Author: BobHiggins

I read the news today Oh Boy, and then I noticed that a good cross section of the top tier of American society, the movers, the shakers, the big money makers in government, business, and the religion game, the very pillars of our community, were in prison, under investigation or actually indicted, awaiting trial or out on appeal, on the prison bus or trapped underneath two large convicts named Leroy and Bubba and I sat back for a moment and smiled somewhat wistfully.

A bittersweet moment and a brief smile because I immediately recognized that what I was looking at was a surface tremor, an advance ripple before the onset of the exposure of a tidal wave of corruption, of civic rot, of a great molting of the fraudulent upper crust, of theft and graft and mendacity in public affairs that this country hasn’t overturned since Tammany Hall.

If we begin with Abramoff and Delay, Bob Taft and Bob Ney, William Jefferson and Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and if you’re willing to bear with me I’ll go on through Bush and Cheney and Scooter the Libby, and an unholy litany of the names of those who have deceived and betrayed brutalized and dismayed their detractors and their supporters alike but I’ll drop the wistful smile and not play games with what is a deadly serious subject involving the future of our Republic.

Those who now stand  before the bar of justice or behind the bars of justice do not stand alone, and like all rats they crave company and they will in time, deliver up the names of their spiritual compatriots and coconspirators in order to lessen their punishments and their prison sentences, hence the groundswell that presages the coming tsunami of cleansing of the halls of government, of business, of religion and all the other institutions they have dragged with them into the realm of public distrust.

This is a great opportunity for America in general and Democrats in particular to answer with the “Mother Of All Public Airings Of The Dirty Skivvies.” It is time to clean our public house and to do so loudly, publicly and unashamedly, without mercy or apology before our countrymen, before the world and before our creator. This is an opportunity for a symbolic historical sequel to the tossing of the moneylenders from the temple. The Gods themselves exult in our good fortune and stand in line for tickets to ride and to watch.

Democrats do not wait, do not falter, this day, this very day begin to cleanse your ranks of the filth, of the rot, of all those unworthy to serve the public trust. You know them well, you have ignored and protected and excused them far too long, and they have held us back like a great sea anchor, made from the mainsail of our Ship of State and torn from it’s proud and proper place flying high and boldly before the winds of history.

Take the lead Democrats and do it this day, the gods and the people wait and watch.

I bought a ticket myself.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Will someone please try to explain to me why the plan being proposed by Republicans and a few misguided Democrats to offer $100 rebates to, as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said, ” help ease the pain that they’re feeling at the pump,” is not simply another major taxpayer subsidy to Big Oil?

These are federal dollars that have been gouged from our pockets by an unholy alliance of Big Oil and laissez faire Republican Government. Now, rather than institute conservation measures or put our dollars to work developing other fuel sources we are asked to borrow more money from the treasury to further enrich the already obscenely bloated oiligarchs of the corporate criminal world.

Since gas has risen in recent months it makes sense to drive less, not more. We need self imposed conservation measures on our gas guzzling culture, and quickly. If increased demand is what is encouraging the international petroleum pirates to stick their hands ever deeper in our pockets, we need to reduce our consumption not borrow money to assist them in their theft. If we drive ten percent less we will put less money in these bastard’s pockets, if we reduce our highway speed by ten percent we will put money in our own pockets and help to reduce the carnage on our highways. If we have a federal government that is too corrupt to take the lead on energy as I believe they are it is up to the citizenry to take the lead.

A return to some of the measures used in the past such as a national speed limit and real tax incentives for energy savings would bring about instant results. A national program aimed at reducing individual consumption is required. There is a great amount that each individual can do to conserve energy through the application of simple common sense and it is time to encourage the public to pay attention and turn off the lights.

I don’t think that finding solutions to the “energy crises” requires great thinkers or rocket scientists, instead I believe, that short term solutions are right under our noses and involve common sense and conservation and that long term solutions will involve using the economic leverage of the taxpaying and energy consuming public to force these oil giants to invest in more responsible methods of supplying kilowatts and miles per gallon.

I find it absurd that the Congress would think that we are a nation of hundred dollar hookers, so short sighted as to sell the economic and environmental future of our country as if we were taking out a second mortgage to purchase some unnecessary extravagance. John Stewart pointed out last week that a Democratic Congresswoman wanted to raise the ante to $500 which at least makes us higher class hookers, but hookers nonetheless.

If the revenue were coming directly from the pockets of the oil industry in the form of fines or other sanctions for their criminality, and involved no future penalties for the consumer I would applaud it and gladly accept the return of some of my money, however, such is not the case. From my point of view this is a major boondoggle for the oil criminals and a net loser for the taxpaying and driving public.

The only real power we have is to say no by driving less, slowing down, and voting out of office those “public servants” who collude with the criminal corporate class in this country.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

I gassed up this morning and it cost me over three bucks a gallon, on the way home I stopped at the store for a loaf of bread which cost me $1.39 for the same loaf of crappy white sandwich bread I paid $.99 for a month ago.

I pulled into the driveway, got the morning paper out of the bushes where it’s easier to throw apparently than on the actual porch and learned that Afghanistan was blowing up again, the intelligence community was about to move in to my spare room, four more of our soldiers and several dozen Iraqis were killed in the endless insanity in that beleaguered country, the stock market took a two hundred point dive, and the Senate Judiciary committee had retreated into a private closet to pass an amendment to the constitution of the United States of America banning Gay marriage.

I have never been a fan of decadent and despotic dictators but Nero at least provided music while Rome burned around him. These stupid bastards are playing futile symbolic board games in the capital’s hidden chambers while the republic descends into ruin

This “do nothing but give the appearance of doing something Congress” should be ashamed of themselves. The vote for this absolutely asinine amendment was, predictably, straight down party lines and the esteemed chairman Arlen Specter who had been on the record as saying he is totally opposed to it, snuck his pathetic group of Republican lickspittles into a private room to avoid public scrutiny and in a vote of ten to eight approved the measure that would be the first amendment to the constitution making discrimination the law of the land.

In a sickeningly sad political sop to the far right’s “my religion WILL be your religion crowd” these ten spineless Republicans capitulated before the Dobsens, Falwells, and Robertsons and sent this shameful and embarrassing measure before the full Senate as early as June 5.

It has NO chance of passing the full Senate as it has NO chance of passing the full House of Representatives and exactly the same mathematical probabilities of being ratified by the States.

I don’t think that I’ve made myself heard on this issue. I don’t give a big fat rat’s ass about the sanctity of the institution of marriage. I’ve been married twice and neither of these arrangements were sanctified or holy, and both failed because of my and my spouses’ individual human shortcomings, as do about half of all other marriages in the country, including those among members of the Senate the House and the ever so pious far right, nut wing, bible thumping, clergy who so desperately want to ram their fraudulent religious beliefs down the public throat.

I get so sick of this symbol over substance nonsense from these over paid, under worked, pampered to death public officials that I have recurring fantasies of stalking the halls of Washington, Buford Pusser style, swinging my axe handle of righteous indignation and caving in the collective crania of approximately half the population of our public buildings.

Two gay people living in peaceful human concert and protected by a legal document which acknowledges the existence of a mutually recognized contractual bond between them threatens nobody. Threatens Nobody.

I would like to establish a new Congressional watchdog agency to oversee these field hands and make sure that they are hard at work diligently going about the people’s business and sticking to the real job of making the country run well, in peace and prosperity for the benefit of every one. I don’t know yet what to call the agency or  what kind of uniforms they will wear but I do know that they will all be issued axe handles.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

I really enjoy the “phony news shows” on Comedy Central. I’ve been watching John Stewart for a couple years and when Stephen Colbert spun off with his Colbert report I really appreciated the nightly bitch slap he represented to the “Wing Nut News” broadcasts and the Unfair and Unbalanced Nitwits like O’Reilly and Hannity.

A good deal of what transpires on both Stewart and Colbert’s shows is far from phony, and mixed in with the humor and satirical treatments of the day’s events are often found pearls of information not seen in the main stream media.

Such was the case last night with the appearance of Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum. In promos from Public Citizen it was mentioned that Slocum had five points that he wanted to make with his appearance about Big Oil. Slocum’s five points:

1. Record-high prices paid by consumers have fueled the $342.4 billion in profits enjoyed by the major oil companies since Bush has been president.

2. We’ll never be able to produce our way to lower prices, because America is already the third-largest producer of oil in the world. The United States produces more oil every day than Iran, Kuwait and Qatar combined. The problem is that we consume more oil than any other country; every day, we use one of every four barrels of oil consumed in the world.
3. On average, it costs a company like ExxonMobil about $20 to extract a barrel of oil in Nigeria, Alaska or elsewhere. The company then sells it to American consumers for $70 a barrel.
4. A new income tax on these windfall profits could be dedicated to funding clean energy fuels, renewable energy, energy efficiency and increased investment in mass transit.
5. Strengthening fuel economy standards will make new cars more efficient, allowing them to use less gasoline. Improving fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon over the next decade will reduce our oil consumption by one-third.

Slocum managed to make his points heard with engaging good humor, even through the equally good natured spoofery which is Colbert’s stock in trade.

I don’t know how many billions of  tax payer furnished dollars have been dumped into the black hole of Dick Cheney’s Leave no Oiligarch Behind Energy Policy but I’m sure that you will not find these five points mentioned.

With all the tens of billions in subsidies given by our Governmental den of thieves to our private den of  thieves all that has been accomplished is the fleecing of the taxpayer, the maiming of the working class, and the near destruction of the American economy.

All the while the bloated plutocrats have prated on about the complexities of global markets and the difficulties in the refining process and other transparent obfuscations.

There are simple solutions to energy, to health care, and to a myriad of other problems and in these five simple statements Slocum, with Colbert’s comic guidance managed to shine a light toward the simplicity of the approach required.

Somehow, I think we’ve been overpaying our governmental officials and all the consultants and think tanks that they hire on our dime. Why not just turn Comedy Central into another publicly funded channel?

They made more sense on energy policy in a few minutes of television last night than this crooked administration has made in six and a half years.

The show repeats tonight at 8:30 EST.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Union Stockyards.. Chicago 1899

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

from “Chicago” by

Carl Sandburg 1916

I moved to Chicago in 1971 at the age of 27 at a point in my life where I was becoming aware that thirty was rapidly approaching on my personal horizon and beginning to have serious doubts about the ’60s adage “Never trust anyone over thirty.”

The city and the country were winding down from the riots of the late sixties, and winding up for more escalation in Vietnam, and, in the resultant protest movement. America had suffered enormous trauma since the assassination of John Kennedy and was ramping up for more to come in the Watergate scandal and the first resignation of a US President in history.

Richard J Daley was in the sixteenth year of his twenty one year reign as Mayor of the “City of the Big Shoulders.” This was the man or at least, one of them about whom the paranoid adage “Never trust anyone over thirty” had been written.

This was “The Man,” “Hizzoner da Mayor,” or the as he was dubbed by Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Royko in his 1971 best seller, simply, “Boss.”

This was the Mayor we loved to hate.

I had left San Francisco after four years during which I had grown weary of what I felt at the time was that city’s insufferable provincialism. Chicago turned out to be a much larger provence than the “City by the Bay” but a province nonetheless and one long ruled by the “Boss.”

“Even the Lord had skeptical members of His party”

Richard J Daley

Richard Daley was born and raised on Chicago’s sprawling south side in 1902 . He became Mayor in 1955 of a city that in the words of one ward heeler “ain’t ready for reform yet” and in the closing words of Roykos’ book “And in 1970, like it or not, it wasn’t getting any.” Daley was perhaps, the last of the big time “machine politicians.”

During his long tenure as Mayor, Daley ruled with a heavy hand which was never more evident than during the Democratic convention and police riots in 1968 and the ensuing investigations and trials to follow. After the city was chosen as the site of the convention Daley put the city’s more than 10,000 police on 12 hour shifts and called up nealy 15,000 troops from the Army and National guard.

One wag noted at the time that Daley fielded more troops for the convention than Washington had commanded in wresting the Colonies from British control.

“The police are not here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder. Richard J Daley

During the ensuing riots hundreds were beaten and injured by police during what was termed the “Battle of Michigan Avenue” while the whole spectacle was filmed by an eager press as “the whole world” watched on live television. A government study would later place blame on the police but Daley vehemently disagreed and in a gesture so typical of Hizzoner gave the police a pay raise.

By most accounts Daley was personally honest but enormously forgiving of venality and corruption in those who ran the city and Chicago Democratic politics for him in his city on the take.

As anyone who lived there at the time can attest, myself included, traffic and other minor offences were more often than not settled with a ten or twenty dollar gratuity for the officer at the scene rather than a trip downtown. The corruption was widespread and operated at all levels including many of the city’s aldermen, police officials and judges.

Daley who died in office in 1976 remained defiant and unapologetic to the end. As Mike Royko described in a 1973 column:

Several theories have arisen as to what Mayor Daley really meant a few days ago when he said:

“If they don’t like it, they can kiss my ass.”

On the surface, it appeared that the mayor was merely admonishing those who would dare question the royal favors he has bestowed upon his sons, Prince Curly, Prince Larry, and Prince Moe.

But it can be a mistake to accept the superficial meaning of anything the mayor says.

The mayor can be a subtle man. And as Earl Bush, his press secretary, once put it after the mayor was quoted correctly:

“Don’t print what he said. Print what he meant.”

So many observers believe the true meaning of the mayor’s remarkable kissing invitation may be more than skin deep.

One theory is that he would like to become sort of the Blarney Stone of Chicago.

As the stone’s legend goes, if a person kisses Ireland’s famous Blarney Stone, which actually exists, he will be endowed with the gift of oratory.

And City Hall insiders have long known that the kind of kiss Daley suggested can result in the gift of wealth.

from What’s Behind Daley’s Words?

by Mike Royko February 16, 1973

If Richard Daley were alive today he’d be 104 years old and I’m sure just as unapolojetic about himself and his city as he was thirty years ago at the time of his death.

Or as Sandburg put it ninety years ago:

……so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

For many of us at the time Hizzoner was the Mayor we loved to hate, but from this vantage point he was also one of the most memorable characters of an incredible era and all I can say now is, Happy Birthday Boss.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

I am an American citizen born in this country, raised and schooled here and a veteran of military service.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of any terrorist group, network, religious sect or social clique which advocates the use of terror or violence against anyone in any country at any time, for any reason.

I have read and understand the Constitution of these United States as amended and am familiar with prevailing law and custom in my country.

The unconscionable, illegal and extra legal tactics being employed by what is clearly a rogue administration, no longer under the control of the citizens of this country must be resisted by all Americans who are concerned with fundamental human rights and liberties.

I will be secure from governmental scrutiny in my home, private affairs and communications until and unless the government can show probable cause before a legally elected or appointed judge or magistrate that I have performed some act of word or deed that would require such scrutiny to protect the common interests of the American people.

I will expect that the government will follow the law in all respects and afford every citizen, indeed every person, the guarantees of liberty and privacy common to our American history and culture.

If I find that my security, my basic liberty to live a life free of unwarranted governmental intrusion is threatened by some  neo Stalinist or facist administration or any other criminal gang, be they private or public,  I will be forced to reconsider many of my core scruples and remove these gloves.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

We’ve all used the expression, “Time flies when you’re having a good time” or “Where did the summer go” or “It seems like just yesterday…”

For some reason the subject of time and its increasingly rapid flow came up at the Pool Hall yesterday. If you knew the cast of characters in this particular saloon you’d understand why time would be a concern, as most of us are either wasting it, frittering it away, unconcerned with it or running out of it.

The Pool Hall is Belmont Billiards in Dayton, Ohio one of the oldest businesses in the area and the smoky ancient den where I misspent a great deal of my youth and intend to misspend a good chunk of my Golden Years, which brings me, rather neatly, back to “Time.”

Time, it seems to me, passes more rapidly with the passing of time, that is, it seems to, and on that I have a consensus of yesterday’s group of local wits at the bar of wisdom.

Remember when you were eight years old and school years were eternal or summers seemed to stretch forever into the sultriness of early September when another painfully eternal school year would begin?

Back then, at eight or ten, “soon” was never soon enough and “wait till tomorrow” was a life sentence of anticipation. Monday through Friday dragged by in a boring sequence of school days, unfairly early bedtimes and dinners that were never ready until you were “starved to death,” while weekends flashed by in the length of time light takes to cross the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. As a kid, time was definitely relative to your personal wants needs and desires of the moment.

Einstein taught us new ways of looking at time as we viewed the physical world and described in “thought experiments” that brought headaches to my young head, the relative nature of time and probably inspired Dali’s whimsical painting above. Einstein was a very smart guy, a regular Einstein as a matter of fact and he might have grown up to be a rocket scientist had he paid more attention in school.

Richard Feynman, another physicist who frittered a lot of time away playing bongo drums (or he might have been a rocket scientist as well) actually described that time could go backwards which got him a Nobel Prize and made my headache a lot worse.

Anyway back at the Pool Hall, during yesterday’s typically stimulating conversation, the passage of time was the subject of the hour with all the wits bemoaning the fact that the years seem to pass more quickly every year. We decided that time has increased its velocity as we have lost our own which I suppose has some relativistic expanation but really doesn’t explain why it takes me half the morning to put my socks on.

Mike the Painter, who I suspect, has spent a great deal of time pondering this issue (most of us thought that he simply went catatonic after a couple of shots) opined, wait, no one uses the word opined at the Pool Hall, I meant, piped up, that time seems to go faster because it does go faster.

He was instantly challenged by the rest of the Barstool Academy of Science who felt that time has one speed and it moves at the speed of … Time. We batted that around for awhile and someone else looked at his watch and said that every minute took the same number of seconds and therefore Mike the Painter had to be full of…. scientific confusion and at that point the controversy became intense. Actually controversy is another word that doesn’t get much usage at the Pool Hall, we just say bullshit.

Well, Mike the Painter reflected quietly over his beer, or nodded off for bit while the firestorm of dissenting opinion raged around him and Vicki the Beer Goddess brought us another round of liquid conversational stimulation in the interest of scientific research and at last Mike the Painter said, Time passes faster as you grow older because a year is  an ever decreasing fraction of your total experience of life.”

This brought about a stunned silence as we sipped our beers and shots and pondered the weight of his words and waited for Vicki the Beer Goddess to bring the aspirin bottle as we all seemed to have become afflicted with headaches.

He continued, “Think about it, when you’re ten, a year is a tenth of your total life, ten percent of all your experience happened in the last year, but now that you’re sixty a year is only one sixtieth of your total experience of time so it doesn’t just seem to go faster, it does go faster, relative to your age.”

Well I had a roaring ice cream headache at this point and a vision popped into my mind of calendar pages turning rapidly, madly flipping by, as in an old Jimmy Stewart movie and the whole concept was beginning to piss me off and the rest of the local scientific community didn’t look terribly thrilled either.

I guess Mike the Painter sensed that his audience had grown surly and he finished his beer and left as the rest of us nursed our drinks and the discussion turned to baseball and the group headache began to subside.

After a few minutes I said that I thought that Mike the Painter might be onto something with his theory of time but Bruber pointed out that Mike the Painter was a painter for crissakes, not a rocket scientist and Scooter the Dozer Driver said that Mike the Painter was just full of controversy.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

My Golly, where to begin?

Let’s start with a Secretary of Defense who uses the expression “my golly,” or “gee willikers.” I did a Yahoo search for this term and Donald Rumsfeld’s name was in the first ten results. Jumpin’ Jehosephat who is writing this script, Lewis Carroll?

What rabbit hole have we entered, what twisted hall of mirrors are we trapped in and how do we come down from this psychedelic trip that we seem to be on.

My golly, the buzz I’m hearing and reading is that we’re going to war. Yes, I know, we already have two wars going, but they are so unfulfilling aren’t they, bogged down as we are, three years after we accomplished our mission in Afghanistan and made Kabul nearly safe for the foreign press and killed or captured most of a deck of cards in Iraq and hired Halliburton to build us a house of cards which is falling down around us.

Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
The queen of hearts is always your best bet

Our criminally insane President and his Vice Madman along with a large percentage of the senior inmates of this carnival administration are poised to go to war with Iran, Russia, China and anyone else who dares to stand in the way of their delusional lust for power, religious dominion and corporate control of the world’s resources.

The signs are clear, Cheney’s carefully crafted and threatening insults hurled so harshly in Vilnius, Condi’s blithely arrogant dismissal of Ahmadnejad’s apparent overture, no, there will be no diplomatic solution, the Oracle has spoken. The Gods of greed once again call man to war.

The rumbling of thunder in the distance presages the rapidly advancing storm. The flashes of lightning, now low on the horizon, will soon be overhead and upon us. The time to take shelter is now.

But wait. There is no shelter from this storm, just as the world was nearly consumed sixty years ago by an unelected band of self styled saviors of Der Volk, another group has risen to bring about their own version of the twelve year Reich.

Will they succeed in their criminal designs as they nearly did in the years before my birth? There is nothing in my tea leaves or the bones I cast on my table that give me an answer.

I know that they have an open field to run on and only limited resistance in sight, just as the Nazis in the thirties. There are no military powers capable of withstanding their onslaught, no statesmen who will stand and raise voices of truth against them. The Fourth Estate is in their palm although they make great pretense otherwise.

And so begins another bestial assault on the history of mankind, just as it began in the years before my life, when weak and frightened men said nothing and cowered in the face of the mad brutality of the black clad minions of another popular movement for the enrichment of self.

All were complicit in the carnage that ensued. Every nation in Europe and Asia, in Africa and the Americas in every land and ocean there was no respite to be found from the terrible trauma of war. Millions died, tens of millions died, perhaps sixty millions died and hundreds of millions more were maimed and brutalized and thousands of millions more remember.

At the heart, at the very center, of this darkness was a virulent strain of evil men who cared only for their own advancement, and now, their spiritual decendents have returned to haunt us with their horror once again.

I am but one but I’m not alone, and I tell you

I tell you this, America,  I love you, land of my fathers, of my birth, I tell you that I know your heart, I know the light that the idea of you lit in my soul. I know that you are being misused and trampled by those who despise you and I will not remain silent.

I will soothe your fever with a voice of truth and remove your lust for death. I will stand against this madness with a retarding hand and a simple no will pass my lips.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

I had intended to write a piece on Cheney’s speech in Vilnius yesterday and wrestled with the idea all afternoon and through the evening, at last too tired, too disinterested in the bastard to finish reading his painfully pompous and threatening remarks much less write about it I gave up.

Finally, I posted the whole sorry thing on my blog under the title “Cheney Lets Mouth Overload Ass, Full Text” and went to bed. To sleep, perchance to wake inspired.
No Dice. This morning over coffee and in the early light of a new day, Cheney’s snoratory was just as ugly and uninspired, just as threatening and bullyish and just as arrogant as it had been the night before. The smug son of a bitch spoke for a half hour, over four thousand words and left nothing to edify, to stir the better natures of his listeners, he delivered only empty platitudes and chest thumping, self serving bombast.

I still couldn’t do it, the morning was beautiful and promised only to improve with time and personal attention so I decided that I would not share this lovely day with a bloodless cyborg so I finished my coffee and went out to till my garden.

The garden was an instant cure, balm for a frustrated soul, as the tiller growled and turned the loamy soil I felt myself unwind. At the end of each pass as I turned the machine around there were robins in my earthy wake happily plundering the bounty the tiller had exposed. The breeze freshened each time the clouds eclipsed the morning sun and subsided with each clearing, stilling for a moment the music of the leaves.  

I worked through the morning and into the early afternoon hoeing and raking, enjoying the aroma of the rich soil and it’s promise of fat tomatoes and fiery peppers. I’ve been cautioned to take it easy so I paced myself and rested from time to time, something I would not have done a few short months ago. I discovered that I’m not able to be manic about physical labor anymore, I’ve grown old over this long winter. Life has found me out, has discovered my secret youth and carried it off forever.

In these unaccustomed breaks I heard the hundreds, no perhaps a thousand birds who shared my morning and saw and felt them cushioned on the breeze as if held aloft on a palm of wind and I felt the sun, it’s warmth, on my arms and on my neck a comfort of spring and peace, the peace of sounds and scents and sights of earth, and spring, and God himself.

I stopped for lunch and made a sandwich, a great noble sandwich. Out of sight of any physician I piled on the salami, the cheese and the peppers, the hearty basil and fragrant oil. I scorned the mortician as I ate this tour de force, this Kervorkian delight of a sandwich, I devoured it while sitting on the deck watching the birds enjoy my morning’s labor.

How good to work without madness, with calmness an enjoyment of the thing itself, I have to learn to do this as I write, I have to learn to feel the breeze.

Cheney will wait an hour, a day, or more, and a thousand dragon windmills will wait to feel the sting of my lance. I’ll meet them on the field, as a loyal legionnaire, I’ll answer the trumpets in my soul with the same determination as always, but today Dick Cheney’s awful speech in Vilnius has helped me till my garden.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Faced with a crises of confidence in their ability to establish an ethical climate in Washington that everyday citizens can look to with pride, and acting with the kind of boldness and raw courage that we have come to expect from the “Do Less Than Nothing Congress,” the august body yesterday passed the “Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act” which will accomplish …… Nothing.

It will make government no more accountable nor make the influence lizards of K Street more transparent. What could be more transparent then what is now going on and has been going on between elected crooks and corporate crooks since I first was able to read a newspaper? Is there anyone in this country unaware of the corruption of our Government? Our business community? Please don’t answer all at once.

Oh they created an appearance of a lot of sturm und drang, they made a pretense of debate, they appeared before the cameras and struck statesmanlike postures. They made sure that every blow dried hair was perfectly coifed and every toupee set at a rakish angle, the alligator shoes were gleaming and the power neckties perfectly knotted. The country expects this kind of tonsorial performance from it’s senior elected hacks. On this day they looked good enough for the daytime soaps.

They had held committee meetings and followed all the carefully constructed forms and rules and protocols for making sausages in Washington, they rose in debate and  they read bullshit into the record, because bullshit was all they knew and their constituents have come to expect bullshit on the record from their leaders, and these boys can shovel it.

The margin was close, the measure passed 217 to 213 with 3 not voting, the vote predictably partisan with Republicans voting in favor of the shameful fraud and Democrats (with 8 mostly southern exceptions) voting against.

“Public Citizen” was wildly underwhelmed with this legislative dog from the outset:

Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook

The legislation began as a woefully inadequate effort to address the public’s legitimate fears of corruption in government, and it has been whittled down even further by committee actions. To make it very clear that the House intends no sweeping reforms of influence-peddling, a gag rule has been attached to the bill that prohibits consideration of any amendments that could strengthen the legislation. In fact, the only amendments allowed for consideration will weaken the already weak bill even further.”

They did nothing, the 217 yeas did nothing because that was their design and intent as it was for the 213 nays, the 8 southern turncoat yeas were apparently trying to wrest some opportunistic advantage from doing nothing on the other side of nothing doing… or something. The only shred of honesty in this sad spectacle came from the 3 who simply stayed in bed and did nothing with a vengeance. In their shred of honesty we may take a tiny dollop of pride, they stayed in bed and struck a snore for the Republic.

Claybrook continues:

“Just to cast a picture of how this bill fails to deal with any of the recent scandals, let’s run through a quick check list of the abuses by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and what H.R. 4975 would do about them:”

See Table Bottom Of Page

This legislation was triggered by the Abramhoff affair, and as you have seen from the comparisons in the table:

Ms Claybrook concludes:

The House must reject H.R. 4975 and instead offer the American public genuine lobbying reform that will prevent similar scandals. The American public will not trust Congress until it responds to these corruption scandals in a sincere and effective way.”

But Congress didn’t reject this phony bill, they passed it. They passed it because the intent was to make a public display of doing something while in fact doing nothing. Congress is not upset with corruption in American politics, They revel in corruption like a dog rolling in a cat box. The smell of cash draws them irresistibly, like jackals to a rotting carcass.

Few in Congress want to slay this goose, go into the lobby of any Senate or House office building and watch the foot traffic. Pay close attention to the better dressed, the high dollar shoes and briefcases will give them away. These are the people who are scurrying around buying our government, and they are very well paid. There are thousands of them in Washington, ubiquitous, hard at work every hour of every working day in the service of their masters. They work weekends too, have low handicaps and good table manners.

Their visits to congressmen and Senators are more than welcome because they always come bearing gifts, gifts of travel and merchandise, of favors for friends and family, of cash and more cash. There are very few of our silver haired slick tongued “public servants” who will allow this enormous river of revenue to go dry. They will make public pronouncements in favor of reform and beat their breast while we’re watching but at the end of the day they will do what keeps them true to their masters and true to their name……. Nothing.

Bob Higgins