The "Thurmond rule" and the GOP's "heads I win, tails you lose" approach to government

Say, has anyone checked lately to see if Ol' Strom, that worthless, doody-sucking old pile of puke, is still dead?

The “[Thurmond] rule,” named for the late senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, posits that, sometime in the summer in a presidential election year, no judges will be confirmed without the consent of the Republican and Democratic leaders and the Judiciary Committee chairman and ranking minority member.

Democrats have refused to recognize the rule and are known to flout it, blissfully confirming Republican presidents’ nominees well into the fall — thus cutting the number of vacancies that an incoming Democratic president might be able to fill.

The Republicans not only adhere to the rule but have been most adept at a fine four-corner stall until the rule might plausibly be invoked.

by Ken

Well, sure, his North Carolina neighbor Jesse Helms was worse, but that doesn't mean Strom didn't devote every ounce of his being to being the vilest, scummiest human being he had it in him to be, right up to the end. Remember those months (years?) when only the people closest to him, who kept him tightly protected off from public scrutiny, knew for sure whether the giant blob of protoplasm was genuinely alive or not?

Now Al Kamen reminds us, in this item from his Washington Post "In the Loop" column, that whatever the present state of his vital signs, the shame of South Carolina continues to befoul the Republic. To make it even more delicious, it's with the complicity of Senate Democrats, but then, what would you have them do? There is a principle involved, after all.

Still, while Senate Dems stand by their modest principle, Senate Republicans get to screw them both ways, no matter which party holds the White House. Brother Al --

Here come the judges

The Senate on Monday confirmed the last three of 17 judges under a deal cut by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell in March. The three nominees — one to an appellate court, the others to U.S. District Court seats — had been confirmed unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The three are Jacqueline H. Nguyen for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California, John Z. Lee for a District Court seat in Illinois and Kristine G. Baker for a District Court seat in Arkansas. Nguyen would be the first Vietnamese American federal appeals court judge.

The action leaves 19 judicial nominees awaiting votes on the Senate floor, five of them for appeals courts and 14 for trial or district court slots.

While some observers — including, sadly, this column — too often dismiss the district judges as chopped liver, it should be noted that they are the ones who do the heavy lifting in keeping the federal courthouses running and case backlogs as low as possible.

As it turns out, many of those confirmed under the deal are filling seats in courthouses where there are judicial “emergencies,” meaning there aren’t enough judges to keep up with the work.

So the 19 pending nominees, all of them approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, will sweat it out until the August recess, when the “Thurmond rule” often shuts down the process.

The “rule,” named for the late senator from South Carolina . . . .

Which of course is where we came in, dear reader.

One more thing about those district judges "often dismissed as chopped liver." It is, of course, true that "they are the ones who do the heavy lifting in keeping the federal courthouses running and case backlogs as low as possible." They are also the "bench" for those circuit-court appeals judges, who in turn have their shot at positioning themselves for Supreme Court vacancies. The more the Republicans are able to pack the district courts with their scum and the Democrats are unable to get confirmation even for their inoffensive (except to out-of-touch-with-reality zealots) moderates, the more the weight of the judiciary is stacked against judicial reason.

At this point, while it remains theoretically possible, though practically speaking improbable, that the Obama administration may be able to get itself fully staffed by the time its first -- and possibly only -- term draws to a close, it's not possible that the president will succeed in replenishing the dangerously depleted federal judiciary. Imagine how the America-hating vermin who make up the Senate Republican Infestation must be congratulating themselves for successfully Democratic judicial appointments, keeping them to a bare minimum, until the sacred "Thurmond rule" kicks in and lifts the weight of the obstructionist burden from their shoulders.

I'm also thinking, as we take this stroll down memory lane revisiting the ghosts of Strom and Jesse, of the relief many of us felt when the pair of them finally had the decency to depart the Senate. (Strom was finally pronounced officially dead six months later, but Jesse, clinging to his reputation as the country's biggest son of a bitch, hung on for another five years.) Not to mention the same-cycle skedaddling of putrid Phil Gramm. Surely, we thought, the caliber of Republican senators couldn't help but be upgraded with those departures. The joke is on us.

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Clinton And Gingrich Now Say It Was A Mistake To Help Wall Street End Glass-Steagall

Wall Street made it clear to the political class they would pay-- and pay big-- to get out from under the restrictions of Glass-Steagall. They tried all during the Reagan and the Bush I years but it wasn't 'til the right had the disgraced Bill Clinton by the balls that they were able to get what they wanted. Conservative Democrat turned reactionary Republican, Texas Senator Phil Gramm, one of the most corrupt Members of Congress in the entire 20th Century, teamed up with conservative Republicans Jim Leach (IA) and Tom Bliley (VA) to help Wall Street game the system in such a way that they could be sure to drain immense wealth from the middle class.

Although the bill passed the Senate 54-44, with only one Democratic vote-- ultra conservative corporate shill Ernest Hollings (SC)-- 2 months later it passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, 343-86. During the debate, one of the Democrats voting NO, John Dingell (MI) warned that if it passed the Wall Street-controlled banks would become "too big to fail" and that it would only be a matter of time before taxpayers would be bailing out predatory banksters. [Speaking of predatory banksters, as soon as Gramm-- whose wife Wendy was on the Board of Directors of Enron but never went to prison-- delivered the legislation, he left the Senate and... became a bankster, of course. Right now he's the Vice Chairman of UBS's investment bank.]

With Clinton, who signed the bill, and Gingrich, who supported the bill as Speaker-- but had been driven from office in a series of sordid scandals a few months before the vote-- now admitting what a mistake they had made, let's take a look at some of the key players from 1999 and see where they are today. Like Gramm, Harold Ford (D-TN), a big supporter, now works as a bankster himself and Wall Street tv shill. I'm not sure where Rob Blagojevich (D-IL) is now-- in prison?--but he voted for the bill, as did Tom DeLay (R-TX), who has also been sentenced to prison but has managed to avoid serving any time. Two other big boosters, Duke Cunningham (R-CA), who is in prison, and Bob Ney (R-OH), who served some time and is out now, are unlikely to ever run for office again. Dick Armey (R-TX) was a key player in passing the bill and he's getting a fat paycheck from the Koch brothers today to run the Tea Party for them. Congressmen who voted yes and then found themselves the recipients of huge amounts of Wall Street money to finance their career jumps to the Senate include these egregiously corrupt senators:

Roy Blunt (R-MO)- $4,812,944
Richard Burr (R-NC)- $3,874,328
Susan Collins (R-ME)- $2,431,440
Jim DeMint (R-SC)- $2,895,397
Lindsay Graham (R-SC)- $2,235,575
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)- $4,792,431
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)- $5,222,119
Rob Portman (R-OH)- $3,966,426
Jim Talent (R-MO), defeated after one term- $3,515,804
John Thune (R-SC)- $4,650,253
Pat Toomey (R-PA)- $3,036,265
David Vitter (R-LA)- $2,866,054
Roger Wicker (R-MS)- $1,592,269

Other boosters of killing Glass Steagall who went on to political grandeur include Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, John Boehner (R-OH), now Speaker of the House, Nathan Deal (R-GA), now Governor of Georgia, Denny Hastert (R-IL), former Speaker of the House, Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the # Democrat in the Democratic House leadership, John Kasich (R-OH), current Governor of Ohio, Buck McKeon (R-CA), Chairman of House Armed Services Committee, Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, Joe Scarborough (R-FL), current TV right-wing talk show host, Chris Shays (R-CT), current candidate for the Senate, Fred Upton (R-MI), current Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a Member of the SuperCommittee.

So who voted NO, in the House? Nancy Pelosi didn't vote. Among the no-votes were Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), a candidate for Senate now, Sherrod Brown (D-OH), now a senator, Tom Coburn (R-OK), now a senator, John Conyers (D-MI), Barney Frank (D-MA), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Ray LaHood (R-IL), now the Secretary of Transportation, Barbara Lee (D-CA), John Lewis (R-GA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Ron Paul (R-TX), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), now a senator, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Compare the lists. One is mostly bad guys who support the 1% and the other is mostly good guys who try to protect the 99% against the predators from within the 1%. Shame voters don't pay attention to history, isn't it? Brad Miller, a senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee-- and one of Congress' staunchest supporters of ordinary working families-- does pay attention to history. Brad is one of the most consistently thoughtful Members of the House. I called him this morning because his primary opponent-- Rep. David Price-- often votes with the Republicans on matters of interest to the 1% and, predictably, Price voted for deregulation and to end Glass-Steagall. Brad wasn't in Congress at the time but everything about his record supports his claim that he would have voted against Gramm-Leach-Bliley. This is what he had to say about it today:

"All the serious, sophisticated people back in the nineties said that Glass-Steagall was an anachronism, that everything then was completely different from the 1920s, and only the populist rabble thought we still needed to separate investment and commercial banking. Score another one for the populist rabble. Repealing Glass-Steagall and the other financial deregulation votes in the nineties obviously was largely responsible for the financial crisis and the enormous shift of wealth from working and middle-class families to the financial sector."

So that's why Alan Grayson endorsed him-- and why Blue America did as well. We need more men and women in Congress like Brad Miller-- and fewer who just go along to get along and do whatever Steny Hoyer tells them to.

Gluttony II

Yesterday's post on what amounted to a modern day depiction of Dante's Second (lust), Third (gluttony) and Fourth (greed) Circles of Hell was also covered, in his own unique way, by Rachel Maddow sub Chris Hayes. That's why I posted the short clip above. Chris is discussing the law and order aspects of the systemic criminal activities in the financial sector, the wealthiest and most politically-protected members of our brave new world, and how it-- the sector-- tanked the entire economy to help enrich a few people. One thing in particular caught my attention:

[M]uch of what created the crisis was systemic deception and institutional corruption. Yet, aside from Bernie Madoff, we've seen hardly a perp walk or conviction.

"There were more morons than crooks, but the crooks were higher up" is how Chris describes what happened; it's a grand-slam of explanations too. But I want to go off on a tangent. Madoff was a lone wolf, a rogue operator, much the way Duke Cunningham turned out. Madoff and Cunningham are in jail. The bigger fish-- Tom DeLay, Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, on the one hand, and the major banksters on the other hand-- well... none of them are in prison and none are likely to go to prison. Between them, they run the show and they protect each other.

Since 1989 the Finance Sector has spent over 4 billion dollars in lobbying the federal government ($4,274,060,331, to be exact). That's the most of any other industry. They're #1. And when it comes to more direct bribes-- what they quaintly call "campaign contributions" Inside-the-Beltway-- another $1,442,282,374 has been spread around-- $775,150,202 directly to Republicans and $656,026,035 directly to Democrats, although mostly to the kinds of Democrats who vote with Republicans on financial matters. These interests have given Barack Obama $42,285,749, John McCain $34,036,462, John Kerry $18,135,477, Chuck Schumer $17,720,436, Chris Dodd $14,016,862, Joe Lieberman $10,114,346, Dick Shelby $5,887,130, Miss McConnell $5,338,828, Max Baucus $4,955,337, Lamar Alexander $4,944,975, Harry Reid $4,842,318, Charlie Rangel $4,826,590, Eric Cantor $4,458,585, Spencer Bachus $4,450,324, Bob Menendez $4,292,622, Johnny Isakson $4,251,233, Mark Kirk $4,153,094... all public officials in a position to protect their interests, all public officials who did protect their interests.

Yesterday Ryan Grim reported on a new poll that shows, "by a double-digit margin, voters want Congress to amend the Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United that allows unlimited corporate spending on elections." Donna Edwards has authored the Amendment and both John Kerry and Max Baucus are pushing it forward in the Senate.

Back to business: officially the Financial Sector only contributed $5,513,718 to Phil Gramm, the Texas senator who rid them of the unwelcome regulatory regime of Glass-Steagall, which allowed them to go on an uncontrollable rampage of greed and avarice. (Many of the names above-- particularly McConnell, Dodd and Alexander-- have conspired to make sure that the recent Wall Street reforms have still not righted that wrong.) But the $5,513,718 in bribes that Gramm took was diddly squat compared to the millions he got as a lobbyist as soon as he accomplished what they paid him to do and he went to work for them. But it isn't just Republicans like Gramm who pull that kind of revolving door criminality. Rahm Emanuel, nominally a Democrat, took $2,893,113 in direct bribes from the Financial Sector. But in between his Wall Street-friendly service at the White House-- where he forced through NAFTA-- and his stint in the leadership-- unexplainably out of the blue-- Rahm went to "work" as a "banker" for a few months and walked away with $16.2 million.

I wouldn't bet on any of the higher ups going to prison, not the banksters, not Gramm, not Emanuel... none of them. Maybe some poor schnooks who went along for the ride and got sloppy the way Duke Cunningham and Bernie Madoff did. No one else.

It's important that everyone associated with George Mason U. suffer the stigma of the Koch Bros.' Mercatus Center

At the intersection of far-right ideological wackitude and stinking right-wing corruption, why should we be surprised to find the wife of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, Wendy Gramm? Our Wendy, subject of an astonishing accusation concerning her tenure as CFTC chair, "is listed as a distinguished senior scholar at George Mason University's [and the Koch brothers'] Mercatus Center."

by Ken

I don't want to keep writing about the wave of right-wing cash flooding the election any more than you want to keep reading about it. In fact, I started stockpiling new and cumulatively ever more horrifying links, which I just haven't had the heart to write about. But there's one piece I don't think we can pass over. Kate Zernike's Tuesday NYT report, "Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead," attracted a fair amount of attention, but not nearly enough, I think. It lays out the gridwork of the once-ridiculed Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Here's just the tip of what she reported:

A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.

Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.” . . .

Koch Industries, a Wichita-based energy and manufacturing conglomerate run by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, operates a foundation that finances political advocacy groups, but tax law protects those groups from having to disclose much about what they do and who contributes. . . .

The Koch network meets twice a year to plan and expand its efforts — as the letter says, “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” . . .

The Kochs insist on strict confidentiality surrounding the California meetings, which are entitled “Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Free Enterprise and Prosperity.” The letter advises participants that it is closed to the public, including the news media, and admonishes them not to post updates or information about the meeting on the Web, blogs, social media or traditional media, and to “be mindful of the security and confidentiality of your meeting notes and materials.” . . .

There's an increasingly serious question as to what even the best efforts of policy-making and communication (not to be confused with what the Obama administration and congressional leaders have actually done) might accomplish against a corporate oligarchy determined not just to retake control of the country, but to assert that control to an extent without parallel in the modern American era. This is roughly the ground I covered, or re-covered, in my post last night, referencing among other sources Bill Moyers's extraordinary speech at the 40th-anniversary gala of Common Cause, including his heroic evocation of Theodore Roosevelt's exhortation:

It is not a partisan issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a great moral issue. If we condone political theft, if we do not resent the kinds of wrong and injustice that injuriously affect the whole nation, not merely our democratic form of government but our civilization itself cannot endure.

I explained at the end of last night's post that what I really wanted to talk about was some of the specific ways the oligarchy is tightening its chokehold -- "this process of right-wing moguls spending huge quantities of money on ideology for profit." The specific case I had in mind was --

the billionaire Koch brothers' funding of a right-wing think tank, the Mercatus Institute, at a public university, Virginia's George Mason. I will be expressing the sincere hope that everyone connected with the once-reputable George Mason U be tarred with the brush of the Kochs' power-mongering corruption.

I think most of us have been aware in a general way that Mercatus has in a remarkably short time emerged as the most vocal and muscular of the extreme-right-wing think tanks, a role we might until fairly recently have attributed to the Cato Institute. A lot of gaps were filled in for many of us, and whole new areas of the right-wing financial network laid open to scrutiny, in Jane Mayer's still-indispensable New Yorker "reporter at large" survey, "Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama," of the Wichita-based Charles Koch's empire and sphere of influence. (David Koch, who's New York-based, seems to function mostly as a front man, burnishing the family name by spreading zillions of dollars to cultural and other charitable institutions.)

To appreciate not just the importance but the brilliance of Mercatus as the Koch's policy shop, we have to go back to Mayer (the boldface emphasis added):

In the mid-eighties, the Kochs provided millions of dollars to George Mason University, in Arlington, Virginia, to set up another think tank. Now known as the Mercatus Center, it promotes itself as "the world's premier university source for market-oriented ideas—bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems." Financial records show that the Koch family foundations have contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center, a nonprofit organization. "It's ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington," Rob Stein, the Democratic strategist, said. It is an unusual arrangement. "George Mason is a public university, and receives public funds," Stein noted. "Virginia is hosting an institution that the Kochs practically control."

The founder of the Mercatus Center is Richard Fink, formerly an economist. Fink heads Koch Industries' lobbying operation in Washington. In addition, he is the president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the president of the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, a director of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation, and a director and co-founder, with David Koch, of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

Fink, with his many titles, has become the central nervous system of the Kochtopus. He appears to have supplanted Ed Crane, the head of the Cato Institute, as the brothers' main political lieutenant. Though David remains on the board at Cato, Charles Koch has fallen out with Crane. Associates suggested to me that Crane had been insufficiently respectful of Charles's management philosophy, which he distilled into a book called "The Science of Success," and trademarked under the name Market-Based Management, or M.B.M. In the book, Charles recommends instilling a company's corporate culture with the competitiveness of the marketplace. Koch describes M.B.M. as a "holistic system" containing "five dimensions: vision, virtue and talents, knowledge processes, decision rights and incentives." A top Cato Institute official told me that Charles "thinks he's a genius. He's the emperor, and he's convinced he's wearing clothes." Fink, by contrast, has been far more embracing of Charles's ideas. (Fink, like the Kochs, declined to be interviewed.)

At a 1995 conference for philanthropists, Fink adopted the language of economics when speaking about the Mercatus Center's purpose. He said that grant-makers should use think tanks and political-action groups to convert intellectual raw materials into policy "products."

The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center "the most important think tank you've never heard of," and noted that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that President George W. Bush placed on a "hit list" had been suggested first by Mercatus scholars. Fink told the paper that the Kochs have "other means of fighting [their] battles," and that the Mercatus Center does not actively promote the company's private interests. But Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, who specializes in environmental issues, told me that "Koch has been constantly in trouble with the E.P.A., and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency." An environmental lawyer who has clashed with the Mercatus Center called it "a means of laundering economic aims." The lawyer explained the strategy: "You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank," which "hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders."

Mayer goes on to describe, as an example of the way having your own think tank can work, the successful efforts of economist-turned-Mercatus-hotshot Susan Dudley in conning the courts into overturning the EPA's 1997 move to reduce surface ozone ("a form of pollution caused, in part, by emissions from oil refineries") on the ground that the agency had "explicitly disregarded" the "possible health benefits of ozone." ("The EPA," Mayer says Dudley argued, "had not taken into account that smog-free skies would result in more cases of skin cancer. She projected that if pollution were controlled it would cause up to eleven thousand additional cases of skin cancer each year.")

Now, given the heavy concentration of energy businesses in Koch Industries, it's not surprising that Charles Koch (right) assigns a high priority to preventing any more meaningful environmental regulation and dismantling as much as possible of what exists. As Mayer also pointed out, though, energy isn't the only area of environmental degradation that's big business for Koch Industries. For example, its 2005 acquisition of Georgia-Pacific made it a leading producer of formaldehyde.

Koch’s corporate and political roles, however, may pose conflicts of interest. For example, at the same time that David Koch has been casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a “known carcinogen” in humans.

Scientists have long known that formaldehyde causes cancer in rats, and several major scientific studies have concluded that formaldehyde causes cancer in human beings—including one published last year by the National Cancer Institute, on whose advisory board Koch sits. The study tracked twenty-five thousand patients for an average of forty years; subjects exposed to higher amounts of formaldehyde had significantly higher rates of leukemia. These results helped lead an expert panel within the National Institutes of Health to conclude that formaldehyde should be categorized as a known carcinogen, and be strictly controlled by the government. Corporations have resisted regulations on formaldehyde for decades, however, and Koch Industries has been a large funder of members of Congress who have stymied the E.P.A., requiring it to defer new regulations until more studies are completed. . . .

David Koch did not recuse himself from the National Cancer Advisory Board, or divest himself of company stock, while his company was directly lobbying the government to keep formaldehyde on the market. (A board spokesperson said that the issue of formaldehyde had not come up.)

James Huff, an associate director at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the N.I.H., told me that it was “disgusting” for Koch to be serving on the National Cancer Advisory Board: “It’s just not good for public health. Vested interests should not be on the board.” He went on, “Those boards are very important. They’re very influential as to whether N.C.I. goes into formaldehyde or not. Billions of dollars are involved in formaldehyde.”

Harold Varmus, the director of the National Cancer Institute, knows David Koch from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, which he used to run. He said that, at Sloan-Kettering, “a lot of people who gave to us had large business interests. The one thing we wouldn’t tolerate in our board members is tobacco.” When told of Koch Industries’ stance on formaldehyde, Varmus said that he was “surprised.” . . .

There seems no end to the nasty businesses Koch Inidustries is heavily invested in, businesses that turn out to reap huge financial rewards for the humongous amounts of money its proprietor invests in the "charitable" side of his operations. Our friend A Siegel has gathered some relevant links on his Get Energy Smart Now blog. A post called "unKnown Koch Kourage" (lots of links onsite) begins:

Koch Industries … one of the wealthiest businesses in the world, privately owned by a far-right libertarian klan who are spending furiously to undermine the very concept of representative democracy. The Koch brothers have their hands (filthy) dirty in funding global warming denial efforts (with Koch funding skewing even Smithsonian museum halls into climate skeptic deceit), attacks on science that shows Koch businesses threatening Americans’ health, Koch efforts to dupe hundreds of thousands (millions) of outraged Americans into anti-Obama/anti-Democratic mania with funding of astro-turf groups like Americans For Prosperity, and have been funding (heavily) campaign efforts to even further open the floodgates to profiting off polluting the air we breathe and water we drink.

Koch Industries is (and the Koch Brothers are) one of the major funders behind Proposition 23 in California, which would seek to kill off California’s innovative approach to tackle climate change mitigation imperatives and opportunities. The all-out attack on Californians has created a serious backlash -- with investors, newspapers, politicians, and myriads of citizens reacting with strong outrage to opposed Prop 23. (Even to the extent that the fossil-foolish funders of Proposition 26, which should also be voted down, are trying to distance themselves from Proposition 23.) . . .

Americans for Prosperity, as Jane Mayer reported, "has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception." Although the Kochs have tried to deny that they're behind AFP, they're just kidding; the financial links have been well established, and Charles Koch doesn't give that kind of money to organizations he doesn't control. By all evidence, AFP is now the lobbying muscle of Koch's political organization -- having been created for that purpose, it appears, to take over from Citizens for a Sound Economy (which, Jane Mayer reported, "was accused of illegitimately throwing its weight behind Bush’s reëlection" in 2004) in much the way that the Mercatus Center think tank was spawned to take over the Koch-think role from the no-longer-favored Cato Institute.

Which brings us back to Mercatus, and a fairly eye-popping story that appeared in yesterday's Washington Post. David S. Hilzenrath reported that one of the two administrative law judges who presides over investor complaints at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), upon his recent retirement, made a request so extraordinary that, assuming it's all true (and I haven't seen any contradiction), still has my head spinning. He asked that the cases he still had pending await [sorry, I originally wrote "not await," turning the meaning upside-down!] the appointment of a new administrative judge rather than being turned over to the other current one.

In a notice recently released by the CFTC, Painter said Judge Bruce Levine, his longtime colleague, had a secret agreement with a former Republican chairwoman of the agency to stand in the way of investors filing complaints with the agency.

"On Judge Levine's first week on the job, nearly twenty years ago, he came into my office and stated that he had promised Wendy Gramm, then Chairwoman of the Commission, that we would never rule in a complainant's favor," Painter wrote. "A review of his rulings will confirm that he fulfilled his vow," Painter wrote.

Painter continued: "Judge Levine, in the cynical guise of enforcing the rules, forces pro se complainants to run a hostile procedural gauntlet until they lose hope, and either withdraw their complaint or settle for a pittance, regardless of the merits of the case."

The CFTC oversees trading of the nation's most important commodities, including oil, gold and cotton. The agency's administrative law judges handle cases in which investors allege that trading professionals or financial firms violated the rules.

I imagine the mention of Wendy Gramm's name got the attention of lots of DWT readers. Yes, we're talking about that Wendy Gramm, the wife of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm -- two of the most ideologically whacked-out and corrupt people to infest the federal government. But it gets even more interesting.

Wendy Gramm is listed as a distinguished senior scholar at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, but a spokeswoman for the center, Catherine Behan, said Gramm is not active there.

Gramm was head of the CFTC just before president Bill Clinton took office. She has been criticized by Democrats for helping firms such as Goldman Sachs and Enron gain influence over the commodity markets. After leaving the CFTC, she joined Enron's board.

Ohmygosh, we even get an Enron linkage!

For the record:

[Wendy] Gramm could not be reached for comment. Her husband, former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), said he would pass along a message but added, "I doubt she's going to want to get involved in this."

Sounds like an ace prediction, senator. But don't you think she's now kind of "involved in this"?

Now I have every reason to believe that there are many fine people at George Mason University doing serious work in the areas of education and all the other things a major university does. It hardly seems fair to tar them all with the brush of Kochian cooptation. Unfortunately for them, however, that's just what their university leadership did to them when it not only took the money but allowed its name -- the name of a public university, remember -- to be pasted onto a think tank whose orientation is entirely ideological and political.

Well, maybe not entirely ideological and political. As I think we've seen, where the Kochs are concerned, ideology is big business. Really big business.

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Rand Paul, Ron Johnson And Sharron Angle Are Clowns But Toomey Is Just Plain Dangerous

If you had to point to one event that led most disastrously to the financial collapse the economy is still suffering from, it would have to be the repeal in 1999 of the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass Steagall), passed at the height of the Great Depression to rein in the kinds of speculation which caused said Depression. Notorious Wall Street corporate whore-- and soon after a major banking executive who made millions-- Phil Gramm (R-TX), introduced the toxic legislation and shepherded it through the Senate, where it passed 54-44, not a single Republican voting NO, 3 of whom are running for election again in November: Sam Brownback (R-KS), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and John McCain (R-AZ). All Senate Democrats up for reelection in November opposed it: Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Harry Reid (D-NV), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)... even Blanche Lincoln (D-AR).

Radical right former derivatives trader Pat Toomey wasn't in the Senate then-- and hopefully never will be-- but he was in the House, where he made a speech in support of his roll-model, Phil Gramm. The speech (above) was in support of credit default swaps, the risky derivatives that contributed so mightily to the financial system meltdown.

In the speech, Toomey said of the legislation that eventually repealed the regulatory framework of Glass-Steagall: “I am particularly pleased that this bill includes an important provision regarding certain derivative transactions, especially credit and equity swaps. These somewhat obscure products are actually very important tools used by businesses, including financial service firms, to manage a variety of risks that they face. This bill reaffirms that swap contracts are legitimate bank products that can be executed and booked in banks and are adequately regulated by and will continue to be regulated by banking supervisors.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer jumped on the story yesterday and tried explaining it in a way average-Joe-and-Jane-voters will understand, running the video on their website, and pointing out that "Toomey has tried to distance himself from derivatives, which he once traded, but video of a 2000 House floor debate found by Democrats shows him advocating for more de-regulation of the exotic financial products."

Toomey urged the House to pass the Commodities Exchange Act because, he said, it would "eliminate most of the cloud of legal and regulatory uncertainty that has shadowed" derivatives since their invention. In fact, he went on to express his hope that the Senate would tweak the bill to "allow greater flexibility in the electronic trading" of over-the-counter derivatives.

The End Of Tax Havens? Not Until The Far Right Is Wiped Off The Face Of The Earth

Well, I wish I could report that the primary author of the worldwide economic meltdown, political hack-turned-Swiss bankster, Phil Gramm, has been arrested and carted off to prison but... rarely is there that much justice in the world. Instead we find out that the company he worked for and helped to rip off the U.S. government to the tune of billions of dollars, UBS, has agreed to pay a fine of $780 million for "facilitating" American criminals-- wealthy corporate ones-- avoid taxes on billions of dollars. And the first of UBS' crooked clients, Steven Rubinstein, has been arrested. Set-ups like UBS-- which was caught smuggling diamonds in toothpaste tubes for rich Americans clients-- hold as much as $10 trillion shielded from the tax man.

The arrest is the first of an American client of UBS, which has been under criminal investigation for helping scores of wealthy Americans evade taxes through secret offshore accounts that went unreported to the Internal Revenue Service. It signals that federal authorities are making good on a promise to pursue American clients suspected of tax evasion, and in some cases to make indictments.

UBS admitted in February to conspiracy to defraud the I.R.S. by helping scores of wealthy Americans hide nearly $20 billion overseas.

The bank paid $780 million to settle the charges, but it remains under investigation, as do its American clients. The admission has helped to open the world of offshore banking and dealt a death blow to Swiss financial secrecy.

But Swiss banks, which, like UBS, helped the German Nazis pillage Europe-- and get away with it for decades after the war was won-- are hardly the only places where those eager to avoid anyone knowing about their income-- from drug deals and Third World dictators to garden variety Republican tax cheats. UBS alone was working for 52,000 American crooks.

You may have heard me complaining this week about how dismayed I was that Obama didn't seem to be on board with the Franco-German regulatory demands, one of which was to shut down the off shore tax havens. Under immense pressure from the wealthiest families in the country not to cooperate, it looks like Obama has bucked the establishment after all and agreed to cracking down on tax cheats. I'll believe it when I see it though.

For as long as I've been alive make believe countries like Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco, not to mention Vatican City, the worst of them all, have been functioning as what is known in international law enforcement as uncooperative tax havens. More recently they've been joined by a gaggle of island mini-states in the Caribbean, like Antigua, and the Pacific, like Vanuatu, all dedicated to hiding tainted money for wealthy clients. The racket accounts for 13% of Switzerland's GDP and even a higher proportion for the organized crime principality of Liechtenstein.

The G-20 has decided to "blacklist" uncooperative tax havens and possibly even apply sanctions. Of the 4 named as the world's worst, two immediately promised to mend their ways, the Philippines and Uruguay. That leaves Costa Rica and Labuan (part of Malaysia) on the top of the list of rogue states. It's unclear exactly what's going on with other shady financial centers, like Switzerland, Luxembourg, Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iceland, the Cayman Islands, Vatican City, and the 2 British nests of tax evasion, the Isle of Man and Jersey.

The Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations at an economic summit here Thursday agreed to end "an era of banking secrecy," rooting out hundreds of billions of dollars estimated to be hidden from tax authorities in offshore banks. Faced with the prospect of penalties making it harder for their companies to do business overseas, Austria pledged to comply "without delay." The Philippines swore to take "the necessary steps" and Monaco promised to be off the list by "by the end of the year."

...The list, published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group of wealthy nations, in coordination with the G-20, singled out four countries as the worst offenders: Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay. Another 38 countries and territories, including the Cayman Islands, Panama, Bahamas and Liechtenstein, were listed as less serious offenders.

Billionaires and the shills who make a living by scraping and bowing before them and faithfully serving their interests-- like the Republican Party and GOP front groups like the American Heritage Institute, Fox News and the Cato Institute-- are hardly giving up and will fight a battle to persuade gullible Americans that tax cheats are true patriots. This video by Republican Party astroturf group, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation explains, with a straight face, how absolutely fabulous tax havens are. This isn't a spoof; it's real (I swear):

Sometimes A Little Obstructionism Can Be Just What The Doctor Ordered-- Bernie Sanders Does The Right Thing

Gary Gensler points to the man who will save us from more Phil Gramm economics

Peter Orszag, Obama's Director of OMB (Office of Management and Budget) is looking more and more like his best economic advisor. Some of Obama's other finance and economic advisors... well, I'm still worried about Geithner and Summers, who seem too predisposed to think of themselves as the representatives of capital or, even worse, Wall Street. These people have gotten Obama into some hot water and are jeopardizing his program-- and our country. The other day a friend of mine told me she had been telling her family members that Geithner really is a good Treasury Secretary but that what he needs is some media training. I suggested she stop telling her family and get word to the administration. Turns out she has; her brother is an undersecretary of the Treasury. Judging by Geither's performance in front of the House Financial Services Committee yesterday, he hasn't acted on her advice yet.

Meanwhile, though, one of the Senate's most trustworthy members, Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has put a hold on Obama's nominee to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Gary Gensler, another Goldman Sachs author of the economic catastrophe that the country was dragged into. Here's the problem, straight from Senator Sanders' website:

“While Mr. Gensler clearly is an intelligent and knowledgeable person, I cannot support his nomination. Mr. Gensler worked with Senators Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of A.I.G. and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.  He supported Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which allowed banks like Citigroup to become ‘too big to fail.’ He worked to deregulate electronic energy trading, which led to the downfall of Enron and the spike in energy prices.  At this moment in our history, we need an independent leader who will help create a new culture in the financial marketplace and move us away from the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior which has caused so much harm to our economy.”

Did I mention that Senator Sanders, like Chuck Schumer, went to my high school, James Madison?


UPDATE: Bernie on Olbermann

He was on last night explaing the power of the special interests and Republican obstructionism:

OK, Pandit Rhymes With Bandit But What Does Boehner Rhyme With? How The Banksters And Their Congressional Shills Destroyed The Economy

Yes, yes, the CEO of CitiGroup has a name, "Pandit," that is only one letter away from what would describe his line of work. But the problem with the banksters goes beyond Vikram Pandit and beyond CitiGroup. Basically the finance/insurance/real estate sector invested around $6 billion dollars ($2,215,520,643 in legalized bribes, or what our elite encourages us to call "political donations") and the balance in indirect bribes or "lobbying." And although one of the worst and most corrupt handmaidens of these banksters-- Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH- $3,045,809 in bankster bribes)-- insists there was not only no quid pro quo that could describe the billions spent by banksters and the deregulation of the financial industry that allowed them to loot the economy, but that the financial industry wasn't even deregulated! Watch Keith Olbermann explain exactly why he named Boehner "Worst Person In The World" yesterday and then we'll get more into the specifics (all you need to watch is the first 35 seconds of the clip):



Wikipedia has a decent history of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, which was meant to allow the financial sector to modernize all the way back to the roaring twenties, the pre-FDR era of no regulation. It repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which had kept investment banks, commercial banks and insurance all separate-- the opposite of what outfits like CitiGroup, Bank of America and, of course, A.I.G. are all about. See, money well spent. Well, well spent for the thieves and crooks who manage these firms, although an unmitigated disaster for the owners (shareholders) and for society at large and for the economy, but Republican policy is always premised on the corporate managers-- the ones who hand out the money and goodies-- and never on the stockholders or, God forbid, on society at large. Why blame this on Republicans when Democrats were complicit in this as well and took nearly as much in bribery from the banksters as Boehner and the Republicans?

Glad you asked. Let's start with a look at the legislative history of the bill (straight from wikipedia):

The banking industry had been seeking the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act since the 1980s, if not earlier. In 1987 the Congressional Research Service prepared a report which explored the case for preserving Glass-Steagall and the case against preserving the act.

The bills were introduced in the U.S. Senate by Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa). The third lawmaker associated with the bill was Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-Virginia), Chairman of the House Commerce Committee from 1995 to 2001. On May 6, 1999, the Senate passed the bills by a 54-44 vote along party lines (53 Republicans and one Democrat in favor; 44 Democrats opposed). On July 20, the House passed a different version of the bill on an uncontested and uncounted voice vote. When the two chambers could not agree on a joint version of the bill, the House voted on July 30 by a vote of 241-132 (R 58-131; D 182-1) to instruct its negotiators to work for a law which ensured that consumers enjoyed medical and financial privacy as well as "robust competition and equal and non-discriminatory access to financial services and economic opportunities in their communities" (i.e., protection against exclusionary redlining). The bill then moved to a joint conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act and address certain privacy concerns; the conference committee then finished its work by the beginning of November. On November 4, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90-8 and by the House 362-57. This legislation was signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.

Let's look at the vote on May 6, 1999 on Gramm's bill, S. 900 and at who voted for and who voted against late in the evening of that fateful day. Illinois Republican Peter Fitzgerald couldn't bring himself to support it and voted "present," while every other Republican voted in favor of the bill that has cost the American taxpayers trillions of dollars-- but has worked out well for banksters and politicians. Conservative Democrat Fritz Hollings of South Carolina was the only Democrat to support the bill. So just looking at current members of the Senate who were voting that day in 1999, we have 21 Republicans who should be help very accountable: Robert Bennett (UT-$1,915,892), Kit Bond (MO, retiring- $3,308,038), Sam Brownback (KS, who is about to retire from the Senate and run for governor- $1,350,769), Jim Bunning (KY- $2,447,635), Thad Cochran (MS- $662,934), Susan Collins (ME- $2,239,863), Mike Crapo (ID- $1,397,092), Mike Enzi (WY- $1,089,594), Chuck Grassley (IA- $2,223,630), Judd Gregg (NH, retiring- $1,077,949), Orrin Hatch (UT- $2,366,143), Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX, retring from the Senate to run for governor- $4,685,238), Jon Kyl (AZ- $3,708,608), Dick Lugar (IN- $2,484,279), John McCain (AZ- $32,423,813), Miss McConnell (KY- $5,013,778), Pat Roberts (KS- $1,602,886), Jeff Sessions (AL- $2,138,385), Dick Shelby (AL- $4,384,492), Olympia Snowe (ME- $1,676,167), and Arlen Specter (PA- $5,753,310). I've added in the amount of bribes each one has taken from the finance/insurance/real estate sector and I've bolded the names of the criminal co-conspirators who will have to face the voters next year.

In way of comparison, the still-serving Democrats who voted against this travesty of a rip-off in 1999 are Dan Akaka (HI), Max Baucus (MT), Evan Bayh (IN), Jeff Bingaman (NM), Barbara Boxer (CA), Robert Byrd (WV), Kent Conrad (ND), Chris Dodd (CT), Byron Dorgan (ND), Dick Durbin (IL), Russ Feingold (WI), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Tom Harkin (IA), Dan Inouye (HI), Tim Johnson (SD), Ted Kennedy (MA), John Kerry (MA), Herb Kohl (WI), Mary Landrieu (LA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Pat Leahy (VT), Carl Levin (MI), Joe Lieberman (then a Democrat- CT), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Patty Murray (WA), Jack Reed (RI), Harry Reid (NV), Jay Rockefeller (WV), Chuck Schumer (NY), and Ron Wyden (OR). So even the most conservative pro-corporate Democrats like Bayh, Landrieu and Baucus voted against the bill, along with the Democrats who were sucking up the biggest donations from Wall Street and the banksters, Chuck Schumer ($12,834,746), Joe Lieberman ($9,981,924) and Chris Dodd ($13,238,806). Every one of the Republicans listed above should be defeated for selling out the country.

The House version was introduced by James Leach and co-sponsored by a batch of the most corrupt Republicans the House has ever seen, many of whom are gone from government now, although only one, Bob Ney, ever found his way into a prison cell. The co-sponsors still hanging on to their seats are Spencer Bachus (AL- $3,789,474), Michael Castle (DE- $2,448,112), Peter King (NY- $1,385,668), and Steve LaTourette (OH- $1,271,387). These Republicans are all on the House Financial Services Committee, all have been paid off far, far grander than your average House member-- senators get over a million; few House members do) and all were loud defenders of A.I.G. and the banksters last week at the hearings-- and each, of course, voted against taxing the bonuses. The final bill itself passed the House 343-86, 69 Democrats and 16 Republicans voting no. Boehner, of course, voted in favor of passage-- as did virtually all the senior leadership of the GOP: Tom DeLay (TX), Denny Hastert (IL), Roy Blunt (MO), David Dreier (CA), Jerry Lewis (CA), John Shadegg (AZ), Spencer Bachus (AL), Paul Ryan (WI), as well as greedy and avaricious backbenchers happy to go along and sell out their constituents for the loot the banksters were happy to send their way, like Mary Bono (CA), Ken Calvert (CA), Frank Wolf (VA), Brian Bilbray (CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Duke Cunningham (currently in a federal penitentiary on unrelated corruption charges), Zach Wamp (TN), Dana Rohrabacher (CA), Richard Burr (NC- now a senator but still selling out working families at every opportunity, just like then House members/current senators Jim DeMint, Lindsey Graham, David Diapers Vitter, Roger Wicker, Johnny Isakson, Susan Collins and Saxby Chambliss) and current embedded GOP propagandist for MSNBC, Joe Scarborough (FL).

Among the House members who voted "no" to this biggest con-gressional heist ever were progressive Democrats Barney Frank (MA), Henry Waxman (CA), Jesse Jackson (IL), Bernie Sanders (VT), Maxine Waters (CA), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Sherrod Brown (OH), George Miller (CA), Lynn Woolsey (CA), John Lewis (GA), Jerry Nadler (NY), Dave Obey (WI), Rosa DeLauro (CT), Jan Schakowsky (IL). Very few Republicans realized how disastrous this bill would be but, credit where credit is due, Ron Paul (TX), Tom Tancredo (CO) and Ray LaHood (IL) went up against the Republican leadership and voted against it. (Nancy Pelosi didn't vote that day and Hoyer voted yes.)

So... that said, back to Pandit and his fellow banksters. He and the crook running Bank of America, Kenneth Lewis, "both issued memos to employees criticizing a tax that would make it hard to retain workers. And J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon reassured his 200 top executives in a conference call that the bank is actively engaging Washington on the matter."

At BofA, Mr. Lewis said his "first concern is about basic fairness to our associates." He said the Charlotte-based bank is "part of the solution for the financial crisis" through its acquisitions of distressed Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch.

Mr. Lewis called the proposed bonus tax "terribly unfair." Many employees, he said, "had nothing to do with creating today's problems," and "I am concerned about our ability to retain some of out most valuable" employees. The bank is in the process of eliminating 30,000 to 35,000 positions across the company. "None of you," he told employees, "deserve to have even more compensation taken away."

"Terribly unfair?" To make the taxpayers pay them hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses because the banks they worked out failed us in the pursuit of unconscionable avarice and a general feeling of entitlement? Piano wire might not have been such a terrible idea after all (metaphorically speaking).

Until we have real campaign finance reform, we have this instead. And it costs American taxpayers FAR MORE than if we paid for our own elections directly:

McCain Campaign Refuses To Address Palin Lies About Obama "Palling Around With Terrorists"

CNN bends so far over backwards to present all sides, that they often-- very often-- will state completely made up propaganda from the GOP and give it an equal footing to objective reality. It's part of the reason I bade my longtime station adieu and migrated to MSNBC earlier this year. But today CNN did yeoman's work in debunking the Lipsticked Pitbull's latest Obama smear, the Bill Ayer's nonsense. Keep in mind that Obama was 8 years old when Ayer's was a member of the Weather Underground and that he long ago denounced Ayers' violence.

Ace McCain, of course, is too chickenshit to repeat this whopper himself so he sends the hapless Mooselini of Wasilla out to repeat it while he hides away in one of his dozen homes and refuses to respond to questions from the press about why his campaign is rolling around in the gutter after promising the nation not to. Palin should still be in her remedial campaign classes learning basic geography so she stops mixing up Afghanistan and Mexico instead of running around the country spreading her lies, poisonous racism and divisiveness on behalf of Senator Chickenshit's increasingly hopeless and desperate campaign to capture the White House.

Harold Meyerson makes a good point in tomorrow's Washington Post about McCain's new all-negative all the time campaign strategy:

... [I]f the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru.

Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.

The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself.

The problem with this exercise, of course, is that Gramm's relationship to McCain is not comparable to the relationships that Ayers or Wright have with Obama. The idea that either Ayers or Wright would have any impact on the workings of an Obama administration is nonsensical. But Gramm and McCain do have an enduring political and economic alliance. McCain chaired Gramm's short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain's current effort. McCain has called Gramm one of his leading economic counselors and has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become McCain's Treasury secretary if he's elected.

CNN hoping viewers want to see the actual truth about Palin's lies and smears:



UPDATE: AND WHAT ABOUT PALIN'S PALLING AROUND WITH SECESSIONISTS?

The McCain campaign, through their happy fool Palin, has accused Obama, who was 8 years old when Bill Ayers was a Weatherman, of "palling around with terrorists. McCain himself actually has palled around with terrorists-- right wing kooks and criminals like G. Gordon Liddy-- and Palin more than palled around with terrorists; she has been heavily involved with a militia group and even married one! Would she and McCain pardon Terry Nichols, the right-wing Oklahoma City bomber? He has the same world view they do. Dave Neiwert brings up a great point at Orcinus this morning: Palin is throwing stones from a glass house.

Notably, she nominated one of her local militiamen/John Birch Society types in Wasilla to serve on the city's planning board. This is a big deal to "Patriot" folks, who consider local planning and zoning ordinances to be among the chief signs of creeping socialism, and fight them tooth and nail. Had the Wasilla Council not balked at her nomination, the man no doubt would have wreaked havoc with the city's planning laws and their enforcement.

She also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this character.

And then there were Palin's notable and extended dalliances with the radical secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. In 1992, its members largely supported former militiaman James "Bo" Gritz for president. It has over the years been associated with promoting paranoid "New World Order" conspiracy theories.

Did McCain Learn Anything From His Keating Five Experience?

Early in his congressional career McCain was taking bribes-- to the tune of $112,000 in campaign contributions-- from Charles Keating, a family friend and crooked banker for whom he was caught strong-arming federal regulators. Eventually McCain's interference on behalf of his pal Keating-- who was also involved in very lucrative business deals with McCain's gangster (former jailbird) father-in-law and with his wife Cindy-- cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. You see, even if McCain didn't invent the Blackberry, he did invent the Savings and Loan scandal. At the time the McCains would regularly bundle off in one of Keating's private jets to his private retreat at Cat Cay in the Bahamas. Although right wing propagandists try to say McCain was "cleared," he wasn't. He was formally "admonished" by his colleagues on the very lax Senate Ethics Committee.

McCain calls his Keating Five experience "the worst mistake of my life," although God only knows how that stacks up to the torture in Vietnam he never stops talking about. But the real question is... what did he learn from being caught in the clutches of a crook like Keating and barely escaping with his political career intact? Apparently it wasn't to stop taking bribes in return for political favors and it wasn't to stop associating with unsavory characters who are eager to get at the taxpayers' money. What he learned was to stop going to the Bahamas... Instead he goes to Bermuda to colelct money from Republican fat cats who shelter their wealth so they don't have to pay their fair share of taxes the way the rest of us do. In fact, the head of the McCain economic brain trust-- his probable first choice to run the economy if McCain-Palin is victorious in November-- Phil Gramm is a senior vice president and lobbyist for a shady Swiss bank that is under investigation for helping rich folksshelter money in Bermuda. His clients may be whining about other things-- like the cost of yachts and cays-- but not about taxes.