among voters: closing the tax gap.

The state of California has one of the largest economies in the world (ranking somewhere between France and Italy) and our budget is about $25 billion short this year. That would seem like an insolvable problem until you find out the difference between what the state of California is owed in personal income, corporate, sales, and use taxes and what we’ll collect is estimated at $8.5 billion. When 30% of the problem can be solved by balancing the books, it’s not a budget crisis, it’s a leadership crisis. Our country has a great leader, but it has yet to be seen if our state can say the same thing.

In the midst of a historic recession, the federal tax code is being changed to emphasize fundamental fairness and close the loopholes that have led to a $350 billion federal tax gap. If Governor Schwarzenegger had the courage to take similar steps here in California (starting with ending the supermajority requirement to raise taxes), we could add as much as $5 billion from readjusting the top tax bracket and $5 billion from taxes on alcohol and entertainment to the $8.5 billion that is our tax gap and reduce our budget deficit by two-thirds – without cutting services or raising taxes on the middle class. And we’d be well on our way to a future of consistently balanced budgets. That legacy has to be more appealing to Arnold than being remembered as the Governor who ruined the state’s credit rating while taking medicine away from poor kids and little old ladies so California’s superrich could have lower taxes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is at a crucial point in his political life. He doesn’t have to look any further than the Republican ticket in ’08 to see the obvious pitfalls of not solving this budget problem. He can’t go to Washington if he doesn’t work this out because there is no higher office available to failed Governors (ask Sarah Palin). And it doesn’t matter if you passed landmark climate control laws, if you’re out of touch with the economic realities of this recession, that’s all anyone will remember about you (see: “McCain, John - the fundamentals of our economy are strong”).

The economic reality in California is that there is plenty of money to go around, but not enough is actually going around. For example, the $30 million Arnold was paid for “Terminator 3” wasn’t paid to him, but to Oak Productions, Inc.; a front company that, for tax purposes, then “lent” him to the movie. While that might make sense for Arnold the movie star who understandably wants to keep all of his money, it makes the job of balancing the budget much more difficult for the Governor and the Assembly.

If there is one person alive who can square that circle, it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a man who has made a fortune in the private sector, becoming one of the most powerful people in one of the most influential industries in the world, then rose to become one of the most powerful people in politics. He now stands astride both worlds with a sphere of influence our former movie star Governor, Ronald Reagan, would have to envy. It’s time for him to set an example by very publicly vowing to pay his fair share in taxes, then convincing, cajoling, begging, or shaming people in his and Maria’s professional and social circles into following suit - if for no other reason than the financial health of the state of California.

A problem with the language - Why I hate Michael Gerson

I believe in the power of words. I respect good use of the written or spoken word, and I admire people who effectively utilize both. So I have nothing but contempt for people like pollster Frank Luntz who manipulate words to produce a desired emotion in targeted voters - and I loathe Newsweek and Washington Post columnist, Michael Gerson, to the point where there’s no guarantee I won’t pull a Sprewell if I see him.

Gerson was the Bush speechwriter who gave us the “Axis of Evil” in the 2002 State Of The Union address (making 3 countries who never attacked us our mortal enemies) and the “16 words” in the 2003 SOTU that falsely connected Saddam Hussein and nuclear weapons. The invasion of Iraq – and the misery and death that followed – was based on that lie, and Gerson is the man who finessed the language to get the C.I.A. to approve President Bush to represent it as fact. The worst part is Michael Gerson is either too proud or too cowardly to admit he (and the administration he served) was wrong.

Post-White House Gerson had the task of analyzing the impact of his work as a speechwriter on Friday’s “Newshour with Jim Lehrer” in a segment that usually features conservative David Brooks’ and liberal Mark Shields’ take on the week’s events. Brooks was off, Gerson filled in and, coincidentally, the big story last week was directly related to his immaculate deception in the 2003 SOTU because last Wednesday was the deadline for US troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities.

It was our former president who agreed to this timetable – very much against his will. In the Bush/Gerson White House (where speechwriters explained policy because nobody spoke to the press), the word “withdrawal” had been replaced by “surrender.” If the Republicans hung on to Congress in ’06 and John “I will NEVER surrender” McCain won in ’08, we’d be staying in Iraq forever – and it would only be a matter of time before the approached the tragic number, 58,000 dead, that brings the word “Vietnam” into any conversation about war.

My fellow Americans and I weren’t having any of that. Congressional enablers were gone, the newly-malleable McCain and his blow-up doll running mate were roundly rejected, and our kiddie Commander in Chief had to agree to clean up his mess and go to his room in a new Status Of Forces Agreement. With that, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was over.

Shields’ analysis was, “Six-and-a-half years ago the United States went to war against a nation that had never threatened us on the fraudulent charge that that nation had weapons of mass destruction and was going to represent a threat to the United States. It was neither a just or a justified war and the country violated one of its great principles in that war – and that is that war demands equality of sacrifice. In this war, all the sacrifice has been borne by less than 1% of Americans: those who wear the uniform and their loved ones. The rest of us pay no price, bear no burden…the one we’ve been asked is to take a tax cut so we didn’t have to pay for the war.”

Gerson tried a bait-and-switch. “One of the comparisons you can make is not necessarily to six-and-a-half years ago, but to two-to-three years ago when it looked like the strategy of standing up Iraqi forces as we stand down was doomed. It looked like a total failure,” he said. “Barack Obama had proposed…an almost immediate withdrawal…If we had withdrawn at that point, it would have been a failure of American military and American will. Now we’re withdrawing, two-to-three years later, and it’s no longer a failure of American military…it’s no longer a failure of American will. They have a decent chance at success and that’s a genuine accomplishment.”

Shields recalled the original lie saying, “That is not why we went to war. Six years ago, the President of the United States said ‘mission accomplished.’ Five years ago, we said Iraq is a sovereign country – we’ve remained there as an occupying power. Four years ago, the VP…said we’re in the last throes of the insurgency.” Gerson should have dropped it, but childishly wanted credit for the “surge” tactic that finally put enough troops into Iraq to secure the country – something Gen. Eric Shinseki and Army Sec. Thomas White were fired for suggesting pre-invasion.

My 4th of July was book-ended by Michael Gerson’s unapologetic cowardice and the passing of Robert McNamara, Sec. of Defense during the Vietnam War. Like Gerson, he advanced policies that resulted in our dropping hot death on innocent brown people based on a lie. But at least McNamara had the decency to admit he was wrong. His 11 lessons learned from the war he called a “mistake” should have been required reading in the Bush/Gerson White House – especially “We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.” Luckily, people are much better informed now than they were in the McNamara 60’s. When this generation realized there was no military victory to be had, we voted the warmongers out. We learned the lesson of Vietnam - even if Michael Gerson and the rest of the best and the brightest in the Bush White House didn’t.

Remebering the King of Pop - RIP Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson once made me the most popular 6th grader at Weston Middle School. In 1983, I used a futuristic device known as a VCR to record “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever” and brought the tape into school. This TV special included performances by legendary artists like Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye, but will always be remembered for 13 minutes of magic from Michael. I had convinced our music teacher to let us watch the video at the end of class and after a Jackson 5 reunion and song medley, we (teacher included) sat mesmerized as Michael took over the entire auditorium with his performance of “Billie Jean.” None of us had ever seen anything like it, and we all wanted more.

For his part, Michael Jackson the entertainer never let us down. He gave us everything he had every time we saw him – and we saw him a lot. For 45 years, every aspect of his life (mistakes included) has been pretty well documented and put out there for public consumption. The fact that he basically lived his entire life in front of the camera means those of us who care to can remember Michael any way we want – from the child star with the adorably oversized afro to the “Invincible” King of Pop. Combine that with the fact that his body of work is so incomparably extensive, and it’s clear he will live forever because Michael Jackson is bigger than life.

I’ve been trying to figure out how I’d like to remember him and I’ve decided it’s as he was between 1978 and 1993 – by far my favorite Michael era.

At the age of 20, he played the Scarecrow in the 1978 movie, “The Wiz,” where his famous vulnerability and the power of his voice on “You Can’t Win, You Can’t Break Even” combined for perfect casting. In 1979, “Off The Wall” began an unprecedented streak of commercial and critical success that saw four straight albums with at least four top ten singles in 12 years. “Thriller” came in 1982 and his transcendent talent totally transformed pop music through the emerging medium of the music video. As a solo artist, he was on top of the world in 1984 and could have commanded any price for anything he wanted to do. Instead of touring to promote “Thriller,” he let his brothers back in on the act on their “Victory” tour and donated his $5 million share to charity. Three years later, he gave us five more #1 singles on the album, “Bad” and set a world record when over a half a million people attended seven sold-out shows at Wembley stadium in London. He released “Dangerous” in 1991 and scored himself four more top ten hits leading up to his mind-blowing performance at the Super Bowl in 1993 – the only time that game has ever seen an increased audience during the halftime show.

His work as an artist and entertainer would be impressive enough on its own, but it would be wrong to talk about Michael’s life without remembering his incredibly generous philanthropic work around the world. At the age of 25, he was invited to the White House by President and Mrs. Reagan to receive an award for his support of charities that help people deal with drug and alcohol abuse. The next year, he co-wrote the charity single “We Are The World” and, along with three dozen of the biggest names in the music business, helped raise over $60 million to aid people starving in central Africa due to a devastating drought. He also started the Heal the World Foundation to “improve the conditions for children throughout the world” and has provided food, shelter, and medicine to kids all over the globe. He truly put his money where his mouth was when he donated the profits from all 67 shows on the “Dangerous” world tour to the Foundation.

Michael and his music have been a big part of the soundtrack of my life since the days of 45 rpm. One of my earliest memories is dancing to “I Want You Back” with my partner, the unstoppable Derick Grant, at the Roxbury Center for the Performing Arts annual recital. No middle school dance could end without “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller.” In 8th grade, I tried in vain to convince Mychal Feldman that I owned the leather jacket on the “P.Y.T.” cover, but my mom wouldn’t let me wear it to school. I almost broke my ankles and my nose trying to master that crazy anti-gravity lean from “Smooth Criminal,” and when my first real girlfriend broke my heart, it was bubble-gum goodness of “Remember the Time” that kept me from going insane.

Blasting my newly purchased copy of “The Essential Michael Jackson” in the car yesterday, I started to well up when “Man In The Mirror” hit its crescendo. But instead of feeling sadness because Michael is gone, I was actually relieved because now he can finally be appreciated. Then I skipped to “Another Part of Me” and cranked it up.