Taking a Stand

One of my favorite activities is browsing and lingering at bookstores and record stores. You can still do that in most major cities, but in the suburbs, it has become quite a challenge; unfortunately my best shot is at the mall.  And, like most men, the mall experience, with it vast parking lots, multiple levels, hyperscents and fast food courts, just isn’t worth the hassle.

For decades, the big chains of all kinds have replaced small neighborhood shops.  Everybody enjoys the low prices the chains charge, and they made a profit for a while. Then the on-line services like Amazon and E-bay drove prices down even further, and Brown brings the stuff right to our doors.

So the big chains replaced the small neighborhood stores, and now the on-line websites are pushing out the big chain stores.  At the High Ridge Road shopping Center in Stamford, CT last month, the Borders bookstore closed.  A favorite place for regional consumers to browse books and magazines and enjoy a coffee, our Borders closure was just part of the nation’s second largest bookstore chain’s failure. (They closed another one on the Norwalk-Wilton border, too.)  Employing more than 10,000 employees, Borders could no longer turn a profit. Five years ago, at the other end of the shopping center, Tower Records closed its doors.

Stamford's Borders Closes

I miss the neighborhood retailers—the record and bookstores and, yes, the local pharmacies. From our local CVS, where we spend a small fortune every month, we receive a daily impersonal automated phone call telling us that the prescriptions are ready. We make our way over there, we’re greeted by staff that asks you how you spell your last name (Tell me, is there another spelling for “Diamond?”), and then are told that there’s a mistake and the prescriptions are not ready. Even better, at the local Walgreen pharmacy each month the clerk quizzes us how the prescription could possibly be appropriate for a six year old. “It’s for a dog,” I announce each time. By the time you should get to know the staff at these big chains, there is a new employee you’ve never met before.

The brand new CVS at Stamford's Bull's Head

I was reminded while on vacation at the Jersey Shore last week how nice it can be to experience small shops where you can actually have a conversation with knowledgeable staff. In Stone Harbor, I chatted with the book-loving clerk at the small bookstore, and the local sandwich shop knew my “usual” order by my third visit. I suspect that this kind of relationship still exists in small towns all across the country. It’s becoming rare in the suburbs and rarer in the big cities.

Now that the big chains are disappearing, is it time for the small neighborhood stores to return? I, for one, would be willing to pay more at a local pharmacy or a bookstore if they would resurface. Is there a place in today’s marketplace and rigorous web pricing, for neighborhood shops? Has the digital explosion caused the music stores to disappear forever, with bookstores soon to follow? Or are we destined to a future of clicks on tiny screens on smart phones and tablets instead of conversing with knowledgeable humans? Perhaps it’s just another case of hopeless nostalgia.

My greatest fear, however is not the disappearance of the neighborhood store, but that the limited profitability ultimately leads to the elimination of the stuff that used to be sold in the stores.

Dan Malloy has done something extraordinary, and something nobody else in Connecticut politics has done before him. In his quest to obtain the Democratic Party nomination to run for Governor of Connecticut, the former Stamford Mayor has raised more than $250,000 in over 4,000 small individual donations of $100 or less. That’s quite an accomplishment. Imagine the effort required to raise that number of small donations in a matter of months –the cocktail parties set up by countless hosts across the state, crisscrossing the state to attend those events, the paperwork required to track each donation; it’s mind boggling.

What Malloy has done is an embodiment of the “public financing” system of reforms enacted in 2005 but now in effect for the first time in Connecticut statewide elections. The system was enacted in as a response to the numerous political scandals in Connecticut that involved many high level officials and resulted in Governor John Rowland going to federal prison.

As part of this “Citizen’s Election Program,” as it is officially titled, Malloy will now have up to $8.5 million to spend in the 23 weeks of the campaign that begin the day after the Democratic State Convention, which will be held this weekend in Hartford.

The courts have struggled with how to regulate money in politics for many years. It’s a balancing act. Appellate judges are always balancing–weighing– one right against another.  Such a balancing act has been going on in American courts with the regulation of money in politics; it has always been on a collision course with the free speech guarantees afforded Americans by the First Amendment.

It was an inevitable showdown, when Congress in 1974 strengthened the Federal Elections Campaign Act, enacting campaign contribution limits as a response to the Nixon-era Watergate scandals of the 1970’s.  Last year’s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizen’s United vs. F.E.C., therefore, was not a surprise, but a continuation of the review of free speech rights of individuals and corporations which started in 1976 in the case of Buckley vs. Valeo.  The court in that case ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, and that candidates can give unlimited amounts of money to their own campaigns. A reform system was created as a result of Buckley whereby campaign spending limits were constitutional and allowed, as long as some form of public financing mechanism is in place, with strict contribution limits as well. The spending limits, however, only apply to the candidates who voluntarily opt to accept the public money. The system cannot be mandatory under Buckley and the cases that followed it, because if it were mandatory it would be an unconstitutional infringement on free speech, according to the Court.

From 1981 to 1983, as Executive Director of Common Cause/NY, I lobbied hard for this type of reform in New York State elections.

Connecticut adopted the public financing system of reforms for both statewide and legislative elections, and the system is now underway statewide races; several candidates who have access to personal wealth, like Democratic candidate Ned Lamont or Republican candidate Tom Foley, have chosen not to participate in the system and do not have to abide by the spending limits.

For those who have access to wealthy donors who can write big checks, the temptation not to volunteer for the populist style reform system is great. For those who have personal wealth and can just fund the campaign themselves, the temptation is even greater. In doing so, however, they will not be able to make the claims that Malloy can make, that he has chosen a “clean” method of financing his campaign, has freed up his time to concentrate on the issues that are important to voters, and has done something to help reign in skyrocketing campaign costs.

What Malloy has done has earned him considerable bragging rights: his campaign has the appearance of being one supported by and for the people, and lots of them, and in politics that’s saying a lot.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder and The Obama Administration were presented with a choice. They could have chosen to submit Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the four other alleged 9/11 terrorists to face prosecution either in federal court by federal prosecutors before a federal judge conducted under federal law and procedure, or in the alternative, could have had them face a trial before a military tribunal.

Either decision would have been legally justifiable.

It would have been justifiable to try them in a military tribunal because, as the grieving family members of the 9/11 victims rightly point out, Mohammed, Al Quaida and radical Islam have declared war against the United States. The 9/11 attacks were an intentional expression of a wartime agenda, and Mohammed was a key general in that war. The Americans murdered on 9/11 were innocent victims of an assault on the United States and the American way of life.

The murders, however, were also a violation of federal law, the crimes were committed here on our soil in New York City and not abroad. Mohammed, not an American citizen, is classified in international law as an “unlawful combatant,” not a prisoner of war (POW). Under the Geneva Convention of 1949, a person is a POW if they: (a) are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) carry arms openly; and (d) conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Since Mohammed is clearly not a POW but a foreigner alleged to have plotted a horrific and barbaric mass murder on our soil, kidnapping Americans and murdering them with American civilian airline jets, either system of prosecution is justifiable. Neither system will provide true justice for this rogue act of barbarism. As with all horrific crimes that shock our sense of a civilized human existence, any procedures with rules and decorum will feel out of place and elevate Mohammed to a level he seemingly does not deserve.

So why do it?

A civilian trial in a United States District Court will be held to an even higher level of decorum than a military tribunal. The rules of evidence in federal court are stricter than in a military tribunal. The following evidence is allowed in military tribunals but will not be allowed in a federal civilian trial: coerced testimony, hearsay testimony, and written statements not subject to cross-examination. Federal judges and prosecutors have, since 1993, accumulated an impressive record of trying and prosecuting hundreds of suspected terrorists. They prosecuted in a federal court in New York Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, Omar Adbel Rahman,  the “blind sheik,” and a federal court in Virginia put on trial Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker.”

At this time in history the United States needs to further repair an image tarnished during eight years of the Bush Administration. That administration and the manner it treated military prisoners gave minimal rights to the accused, allowed torture and had to be reined in a number of times by the Supreme Court, a court known to be otherwise conservative when it comes to the rights of the accused. In one such strong rebuke, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush, “the laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law.”

Mohammed would like nothing more than for us to summarily execute him; he craves for us to imitate his barbarism. He wants us to do that so that he and his fellow radicals can hold us up as international oppressors. The appropriate way for us to defy him is to make no apologies, to hold our heads up high and conduct the most fair, dignified proceeding possible. Not because we are weak, but because we are strong. And in acting with elevated rules of procedure and decorum, and conducting an open and public trial in a federal courtroom in New York we will demonstrate to the world, and history shall record, that we are a nation where the overriding principles are the rule of law, of fairness and a dedication to human dignity.

The memory of the victims of 9/11 deserve nothing less.

Can We Blame Oprah for Putting Charla Nash on TV?

Charla Nash appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show on November 11. Nash is the victim of the horrific attack by a 200-pound adult chimpanzee owned by her friend and employer Sandra Herold in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut. Nash deserves a world of credit for the appearance, as it took a tremendous amount of courage for her to appear. The disfiguration to her face is shocking.

Paramedics responding to the February 16, 2009 911 call said they found pieces of Nash’s fingers strewn on the floor and her hands looked as though they had been through a meat grinder. “The monkey had ripped off her entire upper jaw, had ripped off her nose, which as hanging by a thread,” said Dr. Kevin Miller, who treated Nash when she taken to the emergency room. “We found extensive dirt, chimp fur, and chimp teeth implanted in her bone.” Nash is missing both hands, but had a thumb surgically replaced on her left hand. Doctors removed her eyes and grafted a piece of her leg to where her nose used to be.

Nash could have attempted to continue to avoid the spotlight and nobody would blame her. Her every move is followed by cameras as the community gathers for a digital glimpse. Many people, certainly those of us who live in Stamford, were curious to view her injuries. I have to admit feeling embarrassed and shamed, however, for being drawn to watch the interview and I wish I never did. It is quite a spectacle to display this tragedy on national television, regardless of the fact that it has been done with Nash’s permission. It’s like a massive international rubber necking delay on the electronic interstate.

What does it say about a society which insists on marveling at pain and suffering? And that the tragedy happened in the prosperous suburban City of Stamford? That same City that had to rescue a bankrupt center for the arts with trash talking daytime television?

What have we become? Today is not a proud day for broadcasting, for journalism or for Stamford. It’s not a proud day for any of us, me included, who did not have the self discipline to stay away.