screwingamerica

#4 William Lerach, Plaintiffs' Trial Lawyer MISSING IN ACTION

2005-09-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Katrina: Ample warning, corrupt employment practices, reckless to willful incompetence, lying official announcements, mothballed school buses, arguments about sex harassment training for emergency workers.
WHERE ARE THE TRIAL LAWYERS NOW THAT WE REALLY NEED THEM?
Goldberg Screwup #77 nominates WILLIAM LERACH, the lawyer who brought Enron to its knees, as the fourth person screwing up America. A famous and fabulously rich trial lawyer, Lerach is the Chairman of Lerach Coughlin, his 150 lawyer firm with offices almost every major city of the South and West, including Houston, Texas. According to his own firms' publicity, William S. Lerach is widely recognized as one of the leading securities lawyers in the United States. He has headed the prosecution of hundreds of securities class and stockholder derivative actions resulting in recoveries for defrauded shareholders amounting to billions of dollars. Mr. Lerach has been the subject of considerable media attention and is a frequent commentator on securities and corporate law, as well as a frequent lecturer. He represents numerous public and Multi-Employer pension funds in corporate securities matters.
The firm says its business includes human rights abuses.
Trial lawyers defend themselves when people like George Bush attack them as the cause of all the ills in the society, on the grounds that we need them to keep the powerful in line. Lerach is the poster boy for the "tort reform" crowd. WHERE IS WILLIAM LERACH NOW THAT WE NEED HIM?
AM I THE ONLY LAWYER IN AMERICA WHO THINKS SOMEONE SHOULD SUE THE FEDS?
The Federal Tort Claims Act allows suits for willful and reckless misconduct.
Starting out to save someone and putting them in a worse position is a tort everywhere in America, including in Louisiana. Even the Good Samaritan Acts don't protect people against what FEMA did, including recklessly hiring a series of unqualified incompetents to run the place.
SOMEONE PUT ME IN FRONT OF A JURY OR I'M GOING TO BURST.

#3 Chief Justice William Rehnquist (posthumously)

2005-09-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

Speak ill of the dead.
William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court until his death two days ago, was the offensive line of the conservative revolution that has come close to undoing our nation, dividing us into two nations, black and white, and stripping the poor and helpless of any claim on their national government. The only thing he did not achieve was to reduce America's women once again to back alley coat hanger abortionists. But not for lack of trying.
For doubters, I have only two words: New Orleans.

Chief Justice Rehnquist was a judicial activist in the worst sense of the word, repeatedly using an eighteenth century interpretation of the Constitution to undo the legislation of the peoples' representatives -- reversing popularly passed measures for affirmative action, violence against women, and gun control.
He had so little respect for the rule of law that, when he found himself in the minority in GARCIA v. SAMTA, the case that revived the federal government's power, his dissent simply stated that judges just impose their personal views anyway, so he was waiting for someone in the majority to die, so that he could force his position through their conservative replacement.

But when asked to interpret the Constitution actively to help people, Rehnquist magically turned into a pure strict constructionist. As a result of one of his decisions, it is fair to say that if any judge is responsible for the horrifying sight of the helpless, impoverished, dying, overwhelmingly black people in New Orleans, it's Rehnquist. Fifteen years ago, he ruled that governments owe their people nothing. While you listen to the eulogies of the former Chief Justice, who died in his bed and at his desk after eighty productive, healthy years, consider "Poor Joshua" Deshaney, whom William Rehnquist said had no claim against the society Rehnquist ruled.
POOR JOSHUA:
The Winnebago County authorities first learned that Joshua DeShaney might be a victim of child abuse in January 1982, when his father's second wife complained to the police, at the time of their divorce, that he had previously "hit the boy causing marks and [was] a prime case for child abuse." The Winnebago County Department of Social Services (DSS) interviewed the father, but he denied the accusations, and DSS did not pursue them further. In January 1983, Joshua was admitted to a local hospital with multiple bruises and abrasions. The examining physician suspected child abuse and notified DSS, which immediately obtained an order from a Wisconsin juvenile court placing Joshua in the temporary custody of the hospital. Three days later, the county convened an ad hoc "Child Protection Team" - consisting of a pediatrician, a psychologist, a police detective, the county's lawyer, several DSS case-workers, and various hospital personnel - to consider Joshua's situation. At this meeting, the Team decided that there was insufficient evidence of child abuse to retain Joshua in the custody of the court. . .
Based on the recommendation of the Child Protection Team, the juvenile court dismissed the child protection case and returned Joshua to the custody of his father. A month later, emergency room personnel called the DSS caseworker handling Joshua's case to report that he had once again been treated for suspicious injuries. The caseworker concluded that there was no basis for action. For the next six months, the caseworker made monthly visits to the DeShaney home, during which she observed a number of suspicious injuries on Joshua's head; she also noticed that he had not been enrolled in school, and that the girlfriend had not moved out. The caseworker dutifully recorded these incidents in her files, along with her continuing suspicions that someone in the DeShaney household was physically abusing Joshua, but she did nothing more. In November 1983, the emergency room notified DSS that Joshua had been treated once again for injuries that they believed to be caused by child abuse. On the caseworker's next two visits to the DeShaney home, she was told that Joshua was too ill to see her. Still DSS took no action.

In March 1984, Randy DeShaney beat 4-year-old Joshua so severely that he fell into a life-threatening coma. Emergency brain surgery revealed a series of hemorrhages caused by traumatic injuries to the head inflicted over a long period of time. Joshua did not die, but he suffered brain damage so severe that he is expected to spend the rest of his life confined to an institution for the profoundly retarded. Randy DeShaney was subsequently tried and convicted of child abuse.

Joshua and his mother brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin against respondents Winnebago County, DSS, and various individual employees of DSS. The complaint alleged that respondents had deprived Joshua of his liberty without due process of law, in violation of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, by failing to intervene to protect him against a risk of violence at his father's hands of which they knew or should have known.

Rehnquist ruled:
Although the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause affords protection against unwarranted government interference . . ., it does not confer an entitlement to such [governmental aid] as may be necessary to realize all the advantages of that freedom."

[Joshua and his mother] contend, however, that even if the Due Process Clause imposes no affirmative obligation on the State to provide the general public with adequate protective services, such a duty may arise out of certain "special relationships" created or assumed by the State with respect to particular individuals. Petitioners argue that such a "special relationship" existed here because the State knew that Joshua faced a special danger of abuse at his father's hands, and specifically proclaimed, by word and by deed, its intention to protect him against that danger. . . Having actually undertaken to protect Joshua from this danger - which petitioners concede the State played no part in creating - the State acquired an affirmative "duty," enforceable through the Due Process Clause, to do so in a reasonably competent fashion. Its failure to discharge that duty, so the argument goes, was an abuse of governmental power that so "shocks the conscience," Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172 (1952), as to constitute a substantive due process violation.

We reject this argument.

It doesn't take much imagination does it to envision how the society might have evolved over the last sixteen years, since Rehnquist's decision in DeShaney, if it had gone the other way. But instead we have the sights and sounds of the last seven days. Poor Joshua. Poor America.

Screwup #2 Judge Richard Posner

2005-09-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

Richard Posner is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. A prolific scholar and public intellectual, as well as an influtential judge, he earns his place as Screwup #2 for his role in creating the doctrine that the government has no duty to rescue its citizens from harm.
Early in his career, Posner published an article arguing that it would be "inefficient" in an economic sense to make people liable for walking past a drowning man. Even really good swimmers.
See,William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, Salvors, Finders, Good Samaritans, and Other Rescuers:An Economic Study of Law and Altruism, 7 J. LEGAL STUD. 83 (1978) (arguing that imposing liability for failure to rescue would be economically
inefficient).
Then, when he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals, he got a chance to put his theory into practice, writing the enormously influential opinion for the court, then affirmed by the Supreme Court, in DeShaney v. Winnebago, the case where the County Welfare Department sent a boy, Joshua DeShaney, back to his abusive father, who beat him until he was forever retarded. Not liable, said Posner, we cannot have the government responsible for the well-being of its subjects. Where will it all stop?
Although the Supreme Court affirmed Posner's reasoning, the case generated the legendary dissent by Justice Blackmun, which begins. "Poor Joshua!"
Poor Joshua, indeed. And all the people locked into the Superdome while Bush fiddles are the heirs of Richard Posner's fertile mind.

Omigod Brown Really Is A Screwup

2005-09-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

When we nominated FEMA director Michael D. Brown as Goldberg77 Screwing America #1, we did it based on his obvious lack of qualification for this crucial post. Little did we know, dear reader, that the horse people didn't even trust him with animals.
Read from Josh Marshall and
weep.
Earlier we asked who would track down the story about FEMA Chief Michael Brown's apparent firing from his last pre-FEMA employment.

The Boston Herald is on the case. The lede from this morning's piece by Brett Arends ...

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.

The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster.

A bit further down, there's this ...

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

``He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign.

Takes your breath away, doesn't it?

Today's Screwup: Michael D. Brown, Director, FEMA

2005-09-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

Just in case you're wondering about the experience of the man whose agency took four days to get to New Orleans, which used to be called the City That Care Forgot.
Well, dear readers, before the Bush Administration found him a job in Emergency Management, he was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee. And we know how well organized they are, don't we?
From 1988 to 1991, Brown was General Counsel to Dillingham Insurance, Suits Drilling, Suits Rig, Latigo Energy, Dillingham Ranch and Dillingham Enterprises.
Do I smell oil? In a Bush administration? Nah, must just be that pesky exploding truck in the City that Bush Forgot.

Put Your Behind in the Past and Consider New Nominees for the Worst 100

2005-09-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,
Now that you have had a glimpse of the kinds of people the right loves to hate -- Nobel Peace Prize winning Presidents of the United States, lifelong warriors against racism and oppression -- it is time to move on. Starting today with Michael Brown, the Bush Administration director of Federal Emergency Management, I am turning my attention to the present and future of our country with real screwups.

So, Goldberg #77's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America
#1. Michael Brown, Director, FEMA
need an explanation? Turn on CNN.

Here's the rest of Goldberg's list, for those of you who have been on Mars. Some of them are as obscure as I was before Bernie made me his own and others are well known to you all. Please feel free to comment on anyone who strikes your fancy.
11 Noam Chomsky
12 Dan Rather
13 Andrew Heyward
14 Mary Mapes
15 Ted Rall
16 John Edwards
17 Al Sharpton
18 Al Gore
19 George Soros
20 Howard Dean
21 Judge Roy Moore
22 Michael Newdow
23 The Unknown American Terrorist
24 Lee Bollinger
25 James Kopp
26 Dr. Martin Haskell
27 Paul Begala
28 Julian Bond
29 John Green
30 Latrell Sprewell
31 Maury Povich
32 Jerry Springer
33 Bob Shrum
34 Bill Moyers
35 Jeff Danziger
36 Nancy Hopkins
37 Al Franken
38 Jim McDermott
39 Peter Singer
40 Scott Harshbarger
41 Susan Beresford
42 Gloria Steinem
43 Paul Eibeler
44 Dennis Kozlowski
45 Ken Lay
46 Barbara Walters
47 Maxine Waters
48 Robert Byrd
49 Ingrid Newkirk
50 John Vasconellos
51 Ann Pelo
52 Markos Moulitsas
53 Anna Nicole Smith
54 Neal Shapiro
55 David Westin
56 Diane Sawyer
57 Ted Field
58 Eminem
59 Shirley Franklin
60 Ludacris
61 Michael Savage
62 Howard Stern
63 Amy Richards
64 James Wolcott
65 Oliver Stone
66 David Duke
67 Randall Robinson
68 Katherine Hanson
69 Matt Kunitz
70 Jimmy Swaggart
71 Phil Donahue
72 Ward Churchill
73 Barbara Kingsolver
74 Katha Politt
75 Eric Foner
76 Barbara Foley
77 Linda Hirshman
78 Norman Mailer
79 Harry Belafonte
80 Kitty Kelley
81 Tim Robbins
82 Laurie David
83 The Dumb and Vicious Celebrity
84 The Vicious Celebrity
85 The Dumb Celebrity
86 Chris Ofili
87 Sheldon Hackney
88 Aaron McGruder
89 Jane Smiley
90 Michael Jackson
91 Barbara Streisand
92 Kerri Dunn
93 Richard Timmons
94 Guy Velella
95 Courtney Love
96 Eve Ensler
97 Todd Goldman
98 Sheila Jackson Lee
99 Matthew Lesko
100 Rick and Kathy Hilton

Gone Fishin

2005-08-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,
I am going on a trip for a few days, trying to find new ways to screw up Bernard Goldberg's America. Who knows? Given the evil deeds of the Nobel Prize Winners, etc., we have already identified, the possibilities are legion. Anyway, no further news on the Goldberg 100 until I return.

#10 Ralph Neas

2005-08-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

According to Goldberg, Neas, President of the People for the American Way, is screwing up America, because he opposes the Boy Scouts' antigay agenda and because he worked against the nomination of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Goldberg particularly focussed on PAW's opposition to Bush's appeals court nominee, Charles Pickering. Actually, what Goldberg hates the most is that unlike most liberal lobby groups Neas' PAW has been pretty effective in an overwhelmingly conservative regime. One measure of such effectiveness is the way that clueless Democratic politicians find their spine when Neas pushes them.

THE REAL RALPH NEAS
Ralph Neas, President of PAW, came to PAW after an unsuccessful run for Congress from Maryland. From 1981 through 1995, he served as Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation's oldest and largest coalition. During that time, landmark laws enacted included the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, the 1988 Fair Housing Act Amendments, the Japanese American Civil Liberties Act, and the 1982 Voting Rights Act Extension. Senator Edward Kennedy, in a 1995 Senate floor statement, described Ralph as the "101st Senator for Civil Rights."

In 1987, he chaired the successful bipartisan effort by the 300-organization Block Bork Coalition to defeat the confirmation of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. For his successful efforts, Ralph was named ABC's "Person of the Week."

As President of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation since 2000, Ralph has increased the members and supporters of People For from 300,000 to more than 750,000 and fought a series of largely ineffective battles against conservative legislation like the Patriot Act and the Bush tax cuts.

His organization's website, asserts special pride in how relentlessly the right wing attacks him, nonetheless, for his effectiveness, especially the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, where he has been personally criticized more than 50 times.

He has been honored by organizations representing the spectrum of issues to which he's devoted his career, including the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award from LCCR; the Benjamin Hooks "Keeper of the Flame" Award from the national NAACP; the Flag Bearer Award from Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; the Public Service Achievement Award from Common Cause; the Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund; the Isaiah Award for the Pursuit of Justice from the American Jewish Committee; the Edison Uno Memorial Civil Rights Award from the Japanese-American Citizens' League; the University of Chicago Alumni Public Service Citation; "Citizen of the Year" from the Guillian-Barre Syndrome Foundation International; named one of Vanity Fair’s Best Stewards of the environment (2004); and the “National Good Guy Award” from the National Women's Political Caucus.

Goldberg's elevation of Neas to top ten reflects a larger issue: that the right cannot tolerate any limits on their absolute power whatsoever. From Goldberg 77's point of view, Neas and PFAW have done very little to defeat the overwhelmingly conservative dominance of every meaningful agency of American life, including its special target, the judiciary. When liberals try to exercise power, conservatives react as if their car talked. "Drive to work? Not on your life! Today, we're going to the beach."

#9: Jonathan Kozol

2005-08-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

Goldberg describes education writer Jonathan Kozol as someone who has lectured for decades on public education standards, specifically promoting the idea that children should become critics of America. According to Goldberg, Kozol views the education system as brainwashing, and that children should be counter-brainwashed by being skeptical of authority. Ironically, to Goldberg, Kozol draws much of his inspiration from the educational systems of Cuba and China. All of this activity has made Kozol, according to Goldberg "the patron saint of today's powerful liberal education establishment."

THE REAL JONATHAN KOZOL
Born into one of Goldberg's hated affluent Jewish families (see Krugman,#8), Kozol has made a practice of leaving comfortable surroundings for more challenging, impoverished areas. He enjoyed teaching young children and eventually got a job in the public school system in Roxbury teaching fourth grade. Thereafter, Kozol spent most of his adult life teaching, speaking, and writing about the conditions and problems of urban youth. Kozol's first book, Death at an Early Age (1967), a devastating chronicle of children he met during his first year of teaching, won the National Book Award. Rachel and Her children (1988), a study of homeless families, won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His most recent book, Amazing Grace (1995), which appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for several months, takes place in the South Bronx, the poorest Congressional district in the U.S. Kozol has said, "Of all my books, Amazing Grace means the most to me. It took the most out of me and was hardest to write because it was the hardest to live through those experiences. I felt it would initially be seen as discouraging but, ultimately, sensitive readers would see the resilient and transcendent qualities of children and some mothers in the book-that it would be seen as a book about the elegant theology of children. That's what happened finally. The most moving comments about it also pointed to its moral and religious texture."

A blogger I found put his finger on Goldberg's targeting of this defender of the poorest and most helpless of Americans -- the children -- perfectly:
"I’ve never heard anyone breathe a negative word about the man previously, but clearly Kozol slighted Bernie at a cocktail party at some point in the 80s and he hasn’t forgiven him.”

Goldberg 77 sees a slightly different -- and uglier -- pattern emerging. What Bernard Goldberg hates most is Jewish men, born into privilege, who give up their privileged positions to advance the claims of people less powerful than themselves.
As the New Testament says "For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required." -- Luke 12:48. A little Freud anyone? Could our Bernie be feeling just a teensy bit guilty about his own selfish, vulgar ways?

#8 Paul Krugman

2005-08-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

Goldberg calls Paul Krugman "the most ideologically left-wing columnist on the Times' op-ed page." Surveying the rich trove of Krugman's twice weekly columns and dozens of published books on economics and economic politics, Goldberg can find only one instance of how Krugman is screwing up America: On May 11, Krugman compared the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal to the My Lai massacre, because both scandals had been exposed in part by long time journalist Seymour Hersh. Goldberg does try to draw a larger lesson from the one column, concluding that "for Paul Krugman, and for many of his devoted readers who eagerly embrace his warped view of America and its military, this blatant absurdity had become a simple fact."
As an aside, Goldberg also asserts that Krugman is screwing up America, because he is one of a group of "rich kids," like Frank Rich (no pun intended I assume), who wrote for their college newspapers.

THE REAL PAUL KRUGMAN

Krugman is a Professor of Economics at Princeton. He is the winner of the prestigious Clark medal, awarded biennially to the best young economist under forty. He has written many books, including a classic text on international economics. In his column for The New York Times he has argued forcefully against the Bush economic policy, persuasively making the case that the Bush policy reflects the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests.

In September, 2003, Krugman published a collection of his columns in a bestselling book, The Great Unraveling, arguing that decreasing taxes, maintaining public spending, and fighting a war in Iraq were in the long run unsustainable, and would eventually generate a major economic crisis.

Goldberg did not have to attack Krugman for his youthful prosperity or college journalism, as Krugman has attracted many commentators willing to give him the respect of addressing his actual political and economic positions. Online National Review columnist Donald Luskin, for example, has started a "Krugman Truth Squad," a group of commentators dedicated to debunking Krugman's perceived deceptions, and Lawrence Kudlow and James Cramer have routinely debated Krugman on the real issues of economic facts and forecasts.

It is interesting to note, dear readers, that in attacking Frank Rich and Paul Krugman with this "college rich kids" rhetoric Goldberg is just overtly doing what the conservative thought police do every day -- using code talk to stir class resentment amongst people who would actually benefit from liberal policies against liberals -- words like "coastal" and "elite" and my personal favorite "Barbra Streisand." You may note that such code words are often used on Jews. So the poor people in West Virginia vote for the quintessential plutocrat George Bush and wind up unable to pay for gasoline. That'll show 'em. I guess.

In addition to allegedly writing for his college newspaper, Krugman the adult has also written for The Harvard Business Review, Foreign, Policy, The Economist, Harper's and the Washington Monthly.

#7 Margaret Marshall

2005-08-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

Margaret Marshall is Chief Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Although she has written and participated in many opinions in her years on the Court, the only thing that matters, according to Bernard Goldberg, is that she was the author of the opinion that struck down the Massachusetts law against gay marriage. None of the other three Justices who made up the four Justice majority are listed in Goldberg's book.

THE REAL MARGARET MARSHALL came to the Massachusetts Court after a stint as general counsel for Harvard University and a partnership in the old Boston firm of Choate, Hall and Stewart.She has a master's degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. Before the opinion in the gay marriage case, the described herself as having lived through two revolutions already: the abolition of apartheid in her native South Africa and the American feminist movement. Then Harvard President Neil Rudenstine describes her most consistent trait as a concern for individual rights. Goldberg 77 assumes that it is not Marshall's brilliant education, her world of admiring friends and family, or her uniform plaudits from prior employers that earned Bernard Goldberg's condemnation.

Rather it is simply that she stands for the issue of the individual rights of gay individuals. On that subject, gentle reader, Goldberg 77 leaves you to your own moral conscience, as she did on the content of Jesse Jackson's Presidential platform and the public policies of Senator Edward Kennedy. She would simply note that when a liberal like Margaret Marshall has an impeccable personal life, Goldberg attacks them for their public positions. When a liberal has a controversial private life, Goldberg attacks them for their PRIVATE positions. No wonder the only liberals he admires are safely entombed in the cold, cold grave.

#6 Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States

2005-08-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

For weeks now, your correspondent, Goldberg 77, has been braying about being on the same list OF ANYTHING as Jimmy Carter. She expects the call from Stockholm any minute.
Here's what Goldberg retails as President Carter's fatal screwups.
He praised the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, North Korea's Kim Il Sung, and others. He said the election of Hugo Chavez, still the President of Venezuela, did not have fatal electoral flaws, he criticized the process in Florida, and he sat next to Michael Moore (see, #1 Michael Moore, the seer, above).

THE REAL JIMMY CARTER
Jimmy Carter was President of the United States from 1976--1980. His Presidency was marked by both failures and successes, successes including the peace treaty he brokered between the states of Israel and Egypt with the Camp David Accord, the SALT II treaty brokered with the Soviet Union, and the Panama Canal treaty which turned the canal over to Panama, and failures including economic inflation and stagnation and the Iranian takeover of the American embassy.

But Goldberg is not interested in Carter's Presidency; it's his twenty-five years of post Presidency that Goldberg credits with Screwing Up America. On the international front, since his unsuccessful bid for re-election, Carter has been involved in a variety of public policy, human rights, and charitable causes. His Carter Center focuses on international conflict resolution and health care including the campaign to eliminate guinea worm disease. He and members of the center are sometimes involved in the monitoring of elections, including acting as election observers, particularly in Latin America and Africa. Carter was the third U.S. president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize award. Like many of the screwups on Goldberg's list, Carter has been publicly critical of George Bush's war in Iraq.

Bernard Goldberg, who resides in Miami, FLA, has a public mantra that liberal "elites" from coastal areas are screwing up the good America, presumably of the heartland, with their elitist ways. Although his home state of Georgia does have a coastal border, it is worthy of note that Carter and his wife Rosalynn are well-known for their work with Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for poor people, and that every September he goes to the Plains Peanut Festival and reportedly frequents the Pink Pig Barbecue Restaurant in Cherry Log, Georgia when he and the former First Lady are visiting their log cabin near Ellijay, Georgia. Carter also teaches a Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. He is also an accomplished amateur woodworker and has occasionally been featured in the pages of Fine Wood Working magazine.

#5 Anthony Romero, ACLU

2005-08-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Goldberg uses the same techniqe with Anthony Romero, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, that he uses with Jesse Jackson. I call it the Old Lefty strategy. Goldberg says, "I'm not a right wing ideologue, because I supported liberal causes thirty years ago." We have no way of knowing this, of course, particularly when Goldberg is merely reporting the contents of his (former) mind. Thus he praises not the present advocate of social change, Jesse Jackson, but the immortal (dead) Martin Luther King, Jr., who can now do nothing to affect our common life. In Romero's case, it's not the ACLU defending civil liberties against the Bush Justice Department's War on Terror, which is happening right now, or enforcing the separation of church and state, which is the hottest current issue in constitutional law, but a thirty-year old march by some marginal self-styled Nazis in Skokie, long ago resolved in favor of the ACLU's position on free speech.

Thus, Goldberg makes Romero NUMBER FIVE on the list of people screwing up our common society, because he is an "absolutist," whose organization sees its job as "to defend ourselves against John Ashcroft (who has since resigned as attorney general) and a government that tramples on the Constitution in the name of national security."

THE REAL ANTHONY ROMERO is Executive Director of the ACLU.
Romero, an attorney with a history of public-interest activism, has presided over the most successful membership growth in the ACLU's 85-year history, almost doubled the budget of the organization and increased the national staff by over 75% since he began his tenure. Romero is the ACLU's sixth executive director, and the first Latino and openly gay man to serve in that capacity. He came to the organization from the Ford Foundation's Human Rights and International Cooperation Program after a stint at the Rockefeller Foundation. There's nothing immediately apparent from his biography to qualify him as a screwup. As a former lefty of course Goldberg can't be put off by Romero's being gay or Latino, so Goldberg 77 can only conclude that Bernard Goldberg picked Romero, because Goldberg thinks the ACLU itself is screwing up America. Here is the ACLU's platform, so you can decide for yourselves.

The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:

Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly. Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict separation of church and state.

Your right to equal protection under the law - equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.

Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.

Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.
We work also to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people; women; mental-health patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor.

Goldberg 77 wants to take this opportunity to thank Bernard Goldberg for motivating her to do the actual research into the lives and work of the men and women he describes as Screwing Up America. After a generation of right wing dominance of the culture, she had lost sight of how many people are still out there, doing honorable work, and keeping idealism alive.

#4 Reverend Jesse Jackson

2005-08-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

Goldberg describes Jesse Jackson as screwing up America, because he blames other people for African-Americans'problems. Jackson seems to be one of several people targeted by Goldberg because they weren't as good as his recollections of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Goldberg Screwup #77 notes in passing that conservatives almost always reserve their admiration for liberals to distant heroes who could not possibly make social change during present lives. In the Fifties, conservatives, critical of King, doubtless found much to admire in George Washington Carver.)In any event,

THE REAL REV. JESSE JACKSON
Jackson has been the target of so much scrutiny, including a lot of scrutiny from questionable sources, that Goldberg Screwup 77 is reluctant to participate in the process, even by restating the controversy. She will try to stick to publicly verifiable facts.
Jackson, in his Sixties, is a minister, civil rights activist, and former candidate for President in 1984 and 1988 (in the Democratic Party). Here is the platform on which he ran for President:
creating a WPA-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially-biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand,"
reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs,
cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration,
declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation,
instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning unilateral disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union,
creating a single-payer system of universal health care,
ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment,
increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all,
applying more strict enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, and
supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.

After Jackson's long campaign against Anheuser Busch for not having black beer distributorships, in 1998, two of his sons purchased the Anheuser Busch distributorship in River North, Chicago. More recently, Jackson participated in challenging the electoral outcomes in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Married and with several children of his marriage, Jackson has admitted to fathering a child with a woman not his wife. Most recently, Jackson participated in the events surrounding the Terry Shiavo case, on behalf of the parents, seeking to continue treatment.

#3 Senator Edward ("Ted") Kennedy

2005-08-19T05:38:00.000-07:00

Kennedy is screwing America, according to Bernard Goldberg, because he is treated as the liberal concscience of the Democratic Party and yet opposed the war in Iraq and, thirty-six years ago, was involved in a fatal auto accident with a single woman.
THE REAL KENNEDY:
Senator Edward Kennedy has been in the United States Senate for more than forty years. Since 1994, his party has been essentially out of power there. He has held mostly liberal positions within the Democratic Party, as portions of the Party have tried to draw it to a more conservative position. From this position of double disempowerment, he is regarded as a relatively effective Senator, in part because his staff is supposed to be the best in Congress, although he has yet to see most of his cherished positions, such as alternative energy programs and liberal immigration policies, enacted into law. When he tried to work with the Bush Administration, he was partially responsible for the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, although his professed achievement turned sour within one month, when he found out how underfunded it was to be.
In a recent poll, over sixty percent of Americans were found to oppose the Iraq war, so if opposition is the equivalent of screwing America, Goldberg's list is going to have to get a lot longer soon.
The auto accident scandal seems more like a private screwing than a national one, but, if private wrongdoing toward women is a criterion, it is puzzling that the BTK killer in Kansas did not make Goldberg's list. And of course as to sexual misconduct, Don Livingston, Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich.

Help Goldberg Screwup 77

2005-08-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

As part of her inquiry into screwing America, Goldberg Screwup 77 is gathering biographical data on Goldberg himself. She suspects that his hysterical antifeminism may have something to do with an ugly divorce in the past. Does anyone know whether BG is still on his first marriage?
Reply privately if you wish to
LRHirshman@att.net

#2 Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.

2005-08-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

Goldberg blames Sulzberger personally for the "liberal bias" he finds in the New York Times, quoting Sulzberger as saying that if white men aren't complaining, the Times is not doing its job.

REAL ARTHUR SULZBERGER JR
Goldberg Screwup #2, New York Times Chairman, is the head of the most admired companhy in America, according to that distinctly non liberal source, Fortune Magazine.
Although Goldberg screwup 77 does not for a moment believe that Sulzberger's ascension to the chairmanship of the family owned company was the result of a liberal and merit based search even within the Family (does no Sulzberger generation ever include sisters?),
it is the case that during Sulzberger’s tenure as publisher, The Times has earned 28 Pulitzer Prizes including well deserved prizes for photography of 9/11, "A Nation Challenged" and "Portraits of Grief."
And it is the case that Bernard Goldberg would detect liberal bias in a left turn arrow at an intersection.

6:02 AM

#1: Michael Moore: The Seer

2005-08-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

Wednesday August 17#1 Michael Moore
Goldberg doesn't really say much about the film maker and author, other than to castigate him for being an "America Basher." Goldberg explains Moore's behavior by noting that Moore's age places him among the middle agers who learned skepticism from the experience of the Vietnam War era.

REAL MICHAEL MOOREMoore is a fifty-one year old, who was barely out of high school when the US pulled out of Vietnam. His most successful works make three points about American society.
1. That American manufacturing was moving overseas, with terrible consequences for the working class, and huge rewards for the executives. (Roger and Me, 1989)
Since Roger and Me, American manufacturing has moved overseas with terrible consequences for the American working class and their communities but huge rewards for the executives.
2.That American gun culture is based on an overall culture of fear, which makes people do things that are more harmful to themselves than the very things they fear. (Bowling for Columbine, 2002)
Since Bowling for Columbine, Ohio, which twice provided the electoral votes to put George W. Bush in the White House, had the single largest number of casualties in any incident in the Iraq war. Bush's victory is widely attributed to his superior standing on the subject of national security in the eyes of American voters.
3. The American war in Iraq was based on false information, destined to fail, and likely to take the lives of many American men and women, all at the instance of a group of men, none of whom have ever been near a war zone in anything but the Presidential helicopter. (Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004)
Since Fahrenheit 9/11, the information about WMD in Iraq has turned out to be false, American casualties are reaching into the thousands, and neither President George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney has yet served in any war. Goldberg 77 wonders what Moore will predict next. Wish he were managing my investments.
6:46 AM

Free the Goldberg 100

2005-08-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that right wing fulminator Bernard Goldberg chose me as #77 in the 100 People Who Are Screwing America. This is the blog for the people who are screwing America. Each day for 100 days I will post a line or two of what Bernie thinks of one of the 100 and then a paragraph about who they really are.
Charity begins at home:
LINDA HIRSHMAN #77
Although I am not the most famous feminist in America, I am the most "arrogant, smug and condescending," according to Goldberg. My offense? I failed to recognize that brilliantly educated women who could have had the jobs that run the world are better off tending their toddlers. And I said so on Sixty Minutes. Worse than being wrong, I was judgmental. How dare I be judgmental, asked the author of a book that attacks Jimmy Carter for screwing America?
REAL LINDA HIRSHMAN is a retired Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Brandeis. In her years there, she consistently earned the highest student ratings of anyone in her Department. Her favorite comment came early in her tenure, when an anonymous student wrote, "I will never think of my life in the same way again." Before taking up philosophy, Hirshman was a lawyer, representing working men and women. She was one of the lawyers who tried the Supreme Court case that still defines the line between the federal government and the states and got her clients a little overtime pay. Recently, her well loved daughter opened her con law book to find the class was studying her mother's case.
TOMORROW: Michael Moore