OK, if not US Attorney, how about county court at law judge?

Still no word on the U.S. Attorney's office or the President's intentions along that line, so I remain unemployed. Perhaps my terms were too severe. Maybe we could put the office in Raymondville? Surely, Mr. President you do not expect me to go as far north Corpus Christi? At any rate, please do not feel rushed, my options are quite limited. One possibility, though is a race for county court at law.

The county court at law judgeship being vacated by Judge Robles and to which Judge Murray was appointed is of course in play. It appears the commissioners may have wanted a hot race, so I have to consider my obligation to help out.

The odds of me winning a race are negligible which is the only reason I would consider running. But to be fair, I better go ahead and let the voters know my requirements.

First, I'm not sure about this title, "Judge." Everybody from past and present who has ever been a city judge or a justice of the peace or U.S. Supreme Court Justice ends up being called "judge." I went to lunch recently and looked around the room and realized only the young woman serving the fideo and I could not claim to to be "Judge." Also, I would be unwilling to be called "Judge" for fear of the ultimate encounter with Someone who has the power to judge the quick and the dead.

I do call people by their titles, "Judge," "Father," "Doctor," especially when, in the pressure of the moment, I can't remember their names.

So for my title? "Your excellency," maybe. "Grand potentate?" After I saw a Robin Williams movie once, I tried to get the kids to call me, "O Captain, my Captain," but nobody would go along.

Now, how about clothes? Black robes never did much for me, except for prospect of being to wear pajamas underneath. On the other hand a powdered wig may be fun if the airconditioning is good enough.

Now to the practical part, I get stuck on the Mathew 7:1 stuff. So I really couldn't pass judgment on anyone. This means all those guys with the orange uniforms would likely get to go home. Besides, at the county court at law level, where everyone is accused of a misdemeanor, it is pretty hard to take many of those crimes seriously. Hot checks, DWI, possession of marihuana, prostitution, gambling, that sort of thing. "Go and sin no more." I've never heard a judge say that, but wouldn't it be fun to clear out a courtroom of defendants that way?

What about the civil cases? County court at law judges don't do divorces normally or injuctions, so that would save a lot of other unpleasantness. There are a fair share of car wreck cases. I believe my knowledge of insurance companies (contempt? disdain? scorn?) would make me especially "fair," in these cases.

This may not be so much a platform as a prediction of how things will go. Naturally, I would not bet on a second term or even surviving the first.

More likely, I'll make a bunch of push cards that say, "Experience, Integrity, Fairness," or "Justice for All," or "Character You Can Trust."

Election tropes

Only because of victory, the election now seems good to me. Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. (metaphor) 

The Republican ticket had begun to sound like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. (simile)  

And especially to Bush, I say Take thy face hence. (synedoche)  

With Bush bombing Iraq and Afghanistan and the suits on Wall Street walking off with everyone's 401K's the results of the election were a no-brainer. (metonymy).  

Is Mr. Bush a Christian? Christians believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in profits and how to get a piece of them. HIs policies are sound, nothing but sound. (antanaclasis).

When Bush spoke to us he raised neither his voice nor our hopes. He should have fixed the problems, not the blame. Now we hold our breath and the door for his exit. (syllepsis).  

I've been Republicaned all I can stand this election year. The whole country has been punked by this administration. And thus, until the change of administration, the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. (anthimeria).

How did we win? The big man upstairs must have heard our prayers. This socialism attack on Obama was misplaced. Just as was once said to Dan Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy," we can say to Barack Obama, "Senator, you're no Eugene Debs." Would that he were. (periphrasis).

These last months of a Bush administration may be brutal.  He forgets:  Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. (prosopesis)

There did not seem to be brains enough in the oval office, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with. After the market fell and unemployment climbed, people moved slowly. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of our own neighborhoods.  (hyperbole).

Bush has left the nation somewhat worse for wear.  During his administration, I saw Lady Liberty flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her physical appearance.  (litotes)

What could the Republicans have been thinking?  Have we not eyes? have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (rhetorical question).

And so they brought us more wars. And our young people learned proud privileges as were learned by a young man of an earlier generation: "By Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene might be his." (irony)

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke. (onomatopoeia)

O miserable abundance. O beggarly riches. (oxymoron)

They led the people by following the mob. They lied to tell their truth. (paradox)

There is nothing that fails like success. -- G.K. Chesterton

Another of my big dozen books is Tolstoy's War and Peace. There are several books that have been watershed events that changed my world view. I read War and Peace when I was in my mid-forties. By most measures of success in life, it is fortunate I did not read it earlier. On the other hand, had I read and understood and applied Tolstoy's lessons when I was in my twenties, I could have avoided a couple of decades of hollow pursuits, meaningless losses and empty victories.

The immediate impact of reading the book was wrecking my view of history; Tolstoy destroys the Great Man approach to history. I was not completely sold on Great Man histories, even before Tolstoy. I had read enough economic determinism to figure economics was the real driving force. But I did think the big names must have made some difference.

Tolstoy showed that Napoleon, regardless of what he thought he was leading, was just the guy stuck in the front of the mass movement of people from West to East. If anyone had any control of a battle or political victory, it was some guy in a trench who was deciding whether or not to fight or run. The heroes at the top, regardless of what they thought, were not controlling events.

Reading Tolstoy was a full summer's effort. I had to stop and read a biography of Napoleon and a history of the Napoleonic wars to follow the story. I had trouble following name changes and family relationships and military ranks, so circling back in the book took me a while.

Whether or not it is "The World's Greatest Novel," I don't know. I am still haunted by certain scenes. A death at battle. The burning of Moscow. I also read some of the critic's surveys. Harold Bloom, for instance, in The Western Canon, features the short story Hadji Murad. Bloom basically took the approach, "That Tolstoy is an unmatched writer, but if you read his essays on law, religion and politics, he's just a nut." (I can't find the quote, but this is the impression I got). Many other critics seemed to take a similar view of Tolstoy's later work.

The approach is much like what you see written about Ezra Pound--good poet, but insane and a fascist traitor.

After I finally worked my way through War and Peace, I could not get enough of Tolstoy. I still rank Resurrection by Tolstoy as my favorite novel. It is about the legal system, a murder case, prison and the interaction between classes, so it harmonizes well with experiences in my life. Tolstoy wrote a version of the gospels, The Gospel in Brief, that I preferred to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He wrote essays on government, politics, war and religion such as The Kingdom of God is Within You that word for word persuaded me that I should change the way I lived life. I decided not to run for County Chairman (or anything else) again, I quit trying to get rich and began to try to get broke, and within a couple of years I quit filing lawsuits and started representing indigent criminal defendants (this greatly facilitated the prior goal).

Kathy was surprisingly accepting of all of this weirdness.

As the years have past, I have had to back off (at least for now) on some of the Tolstoyan lifestyle to sort of a Tolstoy Light. I found I was too middle class to suffer so much. It was a pain trying to live without a house, so the bank and I have been buying another one. I got tired of the long hours. And I kept getting rid of more money than I had to give, not so much out of generosity, but out of not really knowing how much money I had.

After I became powerless and broke, as you might imagine, I got a whole new set of friends. Not a lot of the old ones stuck around, but the ones who did were keepers. Another change was I was able to quit spending time with people I didn't like. I have to lie a lot less, even to Kathy. A don't take Prozac anymore. I don't have to worry about how to invest the 401K plans or keeping up with a beach house, a Hummer, a Rolex or a swimming pool. That junk is fortunately all gone. I sleep through the night. I am willing to get out of bed in the morning.

Some book!

Gilberto Hinojosa and the Democratic County Convention

Now to the Cameron County Democratic Convention.

I attended my first Democratic County Convention in 1968. It was an impressive little steamroller in Denton County. Maybe thirty people were there and there was no dissent or controversy. Those were the days--democracy was not much sullied by the involvement of people. And we didn't have to worry about all of the complications that come from having two parties.

Gilberto did not have these advantages, though. This is why I think he did a good job:

1. He pulled off a difficult task smoothly by running things largely on schedule, even while having to put up with me and the other Obama people engaging in skirmishes to get our delegates seated and elected.

2. He followed party rules and allowed the Obama people to have our 31% representation. He and the other Hillary delegates had the stroke to shut us out completely and I would not have been surprised if they did. The Jesse Jackson delegates in 1988 (me included) effectively shut out the Al Gore people. The Obama crowd (again, me included) had already planned a floor fight, rump convention and challenge to the delegation at the state convention, if we got shut out. Gilbert avoided all of this by following the rules, despite his close ties to Hillary.

3. He put young Turks in charge of the Committees who did a good job.

4. He had the personal connections to get John Sharp, the presumptive Democratic candidate against Perry in 2010, to come to the convention.

5. He had the extreme good judgment and good taste of inviting me to introduce John Sharp. I am sometimes amazed at what a smart and sensitive guy he is.

Anyway, I thought it was Gilberto's county convention and the best I have seen.

Politics, noun. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." —Ambrose Bierce

I am thinking this blog should adopt the policy of Homeland Security of posting warning colors, red, orange, whatever, to give a generally heightened sense of anxiety with no means of remedy. Red could be, "I am about to grind out another half-baked idea that struck me in the wee hours of the morning, so I'll probably change my mind about this later." Orange is, "This is going to be an insufferable load of bombastic drivel (my mind inexplicably moves into that mode sometimes) and in the unlikely event that I ever read it again myself, I'll be embarrassed." That sort of thing.

Anyway, this should be sort of a blend of red and orange, (is that where we get burnt orange?) which should be its own category that is even worse: I am going to talk about local politics....again.

This is in essence a guide to responding to local candidates. They should also be ranked with warning colors:

1. Judges and prosecutors are red and the higher the office, the more alarming the shade of red should be. Sheriffs are usually red, depending on the nature of your work.

2. Legislative offices such as State Rep, Senate, school board, TSC board, Port Authority are orange and the higher the office the scarier the orange.

3. Risible candidate posts. These are the ones either with no power or no responsibility. My old job of County Chairman comes to mind. I am not that great at describing colors. I hear words of color that do not conjure up any image at all--mauve, taupe. This warning color would be sort of like the flesh of a cadaver.

The orange offices can move to red if you actually want something such as a contract to tow cars or collect taxes.

The red offices can move to orange if you never commit any crimes and do not practice law.

The cadaver-colored offices move to red if you want to run for something, yourself.

Here are some of my problems with participating in local races at all:

1. Most of the time it doesn't matter who gets elected because no individual is stronger than the institutional structure of the office he holds. People ask, "Is he a good sheriff?" "Is he a good DA?" Even if the candidate is far more honest and less vindictive than the norm, this is hard to answer. It is like asking, "Is he a good flood victim?" "Is he a good junk yard dog?" Even though the office holder may face the job with integrity and courage, the nature of the job always ultimately beats the good person into a bloody stub of compromises and ugly deeds.

2. It is dangerous to oppose red zone incumbents. Only if they are really horrible can this even be considered. (I know the firebrands among you will view this as gutless). Even if you are certain an incumbent will lose, you usually must still support him, because even after he has been defeated he sits on the bench or in the DA's office or in the sheriff's office for another nine months.

3. I am not sure it is moral. I quit voting entirely during my Tolstoy period. (This period lingers with me, but in a weaker form). Matthew VII, 1, again.

When I spend a lot of energy in electoral politics I begin to get the type of foreboding described by Poe's Masque of the Red Death. As you may recall, the prince (or lord or king, some high muckety-muck) brought a thousand of the beautiful people into a great ballroom to hide from the plague that was killing off the poor in his regime. The plague comes in disguised in a fancy mask and everyone dies.

The striking thing to me about this story is not the morality play of mistreating the poor. It is the jarring, teeth-grinding contrast between the gaiety of the party and the dread engendered from the nasty future we know is inevitable. It is not that I don't enjoy the party of electoral politics (at least as a spectator sport), it is that there is a plague going on among the poor and it won't leave the privileged alone for long:

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing and joy cometh with the morning. Eugene V. Debs

To the tune of Mammy's little baby loves shortnin':

"Rush," says the boss
"Work like as hoss
I'll take the profit
and you take the loss

I've got the brains
I've got the dough
The Lord himself
Decreed it so."

Mammy's little baby loves union union
Mammy's little baby loves union shop,

etc.


Someday, we will look back on employment in the same way we now look back on slavery. In fact, the term "wage slavery" is not a metaphor. It is a form of slavery that should be abolished. It is not usually as cruel as slavery slavery, but it can be.

This is simple statement of the premise: Everyone should get the full value of his labor. To get any less is theft. To get anymore is theft.

Capital is withheld wages. If a company accumulates capital it means wages have been withheld from those who earned them. Unless these wages go to benefit the labor that produced them, then they have been stolen from the rightful owners.

I know this all sounds dry, and preachy and Marxist.

(May I first say, I am not a Marxist. First, I cannot be an "-ist" for anyone I cannot read and rarely have I found a German author whose work I am able to read. I cannot be a Hegelian either. Or a Kantian or a Heideggerian. All these books sit on my shelf and my son has read them and he recommends them, but it is not likely to happen.

Next, to the extent I can understand the issues, in the great battle between Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, I stand with Proudhon. (Maybe this is just because the French write better.) Proudhon rejected collective ownership in favor of a plan in which the individual worker had ownership and he believed that social revolution could be achieved peacefully.

Also, I have never been the member of any organization that saw the teaching of Marx as an organizing force. I did try to get into the Navy Judge Advocates General Corps once which is publicly owned and operated, but I don't know if they talk about Marx or not, because I didn't get in.

So, unless you are just feeling grumpy, there is no need to call me a Marxist. Also, there is some risk I might begin to imagine that I have read Marx.

Also, it is not really accurate to call me a socialist, either. I am not a fan of collective ownership in most cases, although I would like to see a socialized bank, hospital and insurance company competing with privately owned ones. If we had these things, I would probably use them. However, I think we need privately owned houses to live in. I think everyone should have one. (This is an evolving opinion. I tried going without any property for a while during my Tolstoy period, but it was very inconvenient).

Don't under-estimate the quality of government work. Government prisons are far better than private prisons. The U.S. Army is first rate, I hear, and far better than the private mercenary corporations, at least as far as I can tell from news reports. The best criminal defense law firm in town are the Federal Public Defenders. If I ever get in trouble, I'll admit how broke I am (Kathy wants me to keep this secret), so they will represent me.

I am pretty socialistic in the sense that I would like to see a Year of Jubilee (hit the link in the title)and international equalization of all wealth, but this is more religious than economic. I have read biographies of Eugene V. Debs and if I had been around in 1912 or 1916 or 1920, I would have voted for him. Debs was a socialist, but I don't think I really am. We named our spare bedroom after Debs.

Fighting Bob La Follette was both a Republican and a Progressive and looks to me a lot like a socialist. If he were running this time around, I would vote for him and cast my first Republican vote. This is regardless of the office. Also, I would vote for the Vermont Independent Socialist, Bernie Sanders.

My friend, Dan Boyd, suggests I am an anarcho-syndicalist. I like the title. From the web, it appears anarcho-syndicalists also call themselves libertarian socialists, I guess as opposed to authoritarian socialists or libertarian economic oppressors. Brownsville, though, appears to have not anarcho-syndicalist clubs or political parties. I don't know much about the Rotarians or the Kiwanians or the Knights of Columbus. These may all be anarcho-syndicalists, but I am deterred by the funny hats. I read the Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood one of the founders of the Wobblies. I am a fan. We named our kitchen after Haywood.

I am still a Democrat. You can be these other things and still be a Democrat. In fact as Bill Clinton is now trying to prove again, as George Wallace showed before, you can be a racist and be a Democrat. You can also be these things and be a Republican, or at least once upon a time you could. The racism is easy for a Republican, as David Duke recently demonstrated and Woodrow Wilson earlier established. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican and by his last race he was at least a progressive. Fighting Bob La Follette was both a Republican and a Progressive and looks to me a lot like a socialist.

My friend and tax man, Bill Fulcher, is both a Democrat and statewide treasure of the socialists. Where but Brownsville can you find a socialist tax man? I also have a socialist barber. God, I love this town.

The problem with me being a Democrat, though, is I am usually angry with most Democrats who grab office and, also, given a chance, I sue them a lot.

Another problem: I have strong doubts that voting matters at all. As my son Austin argues, "If voting made a difference, it would be illegal." That is probably right. I quit voting for a while because I worried about Matthew vii, 1 and thought maybe Jesus was instructing us not to vote in the Sermon on the Mount. It makes sense and that is how the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mennonites interpret it. Fan, again. I have never met a Witness or a Mennonite I did not like, but no rooms have been named after them.

My greatest concern is that voting in a non-democratic format such as plebiscites for Napoleon or Hitler or in the Electoral College or in the Democratic Super-delegate system uses up energy that could be more effectively directed to something important. Like writing in a blog, for instance.

My two favorite magazines are the Economist and the Socialist Worker. The Economist is an English, capitalist magazine and the Socialist Worker is an American (and obviously socialist) magazine. Both promote a economic interpretation of history and the world. In fact, they are very similar, except for the last paragraphs of the articles. The Economist describes a world in which money governs everything and that's OK. The Socialist Workers describe a world in which money governs everything and that's not OK. Anyway, I think both are more trustworthy for predictions of political races and economic trends than those confused magazines such as Nation, Texas Observer and National Review (yes, I read that one on-line) that think ideas are more important than money in predicting social behavior. (OK, OK, I may also occasionally read People, but it doesn't count here).

Treat all of this as a long digression, Uncle Toby. People often ask me why I don't run for office. The tirade above should put that to rest. I don't expect anyone to care what my politics are. I just throw it in to anticipate questions about where this labor opinion comes from and because I very much enjoy talking about myself.

Now, where does this opinion come from?

1. I have been an employer, and not a very good one.
2. I have been an employee and it was a bad fit.
3. I tried to start a coop and we never got off the ground, because it lost more money than it made--tens of thousands of dollars more.

I have tested the limits of the employer-employee relationships off and on since I got fired from my job as a paperboy for trying to organize a union.

These issues also include some skeletons that I must toss out of the closet. Bear with me, readers true. Sorting all of this out may be as hard as all of that time I have done in therapy.

Learning to Love Molly

When Molly Ivins died, the expressions of grief filled a couple of our regular magazines, Texas Monthly and Nation. I don't remember anything showing up in the Economist, International Socialist Review or People. Anyway, I had some mixed feelings about the reviews.

Then, recently, Truth Seeker referred me to an article about Hillary by Molly. He suggested that if I read the piece I would forgive myself and learn to love Molly. It was a good suggestion. I liked the article, I felt better and I agreed with Molly. Why, then, do I not already love her?

This takes me back about thirty eight years. (And Truth Teller thinks he's old). The only time I met Molly Ivins was at a local chapter meeting of an ACLU meeting in Austin. I believe it was the Spring of 1970. Molly was some new honcho at the Texas Observer. She was already a local celebrity and I had been told that when I met her.

Also, I was nineteen and she was barely older, or at least looked that way through those nineteen year old eyes. I knew there was a huge social gap already, she a college graduate with a job at the Texas Observer and I was star struck. On stardom level, she could have been Willie Morris as far I was concerned.

Anyway I got to meet her. She shoved a damp, limp piece of flesh towards my chest. The rules I knew were that you could offer to shake the hand of a man, but you could not offer it to a woman, but if she offered it to you, you could shake it. Boy was I excited. I grabbed her hand and pumped it like Willie Loman. She grimaced, complained about my grip and moved away. The whites of my eyes turned yellow and I have viewed her ever since through jaundiced eyes.

...aside the Devil turnd For envie, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plaind....

The years passed and this early first impression hardened into certainty and fact: she was a phony and a snob.

She had gone to an expensive private prep school. She grew up in a big city filled with sophisticated people. I went to a public high school in a small city filled with hicks. So who was she to pretend she had a clue what this creature, a "Texan" was, indeed make a career based on explaining it to New Yorkers.

I did think she knew something about Bush, but not in the way she later sold it:

As it happens, I have known George W. Bush for a long time -- not well, but for a long time. Since we were both in high school. He went to prep school in the East, and I went to prep school in Houston, but he hung around with friends of mine, dated girls I knew. I would never claim we were friends, but he was someone I vaguely knew.

Molly, if you were at a level to hang around with Bush, you don't have a clue about what you're talking about. And is this a sly way, wink, wink, of saying, "I'm really a upper class kind of person. When I talk about being from Texas and 'bidness,' I'm just slumming?"

I never bought her accent. How could such a sophisticated private school snob girl pretend to talk like that. And all of this dropping of the "g"'s:

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

Please. Fraidy-cats? Please, again.

Contrived country was what it was to me and this was phoniness just like pretending you had an English or French accent. I thought I saw it in other places as well: Jim Hightower. Even (please, Lord, don't strike me dead) Dean Page Keeton, and it always sounded phony to me and I didn't like it.

I knew what a rural Texas accent sounded like--it was my father in law, Joe. But unless you grew up on a ranch, had 6th grade education and had broken most of the bones in your body on steel erections, cows, drunks' skulls, bad horses, falling from bad whiskey, oil rigs and high curbs in Ojinaga, you did not have a right to try to talk like that, and she didn't have a right to talk like that and she never got it right. I didn't like it one damn bit.

Then she began to rise on this Bush thing, Shrub.

I saw this as pure hustle. "Let's tell the New Yorkers that they can't understand Bush because he's a Texan. But since I'm a Texan, I can explain him to you. Texans are x, y, z and Bush is x, y, z and that is why he acts like that. So if you need to understand something about him you can read my books and articles."

Her premises offended. That Bush acted like a Texan and that Molly accurately described Texans. Some examples:

The president is a Texan, the governor is an Aggie, God's in His heaven, all's right with the world. And I want it noted for the record that I am doing my dead-level best to be cheerful about this revolting development.

High entertainment value: The fact that Bush cannot express himself well in the English language is a constant source of delight to us all. In his defense, no matter how badly he mangles it, you can almost always tell what he was trying to say. The Texanism is, "My tongue got caught in my eyeteeth, so I couldn't see what I saw saying."

His favorite foods are chili dogs and chicken-fried steak, which will gross out the entire East Coast. Take that, you radicchio-eating foodies.

His new ranch in Crawford will force the entire national press corps to spend tons of time in Waco, upping their cultural IQ by going to the Dr Pepper Museum.

The famous Texas two-step is getting a heavy workout in Washington. You glance away for just a moment to watch the World Series and -- oops -- we're no longer for regime change in Iraq.

First, why concede Bush is a Texan? He was born in Connecticut. Connecticut is not part of Texas. It is not like Texas. His grandfather Prescott Bush was United States Senator from Connecticut and on the corporate boards that profiteered to allow Hitler's rise to power. Bush is multi-generational Eastern malefactor of great wealth. Then Bush grew up in Midland. Midland is the management town. It is New England with hot summers. They play polo there. Odessa is Texas, the labor town. Bush grew up in Midland, not Odessa. Then Bush went to Houston (River Oaks?) were he hung around with Molly and her friends, because those private school kids stick together. I'll bet he didn't grow up in the Fifth Ward.

I don't see Bush as a "typical Texan" at all. I see him as a spoiled rich frat boy, part of the power elite who own most of the wealth of the country and won't share, who always thought he was entitled, never loved anyone but himself, and was socially promoted through big name expensive schools and elitist secret societies. I thought Jesse Jackson pegged him better than Molly: He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.

Next, why concede Texas is what Molly says it is. It is not rich and rural. It is not like Dallas on TV. It is urban and poor and many parts are mostly black or brown. And I've never heard anyone say "my tongue got caught in my eyeteeth," and I've gotten my hair cut a thousand times in Texas barbershops. Even the rural ones where people speak English, nobody ever said this.

So I read her articles when they happened to pop in front of my eyes, but I never bought or read one of her books. Then she died, damn her.

I am sorry she died so young. But I haven't learned to love her.

But it is Easter time. OK, Molly, I forgive you.

Three Things No District Attorney Should Do, But That All District Attorneys Will Always Do, For All The Wrong Reasons

Before we begin, and in hopes of establishing some meager credentials, let's drag one of my skeletons out of the closet for all of the paraclete to see.

(Paraclete here is used in the obsolete form, second definition in the OED2, meaning advocate or intercessor. It is not meant so broadly as to mean all lawyers, oh no, readers true, most lawyers are not paraclete, but satans; Satans, not meaning the Devil, but in the etymological sense of 'adversary' with allusion to Matt. xvi 23. Nor is it so narrow as to include only criminal defense lawyers, but would include other "advocates" and "comforters" such as Tolstoy, Gandhi and Jimmy Odabashian, and Gail Hanson, that is those who advocate and comfort without setting foot in the courtroom. It is not capitalized so as not to mistake it with the Holy Spirit on this Good Friday. Nor is the form changed for the plural, because I cannot find a single usage in which it has been changed for the plural. I find reference to "paracletes" as the plural, but I am unwilling to be the first to actually use that ugly form.

Roughly stated, "paraclete," here means defense attorneys and preachers for accused criminals and '"satan," here means prosecutors. This is not intended as an insult, but just an etymological inevitability. Please do not be offended dear, dear friends in the various offices of prosecution; I am not responsible for penning the Gospels.

While I am digressing may I say, on this Good Friday, that Dorothy Day who is, or should be a saint, uses the word "precarity." In 1952 writing for the Catholic Worker Movement:

"True poverty is rare," a saintly priest writes to us from Martinique. "Nowadays communities are good, I am sure, but they are mistaken about poverty. They accept, admit on principle, poverty, but everything must be good and strong, buildings must be fireproof, Precarity is rejected everywhere, and precarity is an essential element of poverty. That has been forgotten. Here we want precarity in everything except the church. (...) Precarity enables us to help very much the poor. When a community is always building, and enlarging, and embellishing, which is good in itself, there is nothing left over for the poor. We have no right to do this as long as there are slums and breadlines somewhere.

No one else seems to use it and OED2 does not describe the word, so much more elegant than the awkward "precariousness."

In summary, "paraclete" should mean , when we do our jobs, defense lawyers, "satans" means prosecutors, and "precarity" is my Good Friday prayer.

I add "precarity" because all good things come in groups of three.

Please pardon me, Uncle Toby.)

Now for the skeleton: I ran for District Attorney in Denton County in 1976. The shame of it. Fortunately, I lost.

Nonetheless, about the things I am about to say, I know of what I speak.

No District Attorney should do the following:

1. Prosecute food stamp fraud.
2. Prosecute hot checks.
3. Prosecute dope cases.

1. Food Stamp Fraud. Food stamp fraud is the worst. It always jails a welfare mom who is struggling to hold things together. It puts her in jail. The kids go hungry. She loses her job at Whataburger. If she happened to have a house at a nickel down and umpteen dollars a month on a contract for deed, she loses that. When she gets out, her life is a shambles, her children are at risk and she can't dig out. Instead of just taking the overpayment out of her future stamps. The Texas Department of Human Racehorses (or whatever euphemism they use these days) sends it over to the DA for prosecution.

Instead of telling TDHR to go back to the hell from whence they came, DA's offices love these cases. Why? a. They are easy to prove because TDHR extorts a confession on the false promise of future food stamps. b. The accused is always too broke to hire a lawyer. c. TDHR gives a kickback of $500 for each case.

2. Hot checks. This is a poverty crime. Merchants should verify the checks before they accept them. Hot check courtrooms are filled with the poor and not criminals. DA offices and the majesty of the law should not be a collection agency for sloppy merchants. Most people who write hot checks are not really guilty of theft, as they are charged, but with not balancing their check books, but they cannot afford the defense and the public defenders don't have the time to defend them.

But DA's love these cases. Why? Merchants like them and they are more likely to contribute to a campaign than poor people are. Also, DA's get to print up those nifty signs so all the merchants can stick them in their windows that say, "We prosecute hot checks!" with the campaign logo on the bottom.

Another skeleton: I printed one of those signs when I ran for DA in 1976. I hope by now they are all clogging up solid waste deposits so no one will ever see one again. The shame of it.

3. Dope cases. They corrupt the police forces (and sheriff's office as we saw a few years back). The feds have more resources and can do it better. If the case is too small for the feds, it's not worth handling. They clog up the courts. Many of the people accused are not criminals or even particularly anti-social.

Why do DAs handle them? Forfeiture money and property is a lot of fun. Anyone want a Escalade with tinted windows? The photo opportunities to claim that a zillion dollars have been taken off the street with pictures, yes, just like Tony Montana, with a mountain of dope, money and guns, is just too exciting.

What should a DA prosecute? Murder. Rape. Robbery. Assault. Burglary. The rest are civil matters.

Think how the backlog of cases, overcrowded jails, beleaguered jailers, overworked prosecutors, harried judges, exhausted probation officers, nervous bailiffs, nearsighted clerks and frazzled public defenders would be helped by this change. Also think about how many poor and harmless people you would let out of jail.

Undervaluing Hillary?

I looked forward to going down with Dennis Kucinich's ship. I never guessed the Texas primary would matter and I thought Kucinich would at least be on the ballot. After the choice became Clinton, Obama, Edwards, I moved on to Obama. The Clinton's were too far to the right for me and I did not trust Edwards' born-again class warrior image. Also, just like many voters take a mindless position in favor of the tallest candidate, I have a mindless preference for a candidate who can give a speech.

I liked Huckabee better than Romney, Jesse Jackson better than Dukakis, Everett Dirkson better than Barry Goldwater.

I never heard Edwards give a good speech. Maybe television doesn't do him justice, but all I heard was monotone and platitudes. It is hard for me to see him as a trial lawyer, but I know some good coaches who can help him.

Clinton's speeches grated on my ears (more on this perception later), but I expected less of her because she was a big-firm lawyer and they are not supposed to be able to talk.

Obama, by contrast, can talk. He is a hot Billy Sunday preacher, a cool Walter Cronkite commentator, a Salvation Army heart to heart peddler of charity, a Laurence Tribe constitutional professor. Pick the crowd and he has the words.

Does this mean he can talk his way out of the half a billion dollar sludge machine that will slam him this Fall? I don't know, but if he gets the nomination, at least I won't have to listen to rank amateurs shouting at the television monitor ad nauseum.

Now let's get to the beef. Kathy says none of this matters. I might as well be asking how tall candidates are and I always undervalue the women candidates.

In fact, she says, everyone undervalues women in leadership, men and women alike.

There is support for this position. An op-ed columnist, Nicholas Kristof, made this argument in the New York Times last month:

In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man....

Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

I don't have any reason to believe I'm immune to the Goldberg Paradigm. On the contrary, I'm old enough to remember when women in power were unusual and I saw that world as normal. We said about the girl debaters, they were like dogs who could walk on their hind legs; we were impressed, not because they could do it well, but because they could do it at all.

There was not a single woman senator when I graduated from High School in 1969. Nor was there a single woman governor. The only women who had ever been governor replaced their husbands and they were the ilk of Ma Ferguson and Lurleen Wallace.

We had Sarah T. Hughes, but she was a novelty.

By the time I got to law school women were a pretty large minority, but when I started practicing law, there were still almost no lawyers in the courtroom. Docket call was held back in the judge's chambers where the lawyers smoked and told blue jokes (and racist jokes, for that matter, but that is another story).

So can I open the mind to the possibility that I should value and like Hillary more than I do? That she will be a better president than I can perceive because I am suffering from this syndrome? That I should have liked Ann Richards better than I did? And Molly Ivins? And for that matter Sappho, the Brontes, Dickenson and Angelou?

Happy Saint Paddy's Day and a Kind Word for Corruption

Of course, I love politics.

It beats cutting sod.

Saint Patrick's day makes me think of corruption and why we need it. My Irish-born grandma had no question about the issue. "There is honest and then there is damn honest," she would say. It was good to be honest, but only a fool would be damn honest.

Self-righteousness about corruption was fine if you were a Dutchman or a Black and Tan who owned the country anyway, but if you were a Mick, and had to buy some influence, well, it was because you did not have any. However the injunction, "do not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn," may be interpreted by theologians, she knew it justified the small bribe to the building inspector or the cop.

Lincoln Steffens (Does anyone know who he is anymore? Do journalist read and revere him in school?) recognized the good the corrupt big city bosses did for common people. Reformers, for all of their pious self-assurance, ultimately served the interests of the aristocracy.

Harry Truman went back for the funeral of Boss Pendergast, saying if he did not he would be an ungrateful son of a bitch.

If you are in a system where a small bribe to the arresting officer can serve the same purpose as hiring an expensive law firm, access to the system is more democratic.

We may differ on other issues, but I have trouble getting exercised about accusations that Eddie and Rene have used campaign funds to pay for rat poison and dry cleaning.

We can either elect independently wealthy candidates who will serve the black and tans or we can elect people who need the money. Since neither state representative nor state senator pay enough to survive, we fairly well insist that the lawyers accept clients to peddle influence and the non-lawyers start consulting companies to peddle influence.

These are the choices: elect the rich, elect a saint or expect some trade of influence for the good life. Saints are in short supply and as a rule I would prefer little corruptions of a broke candidate to the big structural corruptions of a rich one.

This being the case, there are two rules for the office holder: 1. Don't be too greedy. 2. Try to peddle influence to the less odious players.

1. The sin is less in the corruption, than in getting rich in office. Lyndon is said to have lamented that people did not love him because he got rich in office. Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.

2. Don't peddle to the TMA, credit card companies, asbestos companies and tax collection lawyers. Peddle to unions, environmental organizations, personal injury lawyers and teachers. They don't pay as well, but you will be more likely to go to heaven.

In truth, as far as I know, my old grandma never prayed to Saint Patrick. Usually it was Saint Jude. Saint Patrick may have been the patron saint of Ireland and chased out the snakes. Saint Jude, though, took care of hopeless causes. We needed miracles more than we were worried about snakes.

John McCain: The Perquisites of Power

I yam what I yam

The straight talk express runs on cash.

What to think of John McCain? Before beginning, may I say, I have never voted for a Republican, so if I were to do so now it would be more a sign of senescence than a reasoned choice.

I read a recent editorial that described him as an "antinomian." I think it was in the Nation. The reference then was to medieval clerics who thought they had license to live any way they wanted because their virtue had already been established. Hence, riches, wine, women and song.

This sent me to the Oxford English Dictionary. Even though I have the twenty volume version, I can hardly read the small print. I can make out that Milton used to talk about antinomians, but whether he liked them or not, I don't know.

One usage of "Antinomianism" seems to be a doctrinal position. Another looks like an insult. The Nation (if that is who it was) apparently intends it as an insult that sounds more erudite than "hypocrite."

I doubt McCain has considered whether he is a doctrinal antinomian or anti-antinomian. (The opposite of antinomian you would think would be nomian, but this does not appear to be the case. Just like the opposite of agnostic is not gnostic. Neither is antidisestablishmentarian more simply called establishmentarianism, although it appears it could be. Tristram asks you pardon the digression, Uncle Toby.)

In essence, an antinomian believes grace replaces the law. An antinomian dispute is recorded in Acts 15 regarding whether circumcision is mandated. As excited as Republicans get about gay marriage, I don't know how we have avoided a national debate about circumcision.

If you have seen law applied up close and personal, the temptation to throw it all out for a little grace makes a great deal of sense. Somehow I doubt this describes McCain, either.

McCain rose like a Phoenix from the ashes of the Keating Five. Part of the McCain much-vaunted bipartsanship may stem from these days when he joined with four Democratic Senators to take money and favors from Lincoln Savings and Loan before it collapsed and cost the public purse $3.4 billion. All the Democrats fell into ruin, retirement and disgrace. Democrats are supposed to get caught with women, not lobbyist money. Republicans get caught with boys and money, but they can be forgiven for the money. (This Spitzer guy seems to be a Republican who likes women, but New York Republicans have always been different.)

The problem is that McCain seems to need to dip into the ashes again from time to time when the cash runs short. I can understand that; sometimes when a guy wants to get somewhere in the world, he does what he has to do.

Cameron County Jail Needs Gail Hanson

(None of us are perfect. --- Sometimes you need a little help from a friend)

First may I confess to the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Sloth. Especially Gluttony and Sloth, because aging has stolen the energy I once had for the others.

That having been said, the Cameron County Jail, and for that matter, the Cameron County Criminal Justice System, and for that matter, jails, prisons and criminal justice systems in the United States could use some improvement.

Sheriffs (including this Sheriff) become defensive when "their" jail is discussed. The recent election cycle showed the weird spectacle of a jail preacher talking about how nice the jail is and the good doctor discussing how good the care is, in defense of the sheriff who, no doubt, is practically perfect in every way.

So before we move to specifics, let me pontificate in general that the tensions between sheriffs, county commissioners, police agencies, and Texas State Government guarantee that all the jails in the State are substandard. Not that all would fail a gumming test by the toothless Texas Commission on Jail Standards, but none do what they are intended to do: that is, hold people who are presumed innocent in a humane manner until they can be tried and convicted or acquitted.

The best sheriff would probably not be a policeman at all, but have some management experience in running a hotel or a restaurant or a hospital or a school or a monastery. Unfortunately, for reasons mired in other social defects, the only candidates who present themselves for the august position tend to be cops. More on this after some reflection during the wee hours of the morning: "Why don't other folks, besides police officers, want to be sheriff?"

In the meantime, sheriffs cannot run a good jail, because commissioners won't give them the money to do so. Commissioners won't give them the money to do so, because they would rather hire someone for the road crew so they can get the patronage rather than giving it to the sheriff. Also, Commissioners won't give the money because felons and illegal immigrants who fill the jails can't vote. Also, Commissioners won't give the money because they are afraid some genius will start talking about criminals not needing to be in country clubs and sheriffs need to be tough guys to go with the police image rather than the motel manager image I think is more appropriate for the job.

Most folks don't worries too much about jail conditions unless they have a kid in jail. Did I ever tell you about my Republican Christian lawyer friend who ridiculed me for a couple of decades for talking about jail conditions until his son grew up, went bonkers, and spent months in and out of jail on minor offenses? All of a sudden he became interested in the 8th Amendment and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. I felt I was being strong and kind by resisting saying,"I told you so," in the midst of his pain.

Does anyone remember when Cameron County Jailers were contracting tuberculosis from the inmates? Jails become a petri dish for disease and jailers (who mostly are there because they need a job and have families to support) catch those diseases.

This all leads up to the question on my mind: Isn't a shame, a scandal even, if Gail Hanson, private school administrator and jail pastor is excluded from the women's section of the jail because she advocates for the prisoners?

Why not Hillary?

Kathy is supporting Hillary. I think she thinks men are not fit to run anything, much less the country. Maybe she's right.

Hillary’s not my first choice because I stayed disappointed with Bill all the time he was running and in office. Remember when he went back to Arkansas as governor to execute the retarded guy? It seemed like, if I remember correctly, he was trying to shore up the white male vote in South Carolina. Then he gratuitously attacked some woman African American singer to work on that base some more.

After he got in office, he wiped out aid for dependent children, brought us the anti terrorism and effective death penalty act, bombed an aspirin factory in the Sudan and built a wall across from Tijuana. With friends like these….

So maybe Hillary will be better. We can always hope, but her performance so far has not been very encouraging.

Maybe she will act faster to get everybody some health care, but I am not encouraged by her first effort.

Also, I don’t trust that she won’t move to the right during the general election and her presidency and make sure we have plenty of more years of war.

The right-wingers keep promising me that both Barack and Hillary are secret socialists. I doubt that. With all of the banking and defense contractor money sloshing around, I suspect they are both what they seem to be: cautious conservatives.

So why don’t I just avoid the process? No way. Hey, I even voted when we had two frat brothers from Yale running against each other last time. Both were rich kids with apparently limited skills, but I sucked it up and voted for the one with long catsup stained face rather than the one with the drooling Hapsburg jaw.

In truth, I think this may be more of a choice than we have had in a long time. I am willing to aim low enough to vote for Barack first, and then Hillary, if need be.

Your cheatin' heart

Some thoughts about the Democratic Primary: I went as an Obama delegate to the Precinct 9 delegation at Putegnat Elementary School in Brownsville. About three quarters of the folks who signed up were for Hillary, including my wife, Kathy. Two Hillary delegates told me they came for her because they wanted health insurance; I began to wonder if I were on the wrong side if she could and would really deliver on this promise.

In truth, I think the Hillary supporters will be betrayed on this issue (among others), but I am also afraid we Barack supporters will be betrayed as well. Both candidate's plans do promise to ban the insurance companies from using "pre-existing conditions" to keep people from getting insurance.

However, both plans seem to be like the Texas Auto Insurance mandate. Everyone has to get it, but the insurance companies won't pay on claims unless they are sued, so very few get any benefits. Medical health insurance companies will get universal payment of premiums, but there is small likelihood of universal benefits being paid.

Obama supported a single-payer plan five years ago and (I think) this is the only way the people in my precinct will get insurance. Unfortunately, Barack has now backed away from a single payer plan. Both candidates now have a plan that will guarantee everyone will get largely useless health insurance to go with their largely useless automobile liability insurance.

Anyway, we'll go our merry way on to the conventions, but in the end, I suspect there will be coal in the Christmas stocking.

I'll dutifully continue to support Barack through the convention, but I want him to know, I have a hunch that four years down the line, most people in Precinct 9 will still be without medical care, no matter who wins. I hope I'm wrong. I think he is the least likely to disappoint, but of course, the only sensible thing here is to aim low.