April 29
Since I was willing to subject myself to Janet Parshall's show last night, it's only fair she accept a Take the Red Pill Award for something thoroughly bigoted she said while interviewing Scott Davis of Exodus Youth, which tries to cure teens and young adults of homosexuality, like it's a disease. She led up to her remark with the usual conservative Christian persecution complex --- conservative Christians are the world's first people to be simultaneously persecuted and in charge of almost everything. After remarking the tolerance is not a good thing, pulling out of all context that God doesn't tolerate pagans, she then said that if she drove 75 MPH in a 55MPH zone the police wouldn't tolerate that. Yes, she compared being pagan to a minor crime. At least she picked speeding instead a felony, nothing to be punished by burning at the stake by pious Christians. Just to be safe, the Take the Red Pill Award I award her today exists in cyberspace, and is not made out of something burnable.
More corruption news today, but in a way it's good since some investigation by people with subpoena power might be involved. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, also known in some court documents regarding Jack Abramoff as "Representative Number 1", looks likely to be subject to wide ranging investigation, meaning more than just bribery charges, by federal prosecutors. Over in the executive branch, former Veterans Secretary Anthony J. Principi is coming under scrutiny. The job he held when he was appointed was president of QTC Management Inc., which does business with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. So first he's president of a company that does business with the VA, then he runs the VA, and then he goes back to QTC as chairman of the board. It seems highly unlikely a president and chairman doesn't have ownership interest in the company. So while he was running the VA, his once and future company did really well with VA contracts, which means Principi probably did really well himself. I'm putting in these probablies because no wrongdoing is proven yet, but when someone leaves a company to run the department the company does business with, then the company gets lots of business, then this someone goes back to the company, it doesn't pass the smell test. It sounds like the typical way of Republicans parking trucks: backed up to the public treasury ready for loading up.
On the downside, House Republicans have the idea that the heat is off on the lobbying scandals. They have the idea the public doesn't care, so it's up to you who have Republican congressmen to tell them you do care, because a consequence of their comfort is that lobbying reform has been seriously weakened. For example, the bill increases reporting requirements for lobbyists giving gifts to congressmen, but it doesn't stop the gift giving. I'm not sure if Democrats should vote for it or not. It's weak, but still an improvement. I suspect a trap too. If Democrats vote for it, Republicans will try to claim they've addressed the issue and make an end of it. If Democrats oppose it, especially if they succeed in stopping, Republicans will denounce Democratic hypocrisy for stopping lobbying reform. I don't know a slick way out of that trap, except to keep speaking the truth, and making the Republicans believe there will be a price for tolerating corruption.
April 25
It's too late at night for me to be writing this but it's too important. Call it Valerie Plame II. Call it political intimidation, which is what I suspect it is. The CIA employee whose firing was in the Saturday papers (which means it came out Friday evening, which says something right there), and who was subsequently identified by name and exposed as a -- gasp -- Kerry supporter in 2004, denies she leaked the secret prison information, didn't have access to it, and is now not even accused of leaking it. Newsweek broke the story in an article posted to their web site. Mary McCarthy is the employee, and we're not supposed to know that because she was promised confidentiality. Nonetheless, her identity was quickly divulged by anonymous government officials, along with selected details about her intended to make her look like a political partisan. If they have nothing to hide, why were the government officials anonymous? If they wanted to keep the firing quiet, they could have let her retire since she was just ten days away. Even if they don't want her at work, they could have found an excuse, found some unused sick time or vacation, and no one would have been the wiser. That suggests they did want someone the wiser. The someone, I suggest, is plural, namely other employees of our intelligence agencies who might make a contribution to a Democratic candidate and who might ever blow the whistle on illegal and, in the case of the secret prisons, utterly reprehensible activity. It was payback and intimidation, which is the common element with the Plame leak. Since the leaking of employee information, even if not classified, is illegal, shouldn't there be an investigation? Will the new set of Bush administration leakers be pursued?
April 23
After a couple days on corporate corruption, back to the corruption that makes all other corruption possible: election fraud. The Free Press has gotten a look at some ballots from Warren County, Ohio, where election officials counted ballots in secret on the grounds of a terrorism warning that no government agency admits giving out. After the count there were some funny results, like a state supreme court candidate got a lot more votes than John Kerry, and many supporters of gay marriage voted for Bush. Some of the ballots look fraudulent. The explanation is a bit complex, but makes sense if you follow it and look at the photos of some ballots. I'll say this much for punch cards: at the GOP had to work at the fraud in this case. The touchscreens let them do it quickly and easily from a distance with now evidence visible to anyone who can't examine the software, which of course no one is allowed to do.
Getting back to congressional corruption, this is a bit embarrassing for a Democrat but shows how we handle these allegations better than Republicans. When a Democrat on the House ethics committee was discovered to have his own issues, he was asked to step aside, and did so. This is Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va. It's not known yet he did anything wrong but contrast how this situation was handled in comparison to Republican scandals. Republicans changed the rules to protect Tom DeLay, like requiring a majority of the ethics committee to vote to start an investigation. It took half the members before, and the committee is half from each party, effectively allowing the Republicans to prevent an investigation of DeLay or anyone else like Cunningham, Ney, Boehner, or anyone else who gets in trouble. I don't expect Democrats to never have a corrupt member. I expect them to get rid of the corruption, not cover it up like the Republicans. I say investigate all of it, because I'll take the chance that there's a corrupt Democrat for every five corrupt Republicans.
All this stuff is of a piece folks. Whether the stink comes from corporations, lobbyists, campaign finance, election fraud, or abuse of power, it's not coincidence it's all happening at once. That's why it's the culture of corruption.
April 22
After in reminded readers of the corporate aspect of the culture of corruption a couple days ago, we have a new for me a local scandal. United Health CEO William McGuire, poster boy for over paid execs, might have enriched himself by illegally pricing his stock options. Stock options are usually awarded at the price of the stock at the time of the award. Apparently there's some fudge factor is just when the options are considered to be awarded. By fudging more than the law allows, the option price can be made lower, making the profit greater when they're exercised. Let me simplify that two ways. The first way is to explain it in one word : theft. In more words, it might help to explain options.
An option is the right to buy a share of stock for a set price, regardless of the market price at the time the stock is purchased. So if you have an option to buy a stock for $5, and the price is $8, you can buy the stock for $5 and immediately sell for $8, pocketing the $3 profit. Options can be purchased from a stock broker, which means you pay for the right to buy a stock at a set price. Where options become a common denominator in corporate scandals is that they're often awarded as a form of compensation for employees. This is done partly because the value of the options, which could be sold on the open market, doesn't have to be counted in the company's expenses. However, they're supposed to give the holders of the options an incentive to keep the stock price up. What McGuire and the board of directors are suspected of doing is awarding themselves loads of options at lower prices than what is legal. So to pick prices from the air since I don't know the real prices, it's like instead of the options being $5 they were $4, so when sold at $8 they made $4 a share instead of $3. $1/share doesn't sound like much, but when someone has millions of options, it means a lot of extra money. So besides the shear amount of money going to Mcguire being obscene, it might be stolen. Even if all his money is legal, how can it be right that he has options worth $1.6 billion while something like 15% of Americans, mostly poor, have no health insurance and by and large can't even afford a checkup? According to Nick Coleman's math, it takes a nurse working on McGuire's customers a year to make what McGuire gets in one hour. Do we yet know McGuire did anything illegal? No, but would someone who would enrich himself that much while inflicted so much suffering flinch at breaking the law?
Now I don't know that McGuire is a Republican, and I would check that out before turning him into a Willie Horton in campaign ads, but come on --- what party affiliation do you expect from a health insurance executive? Anyone think he's hiring lobbyists to campaign for single-payer? Now he is doing a bit of philanthropy. We're getting a new riverfront park paid for by McGuire's $5 million. So I'm supposed to be grateful for this noblesse oblige crap that says the robber barons or old or new can wring money out of the rest of us by means that may be nefarious or at least abusive, then they get decide when a little fraction of their wealth gets used for something good. If he wants to do something with his billionaire's pocket change, he could use that same money to have his corporation provide free insurance to the uninsured. I would like the riverfront park, and I'll feel guilt free about using it since it's a way, albeit far from the best way, of getting back the money he allegedly stole. But instead of waiting for a drop of generosity from a modern day James J. Hill, let's make them pay their fair share of taxes and build not just a park, but a sane medical system. Before we congratulate McGuire's call for an end to options, let's see it as a plea to the SEC to leave him alone --- while we plea for the book to be thrown at him. And just remember when you vote this fall your Republican congressman voted to give these guys their multi-park tax cuts.
April 20
The trial of former Enron CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay reminds me of the culture of corruption --- the 2002 version. These two have been out of power so long that we forget how powerful they were. The acting president used to be the governor from Enron before he was the president from Enron, with Lay getting to interview candidates for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. We forget the Bush let Lay pick his regulators, and that the electrical ripoff of California happened under Bush's watch, and not much was done about it. Remember too that Cheney has made millions in office from his stake in Halliburton. Besides the details of the corporate scandals, I want to point out a couple things to my fellow liberals. One is that the CEOs in the middle of the corporate scandals were far more Republican than Democratic. It wasn't 100% --- I recall former DNC chair Terry McCauliffe made money off Global Crossing --- and I expect many executives caught cooking the books were apolitical --- but their connections were mostly Republican, and this was absolutely part of the same culture of corruption as the congressional and presidential scandals. We should use this to drive home the point of how pervasive corruption has become with conservatives in control of everything.
There's one other important thing to keep in mind. The corruption issue was working for us four years ago when suddenly Iraq was deemed a crisis and it had to be voted on immediately. This just happened to occur a couple months before Election Day. Since we know now, and many of us suspected then, that there was no crisis, we can reasonably conclude that Iraq War II, though not fought just for the 2002 election, was timed to change the issue and get enough voters to rally round the flag and the president because a war was on. It worked. Look back at that time if you need a reminder of how the issue changed from the rough economy and the corporate scandals connected to the Bush administration to Iraq.
I mention that not just as history, but in hopes of learning a lesson. Iran is looking like a possible war at a convenient time. The nutty president of Iran is handing Bush an issue though I doubt he has any idea he's doing this. I predict sometime around August Iran will be a hot issue again, and Congress will be asked to authorize the use of force. It will be timed to make voters forget corruption and rally around the president again just enough to get the GOP through the midterms without losing Congress. Then of course we'll be stuck with the next war, but our country is run by people who won't have thought a day past retaining control of the government. Sadly, the one thing they're good at is running election campaigns and manipulating vote counting. I mention this in hopes that knowing their strategy this time will let us counter it. I don't know how, but at least expecting it puts us one step ahead.
Speaking of 2002 scandals, the convictions in the New Hampshire denial of service attacks on Democratic and union GOTV (Get Out The Vote) phone banks have led to the discovery of a whole lot of phone calls between James Tobin and the White House. Tobin The recipients of the calls included current Republican chair Ken Mehlman. Democrats have brought a civil suit. Republicans claim the calls are normal campaign activity. I'll believe the frequent calls are normal, but when the people on the New Hampshire end are in jail for what they were doing at the time, could Mehlman really not know? Who else at the White House knew this attempt at election fraud was in progress? Did they know about other alleged incidents of election fraud that year? Then how about in 2004? I don't know either, whatever I might suspect. That's why it's important to get subpoena power, which requires Democrats getting at least one house of Congress. The Republicans have refused to investigate, look disinclined to change their minds, and thus if it's up to them we'll never know.
