What's Next For Staten Island?

"We," said Jon Stewart, getting more serious last month than one usually expects, "are definitely not living in a post-racial society." What he didn't say-- and couldn't have known as the time-- is that the D.A. responsible for failing to get a Grand Jury indictment against the cop who murdered Eric Garner on camera, Dan Donovan, would be propelled-- largely because of that failure in the polarized racial atmosphere of Staten Island-- into the front-runner position for the congressional seat being vacated by convicted felon Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm.

Staten Island Republican insiders told the Observer yesterday that Mr. Donovan was their preferred candidate, despite the controversy over the Garner case. New York State GOP Chairman Ed Cox has indicated he would prefer to see Staten Island Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis succeed Mr. Grimm, but he has little influence among the local party leaders who will pick the candidate for the special election.

Meanwhile, Steve Israel and Ben Ray Luján-- with self-referential cheer-leading from Chuck Schumer-- are leading the DCCC into another zombie-like death march, dithering for a candidate between Blue Dog Michael McMahon, who was the execrable one-termer who lost to Grimm, and anti-Choice Assemblyman Michael Cusick, who happily describes himself as "a conservative Democrat." Neither has any chance to beat Donovan whatsoever, whose failure to get an indictment in the Garner case has made him a hero among the angry and primitive racists who form the base of the Staten Island Republican Party.

As for Grimm, speculation is pretty much universal that he copped the guilty plea in a deal with the Feds to avoid a long prison term. He'll be sentenced on June 6 and is expected to walk away with a wrist-slap and, more important, no further indictments to a series of criminal activities going back over a decade. Grimm's punishment, aside from the loss of his House seat, is that he will be disbarred-- a felony conviction makes that automatic-- and that he will not be eligible for a congressional pension; one needs to serve in Congress for 5 years for that stupendous lifetime benefit (around $50,000 annually). Had John Kerry's and Walter Jones' Federal Pension Forfeiture Act (the Duke Cunningham Act) passed-- Republicans killed it in committee-- Grimm would have not been eligible for any pension benefits regardless of how long he served. He may lose his congressional health insurance but would be eligible for Obamacare.

Unless Grimm actually goes back to the Mob, his most likely career paths are either Hate Talk Radio or lobbying. That doesn't mean there hasn't been talk, on Staten Island at least, that Grimm still has a bright future as a Republican politician ahead of him.

James Cohen, associate professor at Fordham University School of Law, believes that, despite what some other legal experts have said, Grimm's background as a former Marine, FBI agent and attorney will hurt him in sentencing.

Cohen, a criminal defense attorney, said, "Much of the things that would normally count in his favor, in this case don't count in his favor. He is a former FBI agent who knows better than anyone what the law is and how to break it."

This could be reason for the judge to be harsher in her sentencing, he said.

"This type of crime occurred over a period of time and he knew exactly what he was doing," Cohen said. "He will get jail time and I don't think it's going to be a light amount."

But Richard Flanagan, a political science professor at The College of Staten Island and co-author of the book Staten Island: Conservative Bastion In a Liberal City, thinks things won't be so bad for Grimm.

Regardless of whether he goes to jail, "I don't think he's done" in public office, Flanagan said. "He has demonstrated an ability to win votes even with a cloud over his head."

After being indicted, Grimm won re-election to a third term in November, beating Democrat Domenic M. Recchia Jr. by a 13-point margin, the highest ever for the congressman.

"The way he just dominated Recchia demonstrates he has beat politicians one-on-one," Flanagan said. "There's a lot of second acts in American politics."

Grimm might be able to run successfully for a state or city position on Staten Island's largely Republican South Shore, Flanagan said.

He doesn't expect Grimm to run for Congress again, however.

"Maybe stay out of Washington for a while," he said. "I'm sure the [Republican National Committee] wouldn't welcome him back with open arms."

Political consultant Hank Sheinkopf isn't so sure the congressman has a future in politics.

"He's a convicted felon and there are some people who say he would have a future ... but it would be tough to see how he has a future in politics."

Sheinkopf noted that Grimm's supporters see him as a "local boy done good"-- a former Marine and FBI agent. But could he win another election? "I don't know."

As for whether that's something Grimm would be interested in, Grimm's father-figure, mentor, former borough president and congressman, Guy Molinari, said he doesn't see it happening.

"I don't think Michael will look at the political sector again," he said. "I think he will go into the private arena."

The Koch Billions' Toxic Effect On American Democracy

Last week we talked about how Republicans were unleashing a barrage of attack ads against weak conservative Democrats, like John Barrow, for voting with Republicans. Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans to cut Social Security benefits for retired people are now being bombarded with ads-- that are true, regardless of the disingenuous source-- pointing out that they are the enemies of working people. That's what Blue Dogs and New Dems like John Barrow-- he's both-- deserve anyway.

Taking it a step further, the Koch brother's Americans For Prosperity went after Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor this week for being out of touch with income inequality in America. Mindboggling! Pryor has had a repulsive tendency to vote for the same interests the Kochs promote-- even if he's doing it on behalf of even richer plutocrats than the Kochs-- the Walton family. Take a look at the trailer for Brave New Films Koch Brothers Exposed, 2014 immediately below this paragraph. "Day in and day out, we see the Kochs using their billions to purchase politicians-- and policy-- taking a terrible toll on democracy... stomping on poor people."

The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate... The company's troubled legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations, Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony convictions-- augmented by internal company documents, leaked State Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company whistle­-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic empire whose profits finance the modern GOP.

...[I]in the real world, Koch Industries has used its political might to beat back the very market-based mechanisms-- including a cap-and-trade market for carbon pollution-- needed to create the ownership rights for pollution that Charles says would improve the functioning of capitalism.

In fact, it appears the very essence of the Koch business model is to exploit breakdowns in the free market. Koch has profited precisely by dumping billions of pounds of pollutants into our waters and skies-- essentially for free. It racks up enormous profits from speculative trades lacking economic value that drive up costs for consumers and create risks for our economy.

The Koch brothers get richer as the costs of what Koch destroys are foisted on the rest of us-- in the form of ill health, foul water and a climate crisis that threatens life as we know it on this planet. Now nearing 80-- owning a large chunk of the Alberta tar sands and using his billions to transform the modern Republican Party into a protection racket for Koch Industries' profits-- Charles Koch is not about to see the light. Nor does the CEO of one of America's most toxic firms have any notion of slowing down. He has made it clear that he has no retirement plans: "I'm going to ride my bicycle till I fall off."

It's worth pointing out that, at least in passing, that Daniel Scarpinato, national press secretary for the NRCC, noted that some Democrats have been similarly masquerading as Republicans-- i.e., the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Scarpinato sent HuffPo a dozen campaign ads to demonstrate his point. One is from Montana Democratic House candidate John Lewis, who brags about his high NRA approval rating and attacks his Republican opponent for supporting gun control. Another shows Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)-- who the DCCC and their House Majority PAC have already wasted and unprecedented $5,020,316 on (including $702,799 just this week)-- denouncing the Environmental Protection Agency (and President Obama).

The Koch's are laughing their asses off as their extremist puppets, like Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Joni Ernest in Iowa, Cory Gardner in Colorado, Mike Rounds in South Dakota, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Shelly Moore Capito in West Virginia and Steve Daines in Montana are propelled towards the Senate takeover the Kochs are willing and able to underwrite. Vice President Henry Wallace warned about Koch-types that "the American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information." And that's exactly what the Kochs have been doing. Do you help bankroll them by buying their products? It's worth thinking about. So is Jon Stewart's welcome to the Koch's as a new advertiser on his Comedy Central show:



NOTE: Short of losing control of the House, which-- thanks to Steve Israel-- is an impossibility this cycle, no House result anywhere in America would damage the Kochs more than losing their Energy Committee chairman, Fred Upton, in MI-06. A dark money group they finance and control, "American Future Fund," has rushed hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race in the last few days to try to save Upton. Lawrence Lessig: "Fred Upton has already taken $2.1 million from Big Oil and energy interests and voted to give away billions in tax breaks for oil and gas companies. Now, a shadowy group that has been largely bankrolled by two billionaire oil barons is pouring money in Southwest Michigan to support him. Voters have a right to know if the hundreds of thousands of dollars AFF is spending to send Fred Upton back to Washington comes with strings attached... The Koch brothers have billions of dollars invested in the very industries that Fred Upton oversees as Chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. If they are funding a last ditch effort to save Fred Upton, voters deserve to know about it."

Steve Israel may be working to protect Upton but Alan Grayson just endorsed Paul Clements. "On Tuesday," he told his supporters today, "we have a chance to take out the reigning king of the polluters, Rep. Fred Upton, the Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The Los Angeles Times has called Fred Upton "one of the biggest threats to Planet Earth on Planet Earth."

Upton has tried to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. He says that Congress's failure to act against climate disruption-- a failure that he is largely responsible for-- means that the EPA must sit on its hands, as well. Upton says that doing anything to fight carbon pollution would "hamstring our economic recovery."

But Upton's not all bad. He cosponsored a bill to make light bulbs more energy efficient. Then he led the fight to prevent President Obama from enforcing it.

Let me put it this way: When Upton was an infant, his first words were "drill, baby, drill."

...Upton's opponent is Paul Clements, a political science professor at Western Michigan University. Clements isn't pulling any punches: he says that environmental protection is THE issue. He is running against Upton because defeating Upton means defeating climate change. Clements wants to bring more clean-energy jobs to Michigan.

It looks like Clements has Upton on the run. A poll last week showed Clements down by only four points, within the margin of error, with ten percent of the voters still undecided. Clements has momentum. He can win. With our help, Paul Clements can beat Fred Upton.

Please keep Paul Clements in your prayers this week. Last minute contributions can be made here.

God Answers Democratic Prayers In Miami-Dade-- David Rivera Is Back!

NRCC and Marco Rubio are not embracing their old pal Rivera this time around

Florida New Dem Joe Garcia has turned out to be a pretty big disappointment. A guy who certainly knows better, he quickly adopted the DCCC strategy of amassing a Republican-lite voting record in Congress. According to ProgressivePunch his abysmal 42.76 crucial vote score is, by far, the worst of any Florida Democrat (including Patrick Murphy), and one of the dozen worst among all House Democrats. Garcia votes against progressives even more frequently than reactionary Blue Dogs Jim Costa (CA), Dan Lipinksi (IL) and Jim Cooper (TN) and is exactly tied with West Virginia's Nick Rahall. And, remember, Garcia's district has a PVI of R+1 where Obama won both times; Rahall's district's PVI is R+14 and Obama barely scored a third of the votes against Romney and also lost big to McCain. Even Murphy has a "better" excuse for voting with the GOP so much-- a PVI of R+3. Garcia is just one big inauthentic mess who compromised away so much promise!

Yesterday, though, he may have had a lucky break-- a last minute entry into the Republican primary: the crook he defeated last time, David Rivera. Rivera's nemesis at the Miami Herald, Marc Caputo, reported that Rivera announced Thursday night that he would run for his old seat. In 2012, Garcia beat him 135,551 (54%) to 108,737 (43%), outperfoming Obama by 4%. But that was before Garcia had run up such a disappointing, defensive, Big Business-oriented voting record.

Rivera's thesis is that he didn't do anything wrong and all his troubles were manufactured out of thin air by the media, especially the Miami Herald. No one believed it in 2012 and there's been a lot more to prove it wrong since then.

“I will not answer to the lies of the Miami Herald,” Rivera said on the political talk show Ahora con Oscar Haza.

“I will not deviate from the issues and [will] defeat Joe Garcia. “Rivera said he’s running due to a “leadership crisis,” calling Garcia “incompetent.”

...Rivera’s announcement stunned Florida’s tough-to-surprise political world.

One of his fellow Republicans running against Garcia, Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos Curbelo, issued a statement that blasted Rivera as well as Garcia, whose former campaign manager was recently jailed in an unrelated absentee ballot-request fraud scheme exposed by The Herald.

“Now more than ever our campaign is about putting an end to the scandals and the corruption that have plagued our community for far too long,” Curbelo said in a statement.

“The unethical conduct of public officials in both parties-- including incumbent Joe Garcia-- has landed people in jail and embarrassed the residents of Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties,” Curbelo said. “We will run a clean campaign focused on reestablishing the public trust and putting an end to this sad chapter in our community’s history.”

Curbelo is the Republican establishment favorite in the race and earned the endorsement of former Gov. Jeb Bush, an early Republican presidential frontrunner.

Rivera is a friend of another potential Republican candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, though the two haven’t been as close as in past years amid Rivera’s mounting political and legal troubles.

The two still jointly own a Tallahassee rental home, but associates of the two say Rubio would like to sell it and that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to run for Congress against Curbelo.

Rivera, who said he’d officially file for the office on Friday, didn’t address Curbelo. The two had a tense race against each other for Miami-Dade Republican chairman in 2008 when Rivera, then a state representative, won the post by just a single vote.



Rivera, then a state representative, went on to win his congressional seat in 2010 when he defeated Garcia and a phony tea party candidate who had links to Garcia’s former campaign manager, Jeffrey Garcia.

The FBI began investigating that incident last year after the Miami Herald uncovered new evidence in the case.

By then, the FBI and U.S. Attorneys Office were farther along in the investigation of Rivera and his friend, Ana Alliegro, who helped manage the campaign of a little-known Democratic candidate named Justin Lamar Sternad.

Sternad admitted to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office that his Democratic primary campaign was funded with about $82,000 in illegal campaign contributions, which were used, in part, to bash Garcia to the benefit of Rivera.

Sternad identified Alliegro as a source of the money. A March indictment against her says she was aided by at least one unnamed “co-conspirator.”

Alliegro is in a federal lockup awaiting trial on charges of breaking campaign-finance laws and lying about it.

Sternad, who is cooperating against her, has yet to be sentenced after pleading guilty last year to charges of breaking federal campaign-finance laws and lying about it.

Alliegro was arrested in March in Nicaragua, to which she twice fled to avoid investigators and prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas J. Mulvihill argued last month in court as part of a successful effort to keep her locked up.

Mulvihill said that, after she surrendered her passport last fall, Alliegro and “another individual” left Miami by flying to Texas, boarding a Greyhound bus to Mexico-- where a U.S. passport isn’t needed for entry-- and then flying to her hideout in Nicaragua.

While in Nicaragua, Alliegro was frequently visited by Rivera, neighbors told the Miami Herald.

When the Sternad case broke in theHerald/El Nuevo Herald, Mulvihill had already been leading an unrelated federal tax investigation into Rivera stemming from a secretive $500,000 payment from a dog track.

Rivera also narrowly escaped a state indictment on 52 counts of theft, money laundering and racketeering revolving around his use of campaign money. State prosecutors said the alleged crimes were too old or too tough to prosecute.

Rivera has long denied wrongdoing in those cases and on Thursday night he downplayed close ties to Alliegro. “I know her family; everyone knows her family,” he said.

He also dismissed the Sternad case.

“Nobody cares about a fake campaign from two years ago.”

Rivera said “no” when asked if federal investigators have come knocking on his door.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said of the allegations.

The DCCC has relvamped and updated their old House of Scandal website-- still no mention of Joe Crowley-- but I bet they can hardly wait to tackle Rivera again. It remains to be seen if they can ever get anything as good as John Steward's Grimm Shady piece though!

Though Christie Didn't Put It There, New Jersey Does Have A Severed Horse's Head On It's State Flag

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

As a service to people who watch Fox News, which has made a great effort to block out the unfolding Chris Christie scandal, here's what happened today to their shockingly incompetent hero-- aside from this, of course:

Chris Christie succeeded at one thing in his press conference today. He acted civilly. He didn't thrust a pudgy finger into any women's faces and scream at them; he had his bullying instincts in check. He announced that he was "embarrassed and humiliated" that his bridge scandal was uncovered and that he was firing more staffers-- this time deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly and his campaign manager, state GOP head Bill Stepian-- as though anyone other than the most gullible think the guilt lies anywhere than with himself. "I'm a sad guy standing here today." Is there a silver cloud somewhere in this for Christie? Yes and no. Looks like Governor Soprano, who has turned this scandal into an opportunity to make himself into a victim and for perspective voters nationally to see how he manages a crisis (and that's the "no"), hasn't been eating as much as usual though (and that's the "yes").

No credible Christie watchers believe any of this attempt to blame "rogue" staffers. A Barbara Buono told Andrea Mitchell, the Christie office is run like a paramilitary organization and no one sneezes or goes to the bathroom without his permission. He wants people to believe that 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 of his top staffers put this whole conspiracy together without him and then kept him in the dark about it for weeks and weeks? New Jersey's voters made have been taken in his his persona before, but they're not this stupid and, more important, neither are voters in Iowa, New Hampshire or even South Carolina. After his performance today, Lindsey Graham said he couldn't win in the South and that everyone could see that he's a "bully… You know, he's a little too slick by half," said the South Carolina senior senator.

Meanwhile, one of Christie's primary hatchetmen, David Wildstein took the 5th over and over again, rather than incriminate himself today at a state legislative hearing into the Christie scandal. Later in the day, his lawyer implied, pretty strongly, that he would turn state's evidence if he was granted immunity from prosecution himself. Everyone loves a rat. Presumably, all Christie's aides will follow suit, take the 5th and obstruct justice. If the Republicans lose the House in November, Darrell Issa won't be running the investigation committee and I'd love to see a real investigation into why Christie thought he could disrupt interstate traffic with impunity.



Journalists who have followed Christie most carefully are now agreeing that his carefully devised, no-nonsense image is in peril. The guy is coming across not just as a bully-- a majority of NJ voters seem to like that-- but as a pitiful incompetent who can't even control his own staff.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has built a remarkable brand in Republican politics around a simple message: that his bluster and brashness, grating as they might be, were driven by a desire to transcend partisan rancor and petty politics in the service of the public good.

He would never let himself engage, he once pledged, in the “type of deceitful political trickery that has gone on in this state for much too long.”

But embarrassing revelations about his office’s role in shutting down some access lanes to the George Washington Bridge now imperil that carefully cultivated image. They suggest that the same elbows-out approach that the Christie administration brought to policy battles at the State House may have been deployed for a much less noble end-- punishing an entire borough for its mayor’s sin of not embracing the governor’s re-election campaign.For Mr. Christie, the timing of the blossoming scandal is dreadful, disrupting a highly anticipated plan to present the popular governor to the national electorate as a no-nonsense, bipartisan balm to a deeply divided federal government.

For Mr. Christie, the timing of the blossoming scandal is dreadful, disrupting a highly anticipated plan to present the popular governor to the national electorate as a no-nonsense, bipartisan balm to a deeply divided federal government.

…Despite Mr. Christie’s claims to the contrary, many saw an inescapable link to the temperamental governor, whose emotional outbursts at those who challenge him in public are a hallmark of his governing style.

Several leading conservatives, long suspicious of Mr. Christie’s allegiance to their cause, seemed eager to pounce. “The point of the story is that Christie will do payback,” Rush Limbaugh said on his popular conservative radio show. “If you don’t give him what he wants, he’ll pay you back.”

The episode is tricky for Mr. Christie and his aides. His cantankerous manner and independent streak are essential to his White House ambitions; advisers view them as an asset in early primary states like New Hampshire that have a history of embracing blunt-talking politicians.

Now there is a new worry: that what once seemed like a refreshing forcefulness may come off as misguided bullying.

“We like mavericks here,” said Thomas D. Rath, a longtime political strategist in New Hampshire. “But there is a line.” … The concept of a governor whose top aides mete out political revenge by triggering a giant traffic jam “could be a problem” for people in the state, said Mr. Rath, who has advised the Republican presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mr. Romney.

Terry Golway, Director for History, Politics & Policy at Kean University in New Jersey penned an even more devastating piece reminding readers that, in essence Christie is nothing but another old-fashioned New Jersey boss.

Christie’s carefully crafted image as an anti-politician explains why a scandal involving traffic cones at the George Washington Bridge has become a potentially crippling handicap. His closest staff members and longtime friends have been revealed to be petty thugs who punished ordinary citizens to settle a political score. And while Christie has denied knowledge of the scheme to cause traffic havoc in the city of Fort Lee, questions are being raised about his administration’s aggressive methods of dealing with critics.

New Jersey has long been a place where politics is practised with brass knuckles. It is still home to a number of old-fashioned political bosses-- even after Christie put several behind bars. The most prominent boss still at large is a man named George Norcross, a Democrat who has worked co-operatively with Christie, a Republican, on several projects and who did little to oppose Christie’s re-election last year.

As governor, Christie has shown a weakness for the sort of autocratic boss-style politics that he seemed to despise during his career as a prosecutor. Even other Republicans have felt his wrath whenever they seemed insufficiently enthusiastic about his program or governing style. In the end, though, important reforms were passed into law during his first term after years of languishing in legislative committees. Sometimes it takes a boss to get the wheels of government working properly.

As the dominant political figure in New Jersey, Christie has no equal and no real rival. But voters have not objected to his my-way-or-the-highway approach to governance: he was re-elected in November with 60% of the vote. Still, it is one thing to force-feed legislation on recalcitrant politicians, and quite another to engage in political thuggery. Christie’s aides crossed that line, and now the governor’s presidential prospects are critically damaged.

Christie says he did not know of the plan to target Fort Lee’s mayor, and apologised for it in a press conference. But the plan itself reeks of prosecutorial zeal, a red-hot desire to punish a perceived wrong-doer. Christie’s aides have made a habit of posting videos of the governor assailing critics as if they were in the dock rather than simply questioning his policies. The bridge scandal may not bear the governor’s fingerprints, but critics have noted that he has been nothing if not aggressive with those who disagree with him.

New Jersey’s old-time political bosses were equally autocratic, but the best of them realised there was a time and a place in politics for compromise and negotiation. Prosecutors, however, live in a very different world. They deal with accused criminals. It is their job to prove that their adversary is guilty as charged. There is no room for debating the charge.

If Chris Christie is to recover, he must show that he does not regard critics as criminals, and that he understands that reasonable people can disagree in a reasonable fashion. That will require a radical change in style.

Right! That's not going to happen anytime soon. Christie, despite his performance today, has very little self-control. And, as Ezra Klein showed in this morning's Washington Post he's a low-grade and pathetic bully through and through. "Christie," he wrote, "inhabits a rare space in American politics: He's a bully. He's followed around by an aide with a camcorder watching for moments in which Christie, mustering the might and prestige of his office, annihilates some citizen who dares question him… The reason Chris Christie is so good at this is that Chris Christie is actually a bully. That doesn't mean he's not also a nice guy who cares deeply about his family and his constituents and his country. It doesn't mean he's not an unusually honest politician who's refreshingly free of cant and willing to question his party. There's a lot about Christie that's deeply appealing. But there's one big thing that's not: He's someone who uses his office to intimidate people and punish or humiliate perceived enemies… What makes Christie unusual is that he's a bully with power. That can be a dangerous combination."

John Banzhaf, a Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School wrote today that there's more bad news for Christie around the corner: civil suits that are bound to uncover more information about what he and his team are covering up. "In addition to the political fallout, and any punishments for the aides who deliberately sabotaged traffic at the GW Bridge, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his aides could be sued by commuters for massive damages under a variety of legal theories-- a tactic which, even if it doesn't succeed in inflicting severe financial harm upon those responsible would, as least, help undercover more still-secret evidence about how the fiasco was organized, and any role Christie played in it." Remember, an elderly woman died when her ambulance couldn't get through Christie traffic blockade of the Bridge. "In addition, those who willfully caused the massive tie-ups could be sued for 'false imprisonment.' Deliberately engaging in an unlawful act for the purpose of forcing people to remain in one place for any significant period of time constitutes the civil tort of 'false imprisonment.' Indeed, many courts have held that intentionally preventing a car from moving can make the defendants liable not only for the actual damages suffered by a person detained (e.g. time lost from work, missed appointments or classes, etc.), but also for massive amounts of punitive damages designed to prevent a repetition of the unlawful conduct… Tort actions, and especially class action law suits, permit those who have been harmed by the wrongful actions taken by those acting in concert-- a civil conspiracy-- to sue everyone responsible, even if the wrongful deeds do not necessarily meet the more exactly standards of a criminal conspiracy," says Banzhaf, who helped develop novel legal theories to successfully sue cigarette manufacturers, fast food companies, soda bottlers, Spriro T. Agnew, and many others.

At least Staten Island Mafia figure and GOP congressman, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm is standing by his man. Grimm, a lowlife thug who is under investigation of a wide range of serious charges by the FBI and is likely to face far more prison time than Duke Cunningham or Bob Ney ever got, vouched for Christie a few hours ago:

“Governor Christie demonstrated true leadership and accountability during today’s press conference,” said Grimm. “I have known Governor Christie since he was a United States Attorney with a distinguished anti-corruption record and I was an undercover agent working a high profile public corruption case with his office. I know him to be a man of unquestionable honor and ironclad integrity, and I take him at his word. In an a time when President Obama and key figures in his administration shamelessly pass the buck and avoid accountability for one massive failure after another, the Governor’s swift and immediate action to dismiss those responsible, commit himself to a full vetting of his staff, and embrace his responsibility as his state’s chief executive is both uncommon and refreshing.”

And then there is this… pay close attention:

MSNBC may be a real-world-based "alternative" to Fox Noise, but let's be careful not to think of it as a counterpart

Could we be careful not to confuse the job that Rachel and Keith (and, yes, Jon) do with the atrocities perpetrated 24/7 by the Fox Noisemakers? There really are such things as "reality" and "facts."

by Ken

A colleague, Rory O'Connor, has written a piece of some interest about MSNBC -- with Keith and Rachel, and now Ed Schultz, and who-knows-what to follow -- as a "liberal mecca" and "the progressive alternative" to Fox Noise, featuring excerpts from interviews with network president Phil Griffin and Schultz, "the latest lefty star in the cable television news-and-opinion firmament."

What concerns me is that, while Rory doesn't make such a claim, I think what people will hear is that MSBNC is an ideologically opposite counterpart to Fox's Noise Machine.

I think this is partly why network chief Griffin is so dodgy about the suggestion of a leftward programming "strategy" at the network. And let's be clear: There is every reason for MSNBC and everyone involved with it to fight to the death any analogy between it and Fox Noise.

Fox Noise is a propaganda machine, whereas the the MSNBC program hosts thought to be counterparts to the Noisemakers -- Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and now Ed Schultz (whose show I have to say I've never seen) -- are fact-based observers.

This is not to say that Keith and Rachel don't occasionally get facts wrong. But you see the difference between them and the Noisemakers in their general insistence on correcting factual errors, usually as promptly as possible. I'm certainly not saying that Keith and Rachel (and Ed) don't have ideological views that influence the way they interpret those facts, but their reporting always starts with their best-faith effort to establish those facts. I'm nervous about saying that they start with a commitment to respect as well as try to understand reality, simply because the word "reality" has taken such a beating in recent times, and has in fact been adopted by the Right to refer not to real reality but to what some particular person or group wishes the reality were.

This has become especially freaky as the Right has become increasingly alienated from reality. Of course everyone has the right to imagine the way they think the world ought to be. However, nobody has the right to blur the right between those imaginings and the way things actually are. Difficult as it often is for us mere mortals to determine where reality is, what the actual facts are, there actually are such things as reality and truth and facts.

By contrast, in the propaganda world of the Right-Wing Noise Machine, facts are irrelevant. Fox Noise dabbles in them only insofar as glancing references to them lend credibility among viewers to the fantasies into which they are spun, and of course insofar as shreds of reality can be twisted to bolster the propaganda message. Luckily for the intellectual defectives who populate this creepy world, they don't have to think about the propaganda message, thinking being an activity to which they're not well suited. Which is why they're luckily that the message is given to them in the form of the famous Talking Points, which we discovered in the era when Karl Rove was controlling the message weren't the least bit metaphorical.

When in doubt, of course, if you're a media wingnut, you can just scream about the same inanities and insanities you screamed about yesterday. After all, one of the philosophical underpinnings of the RWNM is that repetition not only isn't to be avoided, it's to be cherished. Messages need to be repeated as loudly and as often as the intended recipients will tolerate. Still, even the most ideologically blinkered recipients have tolerance limits, and a bit of variety is required -- both to provide momentary relief and to make sure the entire agenda is covered. Even as utterly mindless a blowhard as Sean Hannity needs the Talking Points. One is tempted to say that especially as mindless a blowhard as Sean Hannity needs the Talking Points.

And we've had, goodness knows, enough leaks from the Fox Noise inner sanctum, not to mention all those instances of hilariously beyond-the-realm-of-coincidence verbatim repertions among Noisemakers, to know that master Noisemaker Roger Ailes is nothing if not a practitioner of messsage discipline. When the word isn't coming directly from the master, it's coming from the inner circle of surrogates in close touch with his wishes.

NOISEMAKING 101: RIGHT-WING "JOURNALISM" DOESN'T EVEN
PRETEND TO BE JOURNALISM (EXCEPT FOR BILLO THE CLOWN*)

As I've written numerous times on DownWithTyranny, for me the single most eye-opening revelation in Blinded by the Right, David Brock's account of his awakening from his former existence as a star right-wing "journalist," is his almost unbelievably late realization that what right-wing "journalists" do isn't journalism at all. And every time I try to explain this, I have the feeling that people still don't understand the magnitude or significance of the distinction. (Note: No pictures of actual journalists have been used to illustrate this paragraph.)

Brock was at the pinnacle of his chosen profession, and already starting to curry disfavor with his loony-tune colleagues, when it began to dawn on him (finally!) that proper reporting isn't actually done the only way it was done in his professional experience. What he and everybody he knew always did was to start out with a fully formed version of "the truth" and then venture out into the world just long enough to collect whatever detritus -- whatever collection of factoids, bought testimony, and if necessary outright fabrications -- it took to lend a patina of believability to the "story."

In their own minds, I suppose, this practice is justified by their imagined possession of "higher truth," the kind the doesn't rely on mere facts. This "higher truth" delusion is the only scenario I can imagine that explains the later career of "Big Dick" Cheney. Having ferreted out this "truth" from the darkest corners of his brain, he wasn't about to be contradicted by low-pay-grade A-holes in new- or intelligence-gathering professions, who've never even been inside Big Dick's brain.

As I always point out when the subject comes up, it's not as if our beloved infotainment news media are rigorous practitioners of the "old" school of journalism. You know, where the one where the crusty old managing editor gets wind of a possible story and sends a truth-obsessed reporter out with orders to "Get me that story" and then puts it on the paper or on the air. It's not hard to tell when you watch TV nooz, or all too often even when you read the NYT or WaPo, that both the assignment editor and the reporter had pretty well figured out what the story was before the poor soul did a lick of legwork, which in this case would consist mostly of tracking down quotes from the Usual Suspects for the subject at hand.

But at least most of those people know, and pay occasional lip service to, the way the job is supposed to be done. Some of the more idealistic reporters, likely to be the younger ones who haven't yet learned the lay of the land, may even get out there and do some honest-to-gosh reporting and see how much of it they can slip past their Village-coopted editors.

It's a grim prospect, no doubt about it, but still an order-of-magnitde different from what goes on at the Fox Noise propaganda shop, where everyone understands that the truth is always a last resort, to be called on only when truly no useful fib can be found or fabricated.

*THE BILLO EXCEPTION. Fox Noise icon Bill O'Reilly can often be heard, for reasons only he could explain, insisting that what he is is a journalist. What a kidder!


FINAL THOUGHT: CAN WE PROGRESSIVES REALLY
SUPPORT THAT MUCH PROGRESSIVE PROGRAMMING?

In the piece noted above, MSNBC boss Phil Griffin [right] tells Rory O'Connor:

"People who like Rachel will like our new 10 o’clock show host and what we are going to do there. No, I take that back. Rachel’s audience will love it! I promise.”

Now I'm just speaking for myself here, and I realize that this is the sort of problem that has never concerned Roger Ailes in programming his propaganda machine, but even before the arrival of The Ed Show MSNBC was already testing the limits of my absorption capacity. Much as I hate to miss either Keith or Rachel, not to mention Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart when there are new shows, I was already having trouble committing those two and a half hours a day, what with so much other important TV to watch, and then two baseball teams to follow, not to mention occasionally going through the motions of pretending to have some sort of life.

More and more I've found myself doing Keith or Rachel, or Keith and Rachel between innings, or even neither one -- and somehow losing track of Jon as well. (Don't tell me about "making sacrifices." I've made sacrifices. I hardly ever watch baseball pregame shows now, and my policy on postgame ones has for some time been: only after Yankee or Met victories, or when I'm too lazy to change the channel.)

I feel the loss, really and truly, but I don't honestly know what to do about it. The real logjam, of course, is all these hours I waste every day coming to an office to make a living, not to mention the well over two hours of daily commuting time. If I'd had the presence of mind to check off the "independently wealthy" box in the initial paperwork, perhaps this could all have been avoided. But that's probably why I haven't seen Ed Schultz's extravaganza. Sure, it would be annoying if I didn't like it, but it might be even worse, consequence-wise, if I did.

So personally, I don't even want to think about 10pm. Just as NBC is simplifying my life by wiping the flagship network's 10pm slot clean (oh yeah, like I'm gonna watch Jay Leno!), would it be so cruel as to put something on MSBNC that its president is so sure I"m going to love? Please tell me, Phil, that you've teamed Pat Buchanan up with Tucker Carlson.

#

The Daily Show offers a Hall and Oates musical farewell to the utterly useless Alan Colmes

Anytime you need a token liberal,
Nothin' but a body to fill a chair,
The barest shadow of a person,
Alan Colmes is always there.

But all those years of non-existence
Can really run a person down.
Now he's leaving Hannity forever.
Alan, please don't go!
You're the only non-douchebag on that show.
He's gone, bye-bye,
Oh why?
He was the Tango to his Cash,
And he's gone.
Oh why?
To the extent
That I hadn't noticed he was there,
But he's gone,
Oh why?
What went wrong?
He's gone, bye-bye,
Oh why?
He was the Laurel to his Hardy.
He's gone.
To spend
More time
Not being seen with his family.
He's gone.
What went wrong?

(Of course, it's an adaptation of the Hall and Oates classic "She's Gone.")

And HuffPost has the statement issued in apparent riposte by master wit Sean Hannity:

"I was actually thinking of Jon [Stewart] as a co-host but I needed someone who could be smart and funny without 50 writers and two has-been rockers who are badly in need of Botox."

Ouch! Take that, Daily Show and musical guests!

#