Author Archives: Margie Burns

More good news on the financial horizon; also, GOP proposes privatizing Social Security

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Some more good news on the financial horizon
  –Following yesterday’s post. With Republicans and tea partiers becoming ever more aggressively irrational–radio hostess with the leastest Heidi Harris said yesterday on the Ed Schultz Show “I don’t know,” when Ed asked her whether President Obama was born in the United States–it is essential that the public be reminded when rational moves are made in the realm of finance. One positive move previously mentioned–New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has filed a lawsuit against Bank of America and its former head.

Another example–

Now that the GOP has come out more-or-less overtly with a proposition to privatize Social Security, Democrats in Congress are going to compel a vote on it. The privatizing proposal, which is already drawing some reportage, will be foregrounded by the Democrats’ move, which also will force congressional Republicans to vote up or down on an unsavory proposal from one of their own.



Congressmembers John Larson (D-Conn.) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) introduced the resolution for the vote.

From the resolution:

“Social Security has provided the foundation for Americans

NY AG Cuomo sues Bank of America, Shelby tries to hold up ALL Obama nominations

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NY AG Cuomo sues Bank of America, Shelby tries to hold up ALL Obama nominations
  –There are bright spots on the financial horizon, aside from the somewhat less dismal unemployment figures released today. This week in the news: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a civil complaint against Bank of America and its former chief executive. The AARP, numbering several million members, is among those calling for a consumer protection agency at the federal level.

From the CEO’s publicly released statement:

“While economic statistics point towards a rebound, Americans still
need relief. We are encouraged by the President

Fotosearch probable source for Landrieu office caper

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Not ready for their close-up: Fotosearch probable source for Landrieu office caper costumes?
  (–Why didn’t they just go dressed as Saints fans? They would have had no trouble getting entree . . .)

Image:  Fotosearch # x17592140

Caption:  Telephone repairman using telephone, close-up

Type:  Stock photography

Description:  Guy on handset, blue work shirt over white shirt or stock, white hard hat, work gloves


Google the image and see it.


btw Did the two young men posing as telephone repairman–Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel–have work gloves? Nothing in the FBI affidavit about that.



Okay, Mr. Basel, Mr. Flanagan, Mr. O’Keefe: one more time

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Okay, Mr. Basel, Mr. Flanagan, Mr. O’Keefe, Mr. Dai: One more time, from the top . . .

 

O'Keefe

From the Lafourche Parish, La., Daily Comet, Jan. 28:

“Last month, protesters marched in front of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office to criticize her support for health care legislation and complain that they couldn’t get through on her office phones. Now Landrieu’s phones are at the center of federal charges against four men accused of trying to tamper with them. Among those arrested was conservative activist James O’Keefe, who gained notoriety last year with hidden-camera videos showing him dressed as a pimp . . .”

Setting aside once and for all that unconvincing ‘pimp’ get-up—a Halloween-costume, joke ‘pimp’ outfit rather than gear for body-guarding streetwalkers—the question now before us is what these four post-frats were going to do in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans building on Jan. 25.

James O’Keefe says in his self-exonerating Friday statement that

“I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office–the people’s office–to ask the staff if their phones were working.”

Okay, that’s clear enough. 1) Sen. Landrieu told the Baton Rouge Advocate in an interview that her phone lines had been “jammed” for weeks. 2) The four interlopers took the senator to mean not that her lines were jammed with people trying to get through—which would be the typical statement–but that Landrieu was saying there was something technologically wrong with her phone system. 3) So, they decided to show up at her office to– ?

It gets unclear. Aside from some little problems with 1) and 2) aforementioned (see below), according to O’Keefe’s statement,

“The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator. We video taped the entire visit, the government has those tapes, and I’m eager for them to be released because they refute the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media.”

Reduced to plain English, the narrative is that the four guys believed or affected to believe that Sen. Landrieu was making excuses; they took her to be saying that her phones did not work; therefore they went to her office in person to show via videotape that her phones did work or otherwise to show that she was simply avoiding constituents’ calls.

First question: Okay, so why didn’t they do that? Why didn’t they just go visit her office, like any other constituent, and stand around videotaping—inconspicuously or otherwise, as with cell phones—while her phones rang?

Second question, a corollary to the first: Why did they need phone-company costumes to determine whether the senator was trying to avoid constituents? After all, O’Keefe himself was apparently not in costume.

WAIT A MINUTE, I hear you ask: WHAT COSTUMES?

—from the FBI affidavit:

“4) On or about January 25, 2010, at approximately 11:00 a.m., FLANAGAN and BASEL entered the Hale Boggs Federal Building, each dressed in blue denim pants, a blue work shirt, a light fluorescent green vest, a tool belt, and carrying white, construction-style hard hat . . .

5) WITNESS 1 stated that upon entering Senator Landrieu’s office, FLANAGAN and BASEL represented to her that they were repair technicians from the telephone company and were there to fix problems with the telephone system. WITNESS 1 stated that they were each wearing a white, hard construction hat, a tool belt, a fluorescent vest, and denim pants and tops.”

[Side note: Not gentlemen. Gents take off their hats inside a building, not outside.]

This is another version of the first question: If their purpose was only to embarrass Sen. Landrieu by videotaping interactions to show that she was avoiding her constituents’ calls, why would they claim that her phones were not working? Wouldn’t it make more sense to show that her phones were working? The affidavit says they even videotaped themselves making the inapposite claim:

“WITNESS 1 further stated that when FLANAGAN and BASEL entered the office, O’KEEFE positioned his cellular phone in his hand so as to record FLANAGAN and BASEL. . .

6) BASEL requested to be given access to a telephone in the office, and WITNESS 1 allowed him access to the main telephone at the reception desk. WITNESS 1 observed BASEL take the handset of the phone and manipulate it. BASEL also tried to call the phone with a cellular phone in his possession. He stated that he could not get through.”

All this while the cameras were rolling, figuratively speaking. What were the alleged perps going to do, under O’Keefe’s explanation—go back to their loyalists saying, Hey, she’s right, her phones don’t work?

Sen. Landrieu

Second set of questions: If the alleged perpetrators were there only to embarrass the senator by videotaping in her office, why did they then try to gain access to the main telephone closet? From the FBI affidavit:

“7) Thereafter, FLANAGAN and BASEL told WITNESS 1 that they needed to perform repair work on the main telephone system and asked for the location of the telephone closet. WITNESS 1 directed FLANAGAN and BASEL to the main GSA office, located on the tenth floor of the Hale Boggs Federal Building. Both men went to the GSA office.”

Why did they then (allegedly) try to get inside the telephone closet? –The affidavit:

“8) FLANAGAN and BASEL spoke with WITNESS 2, a GSA employee working the GSA office, and represented that they were employees of the telephone company and needed access to the telephone closet to perform repair work. WITNESS 2 asked the men for credentials, and FLANAGAN and BASEL stated that they had left their credentials in their vehicle.”

 Hooray for the GSA: The two did not get inside the telephone closet, and the rest is history.

–With some gaps left to fill in:

  • Purely on the factual side of the matter, it would be good to know how they got those work uniforms and hard hats. Were they purchased? If so, where and when, and by whom?
  • Who paid for them?
  • Side note: Did they get that idea of the telephone-repairman disguise from Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, or from Burn Notice? Or did they get the idea from an earlier Nixon-Segretti or Lee Atwater-Karl Rove episode in the ongoing series, U.S. political dirty tricks?
  • Who got the idea for those disguises?
  • If the defense was that this was basically a prank, will we hear the defense claim that the disguises weren’t real work clothes, just male-stripper telephone-repairman costumes or the like?
  • Re the legal aspects, it would be good to know whether O’Keefe consulted with the others before issuing his statement, given that the statement provides cover for him rather than for the guys who went, disguised, to the GSA office.
  • Related question: Are those hapless work-costume guys represented by the same attorney/s representing O’Keefe? Wouldn’t be my call, if I were their parents . . .
  • Also related: What was the role of the fourth guy, the one in the car? Doesn’t leaving one guy in a car look like arranging a get-away driver? Was the fourth, Mr. Dai, seated behind the wheel? Whose car was it?
  • Another factual detail: Did Sen. Landrieu’s phones ring, any time while the alleged interlopers were in her office?
  • As to that office: Landrieu has five offices, counting the one in DC. Did the guys enter any of the other offices? If so, when? If not, why not? –What would be the point in videotaping phones and staffers in one office, showing that the phones in one of Landrieu’s offices either did work or did not work, if that left all the other offices—Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Capitol Hill—unaccounted for? How could videotaping in one office be comprehensive? How could it accomplish as much as, say, cutting the lines or otherwise disrupting the phone service in one office?

 

Nope and Noper: House Repubs, Senate Repubs

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Nope and Noper: House Repubs, Senate Repubs
 —Haley Barbour: Dems “trying to ram health care down our throats”

Not much heat or light from the Sunday talk shows today, with prominent Republicans understandably subdued after the president’s very persuasive appearance at the GOP retreat in Baltimore Friday. Video links of Obama’s speech and Q&A with GOP House members are posted here among other places. The exchanges went heavily in Obama’s favor.

It’s a good thing the Internet makes some of the Obama-GOP Q&A available, often via YouTube, because very little of the true flavor of the event came through reporting or commentary on this morning’s talk programs. No surprise there. When I clicked on the TV, I had two questions for myself (“Self . . .“). One was whether any of the prominent journalists who monopolize the Sunday morning airwaves would do justice to the president’s command of issues in that conference of House Republicans. The other was whether the bizarre incident when far-right favorite James O’Keefe entered one of La. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s offices with some of his post-frat brethren, costumed as telephone repairmen, would be mentioned. Predictably, the answer to both questions is no.

One of the biggest weapons in the corporate media arsenal against participatory democracy is simply to flatten. We are seeing it now. The words “bipartisan” and “bipartisanship” are all over the place in big media outlets–and btw I do not recall seeing that emphasis in the media during the Bush years. The effect of calling for “bipartisanship” without context, of course, is to conceal any qualitative difference between policies on one side and policies on the other.

Calling for ‘bipartisanship’ without context in political commentary is also false political reporting. There was never any hope for Republican bipartisanship with Obama, and to pretend otherwise is journalistic fraud. An easy example is the proposal to set up a federal commission on the budget deficit. Previously, Republicans called for such a commission, co-sponsored legislation to bring it about, and vilified the White House and congressional Democrats for not setting one up. Now that President Obama urges a deficit commission, Republicans are opposing it–even Repubs who were previously co-sponsors. This is simply Lucy and the football. There is no hope for genuinely bipartisan action with people like Mitch McConnell or John Boehner. To pretend that there is, that somehow the president simply hurt GOP feelings so much, that they had held their little tiny pink hands out to shake and he just ran over them with his bike, when they were doing all they could to rein in insurance company abuses, to extend unemployment benefits, to impose transparency and fairness on the banks and the financial sector, etc., is fraudulent.

The word “bipartisanship,” in this kind of journalistic flattening meant to imply that both major parties are equally at fault, that the picture is somehow ‘fifty-fifty’–‘a plague on both their houses’ is another favorite flattening metaphor–simply hammers the administration and the Dems, any time they move in the public interest.

The word “jobs” is being used the same way. Like a nonexistent ‘bipartisanship,’ seizing on ‘jobs’ to create an illusory hope or demand that the White House magically create them is simply a weapon to use against the Democrats and against Obama. Haley Barbour’s appearance today on Face the Nation was a perfect example. Barbour’s GOP talking point is that the White House concentrated on health care instead of concentrating on “jobs.” Barbour put it unfortunately, claiming in a Freudian slip that the White House was “trying to ram health care down our throats.”



A couple of obvious points here: One, a lot of people, in fact the overwhelming majority, would prefer to get “health care” when needed. Two, the GOP does not exactly have a track record of supporting jobs programs. Since at least the Great Depression, Republicans have responded to jobs programs by screaming either ‘Communism’ or ‘higher taxes,’ and they’re doing the same thing today.

Btw Barbour did not mention the word “insurance,” as in the phrase “health insurance reforms.” And that’s in spite of the fact that Barbour should know something about insurance abuses, having lost a house in Hurricane Katrina.

Barbour and the rest of the top-dollar GOP, of course, are sticking to the talking point that the way to create ‘jobs’ is ‘cutting taxes.’ For them, also of course, that means cutting taxes for the rich. If they were halfway sincere about budget deficits, they would favor raising taxes on the rich, and on corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas, but that’s a different branch of the topic.

That one, Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm handled well. Also on Face the Nation, Granholm may have fallen into the ‘jobs’ trap, but at least she salvaged something by opposing ‘jobs’ to ‘the deficit.’ Granholm pointed out accurately that most ‘angry’ voters are much more concerned about unemployment than about the budget deficit.



Any halfway smart Democrat ought to learn from the vocabulary not being used by the GOP. What are they not talking about–McConnell, Boehner, Barbour, McCain and the rest? –They are not talking about insurance abuses. They are not talking about the cost of the Iraq war in regard to budget deficits. They are not talking about contractor rip-offs. They are not mentioning, publicly, that their presidential candidate supported the Wall Street bailout.

In spite of occasional nods to ‘infrastructure,’ they are not mentioning rape crisis centers being
cut, or libraries being closed, let alone teachers and police losing jobs. They are certainly not mentioning thousands of police, firefighters, teachers and others able to stay on the job via state funding through the stimulus program. They also have little to say about foreclosures, or about long hospital stays that drive people bankrupt–they tend not to mention bankruptcies much, either–or about domestic violence. It looks as though they are even going to oppose Obama’s excellent plan to fund student loans directly without having the taxpayers subsidize middleman private lenders imposing loan-shark interest rates. They didn’t mention that one, either.

These omissions map perfectly on to the omissions by large media outlets.

By the same token, predictably there was no mention today about James O’Keefe and his team–the young guys who, if you recall, almost gained access to the telephone-wiring closet in one of Landrieu’s offices under false pretenses (they were turned away by a suspicious employee at the last minute) and are now claiming that they were only there to videotape.



Stan Dai

More on that tomorrow. Suffice it to say for now that some media outlets would be almost as embarrassed as the GOP, by reminders of past Nixonian and Rovian collegiate-style dirty tricks in politics. The pattern would be familiar to any citizen with some civic literacy, but civic literacy is not a desideratum in all political circles, or in all media circles.

On a brighter note–CNN continues its excellent coverage of the disaster in Haiti. Things may be looking up, with tons of food on the way to the suffering people there.














Good State of the Union address; self-serving ‘analysis’ the morning after

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Good State of the Union address; self-serving ‘analysis’ the morning after


Two days after the Massachusetts special election for the senate was safely
over, Goldman Sachs announced its fourth quarter 2009 earnings and projected
bonuses. The huge bank, a top recipient of Bush

News coverage in Haiti

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Keith Olbermann on Countdown is giving a commendably succinct but eloquent description, with interviews, of what is happening in the quake region in Haiti right now.

This BBC overview fills in; near-continuous coverage on CNN and MSNBC help clarify the picture. The bright side is the global and U.S. outpouring of support. The dark side is the logistical snarl that prevents aid from reaching the people most in need of it.

Another sour note, not yet confirmed: While generous contributions are pouring in to singer Wyclef Jean’s charity, The Smoking Gun website is posting a warning of sorts. Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation has been the recipient of quite a large amount of money in the quake crisis but has been less than regular about filing IRS returns. The irregularities according to TSG also suggest some self-dealing. Jean himself has been–commendably–on site in Haiti, helping to recover bodies for disposal.

A useful resource for donors, CharityNavigator.org, evaluates charitable organizations on several criteria; one of the highest rated Haitian orgs is the Haiti Health Foundation.

Haiti needs primitive transportation

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In Haiti, collapsed roads threaten to keep desperately needed supplies–water, food, medicine–from the people who need them. The airspace at the airport is currently saturated, all flights barred until 8:00 EST tonight. And when supplies get to airport or piers, how to get them to where they are needed is a quandary.

There is no easy answer, even with the US medical carrier under way. Roads full of gaps, chasms and enormous potholes are presumably not going to be navigable by heavy-duty vehicles, however rugged. This is a tragic tug-of-war between immense need and constricted bottlenecks, millions of people needing help that can get to relatively few at a time. The capital city of Port-au-Prince needs human relay chains, bucket brigades and old-fashioned barn-raising tactics to negotiate the rubble. But how can thirsting, hungry, exhausted or injured people come up with the strength? Ideas needed, to say nothing of supplies: Wagons? Sleds with moon wheels? Hammocks?

Gurneys, surely. Drag stretchers?–looks almost helpful.


Same with approach by water surface, up to a point. If the harbor is too dangerous to navigate by ship and piers are collapsing or unreliable, then other smaller conveyances have to be part of the answer.


Undoubtedly the Army will start helio-lifting as soon as humanly possible. So an immediate aim would have to be communicating, to let the populace know that water bottles etc are en route, that they will be air-dropped, and where to stand out of the way but nearby.

I am no tech, but I understand that pontoons can carry impressive loads. However, the approach of supplies via water would also have to be communicated in some way to local people.

Getting help to Haiti is indeed, as we keep being reminded on the air waves, a challenge. One of the hurdles is getting over that tendency to think big, an almost irresistible tendency given the magnitude of the problem. Looking ahead to rebuilding, it would be a good idea to keep buildings in proportion to the inescapable fact of that massive fault line: Collapsing multi-story buildings caused more casualties than other buildings in the quake. For the immediate future, we have to remind ourselves that help has to get on the ground or into the water, by any means possible, however small.

But it is so hard to improvise–even setting fatigue or injury–when there may well be a shortage even of primitive basics like rope and planks. Hard even to rig up even a makeshift litter, hard to rig up a pallet when there is no surplus of mattresses or sleeping bags.

One bit of good news, one small step in the right direction aside from the outpouring of international support, is that refugees are beginning to congregate in makeshift camps in open spaces in the main city. Undoubtedly, as the worst-hit did in New Orleans after Katrina, they will begin to organize in some fashion.

If only help can get to them in time. It is terrible to feel so helpless to help.

Rudy Giuliani: A noun and a verb and a What was that again?

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Rudy Giuliani: A noun
and a verb and “We had no domestic attacks under Bush”

 

Giuliani has
outdone himself, not easy to do. After campaigning

KEITH OLBERMANN GIVES SPECTACULAR SPECIAL COMMENT ON HEALTH CARE BILL

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KEITH OLBERMANN GIVES SPECTACULAR SPECIAL COMMENT ON HEALTH CARE BILL
  –“Not health, not care, and certainly not reform.” Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown just did a terrific commentary on H.R. 3590. Sad but true. There’s a lot to be sad and true about.

Olbermann also did a really good quick version of political handling, advising Harry Reid to put the public option back in, put the Medicare buy-in back in, and let Lieberman be the one to commit suicide instead of Reid and senate Dems.

Sounds like good advice.

Olbermann also advised President Obama, with quintessential accuracy, that whatever he does is going to ignite the right–so he might as well move the way he wants to. Moving the way they (ostensibly) want him to is going nowhere, politically or otherwise.

Again, good advice. It is tempting to wonder whether anyone in the White House is giving advice equally good, anyone at all; but I don’t want to waste time speculating about personalities. Yet.

Olbermann also had among guests Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), crisp and clear as usual. It is generally reassuring when a politician can actually speak well and can be forceful and sufficiently energetic without getting offensive.

To continue the political thought enunciated by Olbermann: You have already given them enough rope, Mr. President; the GOP and
Lieberman have conclusively proven that bipartisanship is not going to
happen. Cooperation is not going to happen. There was never even the
proverbial ‘honeymoon.’ Get the legislation wished by the people who
elected you, not by the insurance industry.

Back to the Countdown special comment on the health care bill as currently proposed: sadly, Olbermann is right. We just cannot have a mandate forcing Americans to buy porous insurance that doesn’t insure, without strong competition from a public option, without expansion of Medicare, without federal and state insurance regulation with teeth in it. We just cannot have that. “Transfer of wealth” says it best.

This is not to underestimate the obstacles. Some of the broader problems are out there, not to be missed by any observer: the largest media outlets tend to skew pro-corporate and are seemingly incapable of reporting factually on issues such as insurance abuses; the remains of the GOP are dug in, tossing off any ludicrous statement that will get them ink and air time, regardless of destruction; etc.

But solving the problems caused by a horrendous redistribution of wealth upward in previous years will not happen by accelerating the unjust and arbitrary transfer of wealth. The U.S. tax burden was mainly shifted away from the immensely wealthy to the middle class and the working poor years ago. The tax burden was also disproportionately shifted away from corporations to individuals, and onto states and localities. We do not need to fine people for declining to pay 17 percent of their income–according to estimates–to insurance companies that currently are not even held to account clearly for the net/profit on which they should be paying taxes.