Over a year ago reporter/columnist Peter Byrne wrote a series of investigative columns about how Diane Feinstein's husband benefitted financially (think billion$) from knowledge Senator Feinstein was privy to in her role on the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. The articles, which appeared in the northern California alternative newspaper, The Bohemian, are available at bohemian.com -- titled Senator Warbucks (Jan. 24, 2007), Daddy Kleinbucks (Jan. 31, 2007), Blum Rap (Feb. 28, 2007), Feinstein Resigns (March 14, 2007), DiFi Backlash (Aug. 8-14, 2007).
After reading these articles, I couldn't help brooding over questions about Feinstein's can of worms. (Especially after learning that The Nation reneged on its agreement to pick up Byrne's article.) The questions won't go away:
o Why was Senator Feinstein never under review for unethical behavior by her Senate peers?
o Was a deal struck? -- Did Feinstein get to keep her Senate seat as long as the Dems never instituted a full WAR PROFITEERING investigation into the Bush Desert Incursions years?
Senator Feinstein has long been gifted at appearing to be a Dem -- like when she asks pointed questions at Senate hearings that get press/tv mention -- but then she inevitably votes for the Patriot Act, supports legislation that destroys the Bill of Rights, votes to affirm Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court, and flies with Bush on Air Force One and says how good the scrambled eggs are. She's what might be called -- in military appropriations terms I guess -- a STEALTH Republican. Like a "stealth" device we taxpayers have paid for, Senator Feinstein's isn't very stealthy either once you start noticing the pattern.
I will take a leap here now away from the facts of Byrne's outstanding reporting so much in line with the tradition of muckraking journalism started a century ago.
I leap because my own weird psychology motivates me to question what seems like a dissonant juxtaposition of Senators Obama, Clinton and Feinstein.
So many folks are hyped for Obama Change, and have been eager for a reconciliation between the two Dem primary frontrunners. But the fact that Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had their peace pipe meeting at Diane Feinstein's abode, does not put me at ease. Nope, it swings me into classification mode, like "birds of a feather flock together". Or is it 'corporatists and war profiteers scratch each others' backs'?
And then I read that Wednesday night Senator Obama had a BIG FUNDRAISER dinner in New York City at $28,500 a plate. (Was that a typo?! $28,500 a plate?!) That sounds a lot different than the millions of Americans who have given small donations and paid Obama's campaign bills all through this lonnngg primary. So, who will Obama be beholding to -- the guy in Youngstown who sent him $35 or the fatcat he dined with to the tune of $28,500 a plate the other night? Which will be able to phone Washington and at the least get to talk with an Obama aide of some sort.
I want change. Not lip service; not even surrogate lip service from the DNC about an end to donations from PACs and lobbyists. Should I be feeling self-conscious about being laughed at by the corporate interests who will still get access while all the little people who paid the campaign bills are just a faceless mass? Should I worry about being called a 'sucker' by the lobbyists and corporations who have vested interests in seeing imperialist incursions continued, or who still want to build that nuke power plant in my community despite the residents wanting green energy, or corporations who don't want a rollback on media consolidation 'freedoms'?
Yeah, I want change. But how does it elbow its way into this crowd?