“You never let a good crisis go to waste.”……..Rahm Emmanuel

I have to admit a grudging respect for Rahm Emmanuel’s thought processes, even though I think he’s wrong most of the time. When he’s right he’s dead on and that quote from him says it all when it comes to the Sequester. The one time the President should have been taking his advice where he could act immediately he hasn’t done so. For months now the FBI has been warning of budget cuts that could seriously hamper its effectiveness as well as the effectiveness of local law enforcement. All it would take is for the Justice Department to declare “That’s it! It’s over! We’ve gone over budget on Boston and we can’t go any further. As of 4:15 PM April 19, all investigations are hereby closed until further notice.” The President could then declare a national emergency and force congress to repeal sequestration “or else!” While they are at it they should also pass a few background check laws before they go home.

The White House

This is not an original idea. In 1969 George Lucas had the opportunity to make an obscure movie titled THX-1138, starring Robert Duvall based on Lucas’s original story. Set in the future, the story deals with a totalitarian society where drug abuse was NOT taking drugs. By the movie’s end THX 1138 escapes to the real outside world not because he is smarter, faster or more expert in any way, but because the system computers declared that they have gone over budget and that all pursuit must stop. That’s budgetthink alright and unfortunately it’s sequesterthink as well. As my paean to George Orwell I think I’ve created two new words.

Think of it. A known terrorist is now on the loose in the Boston area and he’s known to be armed and dangerous. Where will he strike next? As I switch news channels to see who is coming up with the latest disinformation I think to myself, “Imagine the possibilities.” The problem is that our Attorney General can’t even prosecute a banker properly and our President has yet to exhibit real executive leadership, so this scenario will have to remain a figment of my imagination.

On the other hand, if he sequestered the congress during a national emergency they might also pass his budget including Social Security chained CPI and Medicare cuts, just for spite. Be afraid either of his actions or his inactions. Either way we’re screwed

“Imagination is more valuable than knowledge”…….Albert Einstein

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Ship’s Captain: “Bring her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships”

Bosun:              “What’s that, Captain?”

Ship’s Captain: “MAKE A LEFT! MAKE A LEFT!

U-Boat Captain “Hmmm…He brought her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships.”

1^st mate:            “ Vas, Herr Hauptmann?”

U-Boat Captain: “HE MADE A LEFT! HE MADE A LEFT!”

With apologies to Charlie Manna’s War at Sea from his best-selling comedy album Manna Overboard.

The late Charlie Manna’s War at Sea routine was a send up of the classic WWII movie, The Enemy Below in which an American Destroyer captain and a German U-Boat captain play a cat and mouse game with each other, anticipating each other’s every move and countering each other’s offensives. It was a taut, tense drama with a not fully satisfying ending. Manna’s routine was very funny, but nothing is funny about the newest threat to our country which is traveling well below our radar, and we only know about it because of a few well isolated pings on our Sonar. We everyday Americans are at sea cruising while the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), running as silently as possible, has us in its periscope sights and the eleven or twelve member wolf pack is ready to draw blood.

To fully understand what’s happening we have to go back about twenty years ago to the early 1990’s when the Bush 41 administration had finalized NAFTA talks and was trying to “fast track” the agreement into action. NAFTA was a free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada which was supposed to promote more and better trade between the three countries as well as open up more jobs. Most of us don’t read these things because they are voluminous beyond our attention spans and filled with words beyond our comprehension, but rest assured that giant corporations have more to do with the formation of these agreements than governments do and these corporations will do anything they can to create and protect their perceived future profits under these FTA agreements. We the people don’t really matter to them. Bush 41 wasn’t able to fast track the agreement before time ran out and Bill Clinton came into office. Clinton, the ultimate corporate Democrat had to renegotiate the agreement to assure some worker protections, which ultimately led to its passage. Clinton signed the document on Jan. 1, 1994. Clinton was quoted as saying. “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time”

So did Prohibition, at the time. The trouble is that when you research these things from other that a human nature perspective Murphy’s Law kicks in full force and something bad is bound to happen. In the almost twenty years since the enactment of NAFTA American jobs have yet to make any kind of impact, Mexico’s farm communities have been devastated and Canada isn’t so happy with it either. The only people it has benefitted are the actual corporations who are doing the trading. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Buried somewhere in these agreements are regulations that supersede actual laws of the countries involved. In other words if something a corporate entity does is considered to be illegal by a country or a state it can be overruled by the terms of the agreement. The agreement allows for NAFTA to pick its own arbiters, usually corporate lawyers to determine the outcome, even over and above a Supreme Court ruling. One case in point is The Canadian Parliament banning the use of MMT, a gasoline additive in 1997. Ethyl Corp., based in Virginia, notified the government of Canada of its intent to sue under NAFTA’s Investment chapter. Ridiculous, right? Nope! The Corporate lawyer NAFTA panel rejected Canada’s argument and a year later Canada was compelled to reverse its decision on MMT and to add insult to injury Canada also had to pay out $13 million in fines and corporate profit losses. In 2012 Canada was again in the gunsights of the Eli Lilly Company because of Canada’s restrictions on granting medical patents to Lilly. Lilly filed for $100million in  the NAFTA investor court. So far, over $365,000,000 has been paid out on submitted claims and there are 19 other actions under review worth 14 billion dollars. The worst part of this is that this has nothing to do with trade issues; this has to do with environmental and public health issues.

I remember discussing NAFTA with my son’s friend, Morgan who was an AFL-CIO organizer in South Florida back in the mid Nineties. At the time I was not against NAFTA because I believed that Clinton was sincere about how NAFTA would work. Morgan took the opposite view and said that it’s the worst thing that could happen to American labor. I pointed out the worker protection clauses that Clinton had inserted, and Morgan just said “that’s just never going to happen. It’s a ruse.” As it turns out Morgan was right. NAFTA is an unmitigated disaster unless you are the corporations doing the business, and there’s nothing that our government can or will do about it.

“If at first you don’t succeed”

So, what do you do when you see NAFTA is not working out? That’s easy. You expand it to include Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic making it more dangerous that before, after all, why shouldn’t some of our Latin American and Caribbean friends feel our pain as well. This was the work of the neocons in 2005 in the Bush 43 administration. There was a lot of contention in congress over CAFTA and it was only ratified by one vote in the House of Representatives. Again workers lost protection and American jobs were sent overseas. Environmental and health concerns were overlooked and the corporations made a fortune. Combining that with the Bush Tax Cuts we were screwed again.

“Try, try again.”

Not satisfied with enriching their corporate friends and damaging the average taxpayer more than ever, the Bush 43 people entered into talks to create a Pacific Basin partnership originally encompassing nine countries, including The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The US entered the negotiations in March of 2008 which places it during the Bush 43 administration. Since that time other countries have expressed interest including Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, The Philippines, Japan, Colombia, Laos and Costa Rica. The US is aggressively pushing South Korea to join. Since the original meeting back in 2004 there have been 16 rounds of talks, the last one taking place in Singapore back in March 4-16^th of this year. A seventeenth round is scheduled from May 15-24 in Lima, Peru.

Having experienced the difficulties in both NAFTA and CAFTA the US participation in these talks has gone covert. No one talks about it. There is almost a 100% blackout of information in the corporately controlled news media, and what information is available has been gotten through leaks and whistleblowers, and you know what happens with whistleblowers. There is no transparency in these negotiations and from what we can ascertain only 2 chapters of the agreement actually have something to do with trade itself. Much of it has to do with intellectual property, and a lot of it has to do with circumventing labor, environmental and public health issues. What we do know is that the Obama Administration has embraced the TPP and is doing what it can to fast track it. On April 15, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Japan and gave a speech at Tokyo Tech waxing eloquently about the advantages of the TPP. Activist Cherie Faircloth, a contributor to WONO actually called the White House and got through to Robert Spitzer, Senior Trade Policy Advisor with the USDA. In her conversation with Spitzer, he admitted that there were too few corporate agricultural advisors in Florida and he was looking for more. Her article appeared on Feb. 26, 2013.

Back in Early March a group of activists attended an anti TPP rally in the Ybor city section of Tampa. You can find the links to the videos Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The message is pretty clear. We’re in Submarine Alley and all those torpedoes are set to fire on us. Since we know about it we can do something about it. Even though many politicians will deny that they have knowledge of it there are some who are aware of it including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Action needs to be taken in the congress to not allow the fast track and to ultimately defeat the US participation in the TPP. You can get more involved by researching the TPP and going to Public Citizen. Org. Maybe we can avoid the torpedoes. Just watch out for the minefields.

*“I got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere, and here’s a guy who says if the weather’s clear….”

Wow! To hear all the judicial candidates speak at all of the events they are invited to one would think that they are all the embodiment of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Learned Hand and Benjamin Cardozo combined, even the ones who are running for basically what is Traffic Court. Frankly, it’s demeaning and embarrassing to see the incumbents have to pander for votes from various civic groups, and its equally bad form for them to be opposed. There should be a better system in place, but that’s for another time and another place and definitely another column.

Unless a judge screws up or is criticized publicly nobody really knows who they are or what their record is. That’s astonishing because judges can affect you and your family more directly than most other elected officials including the President, yet they are the stealth candidates that continually run under the radar. In circuit court races this is really important because very elderly voters in one county can make the difference in retaining judges who deal with youth in another county. Elderly citizens vote-youthful ones don’t. It’s that simple. The Ninth Circuit is a classic example of how the system works. Take a look at the 66 judges currently on the bench and you’ll see very little diversity. A large percentage of them come from the powerful and influential law firms in the area and were initially appointed by one governor or another to fill in a vacancy. They were recommended by selection panels consisting of and vetted by lawyers from these very same law firms. Once in office they rarely lose elections because these same law firms throw tons of money at their campaigns. It is public record but few people bother to check. Over a period of time the bench gets top heavy with corporate litigators, whom through their practices have forgotten the human touch. It’s not apparent until the little businessman or average citizen is up against a Chamber of Commerce member. Guess who is going to lose? The trial attorney who represents the common man has a most difficult time getting equal justice from that kind of judge, even though that particular judge feels that he or she is being fair. It’s a rigged system that needs to be changed.

Now, before we get into the actual handicapping I must admit full disclosure-I am working with a candidate for Ninth Circuit, Group 27. His name is Jose Torroella and of course I am endorsing him. I’ll explain later. I’ve gotten to know almost every candidate and their families over the last six weeks and they are all good people and fine attorneys. They are all people I’d like to have as neighbors, so this is a difficult choice. Right now let’s look at the field in the Ninth Circuit which also covers Osceola County and I’ll handicap the way those tipsters do at the race track:

Group 3.  This is a one horse race. Belvin Perry is the class of the field. Scratch Dan.

Group 7. This is an open seat which is being hotly contested by three good attorneys, Eric DuBois, Leticia (Letty) Marques and Joel Wilson. Any of them will make a fine judge, however, based on the Orlando Sentinel interview Ms. Marques is clearly the leader. The other two still need some more training. Letty Marques by three lengths.

Group 27.  A green incumbent against an experienced trial attorney. Appointed less than two years ago by Charlie Crist, White has come under fire for not protecting battered women properly. Based on his Orlando Sentinel deer-in-the-headlights performance he offered no real explanations. His performance at the Puerto Rican Hob Nob last week offered more evidence that he had no clue to whom he was talking when he tried to equate Mel Martinez with the Puerto Rican Community. Obviously he wasn’t following the redistricting battles. If he weren’t in the Domestic Violence division it might not make a difference, but he is in it and innocent people have suffered and may suffer because of it. Torroella on the other hand knows what it is like on the other side and handles himself with gentle yet passionate wit and humor- something sorely lacking on the bench. Jose Torroella by a nose.

Group 42.  Incumbent Tim Shea has gotten himself into a passel of trouble recently and has been reprimanded by the Florida Supreme Court for acting most unlike a judge. Pedro Malaret, his challenger is still awfully young. It seems here that anyone who claims to be Puerto Rican and doesn’t know the lyrics to The Jet Song from “West Side Story”, or doesn’t even know “West Side Story” still has a lot to learn. Malaret can still learn. Tim Shea won’t even try. Pedro Malaret by a furlong. Disqualify Shea.

Okay, let’s look at the county races. County judges rarely handle anything but misdemeanors, traffic violations and lawsuits involving very little money. It’s probably a good training ground for those who want to advance through the judicial ranks. County court is where the useless trials of Occupy Orlando took place costing the taxpayers time and money. Here are my picks:

Plogstedt v McGinnes-  Antoinette Plogstedt has the experience that Adam McGinnes lacks. Give him a few more years in practice and someday he’ll make a fine judge. Plogstedt by a length.

Cheek v Cameron- Leon Cheek has been on the bench for over 14 years. Most of that time he was an excellent judge, but recently he’s been losing it. His age might have something to do with it. Andrew Cameron has been a practicing attorney for 26 years and brings a fresh perspective and gentle demeanor to the bench. Figuring weight for age its Cameron in a Photo finish. Time for Cheek to retire and be put out to pasture.

*“I tell you Paul Revere, now this is no bum steer, it’s from a handicapper that’s real sincere.”

I’m not psychic. I don’t have ESP. These are my picks on who should win, not who is going to win. It’s up to you dear reader to accomplish that.

Next Part Two- the Countywide Races.

* Excerpts from “Fugue For Tinhorns” from “Guys and Dolls” by Frank Loesser