 TURTLES
UNITE!
Indeed, here I am, feverish,
coughing, and even a little delirious, but with plenty to
write about: they're sure having fun up in Seattle, huh? Who
would've thought green turtles had such strong opinions about
the WTO?
IT
TAKES A HILLARY TO CARPETBOMB A VILLAGE
Gail
Sheehy's new book on Hillary Rodham Clinton is not something
I would normally cover in this space, but one little item
revealed in the text is a veritable blockbuster: it seems
that Hillary hadn't spoken to Bill for quite some time
after l'affaire Lewinsky, but that she finally broke down
and phoned him to demand that he start the bombing of Yugoslavia
tout de suite! In a chat with Dateline. Sheehy
reveals that Hil refused to speak to the President for eight
solid months – but broke her silence, one day in March
of this year, and took on her aspect as Hillary the war goddess
– demanding Serb blood as the price of their reconciliation.
According to Sheehy, "The day after she said that, he
[Bill Clinton] announced that he was informing his NATO allies
that he was recommending a bombing campaign."
THE
WICKED WITCH OF WAR
Hillary
Clinton, bitch goddess of the Third Way, a bloodthirsty and
vengeful witch whose malevolence is apparent even to her political
supporters – you couldn't ask for a better symbol of
the War Party than old Hil.
OUR
ARROGANT ELITES
The
tidal wave of vituperation unleashed against Pat Buchanan
seems to have died down, at least for the moment – I
mean, how long can they keep recycling the same old smears?
So now they're moving on to his supporters in the Reform Party,
notably Lenora Fulani, the first black presidential candidate
to get on all fifty state ballots and a leftist who has nonetheless
endorsed Buchanan's candidacy as a way to break up the two-party
duopoly. Now, suddenly, we are being inundated with lurid
magazine articles – like the
recent hatchet job in the New Republic – which
details the history of the New Alliance Party, the former
name of Fulani's group: suddenly all the usual left-wing "anti-extremist"
"experts" like the omnipresent Chip Berlet, are
being trotted out to describe the Fulani group as a "cult"
of (gasp!) "Marxists": the New Republic piece
(which I'll deal with at length in a future column) literally
seethes with contempt for Fulani, who, it seems, is not "legitimate"
enough for the imperious David Grann. The whole point of the
piece seems to be: how dare Fulani and her associates
get into politics at all?! Who do they think they are? Politics
belongs to the elites – not to some black woman "with
hoop earrings" (Grann notes) who is representative of
"the fringe." Surely such arrogance is going to
garner Fulani more sympathy than anything else, at least from
ordinary people – but, then again, what ordinary person
ever reads the New Republic? (Which is why Marty Peretz
– or, more accurately, his rich wife, has to subsidize
that rag to keep it going).
WHAT
IT MEANS TO BE A LIBERTARIAN: OR, BUYING POLITICIANS FOR FUN
& PROFIT
I
also note that today's New York Times op ed page has
yet another hit piece on the Buchanan-Fulani alliance,
this
time by Roger Pilon, of the "libertarian" Cato
Institute. The spin is that campaign finance reform is a bad
idea, because public financing has led to "the unholy
alliance of Patrick Buchanan and Lenora Fulani. "These
two politicians, who have garnered almost no public support
of late, may be given a prominent platform next year."
Of course, the chief backer of the Cato Institute, billionaire
Charles Koch, buys Republican politicians by the dozen, and
would like to be able to keep doing so – but that, naturally,
has nothing whatever to do with Pilon's article.
POLITICIANS
FOR SALE
The
irony is that Buchanan, and even Fulani, have more support
than the wacko Libertarian Party, which nominated Koch's brother,
David, as its vice presidential candidate in 1980. The Koch
Combine poured millions into the LP and allied institutions,
but turned to Republicans when it became clear that the GOP
was a more reliable route to power. Contrary to Mr. Pilon
– who is described as Cato's "vice president for
legal affairs" – there is nothing in the least bit
"libertarian" about allowing billionaires and transnational
corporations to buy up every politician in sight.
MONEY
CAN'T BUY YOU LOVE
How
pathetic: Pilon, the servitor of Koch and his chief henchman,
Cato President Ed Crane, cannot conceive that Buchanan could
be going after the Reform nomination out of a sense of principle,
or because he wants to build an alternative political movement
– oh no, it's because of "the $13 million pot of
public money that will go to the Reform Party's nominee."
But, somehow, Pilon doesn't mention that the two "major"
parties get more than that just to run their presidential
nominating conventions. Of course, libertarians are opposed
to that, too – but, somehow, Pilon forgot to mention
it.
ASK
DAVID
Pilon
reminds the supporters of public financing that the original
campaign reform legislation enacted in 1974 was "supposed
to shore up the two-party system," and yet, horror of
horrors, "Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Fulani, who stand to gain
so much from public financing, recently called for breaking
the 'iron grip' of the two-party system." If I were Pilon,
I would ask my benefactor, David Koch, about the iron grip
of the two-party system – and how many legal hurdles,
how many millions of dollars, how many tens of thousands of
petition signatures, how many unreasonable deadlines it took
to get his name on the ballot in all fifty states.
INQUIRING
MINDS WANT TO KNOW
Why
is Cato so hot on the God-given right of billionaires to buy
up politicians? Your guess is as good as mine – but maybe
Cato's policy analysts should take a look at a few of their
sugar daddy's special deals with the U.S. government, including
the outright seizure of native American lands, and tell us
how this is "libertarianism" in action.
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