Tom DeLay won't help needy children until you pay his meals and travel expenses to golf at Key Largo. Tom DeLay's first instincts are to relax the rules that apply to him (Houston Chronicle):

One of Rep. Tom DeLay's first maneuvers as majority leader was to engineer a change of House ethics rules so charities now may pay for lawmakers' travel and meals whenever they participate in charitable fund-raising events.

The change came as DeLay is organizing a Florida golf tournament that will benefit a project in his district south of Houston.

Particularly upset by the change was Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., chair of the House ethics committee, who said he was "blindsided." He told the Washington Post that his committee's job "is to keep people out of trouble. We don't want to have the impression, nor the reality, that we're trying to weasel around ways to live high at someone else's expense."

Citizen watchdog groups, including Common Cause and Democracy 21, are trying to find a Republican willing to reverse the rule change by introducing a measure to repeal it. But few lawmakers, Democrats included, are willing to take on the powerful majority leader -- known for punishing his adversaries by killing funds for projects in their hometowns.

Meanwhile, philanthropists worry the rule change will turn back the clocks to a time when charities were used as fronts for political activity.

"Charities used as fronts for political activities" — if that doesn't describe the redneck-religious-Republican cabal right here, right now, I don't know what does.

"You want to play on a good golf course on a sunny day, and it's helpful to have a few VIPs to attract support for this great cause," DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella said of the new rules change that will apply to DeLay's golf tournament, as well as other charitable fund-raisers.

DeLay's comfort at his "charitable" golf tournament is now even more tax deductible by the lobbyists and favor-curriers who grease the already slimy wheels of American corruption.

{ 6:02 PM }

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"This doll stands 12 inches tall and says 17 different phrases," according to the eBay listing for the TALKING! George W. Bush doll.

Do those 17 phrases include "We'll smoke him out of his cave, and we'll get him eventually"? Osama bin Laden, that is.

{ 6:40 PM }

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To our Saudi Arabian friends: "Win American hearts through sustained lobbying," says Neil Bush. Presidential sib, S&L crook and dynasty caboose Neil Bush advises Saudis on spinning American media like the pros (ArabNews):

JEDDAH, 22 January — Neil Bush, brother of US President George Bush, said here yesterday that the distorted image of the Arab world could be removed through the sustained lobbying of US politicians.

"The US media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims and the American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and PR effort," Bush, chairman and chief executive officer of Ignite! Inc., said in his keynote address on the concluding day of the three-day Jeddah Economic Forum at Hilton Hotel here.

[...]

"Over 3,000 lives were lost through a brutal and horrific act that affected not only Americans but peoples all over the world. I want to express gratitude to all for their support. Without the support of the peace-loving people in this region and all over the world, the US president cannot succeed in his fight against terror," said Bush, who freely interacted with delegates before he began his speech on "The corporate challenges of human resources in a complex global environment."

Q: Fifteen of nineteen 9/11 hijackers had peace-loving Saudi passports?

A: Bomb Iraq!

Here's an interesting postscript:

Later in the day, the focus shifted to the world’s energy markets with Dr. Ray Irani, chairman and chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum, saying that he was fundamentally opposed to the Kyoto protocol — the international agreement to place controls on the emission of greenhouse gases.

What a coincidence! In contrast with the rest of the world, the chairman and chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum and George W. Bush are in perfect harmony on the Kyoto protocol.

Will these ironies never cease?

{ 4:24 PM }

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The Happy Tutor provides today's lesson in charitable 501(c)(3) hatred. In response to PLA's (here and here) and our thoughts on right-wing philanthropic misanthropy, Wealth Bondage offers a weblog call to action, joined with a clarification of the site's striking name, in this post:

Weblogs can help build "social capital" and solidarity among those whose interests are not represented in the hard right's synthesis of wealth, media, politics, and philanthropy. They call it "freedom, and justice." I call it wealth bondage, the ideology of power exercised ruthlessly from the top down, inflicted upon those who apparently love it.

Overall, the site Wealth Bondage explicitly ties the right wing's ideology, strategy and tactics to a power-lust obsessed with its own sadomasochistic fulfillment.

And if there's any doubt that this obsession is sexual, take a peek at the trembling awe of Peggy Noonan at the feet of her Superman:

[...] In the first, domestic part of the [State of the Union] speech he was serious and contained, but in the second part of the speech, on Iraq, there was a shift. His voice seemed lower and there seemed a kind of full head-heart engagement in his grave but optimistic message. For a moment I though[t] of earnest Clark Kent moving, at the moment of maximum danger, to shed his suit, tear open his shirt and reveal the big "S" on his chest.

[...]

I felt at the end of the speech not roused but moved, and it took me a while to figure out why. It was gratitude.

[...]

A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.

All this Lois Lane groupie-talk is difficult to stomach. But as ludicrous as the American Leni Riefenstahl can be, I have to agree with Peggy Noonan's last statement.

"Gift" is the German word for "poison" and also means "malice" or "spite." This presidency is indeed feeling very much like a poisonous dose of spite.

{ 11:19 AM }

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Laura Bush to poets: "Write pretty, or shut up!" Art, like Republican First Ladies, should be beauteous and noncontroversial, says Laura Bush (New York Times):

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 — Laura Bush has postponed a White House symposium on the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman after some of the poets invited said they hoped to use the event to protest American military action in Iraq.

Noelia Rodriguez, the first lady's press secretary, said the event, originally planned for Feb. 12, had been designed to celebrate the written word. "While Mrs. Bush respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions," Ms. Rodriguez said today, "she, too, has opinions, and believes that it would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum."

The poetry symposium, planned as part of a series of White House literary events showcasing American literature, began to attract attention as an opportunity for an anti-war protest. On Sunday, Sam Hamill, a poet and founder of Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, Wash., sent an e-mail message to 50 friends and colleagues asking them to send him anti-war poems or statements of protest action in Iraq. Mr. Hamill, the author of 40 books of poetry, had been invited to the symposium by Mrs. Bush.

In his message, Mr. Hamill said he felt "overcome by a kind of nausea" as he read his White House invitation, and decided the only response would be to reconstitute a "Poets Against the War Movement." Mr. Hamill said that he had not planned to attend the White House event himself but that the submitted poems and statements would be compiled into an antiwar anthology to be presented to Mrs. Bush on Feb. 12.

By Wednesday, Mr. Hamill said he had received 1,500 responses, and had to create a Web site, which he named poetsagainstthewar.org, to handle the e-mail messages that were overloading his system.

Echoing inside the empty chamber of Laura's head: Those gosh-darn poets are ruining this great country of ours! You never know where the next threats to my husband's my opinions might originate. Poets should celebrate the written word — as long it agrees with my husband me. Any emails to the contrary will be dealt with.

"Noelia, get me Ashcroft on the line. After all, I have opinions too," Laura mutters. "And where's my vodka tonic."

UPDATE: The Boston Globe refreshes our memory as to how poets felt about the previous administration of Bill Clinton:

''We had an event in which President and Mrs. Clinton joined kids from Washington public schools, disabled war veterans, former poets laureate Rita Dove and Robert Hass, and we read poems by Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson. But that was at a time when a lot of poets were happy to be supporting the president, because they thought he was being attacked unfairly.'' [former poet laureate Robert Pinsky]

Note that Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson were two of the same poets to be feted by the cowardly Laura. Meanwhile, her husband is still struggling with the vocabulary requirements of "The Big Book of Limericks."

{ 9:31 AM }

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I will be out of town Thursday, so no posts.

Meanwhile, for any legal geniuses who happen to read this, please figure out how to help secure the inheritance of Jack Kerouac's closest living relative, who is homeless.

{ 4:13 PM }

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Dwight Meredith at PLA deserves some kind of vigilance award for his detailed post on how a group called the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) is staging a strategic legal battle over lawyer's trust accounts to deny legal aid to poor people. In the WLF's own words:

We are finally in a position we've fought more than a decade to reach -- a position where we can deal a death blow to the single most important source of income for radical legal groups all across the country," wrote WLF Chairman Daniel Popeo. Among the foundation's adversaries in the litigation, Popeo continues, are "groups dedicated to the homeless, to minorities, to gay and lesbian causes, and any other group that has drawn money from hard-working Americans like you and me to support its radical cause!

A death blow to the homeless! Yet another example of compassionate conservatism in action.

The topic of lawyer's trust accounts undoubtedly makes people's eyes glaze, but it contains real power to change the country. Dwight cuts through the clutter to expose the WLF's radical and hateful agenda. Thinking people, like the readers of this blog and others like it, should go read Dwight's post.

Postscript. More about the mysterious Popeo: Here's a 1988 letter from Daniel Popeo to Philip Morris, begging for $10,000 to support the WLF's continuing efforts in support of tobacco ads (scroll down).

Some of the WLF's more recent handouts came from Exxon Mobil, Schering-Plough, Kimberly-Clark, Chase Manhattan, Bristol-Myers Squibb, General Mills, 3M, and Caterpillar.

The WLF also opposed any regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, arguing in 1999 that the "EPA has no authority under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles or any other source, including utilities. The Working Group also argues that even if EPA does have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, there is no sound scientific basis for doing so...." according to this press release.

Popeo is also mentioned in Sidney Blumenthal's 1986 book, The Rise of the Counter Establishment, as part of a who's who of the extreme right:

Benchmark magazine, for instance, which deals with legal issues, is published by the Center for Judicial Studies, a think tank directed by James McClellan, a former aide to New Right Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. The Benchmark book review editor is Gary McDowell, a Justice Department public affairs aide who has castigated the Supreme Court for making the states adhere to the constitutional stipulations on religion, speech, and other rights. Senior editor Grover Rees oversaw judicial selection at the Justice Department, and was then appointed a federal judge. Another senior editor, William Kristol, denouncer of the "judicial activists," is the special assistant to Secretary of Education William Bennett. And contributor Daniel Popeo is the head of the Washington Legal Foundation, which files briefs for New Right causes.

Google "Daniel Popeo" and see just how profoundly unfriendly this man is to his fellow citizens, the environment, and just about anything else that doesn't come on the heels of a fat corporate donation for his radical ideology.

Daniel Popeo, who so despises the homeless, is himself just a beggar.

{ 1:17 PM }

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Crimes of compassion. How long will it be before the country wakes up and realizes that the "compassionate conservatism" in the AIDS in Africa rhetoric of last night's State of the Union speech will turn out to be federally funded Christian missionaries sent to preach abstinence to the heathen?

How much of that supposed $15 billion will be spent not on antiviral drugs and condoms for Africans, but on packs of pious Caucasians from Utah and the deep South? How will he "prevent" 7 million cases of HIV infection without speaking about sex, as his religious constituents have forbidden?

The speechwriting was often stunning in its projection of the opposite of what was being said. Did you get the impression that W was going to get tough on HMOs and insurers? Wrong. He proposed a health plan for CEOs of health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. We're back to yet another form of privatization, and the private enrichment of corporate interests versus the common good. From the New York Times (last paragraph):

Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said: "It is clear that President Bush intends to privatize Medicare. He's cleverly using the promise of a meager drug benefit as a bribe to push Medicare beneficiaries into second-rate, low-quality health plans, putting seniors at the mercy of health maintenance organizations and the big drug companies."

Not enough can be said about the abject irresponsibility of the lies told about the "stimulus package" which preferentially benefits the wealthiest 1% US households. Nancy Pelosi's on-camera disapproval recognized that W's statement — "This tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes" — is a lie that shows utter contempt for working people who pay taxes on wages, not dividends.

The federal deficit is out of control, thanks to the Bush enrich-the-rich giveaway. Each new forecast increases the amount of money squandered on lavish financial gifts to the wealthy, we'll-prove-it-real-soon evidence of threats from Iraq, and highly politicized Christian initiatives. From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Congressional Budget Office increased its forecast for U.S. government deficits of $199 billion this year and $145 billion in 2004, affirming a bleak fiscal outlook already fueling battles over taxes and spending in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election.

In August, the CBO anticipated a deficit of $145 billion in 2003 and $111 in 2004.

In a report set for release later Wednesday, the CBO also predicted the 10-year U.S. cumulative budget surplus will rise slightly to $1.3 trillion from the $1 trillion it last forecast. As recently as 2001, the CBO saw 10-year surpluses of over $5.6 trillion. A CBO spokeswoman confirmed the contents of the report to CNNfn Wednesday.

Democrats generally blame President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut package in 2001 for the steep slide in the U.S. fiscal position and say the $674 billion in new tax cuts he recently proposed will only dig the deficit hole deeper.

Republicans counter that tax cuts, coupled with strict government spending restraint, will help the sluggish economy grow and, ultimately, move the budget back toward balance.

In two years, a move from $5.6 trillion in surplus to $1.3 trillion in surplus. Where did the missing $4,300,000,000,000.00 go? Market ruptures and wealth disappearance due to corporate fraud by the likes of key campaign contributor Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay? Tax cuts for the families — and the heirs — of Bill Gates and George H. W. Bush? War plans? All of the above.

The compassion in W's conservatism is directed toward a small and tight-knit corporate elite, who plan to use American citizens' lives to build its wealth and secure its borders, and then burn and bulldoze their bodies into mass graves once they have served their noble purpose.

How compassionate is that?

UPDATE: The best sentence-by-sentence dissection of the entire speech was written by David Ehrenstein. (Via Roger Ailes.)

{ 10:12 AM }

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Tonight, when W tries to tell us how he's going to stimulate the economy, remember this.


Compare the slow growth of Clinton's first two years — the first time the World Trade Center was attacked — with W's two-year record of out-of-control volatility. Market behavior like this is based on uncertainty and "lack of visibility," thanks to a deficit-welcoming warmaking policy and a friendly attitude toward corporate misbehavior. (We took the liberty of drawing the trend lines over actual market data.)


It's very clear who is hurt by the market damage wrought by Bush's policies: working people, union members, legal immigrants, women, children, foreign allies, retirees, seniors, people with IRA or 401(k) savings, small investors, entrepreneurs and small businesses. And it's also clear who benefits: the energy industry, the defense industry, the Bush family, politically expedient CEO cronies, the religious right, and the real thrust of the "stimulus package": making the richest 1% of US households even richer.

This is a White House of, by and for the wealthy.

Polls show that disbelief in White House propaganda is gaining ground. The state of the union is disunited.

{ 2:59 PM }

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"The General Accounting Office, investigative arm of Congress, said it had postponed a study of investment bank involvement in recent corporate scandals until mid-March. The study had been expected this week." Via FindLaw. [Note: The official GAO news site hasn't updated in more than two weeks.]

It's easier to give this sort of revelation a public burial while the media horse is blinkered with a war going on. So we wait.

{ 11:52 AM }

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A Tale of Two Insiders. Jeffrey Toobin profiles Martha Stewart in The New Yorker, focusing on the ImClone insider trading scandal that has engulfed her life over the last year.

To refresh your memory, here is Toobin's overview:

On December 26, 2001, Stewart's old friend Samuel Waksal, the chief executive of ImClone, learned that the Food and Drug Administration was going to reject the company's highly touted cancer drug, Erbitux. Knowing that the stock would plunge when this news became public, Waksal immediately tried to sell tens of thousands of shares of ImClone and encouraged his father and daughter to sell, too. For these actions, Waksal has pleaded guilty to insider trading, among other crimes, and faces as much as twelve years in prison when he is sentenced, in March. On December 27th, Stewart sold all of her stock in ImClone—3,928 shares, at fifty-eight dollars a share—grossing about two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars. The claim is that Stewart did so because she had an illegal tip.

Given her celebrity status as a purveyor of classy lifestyle porn, she was an easy mark and even her talk show host friends couldn't resist ripping into her during their monologues. But through the thicket of endless Martha-in-prison jokes, rays of light did shine:

Stewart looked cheerier when she recalled the support she's received—from Hillary Clinton, for one. "Look at her ups and downs," she said. "And she was one of the first people to call me after the article"—announcing the investigation—"and very nicely say, 'You know, you just have to hang in there. It's the process.' " Stewart continued, "First Lady, knocked to death and now senator. You know, a very important person, still. Because she's smart, she's worthy, she's great. You know, that's what I hope I'll be thought of as."

It's no secret that Stewart is a Democrat. It's also no secret, as Toobin writes, that the scandal has cost her in the vicinity of $400 million in stock losses as well as legal fees and lost business opportunities — the actual transaction cost of her $228,000 ImClone "insider" trade. (That she tried to sell her entire ImClone stake to Bristol-Myers two months earlier is rarely mentioned, although Toobin does.)

On the other hand, we have Thomas White, Secretary of the Army. This former Enron officer has a much clearer-cut case of insider trading than, well, just about anybody. If you want a summary of White's errors of judgment, here's a page courtesy of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Be sure to view the highly revealing chart.

With all this information floating free of useful context, we decided to look at Martha Stewart's and Thomas White's alleged insider trades side by side, to see what we could infer about the treatment each case is receiving with respect to public discourse:

Insider Trades: US Military Leader vs. Ex-Caterer

	Thomas White	Martha Stewart
Position	Secretary of the Army	CEO Martha Stewart Omnimedia
Former Position	Vice Chair Enron Energy Services	Caterer
Insider Affiliation	Enron	Imclone (via friend/CEO Waksal)
Insider Trades (Alleged)	405,710 shares	3,928 shares
Transaction Value	$12,120,827	$228,000
Number of Insider Phone Calls and Meetings	81	3
Party Affiliation	Republican	Democrat
Google Search String	"thomas white" enron	"martha stewart" imclone
Total Google Hits (1/27/03)	4,660	11,200
Smoke & Mirrors Index*	$2,601	$20

*The Smoke & Mirrors Index is Skimble's measure of ill-gotten money divided by Google hits.

If I stole $1,000 and got 10 Google hits, my Smoke & Mirrors Index would be 100, equal to $100 per Google hit. If you stole $100 and got 20 Google hits, your Smoke & Mirrors Index would be 5, or $5 per Google hit. I stole more money than you but fewer people are talking about it, so the smoke and mirrors are in my favor — distracting the world from my self-enriching crime.

Bad guys score high; (relatively) good guys score low.

In other words, the higher someone's Smoke & Mirrors Index, the more they are getting away with. The less scrutiny there is about great financial crimes, the higher the S&M Index. The more scrutiny there is about smaller crimes, the lower the S&M index.


Using the Google-based logic of the S&M Index, we see that discourse about Martha Stewart is weighted more than one hundred and thirty times over discourse about Thomas White, relative to the financial value of their alleged insider trades. Once again, disproportionate treatment of administration insiders rules the day.

Could this have anything to do with media support for an American military leader at the advent of a propagandistic war?

Could this have anything to do with keeping the stink of Enron off the administration?

Could this have anything to do with wanting to take down a strong Democratic woman?

Could this have anything to do with the general bias and/or cluelessness of the American mainstream press?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

{ 10:31 AM }

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At least the last five days of posts at Orcinus are worth your time. Go.

{ 8:55 AM }

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Another lesson in free market economics, from jilted Enron suitor Dynegy. We've got a gusher! The slippery stuff keeps pouring out of Houston (Houston Chronicle):

A former Dynegy trader has been indicted on federal charges of reporting bogus data to a publication that puts out a benchmark widely used to set natural gas prices.

Michelle Marie Valencia, 32, who was recently fired by Dynegy, was arrested by FBI agents this morning [1/27/03] at her Houston home.

[...]

The indictment cites three separate times -- November 2000, January 2001 and February 2001 -- that Valencia allegedly fabricated natural gas trades for submission to a trade publication called Inside FERC's Gas Market Report.

All told, the indictment alleges, she made up 43 natural gas trades. Those trades were said to have been done in the western United States, including New Mexico and California.

[...]

When she was called before U.S. Magistrate Calvin Botley, her hands were handcuffed to a thick chain that wrapped around her waist.

Outside the courtroom, Valencia's attorney, Chris Flood, said his client was the "victim of a political prosecution by the current administration trying to do something to rid itself of the stain they have from the energy industry."

Stains, stains, everywhere stains. There is an unintentional stain theme in today's posts. Go figure. More:

"Our markets are the bedrock of the U.S. economy," [U.S. Attorney Michael] Shelby said this morning.

"The market works only when there is a free flow of truthful information among its members and we intend to hold criminally accountable any person who attempts to manipulate the market by knowingly disseminating false information."

Inside FERC's is one of several publications that compile so-called indexes, which are used as benchmarks to price billions of dollars in natural gas contracts in this country.

Manipulating indexes can skew the prices consumers ultimately pay for their natural gas or electricity. But because of the energy market's complexity, it's difficult, if not impossible, to quantify potential consumer harm.

The consumer harm may be difficult, if not impossible, to quantify, but the plunder is not. One measure might be the net worths of energy markets geniuses Lay and Skilling and Fastow of Enron and others of their River Oaks McMansion class. The value, if not the location, of those assets can be calculated with considerable precision.

In November 2002 we wrote about Dynegy and the travails of whistleblower Ted Beatty, who reported Dynegy's bogus round-trip trades, here. And over here is the case against the Dynegy 401(k) plan, yet another breach of duty by yet another upper management cabal in yet another Texas energy company.

{ 3:41 PM }

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Is Al Sharpton another Ralph Nader, willing to give away the table in 2004 just so he can leave his personal stain on the tablecloth?

This article by Garance Franke-Ruta in The American Prospect certainly put that idea into my head.

Similarly, under the heading "Eternal Political Mysteries," Media Whores Online today asks the question: "What is it that deludes otherwise intelligent men like Al Sharpton, Ralph Nader and Gary Hart into believing they could possibly be elected president?"

They don't believe it. It's the stainmaking that interests them.

{ 9:47 AM }

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