Tossed into his rich and simmering ragoût of stupid was Mittens’ recent offer to take Obama to the closet – um, poor word choice – woodshed for a good old fashioned water-ski whooping. But no golf. He hears Obama is good at that. Presumably, Mitt would borrow the Presidential barge for the match. I don’t blame him. In 1981, he tried to do the whole middle class water-ski thing and managed to get himself arrested for disorderly conduct. Not a big, Earth-shattering deal, but a deal nonetheless. The story goes something like this:

The Salt Lake Scion Goes to Jail

The Salt Lake Scion, a true Masshole,was launching his boat at Cochituate State Park, MA. One of Cochituate’s finest took issue after seeing the boat’s registration painted over. After a ‘confrontation’ in which the ranger warned of a $50 fine, Mitt pulled out a crisp $50 and handed it to the ranger -  probably in much the same way he tips reporters after they write flattering stories. The Ranger promptly arrested him for disorderly conduct and everyone else stood around thinking, “Damn, I wish I could piss away $50 like that.”

The boorish Romney cash – valid only at the Salt Lake Tabernacle Gift Shop (sorry, no women allowed) – was bad enough. If I had defied the cop’s order to stop, I would’ve found myself prone on the pavement with a Glock to the back of my head or maybe even a pair of scissors in my hair.

Mitt, I know you’re a little thick, but here’s a simple example why your $50 payoff was just wrong.

Say I was speeding and was pulled over. I’m not allowed to throw a $50 out the window and assume that takes care of the whole thing. There are laws to be followed, and yes, they apply to you too. If I can’t just throw some money in the hat and drive off disregarding points on my license, higher fines for arguing with the cop, and additional fines for driving with Irish Setters strapped to the roof, neither can you. BTW, they apparently let you off the hook completely for having an unregistered boat so you should consider yourself lucky.

But he couldn’t leave it at $50 worth of dipshittedness. No, his defense was that he was wet and in a bathing suit when they hauled him off to the Natick lockup. His kids could see his embarrassment as he argued with the cops. Poor dears. I’m sure the cops were visibly moved by the sight of a grown man in madras swimming attire, especially when most of their clientele is vomit-covered and naked for their big night at the Soap on a Rope Invitational.

Ipso Facto, Caveat Emptor, Lorem Ipsum: INNOCENT!

He then went to court and defended himself by claiming the cop didn’t specifically tell him he would be arrested as a law-breaking swine – ipso facto, caveat emptor, lorem ipsum – he was innocent. He iced the cake by threatening to file unlawful arrest charges and backed that up using the firm legal principle that since the cop didn’t show up in court, he must be innocent.

Newsflash Newton, cops usually go to court on their own dime. No overtime. No pay at all. No water skiing with the kids and getting arrested for disorderly on a lost day off to attend to a shitheel like you. Shocking, I’m sure. Besides, what does the cop need a tax break for?

Um, Mitt? The rest of us don’t go to court. We’d be laughed out of the place for a story as lame as this. We pay the frickin’ fine, consider ourselves lucky that SWAT didn’t show up, and say, “Thank you for guarding my safety Mr. Law Officer, sir. I shan’t do it again. Have a good day!”

A very, very understanding  judge let you off, which explains why I’d never make it as a judge. Had you been in my court, I would’ve forced you to launch your boat – carefully supervised to ensure you do it legally this time – and I’d have dropped you overboard without your gold-plated water-wings.

Let me tell you buddy. You’re one lucky sumbitch.

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Sometimes the stupid things catch up to them as adults. Mitt Romney is in that PR hell now. He supposedly led a group of boys – there’s that leadership thing he goes on and on about – and held down a kid with a ponytail, cut it off, and badgered the kid for being gay. That’s the sort of thing that causes kids to commit suicide these days. It probably did back then too, you just didn’t hear about it as often because suicide besmirched the family reputation so much it was hidden as often as not.

The Romney Hairborne Legion Attacks

One of the bully boys met the poor hairless sot later in life. He learned that, indeed, the kid had been gay and the Romneycut had been a life changing affair. The member of the Romney Hairborne Legion apologized. It came late, but at least the guy apologized and owned up to his stupid youth.

On the other hand, Mitt first categorically denied it happened. Then he said it, um, MIGHT have happened and if it did he apologized. He defended his stupid youth by passing off the incident, if it happened at all, as a “prank” and using the bee’s knees, 1930 buzzword of the day, “hijinx”. Very jolly. Very fun. Twenty-three skidoo.

Now I’ve been on the receiving end of bullying up close and personal and stupidly reciprocated a time or two. But, a wedgie is a prank. Holding someone down, roughing them up because they’re gay, and cutting off their hair is a prank only if by prank you mean something like waterboarding.

But hey, maybe it didn’t even happen. Never know. Mittens forgot. Besides, Mitt says he didn’t know the kid was gay, because, you know, that would’ve made everything different.

Now the Mittenites have ferreted out a passage from Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, in which he cops to once shoving a girl because his classmates teased him about the possibility that she was his girlfriend. He yelled at her and she ran away.

Some conservative pundasses – like Sean Hannity – rejoiced at this “good news”. “We have uncovered somebody who has actually admitted to engaging in real inappropriate behavior as a youth.”  He pointed out that Obama also openly admits he used drugs and alcohol as a youth, saying it “puts Romney and the bully issue to shame.”

A Drinking, Stoned College Kid…Really?

Sean, a college kid who drank too much and fired up a doob or two…in 1980 fer chrissakes? Really? Now that’s some outlaw behavior. Real send ‘em to the gallows stuff. He even copped to inhaling. Nothing like your fellow anti-bully Rush Limbaugh’s brush with OxyContin and hydrocodone though. Good thing he took his rehab time to reflect on his contention that drug addicts deserved life sentences. Change is good, eh Rush? Especially when yours is the life being sentenced.

But if you’re truthful about your own youth – because let’s face it, if you are this stupid as an adult you must’ve been a colossal moran [sic] as a kid – you probably kicked the crap out of some kid every morning before smoking the third  joint of the day while cooling your bruised dukes with a 6-Pack of Old Milwaukee. But we’ll never know because I suspect your memory on that score is as bad as the Scion of Salt Lake’s.

No true blue conservative would ever engage in such brutish, bullying behavior except, well, George the Lesser. Sort of a reverse noblesse oblige and all that. His cocaine and Wild Turkeyfests are well known. He still looks and talks like he has a little Captain in him if you catch my drift. I’d wager Skull and Crossbones had some ass-kicking hazing rituals too. But let bygones be bygones shall we?

So yes, Obama admitted his dirty deeds. Admitted them without anyone even asking. Sean, your boy can’t even remember if it happened. But you know what? However lopsided the rights and wrongs appear to be in both these cases it doesn’t much matter.

Both of them did something wrong. But once you’ve done a wrong, there is really no way to stuff it back under the rock from which it came. It sticks to you like glue.

The only thing you can do is apologize and try to make amends. Adults, when charged with stupid childish behavior, do not say, “Mom! It’s OK if I do it, he did it too!”  To which any wise Mom (or voter) would answer, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Two stupid kids don’t make a President either.

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In America, we make money the old fashioned way – we steal it from the Joneses with whom we are trying to compete. We’re a country that firmly believes in the notion that more is better and that competition trumps everything. Money uber alles if you will. But, we’re also one of the most charitable nations on Earth. Name a disaster anywhere on Earth and we’re ready to help. Ordinary folks dig deep and donate clothing, goods, or even their own time to just about every charitable cause imaginable.

Some of us anyway.

A few charitable organizations have sullied the many with underhanded donation solicitations, non-stop phone calls and mailings, excessive administration costs, pricey leadership, or just plain chicanery. These organizations have forgotten they aren’t profit centers and that charitable organizations practice, well, charity.

People get ruffled about these charities for the same reasons they don’t want  to see any of their money wasted. You are sacrificing to help someone out and you don’t want a professional spamming and telemarketing company skimming most of the bucks off the top.

But just as we have a widening wealth gap, we’re also on the path to a widening charitability gap. Many Americans have gotten skin-flinty – down right mean about it too. This, of course, is their right. It’s their money and they can not create jobs with it or protest gay marriage with it or donate to the campaign of some of history’s biggest lunkheads. They can even demand the rest of us support their churches with our tax money…but aren’t allowed to complain about it without being accused of being an unpatriotic ner’do well.

Many of these people are the same ones that kvetch about taxes for anything, even the services they use, bought and paid for by those taxes. They believe poor people always have a choice to glom onto Uncle Sam’s tit or be the next CEO of Exxon.  By God, they pulled themselves up by their Harvard MBAs, connected parents, and hard-drinking frat brothers and they expect everyone else to do the same – even if they have none of those built-in benefits.

It isn’t all about public assistance though. Their donations of time and money are on the wane. It’s much more fun to golf instead of working for Habitat for Humanity or spend your money so you can build that second yacht you’ve always coveted.  You can’t even hear the drowning’s cries from your leather seat on Air Force One.

I like to think I do my part. I like to think I spread some of my own personal wealth (paltry though it may be to someone like Mittens) because I’m lucky enough to afford it. I volunteer for a variety of things. I think sharing is a good thing that brings not only pleasure, but much good for society. Really, everyone should jump on this bandwagon.

I’d like to think that all the, “I’ll get mine before anyone get theirs” folks are just having a bit of a charitability lapse.  I’d like to think that all those folks who believe their taxes are too high – including the corporations that end up with effective tax rates of zero or people who settle tax fights for, “pennies on the dollar” – eventually see what damage they are causing to the nation they profess to love. I’d like to think they will never feel the sting of poverty, or deadly disease, or hunger. And if they do, I’ll be in line to help them out. That is not Christian charity it is human charity.

But if they do, I hope it will teach them the importance of charity, because boy, are they going to need it.

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 I made an inexplicable blunder in this post. The Federalist Papers were, of course, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. My apologies. Tom Paine wrote Common Sense…which I clearly lost here somehow.

There is an immutable fact about history – if you weren’t there, if you didn’t personally know and speak to the history makers, you can have no irrefutable, complete evidence of their intent.  You can know concrete things, like dates. You can read treatises written by the historical participants and get some insight into what they were thinking. “Experts” can fill in some blanks. But at some level you can’t know, beyond a shadow of doubt, everything they thought, and more importantly, why.

Thomas Paine’s oft-cited Federalist Papers are a case-in-point.  Constitutional fundamentalists often look at them as the end all and be all of all things Thomas Paine. We can verify many things Paine did and we can infer some intent from his writings, but the papers are only our best insight into the mind of Thomas Paine, not everything the man believed or how he dealt with those beliefs.  Inference depends as much upon the reader as the writer, not unlike a fundamentalist’s view of the Bible.

I personally believe in the notion that the Constitution is a beautifully malleable document meant to live and grow and evolve as history waxes and wanes. I think that we should adhere to it as closely as possible, but I also think it is folly to apply 18^th century societal norms and thought to a 21^st century world. We are not the same citizens and this is not Philadelphia circa 1776.

Of course, I can’t irrefutably say that without a shadow of a doubt because Paine, Jefferson, and Washington weren’t my BFFs and available for an entertaining political debate over dinner. I can only speak to the here and now.

The argument is doubly clouded when ideologues pick and choose historical evidence.  For example, proponents of corporate personhood often forget that interpretation wasn’t explicitly contained in the Constitution. Corporate personhood was the invention of an “activist” Civil War era Supreme Court decision. My opinion is that it was a bad decision then and a bad decision now, but I can no more point to an amendment saying it is bad any more than a CEO or Supreme can point to it and say it’s swell. The difference is that I don’t get a vote. I’m not a Supreme and I don’t have the money to successfully argue the point. It’s galling, especially since one of the reasons the corporate personages have the money is because my rights as a flesh and bone citizen are subservient to theirs.

Likewise, opponents of mandated health care like to say that compelling citizens to buy specific things has never happened in America. However, there are cases of just that sort of behavior in our past, behavior that isn’t explained in the Federalist Papers or other writings.

In the late 1700s, Congress passed laws requiring ship owners to buy medical insurance for their seamen, force “able-bodied men” to buy a gun, and require seamen to buy medical insurance for themselves. All were signed by Constitutional framers.

Even today, localities may require residents of a neighborhood to partially pay for the installation of water and sewer lines because the majority of the neighborhood’s residents have voted to have them installed. To do otherwise, would allow those who didn’t want to pay to put the entire burden of that infrastructure improvement on their neighbors, even as they can use it.

The debate about health care isn’t so much a Constitutional debate as a societal one. Should the government be able to act in support of the greater good or find itself constrained by 18^th century thought, word, and deed? I think the framers would understand and take the route of the greater good. But you can’t prove the opposite any more than I can prove they would.

History is funny that way.

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In a target-rich environment filled with the likes of BP and all the bailed out banks setting up shop faster than Starbucks stores in Manhattan, let’s pick perennial California magnificent malfeasant assopoly Pacific Gas and Electric for today’s lesson.

PG&E is no stranger to bashing actual breathing humans with the exhalted power that springs from corporate personhood. Erin Brockovich went to war with them. They forced electronic meters onto customers despite claims the infernal things didn’t work. They did it by coming onto your property to do the work without permission or even notice. Where the hell are the howls of tyranny now that it’s a pretty logo doing it rather than the ignorati of Capitol Hill?

Making it ‘Right’ Again…NOT!

PG&E’s latest shakedown – well, the largest of their burgeoning list anyway – is the ongoing fight over a deadly Sept. 2010 explosion in San Bruno California. After destroying or damaging hundreds of homes and killing several residents PG&E issued feel-good messages telling everyone they would make everything right again. However, it wasn’t clear just how you make the dead “right again”. Clearly, the messages were ghost written by the PR hacks at BP.

Within hours the company began making everything right by offering residents low-ball settlements. As investigation after investigation showed the company had no idea where pipes were or how serviceable they were. They missed court-ordered deadline after deadline for turning over important documents. After more than a year, they finally copped to not even knowing where all the paperwork was or even if it had ever existed.

They promised customers again to make it better by testing other parts of the same line along with other pipelines across the state. There were cracks a few blocks away  and pipelines exploded elsewhere in a deadly game of  Whack-a-Conflagration across the Golden State. Even they admitted that it was (or is, because they are still testing and blowing stuff up) an embarrassing show of ineptitude. But they had  a plan…impose huge rate increases on customers to pay for the overhauls, later struck down by the court.

Color Me Shocked

Oh, did I mention they already received several million dollars specifically earmarked for repairs the year before for repairs they never made? Surprise! The money went to large compensation packages for the corporate swells and big bonuses for investors.

Color me shocked.

Regulators weren’t much better. They had essentially allowed PG&E to self-regulate themselves for decades, despite a long history of cock-ups, over-charging, and deceptive practices. They eventually fined the company a token amount and a judge kicked it back, calling it ridiculously low for the magnitude of the crimes. The company and their cozy regulators tacked on another few million. The court is still weighing just how absurd this fine will be.

And yet, there are still whiners for poor, beleaguered companies that can’t compete because of oppressive regulation.

It’s nigh onto two years. Several people lost their homes through PG&E-induced default. There is still a big hole in the street which the PG&E CEO probably wants to make into a private swimming pool. The dead are still dead. And, the town is still at odds with the company, regulators, and even itself.

While I’m no great believer in Castroism, I find myself sorely tempted to support having the outlaws nationalized. I couldn’t get a worse deal for their marginal service. They’d be stripped of the over-expensive board. And plenty of “excess employees” and their promised benefits would disappear in the “cleansing” fire of an exploding pipeline. You know, just like rank-and-file government, private, and unionized employees are having inflicted on them.

You would have to fight a titanic battle to screw their response up any more. They make “Helluva job Brownie” look like, well, Brownie doing a helluva job. The company is compounding this crapitude by demanding more ratepayer money to retain the board for their “expertise”. They are in the process of “making things right” by declaring the “right” complete as they get the hell out of the California Afghanistan they created in the picturesque San Bruno hills.

Open your wallets and turn off the gas, PG&E is on the lookout for their next display of stellar corporate personhood and you just might be it.

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