Harry Shearer

In Obama's Budget, a Trickle of Money for Louisiana's Disappearing Coast

2010-02-03T09:13:13-05:00

NEW ORLEANS -- I've been rather consistently critical of the Obama administration's largely MIA stance toward New Orleans, with the singular exception of the appointment of a new FEMA administrator who, by all reports, has cut the red tape and started the long-appropriated funds finally flowing to fix the damage caused by the failure of the federal levees. So it's only fair to acknowledge a small, halting step towards progress in Washington.

Today's Times-Picayune editorializes in delighted surprise at the inclusion of money in the new 2011 budget for programs to help restore the long-eroding Louisiana coastal wetlands. That's the good news. The less-than-good: the $35.6 million requested to work on rebuilding the essential fabric of South Louisiana's economy and culture (and the essential hurricane buffer for the city of New Orleans) is one-tenth the money requested in the budget for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

The Great Lakes? Are they dying? Here's a Brookings Institution summary of the situation:

The Great Lakes and surrounding areas face numerous threats to their health and utility, however. In recent years, Great Lakes' beaches have been closed due to contamination, fish stocks have dwindled, and invasive species have become growing menaces. According to Pre-scription for Great Lake Protection and Restoration: Avoiding the Tipping Point of Irreversible Change -- a 2005 report published by many of the region's leading scientists and now endorsed by 200 scientists nationally -- the Great Lakes have experienced over 400 years of human induced stresses.4 To reverse this damage, these scientists have called for the restoration of crit- ical elements of the ecosystems' self-regulating mechanisms, particularly the wetlands, tributaries, and near-shore habitats that enable the lakes to heal themselves.

Fair enough. But, as I've been learning in talking to experts on Louisiana's disappearing wetlands for my documentary The Big Uneasy, the problem south of New Orleans has been a slow-motion disaster that threatens the source of much of this nation's petroleum and seafood (don't eat them together), as well as the survival of New Orleans.

I don't want to start yet another war between South Louisiana and the Midwest. But maybe the disparity in requested appropriations represents not a disparity in need or seriousness of the problem, but just the disparity in the number of voters abutting the affected areas.

Are Tech Solutions the Best Solutions to Terrorism?

2010-01-31T12:17:18-05:00

NEW ORLEANS -- In the wake of the Underpants Bomber, lobbyists for companies that make full-body scanners -- including, notably, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff -- have unhesitatingly pushed their products, on media interviews and on Capitol Hill, as this year's must-have anti-terrorism accessory. But fashion and profit aside, some of us keep wondering, "Why not sniffer dogs?"

Now comes a report in Melbourne's The Age on the latest trend in suicide bombing: surgical implants, which cannot be detected by scanners. And again the question arises, why is nobody discussing the issue of sniffer dogs? The article suggests one answer, the Islam culture's aversion to dogs. There's also the well-known American penchant for thinking a technological fix is the only plausible fix.

Here's another possibility to consider: there's no big sniffer-dog lobby.

PS: While Mike ("Brownie") Brown got most of the derision for the Katrina response debacle, his boss was busying himself during the first days of the flood attending a bird flu conference in Atlanta. Yep, Michael Chertoff.

Obama to New Orleans: Recover Without Us

2010-01-28T00:58:29-05:00

In the welter of State of the Union news, this tidbit got to me: the administration is letting the Office of Gulf Coast Recovery quietly die. It should make Glenn Beck glad; that's one "czar" off the government payroll. And it's arguable that the job, whether in the hands of Texas banker Don Powell or New Orleanian Janet Woodka, was about as effective as a Democratic filibuster.

But, like most presidential gestures involving post-flood New Orleans, if the creation or continuation of this office had mainly symbolic importance, at least it had that. In the absence of substantive support for, to take one example, increased and accelerated funding for programs to restore the coastal wetlands that not only provide 40% of the nation's domestic seafood but that also happen to buffer New Orleans from more severe hurricanes, the existence of this office was at least a signal that something effective might be done at the presidential level, at some time, in some way, maybe. The decision to let the office lapse is, like so many of the signals from President Obama, designed to say to New Orleans, in effect, "too bad you had your disaster before I got here. You're on your own."

Don't Want to Go Overboard With the Sympathy Thing

2010-01-26T12:25:57-05:00

NEW ORLEANS--I'm preparing to begin shooting a feature-length documentary on the subject of why, in August 2005, 80% of the city of New Orleans experienced catastrophic flooding. The city, of course, is in an ecstatic mood this week, and there seemingly isn't a conversation that doesn't begin and end with the Saints.

It's instructive that a community so recently wrecked by the confluence of nature and human malfeasance, and which is just at the moment beginning early voting for its next mayor, is so clearly placing its hope, faith and belief in a football team. What it says to me is that folks here have rarely seen the leadership class perform with the professionalism, discipline and determination that they see in their football players.

Of course, President Obama has been asked to weigh in on the portentous Colts v. Saints Super Bowl matchup. Maybe it's just that this sound bite appeared on the same day the president donned Republican garb and called for a federal (non-defense) spending freeze, but the sentiment the man expresses ("pretty sympathetic") about the near-destruction of New Orleans is starting to typify the pallidness and halfwayness of this Presidency. Maybe what he'll get next time is voters who are "pretty interested" in his re-election.

How To Help in Haiti: the Grass-Roots Version

2010-01-16T10:20:16-05:00

This relayed by my friend Lolis Elie, reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, who describes Beverly Bell's work in Haiti as "selfless and inspiring":

Friends: There are ways that your donation, no matter how small, can have a big impact. They are not via the huge bureaucracies, but via the foundations who have long histories of accompanying, trusting, and strengthening the grassroots groups which, in Haiti, are the only ones who have ever made a sustained difference. These are small foundations that know that the only thing that ever works in Haiti is for people to have control over their own rebuilding, over their own communities, and over their own needs and destinies. These are the small foundations who understand that the best that they can do is strengthen those groups' capacities and strength with funding, infrastructure, and technical support.

The need today is of course enormous and overwhelming. Even the UN and Red Cross have no idea how to respond to a calamity of this size. Past the urgency of everyone now getting food and water (which will not happen) and the wounded getting care (neither), what will be needed is what the Lambi Fund called today "second responders." That involves rebuilding the efforts that were under way to move Haiti "from misery to poverty with dignity," as it is known there. That is the slow, careful work of helping grassroots movements get back on their feet, reclaim what they lost, and move forward - both individually, and as organized movements working for change and justice. The two groups listed below bring respect, trust, and integrity to that process.

Lambi Fund of Haiti, www.lambifund.org
Grassroots International, www.grassrootsonline.org

If you have any questions or want any more information, please let me know.

With gratitude,
Beverly Bell
Other Worlds

The Fantasy Assignment Desk: Where's the Brennan Op-Ed on Iraq?

2010-01-13T18:58:54-05:00

LONDON--The British have been doing something so deliciously un-American: looking backward. The Chilcot Inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War is back after its Christmas recess, garnering live TV coverage Tuesday when Tony Blair's still-loyal former spin doctor-in-chief, Alistair Campbell, delivered a rousing display of what "loyalty up" means. Britain, he said as he concluded his testimony, should be proud of what it did in Iraq.

Maybe that's why, as I read Peter Baker's generally admiring NYT Magazine piece on deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan, this passage leapt off the computer screen:

Brennan, unhappy, left government in 2005 and went on to write a proposed Op-Ed essay that he titled, "Mr. President, You're Wrong on Iraq." In keeping with CIA rules, he submitted it for classification review by the agency before distributing it to any newspapers for publication. A copy found its way to the White House, where it angered top officials. Brennan ultimately thought better of the article and withdrew it from CIA review, but it was too late to salvage his standing at the White House.

Sounds like hot stuff -- a CIA guy coming out against a President who, by 2005, was blaming the CIA for what we didn't find in Iraq. Surely a reputable journalist like Baker would follow up, ask Brennan (in one of their many reported chats over the last year) what he said in that self-spiked Op-Ed. Maybe he did, but there's no sign of such questioning, nor of any answers it might have elicited, in the long article.

So I'm reviving a department from the early days of Eat the Press: the Fantasy Assignment Desk. If any journalists are reading this, here's your assignment: find out what was in Brennan's 2005 Op-Ed on Iraq. Better yet, find a copy. Ideally, put it in the public conversation in the next few weeks, before the lines form outside the Queen Elizabeth Conference Center for Tony Blair's appearance before the Iraq Inquiry. In my business it's called "timing".

The Dark Prison Gets a Little Spotlight

2010-01-08T11:29:06-05:00

While the president and the punditocracy alike have no compunctions in talking about Guantanamo Bay, Obama's promise to close it, the missing of the deadline, the problem with the Yemeni prisoners, et al., the word that continues to be unspoken is Bagram, the name of our oh-so-secret prison in Afghanistan, and the only one of our prisons where two of our detainees seem to have met their demise at the hands of enhanced interrogators. This week, for a moment, two shafts of light fall on Bagram.

First, a U.S. appeals court on Thursday heard oral arguments on the question of whether the U.S. Supreme Court's decision granting habeas corpus rights to Gitmo inmates may also apply to certain Bagram residents, specifically detainees who were rounded up outside Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram. Afghan detainees need not apply, because it's a war zone.

Then, there comes an announcement that the U.S. military is investigating allegations that two Afghan teens were beaten while in custody at Bagram. What the adolescents allege in terms of treatment sounds so similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, and what British troops have reportedly done at their Basra detention center in Iraq, that one imagines there must be a military orchard someplace where all the bad apples are being bred.

Cheney's Game

2009-12-30T14:22:03-05:00

Dick Cheney certainly isn't spending the first year of his retirement from the vice presidency growing a beard. Instead, he's playing a very clever game, exemplified by his latest "exclusive" screed released in written form to the apparently compliant folks at Politico.com.

In it, as is well known by now, he uses the case of the failed Detroit underpants bomb attempt to accuse President Obama of "pretending that the United States is not at war," thereby making us less safe. He can engage in this kind of rhetoric safe in two comforting assumptions: that the Republican base, and a certain percentage of independents, will eat this stuff up, and that the Democrats, in and out of power, will continue to not know how to respond.

The latter is because they, willingly or not, allowed themselves to be co-opted into the "war on terror" model in the first place, out of fear of being depicted as "soft" if they so much as emitted a peep of opposition. What should they be saying?

How's this: Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush, made the country less safe for eight years by pretending that this country was at war, thereby wasting vast amounts of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, while failing to achieve the basic aims of the enterprise. The problem with pretending we're at war, rather than understanding we're dealing with a criminal syndicate -- like the Mafia -- is that it gets our resources overextended and tied down in geographical areas, like Afghanistan, while the opponent is free to move and relocate (hello, Yemen!, hi, Somalia!). In fact, the war model weakens us, makes us less able to respond nimbly and quietly -- check the recent stories on the logistical challenges facing the Afghanistan surge here, here, here and here. In short, we lumber, they scamper.

But Obama can't say any of this, having just signed on to the AfPak surge. Nor can he bring himself to John Wayne it up, GWB-style. Therefore, he's always open to Cheney's attacks, and his response is always a stoic silence. What, then, would discourage Cheney from keeping it up, straight through next November?

Airport Security: Everything but Accountability

2009-12-28T15:39:23-05:00

Now that the reassurance machine has kicked into high gear, with statements from everyone from President Obama to Janet "The System Worked" Napolitano, we're being asked to believe that what has become the usual syndrome in post 9/11 response -- overreaction in compensation for failure -- is good enough. So we will sit immobile for that last hour of incoming international flights, unentertained, unblanketed, and untoileted, and that will do the trick. Another array of measures the experts deride as silly and nothing more than show business will pacify us, for a while.

But forget about the watch lists and the father's warning, and the sniffer dogs and the puffer machines. There's a simpler question to be asked about this event. If, as reported, the would-be Detroit bomber paid cash for a one-way ticket, why didn't that automatically flag him for secondary screening? Even lacking cash payment, the one-way ticket has generally done exactly that. I know. On a tour a couple of years ago, my itinerary failed to list the final flight home as part of the tour, rendering each of the intermediate stops as a one-way in the eyes of the TSA, and I was pulled aside for secondary screening every time, even though the only thing I had hidden in my underpants was me.

Yes, investigations, and new regulations, and everything's okay. But if this were Japan, Janet "The System Worked" Napolitano wouldn't have gone on morning TV today to walk back her nonsensical reassurance. She would have bowed deeply, apologized with profound emotion, and resigned. This isn't about finger-pointing. If employees at the TSA (or the Corps of Engineers) see that there are no career consequences for dramatic and/or catastrophic screwups (for the latter, see New Orleans, 2005), they will have learned a regrettable lesson: there is no price to be paid for failure. In that direction lies more failure.

UPDATE: 4:38 PM PST MONDAY: The DHS Operation Second Thought is rolling along nicely. After having Sec. Napolitano decide publicly that the system wasn't working, now the TSA is walking back some of the new regs. And CBS, among others, is quoting a Nigerian official saying the bombing suspect actually bought a round-trip ticket. Of course, he also said he's coming into a large inheritance very soon....

To Call Blair Bush's Poodle Is An Insult to Poodles

2009-12-14T23:27:18-05:00

Something rather interesting is going on in Great Britain these wintry days--an official inquiry, broad-ranging in its declared scope, into the way that country got involved in a little conflict in Iraq. Early testimony has dribbled out some interesting tidbits--doubts that were obliterated in the public pronouncements, intel that was ignored in the final rush to war.
Now, watching that inquiry with a quizzical eye, the former Director of Public Prosecutions during the very era in question has written a bristling, withering attack on former Prime Minister Blair and his relationship with George W. Bush. He stops just short of picturing them praying together on the Oval Office rug as they plotted the invasion of Iraq. Or maybe he goes much farther; his final graf:

We have seen enormous acts of courage on the part of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most heart-rending sacrifices have been made; many of them will become poetry and song in future years. But none of this sprinkles, as he might once have hoped it would, any starlight on Tony Blair. On the contrary, it is entirely the work of warriors thrust carelessly into death's way by a Prime Minister lost in self-aggrandisement and a governing class too closed to speak truth to power.

Fortunately, none of this sheds any light on what went on in this country. Otherwise, the national media would have to pay attention.

You're a Student of History, And I'm Not

2009-12-14T13:31:19-05:00

For a crystalline example of what's wrong with American journalism, and the American political conversation, at this exact moment, go no farther than Sunday's 60 Minutes interview with President Obama, specifically to 7:12 in.

Steve Kroft begins his question with this sentence: "You're a student of history". The subject is the escalation in Afghanistan. The two examples of history Kroft cites: the British in America, the Americans in Vietnam.

Gee, it's too bad there aren't any historical examples of foreign nations invading Afghanistan for him to cite. They might have framed a more challenging question for the president. But, that's that damn history for you.

The Missing Word in Obama's Nobel Speech

2009-12-10T20:22:48-05:00

The man (and his wordsmiths) can write. President Obama's acceptance speech in Oslo was elegant, nuanced, and intelligent. Faced with accepting a peace prize while waging war, he chose not to salute his predecessor Henry Kissinger and leave it at that, but he dove instead into the intellectual thicket of defending warlike means to achieve peaceful ends.
He also took the time to rebut the previous Administration's approach to the issue:

I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. (Applause.)

Very moving, until you read that paragraph again and notice the missing word. He boasts of ordering Guantanamo Bay prison, but leaves unsaid the name of the American prison where our detainees have not only been mistreated, but have been killed. The name is Bagram, our prison in the compound of our large Air Force base in Afghanistan. It has been remodeled and spruced up lately, but it is still a place that exists outside all law, not covered by the Supreme Court decision that "gave" habeas corpus back to Gitmo detainees.
The President's continued refusal even to say the word, to name the place, to include it in his fine-sounding call to an American role as a "standard bearer" renders the rhetoric empty, the nuance devious, the intellect derailed. He continues this country's recent tradition as a sub-standard bearer until he dares to confront the challenge of Bagram.

New Tiger Woods Ad Campaign (Part 2)

2009-12-09T18:43:07-05:00

More Tiger ads. Still keepin' it real...

New Tiger Woods Ad Campaign

2009-12-04T15:36:20-05:00

Tiger's new ad campaign: Keepin it real.

Hey, Tiger, Lack of Privacy Is Part of the Deal

2009-12-03T11:38:26-05:00

The spectacle of near-celebrities going on Larry King Live to ask for the return of their privacy has been one of the long-running jokes of our era. Now Tiger Woods puts a new spin on it with his profound-apology-but-give-me-my privacy press release.

Memo to Tiger: if you really wanted your privacy, maybe you should just have played championship golf, lived on the prize money, and gone home. Maybe you shouldn't have inked dozens of deals with sponsors who were using your name and image to create a bond with potential consumers, a bond that's implicitly aspirational. The grandaddy of such advertising in the modern age, of course, is three simple words: "Be Like Mike". Once you're asking people to be like you, you're inviting them to wonder about the "you" they're supposed to want to be like. End of privacy. In case your agents, lawyers, managers, and other handlers didn't mention it, that's the deal.