Eight Feet Deep

This is shap­ing up to be one of the nut­ti­est mid-term elec­tions on record. Here in Texas you have Repub­li­cans pos­si­bly fund­ing the Green Party. In Nevada, even a lot of Democ­rats would love to have just about any­one but Harry Reid back in the Sen­ate, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of that any­one being GOP can­di­date Shar­ron Angle. Reid and Angle are cur­rently squab­bling over the Sen­ate Major­ity Leader’s cam­paign using snip­pets from pre­vi­ous Angle Web sites when she was going more toward the “Tea Party Look.” Hey, that Pro­hi­bi­tion thing worked well didn’t it Shar­ron, and you think we should try it again along with con­tin­u­ing to crim­i­nal­ize pot?

Best of all in the race for the kook­i­est can­di­date con­test has got to be Al Greene. No, not the smooth-voiced pur­veyor of soul and R & B, the Rev. Al Green, who gave us clas­sics such as “Take Me to the River” and “Love and Happiness.”

Take me to the river, Alvin Green, and drown me please!

No, instead, we’re talk­ing Alvin Green, the 32-year-old unem­ployed vet­eran who came out of nowhere to win the South Car­olina Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary elec­tion for the U.S. Sen­ate. Some Democ­rats have sus­pected that Green was a plant by GOP for some odi­ous rea­son or the other. That would be intrigu­ing enough, given Green’s per­sona is one of hav­ing been put into his present sit­u­a­tion as some kind of Dave Chap­pelle char­ac­ter. But the top­per is that Green believes he can make jobs for those in South Car­olina who go work mak­ing Alvin Green, the action fig­ure. You heard me. Action Fig­ure Alvin Green, come to save the day in South Carolina!

I can just see those per­cent­ages of the unem­ployed falling like a Rocky Moun­tain avalanche. And only an hour ago I was won­der­ing what the hell was there to write about.

Char­lie Wil­son, the Texas con­gress­man who inspired the book and movie Char­lie Wilson’s War, died today at the age of 76.

Wil­son was prob­a­bly the most col­or­ful politi­cian I, sort of, knew. I say, “sort of,” because I didn’t know him well enough for him to recall my name although, if he ever had the occa­sion to know it, he sure as heck would have found it out quickly. Char­lie rep­re­sented the area of Texas — first in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture and later dur­ing 12 terms in the U.S. House — I lived in for most of my life. Of course, I moved around some and even left South­east Texas sev­eral times for a few years at a pop  but returned. Also, polit­i­cal lines being what they are, where I lived at the time may or may not have been served by Charlie.

I prob­a­bly could have made that whole para­graph shorter by say­ing Char­lie rep­re­sented me from the time I was a kid until I was an adult in my 40s. That’s some time.

My link above is to Wilson’s home­town paper, The Lufkin Daily News. It looks like they have all hands on deck for this story, which one would expect. Their early cov­er­age looks pretty thor­ough although most papers have obit­u­ar­ies long on hand for promi­nent people.

But more than his longevity, Char­lie will be remem­bered more for his devil may care atti­tude. “Good Time Char­lie” is one of his nick­names. He liked to party and have good look­ing women around him. There is the famous line about some­one ask­ing Char­lie, upon see­ing all these fan­tas­tic look­ers work­ing for him in his con­gres­sional office, what it was all about. Char­lie said: “You can teach them to type but you can’t teach them to grow tits.”

Wil­son was never known in Con­gress for his abil­ity to pass land­mark or high-profile leg­is­la­tion. But his legacy will be his secret and some­times sin­gu­lar fight to fund Afghan rebels when they fought an occu­py­ing Soviet Army in the 1980s. His hijinks and his suc­cesses are chron­i­cled in the book-turned-movie by George Crile in which Wil­son was por­trayed by Tom Hanks.

As a politi­cian and as a con­gress­man, Char­lie will also have a legacy that only those who lived in his con­gres­sional dis­trict knew. That was his so-called “con­stituent ser­vices.” These are things such as ensur­ing some long-suffering vet­eran gets his pen­sion or help­ing some­one get their Social Secu­rity checks. Such ser­vices and even what some call “pork” which puts jobs in a com­mu­nity and bread on the table are what get con­gress­men elected. And, Wil­son and his staff were among the best at serv­ing their con­stituents. It’s why lit­tle old ladies in the Bible Belt just loved Char­lie, no mat­ter that he trou­ble with drink­ing and dri­ving or alleged use of cocaine.

Prob­a­bly no one but Char­lie Wilson’s staff could have got­ten a medal from the Soviet Union for my late father, whose ships deliv­ered goods to Vladi­vos­tok dur­ing World War II. It’s a long story, but I wanted to honor my Dad who wasn’t even rec­og­nized as a vet­eran at the time of his death in 1984 — it would be sev­eral years later that Con­gress passed leg­is­la­tion finally mak­ing Mer­chant Marine mil­i­tary vet­er­ans — despite his hav­ing served dur­ing hos­tile action on board a mer­chant ship.

Char­lie was cer­tainly a pres­ence when he was around you. He could BS with the best of them. That’s high praise for a Texan. The world was cer­tainly made more inter­est­ing by hav­ing Char­lie Wil­son in it.

 It is dif­fi­cult for me to recall but I am almost cer­tain that I did not go to the bath­room dur­ing my only visit to the U.S. Capi­tol some five or six years ago. I feel pretty sure about that fact because I have not yet been inves­ti­gated by a con­gres­sional committee.

 I did have some­thing I wrote in a news­pa­per col­umn once read into the Con­gres­sional Record. That was nice. But, no, I have never been grilled by Con­gress for using the bath­room at the Capi­tol or any­where else for that matter.

 The rea­son I bring the mat­ter up is because Con­gress seems primed for an pub­li­cized inquiry any­time they catch some­one using the Capi­tol water clos­ets. Now that is pure hyper­bole but I use the state­ment because large-scale con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tions some­times seem as if they are more often than not dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the impor­tance of the sub­ject under scrutiny.

 Now I cer­tainly believe that an inquiry might be war­ranted into how the glam cou­ple and per­haps future real­ity TV stars, the Salahis, allegedly crashed the White House state din­ner for the Indian prime min­is­ter. How­ever, the fact that the show in Con­gress seems to be ampli­fied by Repub­li­can Rep. Peter King of New York, the rank­ing oppo­si­tion mem­ber of the Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee, makes it obvi­ous that King might just be more inter­ested in hurt­ing Obama and  his staff mem­bers than wor­ry­ing about the safety of the Pres­i­dent him­self. King now has beat that dead horse to the point that he is will­ing to hear from the White House social direc­tor while she is not under oath or before cam­eras.  It looks as if that repro­bate King might have just drilled him­self a dry hole. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not a big fan of Peter King. I think the best descrip­tion of him remains that from Slate media critic Jack Shafer who called King “an explod­ing car­bun­cle mas­querad­ing as a mem­ber of Congress.”

 Mean­while, the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee is busy­ing them­selves try­ing to exploit exam­ine the leak of a sen­si­tive Trans­porta­tion Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion doc­u­ment. The 90-some-odd-page man­ual on how to screen air­line pas­sen­gers was posted, for awhile, on the Inter­net. Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano said “action” has been taken against those respon­si­ble. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Per­haps they were made to stand in line at a TSA screen­ing sta­tion for 24 hours. Or maybe they were sub­jected to con­tin­ual body cav­ity searches.

 A lot of good can come from these con­gres­sional inquiries. For instance, learn­ing about chinks (and no, I am not mak­ing a racial slur against Chi­nese peo­ple!) in the armor of White House secu­rity can help make the Prez’s place more secure. And surely the TSA screen­ing process has room for improve­ment. They can take me off their “watch list” or what­ever it was that caused me to be denied an online board­ing pass dur­ing my depar­ture from Hous­ton to Mem­phis in Octo­ber. This after­noon I have filled out a form to send their redress pro­gram so maybe I won’t find myself in a dark lit­tle room being man­han­dled in the nude by two for­mer Russ­ian women wrestlers who now are TSA secu­rity peo­ple. Or I might just make things worse for myself. One never knows.

 Nonethe­less, if I was in charge con­gres­sional inquiries would help improve mat­ters rather than used as a plat­form to blud­geon polit­i­cal foes. Or else, if I was in change, I might be out on a big yatch some­where fish­ing. I can’t say. I’m not in charge and likely I will never rise to such a high station.

 Tex­ans for Pub­lic Jus­tice on Tues­day released another of its ever-enlightening reports on cam­paign finance. This report focuses on the $28 mil­lion raised for the bat­tle supreme for the Texas GOP governor’s nom­i­na­tion in 2010 between Gov. Rick “Good­hair” Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay “Give me a ‘G,’ give me an ‘O,’ give me a ‘P’” Bai­ley Hutchison.

  The most recent state finan­cial dis­clo­sure reports indi­cated Hutchi­son raised about $14.8 mil­lion and Perry, slightly less, at $14.4 mil­lion. TPJ says there are caveats to these fig­ures, however.

 Perry has been rais­ing cam­paign cash since tak­ing office since 2000. That is with the excep­tion of a six-month period sur­round­ing the bien­nial leg­isla­tive ses­sions dur­ing which state offi­cials are pro­hib­ited by law from tak­ing contributions.

 Hutchison’s mon­e­tary fig­ure reflects the period between Decem­ber 2008 — when she named a state cam­paign trea­surer – and July 2009. But Hutchi­son also trans­ferred an addi­tional $7.9 mil­lion from her fed­eral sen­ate war chest to her state cam­paign funds.

 A few mil­lion dol­lars here and another few mil­lion there and we’re talk­ing a lot of money.

 S.W.T. Lan­ham, elected Texas gov­er­nor in 1902 and 1904, oversaw early cam­paign reform laws includ­ing the require­ment of fil­ing cam­paign expen­di­tures. Lan­ham spent $20 on his last cam­paign. Then again he didn’t have to deal with the cost of jet planes (or planes for that mat­ter), or tele­vi­sion ads play­ing statewide and in some of the country’s major mar­kets. Of course, there was no TV or com­mer­cial radio. And the Inter-what?

 Many of those peo­ple who rant about cam­paign finance at either the state or fed­eral lev­els often aim their invec­tive at the indus­try, or orga­ni­za­tion or even the per­son. That influence-peddling, legal or not, has become one of the major obsta­cles to gov­ern­ing raises lit­tle doubt.

 But it should be both­er­some enough to most peo­ple except those who make a profit off expen­sive elec­tions that such enor­mous amounts of cash go toward elec­tions. It’s the money, stupid.

 How much money will be raised through both the Demo­c­ra­tic and GOP pri­maries for gov­er­nor in Texas? Then comes the gen­eral elec­tion. What will be the final tally for the entire 2010 elec­tion for governor? There are wide­spread pre­dic­tions of another record-breaking year for rais­ing cash to buy the Texas governor’s seat.

 The mind-numbing amounts of money raised and spent for offices pro­vide com­merce for some, but can any­one say with cer­tainty that the cash is spread around to many? Well, one could argue, it pays off in the end for the indi­vid­ual donors who seek time with elected offi­cials to make their case for this or that. Of course, if such influ­ence pro­vides rot­ten results that help only a few, then we pro­ceed, straight back to square one.

 There is lit­tle rea­son to hope that the laws will even­tu­ally bar the ever greater amounts of mil­lions of dol­lars which infuse campaigns. Americans seem will­ing to wait for the crit­i­cal mass. Wait until the waters over­flow — like in New Orleans dur­ing Kat­rina – and fix it then.

 But one has to won­der. Will Tex­ans have a bet­ter qual­ity gov­er­nor — who spends mil­lions upon mil­lions of dol­lars — in office after the 2010 elec­tion than it did with S.W.T. Lan­ham who spent a mere 20 bucks to get elected?