Good Riddance, Howard Metzenbaum

Thursday, 13 Mar 2008

Former Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat……died Wednesday night. He was 90.

Metzenbaum died at his home near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Joel Johnson, his former chief of staff. No cause was given.

During 18 years on Capitol Hill, until his retirement in 1995, Metzenbaum came to be known as “Senator No” and “Headline Howard” for his abilities to block legislation and get publicity for himself.

……Unabashedly liberal, the former labor lawyer and union lobbyist considered himself a champion of workers and was a driving force behind the law requiring 60-day notice of plant closings.

Unabashedly socialist, more like it.

And a hypocrite:

……He bragged about his ability to take advantage of tax loopholes, but as senator said he sought to erase loopholes favoring the wealthy.

And an anti-military snark:

……Metzenbaum had been contrasting his business background with (John) Glenn’s military and astronaut credentials, saying his opponent had “never worked for a living.”

Glenn’s reply came to be known as the “Gold Star Mothers” speech. He told Metzenbaum to go to a veterans’ hospital and “look those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn’t hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job.”
http://www.myfoxcleveland.com/myfox/pages/News/Politics/Detail?contentId=6017656&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.14.1

This was Glenn’s speech in its entirety:

I served 23 years in the United States marine corps. I was through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different occasions.

I was in the space program. It wasn’t my checkbook. It was my life that was on the line. This was not a 9-to-5 job where I took time off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank. I ask you to go with me . . . as I went the other day to a Veterans Hospital and look those men with their mangled bodies in the eye and tell them they didn’t hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother, and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job.

You go with me to the space program, and you go as I have gone to the widows and the orphans of Ed White and Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee, and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their dad didn’t hold a job.

You go with me on Memorial Day coming up, and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery – where I have more friends than I like to remember – and you watch those waving flags, and you stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell me that those people didn’t have a job.

I tell you, Howard Metzenbaum, you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there were some men – some men – who held a job. And they required a dedication to purpose and a love of country and a dedication to duty that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what has made this country possible…. I have held a job, Howard.

Link: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_glenn_metzenbaum.htm

Metzenbaum, the darling of socialists, was praised by Ted Kennedy, who called him “the conscience of the Senate”.

He “battled big business, stood up for labor and consumers and blocked scores of special-interest bills” but was a millionaire not averse to accepting bribes:

Retiring Senator Howard Metzenbaum received a warm send-off in the August 1 (1994) Newsweek. Jolie Solomon’s fond farewell described him as a “self-made millionaire who fights for the union maid and a mince-no-words man whose sense of humor and integrity has made ideological foes such as Orrin Hatch and Alan Simpson into friends.”

Indeed, Solomon gave readers no reason to doubt the integrity of this “renaissance liberal.” But the 1994 Almanac of American Politics by Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa noted: “Metzenbaum himself in 1983 accepted a $250,000 `finders fee’ for making a phone call putting a prospective buyer in touch with the owner of Washington’s Hay-Adams hotel, returning the money only after the transaction was revealed.” The authors also noted a conflict of interest involving Joel Hyatt, Metzenbaum’s son-in-law and heir apparent to his Senate seat: “He lobbied the Senate Finance Chairman on a tax break for companies that pay for employees’ legal services while his son-in-law Joel Hyatt heads the nation’s largest legal services firm.”

Solomon also claimed he “challenges the equation that an anti-business liberal is a big spender. By reading the fine print of every bill to root out hidden tax breaks, colleagues say, he has saved billions for taxpayers.”
However, the National Taxpayers Union didn’t find Metzenbaum’s record much of a “challenge.” They gave him a grade of “F” for 1993, putting the Ohioan in the “Big Spender” category.

http://www.mrc.org/mediawatch/1994/watch19940901.asp

Metzenbaum’s life and career, like so many of his democratic colleagues, was chock full of manipulating the system to favor leftist agenda with the backing of unions and other radical organizations.

Just one of the examples:

SDS radical Heather Booth is the guiding force of the radical organization ACORN and was a legislative aide to Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum before he retired.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID={06C7AC3C-1878-424B-B27E-ADCEE336FDED

As Senator, Howard Metzenbaum worked tirelessly at raising Ohio taxes through the roof, eroding the rights of gun ownership, and forcing the bussing disaster on Cleveland’s citizens. He was a partisan to the Communists and preferred them over America throughout the Cold War. He may have lived here, but his loyalty lie somewhere deep within the bowels of the Kremlin.

Buh Bye, Howard.

Say hello to “Uncle Joe” Stalin.