The late twentieth century in just two years. Let's see — in two short years we've revived the repression and witchhunts of the 1950s, the military quagmire of the 1960s, the floundering stock market of the 1970s, and the tax-averse corporate greed of the 1980s.

The only thing missing is the peace and prosperity of the 1990s.

{ 12:46 PM }

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Podhoretz joins "West Wing." It's shark-jumping time over at General Electric's little television venture known as NBC (FindLaw):

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When NBC's White House drama "The West Wing" returns next week for its fifth year, the most obvious difference from last season will be that John Goodman, not Martin Sheen, is calling the shots in the Oval Office as the famously liberal show gets more bipartisan.

[...]

To represent the Republican point of view, Wells has recruited former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein, along with John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist who wrote speeches for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior. Wells said Podhoretz has been one of the show's "staunchest critics" in recent years.

There goes a good show. Partisan maniac and non-artist Podhoretz will not have a clue that it was West Wing's creative execution and not its politics that made it great.

"I don't know about you, but frankly, I don't need any lessons on theology, destiny, public service, job creation, pay equity, or conservative ideology from a crack addict," he said of show creator Aaron Sorkin.

Actually, those are all lessons he needs.

{ 9:41 AM }

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Shaming Wall Street. CalPundit uses the resignation of the NYSE's Dick Grasso to make a much larger argument:

Here's a point that sometimes gets lost in conversations about growing income inequality in America as represented by gargantuan pay packages like Grasso's. Although liberals like me generally support limited government actions like progressive taxation as a way to ameliorate income inequality, most of us understand that there's a limit to how much government can and should do about this.

However, even if you don't believe the government should be involved in arguments over executive pay, there's nothing to prevent shareholders and public figures from trying to shame our nation's plutocrats into more responsible behavior. That's largely what happened here and I applaud it. Incestuous compensation committees will continue to expand executive paychecks far beyond anything that a free market would ever deliver until society simply makes this unacceptable. If people like Grasso are shunned and embarrassed over this kind of legalized thievery often enough, maybe we can put an end to it and redirect some of that money back to shareholders, to whom it properly belongs in the first place.

The advocates of the free market traditionally operate in markets that are anything but free: the tightly-controlled, interlocking circles of influence known as boards of directors. "More responsible behavior" from the people who consistently argue for self-regulation would help their arguments a great deal.

Until then, let's shame and regulate the bastards. The entire concept of public equity and individual shareholders is in danger of falling apart if the plutocrats successfully return to robber-baron tactics.

Kevin is right — the money stolen by maneuvers such as Grasso's properly belongs to shareholders. Shame alone won't get it back.

{ 12:20 PM }

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Beware the Merrill Lynch mob. The collusion between Merrill Lynch, Enron and the Bush administration becomes more evident with each passing day (Washington Post):

The Bush money machine relies primarily on a corps of "bundlers" -- chief executive officers, contractors, investment bankers and others primarily from the business, legal and medical communities. They tend to have extensive networks of employees, suppliers, subcontractors, clients and others who are receptive* to their pitch for campaign donations.

For example, one Bush bundler is E. Stanley O'Neal, chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co. The Center for Responsive Politics recently reported that Merrill Lynch employees and their immediate relatives already have given the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign $264,750.

*So if you are a supplier or subcontractor of Merrill Lynch's, you would undoubtedly be "receptive" to Merrill Lynch's suggestion that you donate to Bush-Cheney 2004 in the same way that any supplier of Tony Soprano's would be to a request for contributions to his pet political cause. They call it "bundling" — we call it "extortion."

It's only 2003, and already Merrill Lynch has loosened $265,000 from its network. Imagine what they'll come up with next year.

Of course it's the right of the fine people of Merrill Lynch to donate to whatever political causes they choose — but not when their efforts are supported by organized criminal activity. Yesterday's indictments were explicitly due to the fact that "Merrill Lynch knew that the [Enron barge] 'purchase' was not real" (today's Wall Street Journal, sub. req'd):

Prosecutors said the bankers engaged in a sham transaction in late 1999 in which Merrill appeared to buy an interest in Nigerian barges from Enron that allowed Enron, now operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection, to record $12 million in earnings. In reality, the indictment states, Mr. Bayly got an oral assurance from then-Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow that Merrill would get its money back with interest within six months.

"Merrill Lynch knew that the 'purchase' was not real," the indictment states.

[...]

The deal [to indict individuals and not the firm of Merrill Lynch] appeared to be aimed at preventing Merrill "from being Andersenized," said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor and SEC attorney.

Wednesday, Justice Department officials seemed to be trying to play up the differences between Andersen and Merrill. "This is the kind of response that the DOJ encourages and frankly expects from companies in the course of a criminal investigation," said Christopher Wray, assistant attorney general for the criminal division, who later added, "There's a right way and a wrong way to respond when the government comes knocking at your door."

The problem with this is that Merrill Lynch was involved at the firm level with this grand deception, and both they and their client Enron are responsible for and beneficiaries of the administration that is dragging the United States into a horrific fiscal crisis.

And why does the Justice Department view its role in the matter as "trying to play up the differences between Andersen and Merrill"? Shouldn't the Justice Department be slightly more interested in, oh, I don't know, justice?

We also wrote about Merrill Lynch, the #1 wealth manager in the United States, yesterday.

{ 9:37 AM }

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Let's repeat this over and over and over until it sinks in:

Rumsfeld Sees No Link
Between Iraq, 9/11

Bush: No Proof of
Saddam Role in 9-11

{ 6:05 PM }

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Don't miss Kicking Ass, a new blog by the Democratic National Committee. It and a bunch of others will soon be added to the permanent list.

{ 4:19 PM }

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Enron, Merrill Lynch, class warfare. Behold the strategic alignment of Enron, Bush-Cheney 2000, Merrill Lynch, and Nigerian barges (Wall Street Journal, sub. req'd):

Former Merrill Executives Are Charged With Fraud

(Associated Press) HOUSTON -- Three former Merrill Lynch executives were charged with fraud Wednesday for allegedly helping Enron Corp. inflate earnings with a loan the energy trader disguised as a sale.

Daniel Bayly, Robert Furst and James Brown were named in a three-count federal indictment unsealed Wednesday in Houston. They were scheduled to appear before a judge later in the day. All three were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and falsifying books and records.

Mr. Brown was named in two additional counts accusing him of committing perjury before a grand-jury investigating the Enron scandal and of obstruction before the same grand jury.

The charges stem from a scheme in which Enron, with Merrill's knowledge, allegedly booked a short-term investment from the brokerage firm as profit from the sale of Nigerian barges. The income was then used to make Enron appear to have met earnings targets.

The three agreed to buy the Nigerian barges only because Merrill Lynch "knew the 'purchase' was not real," according to the indictment.

Neither is the "administration" real, based as it is on the whims of the Supreme Court and lavish campaign contributions from fraudulent Enron profits, facilitated by Merrill Lynch.

So who is Merrill Lynch? According to a 2003 survey by Barron's, Merrill Lynch is the #1 wealth manager in the United States, with private client assets of $630 billion, more than the Bush deficit for this year. With a minimum account balance of $1 million, these are the people who benefit most — by a long shot — from the Bush tax cuts. It was in Merrill Lynch's best interest to help create the fraud that was Enron because Enron helped create the fraud that is Bush who helped create the fraud that is current fiscal policy.

With full knowledge of what it was doing, the largest wealth manager in the US facilitates the deceptions of the largest energy trader in the US who contributes mightily to the Bush campaign and who directly recommends energy policy to the vice president, himself the CEO of the largest oil services corporation, and still on six-figure annual deferred compensation from Halliburton while he occupies the office of vice president.

What boggles the mind is the scale and coordination of this national hoax — to drain the US Treasury into the grasping hands of the rich.

Hello, special prosecutor? Can you hear me?

UPDATE: Merrill Lynch has cut a deal that ensures it will not meet the same fate as the scapegoat firm of Arthur Andersen, which acted not only as Enron's auditor, but also Halliburton's while Dick Cheney was CEO. Killing two birds with one stone, as it were. Under the politico-plutocratic logic of the Bush administration, Andersen the auditor was dispensable; Merrill Lynch the wealth manager is not.

{ 12:56 PM }

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CalPundit aka Kevin Drum provides an excellent, exclusive interview with Paul Krugman, who recently published an outstanding article entitled "The Tax-Cut Con" in the New York Times Magazine.

{ 4:27 PM }

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The Texas goose step. Adventures in procedural fascism continue in the Texas redistricting crisis. Story from the Houston Chronicle:

A Democratic crowd in the gallery pelted the Republican leadership with jeers of "Nazis" as the Senate adjourned quickly to deny boycotting senators a chance to re-enter the Senate triumphantly while it was in session.

[...]

The other 10 boycotting Democrats walked into the Senate chamber at 12:07 p.m. A ring of television cameras and boom microphones surrounded them. The gallery crowd cheered wildly.

"Thank you, Texas!" Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, shouted back to the crowd.

Van de Putte, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said the boycott was about more than partisan politics. She said the Democrats wanted to make certain the Republicans did not stifle the voices of rural Texans and minorities with redistricting plans harmful to their interests.

Sen. Mario Gallegos made fun of the Republicans for adjourning so quickly.

"If they were so eager for us to come back to work, where are they?" said Gallegos, D-Houston. "If they were so eager for us to make a quorum and make the issues on the floor, where are they?"

At the center of the storm is Republican Texas Speaker Tom Craddick who, with Tom DeLay, was a conspirator in the craven illegal abuse of the federal Department of Homeland Security just to shore up Craddick's petty fiefdom in Midland, West Texas.

{ 9:15 AM }

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L. Jean Lewis and the two faces of scandal. "The really germane question is this: How exactly did L. Jean Lewis rise suddenly from the ranks of minor RTC [Resolution Trust Corp.] investigator to the overseer of a massive Defense Department bureau [that investigates fraud and audits Pentagon contracts, including the billions of dollars being awarded in Iraq to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel]? What exactly were her qualifications? The ones she put on display for the RTC: Namely, ginning up scandals against Democrats, and covering up scandals against Republicans."

That's David Neiwert at Orcinus (see also here). Via Atrios posts here and here.

{ 12:42 PM }

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