DSPQ

December 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | 1 Comment 

Apropos President Obama’s Afghanistan speech two nights ago, Gabor Steingart, Der Spiegel’s senior correspondent in Washington, writes:

Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the gathered cadets were asked to respond “enthusiastically” to the speech.

If this is true, it raises some important questions.

For starters, it makes the Corps of Cadets’ restrained reception of the President’s remarks a significant story in and of itself — far beyond the passive “enemy camp” explanation proffered by Chris Matthews.  The fact that this exhortation (or direction, depending on from whence and whom it came)  wasn’t widely reported and factored into the post-speech analysis would be only the latest example of the mainstream media’s laziness and/or tendentiousness.

Second, it raises questions about who urged such a reception — and why.  This was a serious speech on a sober subject by the Commander in Chief, and the restrained demeanor of the corps was entirely appropriate.  I read one report that even the response to the earlier announcement of an amnesty for minor disciplinary offenses —customarily granted at the request of a distinguished visitor and usually raucously greeted— was notably subdued.  Who, then, decided to urge the cadets to assume the role of a cheering section?

Maybe Mr. Steingart simply misunderstood the situation.  But genuinely inquiring minds should want to know.

DSPQ

October 6, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | 1 Comment 

Sometimes —just sometimes— I wonder if my Double Standard Paranoia Quotient isn’t tuned up a tad too high.

And then something like this happens — something that sets my DSPQ Sensitivity Meter’s needle aquivering all the way up at the end of the red zone.  Something that defines the category of “you couldn’t make this kind of thing up.”

Before proceeding, I think it’s important to make a couple of things clear:

First: this IS NOT another Saturday Night Live comedy video.  This was actually broadcast as part of Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room CNN news program yesterday.

Second: this IS NOT another Saturday Night Live comedy video.

Third: did I mention that this IS NOT another Saturday Night Live comedy video.

OK, with the understanding that this IS NOT another Saturday Night Live comedy video, sit yourself down, pour yourself a stiff drink, and click below:

Millions For Defense. And Now Also For Tribute.

September 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, Senate | 2 Comments 

As reported by Bryan Bender in today’s Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON – A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The earmark, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The institute will serve as a focal point for the late Massachusetts senator’s legacy, much as presidential libraries do. It will house Kennedy’s official papers and oral histories from the nearly half-century he served in the Senate. With a museum and exhibit space, it also will be dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new US senators, and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate in American political life. The institute plans to host an annual “Summer Senate’’ for high school students from across the nation.

The $20 million earmark would cover as much as 40 percent of the institute’s initial fund-raising goal.

Beyond raising questions about the practice of slipping earmarks into bills in Congress, the provision also presents a potential ethical question for Paul Kirk, the longtime Kennedy aide Governor Deval Patrick appointed to fill the late senator’s seat yesterday.

Kirk, who stepped down yesterday as chairman of the JFK Library Foundation, has also served as a member of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board and has played a key role in helping plan and raise funds for the new center. If he casts a vote in favor of the defense bill, he also will be voting in favor of an institute to which he has had close personal and professional connections.

A spokeswoman for Kirk, Stephanie Cutter, said yesterday that he does not see his roles as conflicting.

“Mr. Kirk expects to vote on every issue important to the people of Massachusetts. He resigned from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board at 8 a.m. this morning, so we don’t expect a conflict to exist, but of course he’ll comply fully with the ethics rules of the Senate,’’ Cutter said in an e-mailed statement. She did not respond to a question about what role, if any, he played in securing the $20 million earmark.

Kirk is not running in the January special election for a new senator to fill out the remainder of Kennedy’s term. He has not yet said whether he intends to return to the JFK Library Foundation once his interim Senate appointment expires.

At Kerry’s request, Senator Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, added the $20 million earmark to the defense bill, congressional aides said. The funding would come on top of $5 million secured with Kerry’s help earlier this year in a Labor Department spending bill, which provided money for the institute’s planning and design.

The center had raised an additional $20 million in private donations earlier this year, and more money has been contributed by members of the public since Kennedy’s death last month from brain cancer, said Joe Ganley, an institute spokesman. Ultimately, Ganley said, the majority of the center’s funding will come from private donors, not taxpayers. He said many of Boston’s most influential civic leaders, including businessman Jack Connors, are helping to raise funds.

The institute’s president, and it’s only staff member so far, is Peter Meade, a former Blue Cross-Blue Shield executive who also serves on the board of the JFK Library Foundation. Meade was unavailable for comment yesterday, Ganley said.

Using the national defense budget for such earmarks is considered a particular affront by those advocating for fiscal discipline in the midst of two wars that are straining Pentagon coffers. Overall, the Senate version of the bill includes 778 earmarks worth $2.65 billion, including a number that have little or nothing to do with military matters.

A major concern is what gets cut from the Pentagon budget to make room for things like the Kennedy institute, said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Strauss Military Reform Project at the left-leaning Center for Defense Information in Washington.

“The committee did not add money to the bill to pay for its billions of dollars in pork,’’ Wheeler said.

A spokesman for Inouye declined to explain why the Kennedy institute earmark was inserted into the Pentagon budget, rather than into an education bill or other piece of legislation. In a statement released by his office, Inouye said, “It is my sincere hope that many of these students will be inspired to seek a life of public service, with the same spirit of patriotism and love of country that I saw each and every day from Senator Kennedy.’’

While Kerry said using the defense budget to fund Kennedy’s institute was a tribute to his “leadership on military technology, weapons systems, and safety equipment for our troops,’’ Wheeler said he believes there is a more practical reason.

“It’s a natural for Kerry to go to Inouye on this,’’ Wheeler said. “If it’s in the defense bill it must be a good idea. And the defense bill is sure to pass. He wanted a fast vehicle to get it enacted.’’

DSPQ

September 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

The needle on the Double Standard Paranoia Quotient meter was reading way up in the red zone thanks to this editorial in today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Here in Clark County, Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said last year he saw “rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week,” with some 48 percent of those forms being “clearly fraudulent.”

The Las Vegas headquarters of ACORN, “a Democrat-allied organization,” was raided after being “accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with duplicate and false names,” the Washington Times reported last fall. The outfit claimed it had registered to vote in Nevada, among others, the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

The raid “set off a skirmish over efforts to expand the electorate on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama,” the Times reported.

Mr. Lomax noted ACORN had hired 59 inmates from a work-release program at a nearby prison and that some inmates who had been convicted of identity theft had been made supervisors. “That led some local wags to joke that at least ACORN was hiring specialists to do their work,” reported John Fund at The Politico, last November.

ACORN’s 2008 Las Vegas field director, Christopher Edwards, pleased guilty last spring to two gross misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit compensation for registration of voters, in a deal that saw him agree to testify against fellow defendants.

Fox News’ Eric Shawn reported there were at least 11 investigations across the country involving thousands of potentially fraudulent ACORN forms. Yet none of this was sufficient to block President Obama and his congressional minions from upping federal subsidies to outfits such as Mr. Obama’s former associates at ACORN from the mere millions to the billions of dollars in their “economic stimulus” bill last winter.

Only when presented with the undeniable evidence of the “pimp and ho” videotape did the IRS last week announce it would terminate ACORN’s participation in the agency’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program — shortly after the Census Bureau advised ACORN it could forget about helping with its decennial head count.

Smoke? Fire? Washington Democratic leaders have opted to just lay low and not smell nothin’.

Despite all this evidence and a request in writing by 28 GOP senators — and despite the fact the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 on Sept. 14 to block ACORN from bidding for any more federal grant money — “Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is refusing to hold a Senate hearing on ACORN’s activities,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee complained Wednesday.

Mr. Reid replied additional investigations might distract lawmakers from addressing more important matters, including health care and economic recovery.

DSPQ

September 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, News media | Leave a Comment 

A week ago tomorrow —on Wednesday 23 August— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is up for re-election this year, told an employee of a home state newspaper that had just run the results of a poll indicating that his road to re-election might not be entirely smooth, that he hoped the paper would go out of business.

The wish, as is well known, is father to the thought.  And, as is also well known, Senator Reid is a man of estimable —and in many respects inestimable— power; a man who should be careful what he wishes for.  Or at least careful about taking his wishes out for walks in public.

On Sunday, a columnist for the newspaper in question —Sherman Frederick of the Las Vegas Review-Journal— revealed the encounter and took the Senator to task:

This newspaper traces its roots to before Las Vegas was Las Vegas.

We’ve seen cattle ranches give way to railroads. We chronicled the construction of Hoover Dam. We reported on the first day of legalized gambling. The first hospital. The first school. The first church. We survived the mob, Howard Hughes, the Great Depression, several recessions, two world wars, dozens of news competitors and any number of two-bit politicians who couldn’t stand scrutiny, much less criticism.

We’re still here doing what we do for the people of Las Vegas and Nevada. So, let me assure you, if we weathered all of that, we can damn sure outlast the bully threats of Sen. Harry Reid.

On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-’n'-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.

Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”

Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.

Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.

No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

I banked this story on Sunday because I was curious to see if it would attract any attention —or grow any legs— in the mainstream media.

The Review-Journal, which Wikipedia describes as taking “a libertarian editorial stance,” isn’t just some marginal blatt bordering on pennysaver status.  It’s one of Las Vegas’ two dailies, and the largest circulation daily paper in Nevada.  So while it is undoubtedly a pain in the ass to the Majority Leader, one might expect that his ill wishes would be considered a story.

One might.  But one would be mostly wrong.

It surfaced —under the anodyne headline “Reid in Flat for Reported Remarks About Newspaper”— in The New York Times’ “Caucus” blog.

The Washington Post, which reported the unfavorable poll, has yet to note this result.

And here’s where the DSPQ comes in. As an exercise, substitute Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Louisville Courier-Journal for the names in this story. And tell me, honestly, how long it would take before there was a nationwide groundswell of third estate indignation about assaults on free speech and the dangers of legislators threatening newspapers at the best of times, much less when the few surviving dinousaurs are already on the ropes.

DSPQ

August 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

In the past I have cast a lenient —almost affectionate— eye on Chairman Charles Rangel.

The natty gravel-voiced Purple Heart winning long-time Congressman has represented his constituency diligently and mastered both the arcanae of tax codes and the even more arcane ways of surviving and thriving on Capitol Hill.

And Chairman Rangel, in addition to his almost unlimited charm and all but unlimited power, is a Democrat.  Which means that he has been able to run the Kennedy-Clinton-Dodd-Conrad-etc.-etc. play book that has worked before and will work again: If you ignore something long enough, no matter how devastating or demeaning or downright horrific it may be, it will either go away or people will forget about it, or both.

So, for going on a year now, Chairman Rangel has blithely sailed above such pesky pinpricks as the  media’s isolated and timidly expressed outrage, or his many colleagues’ calls for him to resign or at least step down as the head of his Committee, much less an Ethics Committee investigation.

But, holy Toledo, surely at some point enough has to become enough.

My bad: New information reveals that House tax czar Chairman Charles Rangel forgot to mention, among many other things,  this $1 million home on any of his disclosure forms.

Today’s New York Post reports what may be (or, see above, may not be) the coup de grace for a long and not totally undistinguished career:

Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.

The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.

This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.

In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.

But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.

The forms filed by House members provide for a range of value on such transactions, so the precise number isn’t publicly known.

Rangel also lowballed his income by as much as $70,000 in 2002, $46,000 in 2003 and $117,000 in 2006, records show.

Only in 2005 did Rangel reveal his total outside income.

Members of Congress are required to disclose all their assets and outside income in an effort to expose possible undue influences.

Rangel’s office insists the Harlem Democrat did not conceal any outside income from the IRS and is paid up on his taxes.

The Post revealed yesterday that Rangel is in arrears on New Jersey property taxes — for property that for more than 15 years he failed to disclose to Congress and the public.

Another area of wide discrepancy in his financial-disclosure forms is where he’s required to list financial transactions.

Every year between 2002 and 2007, Rangel failed to include all his deals for the year, according to records.

On his 2002 and 2003 financial-disclosure statements, Rangel did not include any transactions whatsoever, according to papers on file with the House clerk.

But the amended records filed this month show as much as $310,000 in business deals in 2002 and up to $80,000 in transactions in 2003.

In 2004, Rangel left off his disclosure form as much as $430,000 in stock transactions, amended records show. One of those deals he did include as a transaction on his original disclosure was the sale of the brownstone on West 132nd Street.

But in the same report, Rangel failed to include proceeds from that sale as outside income. That has been revised in the amended report.

Despite the reported sale, city records still show Rangel is the owner of that property.

Rick Perlstein On The Town Hall Demonstrators

August 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Congress, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, George W. Bush, Healthcare, New Media, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixonland Nitpicks, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin, TV News Personalities, U.S. History | 8 Comments 

A little over a year ago, when Rick Perlstein published his mammoth study of “the American berserk” – the original subtitle of Nixonland – in the years between 1965 and 1972, he concluded his 748-page saga of heated hardhats and howling hippies (or was it the other way around?) by arguing that the culture and political wars of the late Sixties and early Seventies had not only not died, but had never really gone away.

Perlstein maintained that the 37th President’s legacy to the nation was “a notion that there are two kinds of Americans: one kind viewing themselves as “people of faith,” patriots, “nonshouters,” and viewing the other kind – “liberals,” “cosmopolitans,” “intellectuals” – as “un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens [Perlstein's emphasis].”

The book’s final paragraphs read:

Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements? It would be hard to argue they do not.

How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.

When Nixonland appeared, several reviewers criticized that penultimate statement, and said that Perlstein clearly was mistaken to think that the passions of that time still ran as strong.

But that was last year, and now that many of this month’s “town halls” about the proposed health-care legislation across the country have featured very heated rhetoric, not only at the meetings themselves, but among the crowds assembled outside the venues, Perlstein has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that makes it clear that he considers himself vindicated in his argument.

Now, anyone following the town hall meetings closely knows that many speakers at them have been as fervent about single-payer care and the proposed legislation’s failure to incorporate it, though not as visible in TV sound bites as the ones who have been waving pocket copies of the Constitution and arguing against the bill’s big-government tendencies.

But the leftist voices at the meetings count for nothing where Perlstein is concerned. What he sees is nothing less than the return of the right-wing fervor that swept through parts of America during the Kennedy years. And the op-ed’s title, though probably the work of a dependably liberal Post staffer, sums up its attitude toward the liberatarian and conservative voices at these gatherings: “In America, Crazy Is A Pre-Existing Condition.”

Yes, all the objections raised to the mammoth scope of the bill, and to the possibility that it marks the start of a path which will see Americans turn over as large a percentage of their income to the state as was the case in Sweden at the height of its cradle-to-grave system – or perhaps more – yes, all the worries raised by hard-working citizens, in Perlstein’s opinion, are on a par with the fears of almost 50 years ago that fluoride in drinking water would brainwash children into being Communists, or whatever members of the John Birch Society were supposed to have believed in those days.

(I have to admit that sometimes fluoride does worry me a bit. The other night I was gargling with that new Listerine “Whitening Formula,” or whatever it’s called, in which the active ingredient is sodium fluoride. On the back of the bottle I noticed an instruction not to drink or eat anything for 30 minutes after using it. If the idea is to keep fluoride out of my system, then why would it be in my drinking water? But then again, my dentist tells me there’s been an upsurge in cavities because kids don’t drink as much tap water as they once did. End of digression.)

In the op-ed, Perlstein states:

Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror — powerful elites — find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.

Why, of course, “crazy-making panic” is endemic only to conservative Americans, otherwise defined, in the world of the Post, as those people who still insist on regarding Sarah Palin as a political force even after her daughter’s former fiance has started dating Kathy Griffin. Those thousands upon thousands (or maybe millions upon millions) of words, many of them still online, which fretted about Guantanamo in the Bush years presaging internment camps for the young and disaffected in the United States? That was legitimate political discourse, nothing irrational about it.

(As is, presumably, the post at a left-leaning site I read the other day that compared the present political situation in America to that of Germany in about 1930. Anyone for Obama as the new Heinrich Bruening?)

Although, as I write, it will be several more hours before Perlstein’s piece appears in the antiquated ink-on-paper format, it has already stirred up several dozen responses from across the political spectrum. Matt Yglesias has one of the most thoughtful posts about it on the Left. He focuses on these remarks of Perlstein’s:

You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to “debunk” claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president’s program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn’t adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of “conservative claims” to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as “extremist” — out of bounds.

As opposed to the “in-bounds” rhetoric of the SDS and Black Panthers, which got substantial on-air attention. But let’s look at today’s situation. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when President Obama held his town hall meeting about health care this week, William Kostric, a self-described “free stater,” was spotted in the crowd by an MSNBC crew with a sign reading “Time To Water The Tree” (it referred to a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, which concludes “with the blood of patriots and tyrants”) – and a gun strapped to his leg, which he had a permit to carry.

It turned out that Kostric had not simply brought the weapon to provide a headache to Secret Service personnel who had to worry about any individuals who might not be carrying weapons simply to “make a statement.” He meant for the gun to attract media attention and stir curiosity about what he wanted – which turned out to be, presumably like all the “crazies” Perlstein describes, to get on TV.

And which program finally extended an invitation to appear? Was it Glenn Beck’s show, or Sean Hannity’s, or The O’Reilly Factor, or any of the other shows which, as every schoolperson in Santa Monica or Marin County knows, are diabolically constructed by “elites” to inflame the heartland? No, it was Hardball with Chris Matthews, a show which is not usually viewed as a hotbed for “crazies.”. I assume that Kostric chose Hardball because MSNBC was the channel that gave him visibility. (He also appeared on Alex Jones’s radio talk show, a venue more along the lines of his personal views, but certainly not the creation of any media “elite.” Indeed, Michael Savage, singled out as a rabble-rouser by Perlstein, has not had Kostric appear on his program.)

Perlstein doesn’t seem to realize that most of those who are concerned about the drawbacks of the health-care bill are voicing heartfelt and rational objections. They know that every citizen of the country already is shouldering a share of the national debt equivalent to nearly a fifth of a million dollars and they hope that there’s some way to keep it from going to a quarter of a million. They were not happy with the idea of a President doing his best Lyndon Johnson imitation and insisting that Congress pass over a thousand pages of slapped-together taxes and regulations before the end of last month, before it became clear that would not happen. (And compared to the versions of the health-care bill now in the works, even the most hastily drafted bills of LBJ’s Great Society look like they were penned by James Madison or George Mason.)

But that doesn’t matter to Perlstein; for him, “the tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America’s flora.” However, he’s not going unchallenged about this. One of the more impressive retorts so far has come from Stephen Bainbridge, a professor at UCLA’s law school. The professor sums up the op-ed as follows: “we lefties are rational, nice, kind people who are puzzled by conservative crazies. We’ve got no crazies on our side, of course. Just nice rational people like me.” Then Bainbridge lists some “rational” responses to perceived threats from the Right by left-wing organizations, starting with the Weathermen.

Bainbridge’s post got this prompt response from Perlstein, who says: “I hate the Weathermen. Read my book. So does everyone I know on the left.”

Well, it may be that everyone Rick knows on the Left deplores what the Weathermen, as a whole, became, or some of its actions. But individual former members of the Weathermen, whether or not they still think they were justified in what they did, certainly are not hated by many of his colleagues – indeed, quite the opposite, as Bill Ayers’s recent well-attended book tour demonstrates.

And, before I forget: does Perlstein mention Richard Nixon in his article? Yes, he does, classing RN as one of the “vultures” who exploited the fears sprouting from the “tree of crazy” – and, somehow, managed, by doing so, to secure a 49-state victory in 1972.

With a little help from 47,168,710 “crazies.” Count ‘em.

DSPQ

April 8, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | 1 Comment 

The extraordinary corruption of the Bush43 DOJ’s prosecutorial arm is only just beginning to be understood; and the fallout is only just beginning to be felt.

WaPo today provides brief biographical sketches of the six prosecutors who will be investigated and, possibly, prosecuted.

But one aspect has, at least so far, been finessed.

The indictment was issued —contrary to DOJ policy and custom— on 29 July, in the run up to last fall’s Senatorial election.

The case went to the jury on 22 October.

The now-cancelled verdict was reached on 27 October.

On 18 November, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich was declared the winner by 3,724 votes.

Indulge me for just a moment by imagining that a Democratic Senator had suffered a similar injustice followed by similar consequences (and consequences not just for him but for his State and for the nation).

Would the Democratic Party and the media now be so…..accepting?  So philosophical?  So passive?

Would the Democrats and the media allow the pesky fact that there isn’t even a snowball’s chance in hell of it ever actually happening to deter them from assembling the press and harnessing the huskies and announcing that nothing short of a special election will be acceptable?

Alaska Republican Chairman Randy Ruedrich duly called for a special election to be held  ”so Alaskans may have the chance to vote for a senator without the improper influence of the corrupt Department of Justice.  The only reason Mark Begich won the election in November is because a few thousand Alaskans thought that Senator Ted Stevens was guilty of seven felonies. Senator Stevens has maintained his innocence and now, even the Department of Justice acknowledges its wrongdoing.”

But his call has fallen on deaf  and/or tin ears.  No Republican member of Alaska’s congressional delegation has even raised such a possibility.  Senator Lisa Murkowski wistfully said that ”I am sure many of us wish we could turn the clock back to last November.  Unfortunately, that is not an option.” 

The only way this could happen would be if Senator Begich resigned.  And Senator Begich, in a stirring statement of principle in a time of troubles, has affirmed that: ”Today, with our country in a severe recession, it’s more important than ever that we have a senator focused on fixing our economy so Alaskans have the jobs they need to support their families. That is my job in the Senate, and I’m honored to serve Alaskans for the next six years.”

DSPQ

April 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | 1 Comment 

Here’s an exercise for those who think that Republicans’ Double Standard Paranoia Quotient regarding media bias is unjustified at best and borderline paranoid at worst.

(1) Read the following excerpt (the first four paragraphs)  from Carrie Johnson’s report in today’s WaPo, headliined “A Split At Justice On D.C. Vote Bill.”  (The story doesn’t appear in today’s New York Times, but at this stage that’s not cause for any DSPQ because it appears to be a WaPo scoop.  Let’s wait and see see how many legs it grows in other outlets over the next couple of days.)

Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.

A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upcoming House vote and make the measure more vulnerable to a legal challenge that probably would reach the Supreme Court if it is enacted. The bill, which would give the District a vote in the House for the first time, appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws. Supporters say it could reach the House floor in May.

In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.

Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor general’s office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.

Democratic and Republican Justice Department veterans said it is unusual, though not unprecedented, for the solicitor general, who backs the administration’s position before the Supreme Court, to be asked to weigh in before a case makes its way into a courtroom. Typically, legal scholars said, the solicitor general is asked whether the office can plausibly defend a law in court, rather than to opine directly on the legality of a piece of legislation. The office was asked for the opinion several weeks ago, before the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as the new solicitor general.

(2) For “Holder” substitute “Gonzalez” or “Ashcroft” or “Meese” or “Mitchell” or the surname of any other Republican Attorney General of the last several decades..

(3) Consider what the reaction would be if one of them —say Alberto Gonzalez— had overruled a decision he didn’t like, that had been made by the appropriate office at DOJ, by assigning another less appropriate but more dependably friendly office to supply the opposite conclusion.

(4) Join me in following the development of this story and tracking the outrage level on, say, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and the Rachel Maddow Show, and the op-ed page of the New York Times.

(5) Monitor the usually hair-trigger indignation meter at NPR for discussions of such politicization of the DOJ.  Count the conniptions experienced by Diane Rehm and Tom Ashbrook.

(6) Makes notes on Donna Brazile’s, Paul Krugman’s, Katrina vanden Heuvel’s, and Paul Begala’s barely controllable righteous ire on the Sunday talk shows.

(7) Don’t hold your breath.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be wrong.  After all, there’s a first time for everything.   But if I’m not, then, please, enough already about the Republicans’ misplaced paranoia regarding media bias.

Annals Of The Obama Administration

March 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Congress, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Life imitates comedy, and what was originally treated as a sardonic punchline by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor —“It’s easy for [Democrats] to sit here and advocate higher taxes because — you know what? — they don’t pay them”— may turn out to have been an understatement of the facts of the matter.

Geither, Daschle and Solis, and others whose nominations were deep-sixed in order to dodge the tax cheat bullet, are now joined by Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the disgraced Daschle’s much-touted replacement.

As just reported by Mark Silva on The Swamp blog:

In a coda to the collection of back-taxes from Cabinet nominees, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, said today that she has paid more than $7,000 in back taxes owed.

In a letter to senators released by the administration, Sebelius said the “unintentional” underpayments in income taxes had involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses.

Sebelius, who faced her first confirmation hearing by a Senate committee today, said she filed amended tax returns as soon as the errors were found by an accountant hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings.

The Kansas governor and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas, paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-07.

And to save time and space, allow me to add a coda that would undoubtedly have turned into a DSPQ post in the next couple of days:

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) quickly moved to quell any controversy: “Congress is going to need a strong partner at the Department of Health and Human Services to achieve comprehensive health reform this year, and we have that partner in Gov. Sebelius,” Baucus said. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Gov. Sebelius has the political experience, determination, and bipartisan work ethic to get the job done with Congress this year. She’s the right person for the job.”

The well-regarded Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius posed in her Topeka office for Vogue magazine early last year.  Her hasty payment of more than $7,000 in back taxes presents the Obama administration with the latest in a line of embarrassing revelations regarding its Cabinet nominees.  The accompanying article noted that:  ”In person, the governor is elegant, circumspect (a trait Kansans approve) and strikingly fit. She loves to golf, scuba dive, play tennis, sail and jog (the last while listening to the  Dixie Chicks).”

DSPQ

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

In today’s New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that the Obama administration will once again —after eight years of Bush banishment— give the American Bar Association advanced notice of its nominees to the federal bench.

The group says it is serious and diligent about evaluating candidates without regard to ideology. But there is reason to wonder whether Alberto R. Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, might have had a point when he told the group eight years ago that its help would not be needed.

The A.B.A. is, after all, a private trade association, not an arm of the government. It takes public and generally liberal positions on all sorts of divisive issues. And a series of studies suggest that candidates nominated by Democratic presidents fare better in the group’s ratings than those nominated by Republicans.

Kim J. Askew, the chairwoman of the association’s 15-member Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which performs the evaluations, said her group is independent, hardworking and completely divorced from politics.

“We are an impartial group of lawyers that bring a peer review to the process,” Ms. Askew said. “We are all lawyers. We are officers of the court. We speak the language of the law. We do not consider politics.”

But a series of studies have found indications that liberal nominees do better in the process than conservative ones. The latest, to be presented next month at the Midwest Political Science Association, found evidence consistent with ideological bias.

“Holding all other factors constant,” the study found, “those nominations submitted by a Democratic president were significantly more likely to receive higher A.B.A. ratings than nominations submitted by a Republican president.”

The differences matter, said Amy Steigerwalt, a political scientist at Georgia State and an author of the study, along with Richard L. Vining Jr, of the University of Georgia and Susan Navarro Smelcer of Emory.

“A nominee who has a higher A.B.A. rating is more likely to move through the process,” Professor Steigerwalt said. “When problems arise, a higher A.B.A. rating provides one piece of ammunition for the president and supporting senators about why a person should be confirmed to the federal bench.”

DSPQ

March 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Personally, I think that the whole AIG bonuses story is a very convenient feint to the populist left that is being seized upon by many of the foxes to divert public attention from their role in the henhouse’s faulty design.  In the end the result of all the high dudgeon now on display may only end up being the unhappy precedent of some ex post facto laws and the cutting of our nose to spite our face.

But what is sauce for the hen should be sauce for the rooster, so let’s see how much traction this AP story develops.  But let’s not hold our breaths. (And, in future, let’s all try to avoid barnyard metaphors.)

Obama envoy Holbrooke once served on AIG’s board

WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama administration special envoy Richard Holbooke was on the American International Group Inc. board of directors in early 2008 when the insurance company locked in the bonuses now stoking national outrage.

Holbrooke, a veteran diplomat who is now the administration’s point man on Pakistan and Afghanistan, served on the board between 2001 and mid-2008. During that period, AIG undertook the aggressive investment strategies that led to a near-collapse and forced a multibillion-dollar federal bailout.

President Barack Obama has insisted his administration was not responsible for AIG’s financial woes, and a White House spokesman said Thursday that Holbrooke was unaware of AIG’s decision to award retention bonuses to key employees.

“Mr. Holbrooke had nothing to do with and knew nothing about the bonuses,” spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

For much of tenure on the AIG board, Holbrooke had a role in approving salaries and compensation. From 2001 until mid-2005, he was a member of the board’s compensation committee. According to AIG financial statements, the committee sets the salary for the company’s chief executive officer and gives advice on how other senior managers are to be compensated.

Holbrooke also led the board’s public policy and social responsibility committee from 2005 through July 2008. The committee assesses how political and public policy issues might affect the company’s business operations, performance and corporate reputation, according to AIG.

The actual amounts Holbrooke received as an AIG board member are difficult to pinpoint. Before 2005, the SEC reporting requirements did not call for dollar figures to be attached to the stock and option awards for directors. AIG stock awarded for board service may now be worth far less than the value it had originally.

According to the SEC filings, AIG paid Holbrooke $267,943 in fees and stock awards in 2007; he was paid $232,865 in 2006. Compensation figures for the six months he was on the board in 2008 are not yet available. By prorating his 2007 compensation, he could have earned about $107,500 in directors fees and stock.

Between 2001 and 2005 the records indicate he earned $200,000 in director’s fees. He also received 2,400 shares of AIG stock and options to purchase 10,000 more during that period.

DSPQ

March 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, Vice President Biden | Leave a Comment 

As reported today on the “Politics Nation” blog at real realclearpolitics.com, Vice President Biden joined some of his former congressional colleagues “to trumpet funding for passenger rail in the stimulus funding.”  The Veep claims to be among the top five Amtrak riders of all time.

So comfortable with the group was Biden that he was heard using the f-word a little too close to the open mic as he greeted them. Of course, his predecessor was caught doing the same, but in a more negative context. 

DSPQ

March 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, International Affairs, Obama administration, Secretary Clinton | Leave a Comment 

Secretary Clinton’s Russian reset button goofski didn’t exactly go unnoticed.  But it has, apparently, gone entirely unexamined.

No questions have been asked about it during the daily DOS press briefing; and the Department hasn’t made —and won’t be making— any explanation.

Can you imagine if this mistake had been made by a Republican SOS in the service of a Republican POTUS?  Can you?  I mean, really, can you?

The Washington Times was apparently the only journalistic operation with an inquiring mind in this regard:

Although the networks aired small segments on the debacle Friday, no media ever sought an explanation, or, more importantly, what steps the State Department was taking to make sure it didn’t happen again. Even after the secretary returned, not one reporter has asked about the episode during the department’s daily briefings.

“This is another clear example of the double standard that exists,” said Roger Aronoff, a media analyst for Accuracy in Media. “If this had happened in the Bush administration, to President Bush in particular or even to Condi Rice, it would have gotten a whole lot more publicity and ridicule by the mainstream media.”

Then again, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would likely have caught the mistake – she’s fluent in Russian.

Rich Noyes, research director for the Media Research Center, has an easy explanation for the quick disappearance of the fiasco. “It was a weekend story, and so it didn’t get huge coverage,” he said, but he added that the mixup doesn’t jibe with the positive coverage of Mrs. Clinton’s trip, which “has been all about how she’s going to give us a fresh start.”

The U.S. media have all but ignored the gaffe, but the Russian media have had a field day with it. The newspaper Kommersant ran a picture of the red button alongside the words: “Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button.” A correspondent for Russian NTV television called it a “symbolic mistake.”

Mrs. Clinton certainly isn’t the first U.S. official to blunder when trying to say something in a foreign language.

In Warsaw, President Carter’s translator, trying to relay to Poles that the president “understood their anxiety,” stated that the president desired them sexually.

Still, Irene Frishman, managing director of Language Solutions International in New Hampshire, found Mrs. Clinton’s error hard to understand.

“So Hillary Clinton went to Russia using garbage translators?” the native of Russia said. “Ha. This is not a difficulty in the translation, but rather the person who did the translation was simply not qualified for the job. Tell her we will help next time.” 

The Veep Asks: “Do You Know The Website’s Number?”

February 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, Internet, Technology | Leave a Comment 

Vice President Biden has apparently failed to master a fundamental difference between two popular and quite widespread modern technologies: the internet and the telephone.  (The fact that the url/phone number in question was for the administration’s new transparency portal —which he was appearing to promote— raises entirely different questions.)

It’s too bad his former colleague Ted Stevens of Alaska is no longer there to educate him —as he famously did his fellow Senators back in the day. Senator Stevens (who was the chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the internet and was explaining a 200-page telecommunications bill he had written), explained to his stupefied colleagues that the web was neither a phone, nor “a big truck,” but, rather, “a series of tubes.”  If the Vice President keeps that clearly in mind,  he’s unlikely to make the same mistake again.

It appears that at least one of the reasons Senator Stevens isn’t in Washington to further enlighten his colleagues is because of some serious prosecutorial misconduct.

 A federal judge held Justice Department attorneys in contempt Friday for failing to deliver documents to former Sen. Ted Stevens’s legal team.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said it was outrageous that government attorneys would ignore his deadline for turning over documents.

Last month, Judge Sullivan ordered the Justice Department to turn over all the agency’s internal communications regarding a whistleblower complaint against the FBI agent leading the investigation into the former Alaska senator.

The agent, Chad Joy, bitterly complained about some Justice Department tactics during the trial, including not turning over evidence and an “inappropriate relationship” between another agent working the case and the prosecutor’s star witness.

The abovementioned inappropriate relationship, incidentally, was of the horizontal variety.  

The Wall Street Journal editoralized about the injustice and its consequences:

So what we seem to have here are young lawyers eager to make their reputations by bagging a big-name Senator. Justice rules forbid issuing indictments too close to elections. These columns were tough on Mr. Stevens at the time, but the facts that have since come to light cast real doubt on the case. Though Mr. Stevens was a champion earmarker, the government never alleged much less proved that Veco got anything in return from the Senator. The formal charges are a low-grade felony — in essence, lying on forms. This is not like the charges against William Jefferson or Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

Mr. Stevens will try to overturn the verdict and rebuild his reputation. He is unlikely to get his Senate seat back, even if he wins on appeal or at retrial. But the evidence of prosecutorial malpractice is serious enough to warrant an internal Justice probe, and perhaps judicial sanctions.

DSPQ

February 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Even for those of us whose Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, after all these years, has been raised far above the threshold of pain, the slack being cut for Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd is hard to take.

Although the latest development is, technically, tangential to the Senator’s hinky dealings and his on-going refusal to release the presumably compromising documents he promised to make public more than a year ago, sometimes it’s the icing on the cake that highlights the decay inside.

Senator Dodd’s mistake was not fessing up at the get go and admitting that (like his Senate colleague Kent Conrad and many others, including Richard Holbrooke) he got a sweetheart deal on  loans from the VIP program set up for precisely that purpose by his friend at the top of Countrywide Financial.  Senator Conrad appears to have decided that discretion is the better part of survival and has been keeping his head down hoping the whole thing will eventually blow over.

But Senator Dodd has gone on the offensive, denying everything, promising transparency, and shamelessly positioning himself as the paladin of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has been one of very few voices speaking inconvenient truth to entrenched power, and today’s editorial expresses an accumulated indignation and frustration.  Read it and weep:

If you think Senator Chris Dodd was friendly with former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, check out the bond the Connecticut lawmaker enjoys with Richard Blumenthal, the state’s attorney general. While Mr. Dodd refuses to make public the details of his sweetheart loans from Countrywide, the state’s chief lawyer not only won’t investigate; he has taken to the airwaves to proclaim Mr. Dodd’s innocence and even predict his re-election in 2010.

Inappropriate doesn’t begin to describe Mr. Blumenthal’s appearance this week on Hartford’s WFSB-TV. The AG compared Mr. Dodd, who was due to receive an estimated savings of $75,000 over the life of his two VIP mortgage loans, to borrowers allegedly duped by unscrupulous lenders. Mr. Blumenthal claimed that “there’s no evidence of wrongdoing on [Mr. Dodd's] part any more than victims who were misled or deceived by Countrywide.”

Portraying Mr. Dodd as a victim for receiving two below-market loans appeared to be too much for WFSB anchor Dennis House. He asked Mr. Blumenthal if he would accept Countrywide telling him that he could see some documents for a short time but not make any copies, as Mr. Dodd recently did with selected reporters. Mr. Blumenthal replied that he subpoenas documents from companies like Countrywide, instead of accepting their representations.

It’s interesting that the state’s top lawyer can pronounce that there’s no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Dodd, especially since Mr. Blumenthal told us this week that he has never investigated Dodd’s Countrywide deals. According to Mr. Blumenthal, the case is out of his jurisdiction because Mr. Dodd holds a federal office and any possible offenses would be federal. Mr. Blumenthal prosecutes civil matters while Connecticut’s Chief State’s Attorney, Kevin Kane, oversees criminal prosecutions. Mr. Kane’s office also tells us that Connecticut’s senior Senator is out of its jurisdiction.

Mr. Blumenthal’s decision to stay out of the way of federal law enforcers contrasts with his approach when Republican Governor John Rowland and others were successfully prosecuted on federal corruption charges. In that case, Mr. Blumenthal was so zealous that in 2004 a state court judge temporarily blocked his civil suit after federal prosecutors claimed he was making it more difficult to prosecute the federal case.

Federal prosecutors aren’t commenting on any probe, if there is one. We can confirm that the Senate’s Ethics Committee investigation continues at whatever pace can be described as less than plodding.

DSPQ

February 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have raised some serious questions in their column “Rahm’s ‘Rent’ Is Just The Tip Of Ethics Iceberg.”

News broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) – and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel’s previously undislosed ethics problems.

One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro’s husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel’s days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.

During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid Greenberg’s firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel’s own campaign committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 2004.)

To be fair, Greenberg had polling contracts with the DCCC before – but each new election cycle brings its own set of consultants. And Emanuel was certainly generous with his roommate.

Emanuel never declared the substantial gift of free rent on any of his financial-disclosure forms. He and De Lauro claim that it was just allowable “hospitality” between colleagues. Hospitality – for five years?

So far the press and the watchdogs are pussyfooting around the powerful (and notoriously vindictive) new White House Chief of Staff, and it remains to be seen how far the questions raised by “Rahm’s Rent” will be pursued.

But consider what happened last summer, when a Republican Senator was implicated in an ostensibly similar arrangement (although he at least paid rent).

The National Journal revealed that Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman was “only” paying $600 a month rent for a basement apartment in the house of a Republican political consultant.

Senator Coleman pointed out that his Democratic colleagues Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois (and Massachusetts congressman Bill Delahunt) had a not dissimilar arrangement with their landlord, California congressman George Miller, to whom each of them paid $750 monthly.

The upshot?

Senator Shumer went on the defensive: “Listen, I share a house with four other people. I share a room with a person. Ask Norm if he does that.”

And Senator Durbin joked about it and poormouthed the digs:  ”I live with Schumer — that’s an added burden.  And you know, the place is not — I don’t know what Norm Coleman’s place looks like. Ours looks like a goodwill store on drugs.”

And Melanie Klein’s watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed an ethics suit against Norm Coleman.

So far the CREW website is silent about the Rent Redrum with which Mr. Emanuel appears to be getting away.

An interesting historical footnote that doesn’t appear to have been mentioned elsewhere:  One of Congressman Miller’s earlier renters was then-congressman now-CIA-nominee Leon Panetta.  Mr. Panetta moved out when President Clinton named him to head OMB, because ethics laws prohibited a member of the White House staff from paying rent to a member of Congress.

(Above: A Goodwill Store on Drugs: Senator Charles Schumer’s unmade sofabed in Congressman George Miller’s Capital Hill townhouse.   Back in July 2007, The New York Times, instead of questioning the ethics of the arrangement, ran a chatty story about the odd couple existence experienced/endured by Mr. Miller (D-CA) and his tenants Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Durbin (D-IL) and Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA). The Times‘ indulgently amused take on the story: “Think MTV’s ‘Real World’ with a slovenly cast of Democratic power brokers.”  But who says slovens can’t get sweetheart deals?)

At What Point Do The Exceptions Overtake The Rule?

February 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, Obama administration | 1 Comment 

Check out “Senator Tom Daschle’s” webpage at Alston & Bird, the powerhouse DC law firm for which he works.  Here’s how they describe him:

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Public Policy Advisor in Alston & Bird’s Washington, D.C. office, and is a member of the Legislative and Public Policy Group. As a non-attorney, Senator Daschle focuses his services on advising the firm’s clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy with a particular emphasis on issues related to financial services, health care, energy, telecommunications and taxes. In addition, he advises on trade and international matters. He spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.

With more than 25 years of service in the House of Representatives and the Senate and 10 years as Senate Democratic Leader, Senator Daschle has played an instrumental role in the development of U.S. legislative and regulatory policy.

Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Senator Daschle attended South Dakota State University and graduated in 1969. Following college, he served for three years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force Strategic Command. After military service, he spent five years as an aide to South Dakota Senator James Abourezk.

Don’t be distracted by the irony involved in the fact that one of his advertised specialties is taxes, and try to think of another word to describe a former congressman and Senate Majority Leader who is a non-lawyer working for a big downtown Washington law firm (in the Atlantic Building on F Street, which is like a classier version of nearby K Street), which functions, in the words of its website, “helping clients transition the  gap from the development of legislation, public policy and regulations to implementation.”

Let’s think now.  What would that word be?

How about: Bob Dole?

Well, yes, Bob Dole, whose ringing endorsement of the Daschle nomination is being widely cited as an example of nonpartisan noblesse, is also a Special Counsel at Alston + Bird, helping clients get it up to speed on the major issues of the day.

But, technically, Bob Dole counts as two words.

So put your thinking cap back on and concentrate on finding the one word that describes a former congressman and Senate Majority Leader who is a non-lawyer working for a big downtown Washington law firm (in the Atlantic Building on F Street, which is like a classier version of K Street), which functions, in the words of one of its partners, “helping clients transition the  gap from the development of legislation, public policy and regulations to implementation.”

How about: lobbyist?

Bingo!

If you want to examine an alternative view of the Washington power team of Daschle and Daschle (the Senator’s wife is a registered lobbyist), consider the combination of anger, frustration, indignation, invective, and, ultimately, resignation, expressed by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, and Washington Monthly’s Stephanie Mencimer  — not exactly your right wingnut amen corner.

Here’s a sample (and a restrained one at that) of Mr. Taibbi’s opinion from his RS blog:

But in picking Daschle — who as an adviser to the K Street law firm Alston and Bird has spent the last four years burning up the sheets with the nation’s fattest insurance and pharmaceutical interests — Obama is essentially announcing that he has no intention of seriously reforming the health care industry. And I know that lots of public policy people are hailing this pick, saying Daschle is perfect for the job (“His new leadership position confirms that the incoming Obama administration has made health care reform a top and early priority for action in 2009,” Ron Pollack, the director of Families USA, told reporters), but when they say that I think they mean the following: “Out of all the bought-off Washington whores who could have been given this job, Daschle is the best one. His fake reform will go the farthest in its approximation of actual action than the fake reform of any other possible whore-candidate.” Actually that probably sums up the ideological profile of Obama quite well generally — but that’s another story.

Regarding Daschle, remember, we’re talking about a guy who not only was a consultant for one of the top health-care law firms in the country, but a board member of the Mayo Clinic (a major recipient of NIH grants) and the husband of one of America’s biggest defense lobbyists — wife Linda Hall lobbies for Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Does anyone really think that this person is going to come up with a health care proposal that in any way cuts into the profits of the major health care companies?

DSPQ

January 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

This picture is worth any thousand words with which I could come up.

DSPQ

January 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Yesterday’s 18-5 vote in the Senate Finance Committee moving Timothy Geithner’s Treasury nomination  to the full Senate has been a foregone conclusion (like the Senate confirmation on Monday) despite the revelation that Mr. Geithner didn’t pay some of his income taxes for several years.  (He also had a problem about the legal status of his housekeeper, but that soon slipped below the radar as focus concentrated solely on the tax issues.)

Maureen Dowd addressed the offense to simple common sense:

How does a guy on the fast track to be Treasury secretary fail to pay $43,200 worth of federal taxes, or forget to check on the immigration status of a house cleaner — the same sort of upstairs-downstairs slipup that has tripped up other top-drawer prospects on their way to top jobs here? Americans expect the man who’s in charge of the I.R.S. to pay his own taxes.

And The Wall Street Journal raised the disturbing prospect that someone might have been betting on not getting caught until the statute of limitations had run:

As to why Mr. Geithner didn’t pay all his back taxes after the 2006 audit, an Obama aide said the nominee was advised by his accountant that he had no further liability. Senate Finance Committee aides said they were concerned that either Mr. Geithner or his accountant had used the IRS’s statute of limitations to avoid further back-tax payments at the time of the audit. “Some might say it was a character moment,” said one Republican aide.

Now we have the AP report —carried in today’s The New York Times— that accepts Mr. Geithner’s word “mistakes” and substitutes it for “failure”: 

The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday cleared the nomination of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary despite unhappiness over his mistakes in paying his taxes.

Geithner paid the back taxes plus interest for the years 2003 and 2004 after being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.  But he did not pay taxes he owed for 2001 and 2002, even though he had made the same mistakes for those years, until shortly before he was nominated by Obama last November to be treasury secretary.

And just now on NPR the news summary at the top of the hour reported that Mr. Geithner had been confirmed “despite his delay in paying his taxes.”

At this rate he’ll end up being owed money.