By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, New York Times

ALBANY — Even for New York, where more than a dozen state lawmakers have been forced to resign in recent years over ethical or criminal midconduct, the corruption trial of the former Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno was eye opening.

Mr. Bruno, according to prosecutors, brazenly turned his Senate office into a private business enterprise, pitching clients in his ornate conference rooms, using Senate lawyers to vet his business contracts, and assigning his taxpayer-provided secretary to handle the bills for his private consulting firm. Last week, after a monthlong trial, Mr. Bruno became the most senior New York official in a generation to be convicted on corruption charges.

But at least he has plenty of company. From Illinois, where former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich was impeached this year after being accused of trying to auction off a United States Senate seat, to Massachusetts, where Salvatore F. DiMasi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, was indicted in June on charges that he conspired to rig state software contracts over rounds of golf, voters have been treated to a veritable buffet of highly colorful corruption cases involving highly senior state officials. Those spectacles have coincided with — and sometimes have been responsible for — intense levels of voter disgust and distrust, manifested in surveys, at town hall meetings, and in the defeat or near-defeat of incumbent officials this November in states like New Jersey and New York. According to a Gallup poll released in September, Americans’ trust in their state officials has sunk to its lowest level in at least 40 years, with just half of respondents saying that they were confident that government officials could handle problems in their states.

The question now is can a sullen and angry electorate prod state lawmakers into significant political reform, whether of the kind typically favored by liberals, like limits on campaign donations and better disclosure of lawmakers’ side jobs, or by conservatives, like term limits. History teaches that significant political reform tends to occur at moments much like the present one: Shocking revelations of corruption or self-dealing paired with overwhelming voter anger, usually coupled with economic upheaval.

“The target becomes politicians,” said John David Rausch Jr., a political science professor at West Texas A&M University. “It can even be directed at a city councilman, someone who has no real effect on the economy. It is largely voter frustration: ‘I’m angry, but I am not sure at whom.’ You see it in the speeches: ‘We need to take back our government.’ ”

In the 1970s, the Watergate scandal produced much of the current federal regime of campaign finance law and personal financial disclosure. During the Progressive Era early last century, popular revulsion against the political influence of Gilded Age robber barons and of large urban political machines spurred the direct election of United States senators, the emergence of civil services, and new tools like the initiative, recall and referendum.

The crucial condition, experts said, is for public pressure to emerge across the political spectrum. During the Progressive Era — the most sustained period of procedural reform in modern American history — reform wings emerged contemporaneously in both of the major political parties.

“What broke the stalemate was a progressive strain in both parties,” said Bruce N. Gyory, a political consultant in New York and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Albany. “Both parties were under assault from progressive reformers in their own ranks who disagreed on substantive economic ideas but agreed on procedural reforms.”

In Washington, where politics has never been more fiercely partisan, such a development seems highly unlikely today. But there are some signs of a cross-partisan stirring at the state level.

In New York, Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, is backing a state spending cap, a top priority of Republicans in the Legislature. Former Congressman Rick Lazio, a Republican who hopes to unseat Mr. Paterson in next year’s election, is campaigning on a platform of tighter lobbying laws — a cause already embraced by progressive reformers — and the creation of a unicameral legislature. Officials on both sides of the aisle have proposed a constitutional convention that would radically rewrite the state’s political DNA, though they disagree on exactly what they want to change.

Meanwhile, in heavily Democratic California, voters this year narrowly approved a ballot initiative that would put an independent commission in charge of drawing state legislative districts, a change that is likely to overwhelmingly benefit Republican candidates. In Illinois last week, on the one-year anniversary of Mr. Blagojevich’s arrest, his successor, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, signed into law the first significant limits on campaign contributions in state history.

And in Louisiana, a state with a well-earned reputation for graft, Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won passage of a historic package of financial disclosure laws for state lawmakers. According to a ranking maintained by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, Louisiana went from being the 44th most transparent state in the country to the first.

“In recent years, ethics reform, especially at the state level, has become a priority,” said Caitlin Ginley, a staff writer at the center who helped prepare the rankings. “But it really needs to come from citizens calling for this. Legislators are not going to write a law to give themselves more work.”

It remains unclear how significant such reforms are, or how much they can really change what Ronald Reagan once referred to as the world’s second-oldest profession. (“I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first,” he famously added.)

Ethics advocates acknowledge that the reforms they have won recently in statehouses are little more than baby steps — small concessions from a political class that is worried, but perhaps not yet worried enough to inflict on itself the kind of wholesale changes produced in earlier eras of reform. Before citizens can get better leadership, some say, they may need to elect a whole new class of leaders.

“People are so mistrustful of politicians now,” said Emily Rusch, the state director of the California Public Interest Research Group, which has pushed the Legislature there for tighter campaign finance limits and other measures, mostly without success. “I think a successful reform effort is going to have to be seen as coming from outside Sacramento.”

Printed on December 12, 2009

If you said Bush, you’re very close, but no cigar.  Bush did say, “We’ve come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed,” in his State of the Union Speech in 2002–the same speech where he coined the unforgettable phrase “Axis of Evil.”

But if you said Obama, DING! DING! DING! You’re correct!

In President Obama’s remarks upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize today, he echoed many of the moral imperatives of the Bush administration’s foreign policy as part of his public–and to some degree, personal–justification for accepting the award.

Now, I’m one of those people who believes that President George W. Bush will, in the decades to come, be vindicated from much of the partisan attacks he endured over the years.

So far, that’s slowly proving true.

With his poised, deep-thinker mantle on full force, Obama balanced out his receipt of the award with his recent decisions as Commander-in-Chief:

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.  One of these wars is winding down.  The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

He then invokes elements of just war theory, and acknowledges the “imperfectability” of humanity insofar as war has always been and will continue to be a part of the human experience:

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone.  I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.  For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

If someone were counting, I bet the use of paper fans were at an all-time high today around the country as anti-war lefties and undergraduate college professors swooned at the sight of their candidate pronouncing their cause of “no war for any reason” dead on arrival.  Meanwhile, I’m sure the rest of America applauded the President’s verbal acknowledgement of what the rest of humanity recognizes as simple reality, especially when Obama got to the biggest invocation of the Bush administration’s philosophy:

…For some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation’s development.  And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists — a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values around the world.

I reject these choices.  I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear.  Pent-up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence.  We also know that the opposite is true.  Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace…No matter how callously defined, neither America’s interests — nor the world’s — are served by the denial of human aspirations.

Sound really familiar?  Check out a similar paragraph from Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech:

America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture — but America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law … limits on the power of the state … respect for women … private property … free speech … equal justice … and religious tolerance.

So, for those of you who don’t remember the whole flap about Sarah Palin not knowing what policy the media arbitrarily coined as the “Bush Doctrine”, the Bush Doctrine has been specifically defined as a policy of unilateral interventionism, including pre-emptive military action if necessary.

But taking the media’s own bias out of the definition, I think it’s safe to call the Bush Doctrine a pro-active policy that firmly engages the moral and military threats of people who are “evil” and hate the fundamental principles of human dignity that America and the West represent.  And why wouldn’t most dictators and extremists hate those principles?  If they can’t control their populations with Western values, then they serve no useful purpose, if they don’t serve as a direct threat.

In the wake of 9/11, Americans were outraged, distraught, saddened, and resolved.  To hear our President say anything other than, “We’re gonna get ‘em for this!” would have been a disaster.  For better or for worse, this defined the tone of the entire Bush administration’s tenure.

Almost 9 years later, Americans are still outraged, and anyone who meditates for 30 seconds to recall what life was like on 9/11 won’t be hard pressed to conjure up the same feelings they had when Bush made that historic address to a Joint Session of Congress days after 9/11.

Americans also have had time to let the dust settle and figure out the best next moves for our country in the pursuit of defeating terrorism.  As much as we made fun of the French for their anti-Americanism during the Iraq War, we also–secretly–wanted notre amis to warmly shout Bonjour! when we walked into the room. As much as political and military necessity prompted us to take immediate, decisive action to assume control of our circumstances–with many nations supporting us in doing so, mind you–this kind of approach only works for so long and will get you so far in accomplishing your objective.

Obama’s speech is probably demonstrative of a sobering of the American people who no longer just want to see the destruction of terrorists and their allies but also want to move forward in a world that achieves a practical, peaceful and internationally cooperative conclusion to all of this as well.

To accommodate for this changing mood, Obama places a tremendous emphasis on international cooperation, using non-violent means to achieve some of these objectives.  More importantly, Obama makes it clear that in the pursuit of human rights, there will be a three step process: engagement, diplomacy, and then armed intervention–and yes, military intervention is very much so still on the table.  (He mentions Darfur, the Congo, and Burma–and I hope he means what he says specifically with regard to these situations.)  Nevertheless, he cautions, “The closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.”

Taking Obama’s speech in its entirety and comparing it to the so-called Bush Doctrine, it continues many of the principles by which Bush governed, but nuances Bush policy by emphasizing that force is not always the solution to every problem. Even if we have always known that, apparently the world still needs to hear it from our country.  For Obama and for America, this upgrading of the Bush Doctrine–a version 2.0 if you will–is fitting for the times in which we currently live.

Inevitably, opponents will try to find fault with this speech, although it has received much praise from Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich for starters. (You may recall they did not see eye-to-eye on the New York 23rd Congressional District special election earlier this year when Gingrich backed Republican Scozzafava and Palin backed Conservative Doug Hoffman).

Of course, I caution that it is merely a speech; until it is followed by action, it is nothing more than ink on paper. For the sake of America and the interest of people worldwide who share our common objectives, I do hope that Obama’s rhetoric and actions continue to change for the better.

As we work to overcome our present challenges in the pursuit of building a better America, each and every one of us has much to be thankful for this holiday season.

So, on behalf of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, I wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe Thanksgiving!

(And, yes, that includes the very special turkeys–sans feathers, that is–in City Hall, Albany and Washington!)

Best wishes,

Jonathan J. Judge
President

Republicans on the Federal level have rarely actually minimized the role of the Federal government. For example, Herbert Hoover adopted highly socialist policies after the First Great Depression in 1929. President Eisenhower called himself a “social conservative” and a “liberal politician” during his campaign for the Presidency in 1952. President Richard Nixon took the United States completely off the gold standard during his administration, inevitably giving the Federal Reserve more power over inflating currency and distributing wealth around the US, yet another example of Republicans straying away from principle and increasing the size and role of the Federal Government. The Bush administration, needless to say, has increased taxes to pay for two overseas wars and proposed the enacted “Patriot Act” which allows the Federal Government to tap into the private lives of citizens.

The misleading guidance of the Republican Party applies locally as well.  A small group of local Republican leaders organized a “Rally Against Socialized Healthcare” on Sunday, November 15, 2009. Two things were done wrong on behalf of these officials. Primarily, the party never reached out to the Brooklyn Young Republicans for this rally. One would think that with failing elections, the youth of the party would be ideal for the future of the party. Nevertheless, I grant you the leadership of the Republican Party. But I digress. The second most important fault on behalf of these officials was their misleading banner. What passed in the House of Representatives was nothing near a “Socialized Healthcare” system. Any educated voter can tell the difference between a socialized healthcare system and nationalized insurance, or the Public Option. There are fundamental political differences in these policies and our very own elected officials are too blind to see the difference.

Ludwig Von Mises, the infamous free market economist, once stated that “the flowering of human society depends on two factors; the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound, social and economic theories and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.” Essentially, what Mises was offering was a simple paradox of the basics of democracy and republican government. In order for a voting system to work, the voters must be educated. But instead of educating the public, Brooklyn Republicans are not only jumping to conclusions, but are also rallying the same ignorant politics we have seen for decades under faulty Republican leadership. Let’s review the difference between Socialized Medicine and Obama’s Public Option.

There are several different healthcare models proposed by theorists and liberal governments around the world. In other words, “Socialized Healthcare” is too broad a term to rally a group against if we don’t even exactly know what role the government is playing in the healthcare system. One popular model used in our globalized world is the “Single-Payer” method; this is a real socialized healthcare system. Why? Because under this model, the government pools in money, usually through taxes, and then redistributes this money evenly to all health facilities in the country. We must understand that this system requires complete government control of all health-related facilities and personnel in order for this system to work. The United States is among some very few countries that do not have this form of healthcare. Another healthcare model is the “Fee-for-Service” method. In this model, individual practitioners and governments regulate prices and offer reimbursements. There are others, but at least you can see that there is a difference between government control of health and government paying for health. I’ll discuss the United States’ model later on.

What is important to understand when reviewing these models is that any socialized method requires government control or regulation of actual health facilities and doctors. Doctors receive a government paycheck, their hours are federally regulated, and government controls all aspects of the hospital equipment. President Obama’s “Public Option” in no way seizes control of any work hours or health facilities. It’s simply an insurance plan that the poor can opt into to pay for healthcare. Granted that this is a socialist move, this policy is still not Socialized Healthcare by nature nor by definition.

I can rant about the drawbacks of a “Public Option” for days, but this isn’t the debate here at the table. Instead, what we are seeing is our public officials misleading voters into thinking that the United States is falling under a “Socialized Healthcare” model. I wish these officials knew which model they were talking about because if they knew any better, their banner would read “Rally Against the Public Option.” In the United States we have had government paid for minimal healthcare since the 1960’s when Lyndon B. Johnson created, under his “Great Society,” Medicare and Medicaid to pay for healthcare for the poor and elderly. Nevertheless, even today, 65% of those insured in this country, pay into a “Private Healthcare” Model. This means that private insurance companies still play a vital role in paying for healthcare. No matter what the government is paying for, however, the government is still not controlling the way doctors do their jobs. This is important because it distinguished between a Socialized Healthcare model and a Public Option.

In countries like England, government practices true socialized healthcare because, for example, a government nurse inspects health in every home; this is mandatory government control over individual health. We obviously do not have this in the United States and our politicians are obviously misleading us. Republicans in this country need to stop focusing on the wrong issues. They need to stop harping over the notion that we are socializing healthcare when we are in fact socializing the paying methods. The less we and our legislators are educated about issues like this, the less of a chance we will gain any form of legitimacy in this country and in Congress. The sad part is, many Republicans are still electing or re-electing these misinformed tools of the system and then asking, “What are we doing wrong?” “Why is government still expanding?”

Government will stop expanding and infringing on our personal liberties when people–especially Republican leaders–realize that there are differences in certain policy. Their “cause” would be worth rallying for in countries like France or England where they actually have a Socialized Model. Their “cause” would also be worth fighting for if their local congressman, Michael McMahon, actually voted for the Public Option; but, he didn’t.

Personally, I don’t know what these politicians are doing, establishing a “rally” for something doesn’t really exist. I wish they cracked open a book or stopped watching Fox News all the time because they’re making our party look bad. I feel that true advocates of small government need a different voice in Brooklyn–true advocates who know what they are protesting.

Roy Antoun is County Committeeman in the 46th Assembly District of Brooklyn, New York. He welcomes feedback at roymantoun@gmail.com