Bill Moyers describes the problems of informing the public about political and business corruption

Bill Moyers has published an article that says a great deal about the reason why America's government is no longer working. Here is a key paragraph:

The late scholar Cleanth Brooks of Yale thought there were three great enemies of democracy. He called them "The Bastard Muses":

• Propaganda, which pleads sometimes unscrupulously, for a special cause at the expense of the total truth;
• sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted by, and in excess of, the occasion; and
• pornography, which focuses upon one powerful human drive at the expense of the total human personality.

The poet Czeslaw Milosz identified another enemy of democracy when, upon accepting the Noble Prize for Literature, he said "Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember." Memory is crucial to democracy; historical amnesia, its nemesis.

Against these tendencies it is an uphill fight to stay the course of factual broadcasting. We have to keep reassuring ourselves and one another that it matters and we have to join forces to defend and safeguard our independence. I learned this early on.
[Formatting added by the editor of WTF-o]

Bill Moyers goes on to describe some instances in which he helped expose corruption in politics, but one item in the story is especially memorable. It involves exposing wrong-doing by corporations.

But shining the spotlight on political corruption is nothing compared to what can happen if you raise questions about corporate power in Washington, as my colleague Marty Koughan and I discovered when we produced a program for David Fanning and "Frontline" on pesticides and food. Marty had learned that industry was attempting behind closed doors to dilute the findings of the American Academy of Sciences study on the effects of pesticide residues on children. Before we finished the documentary, the industry somehow purloined a copy of our draft script - we still aren't certain how - and mounted a sophisticated and expensive campaign to discredit our program before it aired. Television reviewers and editorial pages of key newspapers were flooded with propaganda. Some public television managers were so unnerved by the blitz of misleading information about a film they had not yet broadcast that they actually protested to PBS with letters that had been prepared by the industry.

Here's what most perplexed us: the American Cancer Society - an organization that in no way figured in our story - sent to its 3,000 local chapters a "critique" of the unfinished documentary claiming, wrongly, that it exaggerated the dangers of pesticides in food. We were puzzled. Why was the American Cancer Society taking the unusual step of criticizing a documentary that it had not seen, that had not aired and that did not claim what the Society alleged? An enterprising reporter named Sheila Kaplan later looked into those questions for the journal Legal Times. It turns out that the Porter Novelli public relations firm, which had worked for several chemical companies, also did pro bono work for the American Cancer Society. Kaplan found that the firm was able to cash in some of the goodwill from that "charitable" work to persuade the compliant communications staff at the Society to distribute some harsh talking point about the documentary before it aired - talking points that had been supplied by, but not attributed to, Porter Novelli. Legal Times headlined the story "Porter Novelli Plays All Sides." A familiar Washington game.

Others also used the American Cancer Society's good name in efforts to tarnish the journalism before it aired, none more invidiously than the right-wing polemicist Reed Irvine, who pumped his sludge through an organization with the Orwellian name Accuracy in Media. He attacked our work as "junk science on PBS" and demanded Congress pull the plug on public broadcasting. Fortunately, PBS once again stood firm. The documentary aired, the journalism held up and the publicity liberated the National Academy of Sciences to release the study that the industry had tried to cripple.

This is really a long way from the ideal of representative democracy we were taught about in civics. This is the corporations working to take control of America and simply do whatever they want to do in the name of increased profit. It is the story we all know of Wall Street which, in its greed, sold mortgage backed securities with essentially fake financial insurance that made the securities seem like a sure route to wealth for the investors. Instead they were the destruction of the Wall Street banks and the world economy. For a while in the fall of 2008 Wall Street was literally dead.

Only amazing efforts by governments around the world and handouts of lrge sums of taxpayer money to the very banks that caused the problem saved the world economy from the second Great Depression. We still call the residue of that period the Great Recession and we will not recover for years.

Wall Street and the American corporations do not want that story told. Go back and look at the list of four highlighted items above. All of them are in play, especially propaganda and the strange amnesia of the public.

Go read Moyer's entire article. As usual it is both very good and highly entertainikng.

Yet even more Blagojevich face time. Enough, already!

Here's the video of Rod Blagojevich's latest over-the-top press conference in his own defense after the Illinois state House impeached him by a vote of 114 to 1.




It looks to me like Rod Blagojevich is another of those people who love being in the limelight and having power. He is working extremely hard to do well personally by doing (some) good publicly.

He has already convinced himself everyone else is wrong besides himself. He also has no understanding of the concept "Over the top." In his grandiosity he thinks everyone will see him as the great man he sees himself. Altogether he is quite narcissistic and also obsessional. I'd bet that his entire political career is based on those traits. Unfortunately it has led him to completely disregard the limitations a democracy places on politicians. He knows that he is right, and that he is uniquely important, so trivialities like the law and the separation of powers does not - should not - apply to him. all he has to do is explain that to the public and he will be saved from his enemies, in this case the Illinois Legislature as a whole.

He is being opposed by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a man who is clearly obsessional about applying the law and rooting out wrong-doing. Those are obsessional characteristics the public approves of.

Fitzgerald and Blagojevich are the principle individual characters in this very public drama. The Illinois legislature is a problem for Blagojevich, but it is a faceless group. The drama is missing, unless you are a political junkie.

The conflict between Fitzgerald and Blagojevich could be the basis for a very good novel. Probably has been.

Bush, Cheney and the conservatives caused the economic crisis and general Wall Street corruption

Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw two shoes at George Bush to remind everyone that Bush and his minions are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They are also the reason that there are 4 million refugees spread around the Middle East. Eric Margolis points out what else Bush, Cheney and the conservatives are responsible for.

While al-Zaidi was being beaten in prison for his courageous act, off in New York, the fabled financial guru, Bernie Madoff, was accused of bilking clients of an astounding $50 billion while well-fed watchdogs of the Securities and Exchange Commission slept.

Thanks to Madoff and other Wall Street bandits, tens of millions of Americans have lost their life savings and retirement funds, and the word financial system is on the rocks. The storm they created has blown as far east as the Gulf and South Asia.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney were obsessed by al-Qaida, searching under every rock in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden, the real danger to America was at home – on Wall Street. The same bin Laden who pointed out a decade ago that America’s economy, its Achilles Heel, would one day collapse.

Wall Street’s financial con men, hedge fund nabobs, and casino capitalists took home a staggering US $33.3 billion of bonuses in 2007 alone thanks to shady financial engineering and peddling fraudulent securities. So far, they have escaped prosecution and get to keep their millions and $30 million South Hampton beach houses. That these fraudsters go unpunished, and get to keep their swag, is unconscionable. [Snip]

The US national debt is twice America’s net worth.

Government and business encouraged a reckless credit binge to which the nation became addicted. Manufacturing fell to only 12% of GDP. Finance – the shuffling of paper – became America’s leading industry, at almost 25% of GDP. Americans saved nothing and had to borrow $1.2 trillion from China and Japan to keep their orgy of consumerism going.

Washington’s response to the financial crisis was panic, then flooding the economy with freshly-printed money in hope something positive would happen. Japan made precisely the same gamble when its bubble economy collapsed in the early 1990’s. Today, Japan has one of the world’s highest deficits and its economy remains stagnant.

Wall Street used the political conservatives to remove government supervision, then they converted the economy into a banker's paradise where bank loans were used for the consumption purchases needed to pump up the economy while their merger-happy parasites shifted real production off-shore to third world countries where they didn't have to share profits with the workers who actually produce the goods the economy has consumed.

The executives of large American companies were bought off with extravagant salaries and bonuses as they consolidated, merged and drove their companies into the ground. Here's Eric Margolis' description of what the car companies have been doing:

Worse is coming. Chrysler and Ford will shut plants in January. GM is next. In spite of the $ 13.4 billion auto industry bailout announced by President Bush last week, many plants may never reopen. Even the mighty Toyota just announced its first-ever loss.

The staggering US auto industry closely resembles the old Soviet Union: economically declining, bereft of new ideas, producing unwanted products, run by dimwitted careerist bureaucrats.

America produces the wrong cars, and far too many. The bloated auto industry must downsize. It has been selling cars only thanks to the steroid of cheap, easy credit – in effect, almost giving them away. Now that the drug is largely cut off, sales have nosedived.

The US economy has been running almost entirely on credit for a decade.

When MBA's, Economists and Lawyers run the economy and it is hard to find students who want to work hard enough to learn the relatively poorly paid jobs of engineers, the economy is being driven into the ground. But that's what Conservatives and Libertarians have been doing since Reagan was elected President.

It'll happen every time conservatives and bankers take control of the economy. The current economic crisis is just the chickens coming home to roost.

Ill. Governor Blagojevich arrested for corruption

It has been announced that this morning the FBI arrested the Illinois Governor Blagojevich along with his chief of staff, John Harris. Blagojevich is the man who was to have appointed the Illinois Senator to replace Barack Obama. He was trying to sell the appointment.

Here are some particulars of what Blagojevich is accused of doing.

Prosecutors also alleged Blagojevich expressed feeling "stuck" as a sitting governor and spent a large amount of time weighing whether he should appoint himself to the vacancy--possibly to avoid impeachment and help remake his image for a potential 2016 run for the presidency. A recent Tribune poll found Blagojevich with a record low 13 percent job approval rating.

Under state law, the governor has the sole unfettered discretion to name Obama's appointment.

Prosecutors alleged Blagojevich sought appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services, secretary of the Energy Department or gain an ambassadorship in the new Obama administration, or get a lucrative job with a union in exchange for appointing a union-preferred candidate. An Obama spokesman had no immediate comment.

Blagojevich also was alleged to be using a favors list, made up largely of individuals and firms that have state contracts or received taxpayer benefits, from which to conduct a $2.5 million fundraising drive before year's end when a new tougher law on campaign donations, prompted by the governor's voracious fundraising, would take effect.

Even Blagojevich's recently announced $1.8 billion plan for new interchanges and "green lanes" on the Illinois Tollway was subject to corruption, prosecutors alleged. The criminal complaint alleges Blagojevich expected an unnamed highway concrete contractor to raise a half-million dollars for his campaign fund in exchange for state money for the tollway project. "If they don't perform, (expletive) 'em," Blagojevich said, according to the complaint.

Blagojevich and Harris also allegedly conspired to demand the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members responsible for editorials critical of Blagojevich in exchange for state help with the sale of Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium owned by Tribune Co.

In addition, federal prosecutors alleged Blagojevich and Harris, along with others, obtained and sought to gain financial benefits for the governor, members of his family and his campaign fund in exchange for appointments to state boards and commissions, state jobs and state contracts.

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement.

"They allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism."

Talking Points Memo is all over the details of this arrest.

At TPMmuckraker, Zach Roth is poring through the documents released this morning by the feds. Blagojevich is comically corrupt, by the feds' account. Here's a guy who has been under federal investigation for three years but who still thinks he can appoint himself to Obama's Senate seat and remake himself for a run for President in 2016:

"I've got this thing and it's [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there."

--David Kurtz

As Josh Marshall points out, Blagojevich has been under investigation by the feds for three years, and it is well known that they have been listening in to his phones for quite a while. For him to be making the apparently incriminating statements on the phone is simply chutzpah - or stupidity.

Personally, I think this is a competition between Louisiana and Illinois. Each currently has an ex-governor in prison for corruption - John Edwards for Louisiana and George Ryan for Illinois. They are tied in the prestigious "ex-governor-in-prison for corruption in office" competition, and Rod Blagojevich simply wanted to break the tie and help Illinois pull ahead.

Think Progress has a video of U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference announcing Blagojevich's arrest.

Hunter S. Thompson would have understood what is going on now

As we watch the federal reserve desperately trying to save the financial markets, we get this report from Greg Palast.

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

So? Is there a connection? Palast thinks so.

How? Follow the money.

The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.

Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’

Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.

‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.

But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.

But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.

Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.

Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America.

Is that realistic? Consider my previous post Elliot Spitzer; Prostitutes; Why is the DoJ involved?. It really wasn't reasonable for the Department of Justice to focus on Elliot Spitzer, but we know from the US Attorney Purge that this administration has used the criminal law to silence its critics. Why would the Bush administration be so adamant about fleecing mortgage-holders? Because that's the only place left that there has been any money for over two decades. Quoted in my earlier post "What's happened to America? Over half a century of war and the conservative movement.":

In just the past seven years, US household debt almost doubled and federal debt soared by near two-thirds, rocketing by a combined $10.5 Trillion. The total combined debt of households ($14.4 Trillion) and the federal government ($9.2 Trillion) is now 168% of GDP, far higher even than in the brief spike during World War II. All other levels and ratios of debt also have soared far beyond any past precedent.

Yet, this record-shattering explosion of debt stimulus created the weakest seven year job growth (4.4%) and one of the weakest periods of real GDP growth (18.1%) since the Depression: less than 6 million new jobs ($1.8 million of debt per job) and a mere $4 Trillion increase in GDP.
This period began with the collapse of Wall Street's stock market bubble from the late 1990s and ends now with the collapse of Wall Street's housing and other debt bubbles. That such massive mortgage and consumer borrowing, tax cuts and war spending produced such remarkably weak real economic results suggests the months and years ahead could be quite difficult.

Yet, along with Fed rate cuts for cheaper debt, the only policies seriously considered by this year's crop of Wall Street-funded political candidates is more short-term household and federal debt "stimulus." Locked into a failed, 30-year-old ideology of deregulation and debt, there is no option to compete with the remarkably effective industrial and trade policies pursued by China and others.

2008 will be the ninth consecutive year the US economy grows slower than the world's growth while China grows more than three times faster. In the past seven years of sluggish growth, the US accumulated Manufacturing trade deficits (production shortfalls) of over -$3 Trillion with full Current Account trade losses of -$4.3 Trillion; more than the entire nominal growth of GDP.

This is what the Wall Street Republican financed Reagan Revolution has brought America to. Financial collapse and Department of Justice prosecutions of political opponents who expose the failure of the conservative politicians and the Wall Street crooks bankers who have caused the collapse.

Palast makes the connection between the bailout for Wall Street and Elliot Spitzer here:

When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.

But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bailout. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Do I believe the banks called Justice and said, “Take him down today!” Naw, that’s not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press – one was “Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer” - made clear to Bush’s enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn’t Bin Laden.

And Hunter S. Thompson? He described where we are now in his slogan "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." That's where we are now.

A novel with Spitzer as the main character?

Like most avid readers of fiction, I have dreams of writing a novel. So I am always on the lookout for advice on what makes a novel interesting. The answer, as I normally am told, is character. But what is it that makes a character in a novel interesting?

Richard Russo, using Eliot Spitzer as an example, explains. It's complexity of character.

My fictional Eliot would be complex, would contain paradoxes. He would not be a hypocrite. My Eliot would believe with his whole heart in his crusades against the corrupt and the powerful and the privileged, even as he worked studiously to undermine his legacy. Fiction can accommodate such paradoxes, provided they're explained.

But I don't mean to jigger the facts; fictive Eliot will do exactly what the real Eliot has done, only my guy almost never imagines getting caught. And when he does occasionally consider the possibility, he trusts that there will be ample warning that disaster is imminent. For the most part, things in his life have happened slowly, especially the good things, and he trusts that bad things will evolve similarly. He will swerve at the last moment. The possibility of a head-on collision, swift and devastating, simply never occurs to him.

Even worse, though he knows that the world doesn't work this way, he convinces himself that if he's caught, people will treat him fairly. Sure, he has shamed himself, but he's done a lot of good things, too, and people will remember that. He has always employed a kind of moral arithmetic, and he'll expect that same math to be applied to him -- all his virtues set up on one side of the ledger, his one weakness on the other. People will understand that he's mostly good. By the time my Eliot realizes that he's wrong about all this, it's too late. The damage is done. He has betrayed his wife, his children, his best self, and it's all his fault.

Okay, that's my thumbnail fictional Eliot; a little thin, and maybe I like him too much. Not giving his nasty, righteous streak enough play. It's possible I'm giving him more credit than God would, but then God has the advantage of knowing what Eliot and I are still trying to figure out. I'll learn more as I write, but there are other characters to consider.

First, Eliot's wife -- and here I sense a mystery even deeper than the mystery of Eliot himself. Why does she stand there beside him at the podium when he confesses? Why do they all? I feel uniquely unqualified to look inside her heart, to ferret out her motives. I make a list of what I know (not much) and what I suspect (not much more) and wonder whether imagination will fill in all those blanks. I'm relatively certain of one thing: It's not this woman's fault. I won't portray her as frigid or otherwise complicit in what has transpired. She hasn't driven Eliot to any of this. I don't believe in perfection, but I've decided for the time being that she's been a good wife, a good mother.

What I know about marriage is that identities over time tend to merge. Eliot's wife was once her own person, but down the years she's lost some of that individuality, surrendered it willingly, never suspecting she might have further use for it. If she's not this man's wife, then who is she? Worse, can she abandon her husband without implying that her daughters should do the same to their father? And what was that promise that she made? For better or for worse? Did she mean that or just say it? How could it be that she was able to imagine the better so vividly, the worse not at all? Was that his fault for leaving so few clues, or hers for ignoring the few there were? The facts of her situation are simple and clear. Why aren't her emotions? Why won't they stand still so she can examine them?

And what of those daughters? This is the hardest part for my Eliot. What really tears him apart is that when the news breaks, these girls are going to have to go to school. He sees them in his mind's eye now and can think of little else. Sees them alone and isolated, all the other kids talking about them, growing silent when his girls walk into the room. This won't go on forever, but to them it will seem like forever. Eliot also fears that he's done them long-term damage. Some of it can be repaired. They're good, smart girls, and they won't grow up hating all men. But their innocence has fled; they look at him now like a man wearing a partially removed disguise. Never again will they take anything on faith. They will be cautious in the living of their lives, taking nothing at face value. They'll brace for impact when there's no reason. He could have spared them all this, yet managed not to.

The novel's getting pretty dark, and that worries me. Time for a little comic relief. Real-life Eliot has few friends, we're told, the natural result of what some people like to call his arrogance, though my Eliot has never thought of it in those terms until now. Arrogant? He'd simply tried to put criminals in jail where they belonged. Wasn't that his job? Is that any reason he should be friendless now? So I'll give my Eliot one friend, someone to help him put what he's done into perspective. I'll give this friend some of my own cynical humor. Ah, what the hell, I'll give him my name. Call him Rick. I can change that later with a keystroke.

Before everything begins to unravel, Eliot confides to Rick that he's made a mess of things, betrayed everyone he loves, that he isn't even sure who he is anymore. But Rick will tell him not to be melodramatic. It's true that he's made mistakes, big ones, Rick explains, but they aren't what Eliot thinks they are. Rick admits he's outraged that Eliot has spent $80,000 on prostitutes, because it shouldn't cost that much to get a little action in America. It's like one of those $500 Pentagon hammers. Downright wasteful. And why order a hammer from New Jersey and pay the shipping? There are perfectly good hammers in Washington -- it's a damned city of hammers, when you think about it. Where on earth did Eliot get the idea that New Jersey hammers were superior? All he wanted to do was nail something, right?

Don't joke, Eliot tells Rick. This isn't funny; he could go to jail. But to Rick's way of thinking, that's the biggest joke of all. Your average CEO can claim millions in salary and stock options in the same year his company is going down the tubes, and it's all perfectly legal. You want to know what you're really guilty of, Eliot? Cluelessness. You didn't forget who you are, you forgot where you are. This is America, pal, where you can lead the nation into war on false pretenses and be rewarded with a second term in office, but where illicit sex is and has always been an impeachable offense. (Note to self: A little of this Rick character goes a long way.)

How will my Eliot's story end? Do I wait for real-life events to unfold or make something up? What kind of story will it be? A tragedy? Maybe, but somehow I don't think so.

My Eliot's no Gatsby, and there's no reason he should wind up floating face-down in the pool. What he's really done is blown it. He's had a great opportunity, and he's blown it. There will be both private and public consequences. He will be punished, and he will punish himself. He will survive. So will his family. People do. What is the basis for such breezy optimism? Well, for one, there's historical precedent. Hillary Clinton wasn't done in by her knucklehead husband. I wouldn't pretend to know what's in her heart, but she's clearly functioning. And Chelsea, God love her, seems to have weathered the effects of her old man's late-onset adolescence.

I'm not going to write a novel based on Spitzer, and I'll probably never finish either of the two novels I have played with for years. But this analysis tells me why Spitzer's story on the news interests me as much as it does, and why I find the news reports so unsatisfying. The reporters keep trying to simplify Spitzer's character so that is can be explained in a single sentence.

I guess they are too busy just trying to report the car wreck on I-95 or the IED in Iraq to bother with describing a complex character. Those reporters will never finish their novels or get them published, either. Too much fact, explanations that are too simple. Even when such an excellent example of a complex, paradoxical character as Elliot Spitzer is simply handed to them on a plate with a bow wrapped around him.

---

Thanks to the inimitable Laura Rozen of War & Piece who directed me to this excellent report in the Washington Post. But for her I would have missed it.

More details on Spitzer

If either the prurience or the politics of Elliot Spitzer's dalliance with extremely high priced hookers has gotten your attention, then Jeralyn Merrit of Talkleft has collected a great deal of information and since she is a defense attorney, she also explains the relevance and apparent legal strategies.

Laura Rozen (War & Piece) also reports more information, this focusing especially on the details of the prostitution organization, the Emperors Club VIP. I was surprised at the prices the Emperors Club charges. This is from the New York Post (referenced by Rozen)

Two other women, Tanya Hollander, 36, a nutritionist from upstate Rhineback, and Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32, of Brooklyn, face similar charges for handling the day-to-day business.

For several years, wealthy men could go online and pick through mini-biographies of the women. Their bodies were pictured but their faces obscured.

"Raquel," who worked in New York and LA, was described as "an avid writer, actress and journalist."

Men paid $1,100 to $5,500 an hour or could get discounted day or multiple-day rates of $25,000 to $50,000. American Express and wire transfers were accepted.

Sometimes the women took imprints of the men's credit cards on the spot and faxed them back to the pimping couple.

The operation started to unravel after one of the hookers agreed to become a confidential source for the FBI in late 2006.

If you wondered where those tax cuts that Bush and Cheney rammed through for their wealthy supporters, this is what those tax cuts were buying. Had to be. No one else except the recipients of those tax cuts could afford those prices.

Somehow this seems to me to be a real justification for a sharply progressive income tax on both investment and wage income, along with hefty inheritance taxes. Paying for sex is not either socially or economically valuable, and should be discouraged.

CNN failed when it ran the recent Republican debate

The Los Angeles Times makes the case that the way CNN ran last Wednesday's debate proves that CNN stands for Corrupt News Network. CNN chose the questions that were asked and controlled the time spent on the "debate." What did they do?

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it. [Snip]

why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters' concerns? The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday's debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing. His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN.

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal -- and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed.

The Democrats have abandoned FOX since it is bought and paid for by the Republican Party conservatives and couldn't report an honest unbiased story if their life depended on it. CNN doesn't even have the excuse that they were bought by a political party. They're just so desperate to increase viewership in their increasingly irrelevant so-called news organization that they, too have abandoned all journalistic integrity.

One other point I found especially obnoxious and biased, and so did this reviewer. It was the disgusting and Unamerican question about Biblical Inerrancy:

...the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues -- say, abortion -- that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It's nobody's business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

The latter point is relevant because CNN's noxious laundering of this question through the goofy YouTube mechanism quite clearly was designed to embarrass Mitt Romney -- who happens to be a Mormon -- and, secondarily, to help Mike Huckabee -- who, as a Baptist minister, had a ready answer, and who happens to be television's campaign flavor of the month.

Beside considerations like these, CNN's incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales.

So CNN was venal, incompetent, biased and corrupt in the way they ran the Republican debate. The authors final conclusion is mine also:

CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it's time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

Read the article. It's worth it.

CNN, on the other hand, has proven itself worthless.

Russell Harding - another Giuliani "mistake"

Another individual Giuliani plucked out of obscurity and appointed to a high management post in New York City is Russell Harding.

Russell Harding? Who's he? Just the college drop-out son of the New York Liberal Party who Rudy chose to lead the Housing Development Corporation, who several years later was convicted of living high on funds he looted from that agency. As you read this, remember that Harding was a city employee. Contrary to the clear directives in the City Charter, Rudy Guiliani had directed "the Independent Budget Office of the City of New York to route all requests for records through City Hall." (according to Rachel Morris' article Rudy Awakening. This was the only agency which might have reined in Russel Hardy's misuse of taxpayer funds.

Here is the story from the Village Voice:

In a series of articles that led to the investigation, the Voice reported ("Lush Life of a Rudy Appointee," April 10-16, 2002) that Harding spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at posh resorts from San Diego to Hong Kong, and that he used an agency credit card to buy expensive presents for friends. [Snip]

Last week, [The article is dated March 22, 2005] three years after his extravagant spending on the taxpayer's dime was exposed in the Voice, former Rudy Giuliani aide Russell Harding pled guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges in Manhattan federal court. Harding admitted to stealing more than $400,000 from the housing agency he once headed, as well as to possessing a disc, imported from Belgium, filled with pornographic images of children. In his deal with prosecutors, he agreed to serve up to 63 months in prison.

So what skimming of funds did Harding do? In an earlier article dated June 10th, 2002 the village Voice described a few things:

In one instance, Harding said in a Web chat that close ties between his father, Liberal Party leader Raymond Harding, and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, had helped his father win legal representation of a firm seeking to manage the city's airports.

On another occasion, Harding allegedly said that he "made a few extra dollars" from contractors he had helped on a Bronx renovation project funded by the housing corporation. [Snip]

Making money was par for the course, Harding revealed in his chats with Sawyers. In a June 2001 exchange, Harding spoke about his father's working relationship with the mayor.

"My dad is always helping the mayor with projects for money making," typed Harding. Writing in his characteristic three-dot style, he added, "And the mayor is always helping my dad as well . . . he had my dad go over some contracts a while back about a company taking over the airports here . . . so not only in the long run will the mayor profit from it . . . but my dad already has with doing the contract . . . they both have a wash each other's back thing going."

The confusing language may just have been Russell Harding's bragging to someone who says he knew nothing about the issues.

"I really must admit I don't understand half of what you just said," responded Sawyers, "but I guess it makes sense."

"LOL," typed Harding, using the cyber-ese for "laugh out loud." "Trust me Fred . . . it makes perfect sense for the line of work my dad is in . . . as well as with my job . . . we all help the mayor and he helps us."

This second Voice article goes extensively into Harding's on-line efforts to find young boys to have sex with, but that does not directly involve Rudy Giuliani. It merely goes to demonstrate the character of the people that Rudy surrounds himself with and chooses for high management positions. Then, from a Village Voice article dated April 10 - 16, 2002 there is another description of Ray Harding's expenditures on the City dime:

On January 16, with just two weeks to go until his last day on the job, Russell Harding, president of the New York City Housing Development Corporation—a small but powerful city agency—picked up the phone and called the corporation's travel agent.

He booked a $10,700 trip that would take him to Singapore, Thailand, and Bali. Through the agent, Altours International, he also ordered a pre-paid, open ticket for $7500, destination unnamed.

Unlike other departing aides to the administration of former mayor Rudy Giuliani who may have been planning post-employment vacations, Harding ordered the bill sent to his agency for payment. That same day, the travel agent faxed an invoice for the trips to HDC, where an official vendor-payment request was immediately prepared. Six days later, on January 22, Senior Vice President Luke Cusack, a close friend who was hired for his job by Harding, signed off on it. A check for the full amount was promptly issued and the invoice stamped "Paid."

Harding, the son of one of the state's most powerful political figures, Liberal Party boss Ray Harding, resigned as scheduled on February 1. But records released in the wake of his departure show the planned Southeast Asia trip was just the cap on a virtual nonstop, three-and-a-half-year spending spree during which Harding and Cusack traveled literally around the world at city expense.

Records show that after Harding was appointed by Giuliani in 1998, he and Cusack racked up more than $250,000 in travel, dining, and entertainment expenses—ranging from $1000 dinners at the Four Seasons to a Hong Kong junket. Even Harding's morning bagels, purchased for $1.25 each, were charged to the agency.

The records also show that Harding dipped into the agency's pocket to shower presents on at least one friend who hadn't the remotest connection to city affairs, at the same time bragging about his ability to file personal expenses—including gambling debts—with the agency as business costs.

A trip to Singapore, Thailand, and Bali is very probably a sex tour of Southeast Asia.

So Russell Harding's appointment was a payoff by Rudy Giuliani to Harding's father, powerful Liberal Party leader Ray Harding. Ray Harding had placed Rudy Giuliani on the Liberal Party ticket for mayor, a move which allowed Rudy to win the job. As described above, Ray Harding and Rudy Giuliani worked together to steer city contracts to favored contractors and Rudy let Ray's son run hog-wild spending taxpayer money in exchange for the favors.

Berine Kerek was not Rudy's only failure in judgment. So was Russell Harding. In both cases competent people (including members of the Press in the case of Russell Harding) warned Rudy in advance against making the appointment, and in both cases Rudy told those who warned him that in his judgment they were wrong and he, Rudy, was right. So what we have in Rudy is a many with poor personal judgment who refuses to listen to people who warn him that he is going to make a mistake.

Rudy is not a man we want for President.

The Iraqi corruption

Iraqi corruption, much of it run from various offices of the Maliki government, is a major barrier to Iraqi development. The Mahdi Army is in control of the Health Ministry and diverts drugs into the black market to finance its operations. In the meantime, investigations into government corruption elsewhere have been stalled when the Prime Minister, Malaki, has stepped in to protect his supporters. MSNBC has the story.

This provides confirmation to an earlier report that says Iraqi 'government' refuses to take control of Iraq. There is no widely accepted single nation of Iraq and no strong-man government to force people to work together, so there is no nation-level cooperation for rebuilding Iraq. Instead there are separate tribes with militias of their own and all kinds of individuals out to line their own pockets, probably more as a survival process than from pure greed or evil intent.

It is not surprising that the Saudi Arabians have no confidence in the Maliki government and are working for its replacement. This is one more reason why Lt. Gen Odum had it right when he wrote that "American Victory in Iraq is not an available option." Every possible solution for a positive outcome in Iraq has depended on success by the Iraqi government, but his is one more indicator - a very strong indicator - that there is no effective government in Iraq.

Given the existing Civil War in Iraq, how likely is it that the problems of corruption can be solved? Can the Maliki government be replaced by a government with better prospects for success as a government?

Right now the very existence of the Maliki government depends on the presence of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. How can the U.S. responsibly pull out of Iraq? What happens when (not if) the U.S. leaves?

Getting into Iraq was a Bush - NeoCon idiocy. I wrote at the time that we were grabbing the tar baby and wouldn't be able to let go. Sure wish had had been wrong. Two things are very clear, however. First, the solution to getting the U.S. out of the disaster in Iraq will not be found by the Republicans or other idiots who got us into this mess. Second, whatever the solution is, it will not be a result of American military operations. It will be political and will come from cooperation with a bunch of people the current administration does not like and will not cooperate with, almost certainly including Iranians and Syrians.

Sunnis in Iraq especially have every reason to be very, very afraid. The only thing standing between the Sunnis being treated like the KKK treated freed American slaves after the Civil War is the U.S. military, and al Qaeda in Iraq is trying hard (generally successfully) to make that not work. Al Qaeda in Iraq is also doing everything possible to fan the flames of Sunni - Shiite civil war, again with a great deal of success. Iraqis and American soldiers and Marines will continue to be getting killed and wounded for the foreseeable future, and the absence of an effective Iraqi government is a major contributor to the set of problems.

Can you say "Gordian Knot?" Unfortunately, the idea of a clear, simple bold stroke that will resolve the set of problems ("Cut the Gordian Knot.") is what got the NeoCon-inspired idiots in the Bush/Cheney government into this mess in the first place. Bush is no King Alexander, and Iraq is no fairy tale legend. The future for Iraq looks bleak, as does the future for America in Iraq.

DoJ official policy: Voting mistakes are federal crimes

Not sure you are eligible to vote after moving to a new address? Don't even try to register! If you get it wrong, the Republican Party's so-called 'Department of Justice' will prosecute you for any error, no matter what your intentions.

In fact, they will prosecute you even if you just register improperly and don't vote. Oh, and it is a crime to be registered twice, so if the voter administrators from your previous place of registration fail to cancel your registration, YOU will be prosecuted for vote fraud. It's all about suppressing Democratic voter turnout stopping Vote Fraud.

Bush and AG Gonzales fired former U.S. attorneys David Iglesias of New Mexico and John McKay of Seattle because they failed to respond to pressure from local Republican politicians to bring federal cases in alleged Democratic instances of voter fraud. That failure was especially heinous since both U.S. Attorneys actually had the gall to not bring such dubious cases to trial right before an election so that the election would be influenced. Those U.S. Attorneys actually tried to follow the guidelines written in the Justice Department's election crimes manual!

Of course they deserved to be fired! They weren't U.S. Attorneys! They were Republican Attorneys tasked with winning elections for Republican candidates! How DARE they refuse to bring political prosecutions and even act in accordance to their written guideline! Who were they working for? The American People or the Republican Party?

The Department of Justice has solved the problem of those pesky guidelines Iglesias and McKay were fired for following. They have rewritten the guidelines and eliminated those instructions. TPM Muckraker has the story. The instructions now say that every minor registration or voting error will be prosecuted, no matter what the registrant's or voter's intent was, or even who was at fault in the case of administrative error. From now on, all likely Democratic voters who can possibly be indicted errors in the process will be prosecuted, even if they are not related to any conspiracy to change an election.

No surprise there. The Republicans have been desperately searching for proof of Democratic conspiracies to steal elections and have not been successful.

We can expect a sharp increase in federal cases of voter fraud to be brought in late September and October of 2008 as Republican U.S. Attorneys like U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic's desperate attempt to keep his job.

---

See also

• Victim of Republican political prosecution demands reimbursement for costs
  June 17, 2007
• US attorney Biscupic (Eastern Wi.) again reversed by Appeals Court - can't convict for no crime.
  April 25, 2007
• White House working to limit voter turnout.
  April 19, 2007
• Georgia Thompson was convicted by right-wing media
  April 13, 2007
• NY Times gets it right! See editorial today.
  April 09, 2007
• Wisconsin US attorney rammed through fake corruption case of Democrat before last Governor's election.
  April 06, 2007

Iraqi 'government' refuses to take control of Iraq

All those 'good news' stories out of Iraq in which schools and hospitals have been rebuilt have left out the end results. From the New York Times via TPM:

...of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million.

Of the projects taken over by the Iraqi government, the Iraqi's have not been able to operate many of them.

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day. [Snip]

In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Mr. Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but 2 of the 12 projects they examined after the United States declared those projects completed.

This problem is not going to get better.

So far, the United States has declared that $5.8 billion in American taxpayer-financed projects have been completed, but most of the rest of the projects within a $21 billion rebuilding program that Mr. Bowen examined in the report are expected to be finished by the end of this year. Some of that money is also being used to train and equip Iraqi security forces rather than finance construction projects.

This does not indicate any likelihood at all the the U.S. will find it possible to 'win' in Iraq. The current Iraqi 'government' cannot succeed in gaining control of Iraq, and the Republican Administration cannot manage Iraq by itself. Under these conditions there is no possibility of bringing any form of stability to that nation.

In short, American success in Iraq is impossible. That is true no matter how success in Iraq is defined! There is no effective Iraqi government (outside of Iraqi Kurdistan) that Americans can depend on, and for the U.S. to adequately occupy Iraq would require at least half a million troops or more along with a U.S. draft to supply those troops. All of that is true even if the international repercussions of an attempt by the U.S. to actually gain and keep control of Iraq were ignored.

Those conditions are impossible to meet. Knowing that, the Bush administration has not even tried. The only question is when the U.S. troops will leave Iraq.

Gloria Borger - if lobby reform passes watch for an exodus of Congressmen

Gloria Borger, discussing the pending Democratic Lobby Reform legislation with Chris Matthews last Thursday said:

"Watch for mass resignations from House members who are now saying they can’t afford to live here unless they’re bought and paid for by lobbyists. They’re going to leave."

The strange thing is that she made it sound like that would be a BAD thing.

Wolfowitz about to be fired by World Bank

This is an interesting story primarily for the sense of entitlement these Republicans have. Paul Wolfowitz was a deputy Secretary of Defense to Don Rumsfeld, and probably the smartest and best educated of the NeoCons pushing for the war in Iraq. He is considered the primary architect of Bush's foreign policy, particularly the the unilateral aspects of it in which America acts no matter what any other nation thinks. Wolfowitz has a reputation as a hawk's hawk. He was also the principle architect of the strategy for the invasion of Iraq:

Wolfowitz’s strategy for the invasion of Iraq [which] “envisaged the use of air support and the occupation of southern Iraq with ground troops, to install a new government run by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.” Wolfowitz believed the operation would require minimal troop deployment because, as Hersh clarifies, “any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand.” The financial expenditure would be kept low because, as Kampfner explains, “under the plan American troops would seize the oil fields around Basra, in the South, and sell the oil to finance the opposition.”

Then, in January 2005 just after Bush was reelected he nominated Wolfowitz to be the new President of the World Bank. The Board of the World Bank, as is normal, accepted the nomination by the President of the U.S. and Wolfowitz took over.

It has recently come to light that Wolfowitz has had a long-time relationship with a senior World Bank employee, Shaha Riza. The relationship threw up red flags, and to resolve it Ms. Riza was seconded to the U.S. Treasury with a promotion and a large raise in pay. The promotion and pay raise were outside normal World Bank rules. When an inquiry into the situation established that there were significant differences between what Wolfowitz had told World Bank officials and what had actually been done, Mr. Wolfowitz was asked to resign. This question now resides with the Bank's Executive Directors, and everyone is waiting to see what they will do.

It doesn't help that Wolfowitz has disagreed with the World Bank staff regarding how to alleviate poverty in the third world nations, and has a reputation for not listening to his subordinates. This is the kind of situation in which a manager is most likely to be fired.

The problem seems to be in part that Wolfowitz believed his own press clippings and since he was in charge, saw no reason to listen to his subordinates. I doubt that military men who worked for him in the Pentagon would be at all surprised at this. The other part, in my opinion, is that there is a general belief among Republican conservatives that the boss at the top is not subject to the rules or laws that apply to his subordinates.

The first problem is a personal one that belongs to Paul Wolfowitz as a person. Since I am not his therapist or his Rabbi, that is none of my business. The second problem is, however, endemic to the current crop of conservative leaders, and is a cultural problem. It is a violation of English common law and of the general Rule of Law. This is the attitude of a tyrant who believes in Rule by Law, in which the tyrant is above the laws that apply to his subordinates. Both Bush and Cheney have this belief.

For a more complete discussion, go to my post Rule of Law vs. Arbitrary Command.. Paul Wolfowitz is about to lose his job at the World Bank because he does not understand how he should function in a world that believes in the "Rule of Law." we can hope that whoever replaces him is not a similarly self-absorbed poor manager.

Some of the problems caused by a politicized federal civil service

People who got their job because they were Bush loyalists rather than experts at what they do have filled the federal civil service from top to bottom. Monica Goodling, Rachal Paulose, and ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown are only a few of the more obvious examples at the top. But they were political appointees and will be easily to replace. What about the same type of people who have been filling the protected civil service positions for the last six years? These are the ones chosen for loyalty to Bush rather than for competence.

Go read Kagro-X at the Next Hurrah for examples, and drift down to the comments for ideas on how to handle the problem.

One thing to think about. Since the Department of Homeland Security has no organized employee unions or civil service protections then there will be no problem replacing incompetent Bush Loyalist employees.

Another good Digby Post - Press bias against Al Gore

This is a particularly interesting historical post by Digby. We have been following the misadventures of the sleazy individuals placed into the Department of Justice, most recently Monica Goodling. Digby goes back and looks at where so many of these low-lifes came from.

The connection runs through the Republican Opposition Research office for the 2000 Presidential Election, and includes Tim Griffin the mostly unqualified attorney who was recently a deputy to Karl Rove, and for whom the U.S. attorney in Arkansas was fired last December so that he could take the job.

Keep those things in mind as you read Digby's history. You might also see if you can find the BBC documentary "Digging The Dirt".

Isnt' this illegal? DoJ under Bush used to "skew" elections

"Joseph D. Rich was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005." Yesterday the Los Angeles Times published an OpEd by him that described how the Department of Justice has been used for the last sick six years to skew elections in favor of Republicans. It ain't just the U.S. attorneys, Folks. Here is what Mr. Rich wrote:

Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. [Editor - underlining mine.]

Both of those U.S. attorneys have stated that they refused to prosecute those alleged voting fraud cases because there was no evidence to show that any voting fraud had occurred.

This means that if any U.S. attorney does bring a voting fraud case in the next two years, it should be viewed with an extremely jaundiced eye. So far the Bush administration has eliminated jury trials only for those they (arbitrarily) declare to be Enemy Combatants and hide away from the justice system, habeas corpus, and access to defense lawyers in Guantanamo. Now the Bush administration has brought the "Justice" Department to such a low reputation that a defense attorney needs only refer to that reputation and provide an otherwise sketchy defense to convince a jury to find defendants not guilty when accused of voter fraud.

In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. [Snip]

Schlozman ... was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts.

Schlozman continued to influence elections as an interim U.S. attorney. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent. [Snip]

This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored. [Snip]

For decades prior to this administration, the Justice Department had successfully kept politics out of its law enforcement decisions. Hopefully, the spotlight on this misconduct will begin the process of restoring dignity and nonpartisanship to federal law enforcement. As the 2008 elections approach, it is critical to have a Justice Department that approaches its responsibility to all eligible voters without favor.

The difference between "Rule by Law" and "Rule of Law" is that in the "Rule by Law" those who administer the law are above the law themselves. They use it only to control those who oppose them. In "Rule of Law", everyone is subject to the law, including the law enforcers themselves.

"Rule by Law" is a major element of control in an authoritarian nation. Rule of Law is what protects us from this kind of authoritarianism. That's what this brouhaha about the U.S. attorney firings is really all about.

[h/t to Josh Marshall at TPM.]

Poll: Public wants aggressive Dem investigation of Republican crimes, corruption

I hope the Comgressional Democrats read this set of polls. The public wants the criminal actions and corruption of the Bush administration investigated.

The story that investigating the Republicans will cause a blowback on the Democrats is frankly B*llsh*t. The real blowback will be on the Democrats if they don't thoroughly investigate the garbage the Republicans have been pulling for the last six years.

How corrupt are the Washington media figures covering the ultra-corrupt Bushies?

This is from Glenn Greenwald.

Whatever one thinks of how convincing the available evidence is thus far, nobody who has an even basic understanding of how our government functions could dispute that the accusations in this scandal are extremely serious. Presumably, even those incapable of ingesting the danger of having U.S. attorneys fired due to their refusal to launch partisan-motivated prosecutions (or stifle prosecutions for partisan reasons) at least understand that it is highly disturbing and simply intolerable for the Attorney General of the U.S. -- the head of our Justice Department -- to lie repeatedly about what happened, including to Congress, and to have done so with the obvious assent and (at the very least) implicit cooperation of the White House. Even the most vapid media stars should be able to understand that.

And yet so many of them do not. They continue to defend the administration by insisting that even if the accusations are correct, there was no real wrongdoing here. Add Fred Hiatt to that list, as he defends the Bush administration's prosecutor firings in his Washington Post Editorial today by insisting that Gonzales appears "to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet know, didn't need covering. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president . . . ."

Just as was true for their virtually unanimous insistence that there was no wrongdoing worth investigating in the Plame case -- including the serial lying and obstruction of justice from the Vice President's top aide, one of the most powerful people in the White House -- they also see nothing wrong whatsoever with serial lying and corruption by the Attorney General in this case.

Think about this: there are only two instances in the last six years where real investigations occurred in any of the Bush scandals -- this U.S. attorneys scandal (because Democrats now have subpoena power) and the Plame case (due to the fluke of two Republican DOJ officials with integrity, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald). And in both cases, it was revealed conclusively that top Bush officials -- at the highest levels of the government -- repeatedly and deliberately lied about what they did. Isn't that pattern obviously extremely disturbing? And imagine what would be revealed had there been real investigations -- journalistic or Congressional -- of all the other scandals that ended up dying an inconsequential death due to neglect and suppression.

Beltway media stars really aren't bothered by any of this in the slightest. It's how their world works. Initially, they even refused to talk about the story at all, insisting that there was nothing worth seeing here, and were all but forced into writing about it as a result of the tenacious coverage in the blogosphere, led by TPM's Josh Marshall. Their instinct is to lash out at anyone who suggests real wrongdoing on the part of the Republican political machinery that has ruled their town for so long.

They respect and admire the Republicans who wield power in Washington -- media elites particularly love Karl Rove (Mark Halperin to Hugh Hewitt: "we say in the book about Karl Rove, who I respect and enjoy…I enjoy his company . . . Maybe he did the things he’s accused of, but to have this guy’s image portrayed and defined by things that are accusations that are unproven, we say in the book is really outrageous"). They admire and love Rove because he is the embodiment of the political power which they worship -- and they are angered by the notion that these figures who rule their world, a world which lavishly rewards them, should be accused of real wrongdoing, let alone threatened with subpoenas and prosecution and imprisonment. Fun and playful political tussles are fine, but anything truly disruptive or threatening is despised by them and considered out of bounds.

These are not journalists who want to uncover government corruption or act in an adversarial capacity to check government power. Rather, these are members of the royal court who are grateful to the King and his minions for granting them their status. What they want more than anything is to protect and preserve the system that has so rewarded them -- with status and money and fame and access and comfort.

The problem the media figures see is not the corruption of the high government officials. It is the lack of sensitivity of the Democrats who actually want Rove to testify to congress about the corruption he is running.



Read the whole thing. Go! Read it!