It is not the wind

It is not the wind.

The house shudders. A cold front is moving across the Midwest. Tiny snow crystals blown by high winds have returned. I hear a wail as it comes down the street, the cold drafts seeping through the walls.

But it is not the wind that I hear and it is not the cold that chills me and frightens me.

It is not the wind that woke me. What I hear is the wail of a thousand children, a thousand thousand children and their parents for whom the safety net has just been removed, from whom hope has just been stolen

I am up in the middle of the night, shaking and in tears at what I fear is the end of the most promising presidency since my childhood. How sad that it seems that it was only our projection on the blank slate of Barack Obama – large shadows of finger puppets projected by a flashlight on a back yard sheet

The President has written himself into a straight jacket from which, I fear he will not be able to get free. His is not Houdini. How can he start a desperately needed jobs program and cut domestic spending? How can he pass the most needed health care reform without initial increases in costs even if they might ultimately result in savings? How can the economy be restored without stimulating small business and entrepreneurs? How can families survive without extensions of unemployment insurance, and food stamps and job training and . . . and . . .

We have waited a year for bold action. We should have known better. Bold action is more than rhetoric.

When I saw the headline in my email Monday night, “President Obama Rather Be Really Good One Term President – ABC News,” I knew another shoe would drop. It reminded me of all the Presidents who have boasted of doing the hard thing when it would have been easier to do what was popular – In each case they were doing what they thought would be popular instead of the right thing.

I pray that I am wrong, that it was only a nightmare and in the morning I will find I imagined it all or that somehow I am missing something and that Wednesday night he will make sense of it all and soar again.

But I fear it is not just the wind that keeps me awake tonight.

Closing the Circle

On New Years Eve, I will retire from the Labor Department after nearly 31 years in the Office of the Solicitor. My interest in workers’ rights began in my childhood as I heard stories of workers compensation cases my father litigated in the 1930s and 40s. He told stories of meat packers with frozen fingers and other such tales but the most legendary was the Case of the Living Dead Women, the story of the radium dial painters of Ottawa, Illinois. The dramatic story (which has now been turned into a wonderful play, These Shining Lives) is captured in a website I have created from hundreds of original newspaper reports on this groundbreaking litigation, establishing the right of workers to seek relief years after the onset of illnesses of which they were not aware. The website is at http://lgrossman.com/pics/radium/. There is also a new novel, Radium Halos, by Shelley Stout which explores the plight of the radium girls and goes beyond it.

It was a winding trail from my father’s death when I was an adolescent, through ten years of teaching in Chicago’s inner city and a few months with an insurance defense law firm, but then a few months before my daughter was born in 1979, I was hired by the Chicago Office of the Solicitor in the waning months of the Carter administration. (An especially timely reminder this week is that the FEHB did not consider my wife’s pregnancy a pre-existing condition and in effect, as I have often joked, I joined Labor in time to pay for the labor.)

It has been my privilege to work in a field that has allowed me to follow in my father’s footsteps, not only as a lawyer but in the field of workers rights. There have been a few dramatic moments and many contrasts, such as the day I picked up a check for more than six million dollars, resolving an early ERISA case involving mob related healthcare and pension plans. On the same day I found in the mail a $300 check resolving a MSPA case (or perhaps it was still FLCRA).

Every lawyer, if he or she is lucky enough, may have the opportunity to place one brick in the wall of justice. For me it was the Lauritzen case in the mid 80s, establishing that migrant workers were employees, not independent contractors. I am especially grateful to the latitude given me by my office to work not only with Wage and Hour in both Wisconsin and Texas, but also Legal Action of Wisconsin and Texas Rural Legal Aid, in litigating this Fair Labor Standards Act, which also included Child Labor issues. I also must thank Paula Coleman, now retired from the FLS division, for being willing to work so closely with a young staff attorney from Chicago on the appeal to the Seventh Circuit.

Over the years I have been able to work in almost every area litigated by the SOL, from MSPA to MSHA, from OFCCP to OSHA. I am especially proud of some of the work with regard to union democracy under the LMRDA. In the right hands, enforcing the right of union members to fair elections is, I strongly believe, a pro-union activity.

I have been privileged to work with wonderful investigators and management from so many agencies, Wage and Hour, EBSA, OSHA, OFCCP. I have come to recognize the dedication and sometimes zeal on the front lines and the role lawyers can take in harnessing that energy in ways that lead to effective enforcement.

When I came to this office it was still under the leadership of one of the pioneers in our field, Herman Grant, who was Regional Attorney before there were regional solicitors. Carin Clauss was the Solicitor of Labor. She continued the fight in amicus briefs filed when administrations changed and began to reverse positions carefully developed by the pioneers in this Department. The values they instilled informed my view of the role of this Agency. The lawyers of the Chicago Office continue in that tradition.

Praise where praise is overdue: Obama on Israel

Those who follow this blog may be forgiven if they were under the impression that I am hostile to President Obama but they would be mistaken. Barack Obama was the first candidate for president for whom I ever voted with enthusiasm. If I have been critical here it is because I expect much and there are issues on which his positions or actions have been troubling.
But there is one area where he deserves special commendation and he isn’t getting enough — his policies toward Israel and Palestine.

I am a strong supporter of Israel and not that many years ago considered moving there, but ever since Nixon I have been aware of a strange phenomenon. Candidates who are touted as “good for Israel” usually aren’t. Such candidates usually encourage Israel’s worst tendencies. I won’t pretend the issues are easy but the American policy for many years of supporting (or at least turning a blind or winking eye toward) Israel’s expansion of the settlements has done Israel much harm. Resolutions of the conflicts that would have been merely difficult years ago have been greatly complicated by Israel’s constant expansion into the West Bank and around Jerusalem. It may be a form of tough love and it may be almost too late but Obama’s clear position on settlement policy is a beath of fresh air after years of stagnation. An interesting recent article on the subject can be found in Thursday’s piece by M.J. Rosenberg in the Israel Policy Forum.

So, thank you President Obama. Perhaps our children will be able to see the day when two states live in peace side by side as a result of your courage (and a lot of hard work and risk on behalf of both Israelis, Palestinians and their neighbors).

Tarnished Medal of Freedom.

I know that Sandra Day O’ Connor has many accomplishments and I am sure that other presidents have given the Medal of Freedom to unworthy recipients but there is a special ring of hell reserved for the cabal that engineered the coup d’état that installed George W. Bush. O’Connor was one of the gang of five who gave the world eight years of horror and destroyed the reputation of this country and its role as a leader in integrity and human rights.

Unitasking in a Multitasking World

In an essay entitled,How Living as a Unitasker Nearly Led Me to Ruin in a Multitasking World, I wrote,
In a world that comes to depend more and more on multitasking, some of us are really born unitaskers. Are we doomed to sit on the sidelines or will we someday be able to listen to music and do homework at the same time?
See the complete essay at Associated Content.

Only now can we call it futile

Imagine, if you will, a gray-haired petty bureaucrat
Walking in a steady gray rain
Black umbrella in his right hand,
Rigid, upright.
In his left a black briefcase
Which contains the book he has just finished reading.

He walks slowly, matching the rain,
The angle of the umbrella and his posture
and the color of the sky and the angle of the rain
Match the upright Miesian columns
Of the government buildings clustered there.

The last pages of the book haunt. It ends
as Hannah Arendt leaves Germany by train at last
The same month his mother left by boat.

Each alone. Fifty thousand Jews left Germany that year.
Each alone.
Each leaving thousands behind who could or would not see.

Two centuries earlier an age of Enlightenment had begun there.
Now who is enlightened?
What is the lesson?

The book is called “The Pity of It All.” But it is misnamed.
It is full of hope and irony as well.
Only now can we call it futile.
We think we are different today.
Or are all hope and enlightenment doomed.
How are we to know whether we too are fools, he wonders.
Walking slowly in the rain, his umbrella upright
Amid the Federal columns.

Tiptoing around the edges of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is not humane

Tiptoing around the edges and tinkering with the details just won’t cut it any more. Yesterday Defense Secretary Robert Gates is reported to have said, the military might not have to expel someone whose sexual orientation was revealed by a third party out of vindictiveness or suspect motives. As an example he suggested that someone who was “jilted” by the gay service member might not be discharged.

“That’s the kind of thing we’re looking at to see if there’s at least a more humane way to apply the law until the law gets changed,” Gates said, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

Nonsense… Can you imagine the hearing? What would the evidence be? How is this human?. What difference does it make how the information is revealed?

The time has come to permit our military to be open about who they are. “Don’t ask” is a good idea – the answer is TMI. But not asking has to be coupled with a No Consequences policy no matter the source of the disclosure. Anything less is inhumane and continues the second class citizenship of gays in the military.

U.S. May Permit 9/11 Guilty Pleas in Capital Cases

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report that the Obama administration is internally circulating a proposal that could allow some terrorism suspects at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to enter guilty pleas without representation and to be sentenced without going to trial. This plan could enable prisoners who appear to want to confess so they can be executed and achieve martyrdom to achieve their purported goal. This, some contend, would save this country from the hassles and embarrassment involved in finding a legitimate solution to the problems created by their incarceration and the difficulties of providing them with trials which contain the minimum due process required by a civilized nation.

While many states permit guilty pleas in capital cases, they often require the state to prove its case before a death sentence is ordered. Would we be satisfied to put these men to death based on guilty pleas resulting from torture or mental illness?

This is one shortcut that just won’t bear scrutiny or even pass the smell test.

Let’s hope this was just a misguided trial balloon.

Why has there been no outcry? Shame on us.

They held a loaded credit card to my head

Congressional irresponsibility reached new heights when the right to carry loaded, concealed weapons was included in the credit card bill.
There is irony in the fact that the rate on my credit card nearly tripled on the day before it passed.

Review of the credit reform legislation shows that many of the protections in offers are less than meets the eye. Card companies will still be able to raise rates to unconscionable levels. It remains to be seen how useful the required notices will be.

But at least I can pack a rod in the woods.

It’s a free country, Isn’t it?

A few days ago on the way to work, my El car stopped while crossing the Chicago River and I used my Palm Centro to snap a couple of shots of the images mirrored in a highrise office building alongside the tracks. I decided I liked them and posted them in a new album, called City Scenes, on my Facebook page. I decided I would like to add to the collection.

Today was a beautiful day and I had a number of errands to do so while walking around the Loop at lunch, I snapped dozens of shots of buildings, skylines and reflections. I happened to be across Clark Street from what we used to call First National Bank Plaza (First National has been swallowed up a number of times and I don’t know which bailed out entity has naming right at the moment. Chase, I think.)

As I was shooting I heard a booming voice from nowhere ordering me not to take pictures. I shouted into the air asking the speaker to identify himself but got no response. Behind me was a building entry with driveway that I now think leads to the basement of the bank. I took a lot of photos, including one of an armored car driving in. The guard, who was the voice, hid his face as I kept shooting.

I took care of some business and on my way back I turned on the video function of the camera. I didn’t capture much, but it did draw the guard out from his station, covering his face and ordering me to stop. When I asked on whose authority he hesitated and then said the bank. I told him I was on public property and invited him to call the police(actually it wouldn’t surprise me if the bank has an easement for the driveway.) He hept hiding his face. I suggested he should wear a mask, at which time he said he would break (or take – my adrenaline was too high to be sure) my camera. At that point I started to call the police but then discretion outweighed valor and I walked away. If I weren’t planning a vacation next week, I might have stood my ground, but the tickets are non-refundable.

I will post the photos on my Facebook site when I get a chance. (The Palm Facebook software only lets you post five photos at at time.)