Okay, this is probably a direct violation of KOS etiquette (i have no idea), but I wrote this diary on the travesty of the ongoing so-called "baseball steriod hearings" yesterday and it died due to, I'm generously gunna say, a combination of "kos server problems" and a dearth of news yesterday that produced a shitload of valuable diaries.
plas, i dint rite in a dawgs voiss. will blawg fer fud.
So since I think it's pretty decent, and the hearings are tomorrow, so there's still time to make a quick call and tell these people to stop wasting our time and abusing their power and call off this fiasco, I'm resubmitting. (Plus, I saw that Jon Stewart led with the baseball issue on Monday and it was hilarious.)
So troll me if you must, but without further adieu, my "baseball diaries."
So it has come to this: The U.S. House of Representatives threatens gainfully employed U.S. citizens with
jail time if they choose not to show up for a hearing that serves no purpose and is a colossal waste of taxpayer's money:
House lawmakers ... said they have the votes to hold several current and former major-league players and two top baseball officials in contempt of Congress -- which could lead to fines or prison time -- if they refuse to appear at a hearing this week.
Ain't that America?
Here's one for ya: How is it that Rafael Palmeiro - 40-year-old major league baseball player, husband, father of two, host of the "Raffy Readers" reading program, spokesman for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation's Walk to Cure program, four-time All-Star, unabashed Viagra pitchman, and a player who, by virtually ALL accounts, has been a stand up citizen in his profession throughout his 19-year career - ends up on a witness list for a government hearing on steriod abuse in baseball?
I'll save you the suspense.
It's because Palmeiro's name appears in a book written by a convicted felon, a serial liar, and a washed-up steriod abuser who was facing massive mounting debt and was on the verge of going broke, so he wrote a "tell-all" book about his life and times as a steriod-enhanced baseball blowhard.
Jose Canseco: The Government's STAR witness.
In fact, asked to explain why Congress is turning its attention to steroid use now, several aides said it was largely because of the publication of Jose Canseco's book "Juiced," a sensational account of the use of performance-enhancing drugs by major league players, himself included. Canseco has agreed to testify before the House committee. Asked what he hopes to gain from Thursday's hearing, Waxman said his aim was to paint a complete portrait of a steroid problem that has been trickling into the public consciousness for years.
Wooo boy. Good to see the boys over there at Committee of Government Reform got their priorities in order. I'd sure HATE to see them take up this story. I mean why should the fucking Committee of Government fucking Reform care about "reforming" a government that hires a company that overcharges SAID Government by $109 million in one of its 10 ongoing projects, and then said government tried to conceal audits that discovered the overcharges? (All right, that's a diary for another time. Focus man. Focus)
The baseball hearings are wrong on so many levels that this issue alone deserves a full accounting, which thus far at kos we haven't done. Some unrecommended diaries on the issue are here and here and the best one is here.
There also is a provocative column written on one of the more serious implications of this undertaking - and it's direct links to Congressional abuses of power during the 1950s - called Neo-McCarthyism Slugs Major League Baseball by a man named Dave Zirin. I encourage you to read it and I'll be quoting it at length here.
So why does this matter? Why, bigskiphazzy, should we even give a shit about baseball and steriods and Congress. As one kossack put it in a off-hand reference I made to writing this diary a day or so back:
IMHO every minute that the repub-dominated congress spends on something other than bankrupting the nation, fucking up bankruptcy laws, or starting morally bankrupt wars is just fine by me.
Okay, fair play. But, really, when Tom Davis and his cohorts are out grandstanding on the taxpayer's dime, what they're NOT doing is their fucking jobs. And make no mistake: this is nothing more than pure unadulterated grandstanding, and, unfortunately in this case, it's bi-partisian grandstanding, which makes it even worse.
Here then, without further adieu, are the Congressional bullshit baseball chronicles:
1.) WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY
(Quick user note: Any time someone says they are doing something "for the kids" you can rest assured that what they're really doing is shoving manufactured moral outrage down your throat.)
In this case, our Congressional leaders want the country to know that they are making damn sure that our multi-billion dollar industry gladiators are NOT engaging in any practices that might encourage the "youth" of America to follow suit. And the thing is, we already dealt with Government outrage over this issue, led by PR whore John McCain taking the lead on this "issue" a year ago.
In the wake of the BALCO steriod scandal, baseball instituted a drug policy, which only went into effect last year. So now Congress, conjuring up all their moral outrage in the wake of Canseco's tell-all, has decided that they want to get in on the act ... even though baseball has ADDRESSED the issue.
Here's McCain, the veritable Government point man on the steriod issue, on these hearings:
Late last week, McCain expressed his disapproval of the pending hearings in the other chamber. "The appropriate thing to do now is to let baseball's program run its course," McCain said in an interview on ESPN radio last Thursday.
McCain said he would not have held a Senate hearing, saying, "There's no point in it."
Reasonable people can argue about the merits of baseball's drug policy, but is it REALLY Tom Davis and Henry Waxman's place to "investigate" the problem and how it "impacts" the youth, before the new plan has been enacted?
There seems to be only a single voice of reason on the CMR, Rep Paul Kanjorski, D-PA:
"To spend our time calling seven baseball players -- maybe I've missed something, but is this the most important issue in the United States today?" Kanjorski told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. "It doesn't warrant even a committee hearing, no less the issuing of subpoenas."
2.) UTTER HYPOCRISY (BIG SURPRISE)
A friend of mine sees this issue very clearly and thinks we can dispense of this whole charade in five minutes. The first witness should stand up and make the following opening remark:
Before we begin, distinguished committee members, I have one simple question for you all: Please state, for the record, the drug testing policy of the United States Congress?
chirp
Thank you. Goodbye.
Seriously, Congress is concerned about the legitimacy of the drug testing program of an ENTERTAINMENT industry, how about implementing one of their own? I'm serious. I'm far more concerned about the OxyContin levels in Hot Tub Tom's bloodstream, than I am worried about whether or not Sammy Sosa gained 20 extra pounds of muscle so he could hit a fucking baseball 500 feet.
3.)NEXT STOP: THE COMIC BOOK HEARINGS
There are serious privacy issues that are being called into question with these hearings. Once you dismiss the notion that there is anything substantive to come of this, you have to look at what they're really after. I mean the STATED reason by Davis and Waxman is a complete bullshit line:
Davis and Waxman contend that their purpose in holding the baseball hearing is not to gain publicity or to embarrass players or baseball. They say their goal is to expose how the pros' use of illegal drugs encourages college and high school athletes to use drugs that can seriously threaten their health.
Say what? The goal is to "expose" how this drug use encourages our youth to use these drugs? Really? So I suspect the witness list will include a myriad of social scientists, and presumably, high school and college coaches, detailing how Jose Canseco's big muscles "encouraged" their youths to go down the path of destruction, right? Uhhhh, no.
Seven players, the commissioner of baseball, and a union rep. There's your witness list. Full stop.
But this in NO way is meant to embarrass anyone.
Palmeiro's lawyers beg to differ:
"By inviting and then compelling Mr. Palmeiro's attendance at these hearings to 'clear his name' -- as the invitation put it -- you have put Mr. Palmeiro under a far darker cloud of suspicion than Canseco's book alone could have done," wrote the lawyers.
Here's the rub: Palmeiro, smeared by an opportunistic serial liar, now needs to go deny something he's NEVER been suspected of, until said liar wrote his book, and in the meantime, he'll undoubtedly be asked to "cough up" any names of any players he may have known of who did steriods.
Paging Mr. McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy, White courtesty phone.
Here's some extended exerpts from our man, Dave Zirin:
Just as Joe McCarthy and his thugs had no moral authority to fume about "protecting democracy," neither do these 21st Century witch-hunters have the credibility to speak to us about drugs, children or the Nation's health. If they cared so much about "public health dangers" this committee should hold hearings about why the United States has such a miserable health care system with 45 million uninsured and literally thousands more losing their insurance every day. If they cared so much about children, this committee would be issuing subpoenas to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney about why their 2006 budget eliminates 48 educational programs, or cuts 670,000 kids from food stamps. If they cared so much about drug abuse, this committee would be raising a stir about the treatment programs currently on the budget-chopping block.
(Emphasis mine.)
Ja huh. He goes on:
Perhaps some will say that these hearings bear no resemblance to the horror that was McCarthy's 1950's; that Jason Giambi, even accounting for the stew of drugs he's ingested, bears no resemblance to Ethel Rosenberg. But this would be wrong. While this is certainly not HUAC in terms of its destructive reach, it should give us all pause when the government arbitrarily picks on seven athlete-employees--whose suspicion was only roused because Canseco, in an effort to avoid tax-court, wrote a best-selling book naming their names. None of the seven have been formally accused or charged with anything or by any authoritative body--save the proudly manufactured body of Canseco himself. That's why anyone who opposes the unchecked power of the federal government, who cares about civil liberties and rights in the work place, should oppose these hearings. We can't compare this witch-hunt to the more devastating ones in the 50s but it is part of a trend of attacks on civil liberties, academic freedom, and anyone who dares buck against the bipartisan party line. In a time when students are being investigated for singing Bob Dylan and wearing the wrong t-shirts, and Gitmo is just a stone's throw away, such hearings help create an atmosphere where the bipartisan pit bull in Washington feels it can get away with more, and more, and more. The time has come for all of us to collectively ask the question of Congress that Joseph Welch asked of McCarthy five decades ago: "How have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last have you left no sense of decency?" Only this time--at long last--we should press for an answer.
Amen, brother.
Otherwise, the next stop is the comic book hearings of 1954, which led to the industry adopting a "code" of conduct that still is in effect today. Here's a couple of the adopted code rules:
(3) Policemen, judges, Government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
(6) In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
Maybe if the Committee of Government Reform actually did its JOB, occaisionally criminals like L. Paul Bremer would be punished when they lost $9 billion dollars. I'm not holding my breath.
The hearings are Thursday, maybe drop Congressman Davis and Congressman Waxman a line and tell them to stop wasting our fucking time, stop abusing their fucking authority and stop tearing down fucking democracy.
Davis and the CGR contact information:
By Phone:
(202) 225-5074
By Fax:
(202) 225-3974
The minority office online form:
http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/contact.asp