7thriv

Hey! Look who's written a book! It's Rod Blagojevich! The product description is classic: The Governor by Rod Blagojevich

THE GOVERNOR provides the most comprehensive look to date at the life of a twice-elected public official in the notoriously complicated world of Illinois politics. We take a tour through the segregated neighborhoods of Chicago, a city of great ethnic diversity, and see firsthand how those divides can evolve into cabals that rival anything found on the national political scene.

We follow the governor as he is awakened early one morning –his young daughter sleeping peacefully beside him – and unceremoniously arrested by FBI agents without knowing the charges being brought against him. We see the harsh glare of the spotlight, the media whirlwind already staking out his home and family, rushing to judgment before even the governor himself knew what crimes he’d been accused of committing. We follow him through the maze of political conspiracies that threaten to unseat and impeach the governor of the fifth largest state in the U.S. –forces brought to light by the ambition of an attorney general and the greed of her Democratic State Party Chairman father –as well as the zeal of a federal prosecutor and the manipulations of a disloyal lieutenant governor.

The behind-the-scenes workings to fill the Senate seat vacated by the most popular President-elect in decades becomes something much more incendiary when wiretapped conversations are used by authorities to commit the arrest. But, as the governor soon learns, those tapes are not allowed to be played at his impeachment hearings in the House or Senate. What is on those tapes? And why will the prosecution not let them be heard if they were the primary factor in initiating the arrest that started this political scandal in the first place?

Quoting from sources as diverse as Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics to Aeschylus , Shakespeare to The Purpose Driven Life, THE GOVERNOR provides not just an inside look at politics on a state and national level but a treatise on the proper place of government in the everyday lives of its people.

It is a mandate for healthcare reform, which the governor feels is the civil rights issue of our lifetime. It is a clarion cry, remarkably, against cynicism in modern governing and a return to a more thoughtful and informed sense of government that views its state budgets as “moral documents.” It is a lament against the current state of the political landscape, one that too often is wracked by scandal and interwoven with a media-driven culture obsessed with scandal and snap judgments.

And it is a proclamation that one man will not be silenced, that his side of the story must be heard and that the fight for American liberties and freedom must sometimes occur within its own borders.

If there is another guy out there who is enjoying his infamy more than Rod Blagojevich, I would like to know his name. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, who shares Blago's sense of the absurd. Both men, while symbols of corrrupt regimes, also seem to take great delight in saying the most outrageous things, certain that their detractors will fly into a full-bore tizzy. No matter what else has happened, Blagojevich has been consistent in giving off the air of someone who is enjoying himself immensely.

EMPIRE OF LIES: THE TRUTH ABOUT CHINA IN THE 21st CENTURY
By Guy Sorman

For an autocratic communist dictatorship that steals US patents, oppresses its people, pollutes the environment, makes shoddy merchandise, curtails free speech, sells tainted food and medicine, and intervenes forcefully in the procreation of families, China gets astoundingly good press. Some of it comes from free trade types who simply see a market to exploit, but a surprising amount of the books about China are written by western academics who write about China in a neutral or positive light, even as they hang scorching anti-US bumperstickers on their Volvos. It's not as if the dark side of China is being hidden. The western press is filled with stories about China's shortcomings. However, it's difficult to find a comprehensive compedium of info to counteract the relentless happy talk.

I had high hopes that this book would be such a compedium, but it is not. This is not to say it is without value. It has plenty of information, much of it gleaned from Sorman's travels through China, and his meetings with dissidents. But the book is limited to what he sees and learns. He doesn't really go beyond the perspective of what he sees before him. This gives the book a strong personal quality, but it lacks the sweep of a Robert Conquest, Alexander Solzenizen, and other historians of modern tyranny.

MY GRANDFATHER'S SON
By Clarence Thomas

Justice Thomas has written one of the great memoirs of this decade. Thomas grew up dirt poor in the segregated South. He was raised by his grandfather, a tough old cuss who liked to say things like "Old Man Can't Is Dead. I Know Because I Helped Bury Him!" The narrative takes you from Thomas' birth up to the moment when he walked into his first session at the Supreme Court. Along the way, he tells the story of how that dirt poor boy grew into the man whose strength of will and character allowed him to face down a Senate Judiciary Committee filled with hostile liberals, and earn a spot on the Supreme Court.

Much of the hype around this book centered around his relationship with his grandfather. However, the sections dealing with his childhood are only a small portion of this book. Thomas is brutally frank, and self castigating about the failure of his first marriage, and his law school days as an "angry black man." He unhesitatingly describes his drinking (mostly beer) and his struggles with debt (his refused to ever allow his son to go to public school). he also details his pre-Supreme Court career, first as an assistant to Missouri's attorney general, then as a corporate lawyer at Monsanto, and finally as the head of the EEOC during the Reagan administration. He is especially proud of his work at the EEOC. Along the way, he meets up-and-comers like John Bolton, John Ashcroft, Walter Williams, and Juan Williams. Most interesting is Thomas' relationship with the great Thomas Sowell, who was Thomas' intellectual mentor.

All of this leads up, of course to the infamous Anita Hill hearings. As you might expect, Thomas stoutly denies anything improper happened. More interesting is Thomas' description of the emotional toll the hearings took. He was essentially attacked by the entire liberal establishment - Senators, unions, feminist groups, the NAACP - which used its allies in the media to spread stories that would have embarrassed the Democrats' segregationist forebears. I remember when the hearings were going on, and Thomas called the spectacle a "high tech lynching." I thought he was engaging in wild hyperbole at the time, but I was young and foolish back then.
Thomas quotes extensively from the statements he read to the TV audience watching the Judiciary hearings. I can vividly remember many of his quoted passages and they still burn with righteous rage. Thomas was his grandfather's son because all of his grandfather's pride, strength, and fire had been passed to him, and saved him during the hearings. Many conservatives have been through attacks similar to that which was visited on Thomas, but few have been able fight back so well (Bolton, Ashcroft, and Sarah Palin are others).

As a prose stylist, Thomas is very good. He is economical in his word choices. his chapters move along efficiently and always lead up to a good conclusory sentence that sets up the next chapter. This should come as no surprise if you have read any of Justice Thomas' judicial opinions, which are always marked by an admirable clarity and unflinching forecasts of the practical results of wrong headed decisions. His opinions are the only ones that could be read and understood by a person of average intellect, which is Thomas' intent. Those who prefer the tortured stylings of the Court's more intellectual members find this unintelligent and worse. They should really be asking why their preferred judicial decisions require obfuscation and obscurity, rather than Thomas' sunlight and clarity.

If you are a conservative, this book is, of course, required reading. If you are liberal, or are otherwise a one of Thomas' detractors, I think fairness demands that you read this book as well. Then, you should ask yourself why the defense of your philosophy required that this man be denigrated and destroyed.

THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY

This may not seem like a big deal, but it certainly is in my line of work (I represent people who are being sued by their credit card companies). The National Arbitration Forum is shutting its doors: Credit Card Disputes Tossed Into Disarray

Two major arbitration firms are backing away from the business of resolving disputes between customers and their credit-card and cellphone companies, throwing into disarray a controversial system that prevents unhappy consumers from filing lawsuits.

The American Arbitration Association said Tuesday it will stop participating in consumer-debt-collection disputes until new guidelines are established. Its decision came two days after another big group, the National Arbitration Forum, said it would stop accepting new cases as of Friday.

(snip)

Although arbitration long has been controversial, the current situation developed rapidly starting last week when the Minnesota attorney general's office sued the National Arbitration Forum, based in St. Louis Park, Minn., over the way it handled disputes. Among other things, the lawsuit contended that NAF didn't disclose that it has financial ties to the debt-collection industry, violating Minnesota laws against consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false advertising.

So, who cares, right? Well, you probably should. The Forum was a place credit card companies could go to obtain money judgments against their customers without going through the fuss and muss of actually proving their cases. If there was a procedural abuse you could conceive of, the Forum practiced it. Notices to appear would show up in people's mailboxes with no information about the date, time and place of the hearing. Hearings often took place in Minnesota, even if the defendant lived thousands of miles away. If some luckless defendant had the temerity to try to participate, their attempts to file documents would be rebuffed for failing to conform to Forum rules. The defects, as well as the underlying rules supposedly broken were, of course, left unstated. The Forum also relied on good old-fashioned "sewer service" to notify defendants of a pending hearing. In many cases, people had no idea an arbitration had taken place, and an award entered against them, until they got a notice informing them that their credit card company was attempting to enforce a big money judgment against them.

There is legitimate business activity and then there is abuse, and the Forum engaged in abuse. The MN attorney general's suit against the Forum is amazing to read. The Forum was set up by the card companies and some of the more prominent debt collection firms. Creditors attorneys practicing in front of the Forum worked for firms whose partners were part owners of the Forum. It was a corrupt system, and certainly emblematic of the abuses and rip-offs the underlay a significant part of the growth in the financial sector.

The Chamber of Commerce spin is that this will throw credit card litigation into "disarray." Don't believe it. You can still arbitrate a case to your hearts' content. You just can't do it in front of an arbitration factory where the results are pre-ordained. My default position is to be pro-business, but I am not going to blindly support this sort of consumer abuse. The Forum is gone and America's financial sector is better off for it.

Free Will is going on a driving trip down the Central Coast. I have scheduled posts for the coming week, but they will not be on current events. Enjoy.