How Much Do Voters Care About Honesty And Trustworthiness? We'll Soon Find Out

Me The People by Nancy Ohanian

In his Washington Post column yesterday, Greg Sargent explained why evidence that Trump knew of the whistleblower complaint when he unfroze military aid to Ukraine is devastating evidence against him, reducing his absurd "I want nothing-- no quid pro quo" defense to smoking ruins. No doubt the Judiciary Committee members-- think Ted Lieu, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline, Joe Neguse...-- were thinking about this yesterday as they prepared for next week's impeachment hearings. Those are some of the sharpest mind's in Congress. Will the eyes of the country be focused on the hearings? Yesterday, the L.A. Times reported that "more than 70 million viewers watched some portion of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry."

Trump likes screeching at his bund rallies that no one was watching. He wishes! "Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC saw significant year-over-year increases in audience levels for November. MSNBC’s daytime viewing levels for November were the highest in its 23-year history."

Viewing of live gavel-to-gavel coverage that aired on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the three major broadcast networks peaked on its opening day, Nov. 13, when it reached an average of 13.1 million viewers. By the fifth session on Nov. 21, the audience leveled off to 11.3 million, comparable to what a top-rated non-sports entertainment program draws in prime time. Fox News was the most-watched network each day.

Gym Jordan by Nancy Ohanian

The figures reflect the average number of people who watched the coverage at any time. The total number of viewers who tuned in-- determined by Nielsen as those who watched at least six minutes of coverage over five days-- came in at 70.8 million. The number does not include C-SPAN or PBS stations that carried the coverage.

The daytime impeachment hearings also gave a boost to cable news opinion shows in prime time. Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.4 million viewers in November, a record high for the program. Hannity also reached an all-time high with 3.6 million viewers. Fox News averaged 2.7 million viewers in prime time, up 15% from November 2018, a high-rated month that included coverage of the midterm elections. MSNBC was up 12% to 2.06 million viewers as The Rachel Maddow Show had its best month since January with an average of 3.3 million viewers. CNN was down 11% to 999,000 viewers.

Many more people also watched some portion of the impeachment hearings online, with all the networks citing a lift in traffic. NBC News counted 9.6 million video “starts” for impeachment coverage across its streaming platforms, which include Twitter and Facebook. CNN said digital viewing boosted its November audience by 3.4%, the largest lift the network has ever seen.

The new SSRS poll released yesterday by CNN asked voted how important the impeachment inquiry be in their vote for president:

• extremely important- 27%
• very important- 19%
• moderately important- 12%
• not that important- 39%

Along with the 2% who have no opinion, that 39% is the pool from which concentration camp guards could be drawn were Trump to win a second term.

That same poll asked all voters regardless of party if Trump is honest and trustworthy. 36% said he is, 62% say he isn't. On top of that, Pro-Publica just published a devastating exposé on Trump's tax swindling. "Documents," wrote Heather Vogell, "show the president’s company reported different numbers-- higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials-- for Trump’s signature building," part of a pattern Trump has long engaged in.

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.

In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a “very significant difference,” said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.

...Trump had much to gain by showing a high occupancy rate to lenders in 2012: He refinanced his share of Trump Tower that year and obtained a $100 million loan on favorable terms.

...Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,” according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.

The diverging numbers match a pattern described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, in congressional testimony this year. Cohen said Trump at times inflated assets’ value in documents submitted to lenders in an effort to secure loans. In reports to tax officials, Cohen testified, Trump would lower the value to reduce what he owed.

The focus on Trump’s business and personal financial records has been particularly intense of late. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has subpoenaed a wide array of Trump financial records to investigate claims that the Trump Organization falsified records of hush-money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she and Trump had a sexual encounter. (He has denied the affair.)

Congressional lawmakers are seeking Trump’s personal tax returns, as well as other financial information, as part of their investigation into potential foreign influence on the presidency. Two federal courts have affirmed lawmakers’ right to enforce the subpoenas, and Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jail to the chief? What do you think? So far, no former American president has ever been thrown in prison. Of course, we've never had one as crooked as Trump, have we? I think it's time, primarily because he deserves it-- but also as a warning to future presidents. We don't elect kings... and we won't accept candidates conspiring with foreign powers to meddle in our elections.

Which Candidates Can Working Families Most Trust In 2020?

I spend a lot of time on the phone with congressional candidates trying to figure out who to believe and who not to believe. How progressive are they? How courageous? How capable? It didn't take much of a discussion to figure out AOC was going to be a super-star if she ever beat Joe Crowley, which seemed impossible to everyone (but her and her posse). But she beat him-- and she's a superstar. Sometimes we get disappointed. I talked so much about how great Jared Golden (ME) would be... but did he ever turn out to be a dud! I got that all wrong. Rashida Tlaib-- somehow just tasting her mother's cooking-- plus glimpsing at her record in the Michigan state legislature-- made it clear exactly what kind of a congresswoman she was going to be. And she is! It makes it so much easier when candidates are already where they have to be and don't need persuading.

Yesterday, Jeremy Gantz noted in his piece for In These Times, Here's Where The 2020 Candidates Stand On Labor, that "Democrats have a history of empty promises when it comes to bolstering unions and workers' rights." Amen, brother! He then asks-- and tries to answer-- Who can be trusted in 2020? He noted that "During the primaries, Democratic presidential candidates have always made a point of showing up at union halls and playing up ties to working people: It’s one of the first pages in the Democratic political playbook. Biden officially started his campaign at a Teamsters banquet hall in Pittsburgh, announcing he is a 'union man.' Warren kicked off her campaign at the site of the historic 1912 textile workers’ Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass. Klobuchar and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) mention union members in their extended family while speaking to union audiences."

But historically, what comes next is what Gantz calls "a pivot to the center during the general election. After fighting for union endorsements during primary season, the Democratic nominee zeroes in on swing voters, taking union voters for granted even as unions send a door-to-door army to get out the vote. Labor has been a core part of the Democratic Party’s coalition going back to the Great Depression." Does anyone have to guess that that will be "union man" Joe Biden? But who can working families actually trust and believe?

Eighty years later, in 2016, something changed. Donald Trump had the best GOP presidential candidate performance with union households since 1984, trailing Hillary Clinton by only 8 percentage points. In 2012, Mitt Romney trailed Barack Obama in this demographic by 18 points. All of which raises the question: Are Democrats losing labor as a reliable constituency? Dems can still count on union endorsements, to be sure. But with Trump attacking from the left on free trade, support from white male union members-- who still make up a plurality of the movement’s members-- is up for grabs.

This uncertainty was born of neglect: Since the 1970s, as the country’s industrial base withered and unionbusting flourished, Democrats in Washington have done little to reverse the labor movement’s decline. Under Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, union money and organizing muscle helped deliver control of Congress and the White House to Democrats. Each time, the party failed to pass labor law reform that would have empowered workers and bolstered the movement.

In 2016, the party paid an electoral price for their waywardness. This time around, will candidates do more than pander during the primaries? Public support for labor is at a 15-year high, especially among young people, women and college graduates. Nearly half a million workers were part of a strike or lockout last year-- the highest figure since 1986. Might we finally see Democrats place unions at the heart of their political agenda? It’s far-fetched, but conceivable. Candidates know they can no longer take union votes for granted.

More significantly, the center of gravity on labor and economic issues has moved left.

“There’s this sense now that we have a big problem of inequality and capitalism run amok,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. “That’s clear on the Democratic side. But what is the solution? Is it about taxation? Or is it vitalization of the union movement? That latter idea has become more understood.”

In some ways, candidates’ rush to the left makes it harder to discern just how deeply committed they are to strengthening unions. Everyone always says they want to rebuild the middle class. Who really wants to rebuild the labor movement?

If you zero in on the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) ACT, the answer appears to be: most of the leading candidates. Co-sponsored by 40 senators and 100 members of the House, the PRO Act offers a litany of labor law reforms. The larger context here is that the United States has among the weakest workers’ rights protections of any industrialized country-- on par with Myanmar, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Over the past 40 years, employers have aggressively fought unionization through (perfectly legal) tactics like “captive audience” meetings, when workers must sit and listen to anti-union presentations, or the (sometimes legal) firing of striking workers.

The PRO Act would strengthen the right to organize and strike by, among other things, eliminating so-called right-to-work laws, banning permanent strike replacements, legalizing secondary boycotts and picketing, and broadening the definition of “employee” to include many current independent contractors. Compared to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), the reform law pushed by the labor movement during the 2008 election cycle that ultimately died in the Senate, the PRO Act is a progressive smorgasbord. But the PRO Act does fall short of EFCA in one significant regard: While EFCA enabled workers to organize through a majority sign-up process (“card check”), the PRO Act only requires card check if an employer is found to have violated labor law during a failed union election. Every current senator running for president backs the bill.

With multiple leading candidates able to point to a history of support for unions, today’s Democratic field stands in stark contrast to the 2016 primary with its binary choice of establishment liberal Hillary Clinton versus change agent Bernie Sanders. Nearly all unions endorsed Clinton, many early on, rankling rank-and-file Sanders supporters. This time around, unions are in no hurry to back a candidate-- only the International Association of Fire Fighters has done so (Biden got the nod). The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association and others have unveiled new endorsement approaches to more deeply engage both candidates and members (and, one assumes, to close any perceived distance between the wishes of the rank-and-file and executive boards).

“There’s intensity for a bunch of candidates this time,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. The union endorsed Clinton in July 2015 and poured $1.7 million into her campaign and pro-Clinton PACs.

Heartburn from the calamitous 2016 election appears to be giving the union endorsement process a dose of democracy. As millions of union members decide who to back, they’ll be wrestling with the question of which candidate would most effectively fight for their interests. Because the leading Democratic candidates are staking out similar ground to make their case, it’s important to look at the candidates’ records, how central the union movement is to their theory of change, and what unilateral actions they would be willing to embrace as president (should Congress fail to act).

This much is clear across the Democratic primary field: Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 and taxing the rich have become table stakes. All the leading candidates-- Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas), Sanders, Warren-- support both. Beyond those two issues, the top of the field is replete with differences big and small.

It’s easy to sort out where candidates stand on a raft of proposed legislation. It’s harder to know what they would try to do for the labor movement if all those proposals become moot-- which will be the case should the GOP hold the Senate.

Biden is an old pro at signaling he’s a fighter for the union cause, but it’s hard to find an example of him sticking his neck out for workers. In May, Biden held a fundraiser at the Los Angeles home of a board member of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, a subsidiary of healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente. The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which has a longstanding dispute with Kaiser in California over mental health staffing levels, called on Biden to cancel the event. They never heard back, says NUHW President Sal Rosselli. NUHW members protested outside the house, but Biden “went into the event and didn’t even talk to our folks,” Rosselli says. “That’s very disappointing.”

Biden also didn’t endear himself to the labor movement by voting for NAFTA and supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, both of which unions opposed. Biden did support EFCA as a senator but has not committed to the PRO Act, and his campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

In contrast, the leading presidential candidates from the Senate have been out front on labor law reform. Sanders has been pushing the Workplace Democracy Act (WDA) for decades (beginning as a congressman in 1992), which is co-sponsored by Booker, Harris and Warren. The WDA can be seen as a forerunner of the PRO Act; it also legalizes secondary boycotting, stops companies from delaying a first contract with workers and gives bargaining rights to many workers who are currently classified as independent contractors. (Unlike the PRO Act, it would let all workers unionize via card check as a matter of course.) Sanders’ method has been persistence: He reintroduced the WDA throughout the 1990s in the House, then brought new versions into the Senate in 2015 and 2018. As with other issues, such as Medicare for All, the Democratic Party has now caught up to him.

It took Sanders years to earn the backing of any national union. They didn’t flock to him when he first ran for Congress in 1988, but came around after he won congressional campaigns in the early 1990s. Today, Sanders remains as outspoken as ever about the power of unions-- they live at the heart of his agenda. “The trade union movement is the last line of defense against a corporate agenda that not only wants tax breaks for billionaires but wants to privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” Sanders told In These Times via email. “We must strengthen unions and bargaining rights of workers everywhere.”

It’s not hard to imagine the other leading candidates saying something similar-- indeed, most have before crowds of union members. It’s Sanders’ long record of actually supporting labor actions that makes him stand out. Political candidates love to call their campaigns a “movement,” and Sanders is no exception, but it feels less cliched when a campaign actively urges supporters to join protests around the country-- like those held by University of California campus workers and Delta Air Lines flight attendants. “What Bernie is doing is very, very unique,” Lichtenstein says. “The most radical thing in this campaign cycle that’s happened is Bernie using his email list to get people to picket lines and protests.”

In March, Sanders’ staffers became the first presidential campaign staff to unionize, starting a trend. Castro’s campaign staff followed in May, and Warren’s team did so in June. The candidates each publicly supported the union efforts. “Every worker who wants to join a union, bargain collectively, & make their voice heard should have a chance to do so,” Warren tweeted.

Unlike Sanders, Warren can’t point to decades of direct solidarity work with the labor movement, but the two New England senators share much in common. Yes, Warren has called herself “capitalist to my bones” while Sanders keeps trumpeting his democratic socialism, but both have New Deal liberalism deep in their blood-- including the sense that worker empowerment is vital to economic justice-- and they broadly agree that American capitalism needs structural change.

Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act is a good example. Introduced in the Senate in 2018, the bill would empower employees to elect at least 40% of board members at large U.S. companies. This new board could then (in theory) push management to do something about yawning pay disparities between the C-suite and average workers. For Sanders’ part, he unveiled plans in May to boost employee ownership of corporations and attended a Walmart shareholders meeting in June at the request of United for Respect, a workers’ rights group, to support a resolution to require Walmart to put hourly employees on its board.

Both senators want to do more than tinker around the edges of neoliberalism. This perspective, and a willingness to call out the rich as an enemy along class lines, is what sets them apart from their primary season peers.

“Strengthening America’s labor unions will be a central goal of my administration,” Warren told In These Times via email. “For too long, a worker’s right to unionize has been under attack. The rich and powerful have teamed up with the Republican Party to push for measures at all levels of government designed to decimate unions and collective bargaining.”

Warren says she wants to “modernize our labor laws for the 21st century,” noting various reforms included in the PRO Act, and that she would fight for “fully portable benefits for everyone and make sure that all work-- full-time, part-time, gig-- carries basic, pro-rata benefits.” She also wants to push to amend federal law so the president and federal courts cannot “enjoin lawful strikes that pose a threat to national health or safety.”

“Far too often, these injunctions have been invoked in strikes not because there is a genuine threat to national health or safety, but rather to curb the power of unions engaging in lawful strikes,” she says.

This attitude has endeared Warren to the labor movement. She spoke in Las Vegas at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Center for American Progress Action Fund’s National Forum on Wages and Working People in April, along with a handful of other candidates. “We need more power in the hands of employees,” she said. The Washington Post reported the crowd gave her its “most passionate response.”

...Jane McAlevey, a former union organizer and author of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, says that getting a sympathetic Democrat in the White House is only the first step. The next, McAlevey says, is a massive wave of strikes.



The relationship between direct action, power and creating a crisis with a Democrat in the White House is “the missing link so often in this discussion,” McAlevey says. The labor movement should back a candidate who will “restore the fundamental constitutional right to strike” (as the PRO Act effectively would) and commit to never calling out federal troops on striking workers. “We need a candidate ... who commits to defending the right of workers to be on strike and using the full resources of the federal government to aid workers in re-claiming some of what’s deserved by the working class.”

Nothing like that has been seen in the United States since the 1930s, when FDR first entered the White House and waves of strikes followed. The backdrop was the Great Depression. Short of another crisis, far-reaching strikes are far-fetched. But one thing is clear enough: Waiting for Democrats to lead the labor movement out of decline is a losing strategy.

I wish Gantz would do as thorough a job on congressional candidates. If that's even actually possible. (He does talk about the other presidential candidates in his piece and you can read about them by clicking here and going back to it. But I decided to ask for comments from some of the candidates Blue America is backing this cycle.

Omaha progressive Kara Eastman emphasized that the Trump enabler she's running against has a clear record of stifling the legitimate aspirations of working families. "Bacon," she told me, "is all about supporting and strengthening the wealthy and large corporations. He touts the GOP tax bill-- a clear government hand-out. He touts the economy-- without ever mentioning the struggles of families in the district who have to work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. He talks about unions but supports 'right to work' laws."

In contrast, she pointed out that she has "been fighting for working families, people living in poverty, and communities of color for my entire career. I have seen students in the district who cannot afford community college, mothers who are raising babies on their own who end up in bankruptcy because their car breaks down, and families in North Omaha who live in rental housing that most people would never step foot in. Government for the people should be just that. When elected, I will never stop fighting for working families who deserve a voice in the Nebraska 2nd."

Audrey Denney is also running for a seat currently held by a Trump-enabling Republican, Doug LaMalfa, in a largely rural northern California district. "Workers’ rights in our country have been under attack, and intentionally eroded for the past few decades," she said. "This is directly linked to the increasing poverty in our country and the growing gap between rich and poor. Unemployment in my district is significantly higher than the national average (7.4%, compared to 4.9% nationally in 2016). Incomes in CA-1 are less than state averages, and the poverty rate in the district is significantly above the state and national average. In the last fifty years, corporate profits have increased 500% and average CEO salaries have gone up 1,500%. It is ethically and morally wrong to perpetuate a system where it is possible for people working full time to live below the poverty line, while the businesses they work for make a profit. It is time that workers be fairly compensated for the work that they do, which supports the thriving of our economy. Reestablishing and fighting to protect the right of workers to organize is an essential step in poverty reduction, and rebuilding a thriving American economy and society.  I will fight for North State workers to bring more jobs to our region, increase job readiness and workforce development through improved career and technical education, and support workers’ rights."





Eva Putzova is in a primary fight against an "ex"-Republican, Tom O'Halleran, who didn't suddenly become pro-union when he changed his party registration. O'Halleran is still a union hater and no friend of working families. But Pelosi and Bustos still support him-- and even trick some unions into supporting him!-- because... these confuse Blue Dog and Democrat. Eva told us this morning that ""I support the current effort to reform our labor laws to make it easier for workers to organize as reflected in the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO ACT) introduced into the House of Representatives in May of 2019. There are 175 Democratic co-sponsors on this bill. Four out of five of the Democratic House members from Arizona support it, with the exception of my opponent. I support the Raise the Wage Act that raises the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024. My opponent wants to weaken that legislation. I support Medicare for All. My opponent does not. I support expansion of social security benefits. My opponent does not. I support a federal jobs guarantee, paid family leave, extending full labor rights to farmworkers, and domestic workers. My opponent is nowhere to be seen or heard on these issues. Instead, he takes campaign contributions from corporate giants like Walmart, Verizon, APS, Wells Fargo, Cigna, and arms and prison industries. Working people in Congressional District 1 need a representative who will fight for their interests every day. But we will change more than the policy trajectory of this country. With my fellow progressives, we will change the rules of politics."

Is Enough Ever Enough For The Deluded American Voter?

You may have noticed that the latest polls show have completely turned around from October when voters were furious at Republicans for shutting down the government and were reporting 50-42% that they planned to back Democrats in 2014. Republicans have now opened a 49-44% lead over Democrats in this generic polling. (Due to gerrymandering, for Democrats to actually win back the House, they would have to be leading the GOP by a minimum of 10 points in the national poll. Being down by 5% is potentially catastrophic.) As expected, Democrats are far less enthusiastic about voting next year-- which is precisely what led to the midterm electoral disaster in 2010.

If you follow this blog at all, you know I will be the last person to defend the revolting DC Democratic Establishment who can only ever be considered even relatively acceptable as a product of how terrible the GOP is. Outside of their progressive caucus, the DC Democrats are only marginally better than the Republicans, at best a C-minus compared to an F. Corrupt slime like Steve Israel, Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Debbie Wasserman Schultz deserve the worst. But do the rest of us?

There are barely words to describe the sheer putridness of the Republican Party. They exist, like most conservative parties, to counter democracy and impose the will of an overwhelmingly criminal, self-entitled plutocracy on society. They'd all deserve to be guillotined... if we still sought to solve problems that violently.

The other day a Twitter wag asked who would be heading up the investigation of the serial lies crooked Orange County/San Diego multimillionaire Darrell Issa fed the media and the American public about Benghazi in the pursuit of partisan gain and American disunity. (The answer is no one... there will be no investigation-- other than the exhaustive one David Kirkpatrick wrote up for the NY Times Saturday.) It's long and you can click that link and read the whole thing. A few excerpts, that should be entered as evidence in the rial of Darrell Issa and the whole Republican DC Establishment:

Months of investigation by the New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.

The attack also suggests that, as the threats from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American interests.

...Members of the local militia groups that the Americans called on for help proved unreliable, even hostile. The fixation on Al Qaeda might have distracted experts from more imminent threats. Those now look like intelligence failures.

More broadly, Mr. Stevens, like his bosses in Washington, believed that the United States could turn a critical mass of the fighters it helped oust Colonel Qaddafi into reliable friends. He died trying.

Of course, some people always think they know better than people who do careful investigations because they feel it in their gut or because it fits their worldview-- be it Republican or Zionist. On Meet the Press today, David Kirkpatrick stated flatly, "There's just no chance that this was an al Qaeda attack. It was an armed terrorist attack motivated in large part by the video." No one should have been surprised that Darrell Issa, who has lied about everything in his life since he was a youngster and was arrested several times for car theft, arson-for-hire, fraud and various other felonies before being drafted by the Republican Party to run for for Congress, disputed Kirkpatrick's thorough investigation. And it was certainly no surprise when the warmonger head of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers (R-MI), disputed the investigation on Fox News Sunday. What may have astounded some viewers-- viewers who haven't followed the bug-eyed little worm's career-- is that Adam Schiff (D-West Hollywood, Burbank, Silverlake, Los Feliz, Hollywood, Glendale), one of Congress' most pathetic agents of the Israeli government, also disputed the Times investigation. Worm: "I don't think it's complete... I don't think either paradigm is really accurate here. Intelligence indicates al Qaeda was involved."

When will the United States ever learn that you can't buy "friends" with bribes? I doubt Allen Dulles, Eisenhower's CIA chief, later fired by JFK when it was no longer possible to persuade anyone he was anything but severely senile, was the first policy maker to employ bribery of foreign leaders and groups as a key component of American "diplomacy." Throughout Stephen Kinzer's book on the Dulles brothers, The Brothers, there are reports of Allen Dulles wasting tens of millions of dollars without compunction trying to bribe everyone from members of the French Cabinet, to the Italian Mafia, gangs in Tehran and Saigon, Christian leaders willing to help him with his extremist plots, members of every fascist junta that managed to overthrown a democracy during the '50s to the king of Saudi Arabia, the mother of the king of Jordan, the members of an international tribune in Geneva and the Pakistani military. He was so breathtakingly incompetent that nothing ever worked for him except bribery-- and the bribery, of course, only worked in the short term. One of Kinzer's many descriptions of him that peppers the book:

Allen was a poor administrator. Many around him also noted a lack of intellectual engagement. He often turned aside probing discussion by telling a story, or musing about his favorite baseball team, the Washington Senators. His mind was undisciplined. By one accounted he "seemed almost scatterbrained. A senior British agent who worked with him for years recalled being "seldom able to penetrate beyond his laugh, or to conduct any serious professional conversation with him for more than a few sentences."

Bribery was all Dulles, an inbred, self-entitled Republican, ever knew how to do. And it's a policy the U.S. still practices to this day, rarely with any kind of lasting impact for the good of anyone concerned. And, of course, there was this:



It's not unrelated to point out Joseph Stiglitz's OpEd in today's NY Times, bemoaning a society where elites behave as though everyone else is a commodity to buy and sell. He could be well describing a domestic version of he Allen Dulles mentality-- and his strategy that everything boils down to the brutal power of cash without honor or dignity.

Economic inequality, political inequality, and an inequality-promoting legal system all mutually reinforce one another. We get a legal system that provides privileges to the rich and powerful. Occasionally, individual egregious behavior is punished (Bernard L. Madoff comes to mind); but none of those who headed our mighty banks are held accountable.

As always, it is the poor and the unconnected who suffer most from this, and who are the most repeatedly deceived. Nowhere was this more evident than in the foreclosure crisis. The subprime mortgage hawkers, putting themselves forward as experts in finance, assured unqualified borrowers that repayment would be no problem. Later millions would lose their homes. The banks figured out how to get court affidavits signed by the thousands (in what came to be called robo-signing), certifying that they had examined their records and that these particular individuals owed money-- and so should be booted out of their homes. The banks were lying on a grand scale, but they knew that if they didn’t get caught, they would walk off with huge profits, their officials’ pockets stuffed with bonuses. And if they did get caught, their shareholders would be left paying the tab. The ordinary homeowner simply didn’t have the resources to fight them. It was just one example among many in the wake of the crisis where banks were seemingly immune to the rule of law.

I’ve written about many dimensions of inequality in our society-- inequality of wealth, of income, of access to education and health, of opportunity. But perhaps even more than opportunity, Americans cherish equality before the law. Here, inequality has infected the heart of our ideals.

I suspect there is only one way to really get trust back. We need to pass strong regulations, embodying norms of good behavior, and appoint bold regulators to enforce them. We did just that after the roaring ’20s crashed; our efforts since 2007 have been sputtering and incomplete. Firms also need to do better than skirt the edges of regulations. We need higher norms for what constitutes acceptable behavior, like those embodied in the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. But we also need regulations to enforce these norms-- a new version of trust but verify. No rules will be strong enough to prevent every abuse, yet good, strong regulations can stop the worst of it.

Strong values enable us to live in harmony with one another. Without trust, there can be no harmony, nor can there be a strong economy. Inequality in America is degrading our trust. For our own sake, and for the sake of future generations, it’s time to start rebuilding it. That this even requires pointing out shows how far we have to go.

Has Romney Already Blown The Trustworthy Thing?

Mitt says he is not responsible for Bain's deprecations after he left in 1999. But he was still CEO, President, Chairman & sole shareholder thru 2002

This has been a bad week for Romney in terms of getting his message out. Instead of the media focusing on the economy, the discussion was all about Romney's relationship to Bain again-- and, even worse (for him), the character issue. How serious were a series of carefully crafted lies about when he left Bain and how much control he had over companies that were outsourcing American jobs to China? If David Corn's blockbuster in Mother Jones seeps into the mainstream media, it's going to further damage Romney's ability to build any kind of trust among independent voters. He'll be fine with the GOP base but he'll find it increasingly difficult to appeal to voters who aren't already... well, like this.

Last month, Mitt Romney's campaign got into a dustup with the Washington Post after the newspaper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm the GOP presidential candidate founded, invested in several US companies that outsourced jobs to China and India. The campaign indignantly demanded a retraction, claiming that these businesses did not send jobs overseas while Romney was running Bain, and the Post stood by its investigation. Yet there is another aspect to the Romney-as-outsourcer controversy. According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits-- and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.

This previously unreported deal runs counter to Romney's tough talk on the campaign trail regarding China. "We will not let China continue to steal jobs from the United States of America," Romney declared in February. But with this investment, Romney sought to make money off a foreign company that banked on American firms outsourcing manufacturing overseas.

Republicans in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama might not care about this, but voters in swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania will... a lot. Voters are left with the impression he lied about being with Bain, lied about his taxes, lied about stashing money overseas, lied about sending American manufacturing jobs to China, lied on filings to the SEC... It would be hard to have been conscious this week and to have not gotten a possibly enduring impression that Romney is a liar and that his word can't be trusted. And questions about Bain is all reporters want to ask him now-- which will drive Romney further and further from the mainstream media and into the arms of Fox and Hate Talk Radio GOP propagandists-- again, appealing solely to the already demented and delusional Republican Party base. But normal people want to know why he hasn't released his tax reports and when he will. Even Republicans are starting to ask him to release his taxes. He can't though; there's too much unsavoury stuff in them that disqualify him from running for office. His secret bank accounted and stashed wealthy in Switzerland, the Caymans, Bermuda and Luxembourg are going to haunt him right up through November. Voters-- not countering Republicans in the South-- aren't morons. How hard is it to figure out that if the maximum you can put in an IRA is $4,000/ a year, you can't have IRAs sheltering a hundred million dollars the way Romney does. That kind of math won't work outside of Mississippi. No one likes a tax evader-- especially not a tax evader who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And another thing that's not going away is the outsourcing of jobs to China and his relationship to the immense sums of tainted Chinese money flooding into his campaign via Sheldon Adelson, his now #1 financial backer-- an organized crime figure in both the U.S. and China.

Layers of opportunistic and contradictory lies have caught up with him and he's stuck in a quicksand-like quagmire of his own making. His own staffers and surrogates are at a loss for how to explain him now.

The Romney campaign repeatedly declined to say Thursday evening whether the Republican presidential candidate attended any meetings or had any contact with Bain Capital during the time he ran the Olympic Games.

Mitt Romney’s relationship with Bain has become a flashpoint in the presidential race as Democrats seek to tie him to corporate decisions made after 1999, when he took a leave from the private equity company to administer the Salt Lake City games until their completion in early 2002. The Boston Globe and other outlets reported this week that SEC documents show Romney was listed as a top executive until 2002.

Romney’s spokespeople have denied that he had any management role in the company during the time he was involved with the games, despite maintaining legal and financial connections to Bain. They say the title listed in SEC filings was an in-name-only position Romney maintained while on leave.



The former Massachusetts governor, however, has previously acknowledged that he remained active in the corporate arena while heading the Salt Lake City games. In a June 17, 2002, appearance before the Massachusetts State Law Ballot Commission, Romney said that during his Utah-based Olympics service, there were “were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth.”

How much time Romney did or didn’t spend in Massachusetts in the years prior to 2002 became an issue when he ran for governor due to questions about his state residency.

Romney testified about his residency after Democrats challenged his eligibility to run in Massachusetts after having been based out of state. The election panel signed off on his candidacy.

Romney didn’t mention Bain Capital in his testimony as one of the companies with which he continued to work while leading the Olympic committee. Asked whether Romney attended any meetings or participated in any phone calls for Bain-- as he did for other firms-- a Romney spokeswoman reiterated that the candidate didn’t have an “active role” in the company during that time.

“As we’ve said countless times, since Feb. 11, 1999, Gov. Romney has not had any active role with Bain Capital,” Romney press secretary Andrea Saul said.

Earlier Thursday, the campaign released a statement from former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu mocking the idea that Romney could have been engaged with the Olympics and Bain at the same time.

“The Obama campaign must think Mitt Romney is Superman. He was, in reality, rescuing the Olympics by working in Utah 24/7 for the years the Obama campaign also alleges he was running Bain Capital,” Sununu said. “Even though the Obama campaign may be wrong about his involvement in Bain Capital, it shows that even they can admit Mitt Romney is a great leader.”

Romney told the Massachusetts election panel in 2002 that he remained active in a number of companies while in Utah, including Marriott and Staples, the office supply giant he helped create through investments from Bain.

During his ballot commission testimony, when asked whether he continued to serve on boards while working on the Olympics, Romney answered: “Yes.”

“I immediately resigned from the board of Sports Authority located in Florida, feeling it could present a conflict of interest with my Olympic responsibilities and of course the travel could be challenging as well. I remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the Life Like Corporation. And I remained as a corporator of the Belmont Hill School,” he said.

Asked specifically about the Staples board, Romney said there were four to five meetings a year and he returned to Massachusetts “for most of those meetings. Others I attended by telephone if I could not return.”

People are starting to wonder if Romney committed any criminal activities in all his phony filings and concerted efforts to skirt the laws mere mortals have to live by. Lede's like this in papers all across the country aren't going to help him focus people on Obama's role in a struggling economy:

Newly-uncovered public record documents are putting Mitt Romney under the microscope again that not only question his credibility but could find him in legal trouble.

Hopefully, tomorrow's edition of Up With Chris Hayes!, which will feature an interview with a former Bain partner, will be able to answer the question once and for all about Romney's role in the company after he falsely claimed he had left in 1999.

HOW SLIPPERY AND UNTUSTWORTHY IS McCAIN?

I don't think the corporate media, John McCain's base, will cover it the way they covered the Clinton's tax returns a couple weeks ago, but the sly way McCain "released" his taxes is demonstrative of the sly way he has run his entire deceptive political career. When he was caught taking bribes from a close family friend, crooked banker Charles Keating, early on in his career he claimed he had never gained anything financially from his relationship with Keating. That was a lie on many levels but one had to do with lucrative investments the McCain's were able to make  in some Keating projects. Except, it wasn't John McCain who made the investments. It was some other McCain... proving, of course, he didn't benefit. The "other" McCain was Cindy McCain.

Cindy's fortune has financed McCain's climb to power from his very first run for Congress. Today when he "released" his tax returns, they were just his tax returns, not Cindy's. Most of the commotion over Hillary's tax returns was, of course, over the money Bill Clinton had earned. Hillary did what all presidential candidates do: she released the joint tax return. Barack Obama did the same thing. In fact, since 1976 every Democrat and every Republican but Reagan released 5 years of joint tax returns. Do you recall Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie screaming his head off in righteous indignation in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry must release her tax returns? She did. Gillespie:

"Throughout history, presidential candidates have disclosed income tax information prior to Election Day. We believe Americans value disclosure and transparency in campaigns. During the 2003 filing year, Sen. Kerry made a $6 million loan to his campaign based on the value of a home jointly owned with his wife."

Cindy McCain may not have ever actually worked but she inherited as much as $100 million dollars from her father's alcoholic beverages distribution network. McCain has made it clear that that pile of money-- the family's real wealth-- will not come under public scrutiny. Something tells me Chris Matthews and David Broder have no intention of pulling their heads out of McCain's ass long enough to ask him about that. And the excuse the McCain's use for keeping the family wealth secret? It would violate their children's privacy; they actually say that. But it's a lie, like most of what comes out of McCain's slick mouth. Unfortunately for them, "Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of taxation at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, said releasing Cindy McCain's tax returns wouldn't violate the children's privacy because details of investments affecting them would be on forms filed by a separate trust."