BOOZ ALLEN ETC Continued

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Margie Burns

The June 2013 news that Booz Allen Hamilton entrusted a 29-year-old disaffected cyber-geek with oxymoronic global secrets, stationed him in Hawaii, and placed him under the supervision apparently of his girlfriend, should come as a surprise. Instead it comes as part of a familiar pattern.

Ironies are too easy to find. To avoid belaboring the obvious, I’ll quote just one Booz Allen press release, this one from February 2013 headed “Booz Allen Hamilton Launches Cyber4Sight Threat Intelligence Services.”

The gist:

““Booz Allen Hamilton today launched Cyber4Sight™ Threat Intelligence Services, which uses multiple data sources to identify and monitor an organization’s unique cyber security profile, determine its “attack surface,” and deploy military grade predictive intelligence to anticipate, prioritize and mitigate cyber threats 24/7. This anticipatory service produces real-time, practical indications and warnings so that commercial organizations can take defensive actions against cyber attacks long before they occur.”

Taking the PR statement at face value, one might be inclined to ask whether Booz Allen considered itself a commercial organization or whether “cyber attacks” include someone inside giving away the store. As said, too easy.

It’s the take-aways that matter. Among them, the following:

1) When you’re talking about the business of the U.S. government, every privatizing, off-shoring or outsourcing is potentially a security breach. This is particularly the case when the government contractors are extremely well-connected, and when the business involved–surveillance, cyber security, etc.–is extremely sensitive or top-secret. The potential intensifies when the contractor is a behemoth and starts to fall into the Too-Big-to-Expose category. These are not factors that enhance oversight, transparency and accountability. Anti-labor types should bear in mind that the ‘privatizing’ mindset that devalues loyalty in favor of big-bucks contracts opens the door to similar security breaches. As ever, when you work with a security firm, what’s on your computers is on their computers.

2) When people start thinking they are above or beyond the law, trouble looms. This principle should be obvious, maybe, but some obvious applications–as they say in R & D–seem not to have been developed. I am not talking so much about Edward Snowden here, as about the mentality that led his corporate employers to hire him. Snowden was not picked from a stack of resumes in Human Resources. He billed himself as special in ways that appeal to the anti-egghead echelon of executive leadership–a de-emphasis on time and labor, including time spent in school; a certain pride in skirting the rules or at least the guidelines, including valuable principles; and a devaluing of serious non-commercial education. Thus he walked in through a side door, figuratively located just the other side of Executive Men’s Toilet. They’re paying for it now.

3) Anti-‘government’ rhetoric is not a solution. ‘Small government’ types in certain circles are exactly the people building mega-billion corporate complexes, bulldozing the Bill of Rights at work and in the community, and then being breached in one way or another. In political circles and in finance circles and in military-and-security technology circles, ‘small government’ types are people simply asking for less supervision and more money for themselves, under the headings of ‘less government’ and ‘lower taxes.’ These are not people who tend to be reflective types, regularly questioning and examining their own motives, leaning over backward to give the other guy his due. Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the biggest contractors in Washington, benefiting from government at all levels–more on that later–donates copiously to politicians who shriek ‘less government’ and ‘lower taxes.’ “Smaller government”? From the corporate allies of our Chamber of Commerce? Typically they avidly solicit and receive contracts from Uncle Sam, to such an extent that the cyber-security sector has become one of the biggest harbors of corporate welfare.

4) Macho corporate swagger is not a solution. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Not all of Booz Allen’s extensive ties in the intelligence community, the American military, civilian government agencies and beyond saved it from mistakes so elementary that, literally, many eighth-graders would have known enough to avoid them. The price of democracy is constant vigilance. That means not just state-of-the art technology, but a close eye on human values. Too much careerist games-playing is incompatible with genuine security.

These are all lessons repeatedly illustrated over recent decades and/or since the year 2000. The point, as previously written, is that previous lessons have not been learned thoroughly enough. The incoming Obama administration had a lot on its plate in January 2009, but it still needed to clean house thoroughly. Unfortunately, having ensconced private security and private ties to military capabilities in government at the highest levels, the national political establishment was little able to mitigate some of the problems.

Thus, as the Booz Allen press release has it,

“Today’s cyber threats are increasingly targeting corporations and governments to conduct industrial espionage, undermine business and financial operations and sabotage infrastructure. A perimeter defense alone is no longer sufficient protection–adversaries are too many, too fast and too sophisticated. Organizations need a new paradigm that combines real-time security resources with a rigorous method of mitigating cyber risks. Booz Allen has combined its deep functional cyber expertise from the intelligence community with its operational military experience to create Cyber4Sight.”

Potential ‘adversaries’ include, you might say, your own people who are less than entranced with many aspects of what you’re doing. Potentially that might encompass much of the United States population.

Going forward, there are questions to be addressed, humorous or otherwise:

Isn’t it possible to vet contractors to prevent giving more government contracts to–for example–a company with its own cyber-security problems?

Big Green

Is anyone moving to review Booz Allen Hamilton’s current federal contracts or other contracts, at least those involved with security, surveillance, or monitoring security or surveillance, etc?

Is anyone moving to reduce the shoulder-rubbing between government agencies and some of our extensively breached contractors?

State as well as federal

Back to that press release:

“Booz Allen’s Cyber4Sight provides clients–from banks to insurance companies to energy utilities–with anticipatory cyber threat intelligence that allows them to cultivate a proactive security posture, get ahead of an attack, assess risks and take appropriate actions to mitigate future attacks. Cyber4Sight combines the science of Big Data with the art of analysis and information gathering to give clients a holistic, forward-looking cyber security program. This service is the result of a significant multi-year investment Booz Allen has made to create an infrastructure that globally integrates data collection, aggregation and analysis and engages cyber analysts from a myriad of disciplines.”

Including high-school dropouts.

Leaving the Snowden matter aside–

As said before, due diligence should be routine in federal contracting. This is especially true in security. Aside from other measures, tightening up disclosure requirements for lobbying would help. It is not enough just to require ‘registered’ lobbyists to provide certain information. We need to require everyone who lobbies to ‘register.’

to be continued

BOOZ ALLEN ETC

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Margie Burns

BOOZ ALLEN ETC

The point of the re-posts below is not that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The point is that previous lessons have not been learned thoroughly enough. The incoming Obama administration had a lot on its plate in January 2009, but it still needed to clean house thoroughly.

January 2009 magazine cover

Unfortunately, the next-to-the-top echelons in the defense and security contracting world, effectively ensconced in government, had other ideas. We as a nation are still dealing with the problems.

Award-winning Booz Allen Hamilton, 2009

The re-posts below, on problems at security contractor HBGary, are just a small reminder of some of the problems still ongoing. More on these topics later.

Previously posted February 17, 2011:

HBGary trolling for customers in the federal government
–while helping the C of C take down ‘big government’

More corporate welfare, this time in the cybersecurity sector

One thing demonstrated conclusively by the massive cache of HBGary emails released on the Internet is that HBGary was highly, not to say avidly, soliciting and receiving contracts from Uncle Sam. They also demonstrate that genuine cybersecurity was not a first concern with the company.

“Smaller government”? From the cats allied with our Chamber of Commerce?

Not so much.

A few quick examples tell the story, swiftly plucked from the tens of thousands of emails linking—as we now know—a number of private corporations and our numerous intelligence agencies in government to a shysterly lobbying firm:

On Feb. 2, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice’s program manager at the InfoSec Technologies (IST) Team of the DOJ I.T. Security Staff emailed a reminder to 34 personnel in eight federal agencies, six private companies including HBGary, and an association. (The links are now down but were accessible yesterday [Feb. 16, 2011].)

The reminder was, ironically, that “The DOJ Cybersecurity Conference will be held February 8-9, 2011, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.,” and reassured “All” that “Prior to and during the conference, we will be working with the conference speakers to ensure they have everything they need in their respective session rooms.”

Questions placed with the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs have not been replied to. A phone call to the DOJ requesting comment has not been returned.

Shortly before this ironic cybersecurity event, aggressive presenter HBGary was hacked, and tens of thousands of emails exchanged among these black-hat holes-in-the-heads and their customers, including federal customers, were released.

HBGary

The conference had, as ever, government facilitators paid with [federal] tax dollars:

“In preparation for the conference, we are asking the speakers to submit their presentations to me by Friday, February 14th. The presentations will then be loaded onto the laptops in each of the presentation rooms.”

Memo to all, in the security sector or not, to engrave over the door: When you work with a security firm, what’s on your computers is on their computers
The Feb. 2 email continues,

“When submitting your presentation, please indicate if any special equipment or computer networking is needed for the presentation. Also, please indicate if your presentation can be made publicly available to participants following the completion of the conference.”

Federal personnel on this email list work in the Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Army, State, the Office of Personnel Management, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT).

Private companies besides HBGary included GE, Dell, PWC, Mandiant, and MK Won Associates.

For context, be it noted that this email from our Justice department was sent to among others Aaron Barr at the HBGary firm, recently infamous. As seen, the immediate topic is an upcoming conference on cybersecurity, at which HBGary was to pitch its products and services to IT professionals across government.

Barr

Some obvious questions:

1) Would we really want HBGary to get more government contracts, given its own problems with cybersecurity?

2) Are HBGary’s current federal contracts under review, given recent events including the hack itself and the exposed actions by the company?

3) Is the Justice department or the White House really going to give HBGary a pass on its amply documented actions, misfeasance or malfeasance, including proposals for surveillance and ‘dirty tricks’ against critics of the Chamber of Commerce and/or HBGary clients, simply because HBGary emails were released?

4) Isn’t it better for the public interest that these massive security breaches have been exposed?

And more.

One positive recommendation to come away from: Sagging economy or not, due diligence–i.e. close examination of the company itself—should be routine in federal contracting. This is especially true in security. The weaknesses in HBGary’s own tech component have been amply revealed by now. As Naked Security and Ars Technica discuss, just about everything Aaron Barr in particular was doing on computers was readily breachable. One problem seems to be that Barr and his cohorts were at least as interested in selling as in providing. (Hands slapping foreheads in disbelief—a nation draws its breath—You think!?)

Too much games playing, too little security.

Notwithstanding the obvious humor, this enormous matter is also grave. Genuine issues of public safety and public health could be affected by similar security breaches, and a large part of the problem stems from that same old ‘privatizing’ mindset that devalues loyalty in favor of big-bucks contracts.

At present it seems unlikely that the GOP in Congress will be hotly investigating this matter.

Note: The numerous federal offices on the mailing list referred to above are far from HBGary’s only government intelligence contacts or IC customers. As the HBGary emails reveal, the company was also interested at the very least in applying to the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

The company also had a presentation for the CIA, long in the works. While not evincing much concern about the quality of their security, Barr and his cohorts expressed concern about the quality of the presentation:

“It’s just under an hour long, hope its not too boring 🙂 –
the idea that social networking is intimate with cyber security is a new concept and very accurate.”

As said, ridicule aside, this is an issue that goes beyond one company.

Regarding HBGary and its proposals, Think Progress is on this bigtime:

“ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms—HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis)—to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.”

Glenn Greenwald at Salon, one of the targets of HBGary’s bright idea of dirty tricks, has this rundown.

Previously posted Feb. 18, 2011:

As previously posted, the enormous cache of emails from and to cybersecurity firm HBGary reveals extensive ties to government agencies. The public stance by the Chamber of Commerce among other HBGary clients against ‘big government’ belies the firm’s willingness to treat our federal agencies, which arguably have a legitimate security interest, as Uncle Sugar.

First off, however–and not to make excessive light of a serious topic–it is undeniably humorous to see how a bunch of swaggering black-hatters react when they start becoming aware that their own security shortcomings are being ventilated. Gradually the light begins to dawn: The guys with the black hats may have to get out of Dodge.

More seriously–No word yet on when, or whether, HBGary alerted its clients inside our federal intelligence community, after becoming aware that its accounts were compromised. In a Sun. Feb. 6, 2011, email with the subject line “Now we are being directly threatened,” Aaron Barr says “I will bring this up with FBI when I meet with them tomorrow,” but out of context the line sounds as much like bluster as anything else. Possibly HBGary may have retained a touching faith to the bitter end, partly based on encouraging feelers put out by CBS’ Sixty Minutes, that the FBI would join with the biggest lobbyists in the corporate world and go after those malefactors at Anonymous.
No word yet on whether Sixty Minutes will do a segment on how Anonymous hacked HBGary, having initially approached the topic from the other end. Be it noted that even while salivating over the free publicity of a Sixty Minutes interview, the company was ridiculing CBS’ Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel behind the scenes by circulating a video clip from 1994.

The Department of Justice has not yet responded to questions about DOJ deals with HBGary, but the ties appear to have been rather friendly.

The firm was establishing a similarly warm relationship with the U.S. military, as displayed in more than one string of emails.

That the relationship was ongoing rather than a casual fling is corroborated by the fact that some personnel at HBGary organized themselves for financial purposes as “HBGary Federal LLC.”

Along with the contracts themselves, our federal agencies also benefited this cybersecurity firm by providing venues where it could rub shoulders with some of the globe’s biggest black-hatters, including SAIC. Regrettably, SAIC is also another major federal contractor, thus extending the potential for security breaches even farther into government. Admittedly it is possible that SAIC has been savvy enough to avoid hiring someone who, like Aaron Barr, would use the same password for all his/her accounts.

Speaking of bigtime contractors, one of the ways HBGary was going to combat the threat posed by its hacking–having finally seen it coming, from a foot away–was by meeting with Booz Allen. Booz Allen has had extensive and deeply rooted ties with the IC and has reaped highly lucrative returns from the relationship.

In any case, only one email seen by this writer suggests a hint of concern in the larger interest, stemming from the company’s security breach.

At the risk of repetition, it is worth noting once again that privatizing, outsourcing, and offshoring pose manifold risks to domestic security as well as to the economy.

As one political science professor comments, “The public knows almost nothing about the extent of consulting on the public dole.”

To be continued

Well-regulated, part 3

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Margie Burns

Well-regulated, part 3

Following up on the two previous posts–

As written earlier, as often as we hear about “the second amendment” in the public discourse, we seldom hear the phrase “well regulated.” The first is a slogan for banners and bumper stickers; the second is being obliterated. But the framers of the constitution included that phrase well regulated in the second amendment because it was paramount. It involved among other things two attributes much prized–wisdom, and energy. In those pre-Nietzschean times, after all, wisdom was considered manly. Wisdom and prudence in fact were considered masculine attributes–a perspective often reversed today by a triad of corporatism, media consolation, and consumerism pushing the line that they are qualities we teach women and children. Two sides of the same sexist coin, of course; but the immediate point is the dishonesty of gun lobbyists who hide behind the second amendment even while they and their allies work full-time to make “regulation” a dirty word in every context including children’s toys.

Straight to the mouth

Nobody says it, but a phrase like “take up arms” itself implies well-regulated. As Clinton L. Rossiter writes in Seedtime of the Republic: the origin of the American tradition of political liberty (1954), the Cincinnatus ideal ruled: “No army of mercenaries could ever fight as bravely or successfully as a ‘well-regulated militia’ defending hearth and home.” The ability to take up arms was linked inextricably with the willingness to put them down. As such, it was the best alternative to, and antidote against, “the inherent danger of standing or ‘mercenary’ armies, ‘a tremendous curse to a state’ and ‘the scourge of mankind'” in sources quoted from the Revolutionary period.

Working from home

This historical perspective yields little justification for freely arming every disgruntled ex-employee or newly separated father engaged in a custody dispute or wishing to avoid alimony and child support, let alone every meth-head, gang member and cartel associate. As Josiah Quincy, Jr., wrote in 1774,

“No free government was ever founded or ever preserved it’s [sic] liberty without uniting the characters of citizen and soldier in those destined for defence of the state. The sword should never be in the hands of any, but those who have an interest in the safety of the community . . .” [emphasis added]

Examples of persons depended upon to be well regulated included “freeholders, citizen and husbandman” (Quincy); the government (“Pacificus,” pseud.); and “the publick” and “the collective body of the state” (Samuel West, 1776). Examples of people and entities who could not be depended upon to be well regulated included “a strong military power in the very heart of their country” and “the power of soldiers” (Samuel Adams); “the supreme magistrate and his creatures” and “every thing of a factious nature and complexion” (‘Pacificus’); “rulers” (West); “unjust and unlawful force” (“John Locke,” pseud.); “a few disaffected individuals” (West); and “oppressive officers” (Thomas Jefferson). [Quoted in Rossiter]

In short, well-regulated meant democratic (and republican); unregulated meant anti-democratic. All the individual liberties supported by Jefferson in Virginia before the Declaration of Independence–including Habeas Corpus, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of the press–had the same fundamental aim of regulating those who would insolently go overboard in oppressing others:

“These are the invaluable rights, that form a considerable part of our mild system of government; that, sending its equitably energy through all ranks and classes of men, defends the poor from the rich, the weak from the powerful, the industrious from the rapacious, the peaceable from the violent, the tenants from the lords, and all from their superiors.”

Part of the picture here is that the founders liked to see things done well rather than badly. As with well regulated currency, it was all rather like having your heart keep pumping and your blood circulating, to which the sweet air of freedom conduced. Even getting rid of a tyrant was supposed to be done well, rather than badly; as in John Milton’s epic narrative there was payback even for getting rid of an alleged tyrant poorly or for wrong motives. Thus the arbitrary, the irrational, the selfish all fell into the bad column; peaceableness, reason and looking out for others fell into the good column. Quoting Rossiter again,

“Resistance in the extreme sense of outright revolution–the “appeal to God by the sword,” as the Colony of New Hampshire labeled it–was never to be undertaken except by an overwhelming majority of a thoroughly abused people. There was no place in Revolutionary theory for the coup d’etat of a militant minority dedicated to the building of a new order. Samuel West expressed this thought in his election sermon of 1776:

‘If it be asked, who are the proper judges to determine, when rulers are guilty of tyranny and oppression? I answer, the publick; not a few disaffected individuals, but the collective body of the state must decide this question.'”

The well-regulated was meaningful. The meaningless was anathema, including meaningless selfishness. Hence it goes without saying that revolution for its own sake was no democratic ideal for American colonists:

“Finally, all colonial writers agreed with Jefferson’s assumption that any exercise of “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish” government would be followed almost immediately by an exercise of their associated right “to institute new Government.” For all their flirtation with the state of nature, for all their loyalty to the mechanistic explanation of government, Americans could think of man only as a member of a political community. Men did not revolt against government to eliminate it entirely and return to a state of nature, but to organize a new one, “laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” God granted men the right of resistance to help them preserve orderly constitutional government, not to induce them to fly from the tyranny of arbitrary power to the tyranny of no power at all.”

The lessons of history are many, and mixed. But adhering to principle is not cherry-picking.

“Well regulated,” part 2: Strict constructionism means paid lobbyists?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Margie Burns

“Well regulated,” part 2: Strict constructionism means paid lobbyists?

Picking up where the previous post left off–

“Well regulated” was praise in this country at the time America was born. For eighteenth-century American colonists, well-regulated was everything the ridiculous Georges on the English throne were not. The Swiftian, satire-worthy courts under the British kings were repudiated in the law courts of the new United States, regulated rather than bought, in check rather than ruled by fear or favor. In the new country–or this was the aim–the king as sovereign in every courtroom was replaced by the people, sovereign in every courtroom. Neither judges nor testimony were to be either bought, or coerced. Unlike the English court, where according to reputation anything and anyone could be bought for a price or pushed around if not, in America no private citizen or public official, however understandable his motivations, was to impose his will unjustly on others by force or fraud. “Well regulated” was encomium, but it was more than just a compliment; it was the antidote to force and fraud, the two basic forms of all injustice according to Aristotle, Aquinas, Dante, Milton and the founders. “Well regulated” was the widely applied tag, applied especially to everything self-evidently in need of regulation–militias, governments, the passions of men; taverns, society, commerce. “Well regulated” incontrovertibly applied to individuals as well as to groups, self-governance being as important a principle as governance res publica.

Assault firepower

Funny how the gun nuts and their well-paid users on K Street always represent ‘regulation’ as the enemy. But then, our highly paid lobbyists and the politicians in their pockets–former politicians and future lobbyists, respectively–are no constitutional purists. You never see them out rallying against a standing army in peacetime, and in fact they tend to distance themselves from the diehards places like in rural Idaho who do oppose government military. Since they are to a man either Republicans or ‘blue dog’ Democrats committed to the wedge issues of McCarthyism, racism, and bloodshed-ism, you seldom see them even refer to waste, fraud and abuse in the military-security-industrial complex. The last people to go to about billions in cost overruns by federal contractors are the protectors of quiet super-wealth masquerading as rugged-individualist loudmouths. Currently they do not even mouth off about foreign ownership of U.S. assets, a topic one might think tailor-made for the more-chauvinist-than-thou types.

It will be noted that the massive contradiction to the high principle outlined in the first paragraph above was slavery. Enslaved people did not, to put it nicely, have the full protection of the law and courts created by their enslavers. Predictably, this hideous part of U.S. history also gets exploited by K Street (name used here as metonymy). The gun lobby often reaches out to selected individuals of color, to be part of ‘the new face of gun rights’. The individuals thus selected often get their statements into print or on air, too, on the journalistic basis of man-bites-dog: After all, historically excluded groups have not benefited from the abuses of the weapons industry, so members speaking on its behalf tend to be exceptions. By the same token, the indigenous peoples of the new continent also did not enjoy equal protection under the law in colonial times, nor did women, nor did children, so the gun lobby has its female reps–although even the NRA has yet to argue that children should have the right to concealed carry. Interestingly, you also don’t see the NRA arguing that Native Americans should be carrying semi-automatics, although as with foreign ownership of American property, the topic might seem inviting; Native Americans with their bows and arrows were by all historical accounts ill-matched against the industrial advances of the Europeans. Perhaps for some reason the NRA is uncomfortable with the notion of standing up for primitive societies and indigenous peoples around the globe. Or perhaps defending American Indians just does not comport well with that cowboy image the gun lobby tries to project.

Guns Across the Border

UPDATE April 30–This just in:

This cannot be coincidence. The gun fanatics are running a billboard featuring Native Americans. Not subtle: A picture of three Native Americans in tribal dress is captioned in giant letters, top and bottom, TURN IN YOUR ARMS and THE GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.

Native Americans targeted by gun fanatics

Are the NRA or its zombies reading this blog? I refuse to say, “I spoke too soon.”

[back to original post]

Speaking of cartoons, cowboys, and borders–

There is more than one falsehood in the ‘2nd Amendment’ catchphrase. Using the U.S. Constitution to justify military-style assault weapons is bogus, and there is more than one way to point it out. The following are a few:

One of the most blatant incongruities is NRA opposition even to sensible policy to reduce shipping arms to drug cartels and gangs in Mexico. Mexican drug cartels have a constitutional right to bear American guns? For reminder, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives revealed in 2012 that 68,000 guns traced in Mexico from 2007 to 2011 had been traced to the U.S. The ATF report is linked here.

The NRA has continued to oppose any move to keep guns off airline flights, although public opinion lopsidedly supports keeping guns off planes. In late 2011, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security had found 800 firearms about to be carried on board during the year.

The NRA and gun extremists continue to oppose registration, licensing and tracing of firearms even while firearms continue to play a big part in the drug trade. There is a constitutional right to trade weapons for drugs? There is a constitutional right to conceal weapons sold in drug commerce? Even while U.S. courts are prosecuting the drug trade and narco-terrorism, and are being funded by the public to do so?

As with exports to Mexico, the gun lobby also continues to oppose any attempt to protect the U.S. against illegal imports of military-grade weapons, even by foreign nationals. Here are the weapons three Filipino nationals tried to bring into the U.S.

Two final observations, quickly:

One is that the gun lobby’s opposition to common sense is itself opposition to the constitution. Our framers had a rooted belief in not putting unlimited power into human hands, any human hands. They knew the dangers too well. The entire U.S. Constitution embodies that belief. In respect to arms in particular, there are no statements of record legitimizing military-grade arsenals for individuals in peacetime.

The other is that, ludicrous as the above examples are, the gun lobby goes well beyond opposing particular (sensible) policies on firearms. In U.S. gun violence, some of the worst problems and many of the deaths occur in connection with 1) domestic disputes, 2) alcohol or other substance abuse, 3) depression or mental illness, and 4) crime. In U.S. politics, the gun lobby effectively overlaps with the Republican Party. What that means in practical terms is that

measures to protect women from domestic violence will always get opposed. The NRA, as we have seen, is all hot to trot on a disturbed man’s right to bear arms and shoot his wife or girlfriend, and children. GOP honchos, as we have seen, are always against better rules and enforcement on grounds of either ‘socialism’ or ‘higher taxes’. The taxes pay for the courts that issue restraining orders, for the child support agencies that supposedly enforce supporting children, and for law enforcement for follow-up to court orders. Thus the tragic finale of gun violence to so many domestic disputes.
by the same token, measures to protect children and minors, to try to maximize their chances of growing up safely to adulthood, will always get opposed. The NRA is less than zealous to keep guns out of the hands of minors–even when minors are used to run guns for gangs, for cartels, and for narco-terrorism. The GOP displays the same attitude toward safe schools, in general, that it displays toward safe homes, safe child-care facilities, and safe consumer products.
for the same reasons, mental health always gets short-changed.
crime prevention always gets short-changed.

Meanwhile, K Street–to use the popular eponym again–works overtime behind the scenes, to short-change the public and to justify short-changing the public.

Well regulated currency

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Margie Burns

Well regulated currency

The ordinariness of “well regulated” in eighteenth-century America

The following is a quick, representative list of American newspapers before and after the Revolutionary War explicitly recommending, or reminding of the need for, a “well regulated currency”:

New England Weekly Journal (Boston, Mass.) February 4, 1734. Issue CCCLVIII, page 1. “Money well regulated and established is the measure of all other things.”
Boston Gazette, or Weekly Journal. June 4, 1751. Issue 1629, page 1. A “fixed invariable currency” is linked to “well regulated” trade.
Boston Evening Post. January 4, 1762. Issue 1375, page 2. Brief historical argument says a well-regulated currency was one of the goals of the court (American) since 1650. The same piece goes on to say, pointedly, that “they were under no great fears of offending the government in England” in so moving.
The New-London (Connecticut) Gazette. March 8, 1771. Vol. VIII, issue 382, page 1. A well regulated currency is contrasted to the evils of counterfeit.
The Providence (Rhode Island) Gazette and Country Journal. August 25, 1787. Vol. XXIV, issue 1234, page 2. Also contrasts well regulated currency with counterfeit.
New York Daily Advertiser. March 19, 1819. Vol. II, issue 601, page 2. Declaims on “well regulated currency,” brings in “Asiatic countries.”
Richmond (Virginia) Enquirer. December 5, 1833. Vol. XXX, issue 61, page 2. Importance of a safe and well regulated currency.
Richmond Enquirer. Dec. 27, 1833. Vol. XXX, issue 70, page 4. Same.

Currency issued by Massachusetts

It is in this light that the words of the Second Amendment should be read: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state . . .” The founders knew that an ersatz, inconsistent, unregulated version of money would destroy a nation’s economy.

North Carolina scrip

There should be little surprise here: Currency aside, a quick search of American newspapers around the time of the Revolutionary War shows the wide popularity of the term “well regulated.” Far from being archival or fine print, the phrase was as ubiquitous in the federal period as it is lacking in the public discourse of our time. It was as emphasized in the American states of the eighteenth century as it is submerged today. To call something well regulated–commerce, currency, a militia–was praise, but it was more than merely praise; it was a much-used trope, a common-sense reminder, an exhortation that such-and-such was needed in order to bring us to that fundamental equilibrium, that bedrock stability and protection of being well regulated.

Signs of the times

Probably the praise was bestowed more often than it was deserved; a real estate advertisement in a couple of 1763 New York papers mentions a nearby “well regulated” tannery, and other real estate listings refer to farms and other property as well regulated. “A well regulated theatre” justified either the existence of playhouses or some types of control of same in newspapers from Charleston, S. C., to Boston, in the 1780’s and 1790’s. But it was over-bestowed because it was high praise. Thus one prominent preacher was eulogized as having a “well regulated zeal” for the Deity, among other virtues.

It would be oversimplification to read this as a convenient top-down invitation to knuckle under. For one thing, the emphasis was on voluntary virtue, not regulation by others; on social self-restraint as a recognition of an ancient and rational distinction of meum and tuum linking individuals in a just society, not setting one against everyone else.

For another thing, it was often used in pre-Revolutionary reminders to the English king. Thus we get pointed mentions of “a well regulated monarchy” in The Providence Gazette of Nov. 1, 1766; “a well regulated state” in the Aug. 24, 1767, Boston Gazette; and “well regulated laws” in the Oct. 30, 1767, Connecticut Journal. These are bottom-up, not top-down. The reminders do not tend to get less forceful as 1776 draws nearer. References to “a well regulated state” in Boston papers of January 1773 oppose the well regulated to tyrannous acts. The Connecticut Journal, again, of Feb. 4, 1774, opposes “a well regulated society” to favoritism (by the English government) that results in “impunity” for serious offenders. The New London, Conn., Gazette of March 31, 1775, opposes “a well regulated city” to martial law (and quartering of troops). The common denominator here is the distinction between tyranny and the well regulated. Being well regulated is not the hallmark of tyranny; quite the contrary.

As with ‘well regulated’ theaters, schools, cities, states, societies, currency, commerce, emotions, and even thermometers, militias were also frequently referred to as “well regulated” in the argot of the time.

Not that they started that way. The earliest mentions of ‘militia’ in American newspapers occurred in 1704, never in conjunction with ‘well regulated’ or any other kind of ‘regulated’. But then they were all foreign. The ten references to a militia in 1704–when apparently the word became fashionable in reporting–all pertain to armed forces deployed in service to the crowned heads of Europe. None are colonial forces in the New World. As those bruisers at the Oxford English Dictionary remind us, the very term militia in the modern sense was relatively new in the eighteenth century. Its modern meaning was codified in a dictionary, Phillips’s New World of Words, only in 1706:

“Militia, a certain Number of the Inhabitants of the City and Country formed into Regular Bodies, and train’d up in the Art of War, for the Defence and Security of the Kingdom.”

This sense of the term remained constant up through the time of Adam Smith, in his famous Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations in 1776:

“It [the state] may . . . oblige either all the citizens of the military age, or a certain number of them, to join in some measure the trade of a soldier to whatever other trade or profession they may happen to carry on… Its military force is [then] said to consist in a militia.” (II. v. i. 300, quoted in O.E.D.)

After the term militia came into vogue, the term well regulated militia got to be thick on the ground in American print. Only partly was it a defense and justification, to the English governors, for having local troops. It was more an accurate reflection of the way sensible, self-directed people in the American Colonies would have felt, from early on, about an unregulated assortment of pseudo-soldiers, the mentally ill or drunk, or self-promoting chiselers, armed to the teeth with military-style hardware.

More later

Bullying in Higher Education

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Margie Burns

Bullying in Higher Education

Workplace bullying can occur at any workplace, including a university. Any employee can be a target, including college and university faculty. If you are a target of workplace bullying, you may not even recognize the behaviors at first (see below). Furthermore, employees who are bullied are not often targeted because of some failure or fault. If you are criticized, misrepresented, threatened, undermined, excluded, or just passed over for recognition, you were as likely targeted for your pluses as for any minuses.

According to Bully Online, the web site of the former UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line, the top six reasons for being bullied are

being in the wrong place at the wrong time
being good at your job
being popular
unwittingly drawing attention to another person’s incompetence by being competent
blowing the whistle on malpractice, fraud, illegality, breaches of rules, regulations and procedures, or raising health or safety issues
having a high level of integrity and emotional maturity.

Worn down in the U.K.

From Tim Field, founder of a bullying hotline in the United Kingdom:

“These reasons are derived from over 10,000 cases from my UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line and cases reported through Bully OnLine. Jealousy and envy are motivators of bullying. Employees who are bullied have often unwittingly blown the whistle, usually on someone else’s shortcomings, failures, breaches of procedures, etc. After the bullying starts, the moment a bullied employee asserts their right not to be bullied, they are effectively blowing the whistle, and the bullying intensifies. Specious (plausibly deceptive) allegations, misrepresentation, fabrication and unwarranted use of disciplinary procedures follow, culminating in the inevitable unfair dismissal or ill-health retirement.”

TIME Magazine's whistleblowers of the year

Whistle-blowing, for obvious reasons, is right up there in the list of top factors. From Field again:

“You discover by accident that your boss is fiddling the books. You realise that customers are being mis-sold investment products. Your professional colleague is guilty of malpractice. You’re asked to endorse an activity which you know to be in breach of health and safety regulations. What do you do? Comply? Look the other way? Or do you report it?

In many cases, if you report what you’ve found, you’ll be bullied out of your job.”

Field points out that “The UK Public Interest Disclosure Act now offers some legal protection for concerned employees who blow the whistle. However, the consensus amongst those involved in whistleblowing cases over the last ten years is that the Act has too many get-out clauses to be effective.” A law with loopholes is better than no law, since it signals a shift in society’s attitudes–but the law was passed for a reason.

Fear and loathing on campus

Most people do not recognize bullying at first. Forget about over-aggressive dodgeball or being crammed into the gymnasium locker. In the white-collar world, including academia, bullying is less often one dramatic incident than “an accumulation of many small incidents, each of which, when taken in isolation and out of context, seems trivial.”

What is bullying? The following list of examples is condensed for convenience.

People who are bullied in the workplace find that they are

constantly criticized and subjected to destructive criticism. Explanations and proof of achievement are ridiculed, overruled, dismissed or ignored.
subject to frequent nit-picking and trivial fault-finding
undermined; false concerns are raised, or doubts are expressed over performance or standard of work, doubts expressed for control rather than for performance enhancement.
overruled, ignored, sidelined, marginalized
isolated and excluded from what’s happening
singled out and/or treated differently. Nit-picked for minor mistakes when major infractions (such as absenteeism, or alcohol impairment in the workplace) are permitted for selected others.
belittled, degraded, demeaned, ridiculed, patronized, subject to disparaging remarks
threatened, shouted at, and/or humiliated
set unrealistic goals and deadlines, either unachievable, changed without notice or reason, or changed when they near achievement
denied information or knowledge necessary for undertaking work and achieving objectives
starved of resources
denied support by their manager and thus find themselves working in a management vacuum
either overloaded with work or have their work taken away, sometimes replaced with jobs less appropriate to training and experience
subject to excessive monitoring, supervision, micro-management, recording, snooping, etc.
forced to work long hours, without remuneration and/or under threat of dismissal
receive negative or intimidating calls or memos, notes or emails, immediately prior to or during weekends and/or holidays
invited to ad hoc meetings that turn out to be disciplinary
facing unjustified disciplinary action on trivial or specious or false charges
coerced into reluctant resignation or early retirement

Since academia tends to like to keep things quiet–look at the statistics, if you can find them, on sexual assaults on campus, and student suicides–entrenched bullying can find a comfortable home there. The problem is exacerbated by factors such as budget constraints, which enable a bullying manager to contain or to get rid of employees in the guise of cost-cutting, and a large contingent workforce. Our colleges and university administrations also tend to keep expanding, while faculty shrinks in proportion to the whole, and an ongoing proliferation of faculty ranks divides the instructional workforce. Furthermore, our educational system is everybody’s favorite whipping boy in the first place, so frequent reorganizations are the name of the game. Reorganizations, in academia as in other workplaces, provide smokescreens for institutional bullies. Careerism, in short, is the bully’s best friend, as it is the rapist’s best friend.

Policy counts

Thus the person being bullied may not realize it for weeks or months, as our British cousins remind us, until the moment of enlightenment comes. Workplace bullying tends to fixate on trivial criticisms and false allegations of underperformance, with little overtly offensive language. It tends to take place in secret, behind closed doors, without witnesses or notes taken. (Be alert about department or program meetings at which no one takes minutes, of which there is no written record, which only some faculty are required to attend or at which only some faculty can vote.) It takes place at work and/or at social occasions related to work. In any case, the target is seen as a threat who must first be controlled and subjugated–and if that doesn’t work, eliminated–often for conduct that the target herself/himself would not have recognized as threatening, like trying to do a good job.

Not to belabor a point, but the results can be a bit discouraging. Some managers or supervisors may appear to invite suggestions but dismiss each idea not already incorporated into the program. They may register a suggestion as a complaint and a complaint as an offense, even while claiming to invite faculty input. They may betray trust and misuse authority behind the scenes. When employee morale deteriorates, this method of operation discourages innovation and creativity, even amid claims that faculty autonomy, independence and creativity are being supported.

What to do? Recognize that you are not alone. Academic bullying is regrettably widespread, but the silver lining is that you are not alone.

Regrettably, public policy in the U.S. has fallen behind that in the U.K., which has a national helpline that includes adults–workplace bullying–as well as children. In this country, most attention to bullying has focused on children and young people, and rightly so; most attention to bullying in the educational system has focused on students, again rightly so. There is, however, a Facebook page on bullying in higher education. The bulliedacademics blogspot has an email contact address.

High time. Some apparent cases of academic bullying have had dire outcomes.

More on the Romney campaign’s internal polling

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Margie Burns

Romney internal polling–myopia rather than rose-colored glasses

I don’t call these post-mortems, but in this election follow-up, The New Republic has disclosed some useful information. The gist is that Mitt Romney’s campaign thought it was likely to win because internal polling at the end said so. The Romney team’s own last-minute projections for six key states showed Romney possibly winning enough electoral votes for victory.

Romney and Ryan in Wisconsin

Here, from TNR:

“In an exclusive to The New Republic, a Romney aide has provided the campaign’s final internal polling numbers for six key states, along with additional breakdowns of the data, which the aide obtained from the campaign’s chief pollster, Neil Newhouse. Newhouse himself then discussed the numbers with TNR.”

The six states chosen for outtakes are Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Red states, blue states, purple states by senate representation

The first thing you notice about the Romney internal numbers is that they were nearly right where they focused on votes for Romney. In alphabetical order, here are the states lined up with the Romney campaign’s projections for Romney, and Romney’s actual results:

Colorado: Romney vote projected at 48%. Actual Romney vote 46.1%

Iowa: Projected Romney vote 46.5%. Actual Romney vote 46.2%

MN: Projected Romney vote 43.5%. Actual Romney vote 45%

NH: Projected Romney vote 48.5%. Actual Romney vote 46.4%

PA: Projected Romney vote 46%. Actual Romney vote 46.7%

WI: Projected Romney vote 45%. Actual Romney vote 46.1%

The late polls were nearly accurate. In five of the six states, the Romney campaign came within two percentage points of predicting Romney’s actual vote, and in New Hampshire the campaign miss Romney’s actual numbers by only 2.1 percent. In three of the states, the polls were off by less than one percent. One could expound on the Romney campaign’s obliviousness to a key fact about New Hampshire–namely its closeness to Massachusetts, home base or epicenter of Romney’s unpopularity. But the fact remains that most of the Romney team’s numbers were close to the mark. It will be interesting to see the campaign’s late polls for Florida, Ohio and Virginia, if they are ever released.

Voting in Florida

Furthermore, the Romney campaign actually underestimated the percentage of the vote that Romney went on to get in three of the states. Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin–percentages highlighted here in red–actually went for Romney in slightly bigger numbers than his own campaign projected in internal polls. This is not wild miscalculation.

Where the Romney team did miscalculate wildly was the Obama vote. This is key: In a presidential election there is more than one candidate running, and dismissing the other major-party candidate the way you would dismiss Virgil Goode is not viable assessment.*

Here are the six states with the run-down on the Obama vote, as calculated by the Romney campaign, and President Obama’s actual outcome:

Colorado: Obama vote projected at 45.5%. Actual Obama vote 51.5%

Iowa: Projected Obama vote 46.5%. Actual Obama vote 52%

MN: Projected Obama vote 47.5%. Actual Obama vote 52.6%

NH: Projected Obama vote 45%. Actual Obama vote 52%

PA: Projected Obama vote 49%. Actual Obama vote 52.1%

WI: Projected Obama vote 49%. Actual Obama vote 52.8%

Again, the underestimates–i.e. all six states–are highlighted in red.

Now the most obvious comment is that Romney’s tacticians made the fundamental mistake of underestimating their opposition, the error warned against by strategists for millennia. However much you wish to despise the person/king/opposition, allowing your assessment to be distorted by your emotions is an elementary error. Machiavelli, whose critics gave Machiavellianism a bad name, would have recognized it. That Machiavelli himself died a despised and forlorn exile is beside the point.

Back to 2012–in regard to the Romney calculations, even hard-nosed numbers crunchers could not see that their numbers re Obama were way off. It did not even strike them as unrealistic that a popular incumbent president was polling, according to their picture, at 47.5 percent in Minnesota and at 46.5 percent in Iowa?

There are several factors at work here.

One is ‘demographics’, which as we know did not play well for the GOP in the 2012 elections. Nor should it have. It stands to reason that the people making those well-exposed public comments about immigrants–often basically running against immigration–would be no better at evaluating what they were doing behind the scenes. The same personnel are now scrambling to find new shades of lipstick for the hog, mostly by promoting a few Latino politicians and a few fauxish immigration reforms. Back during the campaign, they kept well away from the people they were characterizing rather than wooing.

Another is the millennial generation. It’s not just that cell-phone users tend to be under-polled; it’s that old measures do not always work. WARNING: OVER-GENERALIZATION AHEAD: Aside from Occupy Wall Street, millennials do not tend to be demonstrative. Demonstration with them tends to be a last resort, not a first. They are not vehement at first hue, they do not ask for things stridently. On the plus side, they tend to respect human dignity, they tend to appreciate courtesy, and they tend to let other people have a say. One can imagine how Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich would have fared with this cohort.

That leaves the third factor, not explored by TNR, of race. Romney strategists and even Romney pollsters operated in a partial blindness that left them unable to imagine other people voting differently from the way they themselves would vote, and the different race of the president made that back-of-the-eyelids view more plausible. Calling this ‘racism’ does not explain anything. It is a simple facet of the human brain to find difference, or newness, harder to understand than the familiar. Change is so hard to adapt to that even positive change–a promotion, winning the lottery–is stressful.**

For Republican campaigners and campaign operatives, the natural myopia was compounded by their other characteristics, or the related characteristics of their side–a continuing antipathy to genuine information, an unwillingness to see anything positive on the other side, and a corresponding willingness to shout down any unwelcome perception on their own side. These are useful attributes for the politicians who are hired guns for privilege rather than independent thinkers, just as they are useful for the media personalities like them–Limbaugh and Krauthammer et al. These are the qualities that strengthen a Gingrich or a Bachmann to run a campaign as shameful as the policies espoused by the candidate. But for running a national campaign, where winning depends on knowing something outside your own sphere of influence–not so much.

They were hoist by their own petard.

*In the interest of full disclosure: according to genealogy research mostly via ancestry.com, Mr. Goode and I may be distantly related.

**[Update Dec. 4: Overt racism was cultivated by the campaign, as we know. Sometimes the overt racism is attributed to blue-collar voters; this is false sociology. Persons with wealth, status and at least nominal education can and do participate in racist acts and speech.]

Grover Norquist Lost

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Margie Burns

Obama won, Grover Norquist lost

2012 election results are in, and Obama won. President Obama should also win Florida. That means an electoral college tally of 332-206.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent at least $28 million against Democrats, lost.

Represented by Chamber of Commerce

American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which spent $1 billion against the president and against Democrats, lost.

Karl Rove lost. Grover Norquist lost. Donald Trump lost. Rudy Giuliani lost. Rush Limbaugh lost. Charles Krauthammer lost. George Will lost. Bill O’Reilly lost.

(Here from YouTube is Rove, on air, trying to dispute the outcome in Ohio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQLV7nqD3CA)

The grotesques lost.

‘Winners’ and ‘losers’ are worse than useless as words. The winners-and-losers language cannot be trusted, anyway, as to validity. The commentators most eager to identify winners and losers self-identify as less eager to nail accuracy; a vulgar mindset characterizes notable non-wizards. I do not want to sound as though I were auditioning to become one of the sillies.

But clearly on election day 2012 some won, some lost.

The president

Won:

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden won re-election, and rightly so. They won the popular vote as well as the electoral college. For the first time since 1936, they won re-election with over 50 percent of the popular vote.

FDR

Several deserving Democratic senators won hard-fought re-election in an avalanche of negative advertising, including Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Bill Nelson in Florida, and Jon Tester in Montana.

Massachusetts Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts, Claire McCaskill won in Missouri, Tammy Baldwin won in Wisconsin, Heidi Heitkamp won in North Dakota, Mazie Hirono won in Hawaii. There are now twenty women in the United States Senate–a record. The senate is better off with such women Democrats.

Alan Grayson won as U.S. Rep in Florida, rightly so.

Tammy Duckworth won for the House in Illinois, in the process defeating the disgraceful Joe Walsh. The swing from awful to good is even bigger than the outcome.

Lost:

Lackluster corporate ally Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the author of the Ryan so-called budget, lost. (Rep. Ryan won re-election to the House.)

Rep. Allen West lost decisively in Florida. Way past due, but better late than never.

GOP Senate candidate George Allen lost in Virginia.

Rep. Joe Walsh lost in Illinois.

Big money lost.

The Koch brothers, who spent tens of millions on the election, lost.

Sheldon Adelson, who donated tens of millions first to Newt Gingrich and then to Mitt Romney, lost.

The Chamber of Commerce losses and the losses of Rove’s groups, the losses incurred by all the super-PACs massed on the pro-corporate, pro-tax haven, anti-union side of the aisle, are the biggest money losses. But it is worth mention again that wealthy self-funding candidates also lost. Linda McMahon lost in Connecticut; Steven Welch lost to incumbent Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania; most others lost in primaries. The national political press could have seen an augury for fall 2012 in the losses of so many self-funders.

Along with the billionaires and millionaires, corporate executives who stepped off the sidelines to bully the political process through their workplaces lost.

Speaking of losses, the long string of candidates who lost the race for the GOP nomination lost again. They did not help Republicans look better in the general election. Remember the parade–the string of fallen candidates from the GOP campaign trail—Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann. None can claim—although that won’t keep them from trying—that the election outcome enhances his individual credibility, or that they enhanced the party’s credibility.

Republicans lost. They lost the presidential race; they lost seats in the senate; they lost seats in the house; and they lost seats in the state legislatures. Only in governorships did the GOP eke out an advantage, and even there, with more to defend, Democrats kept or took five governorships including the hard-fought governorship of West Virginia.

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lost.

House Republicans lost. They lost their two ugliest members, they lost some of their ‘base’, and once and for all the scorn of establishment Republicans for the anti-abortionists was clarified for all to see.

Won:

Democrats won. Not all state tallies are complete, but enough returns are in to clarify a nationwide pattern.

Democrats gained two seats in the senate, giving them the edge 53-45. Of two independents–Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Maine’s Angus King–at least one will caucus with the Democrats. Given the quality of the new Democrats elected, that means the Democrats are stronger now than with the nominal ‘filibuster-proof’ sixty they had in 2009, relying on Joe Lieberman.

Democrats gained at least six seats in the house. In a notable upset, physician Raul Ruiz defeated GOP Rep. Mary Bono Mack in California. (Bono Mack’s husband, Connie Mack, also lost his senate race in Florida.) Dem Pete Gallego beat Quico Consego in south Texas. Lois Frankel beat Adam Hasner in South Florida. If Scott Peters has beaten Rep. Brian Bilbray in California, the gain is at least seven for Dems.

In the states, Dems gained the New Hampshire Executive Council. Democrats flipped at least eight state chambers from Repub to Dem in 2012, including chambers in Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Oregon, losing only two. Early estimates are that Democrats picked up 200 seats in state legislatures, partly making up for the large losses of 2010. Local races parallel the federal and state patterns.

Lost:

Media grotesques lost.

Charles Krauthammer and Rush Limbaugh lost, as mentioned. George Will and Bill O’Reilly lost. Sarah Palin lost. Sean Hannity lost. Dick Morris lost.

The rightwing noise machine lost.

Fox News lost.

Rupert Murdoch lost.

The Wall Street Journal lost. The Chicago Tribune lost.

A host of auxiliary right-wing pundits installed by the newspaper I subscribe to, the Washington Post, lost. David Gergen lost. For that matter, most pundits lost. Dan Balz lost. The WashPost‘s layout editors–whoever composed the unfavorable headlines and picked the disfiguring photos of Obama–lost. George Stephanopoulos’ Round Table on ABC’s This Week lost. Face the Nation lost. Meet the Press lost. Chris Matthews lost.

Many or most of the pollsters–except for Nate Silver–lost.

The middle class won. Some degree of tolerance won. Health care won. Social Security won. American labor won. Reproductive rights won. The U.S. automobile industry won. Collective bargaining won. College students won. Mortgage holders won. Banking customers won.

Unfortunately, Paul Ryan won re-election to the House. So did Michele Bachmann. We can’t have everything. Bachmann’s race was tight, though. In theory that should end any discussion of Bachmann as some kind of powerhouse. Still, politically progressives won. Racism lost. Anti-immigrant campaigning lost decisively.

I am not gloating. This is a celebration of improvement, of steps toward a cleaner and healthier body politic. People like Joe Walsh and Allen West never did have any place in public office and should never have gotten a federal office in the first place. Anyone who held the opinion that the election was Mitt Romney’s to win was never qualified to be a political reporter in the first place. Any writer who thought ‘the economy’ an issue that would work in Romney’s favor is unqualified to appear in print. Corporate managers who spent more time throwing their weight around than they did improving their companies never should have been managers in the first place. Corporate management should never have been so pinned to stock price in an imaginary paper market as to neglect product, service and labor in the first place.

Political reporting, like every other kind of reporting, is supposed to shoot for accuracy. So read it here, all you buckaroos and buckaresses who spent a year and a half predicting a ‘close election’ and a ‘late election night’:

The presidential race was not close.
The battleground states were not razor-thin.
Democrats won. It was not fifty-fifty. It was not split-the-difference.
Republicans lost. The party has also lost name affiliation among registered voters.
Progressives won. Where Democrats lost, it was either a Blue Dog, a Republican-leaning district, or a hard race, sometimes close, where a challenger took on an entrenched incumbent. As mentioned, Alan Grayson won.
The right wing lost. As mentioned, Joe Walsh and Allen West lost. So did Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, although their brand of conservatism differs from the ugliness of Walsh and West.

more later

Mitt Romney and taxes, the last word

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Margie Burns

The last word on special tax deductions for filers like Mitt Romney

[Update Mon. Nov. 5

Actually the last word on Romney’s taxes may be this Dutch article of today. The Volksrant reports that Romney lessened his tax pay-up by almost a hundred million Euros, by using tax mechanisms routed through the Netherlands as written earlier.]

The last pre-election word on Mitt Romney’s own tax arrangements may be this article published by Bloomberg Oct. 29. Overshadowed by Hurricane Sandy, the report–“Romney Avoids Taxes via Loophole Cutting Mormon Donations”–once and for all clarifies how Romney could, indeed, get away with paying no income tax for years on end.

In pertinent part,

“The charitable remainder unitrust, as it is known, is one of several strategies Romney has adopted over his career to reduce his tax bill . . .

In this instance, Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity — the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing — to defer taxes for more than 15 years.”

“In general, charities don’t owe capital gains taxes when they sell assets for a profit. Trusts like Romney’s permit funders to benefit from that tax-free treatment . . .”

“When individuals fund a charitable remainder unitrust, or “CRUT,” they defer capital gains taxes on any profit from the sale of the assets, and receive a small upfront charitable deduction and a stream of yearly cash payments. Like an individual retirement account, the trust allows money to grow tax deferred, while like an annuity it also pays Romney a steady income.”

“CRUTs were more common in the 1990s when capital gains rates were higher. In 1996, when Romney set up his trust in Massachusetts, the federal rate was 28 percent, compared with 15 percent today. At the time, a Massachusetts state resident who sold shares for a gain of $1 million could have faced a combined state and federal capital gains tax of as much as 40 percent, reducing his take to $600,000.

By contrast, if he contributed the stock to a CRUT, and it sold the shares, it typically wouldn’t owe any tax since it is a charitable trust. The CRUT could reinvest the $1 million and earn a return on the full amount.

“The power of this is the tax deferral,” said Jay A. Friedman, a partner at accounting firm Perelson Weiner LLP in New York. “The money is all growing tax free and he only pays tax on what is distributed to him.”

Concerned that CRUTS weren’t sufficiently philanthropic, Congress mandated in July 1997 that the present value of what was projected to be left for charity must equal at least 10 percent of the initial contribution. Existing CRUTS weren’t affected by the new law.”

As mentioned, Romney set up his trust in 1996. Looks as though his financial advisors were keeping an eye on upcoming developments in Congress.

Speaking of those–

Romney’s own tax returns are only one side of the Romney tax story in election 2012. The other side of the Romney tax story is, as ever, the question of what action a Romney-Ryan administration would take on tax policy. On that side of the story, there has been no last word.

We do know that Romney’s silence, and his past actions, have left an awful lot on the table, ‘on the table’ meaning to be carved up by the same harpies who brought us the Iraq war. Much harm can be done to the big middle of the working class in America under the guise of budget-cutting–just as many windfalls accrue to the undeserving few under the guise of promoting growth. ‘Austerity’ and ‘growth’ are two sides of the same bogus coin. A national economy should meet our needs as a nation, not shoot for some target abstraction or imitate the endless game of ever-boosting stock prices as an index of ‘performance’. The Greek root for economy is oikos, the household.

The candidate

If the Romney candidacy stands for anything, it stands for exactly the opposite of meeting our needs. It stands for–if anything–boosting torque in a series of boom-and-bust markets, supporting a temporary marketplace rather than supporting the national economy. Right now, we have only inconsistent or evasive statements from Romney on some of the most important middle-class tax breaks–including the mortgage interest deduction on first homes, and the capital-gains exclusion on first home sales–or no statement at all.

Capital gains exclusion for home sale

On the other hand, it’s interesting how much we do know about Romney.

We knew back in August that Romney is cheerfully cognizant of tax loopholes for big business. In August, he said with absentminded candor that “big businesses are doing fine” because they can always use loopholes.

Romney hitting the marks

We learned in September, when Romney released a couple of partial returns, that in 2011 his own trust received more from the federal government than it paid. Thus we know–again–that Romney is not all that worried about ‘takers’, when they’re people like him. Again we know that Romney is less than worried about the national debt, since he as another purchaser of U.S. Treasury notes was willing to add to it. Here for convenience again are the documents:

The 2011 tax return:

total adjusted gross income: $13,696,951.

biggest income source: capital gain: $6,810,176.

next: dividends: $3,649,567.

next: interest: $3,012,775.

The 2011 W. Mitt Romney Blind Trust return:

top line: U.S. Government Interest: $652,018.

U.S. Government Interest reported as Dividends: $12,027.

thus a total of $664,045 from our govt.

The 2011 Family Trust return:

top line usgov interest: $662,115.

usgov interest reported as dividends: $90,461.

total $752,576.

The 2011 Ann D. Romney Blind Trust return:

top line usgov interest: $362,701.

usgov interest reported as dividends: $156,157.

total $518,858.

As written before, the Romneys’ federal interest income comes to one-seventh, or 14 percent, of the adjusted gross income declared on Romney’s IRS return for 2011. Romney’s income tax burden was almost exactly offset by interest income the Romney trusts received from the U.S. Treasury.

Looking at the same thing another way, without the federal interest income, his adjusted gross comes down to $11,239,472–and that’s just the interest on those U.S. government products. The face value of the Treasury bonds, notes or bills does not have to be reported, nor the purchase date or the type of Treasury product.

We knew in 2011 that Romney was less than forthcoming on the heated fiscal debate in Congress. Candidate Romney stayed out of the debt-ceiling fight. He stayed out of the disputes between House leadership and mad-dog Tea Party representatives over the federal budget. He stayed out of disputes between the House and the Senate. Remarkably, he even stayed out of most disputes between Democrats and Republicans. He was inconsistent on Paul Ryan’s budget, and statements between the nominee and his pick for vice president have yet to be fully aligned. That is, the two Republican candidates have not bothered to align their differing positions, even for public consumption.

By 2012 we did have Romney’s explicit statement that he would not release his tax returns if he were nominated. Romney stuck to this (one) position even under serious pressure from his own side.

As to the Romney track record on fiscal management, its main component is Bain Capital. We have long known that Bain Capital benefited from taking over debt-ridden companies. We knew that Bain profited from big employee layoffs, from the bankruptcies of other companies, and from off-shoring. We have long known that Romney himself is aware of the political liabilities in his track record, as his varying accounts of his relationship with Bain Capital indicate. He had fielded questions about Bain before running for the White House. He has been only somewhat less evasive about Bain than about his own taxes, and only somewhat less evasive about his own taxes than about his preferences on future tax policy.

Regardless of any differences on detail, as we know, by the end of March Rep. Ryan endorsed Romney. Ryan could read the map on demographics. There was no possibility of a Santorum win.

There was a little more mystery in Romney’s choice of running mate. Maybe not all that much, though. We saw Romney come out with the Ryan announcement after being blitzed over a few days by the Wall Street Journal, National Review writer Rich Lowry, and the Weekly Standard, all urging him to pick Ryan.

So much for tacking to the middle.

So much for winning, as far as that goes. In choosing Paul Ryan, Romney did not play to the electorate. He played to some rightist media personalities and to officeholders who are future lobbyists.

To sum up: The foregoing does not add up to a candidate with a vision of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Romney arithmetic and Staples

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Margie Burns

Romney arithmetic and Staples

Divorce folklore abounds with stories about men trying to offshore assets, so to speak; dark hints about bank accounts concealed or moved abroad, about the plaintiff’s attorney being bought off by job offers or other means, about property liquidated for pennies on the dollar. Most such lore seems more suited for entertainment media–Dick Wolf’s Law & Order–than for hard reporting. Goldie Hawn’s character in the movie The First Wives Club had a little fun with just such a dirty trick, gender-bent.

It looks like less fun in real life. Now we get the real deal, from family guy Mitt Romney of all people. Testifying in a divorce hearing on behalf of a crony who had left his wife, Romney presented the court with an estimated value of a share of stock in Staples at the time–$1.75.

Plugging for Staples versus plugging up divorce concessions

Bain Capital had bought Staples stock at $0.86 per share. At the time of the testimony, a recent sales figure had been $2.90 per share. (Romney testified privately that the stock was actually worth less than it was selling for.) Months later, Staples went public with a price of $19.00 per share. The IPO closed on the first day of trading at $22.50 per share. The ex-wife had received $2.50 per share.

Bain Capital got out with a $13 million profit. The Staples executive got out of his marriage, shortly before the company went public, assessed a tenth of the pay-off there would have been after the IPO.

Today’s Washington Post, btw, omits some of these facts.

Some quick highlights from coverage so far:

A judge has okayed the release of the transcripts.

Romney acknowledges the ex-wife’s stock category as a “favor” to Tom Stemberg, the divorcing exec.

The Republican Chicago Tribune whitewashes the whole thing.

A fuller though softened report comes from the WP.

Romney was on the board at Staples by virtue of his position at Bain Capital.

[update]

A few more early reports:

From Business Week:

“Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as a board member of Staples Inc., voted to set a low price on the stock and create a new class of shares as a “favor” to its co-founder who was involved in a divorce.”

From truthdive.com:

“Sources have said that Romney provided testimony in the bitter divorce of his friend and staunch advocate, ex-Staples CEO Tom Stemberg, that meant his ex-wife received a poor divorce settlement, the report said.

He testified during the hearings in 1991 that the company’s stock was ‘overvalued’ and that the future did not look good, it added.”

From the Lawyer-Herald:

“Tom Stemberg, founder of Staples, has endorsed Romney on various occasions on his presidency campaign. Hence, his testimony in the Stemberg case is necessary to be exposed to the people, argued the Boston Globe and the judge agreed. ”

“Romney’s business Bain Capital played a crucial role in setting up the huge office-supply retail Staples in 1996.”