RUDY VERITAS

President Jim Hacker

 

One of my favorite television shows was Yes, Minister/Prime Minister.  In one currently significant episode the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, complains to his Cabinet Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, that he is in need of some good news for his premiership and wants a summit with the French President in order to conclude the stalled negotiations over the Channel tunnel leading to a well publicized ground-breaking ceremony.

Sir Humphrey, aghast, explains that this would be quite impossible.  Negotiations are left to the Foreign Office and for good reason.  The PM says that he believes he could iron out the remaining issues himself with the wily French President without the aid of Whitehall.  Sir Humphrey then poses the tunnel's sticking point questions to Mr. Hacker: where will the new border be between Britain and France; which language should appear first on signs; who would have legal jurisdiction were a British truck to be hijacked in France, French or British police?  And on and on.  Hacker thought these silly points of minutiae although he had no simple answers for any of them.  Sir Humphrey explained that they weren't silly to the French who were demanding the border be at Dover, French be the first language on all signs, etc, etc.  That is why these matters were left to the diplomats to iron out first.  He further reminded him that the reason the Concorde was spelled the French way - with an 'E' at the end - was due to prior British Government's hastily giving in to the French.

Why am I bringing this up and why am I claiming it's currently relevant?  Because of the unprecedented performance by and towards our President in Copenhagen.  For decades, the American media have criticized the pre-packaged nature of U.S. summits; whether with the Soviets, Chinese, or whomever.  But as we know from history, working out the details in advance is crucial to avoiding huge historical missteps.  You work out treaties in advance of a presidential visit in order to avoid the embarrassment of accomplishing nothing and to guarantee that the details are in U.S. national interest.  Neo-cons are still losing sleep over what almost happened in Reykjavik when a U.S. President decided to wing it.

Barack Obama went to Copenhagen yet again hoping to charm himself into a successful outcome.  First he flew in for the Olympics without any groundwork having been laid and came in fourth.  Now he swoops in at the last minute and cobbles together a 'treaty' that is a sell-out to his supporters and a gift to his enemies.  Moreover, the President is treated in a manner by other leaders that has never been seen in the modern era.  For starters, he was lied to and left standing alone by the Chinese.  Then, like a dissident union delegation, he was forced to storm a meeting to which he had not been invited.  Finding no chair he had to squeeze in next to Brazil's President where he made awkward pleasantries in order to appear relevant.  He looked like of one those H.S. band kids trying unsuccessfully to fit in at the cool kids table during lunch.  How did this man go from being rock star cool to the world's biggest nerd in the span of one year? 

The answer is lack of focus and poor planning.  I actually like Hillary Clinton now after spending the whole of the 90's hating her guts.  I think she is smart and capable.  But these embarrassments have to be the result of State dropping the ball.  On the other hand,  it's also entirely possible Obama ignores her advice, feeling like FDR that if only he could engage personally all problems would slip away.  That didn't work out too well at Yalta and it's not going to produce any international accords for this administration.

As a conservative and someone who does not believe at all in so-called Global Warming, I am deliriously happy with the outcome in Copenhagen.  I actually think that George Bush would have felt compelled to accomplish more because of the domestic and international criticism lobbed at him on this issue.  Ironically we made out better with a true believer then an unabashed skeptic.  Now that may make me feel better, but to the President's fans and other world leaders who care about this issue and were looking for him to carry the day, he is looking weak, abused, and inept.  

It seems to me that this White House needs to stop buying their own P.R. and start putting a little faith in the striped pants set at Foggy Bottom.  Sir Humphrey, in the episode, provided the PM with a mechanism to get what he wanted.  It's too bad no one at the White House is a fan of the show or as smart as a fictional British Cabinet Secretary.  Surely Sir Humphrey would be shaking his head and saying, "I told you so," to Rahm Emmanuel right about now.

 

Russell Harding

The End of ....Something

 

So now what I told you months ago is official, Rudy is not running for the U.S. Senate.  In fact he's not running for anything, ever again.  He gave as his reason the one I told you he would, he wants to make money.  All I can say is that it's sad.  Rudy Giuliani's political career is now over.  It ended apparently on January 1, 2002 only none of us knew it then.  His presidential foray was an ego sop never intended to actually achieve victory and in my mind didn't count as a serious effort.  So now he's going to be an extreme right-wing TV pundit and a worldwide salesman for the Giuliani brand.  It's all so sad.

Old Rudy used to care about things besides money.  Old Rudy wanted to be in the arena, mixing it up and making a difference.  Modern Rudy wants to be adored and above all else, paid.  The AP, in its story today, claimed that, "Giuliani's consulting business, Giuliani Partners (GP), is flourishing."  Don't you believe that for a nanosecond.  Yes, Lula has somehow missed the results from the last Latin American country that wrote a big check to GP, but the result will be the same.  Rudy & Company were supposed to clean-up Mexico City's crime problem.  Hmmmm, how did that work out? 

Now the deep poverty of Rio's favelas has fallen to Rudy Giuliani to fix.  Most of Rio's crime emanates from its slums.  The City's answer last year was to build walls around them so they would stop spreading and remove the eyesore.  Old Rudy might have gone in there with a multi-phased plan on how to combat poverty which is the cause after all of Rio's crime.  Modern Rudy will propose guns, cops, checkpoints and maybe even rendition and torture.  He'll then scurry home to cash the check.  Rio will be no safer after Rudy's departure than before his arrival.  GP is not flourishing.  If it were he might have actually considered one these races.  But it's not and if he hopes to live for another 20 years in the type of luxury he and especially Judith have become accustomed to, he knows it's Rudy who is going to have to pop his head in at client pitch meetings.  He can't do that as Governor or Senator.  The business is not self-sustaining without him.

So for the next 15-20 years of his life he will run around the world representing the interests of tyrants, despots and dictators who not so long ago he would not even shake hands with.  He'll represent the who's who of white collar villainy.  Who not so long ago he prosecuted.  He's a modern day Duke of Windsor for the politcal set.  Wanting the company and adoration of his Cafe Society (red state yahoos & Fox News) but actually contributing nothing in return except a fading memory of who he was and all that he did.  To those of us who would have done anything for him once upon a time, it's all so sad.

 

Russell Harding

Repealing the Repeal

 

As readers of this site know, I am not a huge John McCain fan.  Nothing personal, I just don't like where he stands on most issues.  But he has now proposed something that all of us can and should get behind. 

When I worked in the U.S. Senate in the late 80's, one of the big issues forever debated, but never acted upon, was the repeal of the Depression era legislation known as The Glass-Steagall Act.  Basically, it split apart financial firms into their core functions.  Banks couldn't offer stocks or insurance products and investment firms couldn't write you a mortgage.  It was said, back in the 80's, that Glass-Steagall was antiquated and not in keeping with the modern financial times we lived in.  How wonderful it would be, said Citibank, if all its branches could offer you a range of stock investments to go along with your CD.  Everything under one roof, one-stop shopping.  I bought into that argument and supported repeal, which came about a few years later.  Silly me, however, I actually assumed government regulators would monitor the activities of these new giant financial behemoths after repeal.  That of course was not to be.

Sen. McCain, who is a principled man, voted for that repeal and like few in D.C. acknowledges now that it didn't work and seeks to reinstate the Chinese wall between banks, investment firms and insurance companies.  I haven't read his bill and don't know how hedge funds and the multiple hydras that have emerged over the last decade would be treated.  My understanding is that within one year of enactment, an institution would basically have to declare its core function and leave the others behind.  Barack Obama should support new Glass Steagall, but sadly I am betting he won't.  It will be another in a laundry list of disappointments to his base that he will surely come out against rebuilding the wall.

I think there is growing awareness that the Barney Frank financial regulation bill making its way through the House is a tame tiger.  It will do nothing to prevent another market calamity.   I do have one idea that I have not heard mentioned that I believe would prevent another housing crisis at least.  It certainly would have prevented this one.

Remember the scene in The Best Years of Our Lives where Fredric March has to decide whether to give this itinerant farmer/veteran a loan in order for him to purchase his own farm?  March struggles with the loan because the farmer has no collateral.  He explains to him that it's the bank and its depositors who will be taking this huge risk and he's just not sure the man is credit worthy.  Well eventually he gives the farmer/veteran the loan backed by the G.I. Bill.  But the anguish March expressed has all but disappeared in modern banking.  What we saw in the housing market over the last decade was none of that angst.  The reason?  Banks don't hold onto their mortgages.  They bundle them up and sell them in huge multi-billion dollar pools.  Banks often held onto new mortgages for a matter of days or weeks before selling them off to be re-packaged and sold in the market eventually as sub-prime bonds.  A local banker didn't really care how credit worthy you were because he knew they weren't going to hold onto the note.  Why would he care if you didn't make the mortgage payments, it's going to be someone else's headache. 

Had that local banker cared, had that banker known that the note would stay on the bank's books for some lengthy period of time, you can be sure he would have tested the credit worthiness of the applicant and sought sufficient collateral.  Consumers all over the country, now in trouble, have discovered how many times their loan has been turned over from one institution to the next.  Often these institutions are not banks but mortgage servicing companies.  In the old days you could have gone the entire length of your thirty year mortgage writing your monthly payment to the exact same institution.   Your bank held that loan for the entire time. 

I propose that as a central component of any financial services reform there should be a mandatory hold provision for any institution that initiates residential loans: mortgages, seconds, home equity.  Whether it's three, five or ten years doesn't really matter.  What matters is that the loan will stay on the bank's books and therefore concern itself with the soundness of the loan.  

In the decade since it was repealed, banks, investment firms and holding companies have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to operate in an environment essentially free from regulation.  The zany list of financial instruments and products offered is clear proof of that.  Sen. Dodd has said it would prove "pretty difficult" to reimpose Glass-Steagall.  What he means is not that there isn't the will in Congress, I believe there is.  What the import of his remark suggests is that the millions and millions of dollars that will surely be pouring into Congress to lobby against rebuidling the wall, makes this proposition herculean.  On that point, I agree.  But polls will be solidly behind the idea.  This is not only a populist idea it makes financial sense.  Notwithstanding Barney Frank's legislation that grants the government authority to declare institutions too large, no such thing will happen and we will be back to 2008 all over again a decade from now.  Maybe not about housing, but surely some other essential part of our economy will be strangled by Wall Street.

There was good reason to do this in 1933.  We should own up to our mistake of 1999 and repeal the repeal now.

 

Russell Harding

The Ever Do-Nothing Mayor

 

 A terrific contrast today as to where Mayor-for-Life Mike places his priorities.  While our Mayor gazes at The Little Mermaid and strolls through the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, his administration back home has told us New Yorkers where their focus is.  All three mayoral appointees to the MTA board voted for the punishing cuts to transit service, the lifeblood of New York City.  No alternatives were offered by them or by the Mayor's staff left behind in NYC.  Rather today's big announcement from the City was a contest to design condom wrappers to be distributed by the NYC Dept. of Health. 

I am often criticized for being hard on Rudy Giulani.  But any regular reader of this site knows that when it comes to defending his tenure in office I defer to no one.  It would have been unthinkable for Rudy Giuliani to have let the wasteful, bloated MTA get away with what they did today.  He would have offered sensible alternatives and barring that he would have galvanized state leaders to find solutions to avert this calamity.  And our beloved jet-setting Mayor?  He needs to be addressing the climate change conference in Denmark apparently, while the MTA punishes us with lousier service and fewer trains and buses.

I have said here repeatedly that Mayor-for-Life Mike not only shows no leadership over the MTA, he proudly abdicates that role.  Unfortunately, it has been picked up by no one else and here we have the result.  In eight years as Mayor, Rudy Giuliani never took a vacation and with the exception of the rare quicky trip to Israel, never left the country.  He worked hard and for all New York's passengers, notwithstanding the fact that he never rode the subway.  He didn't need to demonstrate his bona fides as a real New Yorker by taking the subway every day.  He knew in his soul that a. mass transit was the glue that held this city's people and commerce together and b. a diminution in the quality of mass transit - a return to the 1970's - was a one-way ticket back to the bad old days in New York.  A good transit system makes this city.  A bad one harbingers its decline.

It's too bad that in riding the subway every day Mayor-for-Life Mike, a foreigner to our city, hasn't learned any of these historic lessons.  Of course there is little chance of him learning any of this amidst the canals of Copenhagen.

 

Russell Harding

The Evil of Goldman Sachs

 

            There are a few lessons and rules that all Jews live by.  The most important of these is 'keep your head down."  With the exception of Israeli Jews, all Jews worldwide live in a diaspora.  For centuries we have made our homes at the sufferance of host countries, until they kicked us out.  The reason I am such an ardent, unapologetic Zionist is because I believe that every Jew, one day, will need an apartment either in Jerusalem or on some settlement on the West Bank.  Staving off the day when we'll need to move there is the job of every Jew.  Any Jew who hastens that cuts the throat of his/her people.

Which brings me to Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs.  First, let me say that I have no idea if Lloyd Blankfein is Jewish or if he is, if he's a practicing one.  But for the purposes of this post, it is irrelevant.  The issue is that most Americans believe him to be Jewish and that will shortly be my point.

As we survey the carnage and economic rubble of the last two years, many analysts like to say there are no winners, only survivors.  I, along with Matt Taibbi, disagree.  He has famously called Goldman," a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."  It's not only true and worrisome from an economic perspective, it's more troubling  to us Jews.

Unlike me, who looks upon much of what Treasury and the Federal Reserve did as a cabal of former Goldman employees seeking only to save the great firm, the vast majority of America, especially the middle heartland of the country, sees only Jews and Jewish sounding names working to save Goldman at the expense of Main Street and the U.S. taxpayers.  Making matters worse, the recipient of all this largess is ungrateful and arrogant.  To me what tied all these men together  was not the issue of foreskin, but rather office space - past and present - at 85 Broad Street.  But when the greedy, voracious firm and its management hand out obscene bonuses after taking billions and then compares itself to God, all I see is evangelical mega churches throughout the Midwest thinking, in unison, "God damn bloodsucking Jews."  The inevitable increase in antisemitism throughout this country can be laid squarely at the feet of Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs. 

Where I see the SEC unbelievably hiring a 29yo Goldman employee to run its "Market Intelligence Division" as more confirmation of the USA as the land 'by and for' Goldman Sachs, the rest of America will see Adam Storch's appointment as a Jewish sounding Goldman employee out to protect their interests from the inside and against the rest of Gentile America.  Think I'm exaggerating?  Then you don't know this country. 

Is it right, is it fair?  It doesn't matter.  It's a stupid academic exercise to look at the fairness of the situation.  The fact is that all Jews who have made it to the highest peaks have a responsibility - especially after Bernie Madoff - to behave responsibly and low-key.  In the Summer of 77 after the Son of Sam was caught, the first words out of my grandmother's mouth after hearing his real name were, "Oh my God, he's Jewish."  It turned out he wasn't, but that mattered little with a name like Berkowitz, everyone would think he was.  She honestly believed that there would be some backlash.  That was her mindset having lived through the Holocaust.  Mentally, her suitcases were always packed; ready to leave when we had outlived our welcome.  She thought it sinful for any Jew to aid that hasty departure.

I get that me and my family may not be the poster example of what I am saying.  But the truth is, we don't have a Jewish name and with the exception of my brother, none of us looks Jewish.  The scandals with which we have been involved were not viewed through the prism of that which I am writing about now.

Blankfein, Winkelried, Geitner, Goldman-Sachs.  These names may in fact all be German and Gentile in origin, I don't know.  But, of course, no one believes that.  You would be shocked how many Americans believe that there is some - or a lot - truth to the Elders of Zion and the vast, worldwide Jewish conspiracy.  That Lloyd Blankfein has so contributed to this current impression with he and his firm's behavior - past and on-going - means that the rest of us Jews will have to be eying God's little acre in Hebron just that much sooner.

 

Russell Harding

Is This a Joke?

 

            I can only assume that it must be Marc Mukasey's birthday this week and either his stepfather or Rudy Giuliani didn't know what to get him so they bought him an item in the New York Post.

Someone sent me a link yesterday to a story in the Post.  I found the story so hard to believe that I thought it must be a hoax and went to the Post to see if it indeed was there.  Sure enough, the Post is reporting that Marc Mukasey nee Saroff, wants to run against Kirsten Gillibrand.  More than that, it says he believes he'd be a strong candidate.  

Now what could lead to this sort of delusion?  Is it a mental illness or a physical one?  How long has young Marc been afflicted and should he be practicing law in this impaired state?  Do his clients know?

You remember Marc Mukasey.  I have written about him before.  He's the stepson of former Attorney General and Bush torture apologist, Michael Mukasey.  He's now a defense lawyer who represents Bernie Madoff's right hand guy, Frank DiPascali.  Sadly for DiPacali, he could not get Madoff's attorney who kept him out of jail post indictment. 

Now I deny no one their desire to seek elective office.  I respect those who put themselves out there facing the scrutiny and articulating positions.  It is hard work and if you have the calling to make a difference it can be the most rewarding feeling in the world.  What I have no respect for and never have are people who run for their resume. 

Maybe I'm just dense or been out of the game too long, but what advantages could a Mukasey Senate candidacy possibly have?  By electoral standards he's completely unknown.  He was an Asst. U.S. Attorney and now a white collar defense lawyer.  Ok, so are 10,000 other guys.  He worked for Rudy Giuliani, which sadly has become a liability not an asset in this state.  Rudy's successful endorsements over the last few years have been as infrequent as a Tiger Woods sighting.  Other than an extraordinary ego, is he possessing of any skills or intellectual talents that we've all missed?  And while I certainly except that everyone in this country is entitled to and deserves a good defense, politically we want Bernie Madoff's henchman's lawyer running for the U.S. Senate from New York?

The real question is what in the world makes this punk kid think he's too good to run for City Council, Assembly, or the State Senate.  His list of accomplishments is so vast that he's above it?  He's going to start in politics by running for a seat held by Aaron Burr, Gouverneur Morris, Martin Van Buren, Pat Moynihan, Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton?  Honestly, is this April 1?

Is Ed Cox - who seeks to restore a totally shattered party - going to countenance this nonsense even for a second?  Is Rudy - whose credibility is on the wane, to say the least - seriously pushing this idea?  The same Republican Party that gave us the great Jacob Javits and yes, even my old boss, Alfonse D'Amato is now seriously proposing Marc Mukasey?  

The nadir of the state Republican Party is not a Sen. Mukasey.  The nadir has been reached when there is such a dearth of plausible candidates that we have come to even the idea of a Sen. Mukasey.

 

Russell Harding

In Defense of Arnold

 

            Every December, The Economist puts out a year end issue that sums up the past year and makes predictions for the coming one.  This year's issue devoted a page to the "mess" in California.  The Economist is probably the finest news magazine in the world and it pissed me off that they had such a myopic view of this.  I think they have it wrong and it is really time that someone speaks up for the California version of democratic government, especially now.

It was accepted dogma in my house growing up that California democracy was something to be derided and avoided at all costs.  Unlike New York: California elects most of its statewide officials, allows for ballot initiative and referendum, term limits its elected officials and permits the recall of its elected officials. This was democracy gone amok, hyper-democracy, I was told and believed.  Something no one would wish to emulate.  Then came Prop. 13 and direct voter input on taxes.  Most of the chattering class in America treated that with equal derision. 

So now here we are.  California apparently has a significant and seemingly irreparable structural budget deficit.  Nothing they do there appears to cauterize the fiscal wound for any length of time.  And the resulting chaos only causes the rest of America to shake its head and sneer at the California brand of democracy.

But contrast California with the U.S. Government.  California has to balance it budget, it's in their Constitution.  California has no ability to print money or run year to year deficits.  At the end of the day, the asset and debit columns have to equal out.  The California budget, as well as any tax increases, require super majorities to pass inside the legislature.  So their Governor and legislature have cut and cut and cut.  The size of Government - not only its personnel, but functions - has shrunk.  They had a defined pot of money and they had to figure out how to spend it and on what.  They re-prioritized what the Government does and is ultimately supposed to do.  The people of California - who pundits say would never stand for this and will now come to regret their low-tax impositions on government - will have their say.  And you know what?  No backlash will result from the results that Gov. Schwarzenegger and the legislature have taken.  The ill-will of Californians is directed at those who hinder action, not what's been done.

The argument goes that what we see in California could never happen in Washington, D.C.  Well, at the moment that's certainly true.  There exists no awareness whatever of a problem.  Therefore the desire to fix it is non-existent.  For the first two years of the Obama Administration, the federal government will issue 4 trillion dollars in bonds to pay for his deficits.  I can't even get my head around that kind of deficit spending, let alone in two years.  And yet - the government just gave across the board wage increases to its employees, the budgets of every single department have been increased, and Congress - before they were caught - were happily buying new Gulfstreams to ferry members of Congress and the military around.  No one in Washington is compelled to see a problem, so they don't.  They have no sword hanging over their head if they don't act responsibly.  Sure, the Chinese could stop buying our debt, but that won't happen.  No balanced budget amendment to trigger action and a totally useless Republican Party drunk on pork. 

The way back for my party from the shameful Bush years is staring them in the face but they can't/won't see it.  When the government does 10,000 things but in reality can only afford to do 1,000 things then hard choices need to be made.  I honestly believe the reason that this Tea Party movement has caught some fire is because the nation is ready to have that discussion.  The federal government needs to shrink because, A. we can't afford what it does and b. a lot of us don't believe it should be  doing many of those things.  This is the perfect time to have the fiscal and philosophical argument simultaneously.  If you had a Gingrich-like platform to shrink the government, I really think people would respond and the demagoging Democrats would have to engage. 

Former Congressman Jim Leach was on NPR the other day complaining that the NEH and other agencies he oversees as the new chairman have only gotten 12-14% budget increases this year.  This complaint, with a multi-trillion dollar deficit, coming from an agency that can only marginally rationalize its existence, is typical Washington.  Do you need any better proof that no one there gets it?

We are in perilous fiscal times and choices need to be made.  What you're seeing in California is representative democracy at its best.  The People laid out some basic ground rules and the legislature has to craft its spending plan accordingly.  It's wrenching to do and painful to watch, but they're doing it; they are bringing California's budget in-line with what the state can afford and what the people want to spend.   If the critics are right, Californians will rebel and repeal many of their prior initiatives in order to pay for more services.  But guess what, it ain't gonna happen. 

The critics are wrong because they view this through a Washington mindset.  Californians get they are going to have less government, fewer parks, longer lines at the DMV and they are going to be OK with that.  This is the scope and size of government that they can afford and like responsible adults, they get that.  What no one can fathom is why these hard choices can't be made at the federal level.  With a multi-trillion dollar deficit, where are the mass lay-offs?  Where is the order from OMB for every department and agency to amass a 20% reduction that OMB will take to Congress?  What is it about Washington that makes these things totally doable in cities and states and yet not only not possible, but not even considered in D.C.?

There are many answers.  The lack of a balanced budget amendment, the lack of term limits, no super majorities for tax increases, lobbyists and huge PAC money, and a culture of total inertia, that prohibits radical change.  A real fiscally, conservative Republican Party in California also makes a huge difference.  Lots and lots of reasons.  But what we know for sure, is that Washington is rapidly becoming out-of-step with much of America, and that crosses party lines.  The ridiculousness of a Sarah Palin candidacy or book is a clear sign of that.  People are yearning for leadership, so in that search they turn to false prophets.

You cannot tell the nation that its tax dollars are going to bail-out Goldman, Bear, BoA, et al.,  produce no tangible results (they are not lending more, they're lending less) and then say we can't find anywhere in a $3 trillion bureaucracy to cut.  It's wearing thin, the anger is growing and if not directed will be co-opted by right wing nut jobs like Glen Beck, Michael Savage and Mark Levin.   That to me would be the most unfortunate thing.   This is a crisis tailor made for the Western, libertarian wing of the party.  Forget the social issues for now.  Put aside abortion and gay marriage and focus on personal liberty, low taxes and small, non-intrusive government.  Like Barry Goldwater, I would rather have a party that lead, was right on the issues and lost elections, than one that simply went along, stood for nothing and won.  In the end we'll achieve victory at the polls because we are right.  That is the way back.  California and Gov. Arnold have shown you the path.

 

Russell Harding

Lacking Clean Hands in Westchester

 

            Imagine, if you will, that 20 years ago Congress gave RJR Reynolds exclusive jurisdiction to delve into the health risks of tobacco at Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson and all other tobacco companies, excepting of course RJR Reynolds.  And RJR put out report after report about the risks of the products sold by their competitors all the while selling their own and making their brands more harmful.  And no one could say a word about it.  Or imagine Bernie Madoff being given the lone charter to investigate criminal activities at U.S. investment funds all the while everyone knowing full well of his activities.  Why am I blathering on like this?  Well those two examples are what come to mind today when I hear of the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) report on Westchester County's jail, Valhalla. 

As I have mentioned in a previous post - Kerik, Valhalla and Me - I was at that facility in 2005 for a number of weeks.  I wrote briefly about my experiences there.  It was not a great correctional facility.  The guards were badly trained and immature, the medical care was terrible, and prisoners had very few rights.  I saw prisoners there beaten routinely.  The prison had an "elite" group of guards referred to by inmates as 'The Turtles.'  They would storm into your unit in full riot gear and tear the place up, busting heads of any inmates who got in their way.  It was a pretty pointless yet frightening experience.  These 'Turtles,' while serving very little purpose from a correctional standpoint, really got off on the experience. 

But why in my previous mention of Valhalla, or even in today's, do I not come down harder on Westchester County for the lousy food, bad medical care and poorly trained staff?  Only one reason.  Anyone, like me, who has served time in many different prisons knows that your reaction and coping skills in one facility are directly related to the places you've served time in before. Why did Valhalla not freak me out?  Why didn't I crack up - as Bernie Kerkik seems to have?  Because I had been to the worst place imaginable two years earlier and after that experience, Valhalla was eminently copeable.  Where had I been that was so much worse?  The federal government's own facility in Lower Manhattan, the Metropolitan Correction Center.  

Now what right does the DOJ have to operate some of the worst prisons in America and then criticize - worse, legally compel - state and county prisons into reform?  Should Valhalla be reformed?  Absolutely, it's a fairly lousy jail.  But who is Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, to tell Westchester County about their jails when he works mere blocks from one of the nation's worst and most brutal prisons?  I have asked this question many times on here:  who monitors the DOJ?  The Justice Department is not only the nation's top law enforcement agency it is also the nation's largest jailer.  It runs prisons that would never meet for a second the conditions it laid down for Westchester County.  Staff brutality, inadequate medical care, insufficient mental health screening and treatment?  The BOP & DOJ could not pass even the most minimum test they might create.

Rumors and lawsuits hint at the brutal treatment at federal correctional facilities.  The MDC - Brooklyn's version of the MCC - has been well documented as a house of torture, literally.  Where is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District's scathing report and threatening lawsuit if the MDC is not cleaned up?  Nowhere.  Why?  Because you can't sue yourself.  One arm of the DOJ isn't about to sue the other.  The U.S. Attorney and the staffs at the MDC and MCC all get their paychecks from the same place, the U.S. Department of Justice.  Why does Congress allow this self-serving anomaly to exist?  I can only guess it's because there are no votes in prisoner rights and lots of votes to be lost in angering all those constituents who 'work' in those prisons.

Russ Buettner wrote a nice piece in The New York Times laying out the federal government's case against Valhalla.  But where is The New York Times in demanding that the government create an independent agency to monitor the Bureau of Prisons.  Its fine to talk about abuses and remedies at Guantanamo.  As you know, I am all for that.  But where is the equal outrage at the federal government routinely abusing prisoners in the prisons it owns/operates/contracts here in the U.S.?  This is not abstract for The Times.  Two of the worst prisons in America exist in their city - the MCC and MDC.  The DOJ settled a lawsuit recently involving torture at the MDC rather then let it go to trial and expose those conditions in court.

Were I newly elected Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, I would accept the reforms, implement them and then countersue the DOJ and BOP for the exact same claims made in their report on Valhalla.  I'm no lawyer, but there's something in the law about having 'clean hands' when you're commencing a legal action.  The jailer (BOP), it's boss (DOJ) and their henchmen (U.S. Attorney, Preet Bharara) can't run houses of torture and then claim any moral high ground to scold localities.  Someone needs to demand that Congress create some independent authority separate from the DOJ to audit, monitor and review the BOP's practices and individual prisons.  Only then can these reports on local jails from a source such as the DOJ  have any ring of legitimacy.

 

Russell Harding