Les Enragés.org: Corruption

Showing posts with label Corruption. Show all posts

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Another Edition of: Where Are They Now?

I was watching this on Rachel Maddow:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And while I thought I was just going to do a primer on the the genesis of Graham-Leach-Bliley Act that I've been bitching about for a while in comment sections everywhere, doing the homework reminded me of several things. The whole ass-end of the '90s flashed in my head. Bill-Gotta-Blow-Job was the dominant theme, and everything revolved around "What You Could To To Make Clinton Pay You For Getting An Unauthorized Hummer While Prez!"

Such leverage was entirely unfortunate, because years of lobbying efforts became true (patience please, as I do snag some long swaths from the wayback machine):

The NYT, Oct. 23rd, 1999, reporting that an agreement was nigh:

Agreement Reached on Overhaul of U.S. Financial System

The Clinton Administration and top Republican lawmakers reached an agreement early Friday to overhaul the financial system, repealing Depression-era laws that have restricted the banking, securities and insurance industries from expanding into one another's businesses.
The deal was announced about 2 A.M. after a compromise was reached over the measure's effect on lending rules for the disadvantaged, the source of months of partisan bickering between the White House and Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who heads the banking committee.
[...]
For instance, the nation's largest financial services company, Citigroup, would have been forced to sell some of its insurance operations as part of the $72 billion merger last year between Citibank and Travelers Group without either the legislation or a waiver from regulators. [emphasis mine (these above and all emphases below too) - the merger was "technically" illegal - read ILLEGAL - at the time, and this was a retro-patch to make it legal. Sound familiar?]
[...]

Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said in an interview, "At the end of the 20th century, we will at last be replacing an archaic set of restrictions with a legislative foundation for a 21st-century financial system." The measure, he added, "would provide significant benefits to the national economy."

[...]
The idea behind Glass-Steagall, named for the two lawmakers who wrote it, was that confidence in America's financial house could best be restored if bankers and brokers stayed in separate rooms. Such a separation, it was thought, achieved two purposes.
First, it would reduce the potential conflicts of interest between investment banking and commercial banking that were thought to have contributed to the speculative frenzy in the stock markets. Under the 1933 Banking Act, commercial banks could receive no more than 10 percent of their income from the securities markets, a limit so restrictive that most simply abandoned business on Wall Street.
Second, it would provide a safe harbor for the money of ordinary Americans by enabling them to put their money in accounts that were protected by deposit insurance and insulated from more speculative investments like stocks. (The 1933 act also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which now insures bank deposits up to $100,000.)
Over time, Federal judges and regulators chipped away at the Glass-Steagall Act and other restrictions on cross-ownership of banks, insurance companies and securities firms, enabling, for instance, Citibank to merge with Travelers last year to form Citigroup, the world's largest financial services company. But large hurdles remained that have discouraged the expansion by banks into new businesses.
[...]
The breakthrough in Friday's legislation came in a backroom meeting at the Capitol soon after midnight, when a group of moderate Senate Democrats -- led by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Charles E. Schumer of New York -- forced a compromise between Gramm and the White House over the legislation's effect on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 anti-discrimination law intended to encourage lending to minorities and others historically denied access to credit.
Dodd, whose state is home to the nation's largest insurance companies, and Schumer, with strong ties to Wall Street, have long sought legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Both men said in interviews Friday that they moved to strike a compromise after it became apparent that the legislation might be killed, as it was last year by Gramm, over the debate about the Community Reinvestment Act.
Gramm had maintained that he did not want anything in the bill that would expand the application of the Community Reinvestment Act because it was, he said, unnecessarily burdensome to banks. He had sought a provision that would exempt thousands of smaller banks from the law. He also wanted a provision that would expose what he has described as the "extortion" committed by community groups against banks by requiring the groups to disclose any special financial deals the groups extract from the banks.
But the White House found that provision unacceptable and had its own ideas about community lending. It wanted the legislation to prevent any bank with an unsatisfactory record of making loans to the disadvantaged from expanding into new areas, like insurance or securities.
The White House had insisted that the President would veto any legislation that would scale back minority-lending requirements. Four days of intense negotiations between Summers, Gene Sperling, the President's top economic policy adviser, and Gramm, while moving the two sides closer, failed to resolve the differences.
Such was the state of play Thursday evening when Gramm decided to force the issue by having the House-Senate conference committee vote on his proposed compromise, which the White House had already rejected for failing to block banks with bad lending records from expanding to new businesses.
When Gramm's measure was defeated by one vote, it quickly became clear that there would be no law unless Gramm could get some Democrats to break from the White House.
But Administration officials had spent all day making sure that the Democrats remained solidly against the measure until their concerns about the Community Reinvestment Act could be worked out.

After receiving calls from executives of some of the nation's leading financial companies, Dodd and Schumer began trying to work out a compromise. An agreement was quickly reached on the issue of banks and expanded powers -- no institution would be allowed to move into any new lines of business without a satisfactory lending record.
The lawmakers bogged down on Gramm's insistence that all community organizations disclose to the regulators what benefits they get from banks. Some Democrats expressed the fear that Gramm's proposal would require the Boy Scouts to file reports with the regulators.
Ultimately, the following provisions were drawn up and both the White House and Gramm said they could accept them:
-Banks will not be able to move into new lines of business unless they have satisfactory lending records.
-Community groups will have to make disclosures to regulators about certain kinds of financial deals with banks that they have pressed to make loans under the Community Reinvestment Act.
-Wholesale financial institutions, a new kind of business that takes large, uninsured bank deposits, cannot be affiliated with commercial banks.
-Small banks with satisfactory or excellent track records of lending to the underserved would be reviewed less frequently under the Community Reinvestment Act. As a practical matter smaller banks are reviewed about every three years. The deal struck today allows all rural banks and banks with less than $250 million in assets to undergo examination once every five years if their last exam resulted in an "outstanding" grade and every four years if they last scored "satisfactory."

Familiar? The playahs are really the same from yesterday to today. Not really a surprise. But the nugget I get out of that is revenge of the Banksters today regarding sticking them with CRA provisions: "Hey, if We, The Banksters Of The United States (TBOTUS) are going down, so are those godamned brown and poor people that you made us have in our godamn cake. Otherwise our plan WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT!"

The NYT, Oct. 23rd, 1999 on background:

Behind the Banking Bill, Years of Intense Lobbying

[...] banking deregulation has been vigorously lobbied and debated for 20 years by three of the nation's wealthiest industries: banking, insurance and securities.
In 1997 and 1998 alone, these three industries gave $58 million to Federal political candidates, according to compilations by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. They donated $87 million in so-called soft money to the political parties, and they reported spending $163 million in additional lobbying expenses.
Some other issues generate larger donations and expenses over limited periods of time. Health care lobbyists on both sides of the managed-care debate, for example, reported $230 million in lobbying expenses in 1997 and 1998. But that issue has been lobbied for a relatively short time. Over two decades of lobbying, the insurance and financial services industries have certainly spent more.
"A tremendous amount of money has been spent just because it has gone on for such a long, long time," said Wright Andrews, a longtime Washington lobbyist who over the years has represented companies on both sides of the debate.
Of course, not every dollar donated by every bank and insurance office was dedicated to this subject. But Gary Hughes, a senior vice president with the American Council of Life Insurance, noted: "The lion's share of our resources have been devoted to this. We viewed this is as critical to the long-term viability of our industry."
Yingling of the bankers association said: "The way we saw it, if we didn't get this legislation we were going to disappear. This was our top issue for a long, long time. The resources devoted to it were huge, and we fought it tooth and nail."
[...]
Schumer was on the House Banking Committee and is now on the Senate Banking Committee. He has long been regarded as the securities industry's strongest ally in Congress. Of course, most brokerage and financial services companies are based in New York City, parts of which Schumer represented in the House. He received more money from the securities industry in 1997 and 1998 than anyone else now in the Senate, almost certainly because he was running for the Senate.
Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, is regarded as one of the strongest allies of the insurance industry. Hartford is the nation's insurance capital. Between 1993 and 1998, Dodd received $325,124 from insurance companies -- not a great deal less than the Republican chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, the man who determined whether banking bills came up for a vote.
The insurance industry gave Gramm $496,610. He also received $760,404 from the securities industry and $407,956 from the banking industry.
[...]
Oddly, though, the lists show that Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the House Banking Committee and has the power to bring bills up for votes or bury them, received meager amounts from the three industries in 1997 and 1998: $8,570 from the bankers, $10,483 from the securities industry and just $3,000 from the insurance companies.
A member of his staff explained: " Leach doesn't take money from PAC's; he never has." Much of the industry money has been donated to members of Congress through political action committees.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas

A Big Lump of Coal From Conservative Santa

How would you like your preparations for Christmas to be interrupted by something like this?
Ho Ho Ho-rrendous.

From CNN:

A wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from a coal plant in central Tennessee broke this week, spilling more than 500 million gallons of waste into the surrounding area. Environmental Protection Agency officials are on the scene and expect the cleanup to to take four to six weeks.

The sludge, a byproduct of ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley Authority's power plant in Kingston, about 40 miles east of Knoxville, agency officials said. The retention wall breached early Monday, sending the sludge downhill and damaging 15 homes. All the residents were evacuated, and three homes were deemed uninhabitable, a TVA spokesman told CNN.

The plant sits on a tributary of the Tennessee River called the Clinch River.
[...]
TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

It's interesting to note the disparity over just how serious this is depending on who's doing the talking.

Some of the goop spilled into the tributary, but preliminary water quality tests show that the drinking water at a nearby treatment plant meets standards.

"I don't want to drink it. It doesn't look healthy to me," Jody Miles, who fishes in the Clinch River, told CNN affiliate WBIR. "Do you reckon they can bring all this life back that's going to die from all this mess?"

Still, there is the potential for more sludge to enter the water supply through waste runoff. "We're taking steps to stabilize runoff from this incident," Francis said. Although video from the scene shows dead fish on the banks of the tributary, he said that "in terms of toxicity, until an analysis comes in, you can't call it toxic."

One environmental attorney called that statement "irresponsible." The ash that gives sludge its thick, pudding-like consistency in this case is known as fly ash, which results from the combustion of coal. Fly ash contains concentrated amounts of mercury, arsenic and benzine, said Chandra Taylor, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Uh huh. You can't call it toxic 'until an analysis comes in.' 'Preliminary' tests show the water meets standards. Well I would guess that, 'in terms of toxicity,' you can't call it safe either. A good secondary test might be to offer a couple of glasses to Mr. Francis and see if he's willing to drink it himself.

And before I leave this topic, I'd just like to say that this is once again NOT something that the cons can come back on with their old "who could have foreseen?" meme. Not only was this predictable, but it's happened before.

The most recent sludge dam breach was in Martin County, Kentucky, in 2000, which the EPA called the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Southeast. When the sludge dam breached, more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge (about 30 times the amount of oil released in the Exxon Valdez oil spill) poured into tributaries of the Big Sandy River, killing virtually all aquatic life for 70 miles downstream of the spill.
[...]
At present, there are 45 impoundments in West Virginia alone that are considered at high risk for failure, and 32 are at moderate risk. In addition, most local communities are dependent on groundwater, which could be fouled by mining waste.

In other news: Did you see all the coverage of the aftermath in Bethesda Maryland of a burst water main - that led to dramatic helicopter rescues of several people from their cars when the road they were on suddenly turned into a raging river? Of course you did. The thing of it is, most of the news outlets reported the story much like someone who slows down to gawk at the carnage in the aftermath of a multi-vehicle pileup.

Shame on them. But that's the the standard we've come to expect from the Lamestream Media. Their reportage is generally shallow and vapid, and doubly so when to dig deeper would involve criticism of their corporate masters, or an examination of the failings of conservative thinking.

Not so with Rachel Maddow's report. Rachel quite properly takes a wider view of this incident. First she ties it in with the toxic sludge story, then branches out to include a steam pipe bursting in NYC and the collapse in Minneapolis of an interstate bridge across the Mississipi. The failure of the levees that resulted in Katrina going from disaster to calamity is also cited as attributable to one common theme: ignoring the creation and maintenance of INFRASTRUCTURE.

(Segment from Rachel's show, Dec. 23, 2008)

Rachel thinks infrastructure is a sexy issue. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is certainly a vital issue.

Our country had a lot of infrastructure investment in the 1930s and in the 1950s, and we were due for an infrastructure upgrade in about 1980 and that's when a widely beloved president proposed turning back most of the federal aid highway program and all transit programs to the states.
(Clip of Saint Ronnie the Bad Actor):
"In this present crisis government is not the solution to our problem. Government IS the problem."
That was the philosophy, "no infrastructure spending for you.

So Rachel places the blame for these disasters where it belongs - with the small government philosophy of conservative Republicans. They love to privatize things, reduce taxes, and shrink government, in the infamous words of Grover Norquist, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Leaving the people of Bethesda Maryland drowning on River Street, the people of Kingston Tennessee drowning in a sea of toxic sludge, and the people of New Orleans without homes for the foreseeable future, many of them forever. Heckuva job, Saint Ronnie and your successors.

Other policies that conservatives like and have pushed especially hard for during the Bush crime spree of the last eight years magnify the misery resulting from leaving everything up to the corporate sector. The obvious one is deregulation, and let's examine how that ties in with privatization when conservatives try to push their philosophies. The less obvious is the push for tort reform.

Deregulation and privatization were just made for each other. Here's how the cons-ervatives want it to work. "We'll turn over responsibility for some given function to private enterprise while simultaneously relaxing (or even eliminating) the performance standards expected. The result should be the appearance of greater efficiency. Proving that we were right all along."

The problem is that the privateers don't do the same job that the government once did, because they are neither required nor expected to. Look at the great job KBR did with such things as wiring barracks buildings and providing drinking water to troops in Iraq. All because no standards were being enforced, and KBR took the most profitable and least ethical approach to the problem. I won't even go into how many construction projects were contracted for in Iraq but never completed, or the billions that just went missing without ever even being attached to any contracts at all.

Tort reform under Bush has, according to Wikipedia, focused on "limiting the number of claims, and capping the awards of damages." That is to say limiting claims against corporations, and capping the damages paid out, thus reducing costs and increasing profits. If a corporation goes up against an individual in court they will still have the full force of the law on their side.

Over time the words Tax and Spend have become a mantra of all that is wrong with liberal thinking in the conservative lexicon. But they have proven that if you don't tax, but spend anyway (as they ALWAYS do - big deficits were run under Reagan, Bush Senior and HUGE deficits by Bush the Lesser) you will run the government into massive debt, and the interest payments will baloon into a major budget item.

They've also proven that whatever spending they do is always tainted with corruption, like the bridge to nowhere that Ted Stevens and Sarah Palin both pushed so hard for. Thank Gawd that they were unsuccessful in that effort, but sadly most such pork-barrel projects go through, cost a lot of money and do no discernable good. 'Cause the Republican Santa is no better and possibly worse than the Republican Jesus.

Let's hope that the adults will be in charge in the new year, and that they will do a better job. At least they aren't held back from doing the right thing by a history of entrenched ideology. An ideology that has clearly become utterly discredited by reality. But then reality testing has never been a conservative strong point.

TAGS: Infrastructure, Disasters

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The Governor's IPod

Monday Night, Walkin' on Sunshine

Tuesday Morning, "What a Fool I've Been"

TAGS: Music Video, Rod Blagojevich, Corrupt S.O.B.

Friday, December 05, 2008

How Can We Miss You

When You Won't Go Away?

This is just sick. Mary Beth Buchanan, whom I've previously dubbed the Queen Bee-Yotch of the Loyal Bushies, has stated that she intends to stay on as US Attorney in the Obama administration, despite being the worst partisan in the most partisan DoJ of all time.

The story, from Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly,

When the U.S. Attorney purge scandal was at its height, some federal prosecutors became famous for getting fired for purely political reasons. Other U.S. Attorneys became notorious for being loyal Bushies who seemingly used their offices to advance the Republicans' agenda.
Take Mary Beth Buchanan, for example, the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh since 2001. Buchanan has been accused, repeatedly, of being one of the more blatantly partisan prosecutors in the country, and using her post to launch politically-motivated investigations. With Bush's second term nearly over, many have been looking forward to Buchanan stepping down, as all U.S. Attorneys do when the White House changes hands.

But therein lies the twist. As Faiz noted this morning, Buchanan wants to stay right where she is.

Despite a new administration coming into power, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said she plans to stick around.
"It doesn't serve justice for all the U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations all at one time," she said yesterday. [....]

More than that, she said she would consider working in the Obama administration. She would not discuss what her future might hold beyond the U.S. attorney's office.

"I am open to considering further service to the United States," Ms. Buchanan said.
Well, that's certainly generous of her to offer, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Obama administration will replace her very quickly if she refuses to step down.

And there's more, from the 11 O'clock News:

She’s been described by colleagues as the quintessential loyal Bushie. “She is very focused to the department first of all,” said one assistant U.S. attorney, who asked not to be named. “She’s not independent, and I don’t think she wants to be.”

During her tenure, Buchanan has been criticized for bringing politically-motivated investigations and charges against politicians in Western Pennsylvania, none more famous than the public corruption case against a local high-profile Democrat Dr. Cyril H. Wecht. Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh told Congress that the Wecht prosecution is “not the type of case normally constituting a federal ‘corruption’ case brought against a local official.” (and let US not mention the Collar bomb "investigation")

Buchanan hired Monica Goodling, and she hand-picked a Pittsburgh attorney to serve as the U.S. prosecutor in Alaska, going over the heads of Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski. She also had a peripheral role in the U.S. attorney scandal:

She did talk with [Gonzales chief of staff Kyle] Sampson about some of the prosecutors who were ultimately fired, including Carol Lam, U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California…

But the most involvement Ms. Buchanan seemed to have in the firings, according to the report, was in meeting with former U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan of the Northern District of California.
Buchanan “has been criticized because her office has brought a number of high-profile cases against Democrats during her tenure, but rarely targeted members of her own party.” And now Buchanan wants to volunteer her services to President-elect Obama.

Here's a suggestion: Mary Beth, offer your services to defend Bush. He'll need all the help he can get.

Here's a stronger suggestion, for Barack Obama: Keep this woman on as US Attorney for more than 48 hours after your inauguration and you might as well announce your intention to become the electorate's nightmare - George Dubya Bush's third term. Keep her on longer than a week and she'll probably try to prosecute you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dan Hicks Performs "I Scare Myself"

(Because I couldn't find How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?)

TAGS: Mary Beth Buchanan, Department of Justice, GOP Corruption, Monica Goodling's Boss

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Corporate Welfare

...Worse Than You Could Have Imagined

Was anybody wondering how the DJIA miraculously rose by nearly 900 points yesterday on the news of the lowest consumer confidence results since that benchmark has been measured? It just doesn't make any sense unless there's some serious market manipulation going on. I asked myself what was happening and ran into something called the PPT, an entity whose very existence confirms some of my worst fears about how the world works.

Have you ever heard of the Plunge Protection Team? That's OK, until today neither had I. Officially it's called the Working Group on Financial Markets, and is a mechanism for manipulating the markets that is shockingly apposite to anything resembling free market principles - all the more so because it was set up under the Reagan administration. Wikipedia tells you what it is:

The Working Group on Financial Markets (also, President's Working Group on Financial Markets, the Working Group, and colloquially the Plunge Protection Team) was created by Executive Order 12631, signed on March 18, 1988 by United States President Ronald Reagan.

The Group was established explicitly in response to events in the financial markets surrounding October 19, 1987 ("Black Monday") to give recommendations for legislative and private sector solutions for "enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of [United States] financial markets and maintaining investor confidence".[1]

As established by Executive Order 12631, the Working Group consists of:
The Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee (as Chairman of the Working Group)
The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or his designee
The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or his designee; and
The Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or his designee.

The current holders of the listed offices are respectively Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Chris Cox and Walter Lukken. I'm sure you've heard about the first three. I have a theory about why you haven't heard of Lukken, the CFTC's acting chairman, which I'll tell you later.

Wiki's explanation of what the Working Group is is straightforward and uncontroversial. What it does is another thing entirely. Indeed the reasoning behind the PPT epithet brings out conspiracy theory accusations:

"Plunge Protection Team" was originally the headline for an article in The Washington Post on February 23, 1997, and has since become a colloquial term used by some mainstream publications to refer to the Working Group. Initially, the term was used to express the opinion that the Working Group was being used to prop up the markets during downturns. Financial writers for British newspapers The Observer and The Daily Telegraph, along with U.S. Congressman Ron Paul and writers Kevin Phillips (who claims “no personal firsthand knowledge” and is “not interested in becoming a conspiracy investigator”) and John Crudele, have charged the Working Group with going beyond their legal mandate. Claims about the Working Group generally include that it is an orchestrated mechanism that attempts to manipulate U.S. stock markets in the event of a market crash by using government funds to buy stocks, or other instruments such as stock index futures—acts which are forbidden by law. However, these articles usually refer to the Working Group using moral suasion to attempt to convince banks to buy stock index futures.

Let's first address this idea that the characterization of the PPT as market manipulators using tax dollars is a conspiracy theory. The pertinent question to ask is "if the group cannot buy or sell stocks, how can it intervene to prop up the market?" And unless you can come up with a believable answer to that, the whole conspiracy theory idea evaporates. Which, by the way, puts you by the fire in the conspiracy camp. And me, I'm not buying the moral suasion argument, so pass the coffee please.

Anyway, the recent $700 BILLION government intervention in the banks renders the question moot. Having a direct interest in the banks through the TARP program, the government can directly intervene in the markets through something rather less moral than mere suasion. And all apparently with nothing approaching meaningful oversight.

Unlike Wikipedia, this extremely persuasive article from WebofDebt.com makes no bones about what is really going on in the markets. Note that it was published last Saturday, before the inexplicable Dow Jones Miracle occurred. The author, Ellen Brown, was responding to the fact that Wall Street somehow managed to weather the storm relatively speaking on Friday after "Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell nearly 10% during the [previous] night, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 8%, and Germany’s and Britain’s fell 5%".

THE NOT-SO-INVISIBLE HAND:
HOW THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM
KILLED THE FREE MARKET

Traders prepared for the worst, but remarkably, disaster was averted. The U.S. market fell only 3.5%, just another “ordinary” bearish day.

Why the more modest drop in the U.S., where the financial debacle originated and should have hit hardest? Suspicious observers saw the covert hand of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT), the group set up under President Reagan to maintain market “stability” by manipulating markets behind the scenes. Bill Murphy commented in LeMetropoleCafe.com:
“Today the Muppets on CNBC were remarking how well our market acted, not falling apart as expected. All day long they spoke of how our market was acting differently today than every other stock market in the world. Well hello, the other countries don’t have a PPT, which is WHY our market is so different.

“There are those who might think what the PPT is doing is right. What they don’t realize is their making ‘Everything is fine’ for so long, and not allowing the market to trade freely . . . like allowing the stock market to fall the way it should, has kept the individual in the market . . . when they might have been SCARED out some time ago.”
In response to Bill Saporito’s comment in Time it might be countered that Henry Paulson’s Plunge Protection Team is quite adept at rigging an economy. The difference between an acknowledged socialist state and the stealth socialism we have in the U.S. today is that in a socialist state, everyone expects the market to be rigged and operates accordingly. In a rigged pseudo-capitalist economy, investors are easily separated from their money because they expect the market to follow “free market principles” based on “supply and demand.” They are seduced into “pump and dump” schemes – artificial manipulations that allow insiders to unload stock at a high price or buy it at a low price – because they trust in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” which is supposed to automatically set things right in a market left to its own devices. The market today is indeed controlled by an invisible hand, but it is not necessarily serving the interests of small investors.

To quote more of this article might go beyond fair use, and I would anyway be tempted to quote the entire thing, so instead I will urge everyone to read the whole thing, maybe twice or more, because it does get pretty technical. Most important is that you understand what a 'pump and dump' scheme is, and that it always favors the big player and milks everyone else. The idea that the government is using your tax dollars to help transfer wealth out of small player's (such as retirement investment accounts) hands into the pockets of the already obscenely rich should eventually sink in.

As Ms. Brown lays it out, it's a case of "Plunge Protection for Some, Plunge Creation for Others." Her home-page (promoting her book Web of Debt) contains some excerpts from the book, which must have been published about a year ago - there are reviews from November of 2007. There is little doubt that she saw then what is happening now. And it don't look good.

To keep up appearances, the "Plunge Protection Team" has been authorized by presidential order to use U.S. taxpayer money to manipulate markets to make them appear healthier than they are, and lately it has been working overtime. But official assurances of a "soft landing" are mere window dressing, aimed at preventing another worldwide depression as home buyers and stock market investors stampede for the exits.

It's particularly galling that this brand of corporate welfare is going on while the McCain campaign rails on about Barack Obama's socialism. Apparently it's not the idea of the government redistributing wealth that bothers them, just the fact that it's going to someone who actually needs it. Anyway, it's all business as usual under the crony capitalist operating principles of the Republican Corporate Feudal State. Socializing the losses while privatizing the profits.

This whole story should give you the right to call BULL-SHIT!! to any Republican who ever opens their pie-hole and lets the words 'free market' emit from it, in perpetuity. It's worth a read if for no other reason than that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and I said I'd tell you why you've never heard of Walter Lukken, didn't I? It's simple. He's the head of the CFTC, whose mandate under the Commodity Exchange Act is to prohibit fraudulent conduct in the trading of futures contracts. A regulatory agency. If you had heard of Walter Lukken it would have meant that he was doing his job. Which might have meant that this economic meltdown would never have occurred. Like the OSM that purportedly regulates the mining industry, or the EPA that supposedly protects the environment, the CFTC has been reduced to an office with one guy doing crossword puzzles and playing paddle-ball all day - regulators are the Maytag repairmen of the Bush administration. Business. As. Frickin'. Usual.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum: There's a great related story from Wonkette about how Cindy Jacobs, a Christian dingbat associated with Pat Robertson's 700 club, declared a "Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies on Wednesday, October 29, 2008" “We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion’s Market,' or God’s control over the

economic systems,” she said.

“While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.”

Because the stock market crash was caused by the sinfulness of allowing gays to marry, doncha' know?

“This is so severe in the economic area because we are facing judgment from the actions, not only for our stance towards Israel, but our blatant sin against Him in passing laws such as the one allowing homosexual marriages,” Cindy said.

Gawd, it'll be good to see the likes of those relegated to their backwaters again when the neocon/greedhead/Christofascist coalition is finally scattered to the four winds.

UPDATE: There's video of Cindy and her followers serenading the bull to the tune of God Bless America. hat-tips go to Slog the Stranger and TC.

Featured in

Mike's Blog Roundup

TAGS: Economy, Government Bailout, Bush Epic Failure
You Can't Make This Shit Up

Sunday, September 21, 2008

What's Really Going On Here?

Wall Street Is Using the "New Sheriff Strategy!"

(Inspired by EdNSted asking the question in comments,
"OK, now explain to me what happens if the government does not bail out these institutions?")

TAGS: Economic Crisis, Blazing Saddles, America Held Hostage
"We Will Not Negotiate With Terrorists"

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The Biggest Story in Living Memory

"A Crime of the Highest Order"

Glennzilla's post on the 'rescue' of AIG (and by extension Wall Street) is enough to curl your hair, straighten it out again, then make it fall out altogether. He's also posted what 'details' of the plan anyone is likely to see before it's implemented, and probably ratified without even a reading by the feckless Congress.

Here is the current draft for the latest plan. It's elegantly simple. The three key provisions:

(1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6];
(2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and
(3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." [Sec. 8].

Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.

In one respect this has all the makings of the USA PATRIOT Act - something rushed through because of a 'crisis'

(and like the USA PATRIOT Act these 'emergency' measures seem suspiciously well developed, as if this plan had been sitting ready in a man-sized safe somewhere all along.)

It also bears comparison to the Military Commissions Act in its provisions for making secret decisions that fundamentally change the way society operates, then taking steps to put those decisions beyond any scrutiny. I say that's a bunch of bullshit.

Nor does this escape the sharp eyes of Mr. Greenwald. Some gleanings from the aforementioned post:

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program "Good Morning America," the congressional leaders were told "that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally."

At least they didn't recycle the 'smoking gun' or 'mushroom cloud' language, although 'complete meltdown' is a suitable substitute I suppose. Why am I calling this the Biggest Story in Living Memory? How could it be bigger for instance than 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, or the devastation of New Orleans when Katrina hit?

...whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function -- and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is "necessary" or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order -- not a "crime" in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.
[...]
..what's probably most amazing of all is the contrast between how gargantuan all of this is and the complete absence of debate or disagreement over what's taking place. It's not just that, as usual, Democrats and Republicans are embracing the same core premises ("this is regrettable but necessary"). It's that there's almost no real discussion of what happened, who is responsible, and what the consequences are.

Glenn laments at length the fact that no-one in the beltway elite, either on the political or the media side of the trough, is questioning this government bailout of America's wealthiest on the back of everyone else. But he makes it plain that that is exactly what is taking place.

We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses.
[...]
More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just "forced" to walk away without any further stake in the gamble..
..This is "redistribution of wealth" and "government takeover of industry" on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't.

Greenwald makes plain not only who benefits from this corporate welfare - the very ones whose greed created the crisis - but to whom the burden is passed:

If there is any "pitchfork moment" -- an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage -- it would be this..
..Whatever else is true, generations of Americans are almost certainly going to be severely burdened in untold ways by the events of the last week -- ones that have been carried out largely without any debate and mostly in secret.

Having already loosed numerous hollow-point rounds into the body of the American economy, the thief of the ages now delivers the coup de grace, point blank, right between the eyes. He knows he's going to have to get out of Dodge soon, and is making a final effort to cop as much swag as he possibly can.

TAGS: Insufferable Greed, Government As Criminal Enterprise, Kleptocracy, Goppers Gone Wild

Monday, August 04, 2008

The Common Good

The basic law of economics is quite simple: People respond to incentives. In fact, that basic law may explain human behavior much better than psychology and the behavior of humanity much better than sociology. It pervades us. We have quid pro quo. We go out of our way to get great deals at sales. We do uncomfortable things like working insanely long hours for a pittance of a pay raise. We may even do the dishes in order to raise our chances of our honey expending a bit of extra attention on us. No one, it seems, is immune. Even the ascetic giving up every material joy or possession is responding to an incentive deferred into the hereafter. We do things to get things.

This being a blog of politically minded readers, the discussion had to circle around to something political. Ted Stevens is loved in Alaska for his prodigious provision of pork (pardon the alitteration - can't resist!). Pork, in the political sense, illustrates what is known as externality. Like the SUV driver who destroys the environment in disproportionate measure to the price he pays for the privilege, a politician gets more from earmarks - pork - than the constituents pay for it. Example is Sen. Stevens's (R-indicted)"Bridge to Nowhere." No sane city planner would want to spend $300 million to connect 50 people adequately served by a ferry to a city with a modern, four-lane bridge. The benefit doesn't justify the cost. Now imagine if you can get the benefit without paying the entire cost - that calculus might just look a little different. This is the calculus of pork and of externality. The bridge still costs the same but the costs are no longer yours. I in Denver am paying a fraction of the cost of that bridge.

Now there are arguments that some pork is beneficial and I won't go there. If Sen. Allard (R-bushclone) gets extra money for the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO (unlikely - he would vote against funding it if he could), one could argue that the benefit accrues to the entire population. I won't say every earmark ever included in a bill under the cover of darkness and shielded from any debate was pork; however, I would certainly prefer the matter be opened to public scrutiny and Congressional debate.

A second political principle often ignored by the fiscally responsible (sic) right is that of the tragedy of the commons. Economics holds that people make rational decisions. Within limits, this is true, especially when we have use of a resource such as public land without having to pay the costs of its maintenance. We can trash the campground and, if we're not caught doing it, the State will have to pick up the tab (and hopefully the trash). Likewise, millions of people can make economically sound decisions such as funding businesses who never intend to make a profit, buying property on credit that is neither secured nor likely to be repaid, or buying barrels of oil (on credit) with the intention of selling them later. All of these are legal decisions and all of them can be profitable - accruing benefit to the shrewd (read lucky) trader.

The problem is that each of these decisions, taken as an unique case, make sense. In an economic sense, they are rational. On the whole they are destructive to the common good. The case for regulation is based on exactly the common good. No one in their right mind wants to strangle business or limit the entrepreneurial spirit. We live as we do today because of both. The problem begins when the entire cost of the activity do not accrue to the person receiving the benefit, as in the case of speculators or pharmaceutical companies. A pharma executive doesn't die or go bankrupt because of the cost of medication, a consumer does. A speculator suffers high oil prices but not in proportion to the profit gleaned from his or her speculative activities. And it is there that damage is done. It is there that Government regulation, the anathema of all good Republicans, has to step in and defend the common good.

TAGS: Common Good, Economics, Earmarks, Speculation

Friday, August 01, 2008

The Enemy Within

...Or, "He May Be a Corrupt Bastard,
But Gol-darn It, He's OUR Corrupt Bastard"

This story off the AP wire (via SALON.com) triggers a post that's been brewing in my head for a while:

Many Support Alaska Senator,
Despite Indictment
Whatever they might think about Sen. Ted Stevens' honesty or lack thereof, many folks in Alaska aren't ready to see their Uncle Ted go.

Indictment or not, they are grateful for the bounty of federal dollars he has delivered in the nearly 40 years he has represented them in Washington. And they worry about how Alaska would fare on Capitol Hill without him.

"As I told the senator, he can do more in six years that any of his opponents can do in 20," said Joe Williams, mayor of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough and one of many Alaska residents who have rallied to the Republican senator's defense after his indictment this week.

Stevens, 84, pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges of concealing more than a quarter-million dollars in home renovations, furnishings and other gifts from an oilfield services company.
[...]
Homebuilder Chuck Spinelli picked up some Stevens yard signs Thursday and planned to display them at his home, his office and on his trucks.

"People of Alaska have hired him to bring money back to this state," Spinelli said. "He has done that over and over and over again. Whatever these charges are, he deserves the respect and our admiration. We should wait to see what actually happens before there's a call to do anything."

Alaska has been a big beneficiary of the federal government's largess, largely because of Stevens' leadership role on the Senate Appropriations Committee and his skill at inserting earmarks into budget bills.

While everyone else in Greater Left Blogsylvania takes the opportunity to gloat over Sen. Steven's long overdue comeuppance, I'm going to take the road less traveled to examine this total disconnect that's obvious in the Alaskan electorate, and by extension the rest of the country's voters.

I'm willing to bet that if you polled Alaskans or any other Americans about the practice of attaching earmarks, aka pork barrel riders, onto otherwise legitimate legislation you would get a pretty strong reaction against. There are a number of reasons you should object to the practice, regardless of your ideological or party affiliations. First, pork barrel projects increase the federal budget and drive up taxes without producing any overall benefit to the country. Second they are an invitation to corruption, as steering government contracts to campaign contributors and political supporters is a quick and dirty way to provide otherwise illegal kickbacks - at the taxpayers' expense. Third they put the integrity of the original bill in question. Is the Senator or Representative voting for or against on its merits, or because of the existence or lack of an earmark for their constituents? Finally they pit state against state, district against district - and thus get in the way of a concerted effort to solve the problems of the nation as a whole.

The weird and even dangerous thing is, no matter how voters may deplore earmarks in the abstract, or on the federal level, they frickin' love them back home. Oh, yeah give me more. F-EE-EE-D ME! As this story about Ted Stevens illustrates,
"..they are grateful for the bounty of federal dollars he has delivered
...he can do more in six years that any of his opponents can do in 20
...hired him to bring money back to this state
...his skill at inserting earmarks into budget bills."
Even Alaskans' beliefs about "Ted Stevens' honesty or lack thereof" is tainted by this parochialism - this local self-interest. They don't care that he's dishonest so long as that dishonesty is working to give them an unfair advantage over their fellow Americans. Not that anybody should think that the voters of any other state would act differently. It's every man, district and state for themselves in a dog-eat-dog environment, and the devil take the hindmost. Hence my subtitle, 'He may be a corrupt bastard...'

It's no wonder that the Gazette Online, of Cedar Rapids Iowa reported the following:

Stevens, 84, also asked that the trial be moved from Washington to Alaska, where he has been a political figure since before statehood. He was named "Alaskan of the Century" in 1999 after unabashedly sending billions of dollars in federal money to the frontier state. The judge said he was not likely to send the case to Alaska.

Alaska ♥s this son-of-a-bitch.

Let's widen the scope of this premise of parochial disconnect, the idea that local (and frankly selfish IMnsHO) political forces outweigh and subvert the greater good. We are confronted with the bizarre fact that the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the performance of both houses of Congress as bodies, but just as overwhelmingly approves of their own Representatives and Senators. Congress has actually managed to score an approval rating below that of the toxic unpopularity of the President, but the upcoming election is expected to just barely buck the trend we see here:

Graphs from Center for Responsive Politics

Why Are Sitting Members of Congress Almost Always Reelected?(Citizens for United States Direct Initiatives)

In November of 1998, 401 of the 435 sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought reelection. Of those 401, all but six were reelected. In other words, incumbents seeking reelection to the House had a better than 98% success rate. U.S. Senators seeking reelection were only slightly less fortunate--slightly less than 90% of the Senate incumbents who sought reelection in 1996 held on to their seats.

What is it about sitting members of Congress that makes them so hard to beat? Are incumbents just better candidates (on average) or is the deck somehow stacked against challengers?

For years, political scientists have researched and written about the "incumbent advantage" in congressional elections. In an attempt to explain the overwhelming success of members of Congress seeking reelection, researchers have identified several factors which make sitting members of Congress hard to beat. These factors include:
The "Perks" of Office
Each member of Congress has a office budget allotment which provides enough money to hire a sizable staff both in Washington, D.C. and back home in their states or districts...
Time
Sitting members of Congress are on the job full-time--that is what they are paid to do. In fact, many of the things a candidate would do to win an election, such as meeting and talking with voters, attending special events, appearing on television or radio talk shows, etc., are part of the job description of a member of Congress...
Visibility
Sitting members of Congress are almost universally recognized in their districts. Having waged at least one previous campaign, and a successful one at that, and then serving in Congress for two years (House members) or six years (Senators) makes a sitting member of Congress something of a household name among his or her constituents...
Campaign Organization
As noted, every sitting member of Congress has run at least one successful election campaign for the seat he or she holds. This means, among other things, that a sitting House member or Senator has invaluable experience with creating and managing a campaign organization. It also means that incumbents generally have an effective volunteer organization in place and ready go when it is time to campaign.
Money
By far the most widely recognized and probably the most significant advantage enjoyed by sitting members of Congress is the large amounts of campaign contributions they are able to raise, especially in comparison to those who run against them...

As you can see from the graph, TPTB are overwhelmingly NOT supporting the 'unproven' (read: have not yet demonstrated their corruptibility) challengers. In the Senate the incumbents have a massive advantage of more than 2:1, in the House it's nearly 4:1!! It's a battle between The Incredible Hulk and Casper Milquetoast. But a factor that isn't discussed above is that many voters sense what's going on, and it's turning them off from participation.

Why the Re-election of Incumbents Year After Year Is a Threat to Democracy
-By Thomas Patterson

Mr. Patterson is the Bradlee Professor of Government & the Press at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The article is derived from his recently published book, The Vanishing Voter (Knopf, 2002).

Synopsis: Professor Patterson laments the decline of voter participation (threat to democracy!) brought about by this enormous incumbent advantage. The simple fact is, too many voters have twigged to the fact that their opinions are not being heard, their input isn't likely to affect any outcomes.

Highlights:

Only about three dozen of the 435 House seats were actually in play in 2002. In nearly twice that many districts, there was literally no competition: the weaker major party did not bother even to nominate a candidate. And in several hundred other districts, the competition was so one-sided that the result was known even before the campaign began. As was the case in 2000, the victors in House races won by an average margin of more than two to one.
[...]
U.S. House races are less competitive-and by a wide margin-than those of any other freely elected national legislative body in the world. The "sweeping" Republican victory in 2002 included a pickup of only a half-dozen House seats. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a gain of 30-50 House seats was the norm. The Democrats gained 75 seats in the 1890 election and lost 116 seats in 1894.
[...]
When members of Congress in the 1960s voted to greatly enlarge their personal staffs, they argued that the additional personnel were needed in order to offset the executive branch's domination of policy information. However, an estimated 50 percent and more of congressional staff resources are devoted to public relations, constituency service, and other activities that serve primarily to keep House members in office.
[...]
Not since John Connally in 1980 has the candidate who has raised the most money before the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire lost a nominating race.
[...]
Competition is the lifeblood of democratic elections and, when it dries up, participation suffers. There are many reasons why electoral participation has declined, but one of them surely is that citizens in too many places now have no real chance to influence the outcome.

I suppose you could continue to refer to this state of affairs as a democracy, but I'm afraid you would be fooling yourself. And that doesn't even take into account the primary process, where money seems to determine that candidates from both parties tend to be of the same stripe and serve the same agenda. Every time I look at these sad truths I find it very hard to see even a glimmer of a solution, an effective response. But despair is not an option, so they say. What always comes to mind is this quote from JFK:

"A Government that makes peaceful revolution impossible,
makes armed revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy --

Not that I'm advocating armed revolution or anything. Just saying, they seem to have made the peaceful revolution of the ballot box a thing of the past.

Elections, Parochialism, Incumbency, Corruption

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Sergeant Schultz Defense

This post started out as a comment in response to this item at TPM Muckraker:

Gonzales Was Oblivious To Politicization At DOJ: IG

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew essentially nothing about the partisan culture and violations of federal law that were routine at the agency under his watch.

That's what we heard today from Glenn Fine, the Department of Justice Inspector General.

Fine told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today that his investigators interviewed Gonzales for their report, which found numerous senior officials were illegally using partisan considerations when hiring some prosecutors and judges.

Accompanying video

One might observe that Gonzales is like that Hogan's Heroes character, Sergeant Schultz, "I see nothing. Nu-u-u-thing!"

But that would be unfairly letting Gone-z0 off the hook. The fact of the matter is he expanded Goodlings hire/fire powers dramatically through an 'unpublished' (read 'secret') memo. From Wikipedia:

Goodling's authority over hiring expanded significantly in March 2006, when Gonzales signed an unpublished order delegating to Goodling and Kyle Sampson, his then chief of staff, the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys (who are appointed by the President). The delegation included authority over interim United States attorneys (who are appointed by the Attorney General) and heads of the divisions that handle civil rights, public corruption, environmental crimes and other matters.

Also, from the same Wiki article:
" Goodling worked alongside Tim Griffin as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign. " - that's as partisan a position possible even for somebody who's job is completely in the party, not the government.

Finally, Goodling's title at the time was White House Liaison. Even putting aside the issue of partisanship, Gonzales should have had an affirmative duty to maintain the independence of the Department of Justice. There was an impropriety in just giving that much power to someone with close ties to the administration. No way can you say that Gonzales, with his own ties to George W. Bush, didn't know exactly what he was doing.

And lest we forget, when Alberto Gonzales testified about the US Attorneys' Purge last April, he claimed to have amnesia no less than 74 times. And that was on just one day of testimony. Let's have Alternet refresh our memories:

When asked about the decision to fire eight federal prosecutors, Gonzales insisted he wasn't involved, then after e-mails about meetings he attended were released, okay, maybe he was involved. But just a little. Microscopically. An eensy teensy teeny wee bit of a tad. He did admit to making the decision to fire the US Attorneys but couldn't remember when he made the decision. Seems to be a perennial theme with this administration. "Had absolutely nothing to do with it. Oh, you have evidence? Nope. Sorry. Can't remember. Its all a blur."

At the hearing, Senators accused Bush's torture champion of being dishonest, deceitful, incompetent, evasive, inept, underhanded, misleading, smelling like rancid olive loaf and looking like he's wearing his father's burial suit. Not to mention scaring small children with a high squeaky voice that over broadcast airwaves has been known to activate smoke alarms, lawn sprinklers and TIVO recordings of Gladiator movies. And those were the Republicans.

The Sgt. Schultz defense just doesn't cut it here. That one of the most loyal of Bush loyalists gave unprecedented power to another Bush loyalist - who wasn't even qualified for the position she occupied - and didn't know exactly what was going to happen, simply strains all credibility. One really has to question how capable an Inspector General Glenn Fine is. He's sure doing a heckuva job.

TAGS: Alberto Gonzales, Monica Goodling, Loyal Bushies, Department of Injustice

Monday, July 28, 2008

Goodling Crossed the Line

From the New York Times:

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility and independence, an internal report concluded Monday.

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office, singles out for particular criticism Monica Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly through the ranks of the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.

Ms. Goodling, who testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, introduced politics into the hiring process in a systematic way that constituted illegal misconduct, the report found.

(Underlining is mine.) So, the question is, if Ms. Goodling broke the law, if her behaviour constituted illegal misconduct, WHY HAS SHE NOT BEEN CHARGED?

OK, that question was merely rhetorical. We all know that the reason Goodling has not been charged is the same reason for which she was hired. The Department of Justice, who would be responsible for laying those charges is full of partisan hacks hired through an illegal process of politicization - a massive program of obstruction of justice. The Republican-fascist bastards, who committed perjury when they took their oaths of office, are interpreting the law of IOKIYAR as being paramount and superceding all the real laws.

Goodling was hired by the Queen Bee of Partisan Corruption, Mary Beth Buchanan, after proving her partisan fanaticism working as an opposition researcher under Tim Griffin. Opposition research is of course a purely political function, and as partisan as you can get. Buchanan had to have been fully aware that Goodling was the most loyal of Loyal Bushies possible.

Rather than provide supervision of her activities, Alberto Gonzales expanded her authority (and that of Deputy AG Kyle Samson) by way of an 'unpublished' memo in March 2006, to include "the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys (who are appointed by the President). The delegation included authority over interim United States attorneys (who are appointed by the Attorney General) and heads of the divisions that handle civil rights, public corruption, environmental crimes and other matters." (see Wikipedia for Goodling's career details.) And what a coincidence! "Reportedly, Goodling "took a leading role" in Bud Cummins's dismissal." Cummings was replaced in that position by her old opposition research boss, Tim Griffin.

When interviewed by the inspector general, Mr. Gonzales said he was not aware that Ms. Goodling and other aides were using political criteria in their decisions for career positions. Mr. Gonzales resigned last summer in the face of mounting accusations from congressional Democrats that politics had corrupted the department.
His successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said in a statement Monday after the report’s release that he was disturbed by their findings that improper political considerations were used in hiring decisions relating to some career employees.

So I guess we're expected to believe that two (three really, because John Ashcroft was not much better) successive Attorneys General could have this kind of illegal activity going on right under their noses and not even know about it. How convenient!

So what can we expect to see happen? Will Mukasey press charges against Goodling, along with Esther McDonald and Michael Elston, who were named in an earlier IG report as having also crossed the line? Not bloody likely. Will those hired illegally be let go and replaced by personnel who can redress the imbalance and blatant cronyism that these loyal Bushies have suffused into the DoJ? I doubt it. Will Congress exercise its authority and mount a full investigation into the department to at least expose the full extent of the corruption? Yeah, right - when Hell freezes over.

These hirees will simply continue on in their positions like the Bush SCOTUS appointments, like hundreds of circuit judges and thousands of little cogs in the wheel, corrupting everything they touch until the country is well and truly the police state that they were all hired to enable. I can almost smell the jackboot polish now.

TAGS: Monica Goodling, Department of Injustice, Corruption, USAttorneys Scandal

Monday, June 30, 2008

Slow Burn of the USA Purge Continues

SadButTrue had a magnificent post last week about Mary Beth Buchanan. Who's that, you ask? She's the one who hired Monica Goodling. Currently Buchanan is serving as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, more on her later.

If ever a subject needed a definitive book written about it, the U.S. Attorneys Purge is it. The problem is coming up with a thesis for the book because the sheer evil genius of the purge is that it works for the Bush administration on so many levels that to take just one motive and run with it would leave so many other wings of the scandal behind.

Off the top of my head, the purge served the following ends:

1. Removed a cluster of effective, impartial prosecutors. These guys were putting away Republicans right and left.
2. Sent a message to the remaining U.S. Attorneys that their job security depended strictly on their compliance (or in the case of Patrick Fitzgerald, his status as untouchable).
3. It totally negated the subpoena power of the incoming Democratic majority. They have investigated now for a year and a half and have not found a single prosecutor that can convert evidence into jail time.
4. Voter supression. The new stooges are there to serve as the Katherine Harrises and Ken Blackwells of the 2008 election cycle.

By the way something, Mary Beth Buchanan has her own Don Siegelman case on her hands. Today the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Justice Department for documents related to the Siegelman prosecution as well as the odious prosecution of Cyril Wecht, which was run by Buchanan. Looks like SbT was onto something. If only there were anyone left to prosecute.

TAGS: Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. Attorneys Purge, Scandals, House Judiciary Committee

NAYs ---8
Boxer (D-CA) Bryan (D-NV) Dorgan (D-ND)	Feingold (D-WI) Harkin (D-IA) Mikulski (D-MD)	Shelby (R-AL) Wellstone (D-MN)

Present - 1
Fitzgerald (R-IL)

Not Voting - 1
McCain (R-AZ)