Publisher Apologizes for Delays,
But Not For Conclusions Of Fact

By Michael Bradley

As the publisher of The Bradley Report all comments ultimately come across my desk, and as of late the views of the readership have pretty easily devolved into two consistent themes: 1). There is too big a time gap between the presentations of published articles. 2). The Bradley Report is too strident.

In the first instance, I can only apologize for myself and my friend and writing associate, William Finucane. In the past six to eight weeks we have been beset with a myriad of problems, including a personal tragedy involving the untimely death of a close relative (Bill Finucane’s younger sister), various end-of-season business obligations, and an unexpected illness, from which I’m now recovering.

In the second instance, however, it’s not possible to apologize, even though we understand how so many well-meaning people – and a number of our personal friends and associates who are long standing Republicans – can somehow feel we have slipped into a political bias. But The Bradley Report is not a knee-jerk Democratic Party supporter, much less a Democratic mouthpiece.

There are many problems within the Democratic Party, as everyone who pays attention to national politics knows. As the saying goes, however, all politics are local, and here in Massachusetts the Democrats have provided everyone with a prime example of how autocratic government can blossom when one party dominates, regardless of whether its intentions are benign or not.

The Bay State’s most recent history lesson came about in the 1980’s, when Michael Dukakis became governor again and had a Democratic legislature ready to support him. In his prior administration of the late 1970s, Mr. Dukakis showed just what kind of ‘liberal’ he truly is when a severe winter gale inundated coastal areas north of Boston. Mr. Dukakis didn’t limit his declaration of a ‘state of emergency’ to the areas directly affected, he broadened it to at least half the Commonwealth and seemed to revel in his new, absolute authority, while in effect giving everyone a taste of what it would be like to live in a police state.

Most of the areas that were suddenly under quasi-martial law had only to dig out from a severe snowstorm, not recover from a velocity flood tide. Yet Mr. Dukakis kept his autocratic control over the state for the duration of the storm cleanup, declaring it was all being done in the name of public safety.

It was unnecessary and most people recognized it as such, which was reflected in the fact that when given the chance voters returned Gov. Dukakis to private life for several years.

But when he was reelected again in the early 1980s, Mr. Dukakis and his administration quickly illustrated that no lessons had been learned. Gov. Dukakis and his appointees immediately set out to correct what they perceived to be social injustices, and further, to harness what they believed to be unchecked business and personal freedoms that might somehow result in harm to others.

In the end, the Dukakis Administration’s approach included emptying the mental health hospitals and establishing shelters in run-down motels – the legacy of which is that areas such as Hyannis on Cape Cod now have permanent problems with the vagrant and the homeless – and subjecting certain areas of the business community, most visibly used car dealers, to what could only be reasonably considered to be persecution.

The second Dukakis Administration was essentially an example of unbridled liberal hubris. The attack on used car dealers is a useful example of the whole. A repressive Lemon Law was passed, under the guise of helping protect the downtrodden in purchasing inexpensive cars, but in the end what it did was assure that it’s now virtually impossible to find a truly sound used car under $2,995.00. Absent Mr. Dukakis’s reforms it would still be possible to find an inspectable and usable car for $500 to $1,000. How does this change help the downtrodden? It doesn’t, but it allows the well off and comfortable reformers to feel they did something for others, when in a large part they did it for themselves, desiring to rid the roads of unsightly old clunkers while taking a free poke at a group of businesspeople beset by prejudice.

Of course, the obvious lesson is that attempting to solve social problems by legislative minutia is much less effective than using broad mandates, such as the Civil Rights Acts, the Freedom of Information Act, and so forth. Mr. Dukakis has never seemed to get the message, even after being soundly defeated in a race for the Presidency. The defeat in the presidential contest ended his political career, although he was quickly offered a professor’s position teaching government in one of the Bay State’s most well known universities.

Although somewhat tarnished in reputation, Mr. Dukakis has remained a voice periodically raised in favor of some stringent and intrusive legislation that would seek to regulate individual behavior and business practices. It is the old story of the well-meaning righteous, who actually believe they know what is best for everyone else, regardless of what the rank and file citizens might think or feel is correct for themselves.

Given all of this, it’s not surprising that Massachusetts so often votes for a Republican governor, despite its consistently Democratically dominated legislature. The voting public has tested the one-party waters more than once and found that the swimming isn’t very good; the water is alkaline and likely to burn for sometime after everyone has dried off.

So The Bradley Report is by no means a knee-jerk Democratic Party organ. The Bradley Report’s editorial and philosophical view is completely steeped in the tenets of American democracy, the bedrock of which is the continuation of a political system that involves at least two vibrant political parties.

There is, of course, no doubt that The Bradley Report has been and remains intensely critical of the Bush Administration, but this is in perfect harmony with its commitment to basic American values.

If it were Democrats now holding power and taking identical actions as are currently being undertaken by the Republican administration and a toady GOP Congress, The Bradley Report would be equally as critical of those tactics and power precepts.

Virtually everyone knows the old adage, ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ but this is usually related to an individual, as a King or a despot of one sort or another. In today’s world, the truth of the adage is the same, but the application is by the nature of events much broader; that is, political parties with absolute power can be intrinsically corrupted!

We are now living in a time period during which the Republican Party has complete political power. It holds the Executive Branch, (the Presidency), the Legislative (Congress), and the Judiciary (a working majority on the Supreme Court).

Unfortunately, it seems clear that the Republican Party’s approach to this massive accumulation of power is not benign.

Even the flawed approach of Michael Dukakis and his ‘true believers,’ assuming of course that they had attained national power and under such circumstances, could realistically only be expected to pursue goals intended to empower individuals, advance government police powers in pursuit of social equity, and press forward human rights issues around the world, however impractical that might have been, or potentially dangerous given the cynicism of other international powers.

The GOP approach is not in any fashion so idealistic or benign, either domestically or internationally.

All of us have been treated to a dramatic world stage-play in the three years since George Bush assumed the Presidency through a historically unprecedented Supreme Court intervention. What we have seen is an illustration of power politics that has little relationship to anything that went before in American history.

Mr. Bush and the GOP have illustrated what can happen when one party dominates all of the American government processes. Further, the GOP has illustrated an operational methodology that is clearly reflective of a desire to maintain power at all costs. This, in the historical sense, has clear parallels to the history of the Roman Empire.

As another sage once said, "Power often leads to hubris, and hubris often leads to overreaching…"

The facts clearly indicate that the Bush Administration is overreaching.

The Bradley Report will continue to report what it sees as reflective of this era in American history, and as always will remain open to the comments and viewpoints of its readership, yet the overall goal will remain the same; that is, to provide to other Americans as much insight as possible into what is happening around them that may affect them and their families in the future.

There is one belief that The Bradley Report adheres to, and that is an absolute faith in the integrity of the average American, if he or she is provided with accurate information upon which to judge events. The Bradley Report will continue to try to provide such information, and if it appears that the content of The Bradley Report is slanted against the GOP, that is only because the facts at hand indicate such a reality.

We are living in a time when we have massive public media, but increasingly limited points of view. All broadcast media must be licensed and therefore is most often, with some notable exceptions, afraid to be bold in its news presentations; it is altogether more comfortable to talk about accidents and other reactive news than to report upon political machinations, which may be challenged through legal action or through consumer/advertising protests.

Print media is free from licensing criteria, and is in many ways the last bastion of true ‘freedom of speech,’ but media companies have consolidated over the past several decades and most now favor avoiding political controversy, even when they believe that the facts belie the representations of public officials.

It seems clear that the GOP today not only has overall power, but wants to exercise it without constraint, and if possible without accountability. The methodology employed to obtain such a goal includes a call to patriotism and the development of a theme of loyalty, which of course involves emotions more than individual intellect.

On the one hand, the current power-brokers of the Republican Party want to appear to be simple Christian warriors struggling against the wave of Islamic fascism, and on the other hand they would have Americans believe that the GOP’s close ties to mega-corporations and their profit motives is in everyone’s best interests.

This is the skeleton of the fabled trickle-down theory now elevated to international politics; that is, the assertion that when the top echelon is making great profits, ultimately everyone will be better off because eventually the monies gained at the top will filter down to those at the bottom through the need for more employees, etc., etc. There are many fleshed-out versions of this concept, yet it is in the end all of one piece and as transparent as a skeleton is in comparison to a living creature.

The Bradley Report fully believes that FDR was correct when he declared, in 1944, that, "the American people are quite competent to judge a political party that works both sides of the street."

And so The Bradley Report makes no apologies for attempting to further illustrate what is currently happening on the national and world-stage through the GOP’s exercise of dominant executive, legislative and judicial power.

The Bradley Report would stand in the same position if it were the Democratic Party that was in power and pursuing goals that undermine American values and historical principles while seeking to benefit the few at the expense of the many. But it isn’t the Democrats wielding such power so ruthlessly and recklessly, it is the Republican Party that has taken on a radical hue. The GOP must be called to account.