The Rake Magazine

Author: Tom Bartel

  • The Roman Arch

    In the introduction to his comprehensive history of Rome, Livy invited his readers to “trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality … then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.”

    A strong metaphor indeed: the collapse of the societal construct as the result of too much of personal aggrandizement and the unwillingness of leaders to provide the harsh medicine that will stop the flux that drains us to the point of death.

    There was no such poetry evident in the discourse following the collapse of the non-metaphorical I-35W bridge. Republicans, who rightfully feared that Democrats would jump on Governor Pawlenty’s two vetoes of gas tax increases as the proximate cause, began right away with the “let’s focus on the disaster instead of the politics” bleating. Of course, politics being, well, politics, that lament sounded just like the report of a starting pistol to Democrats lined up to trample Pawlenty under the race to assign blame.

    That race has a long way to go. So far, what is clear is that the Minnesota Department of Transportation knew the bridge needed maintenance. What is not clear is who exactly made the decision not to perform it. My guess is that will never be clear. What is also clear is that performing the maintenance would have inconvenienced a lot of drivers. And, finally, it’s clear as well that politicians, and bureaucrats who answer to politicians, have no stomach for inconveniencing drivers … or anyone else who might vote, for that matter.

    We all decry the failure to maintain our roads, yet what representatives of our government’s work receive more irate looks than the guys who put out the orange cones that slow us down? (At least the people who hand out welfare checks, regulate polluters, teach our children, and write speeches for members of Congress have the decency to work where we can’t actually see them.) Indeed, since Ronald Reagan’s famous “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” inaugural speech, the official position of his party (to which Bill Clinton later acceded) is that people who work for the government pretty much play the same role for today’s politicians as the Jews did for the Nazis in the 1930s. Everything that goes wrong—from Katrina to the I-35W Bridge—is the fault of some nameless scapegoat who is taking your tax dollars under false pretenses.

    This isn’t the strategy of just one party. It’s the modus operandi of both. Politicians, whether in Washington or St. Paul, have no stomach for prescribing sour medicine for the mundane aches and pains of quotidian America. Mayors, governors, senators, and presidents will all rush heroically to the side of a collapsed bridge, pausing only long enough to remove their ties so they’ll look more like the common concerned citizen. However, a politician who actually rolls up his sleeves and sponsors a spending bill to maintain that bridge in the first place might as well put on one of those orange vests to toil by the side of the road and be reviled, or even worse, ignored, while we zip by at seventy miles per hour.

    The Roman system of roads, bridges, and aqueducts was the very emblem of their power to dominate and administer their empire. Julius Caesar caused the first bridge over the Rhine to be erected just to prove to the Germans that Rome could do whatever it pleased. In a sense, our interstate network is the equivalent American demonstration of our national will. But building a road system, and a governmental system that is also modeled on Rome’s, was relatively easy. The truly difficult work of government is the work that confers no glory on those who do it.

    Think ahead eighteen months or so to the opening ceremony for the rebuilt bridge. No doubt we’ll see a mayor, a governor, senators, and perhaps even a president. But, we won’t see the government workers—the engineers, the inspectors, the accountants, the police and firefighters—who provide the actual foundation that buttresses our civilization. My guess is they’ll still be shouldering the blame for rotten re-bars and rusted gussets, while our leaders take credit for the shiny new monument to their dominion.

  • What's Wrong with Mr. Maliki?

    My flag’s prettier than your flag

    We’ve been hearing a lot lately that Nuri al-Maliki, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iraq, is the main reason why our efforts to do whatever it is we’re trying to do in Iraq this week aren’t working.

    Here are some of the specific criticisms:

    He’s made the governmental forces into an instrument to ensure his party’s domination and oppress his political enemies.

    He’s arranged for his supporters to take in the lion’s share of oil revenues.

    His government promotes the sectarian division of his country along party and religious lines.

    He promotes the politics of nationalism and aggression rather than unity and reconciliation.

    He uses American forces for his own political purposes.

    Yeah, we should have told the Iraqis that, when you have elections, it’s a complete crap shoot. You never can tell when you’re going to get someone just like Maliki running your country.

  • Some Questions for our Fearless Leaders Precipitated by the Precipitation of the 35W Bridge

    More interesting than the news of the bridge collapse itself is the immediate attacks going on in the blogosphere by liberals and conservatives blaming each other for blaming each other.

    Here’s how it’s going so far, in case you have other things on your minds: liberals suggest that we should have raised taxes by now in order to pay for the well documented need to improve the country’s infrastructure of roads and bridges; conservatives think it’s too bad the bridge didn’t fall on the liberals for suggesting that “no new taxes” is anything short of unimpeachable dogma.

    Still, questions should be asked, in a non-partisan fashion. Here’s a few I’m wondering about today.

    Timmy P has ordered all bridges in the state to be inspected. What’s the point if he won’t go along with a five cent gas tax that would pay to fix them? Could we afford a one cent gas tax that would be enough to pay for signs that we could post at the entrance to ones like the 35W bridge (which got a 50 percent passing grade when inspected two years ago) that say, “There’s a good chance that this bridge could fall down before we get around to fixing it. Cross at your own risk.”?

    What should we be willing to pay taxes for? Stadiums? (Yes) Keeping city libraries open? (No) Ethanol subsidies for agribusiness? (Yes) Roads on which to drive our subsidized gas guzzlers? (No) War in Iraq? (Yes) Health care for veterans? (No)

  • A Small Defense of Keith Ellison


    What is being handed over in this illustration is the fasces, the Roman symbol of power. Look up “fascist” in the dictionary, if you wonder where the word came from.

    I was on vacation two weeks ago and so missed most of the tempest in a teapot blown up by Keith Ellison’s conflation of Bush’s exploitation of 9/11 with Hitler’s exploitation of the Reichstag fire to set the stage for his assumption of power in Germany.

    Ancient historian and author Robert Harris wrote a piece with a similar thesis almost a year ago for the NY Times. But, instead of invoking the Reichstag fire, he dredged up the Lex Gabinia, which was used by Pompey Magnus to basically seize dictatorial powers in ancient Rome. Mediterranean pirates raided Ostia, the port of Rome. And although they were small in number, the pirates were made out to be such a threat that the Roman Senate emptied the treasury, raised a huge navy, gave Pompey the means to gain unlimited power, and sent him after them.

    Of course, until Julius Caesar came along just behind Pompey, there was no actual dictatorship in Rome, but Pompey and Caesar were both able to wield absolute power by virtue of the wealth they were able to accumulate because of their ability to use the military to plunder provinces and, in turn, influence elections.

    Since it’s no secret that the fathers of this country were students of the Roman republic, and modeled our form of government after the Roman system, (right up until it was destroyed forever by Julius Caesar,) it wouldn’t be a bad idea to at least consider Harris’s contention that al Queda bears a striking resemblance to the Mediterranean pirates…and that Dick Cheney is the very reincarnation of Pompey. (Actually Harris doesn’t say that; I do.)

    Never happen here? But there’s one more parallel to note. The pirates, some of whom were Roman citizens, disappeared into prisons on an island not far off the coast of Italy, never to be allowed trials, never to be released.

    Sicily it was then. Not Guantanamo. We’d never do anything like that.

  • When Johnny Comes Marching Home

    There is a famous cartoon in the World War II memoir Up Front by Bill Mauldin, the editorial cartoonist for Stars and Stripes. Mauldin’s main characters, GIs Willie and Joe, slump against a wall, exhausted and unshaven, as a spit-shined soldier struts aggressively past them.

    “That can’t be no combat man,” Willie says to Joe. “He’s lookin’ fer a fight.”

    I once mentioned this cartoon to someone who was a combat soldier, with a Purple Heart and Silver Star from Korea to prove it. He laughed when I asked him if he thought George W. Bush had ever seen it, or if he thought the president would understand why it was funny. “All I can say,” he told me, “is that we never said ‘bring it on’ when those Chinese were shooting at us. We wanted them to bring it somewhere else.”

    A great deal has been written about how Bush has left his war up to soldiers like Mauldin and my friend—soldiers who had a war brought to them while the rest of us were urged to keep shopping to keep the terrorists at bay. (If the recent performance of the stock market is any indication, we certainly have been doing our part.) I tore myself away from the mall one day last week to attend a party in honor of one of the soldiers who is just back from fifteen months as a convoy escort on a road even more dangerous than 35W at rush hour.

    I’ve known him since long before he left home as a nineteen-year-old recruit. He passed both his twentieth and twenty-first birthdays in Iraq, but while his friends and relatives were enjoying a celebratory party keg of Michelob, he sipped root beer. He wearily but smilingly endured dozens of relieved hugs. He answered all our silly questions while not going into much detail about what he’d seen or done. He laughed as he told the story of smuggling an unauthorized incendiary grenade aboard his vehicle and using it to burn down a field of elephant grass; the enemy had been using it as cover to attack his convoy. About the regular fire fights, though, he said only that he’d fired his weapon almost every day—except for the days his unit was told to conserve ammo because of supply problems. “We were almost out of food at our base, too,” he said. “I was afraid we were going to have to resort to eating MREs. Those things taste terrible and they stop you up for days.”

    His mother had compiled a scrapbook of his Army career to date. On the first page was the smiling recruitment photo. On subsequent pages were photos he’d emailed to his mother of him sitting atop a wrecked Humvee or pointing to bullet pocks in the gun turret he manned. He had no idea he was terrifying his mother by sending her such images. That was just his life, and those photos were the equivalent of his cartoons.

    He didn’t talk about the commendation he’d got for one incident when he’d provided the suppressing machine gun fire that had driven off an attack on his unit. He wasn’t even aware that his mother had pasted that document into the book as well. When I asked him about it, he claimed he didn’t remember that day.

    He also didn’t mention that six men from his unit had been “lost.” His father, who had also been a soldier, had to fill in that part.

    His preferred topic of conversation was the shiny new motorcycle, which he’d ordered when he was home on leave at Christmas and had just picked up that morning. I asked if that’s what he had spent his enlistment bonus on. “No. I joined before they started paying the bonuses. The only thing I’m getting is the education benefits.”

    “I’ve never driven a motorcycle before,” he admitted. “But I’m going to learn. The one thing I learned in the Army is that, if I can do this, I can do anything I want to do.”

    Of course, he’s learned more than that. He’s acquired the reticence of a real combat man.

  • More Bad News From Your Doctor

    I know you’ll find this incredible, but it seems that the last several presidents have tried to keep their Surgeons General quiet about politically sensitive scientific and medical issues.

    From Reagan trying to silence Koop about AIDS to Clinton being sensitive about the news that needle exchange programs were actually working to limit disease, presidents have been reluctant to give the people the facts and let politics fall where they may.

    Of course, it’s no big surprise that the main offender is the current occupant of the White House.

    Aside from trying to muzzle former SG Richard Carmona about tobacco and stem cell research, the Bushies also faulted him for attending–get this–the Special Olympics.

    Why? Because the Special Olympics have been supported for a long time by a “certain” family. And you know that, no matter how wonderful the cause, if the Kennedy family supports it, it must be wrong.

  • Scooter Skates, Zheng Hangs


    Zheng Xiaoyu died for our sins

    When one thinks about the rule of law here in the United States, it can only lead to confusion. The Bush Justice (is that an oxymoron?) Department can put innocent people in prison for political reasons, but lets the guilty ones go.

    China, on the other hand, who isn’t exactly known for its sense of justice when it comes to its own people, sure knows where to come down when someone threatens their livelihood. For when Zheng Xiaoyu was convicted of taking bribes to approve medicines that killed people, China hanged him faster than you can say “mentally retarded Texas man.”

    Don’t harbor any illusions that Zheng paid the price because he harmed the people who had taken the phony drugs. He was executed for throwing a wrench into the Chinese economy. If we can’t trust their drugs, we certainly can’t trust them not to use poisonous paint on Thomas the Tank Engine or put poison in our dog food.

    Nevertheless, one has to ask what ought to be the penalty for distributing poisonous drugs in this country. The New York Times has written a few stories lately about Minnesota doctors who have taken money from drug companies to promote the prescription of their medicines for “non-indicated” uses. There is real evidence that these prescriptions have severely damaged people.

    But in this country, bribery for “legitimate” business purposes doesn’t seem to be a crime. In this country, what it leads to is ever increasing profits. Americans would “never, never” do what Chinese officials have done, would they? Well, they have. The difference is that, here, they get away with it.

    Do you remember Lester Crawford? He owned stocks in companies he was regulating while he was head of the FDA. That’s not all. If you want to make yourself sick, read this.

    His penalty? A little fine, and a nice fat job as a lobbyist.

  • Par and Paris: only a syllable separates them

    ridder_prison.jpg

    OK, it’s a little premature, but I couldn’t help laughing at the first reports out of the Par Ridder hearings today.

    Question: what’s the difference between a little rich girl driving while drunk and a little rich boy driving a newspaper while drunk on power?

    UPDATE: Mnspeak’s worth a look on this. Lots of funny people there.

  • To The Barricades

    As I was watching the mid-June press screening of Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko, I could almost hear the lips of the conservative bloggers and talk show hosts beginning to smack as the smell of fresh meat wafted over the media landscape. Moore, whose Bowling for Columbine won the Academy Award for best documentary, won’t disappoint. The basic premise of Sicko—that the American health care system is sick (in all senses of that adjective)—is not disputed by any serious observer.

    Unfortunately, Moore can’t resist taking his point to the furthest reaches of the political landscape: Cuba. In order to show up our government and our health care industry (is that redundant?) he ferries a troop of Americans, whose health has been ruined as much by our system as by their own misfortune, to Cuba, where they are given free examinations and extremely cheap medicines. The fact that a number of these people were sickened by working at the site of the World Trade Center attacks makes Moore’s point unmistakable—when our reviled Communist enemy Fidel Castro provides better health care than we do, we ought to reexamine how we’re doing things here.

    Moore, of course, never uses a needle when a cudgel will do. He frequently undermines his own arguments by not filling in the subtleties that might call his conclusions into question. In his exuberance, he provides unlimited fodder to his right wing critics and those in the pay of the medical industry. The attacks should start in earnest June 29, the day the movie is released.

    The main point I took away from Sicko though, was the conclusion Moore drew from France. Yes, that France, the one that many people believe belongs alongside Iraq and Cuba in the Axis of Evil. Moore pointed to the frequent mass demonstrations in France as having a real effect on the government; those manifestations of public outrage prevent the government from being too influenced by capitalist pressure to cut social benefits. As he put it, “In France, the government is afraid of the people. In America, the people are afraid of the government.”

    We have 47 million Americans without health insurance. We have the leading Democratic candidate for president, who once was the primary national advocate for universal health care, now taking massive contributions from health care companies and expressing more “moderate” views. We have enshrined in law that the government which represents the people is prohibited from negotiating bulk drug prices for the benefit of its citizens. We have story after story in the mainstream press about children dying as a result of losing their health insurance. We have two recent stories in the New York Times about doctors in Minnesota taking large payments from drug companies to promote non-indicated uses for their products. And we have the local CEO of a large medical provider who wasn’t satisfied with the billion dollars he’d made by cherry picking who would get coverage and who wouldn’t, and so manipulated the dating of his stock options so he could make even more.

    So, is it time to put away our “Freedom Fries” and try exercising some real freedom? Shall we take to the streets?

    Not so fast.

    Although my natural inclination is to recall my youth during the Vietnam war and dig out my STRIKE! T-shirt from the bottom of the attic trunk, it ain’t gonna work this time. When naïve people say that the country learned nothing from Vietnam (and that’s how we got into Iraq) they grossly underestimate how smart the guys who own the government are. They certainly have learned how to quell dissent.

    The situation regarding health care is only going to change when business realizes that it’s ultimately bad for business to have an unhealthy work force. When we have economic studies that show that the country is worse off because workers are afraid to change jobs because they’ll lose their health care, when economic studies show that American companies are less competitive because they have to bear the costs of health care for their workers, and when we have studies that show that communities which are the home to large employers who don’t provide health insurance are having to bear the costs of that lack of care by subsidizing local hospitals, we might have some change. Such studies do exist, but they have no chance against the massed strength of the drug and health care companies

    The health care problems of this country will only get better if the rest of the business community decides that it is in its own best interests to put gross anti-government ideology aside and throw its own economic muscle behind buying back the government. We hear all the time about how small business is the real backbone of this country. This might be our chance to find out if small business actually has one.

    Let the attacks commence.

  • We'll Always Have Paris

    The story in the NY Times this morning says that NBC has outbid ABC for the right to have the first interview with jail bird Paris Hilton when she gets out next week.

    NBC indignantly protests that they “don’t pay for interviews.” However, it does seem that they pay the Hilton family other fees for access to Paris’s baby pictures.

    ABC, the less virtuous of the two networks, had offered a straight $100,000 for the interview, but was told they were “not even in the same galaxy” as NBC.

    So why would they want to be in that galaxy anyway, unless of course, they wanted to just drop the news charade anyway and just admit the news, for network TV, is just entertainment?

    That theory would seem to be borne out by the recent installation of ABC’s Barbara Walters’s star on the Hollywood sidewalk.