Speecwriters like myself are paid a king's ransom for creating the illusion of candor. As well we should be since simulating candor in an era in which it hasn't been heard for decades is a rare art form.
So, it's no surprise that in POLITICO Roger Simon reports that he has observed Hillary Clinton being candid. And therefore he interprets that as a sign that she has thrown in the towel on any plan to run for U.S. President. To me, that seems to make a lot of sense.
The war drums for the impeachment of U.S. President Barach Obama are becoming louder. Sometime this summer we could well have Joe Biden as our accidental president and the starter of a new political dynasty in America. Jeb, Caroline, and Hillary would have to become fierce about getting attention.
In BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK, Joshua Green reports that the obstacle to impeachment is the Democrat-controlled Senate. Sure, the process could begin in the GOP-dominated House but it might hit a wall in the Senate. However, this doesn't factor in the human tendency to save one's own career.
U.S. senators up for re-election might decide they better cave to what will be the national mandate for reform. They will state that they have to do what is in the best interest of the nation and vote for impeachment. Then Barack Obama could do the same and say that he is resigning to do what is the best interest of the nation.
As top dog, Biden could come into his own. A Mr. Clean he could become the darling of both parties. Hillary Clinton wouldn't dare try to take him on in 2016. Welcome to the Biden Dynasty.
The voodoo of being made a martyr is one of the most powerful pull forces in civilization. It was when Jesus Christ, who had started the Christianity movement, and the early followers were murdered for their beliefs that the religion really got off the ground. That worked out great, with the institutions it created still standing today.
Now, those lucky sons of the gun - conservatives and reporters - have become the new kind of martyr. As POLITICO reports, the IRS had been targeting conservatives and the Department of Justice has been snooping into the phone records of reporters. Both groups can get on the rhetorical, regulatory, and legislative soap boxes and demand these wrongs be made right. Attention will be paid.
As for the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, who's associated with the now-tainted Obama regime in addition to the Benghazi cloud over her, is no longer a sure thing. The presidency of the free world is in play again.
In politics the law of attraction favors personal experience. So, Jersey City, New Jersey mayor Jerramiah Healy has a new edge.
As the STAR LEDGER reports, Healy was at the PNK bar in Jersey City campaigning for Council candidate Gerald Meyer. Outside, in what might have been a drug deal gone bad, an innocent bystander was shot in the chest. Healy, as politicos do, visited her in the hospital.
The bullet could have landed in Healy. His communications aides have a wonderful fresh anecdote to roll out. Perhaps Healy can publish a book on his brush with violence.
Jersey City, with its wild melting-pot metabolism, is a place which keeps on giving in terms of themes for writers to cover. My first essay in freshman comp at Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, a half century ago was on the character in our downtown Bay Street neighborhood called Vinegar Feet. I got an "A" and realized how rich a background I had not growing up in the tame suburbs. Four decades later, I reached into that wealth to get back on my feet after my business tanked Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg. I'm back and earning more than I had before the Crash of 2003.
For me, in a love-hate relationship, Jersey City has been what Newark has been to novelist Phillip Roth.
IAC head Barry Diller not only said it was a mistake buying print NEWSWEEK, overseen by Tina Brown. He added that he didn't have great expectations for its digital compression into the Daily Beast. If he wants to save the media property he may have a shot at that by sending Brown to Abovethelaw.com (ATL) as an intern.
Clearly, Brown, who uses the anachronistic term "zeitgeist," can't get with the zeitgeist of a digital era. For example, the articles for Daily Beast have too many ideas, as in the olden days, not one idea that is played with in brilliant and provocative ways.
At ATL, David, Elie, Staci, and Joe have down cold the minimalism of driving one message forward until readers are persuaded or resist so aggressively that the piece goes viral, then results in behavior change. I have a hunch that it was Elie who is responsible for shaking Millennials out of denial that law school had a lousy ROI. His rhetorical crusade was relentless and it worked, finally. Applications are down.
Also, ATL doesn't need the big bucks to operate which burdens Daily Beast. It has a volunteer army of tipsters who in almost cult-like fashion pony up smug or abrasive memos from law firms. And, thanks to the new rules on aligning the monthly repayment of law school student loans to monthly income the writers aren't going to bellyache too much about making a lot more.
What could Intern Tina pick up at ATL? Plenty, including:
Keep it simple. If the attention span of those who scored in the 99 percentile of the LSATs is low, lower is that of the demographics for Daily Beast.
Throw high earnestness, not money, into coverage. Human beings are suckers for a wrong that needs to be made right, not sophistication created with money.
Show you're having fun. Everyone wants to be a part, in some way, of ATL because it seems a throwback to the heady days of the ad business in the 1960s but without the undertow of sadness of "Mad Men."
Be accessible. Staci told me it was good to hear from me. Would the folks at Daily Beast make me feel like a pest?
Who should supervise Intern Tina? Joe has the ideal temperament for that. In return? Intern Tina can pay off all the ATL members student loans.
The tenements where we lived in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey buzzed with economic activity. My uncles sold pink plastic umbrellas and shoes they swiped from the docks. The yenta across the street earned commissions on getting your brother out of prison.
Officially, though, most of us were so poor that we qualified for free clinic visits at the Jersey City Medical Center and two weeks at the "fresh air" camp in Butler, NJ run by do-gooders. But we had no trouble ponying up tuition for Catholic school, frilly communion dresses, cash for new cars, lavish weddings, and eventually single-family homes in the suburbs.
The reason was the underground or gray economy. In THE NEW YORKER, James Surowiecki estimates it's currently worth about $2 trillion, none of which is taxed or figures in employment figures.
Liberals, don't cry for the poor. We always manage to manage. And, if the officially jobless Millennials, including recent law graduates, get a hang of how to get work in the gray economy they will not turn out to be the lost generation. The trick is understanding how the networks underground operate and conforming. Unlike those based on Ivy League credentials, measurable income, and conspicuous consumption, gray networks function via instinct, especially about who to trust. For example, it's well known the snitch winds up in the ditch.
JDs could quickly get up to speed on earning a good buck doing whatever if they move to marginal urban areas. Everything in terms of services and products is for sale and nothing has a fixed price. Satisfaction is guaranteed with baseball bats. What the government loses in tax revenues it could gain in eliminating functions like consumer protection performed now by Richard Cordray.
The fairy tale in America is that addiction, ranging from alcohol to food, can be cured through the seemingly progressive but expensive institution of "going to rehab." Pack the prince/princess or oneself off to those 28-day stays and the light will be turned on. The once-addicted will live happily ever after. The monsters of the mind have been slayed.
That's the mythology. The reality is presented in the book "Inside Rehab" by Anne M. Fletcher. The author previously published "Sober For Good." Her research for this book included staying in more than 10 rehabs.
Essentially, "going to rehab" means bcoming a consumer of a largely unregulated industry whose methodologies are unproven and success rate frequently not measured. Yet since science and society know so little about the causes and "cures" for the chronic disease of addiction, the industry continues to thrive. That could be easily changed if Congress, insurance companies, and employers demand transparency about approaches and outcomes.
One theme in "Inside Rehab" is the high relapse rate of rehab alumni, although each stay might cost from $28,000 to $40,000. Often alumni return to the same rehab several times. Those of us in 12-step programs, which cost nothing but also have no hard data on outcomes, hear constantly tales of those multiple stays, without results, that is long-term sobriety or being free from all addictive substances. The tragedy of that is the illusion of help.
Since lawyers have a higher than average rate of addiction they might, through their trade associations, push to get some answers about this approach which might have promised them and their colleagues a second chance and hasn't yet delivered.
Chris Christie, probably the only current politico who could take on Hillary Clinton, is one of TIME's 100 Influentials for 2013.
Before he was the Chris Christie he was just another lawyer in New Jersey. We spotted his raw political genius when he distanced himself from the floundering GOP in delivering his keynote address at the RNC. Then we saw it again when he nuzzled up to President Obama just after Sandy and before the election. His moves are the ones we observe and deconstruct to apply to our much smaller plays.
Incidentally, Christie is a role model for the smartness of getting a law degree. It's, as they say, a multi-dimensional credential that could be leveraged in so many ways. At a New York Metro law school, the dean should invite him for career day. Boy, he could get plenty of rigid JDs unstuck and moving along on a successful career path.
Justice is an abstraction, an ideal which the U.S. legal system tries to make reality. But, there wouldn't be so many courts of appeal if interpreting the laws of that system wasn't so open to ambiguity.
One piece of ambiguity is if Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should have been read the Miranda rights before he was questioned. All that is certain is that he wasn't read those rights and he is being questioned. He is answering in writing.
According to criminal lawyer and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, those in the loop who made this decision will come to regret it. In this interview with REAL CLEAR POLITICS, he argues that there was no issue of public safety which would have provided an exception for Miranda. The danger was documented to be over, he contends. Also, in order for the death penalty to be enacted there has to be proof of intentionality, that is what had been going on in his mind. If Tsarnaev is revealing that now and it is later ruled he should have been read his Miranda rights, those statements cannot be introduced in court.
Should Dershowitz turn out to be accurate many in law enforcement will go down in history as bungling this whole thing. In addition, politicians who made public pronouncements about no Miranda could lose the next election for reckless statements. Their legacy could become The Tsarnaev Rush to Judgment.
The elephant in the room in the tragedy surrounding alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is this. Some of us, including lawyers and judges, who had been politically active during the Counterculture might feel empathy for this 19-year-old college student.
During the heated feelings against the VietNam War, it could have been a natural progression to migrate from passive resistance to violence. We are here as successful professionals today because for whatever reason we didn't cross that line.
Here is a discussion of an alternative to hate for viewing Tsarnaev. A number of world views advocate compassion. If the suspect lives, he has a lot of painful thinking he might be doing the path he had taken.
