Tag Archives: 9/11

“The most epic and consequential story of the past 40 years”?

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On June 19, Politico media reporter Joe Pompeo wrote that New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron “are the two most important newspaper editors in America right now, at a time when the news media are tackling the most epic and consequential story of the past 40 years.”

Concerning the United States’ ‘most important’ newspaper editors, I have no opinion. I try to sidestep argument about which human being is more important than his (usually, his) fellows. For one thing, this is grounds-of-conscience territory. For another, it is in poor taste. (I can be as stuffy as anyone else.) For another, I do not care. Also, ‘most important’ too often translates into ‘stupidest’. Take for example the context of the quoted statement, explained by Pompeo:

 . . . Baquet was being grilled by his own media columnist recently during a sardonically titled talk, “Covering POTUS: A Conversation with the Failing NYT,” when someone in the audience asked: “Better slogan: ‘The truth is more important now than ever,’ or ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness?’”

The former was from a brand campaign the Times kicked off during the Oscars; the latter was the Washington Post’s new motto, an old saying that had been invoked by owner Jeff Bezos in an interview last year with Marty Baron, the Post’s editor.*

Having fun with slogans is a good idea. As part of the new save-journalism movement, I have a couple of NYTimes and WaPo mottos myself. For the Times, how about ‘Judith who?’ For the newspaper I subscribe to, how about ‘Journalism Dies in Stupidity’? Or just ‘We killed the printers’ unions’?

Fun aside, it’s the last part of the quoted sentence that horrifies. Here it is again:

at a time when the news media are tackling the most epic and consequential story of the past 40 years.

There are two realistic explanations for this statement, and only two. The first is that the author really believes we are now in the midst of a story more important than the attacks of September 11, 2001; more important than the non-precedent Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore that gave George W. Bush the White House; more important than the Washington Post Company’s epic and consequential financial stake in the Bush campaign and its ‘education reforms’; more important than the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing Iraq War and the rest of the ensuing carnage in the Middle East.

September 11, 2001

The other is that the author made a thoughtless comment without realizing the implications. I’m hoping for the latter, but even that means some lack of thought about the horror, tragedy, and dishonor blithely swept under the rug.

Backing away somewhat from the bloodshed of 9/11 and the Iraq War, let’s quickly review the past 40 years.

Well, June 19, 1977, featured Led Zeppelin and Elvis in concert. Pass.

Broadening the scope, 1977 and the late 1970s involved the continued unwinding of the Vietnam War, with its continuing suicides, substance abuse and other results of post-traumatic stress disorder, and strain on social services and on communities. The same period also involved climbing out of the recession of 1973-1975, the longest and deepest economic depression since the end of World War II according to the Federal Reserve. The climb was never completed. I recommend Wallace C. Peterson’s Silent Depression, which sounds like a psychology textbook but is actually a work of popular economics. Subtitled Twenty-Five Years of Wage Squeeze and Middle Class Decline, Peterson’s book narrates in persuasive detail some of the changes in the U. S. economy before and after 1973. The immense change was that the economy was expanding before 1973 and contracted afterward. The story can be read in the lives of everyone contemporaneous. We’re still feeling the effects today. We’re still paying for Vietnam, too.

The late 1970s including 1977 also involved the continuing development of U. S. feminism and some advances for women–not in regard to rape and domestic violence, but in the job market and in education. See Gail Collins’ When Everything Changed–the title a bit of an overstatement but the work a good chronological overview, with documentation.

That year and the late seventies also saw the collapse of the job market in higher education. With the draft (Selective Service) over and Vietnam winding down, undergraduate enrollment dropped rapidly. Troubles in the school systems didn’t help. Meanwhile, graduate school enrollment and the graduation of thousands of new Ph.D.’s continued–for a while. One result was that for at least a couple of years, there were some two thousand new Ph.D. grads in English literature and related fields, with not a tenth than many jobs in college teaching. (Someone computed the higher-ed unemployment rate the year I got my doctorate at 83 percent.) The secondary result was that the overflow went largely or partly into ‘adjunct’ teaching in higher education, a set-up again still with us today. This development coincided with the influx of more women into graduate programs, with the natural consequence that adjuncts were and are disproportionately female–especially in the lower-paying disciplines and in lower-division grinding classes. By the way, this entire phenomenon went virtually unreported in U. S. newspapers. The New York Times didn’t touch it for thirty years.

On a brighter note, the major movements of the sixties in environmentalism, civil rights and physical fitness and health more or less continued through the late seventies.

The above is just a thumbnail, only partly tongue-in-cheek, of part of one decade. No reason to go into detail on the Reagan years and other collapses of the eighties or on the continuing promotion of the Clintons and the Bush team in the nineties.

 

*Side note: Amazon head Bezos, who bought WaPo, is reportedly also going to buy the upscale Whole Foods grocery chain. A Whole Foods just opened in my region, to great fanfare about ‘jobs’, as in County Executive Rushern Baker’s touted economic vision of luring big and upscale employers like the Casino to the county. Amazon reportedly plans to automate grocery checkers out of their jobs. To its credit, the Washington Post reported this intent.

The low-class Washington, D.C., chattering classes

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The chattering classes are lower-class than the masses.

We have seen this before. In 2002 and 2003, millions of ‘ordinary’ Americans figured something was wrong about wantonly invading Iraq. That perception was not shared, however, by established media authorities including George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer, the entire Republican noise machine, the three original major television networks and Fox, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the major cable outlets. The upshot was a bloody and unconstitutional invasion of a sovereign nation that basically amounted to the betrayal of the less educated by the (nominally) educated.

Now we are seeing it again. The newest representation is our more elevated media mouths’ reaction to Donald Trump.

Typically inadequate commentary about Trump’s rise or support can be found here and here, among many other places.

The ground rule of pundits like these: always blame the many rather than the few. So much for participatory democracy. So much for each-one-teach-one. For Democrats, so much for winning in November 2016.
In commentary pieces like these, however well-meant they may be, a good guideline is to look at what is missing. Thus, in these particular pieces linked and in many others, there is no account of the staggering dearth of valid information in what passes for ‘political reporting’ in our big media outlets. Nothing about the paucity of genuine information in our politics coverage. (Far too typical. Did we learn about segregation and desegregation from the big media outlets? — not until the latter was dramatized by protests that lighted racial justice up on the big board. More recently, did we hear about insurance companies’ stiffing their own customers? — not until John Grisham and Michael Moore and, on a lesser scale, I, voiced the issue. For that matter, when was the last time Wolf Blitzer used the word ‘redlining’?) Nothing about the infotainment dished out by what Chris Matthews actually called (with a straight face) “Washington insiders.” Nothing about the brutal assaults on public education that leave many students unknowing about checks and balances. Nothing about the internal corruption in the Democratic Party that shut out an excellent candidate, Vice President Joseph Biden, away from voters who would have liked more choices. The behind-the-scenes money-and-connections apparatus, you will recall, did its collective best to lock up the party nomination for the deeply flawed Clintons. One result was that 17(?) 27(?) 127(?) GOPers were salivating at the chance to run against Hillary Clinton. And one result of that was Donald Trump–the cue ball banging into the rack, with the arithmetic of the field always in his favor.
Some of these guys in media commentary have even found ways to be unfair to Donald Trump–not a feat any ordinary person could pull off. Trump has at moments engaged in more accurate political commentary than the analysts covering him–one example being when he called out Ted Cruz for megaphoning that Ben Carson was liable to drop out of the race, just before the Iowa caucuses. The result was that Cruz came out on top in Iowa, beating Trump by a few points, with Carson well down toward the bottom. (Incidentally, the loss may have helped Trump in the long run. If he had ‘won’ Iowa and gone on to win the next couple of races, the rest of the field and the party establishment would have homed in on him that much sooner.)
More importantly–to do Donald Trump justice, it is Trump who has repeatedly criticized George W. Bush’s wanton and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq. Only Trump has had the temerity to point out that for George W. Bush to take credit for our ‘safety’ when 9/11 occurred on his watch is a dubious claim. (Imagine what would have happened to the principal of Columbine High School, had he gone around boasting, à la Bush/Pataki/Giuliani, about his actions in the immediate wake of the tragic events there). One predictable outcome is that all the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) signatories are now up in arms against Trump. PNAC was co-founded by Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush, and all the apologists for the Iraq War, all the movers and shakers who think the problem is that we just didn’t spill enough blood, are now joined with the remains of the GOP establishment to take an imaginary moral high ground against Trump.

PNAC

WOULD THAT HILLARY CLINTON AND THE SO-CALLED MAINSTREAM DEMOCRATS HAD MADE THE SAME CLEAR STATEMENTS, in recent years. Hillary Clinton never does, for obvious reasons; she voted for the Bush war. But too many Dems who see themselves as either connected or cerebral have spent the last seven years on the sidelines. Worse yet, too many of them dug in with passive-aggressive tactics against President Obama– undoubtedly partly out of the pettiest and most parochial envy/jealousy/competitiveness, partly out of spite because they underestimated him, and partly out of residual bigotry that afflicts some leftish writers as well as some rightwingers. So you have GOPers blaming President Obama, rather than GWBush, for every disaster in the Middle East. And the Blue Dog ‘centrist’ types and the sideline sitters seldom or never step up to the plate to defend one of the best presidents we have had. (Hillary Clinton now claims to be his defender, having adopted the line from people with my view that Obama should get more credit. Meanwhile, her emails show her as SecState chiefly intent on gauging Obama’s and Biden’s popularity. Read some of them.)

Priorities

I might add that the same left-ish media sources are not exactly eager to pay their own writers and lower-level staff; look at Arianna Huffington, Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for examples. Too many producers take advantage of the passion of populist writers by paying, if at all, on the Walmart model–calling them Kossacks, or bloggers, etc., rather than employees, even contract employees. The treatment of PT/contingent workers has affected our republic of letters. This again is something you do not hear discussed by Hillary Clinton-type candidates–not for decades. Not until her people pick it up via social media from someone like me, or until some event makes it safe and popular.
The Democrats underestimate Trump at their peril in 2016. And downplaying Trump’s supporters as dumb will not help. Quite the contrary.
If some of the guys/gentlemen who have profited most from their media positions could be a little more concerned about fellow human beings and a little less concerned about vague notions of status, they might pull off some actual analysis once in a while. In the meantime, their accuracy will inevitably be hobbled by their vulgarity. It is quintessentially vulgar to proceed on an assumption that some individuals are worth more than others, purely on the basis of position or status or anything else extraneous to merit. The assumption also leads to a very simple but very obtuse logical slide–the view that if So-and-so is not important, then misrepresenting him is also not important.

The Elephant and the Denatured Donkey in the Room

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As the New Hampshire presidential primary approaches (February 9), the national political press is consumed with speculation over Donald Trump’s lead in the GOP. Secondarily, it is speculating over how well Sen. Bernie Sanders’ lead on the Democratic side will hold up. The corollary re the GOP is that establishment candidates must be ‘winnowed’, so that Republicans can ‘coalesce’ around an alternative to Trump or Ted Cruz. The corollary re the Democrats is that loaded-with-minuses Hillary Clinton is in for the long haul, on her way to her still-inevitable nomination. Commentators do not always put it that way, but that’s the gist.

Not too ironically, one of the more interesting aspects of the 2016 race is what the national political press is not discussing. This has happened before. An avalanche of commentary in 2014 failed to disclose that the GOP ‘wave’ had a key cause: in state after state, the GOP saw to it that, while tea party candidates proliferated, party-establishment candidates had a clear path to nomination. Thus the arithmetic of the field virtually always prevailed, and in favor of the party’s preferred candidate. The relatively plausible candidate then went on, in most races, to win–especially against Blue-Dog, Clinton-like, triangulating-type Dems. More on that later.

The insurgent types seem to have learned a lesson from 2014, by the way. Trump may be a human cue ball, but most of the ‘winnowing’ this time has occurred in the non-establishment lane, as it’s now being called. Dropouts so far Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum would all be competing for the insurgent vote, if they were still in; Rick Perry and Scott Walker somewhat; only George Pataki and Lindsey Graham perhaps not. Thus with nine presidential candidates remaining, the GOP now has six candidates competing for establishment support–Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio. Only two are competing for the tea party-evangelical vote–Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Trump is running sui generis, salesman that he is.

I do not pretend to have a forecast for the New Hampshire primary. In the interest of full disclosure–to make my own position clear–if I lived in NH I would be voting for Senator Sanders. My own guess is that if Trump were to drop out of the GOP race or to do so poorly as to become irrelevant, his supporters would scatter or drop out, too. Pretty dreary prospect.

Sanders 2016

Back to what’s not being reported. First, the Republicans.

Whatever the outcome in New Hampshire, for anyone who can do arithmetic, the GOP candidate with the best chance long-term is still Jeb Bush–IF he chooses to stay in the race. Christie is ghastly. Fiorina is being sidelined pretty emphatically, in spite of her efforts to out-ugly the uglies. She would probably be sidelined more explicitly, except that the party is trying (sort of) to keep some women voters. Gilmore is being thoroughly ignored. Kasich is under none-too-subtle pressure to make like Scott Walker and bow out; that happens to GOP candidates who occasionally pay lip service to working people. The focus of commentary at the moment is on the GOP candidate most like Bush–Rubio. A few weeks of voting should answer some questions. Bush has the backing to survive not being voted for; Rubio may not. The big question is whether Bush and his backers stay in.

Jeb Bush

Meanwhile, in the tea party-ish lane, Ben Carson is facing an onslaught from Cruz, whom nobody can out-ugly. If insurgent voters were to turn on Cruz in revulsion, that whole wing of the GOP would change in a heartbeat. With Cruz hypothetically not a factor, his supporters would probably split among Carson, Trump, the multiple-candidate lane, and dropping out or voting Democratic. It will be interesting to see how they vote in New Hampshire.

So, back to the non-reported: what no esteemed commentator says about Jeb Bush is that the invasion of Iraq cost the United States dearly. No pundits bring up the statistical facts–the Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion and afterward; the assassinations of Iraqi college professors under the Coalition Provisional Authority; the deaths and injuries in American troops. No commentators point that Team Bush has never apologized for the harm done to fellow human beings, or even for the harm done to America around the globe. No mention of Iraqi children, or babies, killed; no reminder of the horrors of the Bush years–Fallujah, collateral damage, sexual assaults in the military and out of it.

Few commentators on the GOP candidates remind the public that George W. Bush used the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for invading Iraq. Not one major media figure has pointed out what I pointed out in 2002-2003, the luminously simple statement of fact that every American can understand: “The Iraqis didn’t do it.” There were no Iraqis among the hijackers. Nor do commentators tend to bring up ‘weapons of mass destruction’. (Neither do the Clintons; see below.)

Instead, we get commentary-lite, on the Jeb Bush ‘baggage’ in narrowly political terms. Two recent examples come from the pro-GOP Roll Call. One piece refers to “the family legacy” as a blessing and a curse, and to concerns about the effect on the candidate’s electability. The fact that the family has not expressed responsibility, let alone contrition, for our situation in the Middle East is omitted. Indeed, Jeb Bush says that people concerned about the actions of his father and brother need to “get therapy”–to the applause of his audience.

A succinct summary of the ethics-lite perspective is provided in the other piece:

“Bush has plenty of credentials, but they are less valuable this year. The Bush brand, once strong, was severely damaged by his brother, and Jeb himself doesn’t fit the times, when long political bloodlines and deep establishment connections are liabilities, not assets. He is, to put it bluntly, old news at a time when Republicans are looking for something new and different. For many Republicans, his name told them everything they needed to know about him and his candidacy.”

This is the way to acknowledge the biggest foreign-policy mistake in fifty years? Even Donald Trump does a better analysis of the Iraq War. Incidentally, Trump also provided a pretty good thumbnail of the effect (on the GOP) in political terms: “Lincoln couldn’t have gotten elected.” (Of course, Trump like all the GOPers blames President Obama. In my view, this is a cynical ploy to take advantage of voters too illiterate to understand that the invasion of Iraq happened before Obama’s watch, and over his opposition to the war.)

Needless to say, the same utter lack of contrition and the same failure to take responsibility extend to the Wall Street debacle in subprime lending. And the national political media tend to fall in line here, too. Too seldom is Jeb Bush, or any Republican candidate, held to account for his/her sympathy or collusion with the giant perpetrators. Meanwhile, the GOP gets to rail unchecked against the president even while unemployment falls, wages rise, prices stay level, the real estate market recovers, housing ownership revives, and coverage for health care expands. You’d think some of these gains were the capture of Osama bin Laden or the release of captured Americans all over again, they are so thoroughly ignored by big-time Republicans. Give credit to President Obama, the man who risks his life daily? Not on your bippy.

Now to the Democratic side.

As with GOP candidates, what is missing from commentary on the Democrats is exactly the information voters need. Hillary Clinton would be a disastrous nominee for Dems, but she has lined up segments of the media establishment along with her ‘Super Delegates’ and other connections.

Clinton is running basically on four planks, one semi-hidden–her electability; her inevitability (behind the scenes); her being a Democrat; and her “experience,” with the claim that she gets things done. Each claim is spurious. Setting aside longer examination for now, do they stand up to quick scrutiny? In order —

If Clinton is electable, why is she struggling so much for the nomination that she and her donors did their best to sew up beforehand? If Bill Clinton is ‘one of the best politicians of his generation’, then why did the Clintons leave the Democratic Party in shambles in Arkansas? Why was Arkansas a blue state when the Clintons began there, and a red state after their thirty-plus years? Why didn’t Hillary Clinton run for the senate from Arkansas? Speaking of New York, has there been a wave of Blue wins since the Clintons relocated there? Why did Marjorie Margolies (Mezvinsky), mother of the Clintons’ son-in-law, lose resoundingly in her New York district? The simple fact is that the Clintons are not beloved, and their coattails are nonexistent. Much of MSNBC in the tank for the Clintons. How are MSNBC’s ratings nowadays? Virginia results in 2015 were disappointing for Dems. Governor McAuliffe, widely billed as a chief Clinton ally, is not deeply beloved. Neither are the Clintons. After Clinton campaigned in Virginia in 2013, McAuliffe barely squeaked out a victory–and that was over Ken ‘Kook’ Cucinelli.

If Clinton was inevitable, why did her supporters do so much behind the scenes to keep other candidates from running? Do these machinations express confidence in their candidate?

Democrats? The Clintons are triangulators. They may be liberal on social issues, but as their track record shows, they have a pattern of shafting labor–even after receiving generous donations and support from labor, and from working people. Before she started sounding like Elizabeth Warren a few months ago, when was Clinton ever forceful on economic justice? In the senate, she voted for the resolution enabling GWBush to invade Iraq. Before that, as first lady she partnered in Bill Clinton’s anti-populist path. Before that, as wife of the candidate she stood by while Bill Clinton flew back to Arkansas to endorse personally the state’s execution of a mentally disabled African-American man.

What has Clinton ‘gotten done’? Did she work to reduce the backlog of rape kits? She now talks the game on student debt, etc., but did she ever work with her donors who are lenders to help with it before? Did she do anything beforehand to impede the coming subprime-derivatives meltdown? Did she support policies to rein in Wall Street (or the good ol’ boys in the C of C), either in Arkansas or later? Did she support gun control, before this past fall? Does her track record include support for clemency, for anyone besides Marc Rich?

These are character questions as well as economic-policy questions. Hillary Clinton is not Elizabeth Warren, and should not pretend to be. She is not someone who ‘fights for’ people outside her immediate circle. That’s not who she is. Clinton herself touts misogynistic and sexist attacks against her–but she has never stepped outside her comfort zone to defend other women, in her life. She is no Ann Richards–who endured savage and misogynistic attacks but without selling out. Clinton’s State Department emails show no consideration for President Obama, let alone for Vice President Biden. Clinton and her people, inside and outside her office, kept a wary eye out for any signs that anyone else (good) might be popular. She did the same in Arkansas, for decades. So did her husband.

One of the main problems analyzing the Clinton candidacy is that too much is deemed off-limits as ‘personal’. There is an unstated definition of ‘personal’ as ‘private’, even when the person is running for the White House. For obvious reasons, the Clintons themselves try to bat away every question of character, and many questions of policy, as mere gossip. But this strategy misconstrues the concept of the personal. Clinton has been married for decades to a man whose degrading treatment of her and of many other women is amply documented. This is not ‘right-wing conspiracy’. It is fact. It is also spousal bullying. (No, it’s not romance. It’s not intrigue. It’s not titillation. It was probably barely even sex. It’s spousal bullying–aimed at one’s own partner, while also demeaning the numerous other women involved.)

She shows the symptoms, by the way–that weird lack of judgment, that weirdly dehumanized Stay- Puft complacency, the perpetual calculatedness, the inability to empathize with any woman not ‘successful’ or established, etc.

And how did Clinton herself ‘stand up’ to the spousal bullying? –By working for the spouse’s political career, by helping the spouse advance up the ladder, by helping him into the White House. For my money, there is no way Bill Clinton could have won in 1992 if his wife had not stoutly denied every (true) accusation against him. As a result, Hillary Clinton became rich and famous; her husband became rich and famous; Arkansas was left behind. Reminding the public of this track record is not the same as gossiping about a neighbor. To remember the over-all track record of dishonesty, humiliation, and other forms of bullying is not the same as criticizing some poor woman for failing to take exactly the right course of action against an abuser. Clinton is now running for the White House, and now has all the resources in the world–entirely because of her long-term partnership with Bill Clinton. And she’s talking about the man with a credible accusation of sexual assault against him as “First Dude.”

There is not enough space here to discuss the problems with the ‘having it all’ version of feminism. Careerism is not feminism.

But the problems with the GOP and the Democratic races have one hideous parallel–that signature lack of shame. No matter what mistakes they make, no matter what harm they have caused–no shame, no remorse, no contrition. No amends. And the political media establishment is playing along on both sides.

NY State–Carl Paladino, the World Trade Center, and eminent domain

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 New York State–Carl Paladino, the World Trade Center, and eminent domain

Paladino

First, from the transcripts:

CARL PALADINO (R), NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: “This is Carl Paladino. As governor, I will use the power of eminent domain to stop this mosque and make the site a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country.”

(video clip, Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, July 29, 2010)

 

CNN INTERVIEW WITH CARL PALADINO, REPUBLICAN NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE INTERVIEWER: RICK SANCHEZ SUBJECT: NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL RACE; PROPOSAL TO BUILD MOSQUE NEAR WTC SITE TIME: 3:00 P.M. EDT DATE: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010:

“MR. SANCHEZ: You say that you will use–here, let me read from your letter once again. You’re right. This is the point that you’re making and you’re correct, you’ve been very consistent on this.

“The governor”, you write, “has a legal power to use the state’s right of eminent domain to seize this site and make it a memorial of which we can be proud. That is exactly what I will do if I’m elected governor.”

So, as governor, you will go in there and take this property away from this people and turn it into a memorial because they want to use it as an Islamic cultural center.

MR. PALADINO: No. Let me correct on that, okay. That was a partial misstatement on my part. We will go in there and we will put a restrictive covenant on the property and all of the property in the Ground Zero site. Ground Zero for me is the extended site over which the dust cloud containing human remains traveled. That Ground Zero site will be protected in the memory of those who fell at the World Trade Center, as well as the memory of the thousands and thousands of soldiers, of American and allied soldiers, that fell in the ensuing wars, and 150,000 troops we still have over there defending our right to speak like this today.”

 

[continued]

“MR. SANCHEZ: Okay. But you just said the property for which the dust cloud–

MR. PALADINO: I’m sorry. I missed the point. Yeah, let me explain that. Eminent domain is a very broad term. You can actually take property or you can just put a restriction on property. In this case it would be the restriction on the use of a property that a zoning board would consider the issue when proposed use is introduced for any property within the district. And if the zoning board determines that it is an affront in any way to the American people to those memories, then it would be rejected, the use would be rejected.”

 

For more than one reason, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino was sagacious to amend his initial campaign promise to ‘seize’ the World Trade Center site under eminent domain. For one, the Islamic Center to include the mosque and ecumenical chapel for religious use is not planned for the World Trade Center site itself but for a site two blocks away. As one attorney expert in eminent domain cases comments, seizing ‘Ground Zero’ would hardly prevent a mosque from being built blocks away. Widening the terrain to that hit by ‘dust’ from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, parries this point—although it also includes all of Lower Manhattan.

 

For another, hearing a GOP candidate for governor of the nation’s third-largest state aggressively proclaim the use of eminent domain to seize property—“we do it every day in zoning”—would hardly sit well with Paladino’s ‘tea party’ constituency.

 

Telephone and emailed questions and requests for comment placed with the Paladino campaign, whose slogan is “Paladino for the people,” have not yet been answered. Paladino’s campaign website further emphasizes, as Paladino said in the Rick Sanchez interview, that Paladino’s use of eminent domain around the World Trade Center site would be restricted–“but not by taking the property.”

 

Still, Paladino’s track record includes some aggressive threats to use eminent domain:

[transcript:]

“MR. SANCHEZ: So you believe that a government–a government has a right to make a decision, a property rights decision, based on its own sensibilities, how its affected. How would that stop, in the future, someone from–

MR. PALADINO: We do it every day in zoning–we do it every day in zoning law.

MR. SANCHEZ: But how–but in this case you’re–

MR. PALADINO: Zoning laws–

MR. SANCHEZ: But this case it’s a First Amendment argument that you’re deciding.

MR. PALADINO: No, we’re not.

MR. SANCHEZ: Aside from sensibilities, if the Constitution says we have a right to worship as we please, where we please, how can you go in and say I don’t want you worshiping that way there because it affects my sensibilities?

MR. PALADINO: I’ve clearly said to you that it’s my opinion that this is not a question of freedom of religion.”

 

Even after widening the geography to that covered by the “dust” from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and restricting the use of eminent domain to “covenant” rather than seizure, Paladino’s rhetoric raises issues that should concern his ‘base.’


The big one, of course, is the First Amendment. [ O’Donnell]

 

Even with the limitations or after-the-fact qualifiers, Paladino’s barn-burning rhetoric basically boils down to saying that as New York governor he would use “any means”—his words—to prevent the ‘mosque’s’ being built, including the power of eminent domain.

Setting aside any other questions, a key legal question for a lay person is, could he really do that?

Any exercise of the power of eminent domain must be based on a legitimate public purpose of the condemning authority, in this instance the State of New York. That fundamental principle raises the immediate question whether preventing a ‘mosque’ at or near the WTC site could be a legitimate public purpose.

Most lawyers would argue, to the contrary, that the expressed purpose of preventing a ‘mosque’ is a direct violation of the First Amendment.

Attorney Thomas M. Olson, of the firm of McKirdy & Riskin in Morristown, N.J., interviewed by telephone, has represented clients in numerous cases confirming that indeed First Amendment issues can arise in relation to eminent domain. Whether the First Amendment issues outweigh other concerns varies from case to case, Olson says, but the First Amendment does not automatically go down to defeat just because the state—at the federal or state level—advances other interests. Boiling it down to lay terms, sometimes the church or cemetery wins.

 

Side note: Purely anecdotally, it used to be a truism that Constitutional Law was the law school course that law school students took least interest in, the one on which they typically placed least priority. The constitution being the terrain only of future constitutional law profs or a smaller handful of future Supreme Court Justices, the conventional wisdom went, Con Law was perceived as offering little payback to the prospective lawyer who wanted to go out and land a well-paying job at one of the big burnout law firms. Indeed, in this (surely) over-cynical and oversimplified view, a well-grounded regard for the constitution was something of a handicap to be reticent about, not a selling point in a job interview with Gordon Gekko.

 

Back to the phone interview–Olson clarifies that the government does have power to use eminent domain in regard to private property—but not for free: when a property is condemned, for example, the property owner still has to be compensated. The government does have power to seize land for public use—a freeway, a school. But whether the government has the right in a particular case depends on what purpose they would seize it for. An unquestioned public use such as a school is much more solid ground for eminent domain; a quasi-private use such as redevelopment is more of a gray area.

Olson’s firm, McKirdy & Riskin, generally represents property owners in eminent domain matters in New Jersey. The religious issue, “a very interesting issue,” Olson comments, “has never been finally resolved by the courts” in an across-the-board way.

When you want to run a road through a church, it can be difficult. There are rights on both sides. A church versus a cemetery might be even tougher.

To deal with the First Amendment issue, Paladino’s rebuttal is simply to deny it:

“MR. SANCHEZ: They may very well be, sir, and I understand your perspective. But what you can’t get away from, and I guess what I’d like to ask you because we’ve got to get a break in and we’ll continue but maybe it gives us a chance to think about this a little bit. How do you get away from the fact that there is a constitutional argument here that seems to say that you can’t deny someone–

MR. PALADINO: There is no constitutional argument because it’s not freedom of religion.

MR. SANCHEZ: It’s not? Okay–

MR. PALADINO: If it was freedom of religion they’d put their mosque someplace else.

MR. SANCHEZ: Okay. Let’s continue that part–

MR. PALADINO: And enjoy their religious experience.”

 

According to Paladino, the building is “ideological,” not religious. Set aside the point that ideology might be protected by the First Amendment and that religious denominations have their ideological components. Set aside that the building is being called ‘ideological’ and is being opposed because some people do not like it. Set aside the point that people could be prevented from enjoying their religious experience anywhere other people were minded to prevent it, on whatever grounds. Set aside even the sad possibility that Paladino may not consider Islam a religion to begin with. Even giving him all these set-asides, his argument pretty much boils down to a statement that the building is not religious because he (speaking ex officio as hypothetical governor) says it’s not.

It is a given that media attention to Paladino’s statements will dwindle because nobody foresees that he poses much threat to Andrew Cuomo. But his is a worrisome train of thought for a chief executive, and should be seen as such by tea partiers as well as others.

Cuomo, Ackerman

A better argument for Paladino to have made as gubernatorial candidate would have been the common-sense reminder that the First Amendment is not absolute and government can abridge constitutional freedoms, within reasonable limits, to serve other legitimate purposes such as curing blight to foster the health, safety and welfare of a community. 

Back when he was talking about ‘seizing’ the property, he could also have reminded the audience that any property seized would have to be paid for. So the taxpayers would be on the hook for any property abruptly picked up by the State of New York, including the footprint of the twin towers.

 

Back—again—to when Paladino was talking about seizing the World Trade Center site, it is intriguing to note that he was talking about using eminent domain in order to create a “public memorial.” This would be his concept of the public use under which eminent domain could be used—a memorial, rather than a road or bridge, etc. A memorial park might indeed be such a public use, or public purpose, but once again it would have to be paid for. It would be interesting to run this one by the deficit hawks among the tea partiers. Fair market value for the property, as paid by the State . . .?

 

Another legal issue, perhaps a future project for legal research, is whether New York State has power to seize property owned by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey for any purpose. 

 

btw a memorial on the 9/11 site is already under construction. Paladino’s proposal to exercise eminent domain ‘restriction’ or ‘covenant’ could overlap significantly with—i.e. come into conflict with—the memorial underway. Thus the argument of a legitimate public purpose would have to be weighed against, again, fiscal costs–the large public maintenance obligation and presumably the loss of tax revenue.

 

But the fundamental concern is that eminent domain must have a legitimate public purpose. The purposes of government are defined by the constitution and by statute. A governor cannot simply declare that something is a public use in order to justify taking private property. This is a Tea Party candidate?

Final note: The Corpus Juris Secundum, the encyclopedia of American law, devotes 752 pages to eminent domain, plus suppl., give or take, which is what eminent domain is all about. See vol. 29A.

 

Pages 167 and 168 of the CJS deal with cemeteries as public use of land. Page 189 deals with cemeteries as property appropriate for the exercise of eminent domain.

 

The CJS makes clear that land, including private property, may be taken by the government—federal or state—for public use, with two conditions: 1) the use has to be public, i.e. open to all, as for example roads and bridges; and 2) the property owner has to be fairly compensated (paid).

 

Any land taken for use as a cemetery or, presumably, as a memorial, must be for public use. It cannot be an exclusionary private cemetery.

 

[This article, deleted by the system among hundreds of articles and blog posts in summer 2011, is re-posted using archives and Word files.]