Election-Year Handcuffs

I don't often disagree with The Wall Street Journal's editorial page?aside from its continuing campaign to erase the 1960s?but last Friday's lead edit stuck in my craw.

The paper said: "You can argue that handcuffing a 78-year-old man at his home at 6 a.m. after he had agreed to turn himself in voluntarily is prosecutorial overkill. And yet the arrests of former Adelphia CEO John Rigas, his two sons and two other executives were useful public theater."

It's not often that the Journal?even reluctantly?joins the rest of the media in applauding the "public theater" of satisfying the bloodlust of Americans who require a photo-op of a likely white-collar felon being treated like an armed rapist. John Rigas and his associates knew the jig was up; that the septuagenarian was led away in cuffs?not to mention having his ties, belt and shoelaces removed by the feds?was a disgrace, and never would've happened in an election off-year. The Rigas family is kaput, and if the charges against them are true, which doesn't seem in doubt considering the evidence of rampant fraud presented by the government, they'll have plenty of time to ruminate their fate behind bars.

Giving the Journal its due, it's critical in the current witch-hunt atmosphere in Washington that individuals are held accountable and jailed, rather than simply let an entire company be liquidated. For example, there was no reason, other than headlines, to destroy the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen. Yes, by all means those guilty at the company deserve their upcoming judicial punishment, but at least 95 percent of the Andersen employees had no complicity in the firm's conflict-of-interest crimes. Some of those people will hook onto other enterprises; more will be out of work for a long time. The same principle applies to Enron and WorldCom: Innocent employees with no knowledge of the fraud practiced by their superiors are now at home watching afternoon soaps and have the resume-stain of having once worked at those corporations. Guilt by association.

These companies could've been saved, no matter how much the media distorts the scandal. Not everyone who worked at Enron, for example, was a 65-year-old janitor who didn't understand the benefits and responsibilities of a 401(k), and anyone who followed the firm's falling stock prices could've cashed out a long time before a "hold" was put on such transactions. There was no need to destroy a company employing thousands when it could've been retooled with new management.

But that quibble about the Journal off my chest?and it is a mere quibble about a daily that has consistently provided the most balanced views and common sense about the current crisis on Wall Street?let's look at the hysteria for what it really is. Politicians, looking to the November midterm elections, have been more shameless than usual, and that includes both Democrats and Republicans. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt gleefully dreams of his party grabbing up to 40 seats this fall, paving the way for his expected presidential run in 2004. That's mere cheerleading, of course, for due to redistricting and incumbents making sure their own seats are safe, there won't even be 40 competitive contests.

Besides, with ethics (whether corporate or political) appearing to be the theme of elections, barring an early invasion of Iraq both parties have their own peculiar problems. Even though his Senate colleagues are treating senator Robert Torricelli with inexcusable deference, not even calling his chief accuser, the convicted felon David Chang, in for testimony, the voters of New Jersey, already smarting from the election of the awful governor James McGreevey, aren't likely to give the "Torch" a free ride in his race against Douglas Forrester. Likewise, any politician in Texas who received money from Enron (almost all of them, not surprising given the fallen corporation's Houston headquarters), like GOP Senate contender John Cornyn, will have to overcome voter resentment.

As for the media, National Journal's William Powers, in a July 26 column, skewered his colleagues for the rank hypocrisy that's splashed across front pages every day.

He wrote: "For journalists, the ruined stock market isn't just an awesome story; it's a chance to show what we really think about the business world. There's a gigantic culture gap between the news tribe and corporate America, one that comes down to different views of money. Basically, we subscribe to the biblical view that money is the root of all evil, and our job is to expose that evil through news stories about bad companies like Enron and WorldCom.

"Most of the time we keep this view well-hidden. The economy is a top-shelf story, after all, and there's no sense alienating the powerful corporate execs who run it, not when they're riding high. But when they're down and out, business types look a lot less intimidating, and our real views start to creep into the coverage, along with a certain smug satisfaction. Now, with Wall Street in so much trouble, we are not above telling the public we knew it all along: Business is a dirty game with a lot of very dirty players."

I can accept this jaundiced and prejudicial view of Big Business from a man or woman earning a middle-class income in the employ of a chain newspaper with tight-fisted owners; it's not objective, but journalists certainly aren't immune from jealousy. What really slays me, however, is the outrage heard daily from the Beltway media cream?top-bracket pundits and editors from the Times and Washington Post, network anchors and talk show hosts whose salaries are in the millions. It's somewhat analogous to the Major League Baseball players' union (a joke in and of itself) complaining that the minimum salary for a big-leaguer is a meager $200,000 and that it must be doubled.

The Trouble With Peretz

The New Republic's co-owner Martin Peretz is one screwed-up piece of work. . His "Cambridge Diarist" in TNR's Aug. 5 issue correctly defended Ariel Sharon for Israel's killing last week of Hamas leader Salah Shehada, with a bomb dropped on a Gaza apartment building that also eliminated 14 civilian Palestinians. In wartime?whether it's Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki?innocents are unfortunately sacrificed for the larger goal of peace. As many commentators have noted, if the United States located Osama bin Laden (assuming he's still alive) in a crowded cafe, there's no question the venue would be destroyed.

But Peretz, a Zionist who prefers the academic oasis in Massachusetts to actually living in Israel, is so embittered by his pupil Al Gore losing the 2000 presidential election that he undermines valid points by constantly taking potshots at President Bush, a man who's the best friend Israel's ever had in the White House.

Peretz writes: "Reading The New York Times, you would have thought President Bush 'denounced' the Gaza City air strike as well [joining the feckless anti-Semitic European governments and media as well as the embarrassing Kofi Annan]." Peretz is on firm ground in lambasting the Times for its misleading article of July 24, the headline of which read "Bush Denounces Israeli Airstrike as 'Heavy Handed,'" when in reality it was Press Secretary Ari Fleischer who actually made that relatively tepid comment. But then Peretz denounces the U.S. military for similar "collateral damage" in Afghanistan, claiming there was no moral equivalence between those operations and Sharon's assassination of Shehada. His source: The New York Times.

At least Peretz is on the right side of this fading controversy. In contrast, a July 25 USA Today editorial was almost obscene in its pro-Palestinian position. The paper wrote: "Each time Sharon overreaches, his country pays a heavy price. This time, the terrorist group Hamas, which lost military commander Salah Shehadeh in the attack, has vowed to kill Israeli children and target bus stops, restaurants and other public places. Before the strike, Hamas had hinted it might end its attack on Israeli citizens."

The naivete of these words is breathtaking, conjuring up one of my current favorite cliches of the day: "senior moment." Does USA Today forget that Israeli civilians, including women and children, have been slaughtered willy-nilly by Hamas and other terrorist groups at a vicious clip? And why would a major newspaper believe that "Hamas had hinted that it might end its attacks on Israeli citizens"? That's as likely as Peretz not using his magazine as a propaganda sheet for the intellectually muddled Gore in the 2004 election.

The Daily News' Zev Chafets, in a column last week, was far better than Peretz in defending Sharon. (Syndicated columnist Mona Charen and Ralph Peters, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, also stood out for their analysis.) Chafets wrote: "Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called the attack 'a massacre no human being can imagine.' But Arafat [Bill Clinton's most frequent foreign visitor at the White House, in comparison to Bush, who has refused to host the madman in Washington] is the one who set the rules of engagement. From the start of the intifadeh, he and his Hamas allies have killed civilians. How exactly did he expect that Israel would reply?... The Palestinians want what they call justice, which in Arabic means Israel's extinction. In the name of justice, Shehada ordered the deaths of dozens of people. As a result, he became a walking dead-or-alive poster. He knew this, but it didn't stop him from moving with his wife and daughter into a crowded apartment building."

Count on the Liberals!

It was my fortune not to have discovered the socialist economic views of Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, syndicated columnist and one of Bill Clinton's most enthusiastic backers in the '92 election. Judging by his loony-bin analysis of today's economic climate, God only knows what he prescribed as an elixir back in '87, when the "Masters of the Universe" were being laid off in droves following that fall's stock market crash.

In the July 18 TAP, Kuttner's feature article, "Can Liberals Save Capitalism (Again)?," demonstrates why the magazine isn't taken seriously, and, if you believe the excellent Slate blogger Mickey Kaus, is on the brink of extinction.

Kuttner writes: "In a few short weeks, America's political economy has been stunningly transformed. The Bush administration, the Republican Party and three decades of conservative ideology are facing a potential rout. Yesterday's conservative cliches are today's political embarrassments... If this sounds familiar, it should. Much the same thing happened in the 1920s, and of course it was the liberals who then dragged a primitive, corrupted and vulnerable capitalist system, kicking and screaming, into the modern mixed economy. It's astonishing that we now have to do it again [Itals mine]."

I grant Kuttner his exuberant, if irrational, joy at what is probably a temporary downturn for the Satanic Republicans. And I guess we now know that since he'll have to save capitalism from the vultures, it's easy to guess that at Al Gore's Halloween Party, should he be invited, Bob will appear as Hercules. Frankly, he ought to switch the costume to one of the Powerpuff gals. How can any educated economist (save the Times' Paul Krugman, who's beyond redemption) write without irony that the world's most vibrant economy can be "stunningly transformed" in just a "few short weeks"?

July 29

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