Billionaires demand control of America

Think America is a democratic nation? Not if the billionaires behind Freedom's Watch have their way. Freedom's watch is an unregulated organization designed to collect unlimited funds and use them to attack Democratic candidates for Congress, particularly in rural districts where even small amounts of money can go a long way. The Sunday Washington Post has a good article on Freedom's watch.

Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker describes their operation.

To review the White House connections: the group is headed by Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official, Mel Sembler, a millionaire former Bush admbassador to Italy, and Ari Fleischer, who serves as the group's spokesman. Much of its support so far has come from Sembler and casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest person in the world. (The group intends to "broaden its base" as time goes on, Fleischer says.) The group got off the ground with a $15 million effort to support the president's surge strategy in August, but it's sticking around for the long haul.

So here's who we have so far:

• Ari Fleischer - FW Board Member - previously White House spokesman.


• Brad Blakeman - President and Chief Executive of Freedom's Watch (FW) and previously White House scheduler.


• Sheldon Adelson - FW Donor - Owner of the Las Vegas Sands company and listed by Forbes as the world's sixth richest man.


• Mel Sembler, - FW Board Member - a Florida Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to Italy


• William P. Weidner, - FW Board Member - president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.


• Matt Brooks, - FW Board Member - executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.


• Anthony Gioia, - FW Donor - a Buffalo businessman who was Bush’s ambassador to Malta


• Kevin Moley, FW dononr - was Bush’s ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva;


• Howard Leach, - FW Donor - a former Republican National Committee finance chairman who was Bush’s ambassador to France


• Dr. John Templeton of Pennsylvania, FW Donor - chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation


• Ed Snider, FW Donor - chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the huge Philadelphia sports and entertainment firm;


• Richard Fox, FW Donor - chairman of the Jewish Policy Center and was Pennsylvania State Chairman of the Reagan/Bush campaign in 1980.

[Note: the above names come from Mike Allen's Aug 22, 2007 article at The Politico.]

Freedom's Watch is expected to resemble a much larger and much more deeply financed version of Texas millionaire Bob Perry's "Swift Boat Veterans," the organization that conducted the nasty, lying anti-Kerry campaign in the 2004 election. Their operations will begin during the general election and their targets will be Democratic candidates for office.

The 2008 general election is going to be the nastiest election campaign that living Americans have seen. Count on it. And the source of the nastiness is the Republican Party funded by anti-social self-centered billionaires.

Rove previews the attack on Obama

Karl Rove writing for the Wall Street Journal, offers an "analysis" of the results of the New Hampshire primary that contains elements of the pending attacks on Obama. Josh Marshall highlights the racial stereotyps that Karl deftly drops into what pretends to be analysis:

in the course of a single column Rove manages to flag Obama's "trash talking", "his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard", and the alleged fact that "he is often lazy."

Then Karl deftly attacks Obama, first describing what he tried to do, then explaining why he failed.

while Mr. Obama can draw on the deep doubts of many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton, he can't close out the argument. Mr. Obama is an inspiring figure playing a historical role, but that's not enough to push aside the former First Lady and senator from New York. She's an historic figure, too. When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.

Mr. Obama began to find his voice at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, when he took four deliberate swipes at the Clintons. He called for Democrats to tackle problems "that had festered long before" President Bush, "problems that we've talked about year after year after year after year."

He dismissed the Clinton style of campaigning and governing, saying "Triangulating and poll-driven positions . . . just won't do." He attacked Mrs. Clinton on Iraq, torture and her opposition to direct presidential talks with Syria and Iran. Then he rejected a new Clinton era by saying, "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s." It deftly, if often indirectly, played on the deep concerns of Democrats who look at the Clinton era as a time of decline for their party and unfulfilled potential for their cause.

But rather than sharpen and build on this message of contrast and change, Mr. Obama chose soaring rhetoric and inspirational rallies. While his speeches galvanized true believers at his events, his words were neither filling nor sustaining for New Hampshire Democrats concerned about the Clintons and looking for a substantive alternative.

And Mr. Obama, in his own way, is often as calculating as Mrs. Clinton. For example, he was the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to use a teleprompter to deliver his Iowa and New Hampshire election-night speeches. It gave his speeches a quality and clarity that other candidates, speaking from notes or the heart, failed to achieve. But what he gained in polish, he lost in connection.

Like all good propaganda, there is truth in what Karl says. But this also lays out the framework, at least in part, for the Republican attack on Obama should he win the Democratic nomination for President.

I had thought until the New Hampshire Primary that the nominations of each party would be clear after the massive primary fiesta that will happen February 5th, but listening to how the various candidate are having to triage which states they can win with little effort and don't need to spend money on, which states they cannot win and don't need to spend money on, and then planning the advertising spending for the ones that are left, I no longer think that the answers will be presented that soon. But they will be known by the middle of March. That's still only about ten weeks away.

After that the uncontrolled 527 organizations will know which Democrat to attack. And they will. The push polls by Huckabee supporters against Mitt Romney have already started in Michigan, (Republican primary in five days) and by Mitt Romney in South Carolina against Huckabee (or maybe vice versa), since the Republican primary there is only nine days from now. John McCain was apparently a target of push polls in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney has reported that he has been a target of push polls in South Carolina, allegedly from Huckabee supporters. Fred Thompson reports that pro-Huckabee push polling has occurred in South Carolina.

I haven't found anything in the first four Google pages about push polling in the Democratic races. This is a republican phenomenon, and so far all their targets are internal to the Party. When the primaries are resolved, all those Republican dirty tricks will be aimed at Democrats. Plan on it.

See my prior posts

• And while we are discussing nasty politics...
  January 04, 2008


• 2008 will be the nastiest election in memory
  January 01, 2008

And while we are discussing nasty politics...

Steve Benen has an excellent article on what the wealthy financiers of the nastiest of the 2004 practices are doing this year. The rich bastards behind the Swift Boat Veterans haven't gone away, they've just found new candidates.

This year they are already contributing to John McCain. And the target? We'll see who threatens their candidate most.

But now, back to Republican nastiness

Odd how pleasant it has been to NOT be writing about the latest despicable or stupid action from the Republicans in Washington, D.C., or about the nastiness of the Republican Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives who has gotten so out of line that even half the Republicans are trying to remove him. Or at least a lot of the Republicans. But I can no longer resist.

The most recent biennium of the Texas Legislature closed yesterday amid efforts to remove him as Speaker. If there were an election, he would be gone, but using his discretionary power to NOT recognize motions by members of the House he avoided an election right up to the closing of the session. He will have to run for reelection as Speaker when the next session starts.

The next session starts in January of 2009 after all members of the House run for reelection in 2008, and Tom Craddick has the largest war chest of any member of the House. Craddick is expected to fund nasty primary campaigns against several Republicans who recently spoke out against his actions. The prediction is that the Texas Legislative elections in 2008 will be real scorched-earth elections. Never let it be said that a Republican doesn't know how to run nasty elections.

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.

Surprise. The emails sent through the RNC have 'accidentally' been lost.

How tragic. The White House has announced today that the emails sent through the private email accounts at the Republican National Committee have been mishandled and somehow "accidentally" lost. According to the Associated Press:

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

Democrats also have been asking if White House officials are purposely conducting sensitive official presidential business via nongovernmental accounts to get around a law requiring preservation - and eventual disclosure - of presidential records. The announcement of the lost e-mails - a rare admission of error from the Bush White House at a delicate time for the administration's relations with Democratically controlled Capitol Hill - gave new fodder for inquiry on this front.

"This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information."

These accounts, which were apparently used by about 20 top aides to the President, were used at times to coordinate the firings of the US attorneys and were also used by the convicted felon Jack Abramoff to conduct some of the business for which he was convicted and is now serving time in federal prison. Since those email accounts were not subject to the archive requirements mandated by law for all White House communications after Nixon resigned, for some odd reason the aides at the white House tended to send sensitive emails over the private accounts rather than the official White House accounts.

Keep in mind, Federal law requires that all White House documents by archived and preserved. That makes those communications available for review if, oh, say the Congress wanted to review them to see if something criminal had been coordinated. But these Republican National Committee accounts used by people such as Karl Rove (See? A surprise there, no?) have been mishandled and many of them have been improperly deleted so that they will not be available to the Waxman Committee as was anticipated.

Karl Rove learned a lot from Richard M. Nixon. Nixon himself once said that his biggest mistake was to have not destroyed the White House tapes before they were released. Anyone who does not know that the RNC emails were used to avoid scrutiny and were purposely disposed of simply does not understand the nature of the Republican occupation of the White House.

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Addendum 10:31PM CDT
Too good not to include. Kagro X says the name for this scandal should be "DogAte."

This is the best comment in the post on the subject by EmptyWheel at the Next Hurrah. Emptywheel thinks this report is just a trial baloon by the Bushies to see how much flack they'll get if they try it seriously. The techies who commented don't think anything is likely to be missing, just hard to find. Hope they are right.

How has WH been able to purge US Attorney's?

Last year the White House removed Arkansas US Attorney Bud Cummins without any reason given. This year the White House has removed the US Attorney in San Diego and another for the State of Colorado. From TPM Muckraker:

Section 502 of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, which was first drafted in July of 2005 and finally signed in March of 2006, changed the law regarding the appointment of U.S. Attorneys. Whereas before the relevant federal district court would have appointed a replacement within 120 days after the Attorney General picked one, now that pick stood without challenge.

So what did the change in the Law do? Here is what one commenter posted as the language removed from the law:

Best I can figure here's the original Title 28, Section 546, and the italics represent the language that the PATRIOT Act removed:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), the Attorney General
may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the
office of United States attorney is vacant.

(b) The Attorney General shall not appoint as United States attorney a person to whose appointment by the President to that office the Senate refused to give advice and consent.

(c) A person appointed as United States attorney under this
section may serve until the earlier of -

(1) the qualification of a United States attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title; or

(2) the expiration of 120 days after appointment by the Attorney General under this section.

(d) If an appointment expires under subsection (c)(2), the district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled. The order of appointment by the court shall be filed with the clerk of the
court.[Note: any italics were lost in the original comment.]

Since the italics he wanted to put in didn't work, the commenter Stealth then posted the new language. Here it is:

Okay, italics didn't work. Here's the new version:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), the Attorney General may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the office of United States attorney is vacant.

(b) The Attorney General shall not appoint as United States attorney a person to whose appointment by the President to that office the Senate refused to give advice and consent.

(c) A person appointed as United States attorney under this section may serve until the qualification of a United States attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title.

As near as I can tell, the new language allows the Attorney General to appoint a replacement US Attorney but he is no longer really temporary. The previous 120 day limitation on how long he or she serves is now gone. The only limit now is that the President can terminate the service of the temporary by appointing a new US Attorney and getting him confirmed by the Senate. This removal the time limit also removes the power of the Federal District Judge to appoint the U.S. Attorney when the time limit that used to be there expires. In other words, this is more centralization of power to the White House, focused on the ability to shut down federal investigations of corrupt Republican officials.

The problem this solves for the Republicans is that the U.S. Attorneys were investigating crooked Republicans. Lamm US Attorney in San Diego was instrumental in sending "Duke" Cunningham to prison and was investigating Rep. Jerry Lewis (CA - R). Since a Federal Judge cannot himself initiate an investigation of corruption, this has to be done by the US Attorney. This is a "protect crooked Republicans" move.

I wonder how long it will be until the Unitary Executive President asserts that the XXII Amendment to the Constitution [Limits President to two terms.] does not apply to a wartime President. The choices are just before the 2008 election, or right after and before the new President is sworn in.