To the editor:
Kimberly Morin's letter ("Time for fast action on the congressional 'Czar Act'," The Times, July 30) is so riddled with exaggerations and false representations as to be laughable — if she were not deadly serious in seeking to mislead Cape Ann residents on the nature of President Obama's administration.
Morin argues that Obama is appointing numerous unaccountable "czars" to positions of considerable power over the rest of us — so many, she says, that at this rate we will have 544 in place if the president lasts two terms. Cute math, but an absurd formulation, as she and the obstructionist Republican congressional rep she quotes, Jack Kingston (Georgia), well know.
Isn't this the period in any president's term of office when large numbers of people are appointed to old and new positions? To extrapolate a rate from this and extend it over eight years is pure dishonesty, meant to panic us. But that is only the beginning, though it is indicative of the level of integrity in the argument.
The people she and Kingston cite are not "czars" in any meaningful sense of the word. (And to compare them to czarist Russia, as she does, is plain silly, as well as being outrageously inflammatory.) None of those she mentions have decision-making authority or control over large chunks of the budget. They are merely presidential advisors.
First, let's be clear: Appointing advisors who have a president's ear but lack the power to implement policy or spend money is not new with this administration. Their jobs are to develop policy agendas that other elected or Senate-confirmed officials implement. In short, they think and they talk. Period. This is not a bad thing.
But let's take a closer look at the snide characterizations she gives some of these advisors to put us on edge.
Morin describes former EPA administrator and businesswoman Carol Browner, now an advisor to Obama on climate change, as a "socialist." Never mind that the National Mother's Day Committee designated her the "mother of the year" in 1997 near the end of her last Senate-confirmed stint in the White House. She once termed the Bush years "the worst environmental administration ever," and she now favors strong action to curb global warming. If that makes her a socialist, she has a lot of company in this town.
Morin then calls former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, now an Obama advisor on urban affairs, a "fellow ACORN organizer," which she clearly intends as a double smear aimed at both Obama and Carron. Neither was ever an ACORN organizer. Each was at one time in their political careers concerned with improved service delivery to poor urban dwellers, which apparently is an unforgivable political sin.
Never mind that in 2006 the prestigious bipartisan Aspen Institute cited Carrion as "among the very best, brightest, and most promising members of America's emerging political leadership." Or that he headed the nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), with 6,000 members from across the country representing both major political parties. He worries about the urban poor, which I gather is supposed to worry us. It doesn't.
And she implies that Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs nominee Cass Sustein — a prolific writer and idiosyncratic libertarian who teaches constitutional, administrative, and environmental law and objects to "judicial activism" as undemocratic — is a nut case because he also supports animal rights. For what it's worth, he supported several of the Bush administration's judicial nominees, too. (Note that his post demands Senate confirmation and, like the others mentioned above, lacks significant budgetary authority.)
But his nomination has been blocked by Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a champion of unchecked military spending who managed six deferments for himself during the Vietnam War — and who is perhaps best-known for suggesting in his home state in 2001 that homeland security would be improved by having local authorities "arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line."
What is new in all this is not that we are getting a fresh crop of presidential advisors — though many of them actually have experience in the areas to which they are appointed, which is a novelty of sorts. Rather, it is the smoke-and-mirrors nonsense right-wing commentators like Fox News commentator Glenn Beck are throwing around and that Kimberly Morin enthusiastically repeats in order to incite people against our sitting government by leading us to think there is a secret government operating behind the scenes that threatens our liberties.
Folks, this is the stuff of far-right fringies who, a decade ago, warned against an imminent assault by United Nations forces arriving in black helicopters. And it is this sort of fear-mongering that is the true threat to our lives and liberties.
We need to squelch it before it goes any more viral than it already has — and before it creates a political environment like that in the late 1960s when extremists of both the right and the left, fueled by such irresponsible trash-talking, took the law in their own hands.
Yes, Ms. Morin has a right to her outlook. But so, too, do the rest of us — and we cannot much longer stay silent as such views are left to dominate the media because their purveyors shout the loudest.
Dan Connell
East Main Street, Gloucester
